Ian's bookshelf: all

Ian's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 02 May 2025 14:15:25 -0700 60 Ian's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Tomas Nevinson 179946097 THE FINAL NOVEL FROM THE GREATEST SPANISH WRITER OF HIS GENERATION, JAVIER MARÍAS'No-one nowadays writes prose like Javier Marías . . . If you're already a fan, you'll know what to expect and rejoice. If you're not, what a treat you have in store' The Herald Spain in the 1990s is beset by a simmering campaign of terror from Basque separatists ETA, with periodic atrocities shattering an illusory calm. Against this backdrop, retired British Secret Service member Tomás Nevinson - now living a quiet life in his hometown Madrid - is approached by his sinister former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold, for one last assignment. His to go back undercover, in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact an ETA terrorist, on loan from the IRA, now on the run and living there incognito.Charting a world where right and wrong, and good and evil, are irreparably blurred, Javier Marías takes us on a journey of rare and unforgettable suspense in this, the final novel written before his untimely death in 2022.Translated by Margaret Jull Costa'The last word from a master . . . once you've been inside Marías' world, to spend too long outside is unbearable' The Sunday Times'A twisting espionage tale shot through with slantwise humour . . . seductive and inescapably poignant' Observer]]> 656 Javier Marías 0241568633 Ian 5 CRITIQUE:

"The Cultivated Murderer"

The protagonist of this novel and its predecessor/ companion, "Berta Isla", is called back from retirement by the British Secret Service to locate, identify and help dispose of one of three women who is believed to have been an accessory to a number of terrorist acts by the ETA.

From the first sentence of the novel, we know that Nevinson's mission might include a non-judicial killing:

"I was brought up the old-fashioned way, and could never have dreamed that I would one day be ordered to kill a woman."

Nevinson finds this a difficult task:

"...my finger was definitely not ready to squeeze the trigger, still less take aim at a woman, it made no difference what she had done in the past."

The aftermath of an ETA attack

Doing the Deed

Still, Nevinson views his task as "carrying out orders", and not thinking critically or ethically:

"When you feel forced to do something, the solution is to convince yourself not only that you have to do it, but that it's the best possible option. You can always find a reason for everything, or two or three or more, there's nothing easier than coming up with reasons and thus feeling, quite impartially of course, that you have right on your side.

"This is what I had to do in those last days of July, clear away any doubts, banish all excuses and steel myself to act. To forget my strange fondness for [XXX] and see that it was vital that she should no longer tread this earth, to make her an objective, a target, an enemy bereft of present and future, someone who must pay for her appalling past, since her past had been judged to be appalling...Yes, I was still a cog, a pawn..."

A Shakespearean Cog in the Wheel

As in his earlier novels, Marias frequently quotes and paraphrases Shakespeare (e.g., the following quotes are from "Macbeth"):

"Better be with the dead...than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy."

"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy."

Elsewhere, Marias writes:

"Nothing is done until it is done completely and cannot be undone, until there is no turning back."

A first step is not enough to accomplish the deed, even if it might lay the foundation of a novel.

"Married Not to the Person, But to Their Voice"

Whatever the protagonist's mission, whatever the novel's plot, we readers can't help but luxuriate in Marias' voice, the ceaseless, reassuringly caressing quality of his prose, the length of his novel (all 634 pages of it!), and his persistently long sentences. To quote his translator, Margaret Jull Costa:

"A long sentence can take an idea or a feeling and investigate its many crannies and contradictions, ...holding them up to the light and testing them out."

author: Javier Marías
name: Ian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: marias, read-2025, reviews, reviews-5-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

"The Cultivated Murderer"

The protagonist of this novel and its predecessor/ companion, "Berta Isla", is called back from retirement by the British Secret Service to locate, identify and help dispose of one of three women who is believed to have been an accessory to a number of terrorist acts by the ETA.

From the first sentence of the novel, we know that Nevinson's mission might include a non-judicial killing:

"I was brought up the old-fashioned way, and could never have dreamed that I would one day be ordered to kill a woman."

Nevinson finds this a difficult task:

"...my finger was definitely not ready to squeeze the trigger, still less take aim at a woman, it made no difference what she had done in the past."

The aftermath of an ETA attack

Doing the Deed

Still, Nevinson views his task as "carrying out orders", and not thinking critically or ethically:

"When you feel forced to do something, the solution is to convince yourself not only that you have to do it, but that it's the best possible option. You can always find a reason for everything, or two or three or more, there's nothing easier than coming up with reasons and thus feeling, quite impartially of course, that you have right on your side.

"This is what I had to do in those last days of July, clear away any doubts, banish all excuses and steel myself to act. To forget my strange fondness for [XXX] and see that it was vital that she should no longer tread this earth, to make her an objective, a target, an enemy bereft of present and future, someone who must pay for her appalling past, since her past had been judged to be appalling...Yes, I was still a cog, a pawn..."

A Shakespearean Cog in the Wheel

As in his earlier novels, Marias frequently quotes and paraphrases Shakespeare (e.g., the following quotes are from "Macbeth"):

"Better be with the dead...than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy."

"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy."

Elsewhere, Marias writes:

"Nothing is done until it is done completely and cannot be undone, until there is no turning back."

"A long sentence can take an idea or a feeling and investigate its many crannies and contradictions, ...holding them up to the light and testing them out."

With Marias, we always feel that we have embarked on a comprehensive voyage of exploration, whether of country, people, institutions, relationships, actions or language.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity]]> 16076785 Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year. The author of The New York Times bestseller The Stuff of Thought offers a controversial history of violence.

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?

This groundbreaking book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives- the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away-and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.]]> 1094 Steven Pinker 0141034645 Ian 0 4.26 2010 The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity

The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity

author: Steven Pinker
name: Ian
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art
review:

]]> London Bone and Other Stories 36162629 343 Michael Moorcock 1473213290 Ian 0 moorcock, currently-reading 3.83

author: Michael Moorcock
name: Ian
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: moorcock, currently-reading
review:

]]> Existential Errands 896931 316 Norman Mailer 0451054229 Ian 0 3.23 1972

author: Norman Mailer
name: Ian
average rating: 3.23
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, mailer, cul-poli-phil-art, lit-krit
review:

]]> Burning Chrome 231383871 Johnny Mnemonic to the technofetishist blues of Burning Chrome.

Johnny Mnemonic (1981)
The Gernsback Continuum (1981)
Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977)
The Belonging Kind (1981) with John Shirley
Hinterlands (1981)

Red Star, Winter Orbit (1983) with Bruce Sterling
New Rose Hotel (1984)
The Winter Market (1985)
Dogfight (1985) with Michael Swanwick
Burning Chrome (1982)]]> 220 William Gibson 0586074619 Ian 4 Wired West

"Burning Chrome" is a fascinating collection of stories that chart the origin of the Sprawl Trilogy. You can watch William Gibson building the world of the Sprawl ("of cities and smoke"), cyberspace and the characters who would later be explored in the three novels.

Equally importantly, you can observe him developing a unique style of writing suited to this world.

It's data- and sensory-rich, almost exhausting in its detail, which is revealed without information dumps or definitions. It assumes that we're keeping up with the story and we get it, without having to have things explained to us at length.

Gibson's world is a combination of the physical world, computers, data, the matrix, cyberspace, and people who use technology to travel between these substrata.

Gibson is equally adept at finding the future in the present, and the present in the future.

Gentleman Losers

The narrators of the stories are often down on their luck technophiles and hackers who illicitly access the corporate segments of cyberspace. Gibson calls them "console cowboys", "hustlers" and "industrial espionage artists" who rustle data. They frequent saloons like "The Gentleman Loser" (named after a line in Steely Dan's "Midnight Cruiser") and visit brothels like the House of Blue Lights. This isn't the Wild West, but the Wired West, although it incorporates Japan, China, Hong Kong, Macao and Russia.

Not surprisingly, the style of some of the stories resembles that found in western novels, others resemble pulp or crime fiction.

In Recognition of a Woman's Sleeping Patterns

There are several narrators, all male. The women are talented, artistic, beautiful, adventurous, energetic, and mysterious, with exotic or kitsch names like Molly Millions, Dialta Downes, Angela, Antoinette, Leni, Charmian, (Colonel) Olga, Hillary, Valentina, Nina, Tatjana, Sandii, Lise (who records an album of her dreams called "Kings of Sleep"), Nance, and Rikki Wildside.

description

author: William Gibson
name: Ian
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2016/02/19
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: gibson, read-2016, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
Wired West

"Burning Chrome" is a fascinating collection of stories that chart the origin of the Sprawl Trilogy. You can watch William Gibson building the world of the Sprawl ("of cities and smoke"), cyberspace and the characters who would later be explored in the three novels.

Equally importantly, you can observe him developing a unique style of writing suited to this world.

It's data- and sensory-rich, almost exhausting in its detail, which is revealed without information dumps or definitions. It assumes that we're keeping up with the story and we get it, without having to have things explained to us at length.

Gibson's world is a combination of the physical world, computers, data, the matrix, cyberspace, and people who use technology to travel between these substrata.

Gibson is equally adept at finding the future in the present, and the present in the future.

Gentleman Losers

The narrators of the stories are often down on their luck technophiles and hackers who illicitly access the corporate segments of cyberspace. Gibson calls them "console cowboys", "hustlers" and "industrial espionage artists" who rustle data. They frequent saloons like "The Gentleman Loser" (named after a line in Steely Dan's "Midnight Cruiser") and visit brothels like the House of Blue Lights. This isn't the Wild West, but the Wired West, although it incorporates Japan, China, Hong Kong, Macao and Russia.

Not surprisingly, the style of some of the stories resembles that found in western novels, others resemble pulp or crime fiction.

In Recognition of a Woman's Sleeping Patterns

There are several narrators, all male. The women are talented, artistic, beautiful, adventurous, energetic, and mysterious, with exotic or kitsch names like Molly Millions, Dialta Downes, Angela, Antoinette, Leni, Charmian, (Colonel) Olga, Hillary, Valentina, Nina, Tatjana, Sandii, Lise (who records an album of her dreams called "Kings of Sleep"), Nance, and Rikki Wildside.

description

Naomi Watts in "King Kong"

Where is Your Bounty of Fortune and Fame?

The final story "Burning Chrome" contains the original use of the word "cyberspace". Interestingly, it had already become the proprietary name of some computer hardware, "the Cyberspace Seven", which the narrator, Automatic Jack, repairs and customises so that he can access and burn Chrome's data towers with a Russian "glitch system" or cybernetic virus analog. Meanwhile, Jack withdraws a significant undisclosed amount of cash from Chrome's Zurich account (which stores its income from global property and prostitution assets):

"I watched zeros pile up behind a meaningless figure on the monitor. I was rich...

"I thought about Chrome, too. That we'd killed her, murdered her, as surely as if we'd slit her throat."

Despite the female face Jack subconsciously attaches to it, Gibson's corrupt new global economy was just as dependent on data as it was on cash. As were console cowboys like Jack who knew how to hack into both in pursuit of fortune and fame.

"Tell me where are you driving
Midnight cruiser
Where is your bounty
Of fortune and fame?"

SOUNDTRACK:

[spoilers removed]
]]> Fiskadoro 29941 New York Times as "wildly ambitious" and "the sort of book that a young Herman Melville might have written had he lived today and studied such disparate works as the Bible, 'The Wasteland,' Fahrenheit 451, and Dog Soldiers, screened Star Wars and Apocalypse Now several times, dropped a lot of acid and listened to hours of Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones," Fiskadoro is a stunning novel of an all-too-possible tomorrow. Deeply moving and provacative, Fiskadoro brilliantly presents the sweeping and heartbreaking tale of the survivors of a devastating nuclear war and their attempts to salvage remnants of the old world and rebuild their culture.]]> 221 Denis Johnson 0060976098 Ian 0 3.56 1985 Fiskadoro

author: Denis Johnson
name: Ian
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: a-wish-liszt, to-read, johnson
review:

]]> The Book of Disquiet 6897011 The Book of Disquiet, an astonishing work that, in George Steiner's words, "gives to Lisbon the haunting spell of Joyce's Dublin or Kafka's Prague."Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Fernando Pessoa, one of the founders of modernism, was born in Lisbon in 1888. Most of Pessoa's writing was not published during his lifetime: The Book of Disquiet was first published in Portugal in 1982.]]> 262 Fernando Pessoa 1846687357 Ian 4 Like a Version (Touched for the Very First Time)

This is an exceptional book or work or whatever you want to call it.

However, ultimately, I found it both fascinating and (just a little bit) frustrating.

One source of frustration is that, upon completing it, I discovered that the version I had read (translated by Margaret Jull Costa) was 262 pages, whereas the Penguin Classics version (translated by Richard Zenith) is 544 pages. I hate it when this happens. I feel duped. Nothing had forewarned me of this possibility.

Readers have different views on the merits of the translations. I was perfectly happy with the quality of the text in the version I read (plus I love the cover!). However, the sheer difference in length has made me question whether and, if so, how much, text was omitted from the earlier version.

This might not be such a big deal. If indeed there is a difference in the amount of text, I imagine that much of it might have replicated what was included in the original version. There is already considerable duplication in the work. Alternatively, it might have consisted of complementary material, the absence of which did not detract from the content of the original version.

Regardless, the fact that this issue occurred at all points to another cause of my frustration.

Fragments from under the Floorboards

Both versions of the work have been presented to the reader as if it was a novel. It's even suggested that it's one of the great Modernist novels of the 20th Century.

I don't want to be precious about the definition of the word "novel". As far as I'm concerned, if the author thinks their work is a novel, that's good enough for me.

However, here, the work as a whole (in whatever version) has been assembled by a team of experts and editors from a trunk full of hundreds or thousands of fragments.

It's not clear whether Pessoa regarded the project as a novel. Nor is it clear whether he regarded any version or part of the project as a finished work. Or in what order he would have presented the work or novel, had he finished it.

The sequence in which the fragments have been ordered (presumably, from a selection) is actually a triumph of sympathetic editing.

However, I'm not sure whether, if the author intended the work to be a novel, it would have looked anything like what I read.

To the extent that its formal concerns might qualify it as a work of Modernist fiction, you have to ask whether they derive from the author or his editors.

Textual Personae

I am nevertheless equally fascinated by the metafictional pretence behind its submission to the reader.

The work purports to be the product of the heteronymic author, Bernardo Soares, a figment of Pessoa's imagination.

Soares was not just a pseudonym for Pessoa writing as himself. He was a fully-fledged persona, clearly differentiated from Pessoa and many other heteronyms he used to imagine and write other discrete aspects of his work.

Thus, the existence of the heteronym allowed Pessoa to fully explore aspects of his imagination, aesthetics and philosophy, without any limitation inferred from its ultimate source in the one person. (Mind you, Pessoa acknowledged that Soares most resembled his true self ["me minus reason and affectivity"], to the extent there might only have been one.)

The result is that this work is not just fragmentary in its own right. It is the product of a fragmented author.

Whether or not it was ever intended to be a novel (by either of its "authors"), the work itself (or at least the analysis of it) fits within the concerns of Modernism, if not Post-Modernism (which I maintain is a branch of Modernism, a sub-movement, not a separate movement).

Melancholy Nihilism

The fragmentation also reflects the philosophical concerns of the author(s).

Ultimately, I sense that this is a philosophical work, rather than a fictional work.

It's a fragmented, but ultimately comprehensive and systematic, contemplation of the narrator's world and his place in it. The narrator is a thinker, not a man of action. Little happens in the work other than thinking about the self and its relationship with others and the world. It's not quite solipsistic, because the narrator acknowledges the existence of the outside world. However, for him, his own mind is of paramount concern.

The editors have assembled the fragments in a thematic way, even though the same themes appear multiple times in the finished text. It could equally have been organised a different way. Or distilled into a short work of melancholy wisdom.

The work is a testament to inveterate egoism, miserabilism and misanthropy. Yet, it's been fashioned into a comprehensible philosophy.

If sub-headings were added as signposts, it would make a fantastic guide to nihilism or whatever you want to call this particular philosophy. I am reluctant to describe it as Existentialism, because of the apparent lack of Humanism.

Whatever you call it, it purports to be a philosophy made by a melancholy person for melancholy people, to the extent that there is any concern for others at all.

Its closest fictional parallel is Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground".

Prepossessing Aphorisms

It's hard to say how much readers are expected to distance themselves from the ostensible authors or their philosophy.

Even if it's serious, it would be ironic if only sad or self-pitying readers related to or enjoyed this work.

Its beauty resides in the quality of writing, which can be enjoyed by all readers with a metaphysical bent.

Indeed, if all philosophy were conceived and written this lyrically, it wouldn't be the preserve of desk-bound, incomprehensible polysyllabists and LL.B.'s that it seems to have become.

This work is as literary and aphoristic as Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

You can understand and enjoy it, even if you don't agree or sympathise with its underlying philosophy.

Ultimately, for this reason alone, it is a creative work, if not necessarily fiction.

Still, there is always the possibility that the fiction lies in the creation of a non-fiction work by a fictitious author, narrator or character (as ably assisted by the experts and editors)! It's hard to tell whether the metaphysics is bona fide or purely metafictional.

The whole text or philosophy might even be ironic. Who knows? Perhaps Johnny Marr could put it to music!

At least this prospect makes it good for a laugh or maybe even a dance. Roger Wilco Foxtrot!

"A Mercator Projection of the Soul"
[An Assemblage of Aphorisms]

Below are some aphorisms that map the metaphysical journey of the work:

Life and the Abyss:

Life would be unbearable if we were truly conscious of it. (212)

If there is one thing life gives us, apart from life itself, and for which we must thank the gods, it is the gift of not knowing ourselves: of not knowing ourselves and of not knowing one another. The human soul is an abyss of viscous darkness...no one would love themselves if they really knew themselves...(236)

Nihilism and Illusion:

In order not to demean ourselves in our own eyes, it is enough that we should become accustomed to harbouring no ambitions, passions, desires, hopes, impulses or feelings of restlessness.(186)

Once we believe this world to be merely an illusion and a phantasm, we are then free to consider everything that happens to us as a dream, something that only pretended to because we were asleep.(220)

Death and Inaction:

I've become a character in a book, a life already dead. Quite against my wishes, what I feel is felt in order for me to write it down.(139)

Living seems to me a metaphysical mistake on the part of matter, an oversight on the part of inaction.(114)

Looking and Feeling:

For me, humanity is one vast decorative motif, existing through one's eyes and ears and through psychological emotion. I demand nothing more from life than to be a spectator of it. I demand nothing more from myself than to be a spectator of life.(198)

I am an endlessly sensitive photographic plate. In me every tiny detail is recorded and magnified in order to form part of a whole. I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget what I feel.(178)

Egoism and Disquiet:

That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even in my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world. I don't care if this makes me happy or unhappy, and I don't much care.(151)

The generation to which I belong was born into a world devoid of certainty for anyone possessed of both an intellect and a heart...the world into which we were born had no security to offer us as regards religion, no anchor as regards morality, no stability as regards politics. We were born into a state of anguish, both metaphysical and moral, and of political disquiet.(206)

Love and Onanism:

We never love anyone. We love only our idea of what someone is like. We love an idea of our own; in short, it is ourselves that we love...The onanist may be an abject creature but in truth he is the logical expression of the lover. He is the only one who neither disguises nor deludes himself.(218)

To love is merely to grow tired of being alone: it is therefore both cowardice and a betrayal of ourselves (it is vitally important that we should not love).(240)

Futility and Nothingness:

The one reason we get on together is that we know nothing about one another.

Love disturbs and wearies, action dissipates and disappoints, no one truly knows how to know, and thinking confuses everything. Better then to put a stop to all our desires and hopes, to our futile attempts to explain the world, or to any foolish ambitions to change or govern it. Everything is nothing...(242)

Tedium and Worthlessness:

Tedium is not a sickness brought on by the boredom of having nothing to do, but the worse sickness of feeling that nothing is worth doing.(91)

Tedium is boredom with the world, the malaise of living, the weariness of having lived; in truth, tedium is the feeling in one's flesh of the endless emptiness of things.(122)

Silence and Emptiness:

I feel this because I feel nothing. I think this because this is all nothing. Nothing, nothing, just part of the night and the silence and of whatever emptiness, negativity and inconstancy I share with them, the space that exists between me and me, a thing mislaid by some god...(262)

ADDED EXTRAS:
[spoilers removed]

Rather than doing updates, the text prompted me to write some mock "verse", inspired by either Pessoa's words (in which case I have simply versified them more or less intact) or the tone of his text.

I also wrote a story that I placed in comment #1 in the thread.

The Semi-Heteronym (Me Minus Reason and Affectivity)

As luck would have it,
If I was there, so was this
Particular man.

Transmitted by Concupiscence

Once I was
Innocent,
But that was
Only once
And many
Years ago.

On Making a Mockery

It doesn't matter
If you laugh at me,
For I too have scorn
In my armoury.

Just Doodles Haiku

These are the doodles
Of my incomprehension
Of my consciousness.

Lost in Analysis

I lost myself
In abstract thought,
But found myself
Once more again
In the pages
I wrested from
Oblivion.

Heidegger's Children
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

Autumn will take
Ev'ry single
Philosophy
That Heidegger's
Drowsy children
Of the abyss
Play at making.

Anticipatory Retrospection
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

I remember him now
As I will in the future
With the nostalgia I know
I will feel for him then.

We Find One Another Wanting

Solitude torments us,
Though it's habitual.
Company oppresses us,
Despite its ritual.

Never Go Too Near

Know the difference
Between voluptuousness
And noble pleasure.

Fragments of a Rainy Season
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

These words are guesses
Made in the void,
Trembling on the brink
Of the deepest abyss.
Through them trickles
The plangent sound
Of the constant rain
Outside the window.

What She Offers to My Eyes
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

This is how I love:
I love with my eyes,
Not my fantasy.
I don't fantasise;
I don't imagine.
I keep whole a heart,
Given over to
Unreal destinies.

A Shot in the Arm
[In the Words of Roger Wilco]

What I once
Thought isn't
What I want
To believe
Any more.

No Self-Pity Them
[Assembled from the Words and Thoughts of Bernardo Soares]

I

Wise men achieve
Their happiness
By making life
Monotonous.
For then, for them,
Tiny incidents
Are imbued with
Great significance.

II

Wise men protect their souls
With just their human senses.
At the onset of any sadness,
They assert their innocence.
The wise shirk the disquiet
Of other men's existence,
And defy successive tragedies
With consummate indifference.

SOUNDTRACK:

See comment #2 in the thread.]]> 4.15 1982 The Book of Disquiet

author: Fernando Pessoa
name: Ian
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2015/03/28
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: pessoa, read-2015, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
Like a Version (Touched for the Very First Time)

This is an exceptional book or work or whatever you want to call it.

However, ultimately, I found it both fascinating and (just a little bit) frustrating.

One source of frustration is that, upon completing it, I discovered that the version I had read (translated by Margaret Jull Costa) was 262 pages, whereas the Penguin Classics version (translated by Richard Zenith) is 544 pages. I hate it when this happens. I feel duped. Nothing had forewarned me of this possibility.

Readers have different views on the merits of the translations. I was perfectly happy with the quality of the text in the version I read (plus I love the cover!). However, the sheer difference in length has made me question whether and, if so, how much, text was omitted from the earlier version.

This might not be such a big deal. If indeed there is a difference in the amount of text, I imagine that much of it might have replicated what was included in the original version. There is already considerable duplication in the work. Alternatively, it might have consisted of complementary material, the absence of which did not detract from the content of the original version.

Regardless, the fact that this issue occurred at all points to another cause of my frustration.

Fragments from under the Floorboards

Both versions of the work have been presented to the reader as if it was a novel. It's even suggested that it's one of the great Modernist novels of the 20th Century.

I don't want to be precious about the definition of the word "novel". As far as I'm concerned, if the author thinks their work is a novel, that's good enough for me.

However, here, the work as a whole (in whatever version) has been assembled by a team of experts and editors from a trunk full of hundreds or thousands of fragments.

It's not clear whether Pessoa regarded the project as a novel. Nor is it clear whether he regarded any version or part of the project as a finished work. Or in what order he would have presented the work or novel, had he finished it.

The sequence in which the fragments have been ordered (presumably, from a selection) is actually a triumph of sympathetic editing.

However, I'm not sure whether, if the author intended the work to be a novel, it would have looked anything like what I read.

To the extent that its formal concerns might qualify it as a work of Modernist fiction, you have to ask whether they derive from the author or his editors.

Textual Personae

I am nevertheless equally fascinated by the metafictional pretence behind its submission to the reader.

The work purports to be the product of the heteronymic author, Bernardo Soares, a figment of Pessoa's imagination.

Soares was not just a pseudonym for Pessoa writing as himself. He was a fully-fledged persona, clearly differentiated from Pessoa and many other heteronyms he used to imagine and write other discrete aspects of his work.

Thus, the existence of the heteronym allowed Pessoa to fully explore aspects of his imagination, aesthetics and philosophy, without any limitation inferred from its ultimate source in the one person. (Mind you, Pessoa acknowledged that Soares most resembled his true self ["me minus reason and affectivity"], to the extent there might only have been one.)

The result is that this work is not just fragmentary in its own right. It is the product of a fragmented author.

Whether or not it was ever intended to be a novel (by either of its "authors"), the work itself (or at least the analysis of it) fits within the concerns of Modernism, if not Post-Modernism (which I maintain is a branch of Modernism, a sub-movement, not a separate movement).

Melancholy Nihilism

The fragmentation also reflects the philosophical concerns of the author(s).

Ultimately, I sense that this is a philosophical work, rather than a fictional work.

It's a fragmented, but ultimately comprehensive and systematic, contemplation of the narrator's world and his place in it. The narrator is a thinker, not a man of action. Little happens in the work other than thinking about the self and its relationship with others and the world. It's not quite solipsistic, because the narrator acknowledges the existence of the outside world. However, for him, his own mind is of paramount concern.

The editors have assembled the fragments in a thematic way, even though the same themes appear multiple times in the finished text. It could equally have been organised a different way. Or distilled into a short work of melancholy wisdom.

The work is a testament to inveterate egoism, miserabilism and misanthropy. Yet, it's been fashioned into a comprehensible philosophy.

If sub-headings were added as signposts, it would make a fantastic guide to nihilism or whatever you want to call this particular philosophy. I am reluctant to describe it as Existentialism, because of the apparent lack of Humanism.

Whatever you call it, it purports to be a philosophy made by a melancholy person for melancholy people, to the extent that there is any concern for others at all.

Its closest fictional parallel is Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground".

Prepossessing Aphorisms

It's hard to say how much readers are expected to distance themselves from the ostensible authors or their philosophy.

Even if it's serious, it would be ironic if only sad or self-pitying readers related to or enjoyed this work.

Its beauty resides in the quality of writing, which can be enjoyed by all readers with a metaphysical bent.

Indeed, if all philosophy were conceived and written this lyrically, it wouldn't be the preserve of desk-bound, incomprehensible polysyllabists and LL.B.'s that it seems to have become.

This work is as literary and aphoristic as Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.

You can understand and enjoy it, even if you don't agree or sympathise with its underlying philosophy.

Ultimately, for this reason alone, it is a creative work, if not necessarily fiction.

Still, there is always the possibility that the fiction lies in the creation of a non-fiction work by a fictitious author, narrator or character (as ably assisted by the experts and editors)! It's hard to tell whether the metaphysics is bona fide or purely metafictional.

The whole text or philosophy might even be ironic. Who knows? Perhaps Johnny Marr could put it to music!

At least this prospect makes it good for a laugh or maybe even a dance. Roger Wilco Foxtrot!

"A Mercator Projection of the Soul"
[An Assemblage of Aphorisms]

Below are some aphorisms that map the metaphysical journey of the work:

Life and the Abyss:

Life would be unbearable if we were truly conscious of it. (212)

If there is one thing life gives us, apart from life itself, and for which we must thank the gods, it is the gift of not knowing ourselves: of not knowing ourselves and of not knowing one another. The human soul is an abyss of viscous darkness...no one would love themselves if they really knew themselves...(236)

Nihilism and Illusion:

In order not to demean ourselves in our own eyes, it is enough that we should become accustomed to harbouring no ambitions, passions, desires, hopes, impulses or feelings of restlessness.(186)

Once we believe this world to be merely an illusion and a phantasm, we are then free to consider everything that happens to us as a dream, something that only pretended to because we were asleep.(220)

Death and Inaction:

I've become a character in a book, a life already dead. Quite against my wishes, what I feel is felt in order for me to write it down.(139)

Living seems to me a metaphysical mistake on the part of matter, an oversight on the part of inaction.(114)

Looking and Feeling:

For me, humanity is one vast decorative motif, existing through one's eyes and ears and through psychological emotion. I demand nothing more from life than to be a spectator of it. I demand nothing more from myself than to be a spectator of life.(198)

I am an endlessly sensitive photographic plate. In me every tiny detail is recorded and magnified in order to form part of a whole. I concern myself only with myself. For me the external world is pure sensation. I never forget what I feel.(178)

Egoism and Disquiet:

That is my morality or my metaphysics or me myself: a passer-by in everything, even in my own soul. I belong to nothing, I desire nothing, I am nothing except an abstract centre of impersonal sensations, a sentient mirror fallen from the wall but still turned to reflect the diversity of the world. I don't care if this makes me happy or unhappy, and I don't much care.(151)

The generation to which I belong was born into a world devoid of certainty for anyone possessed of both an intellect and a heart...the world into which we were born had no security to offer us as regards religion, no anchor as regards morality, no stability as regards politics. We were born into a state of anguish, both metaphysical and moral, and of political disquiet.(206)

Love and Onanism:

We never love anyone. We love only our idea of what someone is like. We love an idea of our own; in short, it is ourselves that we love...The onanist may be an abject creature but in truth he is the logical expression of the lover. He is the only one who neither disguises nor deludes himself.(218)

To love is merely to grow tired of being alone: it is therefore both cowardice and a betrayal of ourselves (it is vitally important that we should not love).(240)

Futility and Nothingness:

The one reason we get on together is that we know nothing about one another.

Love disturbs and wearies, action dissipates and disappoints, no one truly knows how to know, and thinking confuses everything. Better then to put a stop to all our desires and hopes, to our futile attempts to explain the world, or to any foolish ambitions to change or govern it. Everything is nothing...(242)

Tedium and Worthlessness:

Tedium is not a sickness brought on by the boredom of having nothing to do, but the worse sickness of feeling that nothing is worth doing.(91)

Tedium is boredom with the world, the malaise of living, the weariness of having lived; in truth, tedium is the feeling in one's flesh of the endless emptiness of things.(122)

Silence and Emptiness:

I feel this because I feel nothing. I think this because this is all nothing. Nothing, nothing, just part of the night and the silence and of whatever emptiness, negativity and inconstancy I share with them, the space that exists between me and me, a thing mislaid by some god...(262)

ADDED EXTRAS:
[spoilers removed]

Rather than doing updates, the text prompted me to write some mock "verse", inspired by either Pessoa's words (in which case I have simply versified them more or less intact) or the tone of his text.

I also wrote a story that I placed in comment #1 in the thread.

The Semi-Heteronym (Me Minus Reason and Affectivity)

As luck would have it,
If I was there, so was this
Particular man.

Transmitted by Concupiscence

Once I was
Innocent,
But that was
Only once
And many
Years ago.

On Making a Mockery

It doesn't matter
If you laugh at me,
For I too have scorn
In my armoury.

Just Doodles Haiku

These are the doodles
Of my incomprehension
Of my consciousness.

Lost in Analysis

I lost myself
In abstract thought,
But found myself
Once more again
In the pages
I wrested from
Oblivion.

Heidegger's Children
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

Autumn will take
Ev'ry single
Philosophy
That Heidegger's
Drowsy children
Of the abyss
Play at making.

Anticipatory Retrospection
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

I remember him now
As I will in the future
With the nostalgia I know
I will feel for him then.

We Find One Another Wanting

Solitude torments us,
Though it's habitual.
Company oppresses us,
Despite its ritual.

Never Go Too Near

Know the difference
Between voluptuousness
And noble pleasure.

Fragments of a Rainy Season
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

These words are guesses
Made in the void,
Trembling on the brink
Of the deepest abyss.
Through them trickles
The plangent sound
Of the constant rain
Outside the window.

What She Offers to My Eyes
[In the Words of Bernardo Soares]

This is how I love:
I love with my eyes,
Not my fantasy.
I don't fantasise;
I don't imagine.
I keep whole a heart,
Given over to
Unreal destinies.

A Shot in the Arm
[In the Words of Roger Wilco]

What I once
Thought isn't
What I want
To believe
Any more.

No Self-Pity Them
[Assembled from the Words and Thoughts of Bernardo Soares]

I

Wise men achieve
Their happiness
By making life
Monotonous.
For then, for them,
Tiny incidents
Are imbued with
Great significance.

II

Wise men protect their souls
With just their human senses.
At the onset of any sadness,
They assert their innocence.
The wise shirk the disquiet
Of other men's existence,
And defy successive tragedies
With consummate indifference.

SOUNDTRACK:

See comment #2 in the thread.
]]> Shadow Ticket 230910361
Thomas Pynchon is the author of V.; The Crying of Lot 49; Gravity’s Rainbow; Slow Learner, a collection of short stories; Vineland; Mason & Dixon; Against the Day; and, most recently, Inherent Vice. He received the National Book Award for Gravity’s Rainbow in 1974.]]> 384 Thomas Pynchon 1594206104 Ian 0 to-read, pynchon 5.00 2025 Shadow Ticket

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Ian
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read, pynchon
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments]]> 56268953
Are taxes theft? Is abortion murder? Does regulation destroy jobs? Is white privilege a lie? Conservative talking points are everywhere, and through well-funded media like Fox News , Breitbart , and YouTube ’s "Prager University," the right has an impressive record of packaging its views for a general audience. Clearly, the left needs to do a better job of fighting back.

Luckily, Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson has developed a reputation as a meticulous slayer of irrational and bigoted arguments. He has tangled with the likes of Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and Charles Murray, exposing their flimsy logic and distorted facts with forensic thoroughness and savage wit. In Responding to the Right , Robinson blasts right-wing nonsense with devastating intellectual weaponry, revealing how everyone from Ann Coulter to the National Review uses fear and lies to manipulate the public. He gives a detailed explanation of how conservative arguments work and why we need to resist them, then goes through twenty-five separate talking points, showing precisely why each one fails.

This essential handbook is a stimulating source of issues to debate and a comprehensive challenge to dozens of dominant orthodoxies. It sets a new standard for leftist critique, and would be an invaluable addition to the arsenals of the millions of progressives fighting the political battles of our age.]]> 384 Nathan J. Robinson 1250777747 Ian 0 3.83 Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments

Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments

author: Nathan J. Robinson
name: Ian
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, trump-gop
review:

]]> Berta Isla 38470122 A thrilling new literary offering from the acclaimed author of The Infatuations and A Heart So White

'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not...'

Berta Isla and Tomás Nevinson meet in Madrid. They are both very young and quickly decide to spend their lives together - never suspecting that they will grow to be total strangers, both living living under the shadow of disappearances.

Tomás, half-Spanish and half-English, has an extraordinary gift for languages and accents. Leaving Berta to study at Oxford, he catches the interest of a certain government agency, and its mysterious agent, Bertram Tupra. But Tomás resists the call of fate - until one, foolish day he makes an avoidable mistake - setting in motion events that will affect the rest of his life and that of his beloved Berta. Finishing his time at Oxford, he returns to Madrid to marry her, already knowing the life they planned has been lost forever.

Darkly gripping, Berta Isla is a story about a relationship condemned to secrecy and concealment, to pretence and conjecture, to resentment mingled with loyalty. With meticulous insight and understanding of the human soul, Marías examines the urge to change our destiny, and the hopeless exiles we bring upon ourselves.]]> 532 Javier Marías 0241343720 Ian 5 CRITIQUE:

"The Clandestine Life"

If you ask me, this 532 page novel focuses more on Berta Isla's (1.) husband, and could easily have been called "Tomas Nevinson", except that this was to be the title of its sequel (which was the last novel Javier Marias wrote before his death).

I say this, because the novel is primarily about the clandestine life of Tomas, who gets entangled in espionage activities, the detail of which is never definitively revealed (which after all is their nature).

Berta and Tomas went to the same school in Madrid. Tomas' father was English, and his mother Spanish. He spoke English and Spanish fluently, and amused his family and friends with his mimicry of other people's accents. He was interested in language, literature and culture, and eventually went up to Oxford to study. At the end of his time there, unbeknown to Berta, he was approached to work in the UK secret service, which valued his language skills, only partly as a translator. Berta's parents were both Spanish, and she taught English literature in Madrid.

Later, it's revealed that there might have been a connection between (which there was in reality), hence the value of Tomas' language skills to the attempts by the secret service to infiltrate these groups. Tomas might also have seen action in the Falklands War in 1982, after which he went missing for 12 years, presumed by some to be dead. (3.)

Tomas is prohibited by law from revealing any of his espionage activities to Berta. She spends all of her time in Spain teaching and taking care of their two children, ignorant of Tomas' whereabouts, other than that he might be in England. Ultimately, she begins to suspect that he might be legally dead, and that she might be entitled to a divorce, which she declines to activate, hoping that he might still be alive:

"You have to understand, Berta...it was essential that, during that time, no one should know I was alive, because if anyone found out, I would probably be dead. Besides, they were my orders."

Pretence and Concealment

Javier Marias implies that there might be some resemblance between clandestine espionage activities and marital or personal infidelity. Keeping a secret for the purposes of one involves a similar temperament, practices and skills to the other. If you're clandestine in relation to your work, would you be equally clandestine in relation to your personal relationships?

"He started leading a double life, and both lives involved pretence and concealment."

"I will be a fiction, a spectre who comes and goes and departs and returns."

A More Extraordinary Life (and Another Love Story)

On the other hand, does it simply make for a more extraordinary life? Even if sometimes Tomas must find safe haven in "a tranquil, orderly life" teaching at a school in a small country town? He describes Oxford in similar terms as "a peaceful place, outside the universe."

As for Berta, Marias quotes Flaubert (2.):

"She, like anyone else, (had) had her love story."

To which Tomas adds:

"...and I was that story, dead or alive."

For she continued to love him (or so she believed), even during his long absence or death.

description

author: Javier Marías
name: Ian
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: marias, reviews, reviews-5-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

"The Clandestine Life"

If you ask me, this 532 page novel focuses more on Berta Isla's (1.) husband, and could easily have been called "Tomas Nevinson", except that this was to be the title of its sequel (which was the last novel Javier Marias wrote before his death).

I say this, because the novel is primarily about the clandestine life of Tomas, who gets entangled in espionage activities, the detail of which is never definitively revealed (which after all is their nature).

Berta and Tomas went to the same school in Madrid. Tomas' father was English, and his mother Spanish. He spoke English and Spanish fluently, and amused his family and friends with his mimicry of other people's accents. He was interested in language, literature and culture, and eventually went up to Oxford to study. At the end of his time there, unbeknown to Berta, he was approached to work in the UK secret service, which valued his language skills, only partly as a translator. Berta's parents were both Spanish, and she taught English literature in Madrid.

Later, it's revealed that there might have been a connection between (which there was in reality), hence the value of Tomas' language skills to the attempts by the secret service to infiltrate these groups. Tomas might also have seen action in the Falklands War in 1982, after which he went missing for 12 years, presumed by some to be dead. (3.)

Tomas is prohibited by law from revealing any of his espionage activities to Berta. She spends all of her time in Spain teaching and taking care of their two children, ignorant of Tomas' whereabouts, other than that he might be in England. Ultimately, she begins to suspect that he might be legally dead, and that she might be entitled to a divorce, which she declines to activate, hoping that he might still be alive:

"You have to understand, Berta...it was essential that, during that time, no one should know I was alive, because if anyone found out, I would probably be dead. Besides, they were my orders."

"He started leading a double life, and both lives involved pretence and concealment."

"I will be a fiction, a spectre who comes and goes and departs and returns."

"She, like anyone else, (had) had her love story."

To which Tomas adds:

"...and I was that story, dead or alive."

For she continued to love him (or so she believed), even during his long absence or death.

description

The Spectre of Fiction - "In the Realm of Chimeras"

Marias alludes to many writers such as Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Flaubert, Herman Melville and T. S. Eliot who have inspired him. In some cases, the novel seems to be a lengthy extrapolation on the original quotation or inspiration.

He also uses his trademark long sentences, with no detriment to the pacing of the novel.

The narrative is assembled, ghost-like, implied, rather than explicit, but never less than stimulating.

FOOTNOTES:

(1.) Pronounced "Isle - a" or "eye - la", not "is - la".

(2.)

(3.) In April, 1982, I went on my first extended holiday in England and Scotland. I travelled from London to Edinburgh to see two concerts: one by the Jam, and the other by Orange Juice. I then caught a train to Liverpool to see a band called Blancmange, after which I went to Exeter to see another band I didn't know as well (I think it was Theatre of Hate). On the way from Liverpool to Exeter, the trains were full of soldiers who were meeting up with troop ships in Portsmouth. I had first learned that there was a war, when I saw a chalk board outside Sloan Square tube station in Kings Road, Chelsea urgently calling all troops back to base. The radio waves (remember them?) were full of Roxy Music's "More Than This".

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties]]> 23460971 368 Elijah Wald 0062366688 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

Introduction

I bought this book in 2019, but have only read it now, after seeing the film inspired by it

At the time, I googled the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and thought I discovered an article by Thomas Pynchon (that I can no longer find online).

However, having re-read the article a few times since I read the book, I thought it expressed opinions with which I agreed. So here it is.

"Notes on Bob Dylan's Performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965" by Thomas Pynchon (A Pastiche)

In a dim way, I had been aware of Bob Dylan before I actually met him.

It must have been in 1963, sometime after Richard and Mimi Farina got married (I had known Dick at Cornell and was the best man at his second wedding.)

Dick often mentioned Bob in his occasional letters, so I recognised his name when I heard his first four albums, and then, finally, the single of "Like a Rolling Stone" (which was released on July 20, 1965).

Dick and Mimi invited me to join them at the Newport Folk Festival, which was scheduled for the weekend, a few days later.

Apart from them, the performance I was most enthusiastic about was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. They turned me on to Chicago Blues, even though most of the band was white.

I knew that Dylan's single featured electric instrumentation, but I didn't know until the Festival that Mike Bloomfield (Butterfield's guitarist) played electric guitar on the track.

I didn't meet Bob, until after his performance on the last night, when Dick introduced me to him in the living room of the festival living quarters.

He was sitting in a corner of the room, a little deflated, but he sparked up when Dick and I walked up to him and started a conversation.

"I just want to play my music the way I want to, the way it sounds in my head. I don't want to be boxed in by other people's expectations. It's my music, not theirs," he said.

I identified with Bob's plight. I felt the same way about my writing. I had just published "V" at the time, and was still working on "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow" (the latter of which I dedicated to Dick). I would be nothing, if I'd written these novels the way people encouraged me to, even though they were well-intentioned and, in some cases, seasoned professionals.

Even though the accounts of booing at Dylan's electric performance were exaggerated, you have to learn how to tolerate boos, when you step onto any kind of stage. You can't have a thin skin, if you seek public approval or acclaim. Bob should already have known that they'll stone you when you're playing your guitar.

description

Dylan's green polka dot shirt

I don't think Bob wanted to be bound up in Pete Seeger's preppie straightjacket (he preferred a green polka dot shirt and a black leather jacket). To the extent that social activism and protest songs appealed to him, he wanted to do it in his own idiosyncratic way. His music was an art form, not a vehicle for a political platform or a manifesto. He didn't want to work on Maggie's farm no more.

By the same token, he wanted the freedom to be counter-cultural rather than be hamstrung by cultural conformity, dogma and somebody else's definition of ideological soundness. He asserted the right to be personal, not just political. He was one of the first to recognise that folk music had become a broken collectivity, at the same time that it tried to circumscribe personality and individuality.

Rock 'n' roll electricity didn't mean that Dylan's art and music were being diluted or re-moulded by and for populism. It was just another tool Bob used to communicate and build communal relationships. It was intended to add another personal and collective dimension.

All of the musicians who played on the last night of the festival (a Sunday) were restricted to 12 minute sets. Dylan could really only play three songs in this time. I think a lot of people had attended the festival for the sole reason that they wanted to see and hear Bob. To travel all that way just to witness three songs must have pissed them off. No wonder some of them booed, but who were they booing? Dylan or the festival management? Then there was the poor sound, which wasn't really set up for electric guitars. Bob shouldn't have taken it so personal.

description

From right to left: Paul A. Rothchild (record producer), Richard Farina, Maria Muldaur, Mimi Farina, Thomas Pynchon (Credit: )

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 3.95 2015 Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

author: Elijah Wald
name: Ian
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: cul-poli-phil-art, lit-krit, muse-ik, thin-white-mercury-sounds, read-2025, reviews, reviews-4-stars, pynchon
review:
CRITIQUE:

Introduction

I bought this book in 2019, but have only read it now, after seeing the film inspired by it

At the time, I googled the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, and thought I discovered an article by Thomas Pynchon (that I can no longer find online).

However, having re-read the article a few times since I read the book, I thought it expressed opinions with which I agreed. So here it is.

"Notes on Bob Dylan's Performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965" by Thomas Pynchon (A Pastiche)

In a dim way, I had been aware of Bob Dylan before I actually met him.

It must have been in 1963, sometime after Richard and Mimi Farina got married (I had known Dick at Cornell and was the best man at his second wedding.)

Dick often mentioned Bob in his occasional letters, so I recognised his name when I heard his first four albums, and then, finally, the single of "Like a Rolling Stone" (which was released on July 20, 1965).

Dick and Mimi invited me to join them at the Newport Folk Festival, which was scheduled for the weekend, a few days later.

Apart from them, the performance I was most enthusiastic about was the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. They turned me on to Chicago Blues, even though most of the band was white.

I knew that Dylan's single featured electric instrumentation, but I didn't know until the Festival that Mike Bloomfield (Butterfield's guitarist) played electric guitar on the track.

I didn't meet Bob, until after his performance on the last night, when Dick introduced me to him in the living room of the festival living quarters.

He was sitting in a corner of the room, a little deflated, but he sparked up when Dick and I walked up to him and started a conversation.

"I just want to play my music the way I want to, the way it sounds in my head. I don't want to be boxed in by other people's expectations. It's my music, not theirs," he said.

I identified with Bob's plight. I felt the same way about my writing. I had just published "V" at the time, and was still working on "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow" (the latter of which I dedicated to Dick). I would be nothing, if I'd written these novels the way people encouraged me to, even though they were well-intentioned and, in some cases, seasoned professionals.

Even though the accounts of booing at Dylan's electric performance were exaggerated, you have to learn how to tolerate boos, when you step onto any kind of stage. You can't have a thin skin, if you seek public approval or acclaim. Bob should already have known that they'll stone you when you're playing your guitar.

description

From right to left: Paul A. Rothchild (record producer), Richard Farina, Maria Muldaur, Mimi Farina, Thomas Pynchon (Credit: )

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> Monument 58907949 111 Louis Armand 1916159486 Ian 0 to-read, armand, kinsella 3.00 2020

author: Louis Armand
name: Ian
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read, armand, kinsella
review:

]]> Perspective(s) 211934923 A pulse-quickening murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence by the renowned author of HHhH.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year’s Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade—masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid—with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de�� Medici, the Duke of Florence’s oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

Who could have committed these murder and lèse-majesté? Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters start to fly back and forth—between Maria and her aunt Catherine de�� Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and the scheming Piero Strozzi; and between Vasari and Michelangelo—carrying news of political plots and speculations about the identity of Pontormo’s killer. The truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot center of European art and intrigue.

Bursting with characters and historical color, Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) is a whodunit like no other—a labyrinthine murder mystery that shows us Renaissance Florence as we’ve never seen it before. This is a dark, dazzling, unforgettable read.]]> 272 Laurent Binet 0374614601 Ian 0 to-read, binet 3.89 2023 Perspective(s)

author: Laurent Binet
name: Ian
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read, binet
review:

]]> In the Country of Last Things 19486 In the Country of Last Things takes the form of a letter from a young woman named Anna Blume to a childhood friend. Anna has ventured into an unnamed city that has collapsed into chaos and disorder. In this bleak environment, no industry takes place and most of the population collects garbage or scavenges for objects to resell. City governments are unstable and are concerned only with collecting human waste and corpses for fuel. Anna has entered the city to search for her brother William, a journalist, and it is suggested that the Blumes come from a world to the East which has not collapsed.]]> 188 Paul Auster 3425040847 Ian 5 Post-Apocalyptic Apocrypha

I don’t normally seek out post-apocalyptic novels, but Paul Auster’s novel is one to treasure.

Even though it is an early work, I felt I was in the hands of a master.

It is both beautifully written and wise.

It’s easy to read, but it’s not so easily “readable�� that I could read it without turning the telly off.

Although its style is sparse and economical, there’s a lot happening beneath the surface.

Still, Auster carefully manages exactly how much he wants us to know and what he wants to remain unclear or open for conjecture.

This transforms the reader into a literary detective, a sifter of clues and memories.

Anna’s Epistle to An Unnamed Friend

The story is told in the voice of 19 year old Anna Blume in the form of a long letter to a friend who isn’t identified (but might be a little sister or a childhood friend).

The letter is a summary of her time in a post-apocalyptic city, written hurriedly in the last days before she expects to escape it illegally.

I’m not sure how appropriate or successful the epistolary format was.

There is only one long 190 page letter written in a blue notebook, not an exchange of correspondence.

We only get one point of view. It could just as readily have been a journal, apart from the fact that it’s addressed to one particular person.

A Letter Never Sent?

Was her letter ever sent?

It’s not clear whether the letter was ever delivered or read. It's quite possible that it wasn't.

This could be an inevitable consequence of the choice of epistolary format.

Normally, this format would dictate that the novel must work internally within the letter.

We can only assume that someone “found�� or received it, even if it wasn’t the addressee for whom it was intended.

However, in the first few pages, there are some clues.

Phrases like ”she wrote�� and “her letter continued�� are interposed into the letter.

Perhaps, they are intended to suggest that somebody other than we readers might have found the letter and read it, if not necessarily the addressee.

However, ultimately, whether or not it was read by the right person, Auster implicitly makes the point that it was worth writing (if only because ultimately he wrote it!).

An Incomprehensible Apocalypse

As you would expect, Paul Auster doesn’t tell us a lot about the nature of the Apocalypse itself. It’s cloaked in mystery.

The novel is more concerned with its aftermath.

Anna Blume arrived in the city by foreign charity ship, 12 months after the Apocalypse occurred.

She comes from a different country to the east, possibly England.

There are opportunities to reveal where she comes from (presumably she has a foreign accent, but nobody comments on it; Victoria, one of the people she meets on the way, has sent her children to England to escape the Apocalypse, but they don't appear to discuss this common interest).

It seems strange that nothing is made of these opportunities to disclose her origins, although Anna might not have thought them important enough.

A Report Never Filed

Anna is looking for her older brother, William, a journalist who had previously come to report on the events for a newspaper, but has since gone missing.

It’s not clear how much reporting has got through to the rest of the world. Not much by the sound of it.

A Collapse of Epidemic Proportions

Only when Anna has been in the city for some time does she learn that:

"...some kind of epidemic had broken out there. The city government had come in, walled off the area, and burned everything down to the ground.

"Or so the story went. I have since learned not to take the things I am told too seriously.

"It’s not that people make a point of lying to you, it’s just that where the past is concerned, the truth tends to get obscured rather quickly.

“Legends crop up within a matter of hours, tall tales circulate, and the facts are soon buried under a mountain of outlandish theories."

It’s not clear whether the epidemic was the primary cause of the Apocalypse or whether it was an after-effect.

Auster refers to the Apocalypse occasionally as a “collapse��, which suggests that it might have been just as much a social phenomenon, as a natural or even man-made disaster, though there is some sense of past destruction and imminent war.

He also mentions “the Troubles��, which were violent political disputes, although it’s unclear whether they preceded or followed the Apocalypse.

Whatever the physical cause of the Apocalypse, it’s clear that not only have many buildings collapsed, but the social order of the city has collapsed into barely-controlled anarchy.

Like the surviving inhabitants, readers have to piece together the clues, and even then it isn’t clear how reliable they are.

The City of Destruction

Auster does not name the city in the novel, although many consider it to be New York.

It contains a National Library, but I doubt whether it is intended to be Washington, because it seems to be a port, and we learn that there is nothing on the same continent east of it.

None of the street names are recognisable, although “Circus Street�� might just be Broadway.

Even though Anna comes from a place that has been unaffected, she lacks knowledge about the continent that the city is on.

Again, she has to rely on what she has been told:

"This country is enormous, you understand, and there’s no telling where he might have gone. Beyond the agricultural zone to the west, there are supposedly several hundred miles of desert. Beyond that, however, one hears talk of more cities, of mountain ranges, of mines and factories, of vast territories stretching all the way to a second ocean."

Whether or not this is America, why doesn’t she seem to have greater knowledge of the continent? Has the knowledge of the rest of the world been affected as well?

Wide is the Gate and Broad is the Road

Some clues as to the scope and design of the novel can be found in the epigram:

"Not a great while ago, passing through the gate of dreams, I visited that region of earth in which lies the famous City of Destruction."

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This quotation comes from Hawthorne’s short story, “The Celestial Railroad��, which is an allegory about the people of a city who try to build a shortcut between their own city and Heaven, between “The City of Destruction�� and “The Celestial City��.

Hawthorne based his story on John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress��, the full title of which is “The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come��.

Both works are concerned with the proper way to get to Heaven, which is itself described in the Bible:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Matthew 7:13-14

A Secular Pilgrim's Progress

The novel isn’t overtly Christian or religious (even though Anna describes herself as Jewish). However, there is an underlying morality at work.

Without any obvious clues, there’s a sense that the city was doing something "wrong", that it had started to step out too confidently and aggressively for its own good, that it deserved to decline and fall, and therefore that it had it coming to it.

Perhaps, it’s been punished for being immoral, greedy and inconsiderate, if not necessarily being irreligious.

In the wake of the Apocalypse, there’s a sense in which humanity has to reconstruct itself without the aid of institutional religion.

After her arrival, Anna is quickly reduced to the level of a local inhabitant.

She has to make her way back to virtue, happiness and fulfilment, and her letter describes a secular pilgrimage of sorts.

The Getting of Wisdom

Anna has to piece together every resource available to her, whether spiritual or worldly, to survive.

In the process, she gains some awareness, knowledge and wisdom, even if it could be taken away from her at any moment.

She starts by describing issues of subsistence, the hunger from which everyone suffers:

"You must get used to doing with as little as you can. By wanting less, you are content with less, and the less you need, the better off you are.

"That is what the city does to you. It turns your thoughts inside out. It makes you want to live, and at the same time it tries to take your life away from you."

Out of Order

Then she describes the social structures that have emerged to fill the void left by the Apocalypse: Runners, Leapers, Smilers, Crawlers, Dreamers, Fecalists, Resurrection Agents, Vultures, Tollists.

Where there is no longer any authority, there is now desperate tribalism, bare aggression and raw power.

Sickness prevails. Death is everywhere.

Even within the confines of the Library, many of the books have been stolen for fuel.

Those that remain have been scattered all over the floor.

They are "out of order" and therefore useless.

Like everybody else, Anna is left to her own devices. Or almost.

Populating the City

Having set the scene, Anna introduces the people she has allowed into her life in the city.

She makes friends and loses them, whether to death or fate or circumstance.

Still, the company of others gives her both love and hope, if only temporarily.

Every act of friendship is more valuable, given the circumstances in which it occurs.

At times, it seems that the novel is an allegory about the Holocaust, where even in the worst and most evil of conditions the beauty of humanity can still shine through.

Eventually, her band of accomplices resolves itself down to the comforting Sam Farr (who she had hoped would lead her to William), the charitable Victoria Woburn (who maintains a hospital in memory of her father) and the eccentric Boris Stepanovich.

A Persona of Indifference Becomes a Persona of Benevolence

Anna and Sam start a relationship, only to be parted, without knowing whether the other is alive.

Sam hibernates:

"I gave up trying to be anyone. The object of my life was to remove myself from my surroundings, to live in a place where nothing could hurt me anymore. One by one, I tried to abandon my attachments, to let go of all the things I ever cared about. The idea was to achieve indifference, an indifference so powerful and sublime that it would protect me from further assault. I said good-bye to you, Anna..."

Yet one day, he stumbles into Victoria’s hospital where Anna is now working.

Reunited at last, he takes on the role of doctor, and the patients start to trust him with their problems:

"It was like being a confessor, he said, and little by little he began to appreciate the good that comes when people are allowed to unburden themselves �� the salutary effect of speaking words, of releasing words that tell the story of what happened to them."

So Sam transitions from non-attachment to engagement with life and, by doing so, he reinvigorates Anna as well.

An Escape Never Made?

At the end of the novel, Anna’s unlikely "bande a part" is poised to escape the city.

So Anna writes her letter in the days leading up to their departure.

We never know whether they succeeded or what happened to them subsequently.

A Collection of Last Things

While there might be a tragedy inherent in this story, it also says something about the role of story-telling and writing.

Life is ephemeral. It happens, and once it has happened, it moves into the past and ceases to be:

"These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back...When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn’t waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it."

If thoughts can’t survive, then neither can memories.

Memories require a human to maintain and transmit them.

Absent people, the memories die, and the reality that once was is no more.

Just as people deny the Holocaust, once the memories cease, people start to forget or deny the underlying factuality.

A Recollection of Lasting Things

Still, Anna feels the compulsion to write, to preserve these memories, to create an amulet:

"I am not sure why I am writing to you now...But suddenly, after all this time, I feel there is something to say, and if I don’t quickly write it down, my head will burst. It doesn’t matter if you read it. It doesn’t even matter if I send it �� assuming that could be done. Perhaps it comes down to this. I am writing to you because you know nothing. Because you are far away from me and know nothing."

Towards the end, Anna pictures her letter as “one last thing to remember me by��.

The notebook could end up as a thing sitting on a shelf above a bed, one last thing that might last.

Boris the Chameleon

Anna owes some of this change of approach to the flamboyant, charlatan-like Boris Stepanovich.

At first, she is captivated by, but sceptical about, his tale-telling and his constant metamorphosis:

"One by one, he took on the roles of clown and scoundrel and philosopher."

Unlike anyone else she has met, his character shifts:

"A man must live from moment to moment, and who cares what you were last month if you know who you are today?"

Yet Boris is a sentimentalist at heart, if a wily one.

Without words and memories, who would know what they are today anyway?

He says of a precious tea cup:

"The set has suffered the fate of the years…and yet, for all of that, a single remnant has survived, a final link to the past. Treat it gently, my friend. You are holding my memories in your hand."

Hats Off to Boris

Anna gets another clue from Boris' love of ornate hats:

”Boris explained that he liked to wear hats because they kept his thoughts from flying out of his head. If we both wore them while we drank our tea, then we were bound to have more intelligent and stimulating conversations.��

Equally, perhaps, society needs memories, to be truly civilized.

Civilisation is what separates us from mere subsistence, whether in a ghetto or a garret.

So, ultimately, Boris too revitalises Anna:

"We became dear friends, and I owe Boris a debt for his compassion, for the devious and persistent attack he launched on the strongholds of my sadness."

Likewise, Boris becomes the inspiration for the escape plan:

"Make plans. Consider the possibilities. Act."

Humanity must not just embrace contemplation, it must embrace action to survive.

Promise to Write

Anna promises to write to her friend when they get out of the city of destruction.

We never find out whether she got out safely, or survived, or posted her letter, or ever wrote again.

Hear Me Calling You

Still, we are lucky to have read her epistle of engagement and action and persistence and humanity.

She did not just call out into the blankness, or scream into a vast and terrible void.

She did not just create one of the last things that will disappear, she created something that will last.

She did not write in vain.

The "you" she was writing to has become the "we" who have read Paul Auster's novel.

It is we who have heard her call.]]> 3.95 1987 In the Country of Last Things

author: Paul Auster
name: Ian
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2011/10/22
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: read-2011, reviews, reviews-5-stars, auster
review:
Post-Apocalyptic Apocrypha

I don’t normally seek out post-apocalyptic novels, but Paul Auster’s novel is one to treasure.

Even though it is an early work, I felt I was in the hands of a master.

It is both beautifully written and wise.

It’s easy to read, but it’s not so easily “readable�� that I could read it without turning the telly off.

Although its style is sparse and economical, there’s a lot happening beneath the surface.

Still, Auster carefully manages exactly how much he wants us to know and what he wants to remain unclear or open for conjecture.

This transforms the reader into a literary detective, a sifter of clues and memories.

Anna’s Epistle to An Unnamed Friend

The story is told in the voice of 19 year old Anna Blume in the form of a long letter to a friend who isn’t identified (but might be a little sister or a childhood friend).

The letter is a summary of her time in a post-apocalyptic city, written hurriedly in the last days before she expects to escape it illegally.

I’m not sure how appropriate or successful the epistolary format was.

There is only one long 190 page letter written in a blue notebook, not an exchange of correspondence.

We only get one point of view. It could just as readily have been a journal, apart from the fact that it’s addressed to one particular person.

A Letter Never Sent?

Was her letter ever sent?

It’s not clear whether the letter was ever delivered or read. It's quite possible that it wasn't.

This could be an inevitable consequence of the choice of epistolary format.

Normally, this format would dictate that the novel must work internally within the letter.

We can only assume that someone “found�� or received it, even if it wasn’t the addressee for whom it was intended.

However, in the first few pages, there are some clues.

Phrases like ”she wrote�� and “her letter continued�� are interposed into the letter.

Perhaps, they are intended to suggest that somebody other than we readers might have found the letter and read it, if not necessarily the addressee.

However, ultimately, whether or not it was read by the right person, Auster implicitly makes the point that it was worth writing (if only because ultimately he wrote it!).

An Incomprehensible Apocalypse

As you would expect, Paul Auster doesn’t tell us a lot about the nature of the Apocalypse itself. It’s cloaked in mystery.

The novel is more concerned with its aftermath.

Anna Blume arrived in the city by foreign charity ship, 12 months after the Apocalypse occurred.

She comes from a different country to the east, possibly England.

There are opportunities to reveal where she comes from (presumably she has a foreign accent, but nobody comments on it; Victoria, one of the people she meets on the way, has sent her children to England to escape the Apocalypse, but they don't appear to discuss this common interest).

It seems strange that nothing is made of these opportunities to disclose her origins, although Anna might not have thought them important enough.

A Report Never Filed

Anna is looking for her older brother, William, a journalist who had previously come to report on the events for a newspaper, but has since gone missing.

It’s not clear how much reporting has got through to the rest of the world. Not much by the sound of it.

A Collapse of Epidemic Proportions

Only when Anna has been in the city for some time does she learn that:

"...some kind of epidemic had broken out there. The city government had come in, walled off the area, and burned everything down to the ground.

"Or so the story went. I have since learned not to take the things I am told too seriously.

"It’s not that people make a point of lying to you, it’s just that where the past is concerned, the truth tends to get obscured rather quickly.

“Legends crop up within a matter of hours, tall tales circulate, and the facts are soon buried under a mountain of outlandish theories."

It’s not clear whether the epidemic was the primary cause of the Apocalypse or whether it was an after-effect.

Auster refers to the Apocalypse occasionally as a “collapse��, which suggests that it might have been just as much a social phenomenon, as a natural or even man-made disaster, though there is some sense of past destruction and imminent war.

He also mentions “the Troubles��, which were violent political disputes, although it’s unclear whether they preceded or followed the Apocalypse.

Whatever the physical cause of the Apocalypse, it’s clear that not only have many buildings collapsed, but the social order of the city has collapsed into barely-controlled anarchy.

Like the surviving inhabitants, readers have to piece together the clues, and even then it isn’t clear how reliable they are.

The City of Destruction

Auster does not name the city in the novel, although many consider it to be New York.

It contains a National Library, but I doubt whether it is intended to be Washington, because it seems to be a port, and we learn that there is nothing on the same continent east of it.

None of the street names are recognisable, although “Circus Street�� might just be Broadway.

Even though Anna comes from a place that has been unaffected, she lacks knowledge about the continent that the city is on.

Again, she has to rely on what she has been told:

"This country is enormous, you understand, and there’s no telling where he might have gone. Beyond the agricultural zone to the west, there are supposedly several hundred miles of desert. Beyond that, however, one hears talk of more cities, of mountain ranges, of mines and factories, of vast territories stretching all the way to a second ocean."

Whether or not this is America, why doesn’t she seem to have greater knowledge of the continent? Has the knowledge of the rest of the world been affected as well?

Wide is the Gate and Broad is the Road

Some clues as to the scope and design of the novel can be found in the epigram:

"Not a great while ago, passing through the gate of dreams, I visited that region of earth in which lies the famous City of Destruction."

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This quotation comes from Hawthorne’s short story, “The Celestial Railroad��, which is an allegory about the people of a city who try to build a shortcut between their own city and Heaven, between “The City of Destruction�� and “The Celestial City��.

Hawthorne based his story on John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress��, the full title of which is “The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come��.

Both works are concerned with the proper way to get to Heaven, which is itself described in the Bible:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Matthew 7:13-14

A Secular Pilgrim's Progress

The novel isn’t overtly Christian or religious (even though Anna describes herself as Jewish). However, there is an underlying morality at work.

Without any obvious clues, there’s a sense that the city was doing something "wrong", that it had started to step out too confidently and aggressively for its own good, that it deserved to decline and fall, and therefore that it had it coming to it.

Perhaps, it’s been punished for being immoral, greedy and inconsiderate, if not necessarily being irreligious.

In the wake of the Apocalypse, there’s a sense in which humanity has to reconstruct itself without the aid of institutional religion.

After her arrival, Anna is quickly reduced to the level of a local inhabitant.

She has to make her way back to virtue, happiness and fulfilment, and her letter describes a secular pilgrimage of sorts.

The Getting of Wisdom

Anna has to piece together every resource available to her, whether spiritual or worldly, to survive.

In the process, she gains some awareness, knowledge and wisdom, even if it could be taken away from her at any moment.

She starts by describing issues of subsistence, the hunger from which everyone suffers:

"You must get used to doing with as little as you can. By wanting less, you are content with less, and the less you need, the better off you are.

"That is what the city does to you. It turns your thoughts inside out. It makes you want to live, and at the same time it tries to take your life away from you."

Out of Order

Then she describes the social structures that have emerged to fill the void left by the Apocalypse: Runners, Leapers, Smilers, Crawlers, Dreamers, Fecalists, Resurrection Agents, Vultures, Tollists.

Where there is no longer any authority, there is now desperate tribalism, bare aggression and raw power.

Sickness prevails. Death is everywhere.

Even within the confines of the Library, many of the books have been stolen for fuel.

Those that remain have been scattered all over the floor.

They are "out of order" and therefore useless.

Like everybody else, Anna is left to her own devices. Or almost.

Populating the City

Having set the scene, Anna introduces the people she has allowed into her life in the city.

She makes friends and loses them, whether to death or fate or circumstance.

Still, the company of others gives her both love and hope, if only temporarily.

Every act of friendship is more valuable, given the circumstances in which it occurs.

At times, it seems that the novel is an allegory about the Holocaust, where even in the worst and most evil of conditions the beauty of humanity can still shine through.

Eventually, her band of accomplices resolves itself down to the comforting Sam Farr (who she had hoped would lead her to William), the charitable Victoria Woburn (who maintains a hospital in memory of her father) and the eccentric Boris Stepanovich.

A Persona of Indifference Becomes a Persona of Benevolence

Anna and Sam start a relationship, only to be parted, without knowing whether the other is alive.

Sam hibernates:

"I gave up trying to be anyone. The object of my life was to remove myself from my surroundings, to live in a place where nothing could hurt me anymore. One by one, I tried to abandon my attachments, to let go of all the things I ever cared about. The idea was to achieve indifference, an indifference so powerful and sublime that it would protect me from further assault. I said good-bye to you, Anna..."

Yet one day, he stumbles into Victoria’s hospital where Anna is now working.

Reunited at last, he takes on the role of doctor, and the patients start to trust him with their problems:

"It was like being a confessor, he said, and little by little he began to appreciate the good that comes when people are allowed to unburden themselves �� the salutary effect of speaking words, of releasing words that tell the story of what happened to them."

So Sam transitions from non-attachment to engagement with life and, by doing so, he reinvigorates Anna as well.

An Escape Never Made?

At the end of the novel, Anna’s unlikely "bande a part" is poised to escape the city.

So Anna writes her letter in the days leading up to their departure.

We never know whether they succeeded or what happened to them subsequently.

A Collection of Last Things

While there might be a tragedy inherent in this story, it also says something about the role of story-telling and writing.

Life is ephemeral. It happens, and once it has happened, it moves into the past and ceases to be:

"These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back...When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn’t waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it."

If thoughts can’t survive, then neither can memories.

Memories require a human to maintain and transmit them.

Absent people, the memories die, and the reality that once was is no more.

Just as people deny the Holocaust, once the memories cease, people start to forget or deny the underlying factuality.

A Recollection of Lasting Things

Still, Anna feels the compulsion to write, to preserve these memories, to create an amulet:

"I am not sure why I am writing to you now...But suddenly, after all this time, I feel there is something to say, and if I don’t quickly write it down, my head will burst. It doesn’t matter if you read it. It doesn’t even matter if I send it �� assuming that could be done. Perhaps it comes down to this. I am writing to you because you know nothing. Because you are far away from me and know nothing."

Towards the end, Anna pictures her letter as “one last thing to remember me by��.

The notebook could end up as a thing sitting on a shelf above a bed, one last thing that might last.

Boris the Chameleon

Anna owes some of this change of approach to the flamboyant, charlatan-like Boris Stepanovich.

At first, she is captivated by, but sceptical about, his tale-telling and his constant metamorphosis:

"One by one, he took on the roles of clown and scoundrel and philosopher."

Unlike anyone else she has met, his character shifts:

"A man must live from moment to moment, and who cares what you were last month if you know who you are today?"

Yet Boris is a sentimentalist at heart, if a wily one.

Without words and memories, who would know what they are today anyway?

He says of a precious tea cup:

"The set has suffered the fate of the years…and yet, for all of that, a single remnant has survived, a final link to the past. Treat it gently, my friend. You are holding my memories in your hand."

Hats Off to Boris

Anna gets another clue from Boris' love of ornate hats:

”Boris explained that he liked to wear hats because they kept his thoughts from flying out of his head. If we both wore them while we drank our tea, then we were bound to have more intelligent and stimulating conversations.��

Equally, perhaps, society needs memories, to be truly civilized.

Civilisation is what separates us from mere subsistence, whether in a ghetto or a garret.

So, ultimately, Boris too revitalises Anna:

"We became dear friends, and I owe Boris a debt for his compassion, for the devious and persistent attack he launched on the strongholds of my sadness."

Likewise, Boris becomes the inspiration for the escape plan:

"Make plans. Consider the possibilities. Act."

Humanity must not just embrace contemplation, it must embrace action to survive.

Promise to Write

Anna promises to write to her friend when they get out of the city of destruction.

We never find out whether she got out safely, or survived, or posted her letter, or ever wrote again.

Hear Me Calling You

Still, we are lucky to have read her epistle of engagement and action and persistence and humanity.

She did not just call out into the blankness, or scream into a vast and terrible void.

She did not just create one of the last things that will disappear, she created something that will last.

She did not write in vain.

The "you" she was writing to has become the "we" who have read Paul Auster's novel.

It is we who have heard her call.
]]> <![CDATA[A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties]]> 19688694 A Freewheelin�� Time is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand, eyewitness, participant-observer account of the immensely creative and fertile years of the 1960s, just before the circus was in full swing and Bob Dylan became the anointed ringmaster. It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.

A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.

Suze Rotolo’s story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before women’s liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.

A Freewheelin�� Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.]]> 384 Suze Rotolo Ian 0 0.0 2008 A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

author: Suze Rotolo
name: Ian
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, muse-ik, thin-white-mercury-sounds
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America]]> 222292401 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �� The author of Fire and Fury delivers a breathtaking insider account of the 2024 Trump campaign—undoubtedly the wildest, most unpredictable campaign in U.S. history, including multiple criminal trials, two assassination attempts, and a sudden switch of opponents.

All or Nothing takes readers on a journey accompanying Donald Trump on his return to power as only Michael Wolff, the foremost chronicler of the Trump era, can do it. As Trump cruelly and swiftly dispatches his opponents, heaps fire and fury on the prosecutors and judges who are pursuing him, and mocks and belittles anyone in his way, including the president of the United States, this becomes not just another election but perhaps, both sides say, the last election. The stakes could not be Either the establishment destroys Donald Trump, or he destroys the establishment.

What soon emerges is a split-screen On one side, a picture that could not be worse for an inescapable, perhaps mortal legal quagmire; on the other side, an entirely positive political overwhelming support within his party, ever-rising polling numbers, and lackluster opposition. Through personal access to Trump’s inner circle, Wolff details a behind-the-scenes, revealing landscape of Trumpworld and its unlikely cast of primary players as well as the candidate himself, the most successful figure in American politics since, arguably, Roosevelt, but who might easily seem to be raving mad.

Threading a needle between tragedy and farce, the fate of the nation, the liberal ideal, and democracy itself, All or Nothing paints a gobsmacking portrait of a man whose behavior is so unimaginable, so uncontrolled, so unmindful of cause and effect, that it defeats all the structures and logic of civic life. And yet here in one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history, Trump is victorious. This is not just a story about It is a vivid exposé of the demons, discord, and anarchy—the fire, fury, and future—of American life under Trump.]]> 400 Michael Wolff 0593735382 Ian 0 3.68 2025 All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America

All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America

author: Michael Wolff
name: Ian
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, trump-gop, wolff
review:

]]> Lanark: A Life in Four Books 2426144 560 Alasdair Gray 0586086137 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

The Lives of Four Books

Some books and authors claim to be post-modernist, while others are claimed by post-modernism.

This novel (which is subject to both claims) purports to tell a life in four books. It's not clear exactly whose life it is. One of the lives is Lanark, while the other is Duncan Thaw. They might or might not be the same life. Perhaps we become different people and live different lives over the course of our lives.

Whatever the lives and to whomever they belong, the four lives aren't told in chronological order. The books are presented in the order 3, 1, 2, 4. Perhaps, Alasdair Gray was trying to tell us something about time, or our influence on ourselves?

The Arbitrary Sequence of Life

On the other hand, Gray might just have intended to reveal something about each life in an apparently arbitrary sequence:

Book 3: the life of a bohemian writer who frequents the Cafe Elite (which bears some resemblance to the venue, in Glasgow, which I was too confused or intimidated to visit while on a sojourn to Scotland in 2019);

Book 1: the life of a student at an art school;

Book 2: the life of an atheist artist commissioned to paint a mural inside a parish church; and

Book 4: the life of the political representative of a community called Greater Unthank (loosely based on Glasgow).

Together, these lives reveal something of both the protagonist and the author: no matter how unsuccessful they might have been financially, they are both polymathic and multi-talented.

Like William Blake, both Alasdair Gray and his protagonists are verbally dexterous, and observant/cognisant of architectural and visual detail.

description

Alasdair Gray's drawing of the Elite Cafe on the cover of a manuscript

Epilogue

If the time sequence of the novel doesn't earn it the status of a post-modernist work, then its Epilogue might: Lanark meets somebody who claims to be his author:

"The critics will accuse me of self-indulgence, but I don't care."

The author explains his ambition for the time sequence of the novel:

"I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another."

author: Alasdair Gray
name: Ian
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: alasdair-gray, read-2025, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

The Lives of Four Books

Some books and authors claim to be post-modernist, while others are claimed by post-modernism.

This novel (which is subject to both claims) purports to tell a life in four books. It's not clear exactly whose life it is. One of the lives is Lanark, while the other is Duncan Thaw. They might or might not be the same life. Perhaps we become different people and live different lives over the course of our lives.

Whatever the lives and to whomever they belong, the four lives aren't told in chronological order. The books are presented in the order 3, 1, 2, 4. Perhaps, Alasdair Gray was trying to tell us something about time, or our influence on ourselves?

The Arbitrary Sequence of Life

On the other hand, Gray might just have intended to reveal something about each life in an apparently arbitrary sequence:

Book 3: the life of a bohemian writer who frequents the Cafe Elite (which bears some resemblance to the venue, in Glasgow, which I was too confused or intimidated to visit while on a sojourn to Scotland in 2019);

Book 1: the life of a student at an art school;

Book 2: the life of an atheist artist commissioned to paint a mural inside a parish church; and

Book 4: the life of the political representative of a community called Greater Unthank (loosely based on Glasgow).

Together, these lives reveal something of both the protagonist and the author: no matter how unsuccessful they might have been financially, they are both polymathic and multi-talented.

Like William Blake, both Alasdair Gray and his protagonists are verbally dexterous, and observant/cognisant of architectural and visual detail.

description

"The critics will accuse me of self-indulgence, but I don't care."

The author explains his ambition for the time sequence of the novel:

"I want Lanark to be read in one order but eventually thought of in another."

Ultimately, 560 pages of post-modernist play (including an index of plagiarisms and influences) isn't enough to warrant five stars or any claim to be a truly classic novel. Though it does remind me of a combination of both Alexander Theroux and Terry Gilliam.
]]> <![CDATA[I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True: A Memoir Of Life, Music, And The Dream Syndicate]]> 209241901 Summer 1984. I’ve got the back lounge of this tour bus all to myself, partly because I’m the lead singer but more likely because it means the rest of the band won’t have to deal with me for the rest of the day. Just two years earlier I was flunking out at UCLA, working the day shift in a record store, living out of my father’s basement. Now I’m living the million-to-one reality of touring the country with my band, The Dream Syndicate, opening for up-and-coming rock darlings R.E.M., and making a big-budget sophomore album for A&M Records. I’m also untethered and unbound, drinking a fifth of Jim Beam every day, barely speaking to my best friend and guitarist, and looking for trouble in all the wrong places. How did I get from there to here? And how do I get out? Stick around and find out. I’ll be here, dreaming my dream . . .

I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True is a tale of writing songs and playing in bands as a conduit to a world its author could once have barely imagined—a world of major labels, luxury tour buses, and sold-out theaters, but also one of alcohol, drugs, and a low-level rock’n’roll Babylon.

Beginning with Wynn’s childhood in California in the 60s and 70s, the book builds to a crescendo with the formation of the first incarnation of The Dream Syndicate in 1981 as an antidote to the prepackaged pop music of the era. It charts the highs and lows of the band’s early years at the forefront of the Paisley Underground scene alongside Green On Red, Rain Parade, and The Bangles; the seismic impact of their debut album, The Days Of Wine And Roses; the spiraling chaos of the sessions for the follow-up, Medicine Show; the dissolution of the band’s first line-up and the launch of a second phase of The Dream Syndicate with Out Of The Grey and Ghost Stories; and more, culminating with the release of the landmark live album Live At Raji’s.

This is Wynn’s story, but it also features some of the biggest and most colorful characters of the period, offering a detailed field guide to the music business that manages to both glorify and demystify in equal measure. And, ultimately, it’s a tale of redemption, with music as a vehicle for artistic and personal transformation and transcendence.]]> 250 Steve Wynn 1916829066 Ian 0 to-read, muse-ik 4.32 I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True: A Memoir Of Life, Music, And The Dream Syndicate

I Wouldn't Say It If It Wasn't True: A Memoir Of Life, Music, And The Dream Syndicate

author: Steve Wynn
name: Ian
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read, muse-ik
review:

]]> S.: A Novel About the Balkans 1611720 201 Slavenka Drakulić 0670890979 Ian 5 HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

Yugoslavia

I know little about the history of Yugoslavia, especially its collapse and the ensuing Balkan Wars of the 1990's.

Up until its collapse, it was a confederation of autonomous socialist republics, analogous to the Soviet Union (although it was formally non-aligned with the USSR).

From 1953 until his death in 1980, Josip Tito was president of the federation.

Tito died shortly after his left leg was amputated, following a gangrenous infection.

I remember two generally held views or pieces of gossip from around this period.

Firstly, before his death, it was commonly believed that only Tito could have held the federation of Yugoslavia together. It came as no surprise that, after his death, the federation collapsed and disintegrated.

Secondly, after the amputation of his leg, there was supposedly a piece of graffiti, perhaps in London, that said, "Alms for the poor, legs for Tito."

Bosnia

In 1992, the protagonist of this novel was a resident of the small village of B. in Bosnia, where she was a school teacher.

Up until Tito's death, Bosnia had been the most ethnically and religiously diverse of the Yugoslav republics. In March, 1992, it held a referendum to determine whether it should declare independence from the federation. While 60% of the participants supported independence, Bosnian Serbs (who made up 30% of the overall population of Bosnia) opposed the referendum, wanting to remain in the federation of Yugoslavia (as did Serbs elsewhere in the federation).

After the referendum, hostilities broke out between Bosnians and Croatians (on the one hand), and Serbs and Bosnian Serbs (on the other hand). The Yugoslav People's Army ("JNA") took the side of the Serbs.

CRITIQUE:

Destruction of Identity

The protagonist is a Muslim woman. Her father is a Muslim engineer, and her mother is a Serb.

In the novel, she is known only as "S." We don't know her real name or her surname, nor do we know the names of other women or any of the soldiers (although their leader [who is from Serbia] is referred to as "the Captain").

Soldiers from the JNA take S. and other Muslim women to a gym in another village:

"These people seem to her unable to understand that for these armed men they are guilty simply because they exist, because they are different, because they are Muslims. And that that is reason enough for them."

Soon after, the women are bussed to a factory warehouse, what one of the soldiers calls an "exchange camp":

"In a single day we had all been reduced to the lowest possible denominator, to brute existence...

"The day seems to have gone by so quickly and the turn of events has left her no time to think."

While the women have been imprisoned in a part of the camp (known as "the women's room"), the soldiers have killed a group of men, and torched the village:

"Stories spread through the camp about torture and about the thousands of people killed in the men's camp...

"S. does not know what to make of these rumours. She's afraid that people exaggerate and invent the most horrible stories.

"You believe it only if you yourself see it. Perhaps this deliberate blindness is a form of self-preservation."

Proof of Existence

S. often takes her personal possessions out of her backpack:

"She has to prove to herself that she still exists as a person, as S., if only through her belongings. Until that summer her identity had seemed indisputable. She knew who she was, she had family and friends, a job, interests...Now, however, she is inhabiting an underground world where the rules are different. She is connected to her previous world by the slim hope that it is still possible to be the same person, but already senses the fragility of this hope, the uncertainty of her own existence.

"She feels like a cracked bowl which is slowly leaking water. Even her memories are becoming remote and inaccessible."

S. has been keeping family photographs in her backpack:

"These pictures are her strongest proof that there truly did exist a person named S., twenty-nine years of age, a graduate of the Teacher Training College, temporarily employed in the village of B. as a home-room teacher, single, 1.68 meters tall, brown hair, brown eyes, no birthmarks..."

Self-Preservation

Just as the soldiers aim to destroy the identity of the internees, they undermine their self-awareness, social-awareness, pride, self-confidence and trust in others:

"The aim is to humiliate people. The internees cease to be human beings and their bodily needs, like their bodies themselves, become part of the machinery whose workings and aim they can only guess...the first lesson of survival in a camp [is] selfishness...

"It is better not to approach the guards, not to have anything to do with them. You never know how it will end. They do not need much of an excuse to whack somebody or do something even worse than that. It is better to become invisible."

"S. notices that she no longer has a will of her own, it has been replaced by something else, as if a robot has taken control of her body, making it move and react in her stead. Again, it is happening to someone else and to her at the same time.

"If the women prisoners cannot count on one another, then there is nothing she can trust any more...It is perfectly clear to her now that she cannot trust anyone...

"What upsets her is the feeling of diminishment, impoverishment and effacement. She wonders what else she will have to give up and what is the minimum of things with which one can survive without losing the feeling that one is human?"

"...We are all infected by the camp in the some way, she thinks. Of tainted blood, we are all the same. Women exist here only in the plural now. Nameless, faceless, interchangeable. There are only two categories, young and old."

"S. sometimes forgets that there is no real solidarity here, merely the struggle for bare existence."

"Opening up inside her again is the hole that swallows up everything that is human about here."

"We're not human any more, thinks S., the camp has stopped us from feeling human."

Slavenka Drakulić

Military Rape

Like all of the women in the women's room, S. is raped multiple times by guards and soldiers:

"More clearly than ever before she feels stripped of her right to herself, completely dispossessed of her own body."

"The women's room...is a storehouse of women, in a room where female bodies were stored for the use of men...This is nothing other than a soldiers' brothel...their task is to rape you...So, for them, the prisoners are garbage."

author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Ian
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: drakulic, reviews-5-stars, read-2025, reviews
review:
HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

Yugoslavia

I know little about the history of Yugoslavia, especially its collapse and the ensuing Balkan Wars of the 1990's.

Up until its collapse, it was a confederation of autonomous socialist republics, analogous to the Soviet Union (although it was formally non-aligned with the USSR).

From 1953 until his death in 1980, Josip Tito was president of the federation.

Tito died shortly after his left leg was amputated, following a gangrenous infection.

I remember two generally held views or pieces of gossip from around this period.

Firstly, before his death, it was commonly believed that only Tito could have held the federation of Yugoslavia together. It came as no surprise that, after his death, the federation collapsed and disintegrated.

Secondly, after the amputation of his leg, there was supposedly a piece of graffiti, perhaps in London, that said, "Alms for the poor, legs for Tito."

Bosnia

In 1992, the protagonist of this novel was a resident of the small village of B. in Bosnia, where she was a school teacher.

Up until Tito's death, Bosnia had been the most ethnically and religiously diverse of the Yugoslav republics. In March, 1992, it held a referendum to determine whether it should declare independence from the federation. While 60% of the participants supported independence, Bosnian Serbs (who made up 30% of the overall population of Bosnia) opposed the referendum, wanting to remain in the federation of Yugoslavia (as did Serbs elsewhere in the federation).

After the referendum, hostilities broke out between Bosnians and Croatians (on the one hand), and Serbs and Bosnian Serbs (on the other hand). The Yugoslav People's Army ("JNA") took the side of the Serbs.

CRITIQUE:

Destruction of Identity

The protagonist is a Muslim woman. Her father is a Muslim engineer, and her mother is a Serb.

In the novel, she is known only as "S." We don't know her real name or her surname, nor do we know the names of other women or any of the soldiers (although their leader [who is from Serbia] is referred to as "the Captain").

Soldiers from the JNA take S. and other Muslim women to a gym in another village:

"These people seem to her unable to understand that for these armed men they are guilty simply because they exist, because they are different, because they are Muslims. And that that is reason enough for them."

Soon after, the women are bussed to a factory warehouse, what one of the soldiers calls an "exchange camp":

"In a single day we had all been reduced to the lowest possible denominator, to brute existence...

"The day seems to have gone by so quickly and the turn of events has left her no time to think."

While the women have been imprisoned in a part of the camp (known as "the women's room"), the soldiers have killed a group of men, and torched the village:

"Stories spread through the camp about torture and about the thousands of people killed in the men's camp...

"S. does not know what to make of these rumours. She's afraid that people exaggerate and invent the most horrible stories.

"You believe it only if you yourself see it. Perhaps this deliberate blindness is a form of self-preservation."

Proof of Existence

S. often takes her personal possessions out of her backpack:

"She has to prove to herself that she still exists as a person, as S., if only through her belongings. Until that summer her identity had seemed indisputable. She knew who she was, she had family and friends, a job, interests...Now, however, she is inhabiting an underground world where the rules are different. She is connected to her previous world by the slim hope that it is still possible to be the same person, but already senses the fragility of this hope, the uncertainty of her own existence.

"She feels like a cracked bowl which is slowly leaking water. Even her memories are becoming remote and inaccessible."

S. has been keeping family photographs in her backpack:

"These pictures are her strongest proof that there truly did exist a person named S., twenty-nine years of age, a graduate of the Teacher Training College, temporarily employed in the village of B. as a home-room teacher, single, 1.68 meters tall, brown hair, brown eyes, no birthmarks..."

Self-Preservation

Just as the soldiers aim to destroy the identity of the internees, they undermine their self-awareness, social-awareness, pride, self-confidence and trust in others:

"The aim is to humiliate people. The internees cease to be human beings and their bodily needs, like their bodies themselves, become part of the machinery whose workings and aim they can only guess...the first lesson of survival in a camp [is] selfishness...

"It is better not to approach the guards, not to have anything to do with them. You never know how it will end. They do not need much of an excuse to whack somebody or do something even worse than that. It is better to become invisible."

"S. notices that she no longer has a will of her own, it has been replaced by something else, as if a robot has taken control of her body, making it move and react in her stead. Again, it is happening to someone else and to her at the same time.

"If the women prisoners cannot count on one another, then there is nothing she can trust any more...It is perfectly clear to her now that she cannot trust anyone...

"What upsets her is the feeling of diminishment, impoverishment and effacement. She wonders what else she will have to give up and what is the minimum of things with which one can survive without losing the feeling that one is human?"

"...We are all infected by the camp in the some way, she thinks. Of tainted blood, we are all the same. Women exist here only in the plural now. Nameless, faceless, interchangeable. There are only two categories, young and old."

"S. sometimes forgets that there is no real solidarity here, merely the struggle for bare existence."

"Opening up inside her again is the hole that swallows up everything that is human about here."

"We're not human any more, thinks S., the camp has stopped us from feeling human."

Slavenka Drakulić

Military Rape

Like all of the women in the women's room, S. is raped multiple times by guards and soldiers:

"More clearly than ever before she feels stripped of her right to herself, completely dispossessed of her own body."

"The women's room...is a storehouse of women, in a room where female bodies were stored for the use of men...This is nothing other than a soldiers' brothel...their task is to rape you...So, for them, the prisoners are garbage."

The Captain invites S. to keep him company in his quarters at least once a week, usually Saturdays. Unlike the other soldiers, the Captain is never rough with her. If the circumstances had been different, there might have been a mutual attraction. However, this is purely hypothetical. She must content herself with "an advancement in her camp status".

Motherhood

Shortly before the war ends, S. discovers that she is pregnant. She can't be sure of the identity of the father, so she assumes that it is all of the men she has slept with at the camp.

When she is taken to Stockholm as a refugee, she initially decides to offer the child up for adoption.

This means that her child, a representative of the next generation, will start without a complete identity. So war deprives multiple generations of their identity.

VERSE:

The Descent of Dread
[In the Words of Slavenka Drakulić]

As darkness descends,
So does the dread.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> 2024 on ŷ�� 195342176 2024 on ŷ�� should make an interesting and varied catalogue of books to inspire other readers in 2025.

For those of you who don't like to add titles you haven't actually 'read', you can place 2024 on ŷ�� on an 'exclusive' shelf. Exclusive shelves don't have to be listed under 'to read', 'currently reading' or 'read'. To create one, go to 'edit bookshelves' on your 'My Books' page, create a shelf name such as 'review-of-the year' and tick the 'exclusive' box. Your previous and future 'reviews of the year' can be collected together on this dedicated shelf.

Concept created by Fionnuala Lirsdottir.
Description: Fionnuala Lirsdottir
Cover art: Paul Cézanne, The House with the Cracked Walls, 1892-1894
Cover choice and graphics by Jayson]]> Various Ian 0 to-read 4.15 2024 2024 on ŷ��

author: Various
name: Ian
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Diviners 94608 567 Rick Moody 0739466011 Ian 3 CRITIQUE (AS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS
OF 2020'S POST-POSTMODERNISM):

Characters Without Narrative

Narrative has frequently been scorned by postmodernism, so much so that there is often little dynamism in postmodern novels.

There are 33 chapters in "The Diviners", two of which purport to be "opening credits and theme music" and "epilogue and scenes from upcoming episodes".

This artifice suggests that the novel itself is the foundation of a television miniseries.

Each chapter relates to one or more characters, though there is not necessarily any discernible narrative that occurs with respect to the characters, either during the chapter or over the course of the novel as a whole.

This means that the author's or narrator's focus appears to be to identify and describe each character, without necessarily positioning them in a narrative or a story.

As a result, the novel contains little or no dynamism (even if gambling, werewolves and U.F.O.'s are adverted to). It is little more than a static wax museum or a collection of pictures at an exhibition. It contains too few verbs and too many adjectives and nouns.

Paradoxically, a character who is a film producer argues that, in general -

"every single citizen [is] either part of the spectacle or part of the audience. There are...two categories of [person], the entertainers and the entertained."

What is puzzling is that the achievement of the novel is the complete opposite of a miniseries. It lacks the dynamism and appeal of spectacle.

You have to question whether the novel warrants 567 pages of writing or reading.

description

Rick Moody

CRITIQUE (AS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS
OF 1980'S POSTMODERNISM [FRANKIE SAY]):

Fragments of a Rainy Season

Whatever your thirst, "The Diviners" is unlikely to quench it.

Bandwagonesque

If "The Diviners" was a TV series, it would probably feature (if not star) actors like Edward Norton [spoilers removed](1) and Nicole Kidman [spoilers removed] Not forgetting Courtney Love [spoilers removed]

Many Happy Returns

Tears are not enough.

Non-Stop Erratic Cabaret

Say hello, wave goodbye.

Deck the Halls with Holly Johnson

This novel lacks the working class spunk and authenticity of the cover version of "Born to Run" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

What's missing is both "The Power of Love" and "The Look of Love".

When you want to suck it, chew it.

Frankie say no more.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) I am nevertheless looking forward to seeing Edward Norton playing Pete Seeger in

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 2.67 2005 Diviners

author: Rick Moody
name: Ian
average rating: 2.67
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: moody, reviews-3-stars, reviews, read-2024
review:
CRITIQUE (AS VIEWED THROUGH THE LENS
OF 2020'S POST-POSTMODERNISM):

Characters Without Narrative

Narrative has frequently been scorned by postmodernism, so much so that there is often little dynamism in postmodern novels.

There are 33 chapters in "The Diviners", two of which purport to be "opening credits and theme music" and "epilogue and scenes from upcoming episodes".

This artifice suggests that the novel itself is the foundation of a television miniseries.

Each chapter relates to one or more characters, though there is not necessarily any discernible narrative that occurs with respect to the characters, either during the chapter or over the course of the novel as a whole.

This means that the author's or narrator's focus appears to be to identify and describe each character, without necessarily positioning them in a narrative or a story.

As a result, the novel contains little or no dynamism (even if gambling, werewolves and U.F.O.'s are adverted to). It is little more than a static wax museum or a collection of pictures at an exhibition. It contains too few verbs and too many adjectives and nouns.

Paradoxically, a character who is a film producer argues that, in general -

"every single citizen [is] either part of the spectacle or part of the audience. There are...two categories of [person], the entertainers and the entertained."

author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Ian
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, pynchon
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Critical Modernism: Where is Post-Modernism Going? What is Post-Modernism?]]> 434991 240 Charles Jencks 0470030119 Ian 0 3.83 2007

Critical Modernism: Where is Post-Modernism Going? What is Post-Modernism?

author: Charles Jencks
name: Ian
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, lit-krit, jencks
review:

]]> The Mars Room 35610823
Inside is a new reality to adapt to: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner details with humour and precision. Daily acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. Allegiances formed over liquor brewed in socks, and stories shared through sewage pipes.

Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line �� until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity. Through Romy �� and through a cast of astonishing characters populating The Mars Room �� Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex.]]> 340 Rachel Kushner 1910702676 Ian 0 3.44 2018 The Mars Room

author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ian
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read, kushner, a-wish-liszt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut]]> 409963 305 William Rodney Allen 0878053581 Ian 0 4.05 1988

author: William Rodney Allen
name: Ian
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, lit-krit, vonnegut
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cultural Studies of Modern Germany: History, Representation, and Nationhood]]> 4422375 227 Russell A. Berman 0299140105 Ian 0 0.0 1993

Cultural Studies of Modern Germany: History, Representation, and Nationhood

author: Russell A. Berman
name: Ian
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read, berman, cul-poli-phil-art
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism]]> 53230639 An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe thirty years after the end of communism.

An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europa and A Guided Tour of the Museum Of Communism, takes a look at what has changed and what has remained the same in the region in her daring new essay collection.

Totalitarianism did not die overnight and democracy did not completely transform Eastern European societies. Looking closely at artefacts and day to day life, from the health insurance cards to national monuments, and popular films to cultural habits, alongside pieces of growing nationalism and Brexit, these pieces of political reportage dive into the reality of a Europe still deeply divided.]]> 256 Slavenka Drakulić 0143134175 Ian 0 3.80 2021 Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism

Café Europa Revisited: How to Survive Post-Communism

author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Ian
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, drakulic, marx-bros-and-karl
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]]> <![CDATA[A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism]]> 8527513
Called "a perceptive and amusing social critic, with a wonderful eye for detail" by The Washington Post , Slavenka Drakulic-a native of Croatia-has emerged as one of the most popular and respected critics of Communism to come out of the former Eastern Bloc. In A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism , she offers a eight-part exploration of Communism by way of an unusual cast of narrators, each from a different country, who reflect on the fall of Communism. Together they constitute an Orwellian send-up of absurdities during the final years of European Communism that showcase this author's tremendous talent.]]> 192 Slavenka Drakulić 0143118633 Ian 0 3.65 2009 A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism

A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism

author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Ian
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed]]> 278227
In this provocative, acutely observed essay collection, renowned journalist, novelist, and non-fiction writer Slavenka Drakulic writes with wit and heart about her experiences under communism—as well as those of other Eastern Europeans, primarily women, who lived and suffered behind the Iron Curtain. A portrayal of the reality behind the rhetoric, her essays also chronicle the consequences of these regimes: The Berlin Wall may have fallen, but ideology cannot be dismantled so quickly, and a lifetime lived in fear cannot be so easily forgotten.

Many of the pieces focus on the intense connection Drakulic discovers between material things and the expression of one’s spirit, individuality, and femininity—an inevitable byproduct of a lifestyle that, through its rejection of capitalism and commoditization, ends up fetishizing both. She describes the moment one man was able, for the first time in his life, to eat a banana: He gobbled it down, skin and all, enthralled by its texture. Drakulic herself marvels at finding fresh strawberries in N.Y.C. in December, and the feel of the quality of the paper in an issue of Vogue.

As Drakulic delves into the particular hardships facing women—who are not merely the victims of sexism, but of regimes that prevent them from having even the most basic material means by which to express themselves—she describes the desperate lengths to which they would go to find cosmetics or clothes that made them feel feminine in a society where such a feeling was regarded as a bourgeois affectation. There is small room for privacy in communal housing, and the banishment of many time-saving devices, combined with a focus on manual labor, meant women were slaves to domestic responsibility in a way that their Western peers would find unfathomable. From this vantage point, she provides a pointed critique of Western feminism as a movement borne out of privilege.

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed is a compelling, brilliant account of what it was really like to live under Communist rule and its inevitable repercussions.]]> 197 Slavenka Drakulić Ian 0 4.11 1991

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Ian
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1991
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Café Europa: Life After Communism]]> 227541 “Drakulic's pungent and insightful ruminations not only describe life in her part of the world—she makes us feel it as well.”—Publishers Weekly]]> 224 Slavenka Drakulić 0140277722 Ian 0 3.93 1996 Café Europa: Life After Communism

author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Ian
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> Holograms of Fear 16038428 184 Slavenka Drakulić 0704343355 Ian 3 CRITIQUE:

Being and Time

"Holograms of Fear" is only the second creative work I have consumed in which one or both of the protagonists spent the whole time in bed (the first being

This is a metaphysical novel [spoilers removed], rather than a narrative-based novel.

The protagonist and first person narrator is an unnamed Croatian woman (we only get to know her as "I" or "me"). She lived in Zagreb, before moving to New York to receive medical treatment for her congenital kidney disease (where she's connected to a dialysis machine for six years).

When the novel begins, she has just been invited to go to Boston to obtain a kidney transplant.

The narrator is a being who exists in time. She suffers from disease, and poor health. As she is treated and moves on, she fears that she is approaching death ("the word I fear the most"; it gives her nausea; she describes it as "that five-letter convulsion").

She writes to "establish a balance between time outside and time inside". She hopes to "coordinate movement and thought." She tries to "resolve the conflict encroaching forcefully on [her] consciousness".

As she writes, she creates "proofs of existence", even though it might soon come to an end:

"Once more the fear. No, the irrepressible horror."

Disease and Death

She thinks of health "in terms of a negation": It's something that is not dialysis or death.

Especially when she is in poor health, she experiences "longing for life", even if it has limits:

"Suddenly I feel that it is dangerous to be alone like this, without love...

"I don't want to be aware of my body, I want it all to stop."

Perpetual Fear

Although her transplant is successful, she continues to live in fear:

"I will never completely free myself of the nearness, the intimacy, the recognition of death."

author: Slavenka Drakulić
name: Ian
average rating: 2.78
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: read-2024, reviews, reviews-3-stars, drakulic
review:
CRITIQUE:

Being and Time

"Holograms of Fear" is only the second creative work I have consumed in which one or both of the protagonists spent the whole time in bed (the first being

This is a metaphysical novel [spoilers removed], rather than a narrative-based novel.

The protagonist and first person narrator is an unnamed Croatian woman (we only get to know her as "I" or "me"). She lived in Zagreb, before moving to New York to receive medical treatment for her congenital kidney disease (where she's connected to a dialysis machine for six years).

When the novel begins, she has just been invited to go to Boston to obtain a kidney transplant.

The narrator is a being who exists in time. She suffers from disease, and poor health. As she is treated and moves on, she fears that she is approaching death ("the word I fear the most"; it gives her nausea; she describes it as "that five-letter convulsion").

She writes to "establish a balance between time outside and time inside". She hopes to "coordinate movement and thought." She tries to "resolve the conflict encroaching forcefully on [her] consciousness".

As she writes, she creates "proofs of existence", even though it might soon come to an end:

"Once more the fear. No, the irrepressible horror."

"Suddenly I feel that it is dangerous to be alone like this, without love...

"I don't want to be aware of my body, I want it all to stop."

Perpetual Fear

Although her transplant is successful, she continues to live in fear:

"I will never completely free myself of the nearness, the intimacy, the recognition of death."

VERSE:

The Shiver of Time (Haiku)
[Primarily in the Words of
Slavenka Drakulic]

Time, like a shiver
Of nervousness, traverses
Across my muscles.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present]]> 220929346
The philosophical debates of the period come to life through anecdotes and extended readings of work by the likes of Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Barthes, Foucault, Althusser, Derrida, Deleuze, groups like Tel Quel and Cahiers du Cin�ma, and contemporary thinkers such as Ranci�re and Badiou. Eclectic, insightful, and inspired, Jameson's seminars provide an essential account of an intellectual moment comparable in significance to the Golden Age of Athens, historically fascinating and of persistent relevance.]]> 481 Fredric Jameson 1804295906 Ian 0 4.00 The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present

The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present

author: Fredric Jameson
name: Ian
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, jameson, marx-bros-and-karl, sartre, de-beauvoir, lacan, baudrillard, barthes, althusser, derrida, irigaray, deleuze
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists]]> 262643 288 Joan Copjec 0262032198 Ian 0 4.28 1994

Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists

author: Joan Copjec
name: Ian
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/11
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]]> Telex from Cuba 2495094
Young Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites come of age in Oriente Province, where the Americans tend their own fiefdom three hundred thousand acres of United Fruit Company sugarcane that surround their gated enclave. If the rural tropics are a child's dream-world, Everly and K.C. nevertheless have keen eyes for the indulgences and betrayals of grown-ups around them the mordant drinking and illicit loves, the race hierarchies, and violence.

In Havana, a thousand kilometers and a world away from the American colony, a cabaret dancer meets a French agitator named Christian de La Mazire, whose seductive demeanor can't mask his shameful past. Together they become enmeshed in the brewing political underground. When Fidel and Raul Castro lead a revolt from the mountains above the cane plantation, torching the sugar and kidnapping a boat full of "yanqui" revelers, K.C. and Everly begin to discover the brutality that keeps the colony humming. If their parents manage to remain blissfully untouched by the forces of history, the children hear the whispers of what is to come.

At the time, the urgent news was conveyed by telex. Kushner's first novel is a tour de force, haunting and compelling, with the urgency of a telex from a forgotten time and place.]]> 322 Rachel Kushner 141656103X Ian 5 CRITIQUE:

Multiple Sources

The title of this richly rewarding novel highlights some of the ambiguity that snakes through its narrative.

It's supposedly a telex from someone or some place. A telex is a communique, a method of communication, even if it's sent by an outmoded form of technology that was common in the middle of the last century.

The fact that it's sent "from Cuba" suggests that it's come from one place (Cuba), whether or not it's come from multiple sources.

The narrator is sometimes, in some chapters, one person, Kimball C. (K.C.) Stites, who at the time of the principal events is 13 or 14.

Other chapters are written in the third person.

Collectively, these narratives come from multiple places, presumably in Cuba, even if K.C. lives in Tampa, Florida at the time he's writing.

On the other hand, you could argue that the Cuba of the title is a person, rather than a place. K.C. writes:

"Later, when I went to military academy, I was on the boxing team and everyone called me Cuba, Cuba Stites."

Thus, even though K.C. only writes one of three narratives, the novel as a whole might be construed as his communique to us.

Multiple Narratives

K.C. tells us about the Stites family. His father, Malcolm, is in charge of the United Fruit Company in Cuba in 1952. He's regarded by the Cuban people and rebels as "[public] enemy number one".

The second narrative concerns the relationship between a French supplier of arms to the rebels (Christian de La Maziere, who is also a former member of the German S.S.) and a burlesque dancer named Rachel K. (who describes herself as a "zazou dancer"): (1)

"The Frenchman remembers zazou. It was a jazz thing during the war. Girls in chunky heels and fishnets, with dark lipstick and parasols. Or maybe it was berets - he can't recall. Boys in zoot suits, an unseemly glisten of salad oil in their hair. They were bohemians who struck poses near the outdoor tables at the Café de Flore, begging cigarettes and slurping the soup people left in the bottom of their bowls. The point of it was more than just poverty. It was a form of protest. But by the time the zazou were being rounded up by German patrols, he was far away from Paris. Marching waist-deep into a cold apocalypse with a panzerfaust over his shoulder."

Rachel K. herself -

"had a narrow face, dark eyes, the full lips and large teeth of a Manouche Gypsy or a German Jew. Zazou - of all things! The framing made her seem oddly knowing, despite her blunt and stupid and perfect flesh..."

"Whatever she is or isn't, she looks like a liar and he likes liars. He imagines there is someone for whom honesty is a potent seduction, but he is not that sentimental someone. Seduction, he knows, is a slew of projections, disguises, denials. What can you claim to accurately know about anyone, much less a stranger to whom you're attracted? And yet you can claim, accurately, that a person is evasive and that their evasions interest you."

De La Maziere is not the only customer who is attracted to Rachel K. There are others like the former president (Prio), the recently instated president (Batista), Malcolm Stites (K.C.'s father), and the rebel Castro brothers.

The third narrative is constructed around teenaged Everly Lederer and her family, who are also linked to the United Fruit Company community:

"Her mother and father seemed to hate people for being rich, and yet they wanted to be rich themselves. Money was always a problem. That's why they were going to Cuba, where her father would have a higher salary and be a boss."

Cutting Cuban sugar cane

American Colonialism

Malcolm Stites and his male peer group are the vehicles through which American capitalism pursues its colonialist agenda.

They become the target of communist rebels, who resent their accumulation of vast quantities of arable land, and their exploitation of Cuban labour (which even the Americans acknowledge - "the fact is we went down there and we took").

At the beginning of the novel, the rebels start fires in the sugar cane fields, as a precursor to full-blown revolution.

In contrast to her husband, K.C.'s mother is more liberal in temperament. His brother, Del (who joined the rebels at age 17), once said that:

"Mother's sympathy for people, without any sympathy for what caused their circumstances, was not real sympathy but sentimentality."

A Circumstantial Chronicle of Events

Rachel Kushner's novel negotiates a passage between the colonialism imposed by American corporations on the third world, and the impact on the families of American executives and staff (not to mention the Cubans) with sensitivity and style, but without undue sentimentality.

It does so with a uniquely literary narrative, rather than with a plot or story that documents sequential action. (2) As De La Maziere says to Rachel K., after she undertakes to tell him her life story:

"You've told me circumstances. Not story."

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Rachel K. also appears in the third story in Rachel Kushner's first collection of stories.

(2) The atmosphere of this novel reminds me most of Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet".

WINE DARK VERSE:

Caribbean Sea [Haiku]
(In the words of Rachel
Kushner)

Like an eye, it both
Reflects and refracts the sky
At which it gazes.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 3.54 2008 Telex from Cuba

author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ian
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: kushner, read-2024, reviews, reviews-5-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

Multiple Sources

The title of this richly rewarding novel highlights some of the ambiguity that snakes through its narrative.

It's supposedly a telex from someone or some place. A telex is a communique, a method of communication, even if it's sent by an outmoded form of technology that was common in the middle of the last century.

The fact that it's sent "from Cuba" suggests that it's come from one place (Cuba), whether or not it's come from multiple sources.

The narrator is sometimes, in some chapters, one person, Kimball C. (K.C.) Stites, who at the time of the principal events is 13 or 14.

Other chapters are written in the third person.

Collectively, these narratives come from multiple places, presumably in Cuba, even if K.C. lives in Tampa, Florida at the time he's writing.

On the other hand, you could argue that the Cuba of the title is a person, rather than a place. K.C. writes:

"Later, when I went to military academy, I was on the boxing team and everyone called me Cuba, Cuba Stites."

"The Frenchman remembers zazou. It was a jazz thing during the war. Girls in chunky heels and fishnets, with dark lipstick and parasols. Or maybe it was berets - he can't recall. Boys in zoot suits, an unseemly glisten of salad oil in their hair. They were bohemians who struck poses near the outdoor tables at the Café de Flore, begging cigarettes and slurping the soup people left in the bottom of their bowls. The point of it was more than just poverty. It was a form of protest. But by the time the zazou were being rounded up by German patrols, he was far away from Paris. Marching waist-deep into a cold apocalypse with a panzerfaust over his shoulder."

Rachel K. herself -

"had a narrow face, dark eyes, the full lips and large teeth of a Manouche Gypsy or a German Jew. Zazou - of all things! The framing made her seem oddly knowing, despite her blunt and stupid and perfect flesh..."

"Whatever she is or isn't, she looks like a liar and he likes liars. He imagines there is someone for whom honesty is a potent seduction, but he is not that sentimental someone. Seduction, he knows, is a slew of projections, disguises, denials. What can you claim to accurately know about anyone, much less a stranger to whom you're attracted? And yet you can claim, accurately, that a person is evasive and that their evasions interest you."

"Her mother and father seemed to hate people for being rich, and yet they wanted to be rich themselves. Money was always a problem. That's why they were going to Cuba, where her father would have a higher salary and be a boss."

"Mother's sympathy for people, without any sympathy for what caused their circumstances, was not real sympathy but sentimentality."

"You've told me circumstances. Not story."

The Transcendence of the Ego: A Sketch for a Phenomenological Description (Routledge Classics)

author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Ian
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1937
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, sartre
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]]> <![CDATA[Dreams of Dreams and the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa]]> 118439
Some of the dreamers Tabucchi chooses to conjure up include Greek architect Daedalus; Carlo Collodi, author of Pinocchio; painter Caravaggio; poet Arthur Rimbaud; composer Debussy; and the father of dream analysis, Sigmund Freud. These short reveries center around memorable, jewellike details - Daedalus teaches a Minotaur trapped in a maze on his Greek island how to fly; Rimbaud wanders the French countryside with his own amputated leg under his arm, wrapped in a newspaper printed with his poems.

The recreation of Pessoa's last days is a complex narrative. All of the alternate poetic personae the poet ever created--including Antonio Mora, a mad philosopher; shy accountant Bernardo Soares; and the monarchist doctor, Ricardo Reis--visit him on his deathbed. Through these conversations with his own multiple personalities, the poet at last achieves peace. - Publishers Weekly]]> 136 Antonio Tabucchi 0872863689 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt 3.80 1992 Dreams of Dreams and the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa

Dreams of Dreams and the Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa

author: Antonio Tabucchi
name: Ian
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas]]> 156183 288 William H. Gass 0465026206 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, gass 3.95 1998

author: William H. Gass
name: Ian
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, gass
review:

]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Ian 0 3.34 2024

author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ian
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, kushner
review:

]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, austen 3.86 1814

author: Jane Austen
name: Ian
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, austen
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory]]> 201632587 Marxist Modernism is a comprehensive yet concise and conversational introduction to the Frankfurt School. It is also a new resource from one of the twentieth century's most important Gillian Rose.

Her 1979 lectures on the Frankfurt School explore the lives and philosophies of a range of the school's members and affiliates, including Adorno, Luk�cs, Brecht, Bloch, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, and outline the way each theorist developed Marx's theory of commodity fetishism into a Marxist theory of culture.

Edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson]]> 176 Gillian Rose 1804290114 Ian 0 4.16 Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory

Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory

author: Gillian Rose
name: Ian
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: a-wish-liszt, to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, marx-bros-and-karl
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]]> A Strangeness in My Mind 24997390 A Strangeness In My Mind is a novel Orhan Pamuk has worked on for six years. It is the story of boza seller Mevlut, the woman to whom he wrote three years' worth of love letters, and their life in Istanbul.

In the four decades between 1969 and 2012, Mevlut works a number of different jobs on the streets of Istanbul, from selling yoghurt and cooked rice, to guarding a car park. He observes many different kinds of people thronging the streets, he watches most of the city get demolished and re-built, and he sees migrants from Anatolia making a fortune; at the same time, he witnesses all of the transformative moments, political clashes, and military coups that shape the country. He always wonders what it is that separates him from everyone else - the source of that strangeness in his mind. But he never stops selling boza during winter evenings and trying to understand who his beloved really is.

What matters more in love: what we wish for, or what our fate has in store? Do our choices dictate whether we will be happy or not, or are these things determined by forces beyond our control?

A Strangeness In My Mind tries to answer these questions while portraying the tensions between urban life and family life, and the fury and helplessness of women inside their homes.]]> 624 Orhan Pamuk 0571275974 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, pamuk 4.15 2014 A Strangeness in My Mind

author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Ian
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
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]]> The Name of the Rose 335061 Il nome della rosa in 1980. Although the work stands on its own as a murder mystery, it is more accurately seen as a questioning of "truth" from theological, philosophical, scholarly, and historical perspectives. The story centers on William of Baskerville, a 50-year-old monk who is sent to investigate a death at a Benedictine monastery. During his search, several other monks are killed in a bizarre pattern that reflects the Book of Revelation.
—F��ǳ� The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature]]> 502 Umberto Eco 0330284142 Ian 5 eco 4.01 1980 The Name of the Rose

author: Umberto Eco
name: Ian
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1980
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: eco
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House]]> 211143818
When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: ';Mother, get a life!' And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been.

InThe Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in America, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care. She describes the perseverance, persuasion, and respect for her members that it took to succeed, but also the joy of seeing America change for the better. Among the best-prepared and hardest-working Speakers in history, Pelosi worked to find common ground, or stand her ground, with presidents from Bush to Biden.

She also shares moving moments with soldiers sent to the front lines, women who inspired her, and human rights activists who fought by her side.

Pelosi took positions that established her as a prophetic voice on the major moral issues of the day, warning early about the dangers of the Iraq War and of the Chinese government's long record of misbehaviour. This moral courage prepared her for the arrival of Trump, with whom she famously tangled, becoming a red-coated symbol of resistance to his destructive presidency. Here, she reveals how she went toe-to-toe with Trump, leading up to January 6, 2021, when he unleashed his post-election fury on the Congress.

Pelosi gives us her personal account of that day: the assault not only on the symbol of our democracy but on the men and women who had come to serve the nation, never expecting to hide under desks or flee for their lives and her determined efforts to get the National Guard to the Capitol. Nearly two years later, violence and fury would erupt inside Pelosi's own home when an intruder, demanding to see the Speaker, viciously attacked her beloved husband, Paul. Here, Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family.]]> 352 Nancy Pelosi 1668048043 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

"What I Saw and Heard"

For almost half of this book, I thought Nancy Pelosi made a better speaker than a writer.

My problem was that I didn't appreciate exactly what I was supposed to be reading. Only in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, does Pelosi declare:

"...I want to convey what this book is not. It is not a memoir; nor do I tell the entire story of how I went from housewife to House member to House Speaker. It is not an account of every challenge we face."

In the Author's Note, she adds:

"This is my story of what I saw and what I heard at some of the most momentous events of the last four decades..."

"The Seven Basic Plots"

There are more or less seven substantive chapters, which means she focuses on seven non-chronological challenges, events or stories:

1) the violent attack on her husband, Paul (the price of leadership);

2) her election as Speaker;

3) 9/11 to the Iraq War;

4) Tiananmen Square to Hong Kong and Taiwan;

5) the Global Financial Meltdown;

6) the Affordable Care Act; and

7) the January 6 insurrection and the impeachment proceedings.

description

How to look good in orange.

"The Spark of Divinity"

As a practising Catholic, Pelosi claims to be guided by the desire to honor "the spark of divinity" in every person.

Her core values (which she describes as her "why") are shaped by a passage in the Gospel of Matthew 25:

"For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison and you came to me."

These values are the foundation of a philosophy of compassion and empathy, which recognises the dignity, need and deservedness of others. Other people are the people for whom we do what we do (not ourselves).

It's demeaning and offensive to call this philosophy "woke". I don't understand how people who claim to be Christians and Evangelicals can embrace this term, when they claim to be "born again".

"Know Your Power and Use It"

Elected office is a vehicle to help achieve these goals for others (for the people and, most of all, for children).

One of the pieces of advice she originally received was to "know thy/your power and use it".

Pelosi doesn't expressly call these values "the art of power", but she implies that they are the "spark" of the quasi-divine power that legislators and the executive wield, well at least those who are Democrats.

The power that Pelosi refers to is the voice and power of the representatives whom she harnesses and manages, in order to get things done, in the face of opposition:

"The Republicans are our opposition, but the Senate is our enemy."

"Outside Mobilisation"

Sometimes, this power is not enough and must be supplemented by the power of the people:

"...When legislating in Congress, our inside maneuvering can only take us so far. Always...it is the outside mobilisation that makes all the difference.

"On every issue - from health care to climate to LGBTQ+ eqality and more - the relentless, persistent advocacy of everyday Americans has made change possible."

Formidable Advocacy and Leadership

I don't agree with everything Pelosi advocates (especially with respect to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where she prioritises human rights over sovereignty), but I respect that she has been a formidable and effective leader against the GOP that has been remade in the image of Donald J. Trump.

America would be worse off if it lacked her or her kind. All political parties need a numbers man (or woman), to make things happen, and they are rarely popular with the opposition.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 3.90 2024 The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House

The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House

author: Nancy Pelosi
name: Ian
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: cul-poli-phil-art, read-2024, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

"What I Saw and Heard"

For almost half of this book, I thought Nancy Pelosi made a better speaker than a writer.

My problem was that I didn't appreciate exactly what I was supposed to be reading. Only in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, does Pelosi declare:

"...I want to convey what this book is not. It is not a memoir; nor do I tell the entire story of how I went from housewife to House member to House Speaker. It is not an account of every challenge we face."

In the Author's Note, she adds:

"This is my story of what I saw and what I heard at some of the most momentous events of the last four decades..."

"For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison and you came to me."

"The Republicans are our opposition, but the Senate is our enemy."

"Outside Mobilisation"

Sometimes, this power is not enough and must be supplemented by the power of the people:

"...When legislating in Congress, our inside maneuvering can only take us so far. Always...it is the outside mobilisation that makes all the difference.

"On every issue - from health care to climate to LGBTQ+ eqality and more - the relentless, persistent advocacy of everyday Americans has made change possible."

Formidable Advocacy and Leadership

I don't agree with everything Pelosi advocates (especially with respect to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where she prioritises human rights over sovereignty), but I respect that she has been a formidable and effective leader against the GOP that has been remade in the image of Donald J. Trump.

America would be worse off if it lacked her or her kind. All political parties need a numbers man (or woman), to make things happen, and they are rarely popular with the opposition.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> Death of a River Guide 548370 382 Richard Flanagan 1843542196 Ian 0 to-read 3.93 1994

author: Richard Flanagan
name: Ian
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City and Its Uncertain Walls]]> 205358060 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library �� a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.

A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a parable for these strange times.]]> 464 Haruki Murakami 1787304477 Ian 0 3.76 2023

author: Haruki Murakami
name: Ian
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: to-read, mura-karmic-wonder-land
review:

]]> The Seamstress and the Wind 9887215 144 César Aira 0811219127 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, aira 3.67 1994

author: César Aira
name: Ian
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, aira
review:

]]> The Literary Conference 7444221 The Literary Conference is the perfect vehicle for César Aira’s takeover of 21st-century literature .]]> 92 César Aira 0811218783 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, aira 3.78 1997

author: César Aira
name: Ian
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, aira
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter]]> 152809 An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter is the story of a moment in the life of the German artist Johan Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858). Greatly admired as a master landscape painter, he was advised by Alexander von Humboldt to travel West from Europe to record the spectacular landscapes of Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Rugendas did in fact become one of the best of the nineteenth-century European painters to venture into Latin America. However this is not a biography of Rugendas. This work of fiction weaves an almost surreal history around the secret objective behind Rugendas's trips to America: to visit Argentina in order to achieve in art the "physiognomic totality" of von Humboldt's scientific vision of the whole. Rugendas is convinced that only in the mysterious vastness of the immense plains will he find true inspiration. A brief and dramatic visit to Mendosa gives him the chance to fulfill his dream. From there he travels straight out onto the pampas, praying for that impossible moment, which would come only at an immense price—an almost monstrously exorbitant price that would ultimately challenge his drawing, and force him to create a new way of making art. A strange episode that he could not avoid absorbing savagely into his own body interrupts the trip and irreversibly and explosively marks him for life.]]> 88 César Aira 0811216306 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, aira 3.95 2000 An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

author: César Aira
name: Ian
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, aira
review:

]]> THE VONNEGUT STATEMENT 478140 0 Jerome Klinkowitz 0440592364 Ian 0 0.0

author: Jerome Klinkowitz
name: Ian
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, klinkowitz, lit-krit, vonnegut
review:

]]> <![CDATA[1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die]]> 125070688 960 Robert Dimery 0789313715 Ian 0 to-read, muse-ik 3.96 2005

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die

author: Robert Dimery
name: Ian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves: to-read, muse-ik
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sound of One Hand Clapping]]> 484124 425 Richard Flanagan 0802137849 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

"Because It Is Tasmania and Not Slovenia"

Throughout the body of this novel, there are many dualities, whether resembling or contrasting each other.

They start with the places Slovenia and Tasmania, the languages Slovenian and English (or sometimes, if such a thing exists, Australian).

Timber Houses and Wog Flats

Place-wise, there is also suburban Hobart and Sydney, and the Tasmanian wilderness.

European immigrants have come here to help construct dams and power stations. The Australians live in timber houses, and the immigrants in "wog flats".

Friday nights, the "wogs" end up drunk and unconscious, surrounded by smashed bottles and broken teapots. Women succumb to death and pregnancy. One woman (Sonja) names her daughter after her mother (Maria).

The Absence of Sound

These dualities suggest to the reader that the novel is not just about a singularity - consisting of the titular Zen koan, "the sound of one hand clapping".

If we think only of a single hand, we are trapped in the absence of sound, the silence of one hand clapping.

One hand, therefore, alerts us to the fact that there is something missing, there is an absence, the lack of a whole or a duality:

"The smell of a tree without a blossom."

There's no purpose in trying to work out what is the sound of one hand clapping. The whole point is that the absence of a second hand [spoilers removed] occasions the absence of sound.

description

Broken Teapot

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 3.78 1997 The Sound of One Hand Clapping

author: Richard Flanagan
name: Ian
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: flanagan, read-2024, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

"Because It Is Tasmania and Not Slovenia"

Throughout the body of this novel, there are many dualities, whether resembling or contrasting each other.

They start with the places Slovenia and Tasmania, the languages Slovenian and English (or sometimes, if such a thing exists, Australian).

Timber Houses and Wog Flats

Place-wise, there is also suburban Hobart and Sydney, and the Tasmanian wilderness.

European immigrants have come here to help construct dams and power stations. The Australians live in timber houses, and the immigrants in "wog flats".

Friday nights, the "wogs" end up drunk and unconscious, surrounded by smashed bottles and broken teapots. Women succumb to death and pregnancy. One woman (Sonja) names her daughter after her mother (Maria).

The Absence of Sound

These dualities suggest to the reader that the novel is not just about a singularity - consisting of the titular Zen koan, "the sound of one hand clapping".

If we think only of a single hand, we are trapped in the absence of sound, the silence of one hand clapping.

One hand, therefore, alerts us to the fact that there is something missing, there is an absence, the lack of a whole or a duality:

"The smell of a tree without a blossom."

There's no purpose in trying to work out what is the sound of one hand clapping. The whole point is that the absence of a second hand [spoilers removed] occasions the absence of sound.

description

Broken Teapot

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert]]> 23558
No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now. With Awake in the Dark , both fans and film buffs can finally bask in the best of Ebert’s work. The reviews, interviews, and essays collected here present a picture of this indispensable critic’s numerous contributions to the cinema and cinephilia. From The Godfather to GoodFellas , from Cries and Whispers to Crash , the reviews in Awake in the Dark span some of the most exceptional periods in film history, from the dramatic rise of rebel Hollywood and the heyday of the auteur, to the triumph of blockbuster films such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark , to the indie revolution that is still with us today.��

The extraordinary interviews gathered in Awake in the Dark capture Ebert engaging not only some of the most influential directors of our time—Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, and Ingmar Bergman—but also some of the silver screen’s most respected and dynamic personalities, including actors as diverse as Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Warren Beatty, and Meryl Streep. Ebert’s remarkable essays play a significant part in Awake in the Dark as well. The book contains some of Ebert’s most admired pieces, among them a moving appreciation of John Cassavetes and a loving tribute to the virtues of black-and-white films.��

If Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris were godmother and godfather to the movie generation, then Ebert is its voice from within—a writer whose exceptional intelligence and daily bursts of insight and enthusiasm have shaped the way we think about the movies. Awake in the Dark , therefore, will be a treasure trove not just for fans of this seminal critic, but for anyone desiring a fascinating and compulsively readable chronicle of film since the late 1960s.]]> 512 Roger Ebert 0226182002 Ian 0 4.18 2006 Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert

author: Roger Ebert
name: Ian
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, fill-um, cul-poli-phil-art
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World]]> 201626960 To save democracy in America and around the world, we need to understand the real source of the thread: the reactionary spirit.

From America to India, a distinct style of far-right politics �� one that pays lip service to democratic ideals but seeks to undermine democracy from within �� is on the brink of overthrowing some of the world’s oldest and most established democracies. Why?

In The Reactionary Spirit, journalist Zack Beauchamp traces the roots of this crisis back centuries to a conflict at the very heart of democracy. By grounding politics in the idea that no person has a right to rule any other, democracy encourages challenges to hierarchies of wealth and power. But those at the top won’t give up without a fight.

Beauchamp exposes how the need to oppose equality and protect hierarchy has powered anti-democracies for centuries. He reveals how, over time, antidemocratic reactionaries have learned to mask their authoritarian politics as a form of democracy �� an insidious style of authoritarianism that began in the United States but has since spread globally.

This book presents a revolutionary new explanation for why our democracy seems so imperiled, but it also offers hope �� telling readers what they can do to stop the reactionary spirit’s global rise before it’s too late.]]> 263 Zack Beauchamp 154170441X Ian 0 3.97 2024 The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World

The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World

author: Zack Beauchamp
name: Ian
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, trump-gop
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927��1939]]> 135452 271 Georges Bataille 0816612838 Ian 0 4.29 1985

Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939

author: Georges Bataille
name: Ian
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, bataille, cul-poli-phil-art, lit-krit
review:

]]> Home Fire 35898777 From an internationally acclaimed novelist, the suspenseful and heartbreaking story of a family ripped apart by secrets and driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences.

Practical-minded Isma has spent the years since her mother’s death watching out for her twin brother and sister in their North London home. When an invitation to grad school in America comes through unexpectedly, it brings the irresistible promise of freedom too long deferred. But even an ocean away, Isma can’t stop worrying about her beautiful, headstrong, politically inclined sister, Aneeka, and Parvaiz, their brother, who seems to be adrift—until suddenly he is half a globe away in Raqqa, trying to prove himself to the dark legacy of the father he never knew, with no road back.

Then Eamonn Lone enters the sisters�� lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to—or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The instrument of Parvaiz’s salvation? Suddenly, two families�� fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined.

Home Fire is a nuanced, searing, and exceedingly timely novel about love and loyalty, ideology and identity, what we choose to sacrifice for and why. With uncanny insight, Kamila Shamsie reflects our world back at us, dramatizing the complicated humanity behind the headlines.]]> 264 Kamila Shamsie 1408886790 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt 4.08 2017 Home Fire

author: Kamila Shamsie
name: Ian
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt
review:

]]> The Empusium 209807703
Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the nearby highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone �� or something �� seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Olga Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 336 Olga Tokarczuk 180427108X Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, mann 3.94 2022 The Empusium

author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Ian
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, mann
review:

]]> Tourmaline 25912439
There is no stretch of land on earth more ancient than this. And so it is blunt and red and barren, littered with the fragments of broken mountains, flat, waterless.

Tourmaline, in outback Western Australia, is dying: its mines lie abandoned and drought has taken hold. When the enigmatic diviner Michael Random emerges from the desert, desperate townspeople see him as a messiah. Random begins to spread the word of God—and to promise them water, that most precious resource. Both a complex spiritual parable and an enduring apocalyptic vision, Tourmaline is Randolph Stow’s most controversial novel.]]> 272 Randolph Stow 1925240304 Ian 5 CRITIQUE:

Original Review

I remember this novel for its crystalline pure and perfect prose. I would once have placed it in my top ten Australian novels.

Perspectives on Style

I can't say that my view has changed that much since I first read this novel, probably some time in the mid-1970's.

I think I had just immersed myself in a number of Patrick White novels, following his receipt of the Nobel Prize.

While I enjoyed Patrick White's writing at the time, I was conscious of Randolph Stow's relative lack of adornment in style.

While this perception remains true, I wouldn't say now that his style is crystalline (as I meant by that term at the time).

My view now is shaped by a comparison of Stow's novel with the works of other authors like David Ireland and Gerald Murnane (all of whom share the publisher, Text Publishing).

David Ireland's early novels were indebted to social realism, whereas Gerald Murnane's novels (particularly "The Plains") owed much more to metaphysics.

"Tourmaline" has elements of, and seems to transcend, both styles. Of course, we should recognise that it was written almost 20 years before Murnane's novel, and almost a decade before Ireland's "The Unknown Industrial Prisoner".

description

Randolph Stow photographed in Essex, England, 1985

Transcendence of the Real

The novel is set in the fictitious titular town. It's a former mining town, probably in Western Australia, which has declined since the collapse of gold mining, and the disappearance of its water supply.

A few hundred people have continued to live there in the hope that living conditions will improve. Everybody else has deserted this desert landscape.

One day, a stranger is found injured and unconscious on the outskirts of town. He turns out to be a water diviner, who, once he recovers, offers to find a water supply for its residents.

He is most often referred to as "the diviner", although his name is Michael (Mike) Random. (1) Perhaps in tribute to his divine occupation, the residents think of him as a messiah.

Narration by the Law

The unnamed narrator is a policeman whose main task is to manage both order and the town's gaol. The townsfolk refer to him as "the Law". The novel is his testament (or gospel) about the coming of the diviner.

Although the Law keeps the peace, the residents hope that the diviner will be able to break the drought and unite the population in material (and spiritual) prosperity.

The Divine Autocrat

The diviner establishes himself as a Christ-like leader or autocrat, perhaps because "someone had to take charge".

When he departs, he must be replaced by someone else, because "he left a gap...and the organisation was there...That - power - is worth having."

The legacy of the diviner is perhaps to create an opening for another autocrat to establish a cult-like society in the Antipodean wilderness. It's hard to sense whether the next diviner will be a messiah or a villain (or both), whether he will precipitate salvation or damnation.

Whatever changes might have occurred in my views, I would still place this work in my top ten Australian novels. It deserves a greater readership and recognition than it has so far received.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Stow was known to his family and friends as "Mick", which is also the title of his biography.

VERSE:

Generous Endowment
[Mostly In the Words of Randolph Stow]

This is my tribute and testament
About the time God came to town,
Promising us water, heaven-sent;
Though this is not to run him down.

Fire Fight in the Blue Hills
[In the Words of Randolph Stow]

Deep, deep blue,
Like the darkest sea,
Strewn with white
Conflagration.
In the red light
There was something
Ancient, pathetic, ludicrous,
About those black shapes,
Those traditional words.
Ahead, the red road
Ran straight as a fence,
Through the boundless
And stone-littered
Wilderness,
Towards the blue hills
Piled on the horizon
Like storm-clouds.

The call of a bugle
In the early morning.
In the cool, in the blue dawn,
Ringing as if in great forests.
I went out to
The veranda,
To the table beside
The kitchen door,
Where an enamel
Basin stood;
And pouring into this
A little reddish water
I washed myself,
The small dawn breeze
Cool on my wet skin.

It is for this I live
Nowadays,
For the pleasures
Of my senses;
A voice, a scent of leaves,
A breeze on
My dripping body.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 4.18 1963 Tourmaline

author: Randolph Stow
name: Ian
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: reviews-5-stars, stow, re-read, read-2024, reviews
review:
CRITIQUE:

Original Review

I remember this novel for its crystalline pure and perfect prose. I would once have placed it in my top ten Australian novels.

Perspectives on Style

I can't say that my view has changed that much since I first read this novel, probably some time in the mid-1970's.

I think I had just immersed myself in a number of Patrick White novels, following his receipt of the Nobel Prize.

While I enjoyed Patrick White's writing at the time, I was conscious of Randolph Stow's relative lack of adornment in style.

While this perception remains true, I wouldn't say now that his style is crystalline (as I meant by that term at the time).

My view now is shaped by a comparison of Stow's novel with the works of other authors like David Ireland and Gerald Murnane (all of whom share the publisher, Text Publishing).

David Ireland's early novels were indebted to social realism, whereas Gerald Murnane's novels (particularly "The Plains") owed much more to metaphysics.

"Tourmaline" has elements of, and seems to transcend, both styles. Of course, we should recognise that it was written almost 20 years before Murnane's novel, and almost a decade before Ireland's "The Unknown Industrial Prisoner".

description

Three Trapped Tigers (Latin American Literature)

author: Guillermo Cabrera Infante
name: Ian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories]]> 18360 117 Anaïs Nin 0804009813 Ian 3 Not Timeless, But Not a Waste of Time

These sixteen stories were written before 1932, when Anais Nin turned 29.

It is not clear how old she was when she wrote the earliest of them, though at least one story is written from the point of view of a 12 year old girl.

Nin considered them to be "immature". All of them were rejected for publication by American magazines at the time of writing, and subsequently she forbade them to be published, until shortly before her death in 1977.

Ultimately, she agreed to their publication, so that young writers could see her progress from juvenilia to maturity.

She did however perceive the flowering of two of her characteristics in these stories: her talent for irony and her feminism.

Ultimately, she asserted that "this is a book for friends only," presumably expecting friends to be more tolerant of their flaws.

I think she was unduely harsh on her work.

All of them deal with interesting subject matter in prose that at worst is competent, at best insightful, if a little conceptual, rather than grounded.

None of them is overtly erotic, although they do all relate to a strong girl or woman who seeks a different world, removed from the "ordinary life" chosen by her school friends and peers.

She was clearly enormously intelligent and attractive to more creative or intellectual men, some of whom lacked her strength of character and would have been totally vulnerable to manipulation, if that was what she desired.

However, I think she would have preferred someone who was at least her equal.

In these cases, she would have been irresistibly seductive.

However, we will have to wait to read her diaries and later books in order to obtain a greater insight into her modus operandi.

Not Entirely Yours
[After Anais Nin]

“You obsess me.��
No, you just want
To possess me.
“I want to love you.��
You cannot bear
Any thought of
Me above you.
“I long to touch you,
But I fear that
I would lose you.��
You might touch me,
But you wouldn’t
Ever hold me.
“I don’t want mere
Half measures.
It’s everything
Or nothing.��
And so upon
Some reflection,
You choose nothing.
I remain, then,
Not yours truly,
In the words of
DH Lawrence,
Both cocksure
And demure.

]]> 3.76 1977 Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories

Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories

author: Anaïs Nin
name: Ian
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at: 2013/04/02
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: miller-nin-jong, frogs, reviews-3-stars, reviews, read-2013
review:
Not Timeless, But Not a Waste of Time

These sixteen stories were written before 1932, when Anais Nin turned 29.

It is not clear how old she was when she wrote the earliest of them, though at least one story is written from the point of view of a 12 year old girl.

Nin considered them to be "immature". All of them were rejected for publication by American magazines at the time of writing, and subsequently she forbade them to be published, until shortly before her death in 1977.

Ultimately, she agreed to their publication, so that young writers could see her progress from juvenilia to maturity.

She did however perceive the flowering of two of her characteristics in these stories: her talent for irony and her feminism.

Ultimately, she asserted that "this is a book for friends only," presumably expecting friends to be more tolerant of their flaws.

I think she was unduely harsh on her work.

All of them deal with interesting subject matter in prose that at worst is competent, at best insightful, if a little conceptual, rather than grounded.

None of them is overtly erotic, although they do all relate to a strong girl or woman who seeks a different world, removed from the "ordinary life" chosen by her school friends and peers.

She was clearly enormously intelligent and attractive to more creative or intellectual men, some of whom lacked her strength of character and would have been totally vulnerable to manipulation, if that was what she desired.

However, I think she would have preferred someone who was at least her equal.

In these cases, she would have been irresistibly seductive.

However, we will have to wait to read her diaries and later books in order to obtain a greater insight into her modus operandi.

Not Entirely Yours
[After Anais Nin]

“You obsess me.��
No, you just want
To possess me.
“I want to love you.��
You cannot bear
Any thought of
Me above you.
“I long to touch you,
But I fear that
I would lose you.��
You might touch me,
But you wouldn’t
Ever hold me.
“I don’t want mere
Half measures.
It’s everything
Or nothing.��
And so upon
Some reflection,
You choose nothing.
I remain, then,
Not yours truly,
In the words of
DH Lawrence,
Both cocksure
And demure.

]]> Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow 27792596 890 Suzanne Falkiner 1742586600 Ian 0 4.33 2016

author: Suzanne Falkiner
name: Ian
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, lit-krit, stow
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Inventions of A Present: The Novel in its Crisis of Globalization]]> 195830907
A novel is an act, an intervention, which, most often, the naïve reader takes as a representation. The novel intervenes to modify or correct our conventional notions of a situation, and, in the best and most intense cases, to propose a wholly new idea of what constitutes an event or of the very experience of living.

The most interesting contemporary novels are those which try �� and sometimes succeed �� in awakening our sense of a collectivity behind individual experience; opening up a relationship between the isolated subjectivity and class or community. But even if this happens (rarely!), one must go on to find traces of collective praxis hidden away within the mere awakening of a feeling of multitude.

And, since it is in the sense of the nation and nationality that collectivity is most often expressed, it is urgent to disengage the possibilities of genuine action within these nationalisms.

This sweeping collection of essays ranges from the elusive politicality of North American literature to the sometimes frozen narrative experiences of the eastern countries and the old Soviet Union; from East Germany to Japan, Latin America and the Nordic countries. Like any such voyage, it is an arbitrary movement across the world of historical situations which, however, seeks to dramatize their common kinship in late capitalism itself.]]> 272 Fredric Jameson 1804292400 Ian 0 3.80 Inventions of A Present: The Novel in its Crisis of Globalization

Inventions of A Present: The Novel in its Crisis of Globalization

author: Fredric Jameson
name: Ian
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, jameson, lit-krit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism]]> 201274431 ��
After generations in the shadows, socialism is making headlines in the United States, following the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns and the election of several democratic socialists to Congress. Today’s leftists hail from a long lineage of anti-capitalist activists in the United States, yet the true legacy and lessons of their most radical and controversial forebears, the American Communists, remain little understood.��
��
In Reds , historian Maurice Isserman focuses on the deeply contradictory nature of the history of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), a movement that attracted egalitarian idealists and bred authoritarian zealots. Founded in 1919, the CPUSA fought for a just society in members organized powerful industrial unions, protested racism, and moved the nation left. At the same time, Communists maintained unwavering faith in the USSR’s claims to be a democratic workers�� state and came to be regarded as agents of a hostile foreign power. Following Nikita Khrushchev’s revelation of Joseph Stalin’s crimes, however, doubt in Soviet leadership erupted within the CPUSA, leading to the organization’s decline into political irrelevance.��

This is the balanced and definitive account of an essential chapter in the history of radical politics in the United States.��]]> 384 Maurice Isserman 1541620038 Ian 0 3.85 2024 Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism

author: Maurice Isserman
name: Ian
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art
review:

]]> Winter of Artifice 46066
* Stella

* Winter of Artifice

and

* The Voice

"A handful of perfectly fold fables, and prose which is so daringly elaborate, so accurately timed...using words as magnificently colorful, evocative and imagist as any plastic combination on canvas but as mysteriously idiosyncratic as any abstract." - Times Literary Supplement]]> 175 Anaïs Nin 080400322X Ian 0 to-read, miller-nin-jong 3.84 1948 Winter of Artifice

author: Anaïs Nin
name: Ian
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read, miller-nin-jong
review:

]]> Body Count 2010920 125 Francie Schwartz 087932029X Ian 0 3.00

author: Francie Schwartz
name: Ian
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, muse-ik
review:

]]> Peril 59346262
But as No. 1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis. Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the centre of the turmoil, resulting in over 6,000 pages of transcripts - and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink.

This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with vivid eyewitness accounts of what really happened. Peril is supplemented throughout with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making for an unparalleled history.

It is also the first inside look at Biden's presidency as he faces the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering dark shadow of the former president.

'We have much to do in this winter of peril,' Biden declared at his inauguration, an event marked by a nerve-wracking security alert and the threat of domestic terrorism.

Peril is the extraordinary story of the end of one presidency and the beginning of another, and represents the culmination of Bob Woodward's news-making trilogy on the Trump presidency, along with Fear and Rage. And it is the beginning of a collaboration with fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa that will remind readers of Woodward's coverage, with Carl Bernstein, of President Richard M. Nixon's final days.]]> 483 Bob Woodward 1398512141 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

Rogue vs Redeemer, Problem vs Problem Solver

It's not fair to this book or its authors that I delayed reading it (like its prequels), until its sequel (in this case, "War") was published (in the last few days).

The reason is that much of its thunder has already been stolen by newspaper and television coverage, both of the underlying events, and Woodward and Costa's account of the events.

Woodward and Costa's account of the facts is lucid and highly readable. Each chapter is six pages long, on average. The book is condensed from "hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 firsthand participants and witnesses to these events." It's focused on facts and opinion, rather than critical or legal analysis. You can read it in two or three days.

In contrast to "Rage", Trump declined to be interviewed for the book, as did Biden.

However, Woodward and Costa still managed to have an ostensibly reliable source in each meeting or event described in the book.

description

Bill Barr

Barr and Milley

The Trump chapters largely relate to the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, and his response to Biden's electoral victory and inauguration.

The main sources with respect to the period around the insurrection are Attorney General Bill Barr and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had (and still has) an unfavourable opinion of Trump and his suitability for presidential office:

"Milley had witnessed up close how Trump was routinely impulsive and unpredictable. Making matters even more dire , Milley was certain Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies."

Mark Milley

Peril and Possibility

The title of the book derives from a sentence in Biden's inaugural address:

"We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility."

Biden's address lists a number of perils, the last of which is "a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat."

On the last page of the epilogue, Woodward and Costa ask:

"Could Trump work his will again? Were there any limits to what he and his supporters might do to put him back in power?"

Their conclusion:

"Peril remains."

21 days out from the 2024 election, their conclusion remains true.]]> 3.96 2021 Peril

author: Bob Woodward
name: Ian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: cul-poli-phil-art, woodward, trump-gop, read-2024, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

Rogue vs Redeemer, Problem vs Problem Solver

It's not fair to this book or its authors that I delayed reading it (like its prequels), until its sequel (in this case, "War") was published (in the last few days).

The reason is that much of its thunder has already been stolen by newspaper and television coverage, both of the underlying events, and Woodward and Costa's account of the events.

Woodward and Costa's account of the facts is lucid and highly readable. Each chapter is six pages long, on average. The book is condensed from "hundreds of hours of interviews with more than 200 firsthand participants and witnesses to these events." It's focused on facts and opinion, rather than critical or legal analysis. You can read it in two or three days.

In contrast to "Rage", Trump declined to be interviewed for the book, as did Biden.

However, Woodward and Costa still managed to have an ostensibly reliable source in each meeting or event described in the book.

description

"Milley had witnessed up close how Trump was routinely impulsive and unpredictable. Making matters even more dire , Milley was certain Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies."

Mark Milley

Peril and Possibility

The title of the book derives from a sentence in Biden's inaugural address:

"We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility."

"Could Trump work his will again? Were there any limits to what he and his supporters might do to put him back in power?"

Their conclusion:

"Peril remains."

21 days out from the 2024 election, their conclusion remains true.
]]> <![CDATA[H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life]]> 58374 247 Michel Houellebecq 1932416188 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt 3.96 1991

author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Ian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Encyclopedia of Rock 1-2: 1. The Age of Rock'n'Roll 2. From Liverpool to San Francisco]]> 161818825 255 Phil Hardy Ian 0 to-read, muse-ik 0.0

The Encyclopedia of Rock 1-2: 1. The Age of Rock'n'Roll 2. From Liverpool to San Francisco

author: Phil Hardy
name: Ian
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, muse-ik
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Encyclopedia Of Rock Volume 3 Sounds Of The 70's]]> 20813165 320 Phil Hardy & Dave Laing Ian 0 5.00 1976

The Encyclopedia Of Rock Volume 3 Sounds Of The 70's

author: Phil Hardy & Dave Laing
name: Ian
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, muse-ik
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Encyclopedia of Rock Volume 2 From Liverpool to San Francisco]]> 20813162 384 Phil Hardy & Dave Laing Ian 0 to-read, muse-ik 4.50 1976

The Encyclopedia of Rock Volume 2 From Liverpool to San Francisco

author: Phil Hardy & Dave Laing
name: Ian
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, muse-ik
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Encyclopedia of Rock Volume the Sounds of the Seve]]> 2297742 384 phil-hardy-and-dave-laing 0586042695 Ian 0 4.50

Encyclopedia of Rock Volume the Sounds of the Seve

author: phil-hardy-and-dave-laing
name: Ian
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, muse-ik
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Liverpool to San Francisco (The Encyclopedia of rock)]]> 3477293 384 Phil Hardy~Dave Laing 0586042687 Ian 0 to-read, muse-ik 4.50 1988

From Liverpool to San Francisco (The Encyclopedia of rock)

author: Phil Hardy~Dave Laing
name: Ian
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read, muse-ik
review:

]]> War 217163846 Runtime: 11 hours and 54 minutes

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency.

War is an intimate and sweeping account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history.

We see President Joe Biden and his top advisers in tense conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. We also see Donald Trump, conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power.

With unrivaled, inside-the-room reporting, Woodward shows President Biden’s approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant land war in Europe since World War II, and his tortured path to contain the bloody Middle East conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.

Woodward reveals the extraordinary complexity and consequence of wartime back-channel diplomacy and decision-making to deter the use of nuclear weapons and a rapid slide into World War III.

The raw cage-fight of politics accelerates as Americans prepare to vote in 2024, starting between President Biden and Trump, and ending with the unexpected elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.

War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.

Woodward’s reporting once again sets the standard for journalism at its most authoritative and illuminating.]]> 12 Bob Woodward 1797189743 Ian 0 4.32 2024 War

author: Bob Woodward
name: Ian
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, trump-gop, woodward
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass]]> 244267 The Street of Crocodiles in the Polish city of Drogobych is a street of memories and dreams where recollections of Bruno Schulz's uncommon boyhood and of the eerie side of his merchant family's life are evoked in a startling blend of the real and the fantastic. Most memorable - and most chilling - is the portrait of the author's father, a maddened shopkeeper who imports rare birds' eggs to hatch in his attic, who believes tailors' dummies should be treated like people, and whose obsessive fear of cockroaches causes him to resemble one.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass is the second and final work of Bruno Schulz, the acclaimed Polish writer killed by the Nazis during World War II. In the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, "What he did in his short life was enough to make him one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived." Weaving myth, fantasy, and reality, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, is, to quote Schulz, "an attempt at eliciting the history of a certain family...by a search for the mythical sense, the essential core of that history.]]> 324 Bruno Schulz 0802710913 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, bruno 4.41 2005 The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz: The Street of Crocodiles, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass

author: Bruno Schulz
name: Ian
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, bruno
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights]]> 198509121
In The Court v. The Voters, law professor Joshua Douglas takes us behind the scenes of significant cases in voting rights—some surprising and unknown, some familiar—to investigate the historic crossroads that have irrevocably changed our elections and the nation. In crisp and accessible prose, Douglas tells the story of each case, sheds light on the intractable election problems we face as a result, and highlights the unique role the highest court has played in producing a broken electoral system.

Douglas charts infamous cases

The Court v. The Voters powerfully reminds us of the tangible, real-world effects from the Court’s voting rights decisions. While we can—and should—lament the democracy that might have been, Douglas argues that we can—and should—double down in our efforts to protect the right to vote.]]> 240 Joshua A. Douglas 0807010936 Ian 0 4.50 The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights

The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights

author: Joshua A. Douglas
name: Ian
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, trump-gop
review:

]]> <![CDATA[1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left]]> 201753805 224 Robyn Hitchcock Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

For the Obsession of Groovers

I've been obsessed by Robyn Hitchcock since some time in the 1980's.

He has a fantastic taste in music, he writes and plays brilliant songs, and his banter during live performances is hilarious.

When he announced that he was writing a memoir about his life in 1967, it was a certainty that I would want to buy, read and review it.

What was less certain was whether I would like the memoir.

For an obsessive fan, I have to say that the book is at best middling, so I've rated it 3 1/2 stars, which I've rounded up to four stars.

My rating isn't so much a product of the book itself, more a product of my disappointed expectations.

A Year in the Life

I was really excited when I became aware that the book was constructed around songs that came out in 1967. I was even more excited when I started to encounter playlists of these songs on YouTube. Then I bought a copy of his album of covers called "1967: Vacations in the Past" (see the soundtrack below).

For some reason, I thought that the memoir was going to explain the influence these songs had had on Hitchcock's life and his music.

Instead, the songs act more like signposts on a year in his life at a private school called Winchester College, when he was 13 or 14 years old. They mark his journey through the year, rather than giving readers any special insight into the journey, let alone the songs themselves.

I had a similar experience when I first read David Mitchell's fourth novel, "Black Swan Green". Both books suffered from their adolescent immaturity, even if Hitchcock's memoir betrays a highly developed sense of humour.

Under the Floorboards

In the same way, the book doesn't live up to its subtitle: it doesn't really show us how Hitchcock got to 1967, nor does it spend much time elaborating on why he never left.

Hitchcock got to 1967 because he was born on March 3, 1953, and lived to experience 1967 while he was at school (i.e., he didn't live the year retrospectively). He listened to the music of 1967 on the radio and on gramophones that were at school and home at the time.

A five page epilogue comes closest to explaining why he never left 1967.

His passion for Bob Dylan never diminished, despite his disappointment with "John Wesley Harding" (Dylan's first album after "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde"):

"'JWH' didn't spend half the time on the record player that 'Highway 61' or 'Blonde on Blonde' did, and still do."

Likewise, I didn't buy an album after "BOB", until 1975, when Dylan released "Blood on the Tracks".

description

The front cover of "Blonde on Blonde"

Vacations in the Past

Although "JWH" was released in 1967, Hitchcock says it "signalled the Great Retreat:"

"The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, even acts such as the Doors jettisoned psychedelia and made their way back to rock 'n' roll..."

Hitchcock and his school mates had gazed into an alternative world of psychedelia and surrealism, they had liked what they had seen, they bonded over it, and they wanted to remain there, if not necessarily at Winchester College.

At the same time, they were "now part of a vast market that the record companies, the musicians, and the lifestyle sellers could exploit - and we loved it."

Paradoxically, Hitchcock doesn't overtly criticise the commercialism of post-1967 music, except to describe it as "increasingly mediocre music".

For him, more recent music just couldn't compete with the music of 1967:

"Music budded and came to fruition then in a way that - to my ears - has never been surpassed."

He wonders if later generations of fans "feel as intense about the music made now as we did about its hippie ancestors." I guess that's for you to say.

"[I] found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream."
(The Beatles, 'A Day in the Life')

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 4.10 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left

author: Robyn Hitchcock
name: Ian
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: cul-poli-phil-art, muse-ik, robyn, read-2024, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

For the Obsession of Groovers

I've been obsessed by Robyn Hitchcock since some time in the 1980's.

He has a fantastic taste in music, he writes and plays brilliant songs, and his banter during live performances is hilarious.

When he announced that he was writing a memoir about his life in 1967, it was a certainty that I would want to buy, read and review it.

What was less certain was whether I would like the memoir.

For an obsessive fan, I have to say that the book is at best middling, so I've rated it 3 1/2 stars, which I've rounded up to four stars.

My rating isn't so much a product of the book itself, more a product of my disappointed expectations.

A Year in the Life

I was really excited when I became aware that the book was constructed around songs that came out in 1967. I was even more excited when I started to encounter playlists of these songs on YouTube. Then I bought a copy of his album of covers called "1967: Vacations in the Past" (see the soundtrack below).

For some reason, I thought that the memoir was going to explain the influence these songs had had on Hitchcock's life and his music.

Instead, the songs act more like signposts on a year in his life at a private school called Winchester College, when he was 13 or 14 years old. They mark his journey through the year, rather than giving readers any special insight into the journey, let alone the songs themselves.

I had a similar experience when I first read David Mitchell's fourth novel, "Black Swan Green". Both books suffered from their adolescent immaturity, even if Hitchcock's memoir betrays a highly developed sense of humour.

Under the Floorboards

In the same way, the book doesn't live up to its subtitle: it doesn't really show us how Hitchcock got to 1967, nor does it spend much time elaborating on why he never left.

Hitchcock got to 1967 because he was born on March 3, 1953, and lived to experience 1967 while he was at school (i.e., he didn't live the year retrospectively). He listened to the music of 1967 on the radio and on gramophones that were at school and home at the time.

A five page epilogue comes closest to explaining why he never left 1967.

His passion for Bob Dylan never diminished, despite his disappointment with "John Wesley Harding" (Dylan's first album after "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde"):

"'JWH' didn't spend half the time on the record player that 'Highway 61' or 'Blonde on Blonde' did, and still do."

Likewise, I didn't buy an album after "BOB", until 1975, when Dylan released "Blood on the Tracks".

description

The front cover of "Blonde on Blonde"

Vacations in the Past

Although "JWH" was released in 1967, Hitchcock says it "signalled the Great Retreat:"

"The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, even acts such as the Doors jettisoned psychedelia and made their way back to rock 'n' roll..."

"Music budded and came to fruition then in a way that - to my ears - has never been surpassed."

He wonders if later generations of fans "feel as intense about the music made now as we did about its hippie ancestors." I guess that's for you to say.

"[I] found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream."
(The Beatles, 'A Day in the Life')

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> Venus 13 4611920 160 Raymond Hitchcock 0722145950 Ian 3 No Kinks in This Fantasy

I’m a bit lost for words to describe this novel.

But first, a confession. I only bought the book for sentimental, musical reasons.

An earlier novel of Raymond Hitchcock’s was the basis of the early 70’s film, “P��, the soundtrack of which featured the Kinks, one of my favourite bands from that period.

More importantly, the author was the father of one of my favourite musicians, Robyn (with a ′��) Hitchcock, whose current band is called the “Venus 3��, which might or might not have been a modification of the name of this novel.

Nature Finds Its Way Back

Raymond dedicated the novel to his son (a mere teenager at the time) by quoting Horace in both Latin and English:

“If you drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will soon find a way back.��

Light-Hearted Sexual Farce

The cover blurb describes the novel as “a delightful space tale designed both to caution and to amuse��. Wikipedia speaks of Raymond’s reputation for “light-hearted sexual farces��.

The novel involves a eugenically selected couple who are engaged to be the first to conceive a child on a space flight. As you can probably imagine, nature soon finds a way back into the process, by way of the temptations of a Scandinavian beauty called Diamond and a Soviet nurse/spy (Natasha).

It is little more than a light-hearted sexual farce of the type that might have appeared in Playboy in the 70’s.

Underground Son

I suppose I’d expected father to betray more of the traits of his underground son. However, ultimately, I felt he was just too mainstream in his preoccupations and delivery. The writing is competent, but uninspiring. Hitchcock doesn't deliver the hilarity promised by the blurb. What a pity!

This might be reflected in the relatively low number of reviews on GR. Some would even call it a "buried book" (a concept which I think is specious). However, what it proves is that not every book that's found buried has been buried by someone (the novel was published by a major U.K. publisher). Besides, sometimes, what is buried isn't necessarily a treasure. It might just be mediocre or unloved or past its use-by date.

SOUNDTRACK:

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 - “Underground Sun��

]]> 3.00 1972 Venus 13

author: Raymond Hitchcock
name: Ian
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2018/04/18
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: muse-ik, read-2018, reviews, reviews-3-stars, robyn
review:
No Kinks in This Fantasy

I’m a bit lost for words to describe this novel.

But first, a confession. I only bought the book for sentimental, musical reasons.

An earlier novel of Raymond Hitchcock’s was the basis of the early 70’s film, “P��, the soundtrack of which featured the Kinks, one of my favourite bands from that period.

More importantly, the author was the father of one of my favourite musicians, Robyn (with a ′��) Hitchcock, whose current band is called the “Venus 3��, which might or might not have been a modification of the name of this novel.

Nature Finds Its Way Back

Raymond dedicated the novel to his son (a mere teenager at the time) by quoting Horace in both Latin and English:

“If you drive nature out with a pitchfork, she will soon find a way back.��

Light-Hearted Sexual Farce

The cover blurb describes the novel as “a delightful space tale designed both to caution and to amuse��. Wikipedia speaks of Raymond’s reputation for “light-hearted sexual farces��.

The novel involves a eugenically selected couple who are engaged to be the first to conceive a child on a space flight. As you can probably imagine, nature soon finds a way back into the process, by way of the temptations of a Scandinavian beauty called Diamond and a Soviet nurse/spy (Natasha).

It is little more than a light-hearted sexual farce of the type that might have appeared in Playboy in the 70’s.

Underground Son

I suppose I’d expected father to betray more of the traits of his underground son. However, ultimately, I felt he was just too mainstream in his preoccupations and delivery. The writing is competent, but uninspiring. Hitchcock doesn't deliver the hilarity promised by the blurb. What a pity!

This might be reflected in the relatively low number of reviews on GR. Some would even call it a "buried book" (a concept which I think is specious). However, what it proves is that not every book that's found buried has been buried by someone (the novel was published by a major U.K. publisher). Besides, sometimes, what is buried isn't necessarily a treasure. It might just be mediocre or unloved or past its use-by date.

SOUNDTRACK:

Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 - “Underground Sun��

]]> <![CDATA[Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance �� award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film �� Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future �� and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team �� well trained but eccentric �� has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch�� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 Ian 0 3.61 2024 Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)

author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Ian
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, vandermeer
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)]]> 18077752
Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X—what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to understanding Area X—and who may have been corrupted by it?

In this last installment of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, the mysteries of Area X may be solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound—or terrifying.]]> 341 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104115 Ian 0 3.66 2014 Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)

author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Ian
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, vandermeer
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Authority (Southern Reach, #2)]]> 18077769 The bone-chilling, hair-raising second installment of the Southern Reach Trilogy

After thirty years, the only human engagement with Area X—a seemingly malevolent landscape surrounded by an invisible border and mysteriously wiped clean of all signs of civilization—has been a series of expeditions overseen by a government agency so secret it has almost been forgotten: the Southern Reach. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.

John Rodríguez (aka "Control") is the Southern Reach's newly appointed head. Working with a distrustful but desperate team, a series of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, Control begins to penetrate the secrets of Area X. But with each discovery he must confront disturbing truths about himself and the agency he's pledged to serve.

In Authority, the second volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Area X's most disturbing questions are answered . . . but the answers are far from reassuring.]]> 341 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104107 Ian 0 3.54 2014 Authority (Southern Reach, #2)

author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Ian
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, vandermeer
review:

]]> On Anarchism 25335127 On Anarchism is an essential introduction to the Noam Chomsky's political theory.

On Anarchism sheds a much needed light on the foundations of Chomsky's thought, specifically his constant questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. The book gathers his essays and interviews to provide a short, accessible introduction to his distinctively optimistic brand of anarchism. Refuting the notion of anarchism as a fixed idea, and disputing the traditional fault lines between anarchism and socialism, this is a book sure to challenge, provoke and inspire. Profoundly relevant to our times, it is a touchstone for political activists and anyone interested in deepening their understanding of anarchism, or of Chomsky's thought.

'Arguably the most important intellectual alive' New York Times

Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous bestselling and influential political books, including Hegemony or Survival, Failed States, Interventions, What We Say Goes, Hopes and Prospects, Gaza in Crisis, Making the Future and Occupy.

Nathan Schneider is the author of Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse and God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet.]]> 208 Noam Chomsky Ian 0 3.61 2005 On Anarchism

author: Noam Chomsky
name: Ian
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: a-wish-liszt, to-read, anarcho-syndical-ism, chompski
review:

]]> Notes on Anarchism 6092675 20 Noam Chomsky Ian 3 Preface

Chomsky's essay is a revised version of the introduction to Daniel Guérin's Anarchism ("Anarchism: From Theory to Practice").

However, it quotes liberally from Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice, which I read and reviewed immediately before deciding to read some Chomsky:

/review/show...

By its nature, the essay is secondary to the work it prefaced. It doesn’t purport to contain much original analysis, and therefore I didn’t find it particularly useful in trying to define and understand Chomsky’s own ideas.

It did, however, help me to contextualize some of the responses I had in reading Rocker’s book.

Anarchism as a Form of Socialism

I was surprised to learn from Rocker that Anarchism, at least the version known as "Anarcho-Syndicalism", is a form of Socialism, to which Chomsky adds Marxism.

My preconceptions were based on readings of Marx and Lenin, who had attacked Anarchists as counter-productive to their revolutionary goals.

However, Chomsky confirms that Anarcho-Syndicalism is a "left-wing critique of Bolshevism", which effectively argues that Bolshevism didn’t pursue genuine Socialist goals enough :

"The anti-Bolshevik, left-wing labor movement opposed the Leninists because they did not go far enough in exploiting the Russian upheavals for strictly proletarian ends.

"They became prisoners of their environment and used the international radical movement to satisfy specifically Russian needs, which soon became synonymous with the needs of the Bolshevik Party-State.

"The 'bourgeois' aspects of the Russian Revolution were now discovered in Bolshevism itself: Leninism was adjudged a part of international social-democracy, differing from the latter only on tactical issues."

What Lenin failed to do was to abolish the State.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Anarchists like Bakunin opposed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the "red bureaucracy".

Authority is the enemy of freedom. In the context of Russia, it didn’t matter whether bureaucratic authority was red or white.

Fernand Pelloutier asks:

"Must even the transitory state to which we have to submit necessarily and fatally be a collectivist jail?

"Can't it consist in a free organization limited exclusively by the needs of production and consumption, all political institutions having disappeared?"

Chomsky confirms that ��

"The question of conquest or destruction of state power is what Bakunin regarded as the primary issue dividing him from Marx.

"In one form or another, the problem has arisen repeatedly in the century since, dividing 'libertarian' from 'authoritarian' socialists."

Anarcho-Marxism

Chomsky seems to be protective of the intellectual legacy of Marxism itself.

Marxism as the principal manifestation of Socialism can be either "Libertarian" or "Authoritarian".

Bolshevism in practice was a form of Authoritarian Socialism.

Chomsky denies that it was true to the form of Marxism he advocates.

He states that it is "perverse to regard Bolshevism as 'Marxism in practice' ", even though only paragraphs beforehand he quotes Engels disagreeing with Bakunin’s criticism of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat:

"The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state....

"But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune."

Marx, Engels and Lenin all believed that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was necessary to protect the gains achieved by a Revolution.

However, Bakunin correctly predicted that a Stalin would come along and be reluctant to let go of the reins of power.

Alienation of Labor

Chomsky quotes Humboldt’s "Limits of State Action" and compares it to Marx:

"Humboldt's vision of a society in which social fetters are replaced by social bonds and labor is freely undertaken suggests the early Marx, with his discussion of the ‘alienation of labor when work is external to the worker...not part of his nature...[so that] he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself...[and is] physically exhausted and mentally debased,�� alienated labor that ‘casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines,�� thus depriving man of his ‘species character�� of ‘free conscious activity�� and ‘productive life.��

"Similarly, Marx conceives of ‘a new type of human being who needs his fellow men....

"[The workers' association becomes] the real constructive effort to create the social texture of future human relations.�� "

Free Associations

This Marxist analysis remains at the foundation of Anarcho-Syndicalism.

Private ownership of the means of production must be ended in favour of some form of public ownership other than by the State or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Chomsky’s analysis paints a more complete picture of what the alternative might be than I have previously read.

He quotes Rocker:

"What we put in place of the government is industrial organization."

And Diego Abad de Santillan:

"Our federal council of economy is not a political power but an economic and administrative regulating power.

"It receives its orientation from below and operates in accordance with the resolutions of the regional and national assemblies. It is a liaison corps and nothing else...

"...in facing the problem of social transformation, the Revolution cannot consider the state as a medium, but must depend on the organization of producers.

"Either the Revolution gives social wealth to the producers in which case the producers organize themselves for due collective distribution and the State has nothing to do; or the Revolution does not give social wealth to the producers, in which case the Revolution has been a lie and the State would continue."

True Democracy

Chomsky argues that "radical Marxism merges with anarchist currents".

When he attempts to define "Revolutionary Socialism", he quotes the left-wing Marxist Anton Pannekoek:

"Socialism will be fundamentally an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character.

"Thus those carrying on the social activities and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central councils of social administration.

"In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community.

"When the central administrative industrial committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of Socialism.

"The transition from the one social system to the other will be the social revolution.

"The political State throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; the Republic of Socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community.

"The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many; the latter will mean the economic freedom of all - it will be, therefore, a true democracy."

Form and Substance

Earlier, Chomsky mentions that "many commentators dismiss Anarchism as utopian, formless, primitive, or otherwise incompatible with the realities of a complex society."

Whether or not this is true (and obviously Chomsky disagrees), his analysis in this essay contributes some form to the discussion.

A picture emerges of what might substitute for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat after a successful Revolution.

I question whether we will ever live to see this vision realised.

First, it requires a Revolution and the abolition of Private Property (at least with regard to the means of production).

Then it needs to be able to withstand the inevitable Counter-Revolution by those who want their Property back, without the aid of the State or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

SOUNDTRACK:

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" [Live at the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert]

Beautiful, just beautiful. Every time she says "like a whisper", I get a thrill up my spine.

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" [Live at an Amnesty International concert in 1988]

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" [Live on Later With Jools Holland show in 2002]

"Don't you know you better run, run, run..."

Tracy Chapman - "Fast Car"

"You've got a fast car,
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we can make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero
We've got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something."]]> 3.86 2005 Notes on Anarchism

author: Noam Chomsky
name: Ian
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2013/12/17
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: anarcho-syndical-ism, cul-poli-phil-art, chompski, read-2013, reviews, reviews-3-stars
review:
Preface

Chomsky's essay is a revised version of the introduction to Daniel Guérin's Anarchism ("Anarchism: From Theory to Practice").

However, it quotes liberally from Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice, which I read and reviewed immediately before deciding to read some Chomsky:

/review/show...

By its nature, the essay is secondary to the work it prefaced. It doesn’t purport to contain much original analysis, and therefore I didn’t find it particularly useful in trying to define and understand Chomsky’s own ideas.

It did, however, help me to contextualize some of the responses I had in reading Rocker’s book.

Anarchism as a Form of Socialism

I was surprised to learn from Rocker that Anarchism, at least the version known as "Anarcho-Syndicalism", is a form of Socialism, to which Chomsky adds Marxism.

My preconceptions were based on readings of Marx and Lenin, who had attacked Anarchists as counter-productive to their revolutionary goals.

However, Chomsky confirms that Anarcho-Syndicalism is a "left-wing critique of Bolshevism", which effectively argues that Bolshevism didn’t pursue genuine Socialist goals enough :

"The anti-Bolshevik, left-wing labor movement opposed the Leninists because they did not go far enough in exploiting the Russian upheavals for strictly proletarian ends.

"They became prisoners of their environment and used the international radical movement to satisfy specifically Russian needs, which soon became synonymous with the needs of the Bolshevik Party-State.

"The 'bourgeois' aspects of the Russian Revolution were now discovered in Bolshevism itself: Leninism was adjudged a part of international social-democracy, differing from the latter only on tactical issues."

What Lenin failed to do was to abolish the State.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Anarchists like Bakunin opposed the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the "red bureaucracy".

Authority is the enemy of freedom. In the context of Russia, it didn’t matter whether bureaucratic authority was red or white.

Fernand Pelloutier asks:

"Must even the transitory state to which we have to submit necessarily and fatally be a collectivist jail?

"Can't it consist in a free organization limited exclusively by the needs of production and consumption, all political institutions having disappeared?"

Chomsky confirms that ��

"The question of conquest or destruction of state power is what Bakunin regarded as the primary issue dividing him from Marx.

"In one form or another, the problem has arisen repeatedly in the century since, dividing 'libertarian' from 'authoritarian' socialists."

Anarcho-Marxism

Chomsky seems to be protective of the intellectual legacy of Marxism itself.

Marxism as the principal manifestation of Socialism can be either "Libertarian" or "Authoritarian".

Bolshevism in practice was a form of Authoritarian Socialism.

Chomsky denies that it was true to the form of Marxism he advocates.

He states that it is "perverse to regard Bolshevism as 'Marxism in practice' ", even though only paragraphs beforehand he quotes Engels disagreeing with Bakunin’s criticism of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat:

"The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state....

"But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune."

Marx, Engels and Lenin all believed that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was necessary to protect the gains achieved by a Revolution.

However, Bakunin correctly predicted that a Stalin would come along and be reluctant to let go of the reins of power.

Alienation of Labor

Chomsky quotes Humboldt’s "Limits of State Action" and compares it to Marx:

"Humboldt's vision of a society in which social fetters are replaced by social bonds and labor is freely undertaken suggests the early Marx, with his discussion of the ‘alienation of labor when work is external to the worker...not part of his nature...[so that] he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself...[and is] physically exhausted and mentally debased,�� alienated labor that ‘casts some of the workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into machines,�� thus depriving man of his ‘species character�� of ‘free conscious activity�� and ‘productive life.��

"Similarly, Marx conceives of ‘a new type of human being who needs his fellow men....

"[The workers' association becomes] the real constructive effort to create the social texture of future human relations.�� "

Free Associations

This Marxist analysis remains at the foundation of Anarcho-Syndicalism.

Private ownership of the means of production must be ended in favour of some form of public ownership other than by the State or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Chomsky’s analysis paints a more complete picture of what the alternative might be than I have previously read.

He quotes Rocker:

"What we put in place of the government is industrial organization."

And Diego Abad de Santillan:

"Our federal council of economy is not a political power but an economic and administrative regulating power.

"It receives its orientation from below and operates in accordance with the resolutions of the regional and national assemblies. It is a liaison corps and nothing else...

"...in facing the problem of social transformation, the Revolution cannot consider the state as a medium, but must depend on the organization of producers.

"Either the Revolution gives social wealth to the producers in which case the producers organize themselves for due collective distribution and the State has nothing to do; or the Revolution does not give social wealth to the producers, in which case the Revolution has been a lie and the State would continue."

True Democracy

Chomsky argues that "radical Marxism merges with anarchist currents".

When he attempts to define "Revolutionary Socialism", he quotes the left-wing Marxist Anton Pannekoek:

"Socialism will be fundamentally an industrial system; its constituencies will be of an industrial character.

"Thus those carrying on the social activities and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and central councils of social administration.

"In this way the powers of such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and conversant with the needs of the community.

"When the central administrative industrial committee meets it will represent every phase of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of Socialism.

"The transition from the one social system to the other will be the social revolution.

"The political State throughout history has meant the government of men by ruling classes; the Republic of Socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf of the whole community.

"The former meant the economic and political subjection of the many; the latter will mean the economic freedom of all - it will be, therefore, a true democracy."

Form and Substance

Earlier, Chomsky mentions that "many commentators dismiss Anarchism as utopian, formless, primitive, or otherwise incompatible with the realities of a complex society."

Whether or not this is true (and obviously Chomsky disagrees), his analysis in this essay contributes some form to the discussion.

A picture emerges of what might substitute for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat after a successful Revolution.

I question whether we will ever live to see this vision realised.

First, it requires a Revolution and the abolition of Private Property (at least with regard to the means of production).

Then it needs to be able to withstand the inevitable Counter-Revolution by those who want their Property back, without the aid of the State or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

SOUNDTRACK:

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" [Live at the 1988 Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute Concert]

Beautiful, just beautiful. Every time she says "like a whisper", I get a thrill up my spine.

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" [Live at an Amnesty International concert in 1988]

Tracy Chapman - "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution" [Live on Later With Jools Holland show in 2002]

"Don't you know you better run, run, run..."

Tracy Chapman - "Fast Car"

"You've got a fast car,
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we can make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero
We've got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something."
]]> Baumgartner 202054616 A taut yet expansive novel of love, memory, and grief from Paul Auster, best-selling, award-winning author and “one of the great American prose stylists of our time" (New York Times)

Paul Auster’s brilliant eighteenth novel opens with a scorched pot of water, which Sy Baumgartner -- phenomenologist, noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor �� has just forgotten on the stove.

Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next forty years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.

Rich with compassion, wit, and Auster’s keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient moments of ordinary life, Baumgartner asks: Why do we remember certain moments, and forget others? In one of his most luminous works and his first novel since the Booker-shortlisted tour-de-force 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster captures several lifetimes.]]> 202 Paul Auster 0571384943 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

The Character of Narratives

"Baumgartner" was the last of Paul Auster's novels to be published before his death on April 30, 2024. It was also the last of his novels that I got to read, although regrettably I didn't get to do so before his passing.

One of the reasons I've enjoyed Auster's fiction so much is that he was always playing with the narrative or the structure of the novel. It's this quality of playfulness that earned him his place in the category of post-modernism, even if he had just as much in common with late modernism.

Unfortunately, this quality of play is largely missing from "Baumgartner". It's much more concerned with the nature of the relationships between the characters. (1)

In this way, it's much more like "Sunset Park", with which its shares several characters, such as Miles (son) and Morris (father) Heller. Morris is Baumgartner's publisher.

Baumgartner is still grieving over the death of his wife, Anna, in a swimming accident. He hasn't just lost a wife and lover, he has lost someone who shares his defining qualities, and his taste in literature, writing and film. He's lost a mirror that defines, reinforces and perpetuates his essence. He's trying to inhabit her (and their) shared past.

In the process of trying to understand this commonality, he encounters Beatrix (Bebe) Coen, a literature student who wishes to write a thesis about Anna's written works.

Structurally, it's interesting that the narrator (Baumgartner) implies that the relationship between Baumgartner and Bebe will develop in the final chapter of the novel, but this chapter doesn't eventuate. Perhaps, this absence constitutes an element of play that is otherwise missing.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) This focus resembles that of John Banville's later novels.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 4.00 2023 Baumgartner

author: Paul Auster
name: Ian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: auster, read-2024, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

The Character of Narratives

"Baumgartner" was the last of Paul Auster's novels to be published before his death on April 30, 2024. It was also the last of his novels that I got to read, although regrettably I didn't get to do so before his passing.

One of the reasons I've enjoyed Auster's fiction so much is that he was always playing with the narrative or the structure of the novel. It's this quality of playfulness that earned him his place in the category of post-modernism, even if he had just as much in common with late modernism.

Unfortunately, this quality of play is largely missing from "Baumgartner". It's much more concerned with the nature of the relationships between the characters. (1)

In this way, it's much more like "Sunset Park", with which its shares several characters, such as Miles (son) and Morris (father) Heller. Morris is Baumgartner's publisher.

Baumgartner is still grieving over the death of his wife, Anna, in a swimming accident. He hasn't just lost a wife and lover, he has lost someone who shares his defining qualities, and his taste in literature, writing and film. He's lost a mirror that defines, reinforces and perpetuates his essence. He's trying to inhabit her (and their) shared past.

In the process of trying to understand this commonality, he encounters Beatrix (Bebe) Coen, a literature student who wishes to write a thesis about Anna's written works.

Structurally, it's interesting that the narrator (Baumgartner) implies that the relationship between Baumgartner and Bebe will develop in the final chapter of the novel, but this chapter doesn't eventuate. Perhaps, this absence constitutes an element of play that is otherwise missing.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) This focus resembles that of John Banville's later novels.

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> A Life of Jung 1332419 522 Ronald Hayman 0393019675 Ian 0 3.98 1999

author: Ronald Hayman
name: Ian
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read, freud-und-jung, cul-poli-phil-art
review:

]]> This Boy's Life: A Memoir 20009790 304 Tobias Wolff Ian 5 CRITIQUE:

A Personal Stamp on a Straight Account

Memoirs don't just create a factual record of the past. They can also capture the stories of the past as we imagined them at the time (assuming that we haven't since forgotten them).

Tobias Wolff explains it better in the introduction to the 30th edition of this book:

"It's true that life doesn't happen to us in stories, that we make stories out of it, and that in making those stories we can't help but put a personal stamp on them, for better or worse."

This personal stamp is something different from what occurs in fiction. In fiction, "you understand that the novelist is revealing an aspect of the narrator's character." If the narrator says something false or causes a character to say something false, the falsity reveals something about the narrator or the character, whereas if a memoirist says the same false thing, they are deceiving the reader and telling a lie, which Wolff believes is forbidden:

"The writer [/memoirist] is charged to keep these things straight."

That said, there is much lying and deception in this memoir of a poor working class family. Tobias (who has changed his first name to Jack) lies to achieve his goals, including escaping punishment at school and gaining entry to a college.

description

Ellin Barkin and Leonardo DiCaprio in the film version of this memoir (Source: Takashi Seida)

This Boy's Adoration of His Mother

As Wolff wrote this memoir, he was overcome by "admiration for my mother's courage, and gratitude for her loyalty; by anger at the cruelty and abuse we both suffered at the hands of a petty, foolish, dangerous man...; and by thankfulness for the profound friendship we had."

He describes his mother as "glamorous", "unconventional", and "footloose to the point of recklessness".

In a way, his mother was like a younger sister who made poor choices with respect to the men she had relationships with and/or married.

You can imagine Tobias/Jack wondering whether she would have been better off, if only she could have taken her son/big brother's advice, or even had a relationship with him instead. Although his mother's husband (Dwight) was his step-father, Tobias' story rarely deviates from the path of a classic Oedipus Complex.

description

Oedipus and Jocasta

The Purpose of This Boy's Memoir

One of Wolff's purposes in writing his memoir was to correct his children's perception of their grandmother as "quite proper and just a little prim". They needed to know what an adventuress she had been.

Equally importantly, what he hoped to achieve was:

* "an informal history for my family"; and

* "a bank of memories for me to draw on for my fiction."

No doubt he achieved these purposes, but from a reader's perspective he also created a memoir that is as lyrical and precise as the best fiction of his contemporaries.

FAKE GRADES (AN HOMAGE):

I studied at a university outside the state in which my family lived. I was the first person from my secondary school to go there. Nobody followed me until six years later, so our paths didn't cross either at school or university. However, the university compared our applications and our academic records, in an effort to determine whether there was anything untoward in how we got there.

Because we had gone to the same school, somebody in the Admissions Office thought to examine the signature of the Principal on our academic records. Although the Principal was the same person, it was immediately realised that the two signatures were different. Just as quickly, the second student fell under suspicion of fraud.

Before contacting the other student, the university sent copies of our academic records to the school, hoping to determine which was genuine.

After examining its records, the school replied to the university that the first academic record wasn't genuine. This was, in fact, correct, because I had indeed forged the Principal's signature on my fake academic record, which inflated my grades, in order to gain admission.

Unbeknown to me at the time, the university declined to take any action against either me or the other student from my school. In fact, nobody actually believed that the signature on my academic record was false. I had had an exemplary academic record at university post-admission, and the administrative staff couldn't believe that I hadn't earned my place there. Besides, what could they do about it? Retroactively cancel my admission? Nullify my university grades? Pretend I'd never studied there?

I only know this now, because a fellow student of mine at university ended up working there, and was one of the staff who examined the signatures. When he told me what had happened over a cup of coffee, I perpetuated the falsehood. I didn't have the courage to tell the truth, even to a former friend.]]> 5.00 1989 This Boy's Life: A Memoir

author: Tobias Wolff
name: Ian
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: wolff, read-2024, reviews, reviews-5-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

A Personal Stamp on a Straight Account

Memoirs don't just create a factual record of the past. They can also capture the stories of the past as we imagined them at the time (assuming that we haven't since forgotten them).

Tobias Wolff explains it better in the introduction to the 30th edition of this book:

"It's true that life doesn't happen to us in stories, that we make stories out of it, and that in making those stories we can't help but put a personal stamp on them, for better or worse."

"The writer [/memoirist] is charged to keep these things straight."

author: Tobias Wolff
name: Ian
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read, wolff
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In Pharaoh's Army: memories of a lost war]]> 45779 224 Luann Walther 0330340190 Ian 5 CRITIQUE:

"Completing the Whole Tour"

This memoir is a sequel to Wolff's first memoir, "This Boy's Life".

The first book focuses on Toby's relationship with his mother, while the second pays much more attention to his divorced father, who was living alone in San Francisco at the time, mostly funded by Toby's older brother, Geoffrey.

Superficially, the book is a war memoir set in Vietnam. It's book-ended by memories of Toby's training and military discharge, followed by his post-war college education, much of which occurred in Oxford (where he studied Latin, French, English History, Language and Literature). The memoir is not just concerned with his tour of duty, but a tour through the rest of his life, the whole tour.

He spent his afternoons at Oxford writing a novel, which became his way of recovering from his domestic life and military service:

"In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all.

"In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it."

Writing, for him, dispersed the fog of war, even if some of it remained in his memories:

"More and more I had the sense of avoiding some necessary difficulty, of growing in cleverness and facility without growing otherwise. Of being once again adrift."

His domestic life and relationships cast him adrift, just as much as the war did.

"Finding Out Who We Are"

What Toby was searching for was a rock or foundation for the rest of his life.

He needed this comfort, whereas one of his friends who had died no longer had any need for it:

"The things the rest of us will know, he will not know. He will not know what it is to make a life with someone else. To have a child slip in beside him as he lies reading on Sunday morning. To work at, and then look back on, a labor of years. Watch the decline of his parents, and attend their dissolution. Lose faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we are." (1)

In Pharaoh's Army: memories of a lost war

author: Luann Walther
name: Ian
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: wolff, read-2024, reviews, reviews-5-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

"Completing the Whole Tour"

This memoir is a sequel to Wolff's first memoir, "This Boy's Life".

The first book focuses on Toby's relationship with his mother, while the second pays much more attention to his divorced father, who was living alone in San Francisco at the time, mostly funded by Toby's older brother, Geoffrey.

Superficially, the book is a war memoir set in Vietnam. It's book-ended by memories of Toby's training and military discharge, followed by his post-war college education, much of which occurred in Oxford (where he studied Latin, French, English History, Language and Literature). The memoir is not just concerned with his tour of duty, but a tour through the rest of his life, the whole tour.

He spent his afternoons at Oxford writing a novel, which became his way of recovering from his domestic life and military service:

"In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all.

"In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it."

Writing, for him, dispersed the fog of war, even if some of it remained in his memories:

"More and more I had the sense of avoiding some necessary difficulty, of growing in cleverness and facility without growing otherwise. Of being once again adrift."

"The things the rest of us will know, he will not know. He will not know what it is to make a life with someone else. To have a child slip in beside him as he lies reading on Sunday morning. To work at, and then look back on, a labor of years. Watch the decline of his parents, and attend their dissolution. Lose faith. Pray anyway. Persist. We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That's how we find out who we are." (1)

Vinh Trang Temple, My Tho, Vietnam near where Toby did his war service

FOOTNOTES:

(1) The Ode (Anzac Day) from "For the Fallen", a poem by the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon:

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> To Be a Man 53732449 In this dazzling collection of short fiction, the National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love—“one of America’s most important novelists and an international literary sensation�� (New York Times)—explores what it means to be in a couple, and to be a man and a woman in that perplexing relationship and beyond.

In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all.��

The way these stories mirror one other and resonate is beautiful, with a balance so finely tuned that the book almost feels like a novel. Echoes ring through stages of aging parents and new-born babies; young women’s coming of age and the newfound, somewhat bewildering sexual power that accompanies it; generational gaps and unexpected deliveries of strange new leases on life; mystery and wonder at a life lived or a future waiting to unfold. To Be a Man illuminates with a fierce, unwavering light the forces driving human sex, power, violence, passion, self-discovery, growing older. Profound, poignant, and brilliant, Krauss’s stories are at once startling and deeply moving, but always revealing of all-too-human weakness and strength.��]]> 234 Nicole Krauss 006243103X Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, krauss 3.83 2020 To Be a Man

author: Nicole Krauss
name: Ian
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, krauss
review:

]]> Mastery 18072970
What did Charles Darwin, middling schoolboy and underachieving second son, do to become one of the earliest and greatest naturalists the world has known? What were the similar choices made by Mozart and by Caesar Rodriguez, the U.S. Air Force’s last ace fighter pilot? In Mastery, Robert Greene’s fifth book, he mines the biographies of great historical figures for clues about gaining control over our own lives and destinies. Picking up where The 48 Laws of Power left off, Greene culls years of research and original interviews to blend historical anecdote and psychological insight, distilling the universal ingredients of the world’s masters.

Temple Grandin, Martha Graham, Henry Ford, Buckminster Fuller—all have lessons to offer about how the love for doing one thing exceptionally well can lead to mastery. Yet the secret, Greene maintains, is already in our heads. Debunking long-held cultural myths, he demonstrates just how we, as humans, are hardwired for achievement and supremacy. Fans of Greene’s earlier work and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers will eagerly devour this canny and erudite explanation of just what it takes to be great.]]> 352 Robert Greene 1101601027 Ian 0 4.30 2012 Mastery

author: Robert Greene
name: Ian
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, le-clair
review:

]]> Zazen 11563601
Reactions to the attacks are polarized. Police activity intensifies. Della’s revolutionary parents welcome the upheaval but are trapped within their own insular beliefs. Her activist restaurant co-workers, who would rather change their identities than the world around them, resume a shallow rebellion of hair-dye, sex parties, and self-absorption. As those bombs keep inching closer, thudding deep and real between the sounds of katydids fluttering in the still of the city night, and the destruction begins to excite her. What begins as terror threats called in to greasy bro-bars across the block boils over into a desperate plot, intoxicating and captivating Della and leaving her little chance for escape.

Zazen unfolds as a search for clarity soured by irresolution and catastrophe, yet made vital by the thin, wild veins of imagination run through each escalating moment, tensing and relaxing, unfurling and ensnaring. Vanessa Veselka renders Della and her world with beautiful, freighting, and phantasmagorically intelligent accuracy, crafting from their shattered constitutions a perversely perfect mirror for our own selves and state.]]> 274 Vanessa Veselka 1935869140 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt 3.47 2011 Zazen

author: Vanessa Veselka
name: Ian
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism]]> 44304588 Volatile Bodies is based on a risky wager: that all the effects of subjectivity, psychological depth and inferiority can be refigured in terms of bodies and surfaces. It uses, transforms and subverts the work of a number of distinguished male theorists of the body (Freud, Lacan, Merleau-Ponty, Schilder, Nietzsche, Foucault, Lingis and Deleuze) who, while freeing the body from its subordination to the mind, are nonetheless unable to accomodate the specificities of women's bodies.

Volatile Bodies explores various dissonances in thinking the relation between mind and body. It investigates issues that resist reduction to these binary terms - psychosis, hypochondria, neurological disturbances, perversions and sexual deviation - and most particularly the enigmatic status of body fluids, and the female body.]]> 272 Elizabeth Grosz 1741763347 Ian 0 4.00 1993 Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism

Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism

author: Elizabeth Grosz
name: Ian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art, grosz
review:

]]> Jesus�� Son 608287 Jesus' Son, the first collection of stories by Denis Johnson, presents a unique, hallucinatory vision of contemporary American life unmatched in power and immediacy and marks a new level of achievement for this acclaimed writer. In their intensity of perception, their neon-lit evocation of a strange world brought uncomfortably close to our own, the stories in Jesus' Son offer a disturbing yet eerily beautiful portrayal of American loneliness and hope.

Contains:
Car Crash While Hitchhiking
Two Men
Out on Bail
Dundun
Work
Emergency
Dirty Wedding
The Other Man
Happy Hour
Steady Hands at Seattle General
Beverly Home']]> 160 Denis Johnson 0060975776 Ian 4 CRITIQUE:

"It's My Wife and It's My Life" (1)

Just about everybody in this collection of stories (set in 1973) is stoned, drunk, addicted, alcoholic or recovering. Their drugs of choice are pills, heroin and alcohol. Their motivation isn't so much the craving for psychedelic or out of body experiences, as the desire to end the surrealistic blur in front of them. This is a world that needs to be escaped.

They hover between moments of brief consciousness, accidents, overdoses and death. Relationships are transactional. Marriages last only until death do us part:

"We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven."

They reside in jails, hospitals, cemeteries and halfway houses. Emergency wards are as frequently visited as bus stops. They're a source of work, drugs or treatment. Death is ubiquitous. People end up dead, almost in mid-sentence, well before the end of the (or their) story.

The characters are all self-described transient weirdos, although the narrator has a defiant charm about him (he was played by Billy Crudup in the He seems to know how to construct a tale. Or a collection of tales, what Frank Moorhouse called a "discontinuous narrative".

Like Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting", I can't recommend this collection to readers who are apprehensive about drug experiences, and their associated risks. But it is superbly written.

description

author: Denis Johnson
name: Ian
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: johnson, re-read, read-2024, reviews, reviews-4-stars
review:
CRITIQUE:

"It's My Wife and It's My Life" (1)

Just about everybody in this collection of stories (set in 1973) is stoned, drunk, addicted, alcoholic or recovering. Their drugs of choice are pills, heroin and alcohol. Their motivation isn't so much the craving for psychedelic or out of body experiences, as the desire to end the surrealistic blur in front of them. This is a world that needs to be escaped.

They hover between moments of brief consciousness, accidents, overdoses and death. Relationships are transactional. Marriages last only until death do us part:

"We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven."

Film poster

"BOX ON THE ROAD" (AN HOMAGE)

I was released from prison about six weeks ago. On the morning I departed, my girlfriend, Mandy, picked me up in my car, which she had been taking care of during my confinement.

The prison was about 200 kilometers from the city. I didn't feel like driving all that distance in one trip, so I drove to a small farming town nearby, where my family had lived when I was in primary school.

We stopped on the outskirts of town, and shot up some speed. Before we got into the centre of town, I turned down a dirt road. I put the foot down, and listened to the rocks on the road hit the underside of the car.

It was then I noticed a cardboard box on the edge of the road. It looked like it had originally carried a large piece of electrical equipment, like a dishwasher. It had been opened and was empty. I wondered whether I should drive right over the top of it. I almost had to, because there was a truck coming towards me from the opposite direction. Anyway, I put my foot on the accelerator, and drove around the box into the path of the truck, before whipping back to my side of the road.

As soon as I had driven past the box, I looked into the rear vision mirror, and noticed a small Aboriginal boy jump out of the box and run into a clump of trees that grew alongside the road.

I couldn't believe how fast my heart was beating. I could just as easily have run over that kid and killed him. I hadn't tried to save his life. I had saved it by accident.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) As will become apparent in the soundtrack below, the novel is inspired by the lyrics of Lou Reed's 1966 song, "Heroin".

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> an impalpable certain rest 58268725 an impalpable certain rest are menaced by and fighting against the corrosive power of illusions and their own half-understood natures.

Apart from the intensity of these psychologically oppressive stories and their provocative, unsettling effect, what most astonishes in this collection are the intermittent, unexpected flashes which could be hope or delusion.

"It’s horrifying and funny and completely engaging." –Gabriel Blackwell]]> 324 Jeff Bursey 9617036673 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt PROLEGOMENA TO A REVIEW

The Big Sell

The publisher reveals that, yet again, he published the author's latest work/collection of short stories without reading it beforehand. Yet he puffs the book up, so that we'll buy it from him, read it and vindicate his folly (listen here):

The reasons you're supposed to like it are a mystery:

"You might like it. Obviously, the author likes it..."

Hyperblurbole

The publisher declares without any argument or justification (whether objective or subjective) that Bursey and the book "should go on the Canon!" As usual with coterie fodder, "it's a masterpiece". Well that would please both author and publisher.

Independent, discriminating readers are supposed to accept and act on these subjective declarations and five-star ratings from the author's peer group. They're being urged to follow the leader, join the Queue-Anon.

Speaking of Blind Faith (or sight unseen)...

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]]]> 4.73 an impalpable certain rest

author: Jeff Bursey
name: Ian
average rating: 4.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt
review:
PROLEGOMENA TO A REVIEW

The Big Sell

The publisher reveals that, yet again, he published the author's latest work/collection of short stories without reading it beforehand. Yet he puffs the book up, so that we'll buy it from him, read it and vindicate his folly (listen here):

The reasons you're supposed to like it are a mystery:

"You might like it. Obviously, the author likes it..."

Hyperblurbole

The publisher declares without any argument or justification (whether objective or subjective) that Bursey and the book "should go on the Canon!" As usual with coterie fodder, "it's a masterpiece". Well that would please both author and publisher.

Independent, discriminating readers are supposed to accept and act on these subjective declarations and five-star ratings from the author's peer group. They're being urged to follow the leader, join the Queue-Anon.

Speaking of Blind Faith (or sight unseen)...

SOUNDTRACK:
[spoilers removed]
]]> <![CDATA[Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything]]> 6610613
Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics proves this fear is folly. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success.

A brilliant guide to one of the most profound changes of our time, Wikinomics challenges our most deeply-rooted assumptions about business and will prove indispensable to anyone who wants to understand competitiveness in the twenty-first century.

Based on a $9 million research project led by bestselling author Don Tapscott, Wikinomics shows how masses of people can participate in the economy like never before. They are creating TV news stories, sequencing the human genome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding a cure for disease, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, or even building motorcycles. You'll read about:

Rob McEwen, the Goldcorp, Inc. CEO who used open source tactics and an online competition to save his company and breathe new life into an old-fashioned industry.

Flickr, Second Life, YouTube, and other thriving online communities that transcend social networking to pioneer a new form of collaborative production.

Mature companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems.

An important look into the future, Wikinomics will be your road map for doing business in the twenty-first century.]]> 380 Don Tapscott 1440639485 Ian 0 to-read, cul-poli-phil-art 3.62 2006 Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

author: Don Tapscott
name: Ian
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read, cul-poli-phil-art
review:

]]> A Long Way From Home 60725586
With them is their navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed schoolteacher whose job it is to call out the hazards on a map that will finally remove them, without warning, from the lily-white Australia they know so well.

This brilliantly vivid, high-speed novel starts in one way and then takes you someplace else. Set in the 1950s amid the consequences of the age of empires, it reminds us how Europeans took possession of a timeless culture - the high purpose they invented and the crimes they committed along the way.

Peter Carey has twice won the Booker Prize for his explorations of Australian history. "A Long Way From Home" is his late-style masterpiece.]]> 360 Peter Carey 0143790382 Ian 0 to-read, a-wish-liszt, carey 4.00 2017

author: Peter Carey
name: Ian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, carey
review:

]]> April in Spain (Quirke, #8) 56758340 *NATIONAL BESTSELLER*

Booker Prize winner John Banville returns with a dark and evocative new mystery set on the Spanish coast

Don't disturb the dead��

On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him.

Because this young woman can't be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother, years ago—the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland's foremost political dynasties.

Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland and soon Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one en route. A relentless hit man is on the hunt for his latest prey, and the next victim might be Quirke himself.

Sumptous, propulsive and utterly transporting, April in Spain��is the work of a master writer at the top of his game.

Don't miss John Banville's next novel, The Lock-up!

Other riveting mysteries from John ��
Snow

]]> 304 John Banville 0369705823 Ian 0 3.88 2021 April in Spain (Quirke, #8)

author: John Banville
name: Ian
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, banville
review:

]]> The Beatles: The Biography 35539
The product of almost a decade of research, hundreds of unprecedented interviews, and the discovery of scores of never-before-revealed documents, Bob Spitz's The Beatles is the biography fans have been waiting for -- a vast, complete account as brilliant and joyous and revelatory as a Beatles record itself. Spitz begins in Liverpool, a hard city knocked on its heels. In the housing projects and school playgrounds, four boys would discover themselves -- and via late-night radio broadcasts, a new form of music called rock 'n roll.

Never before has a biography of musicians been so immersive and textured. Spitz takes us down Penny Lane and to Strawberry Field (John later added the s), to Hamburg, Germany, where -- amid the squalor and the violence and the pep pills -- the Beatles truly became the Beatles. We are there in the McCartney living room when Paul and John learn to write songs together; in the heat of Liverpool's Cavern Club, where jazz has been the norm before the Beatles show up; backstage the night Ringo takes over on drums; in seedy German strip clubs where George lies about his age so the band can perform; on the lonely tours through frigid Scottish towns before the breakthrough; at Abbey Road Studios, where a young producer named George Martin takes them under his wing; at the Ed Sullivan Show as America discovers the joy and the madness; and onward and upward: up the charts, from Shea to San Francisco, through the London night, on to India, through marmalade skies, across the universe...all the way to a rooftop concert and one last moment of laughter and music.

It is all here, raw and right: the highs and the lows, the love and the rivalry, the awe and the jealousy, the drugs, the tears, the thrill, the magic never again to be repeated. Open this book and begin to read -- Bob Spitz's masterpiece is, at long last, the biography the Beatles deserve.]]> 983 Bob Spitz 0316013315 Ian 0 4.07 2005 The Beatles: The Biography

author: Bob Spitz
name: Ian
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: to-read, a-wish-liszt, cul-poli-phil-art, muse-ik
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father]]> 210805
In The Duke of Deception, Geoffrey Wolff unravels the enigma of this Gatsbyesque figure, a bad man who somehow was also a very good father, an inveterate liar who falsified everything but love.]]> 275 Geoffrey Wolff 0679727523 Ian 0 to-read, wolff 3.87 1979 The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father

The Duke of Deception: Memories of My Father

author: Geoffrey Wolff
name: Ian
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: to-read, wolff
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Rise Again at a Decent Hour]]> 23278040 A big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel about the mysteries of modern life by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris, one of the most exciting voices of his generation

Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God.

Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual.

At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.]]> 337 Joshua Ferris 0141047380 Ian 0 to-read, ferris 2.91 2014

author: Joshua Ferris
name: Ian
average rating: 2.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read, ferris
review:

]]> The Unnamed 6422678
During their 20-year marriage, Tim and Jane Farnsworth have savored the fruits of his labor as a high-powered lawyer: they live in a beautiful home, they travel on exotic vacations, they don’t worry about money. Tim has battled a bizarre, inexplicable illness, but those episodes, while not exactly forgotten, have passed. Then it comes back, causing him to behave in a frighteningly new way, driving him out of his life and into a world and a self that he can’t recognize and Jane is helpless to control. How far will he go to fight his body’s incomprehensible desires, and what will they both risk to find the way back to the people they love?

A heartbreaking story of family and marriage, a meditation on the unseen forces of nature and desire, The Unnamed is a deeply felt, luminous novel about modern life, ancient yearnings, and the power of human connection.]]> 310 Joshua Ferris 0316034010 Ian 0 to-read, ferris 3.32 2010

author: Joshua Ferris
name: Ian
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read, ferris
review:

]]> Then We Came to the End 2025667
With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.

"Not too many authors have written the Great American Office Novel. Joseph Heller did it in Something Happened (the one book of his to rival Catch-22). And Nicholson Baker pulled it off in zanily fastidious fashion in The Mezzanine. To their ranks should be added Joshua Ferris, whose THEN WE CAME TO THE END feels like a ready made classic of the genre. . . . A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love,and loneliness." -Seattle Times

"A masterwork of pitch and tone. . . . Ferris brilliantly captures the fishbowl quality of contemporary office life." -The New Yorker]]> 385 Joshua Ferris Ian 0 to-read, ferris 3.44 2007 Then We Came to the End

author: Joshua Ferris
name: Ian
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: to-read, ferris
review:

]]>