Currently Reading

[jon abbey]

Holy shit. Cloud Atlas was a masterpiece. Is the rest of Mitchell's stuff that good?

I wasn't so into Cloud Atlas, the structure is obviously really impressive, but I didn't care about most of the content. I've read all his books except the new one, and I still think Number9Dream is easily my fave.

[will]

I liked Cloud Atlas, but would need to re-read it to get a better sense of the message-code distinctions in the structure and the narrative. I read Ghostwritten right after Cloud Atlas, and it really made it clear to me that I hadn't picked up on a lot of what was going on in the former book.

[_duif]

I have read them all and enjoyed them all (and wondering what the Wachowski Brothers - or is it brother and sister now - will do to 'Cloud Atlas'), will just point out that the new one 'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet' is very different from all the previous ones, more like a classic historical adventure novel, but very good at that. helps if you are interested in Japan & its history.

[aditi]

It has been over a decade since I last read Rimbaud, and a few months for Henry Miller...a calm return to the both of them.

[yonhosago]

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel story:

...was afforded the chance to grace the cover of Time magazine accompanied by the majestic headline "Great American Novelist," an honor that put him alongside such august names as Salinger, Nabakov, Joyce and Updike.

WTF

Joyce Carol Oates, maybe?

Did you see the comments section? I think the first poster mentions that error. Yikes.

[splityourwig]

Fascinating, hilarious, often disturbing autobiography of this dissident surrealist. A large portion of chapters are devoted to his weird obsession with symbolic female figures in classical antiquity, and how they relate to his own sexual hang-ups and masochistic tendencies. The man was complex and deeply troubled.

[jkudler]

well, i started "freedom," which i am getting pretty sucked into. funny to see jon say specific things resonate with him so much, because i am finding that with all the early stuff about gentrifying st. paul. my parents lived in minneapolis for a few years, had a volvo 240, seemed to have similar rules about video games and the like for us, etc. but also, franzen is just incredibly good at creating a world and then keeping the description of that world intriguing. i read and liked 'the corrections' years ago, though i then kind of retroactively started to dislike it after seeing some interviews and such with franzen and reading some essays. dude can be kinda a pompous douche. but 'freedom' is proving pretty damn engaging. i actually downloaded a sample of it for free on "ibooks" on my iphone, which is turning out to be a surprisingly nice way of reading it. it's a bit weird to have no idea how far along you are (at the font size i have set, a "page" is like 100 words maybe) or how much you have read in a sitting, but it's awesome for squeezing in a little here and there. i really don't know if i'll buy the physical book or the full download when i get to the end of the free sample.

also kind of slogging through lawrence weschler's "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees," his bio/oral history of the artist robert irwin. i recalled hearing a lot of good things about this, but so far it's kind of tedious. too much unembellished biographical details and not much insight or value added. i was blazing through it at first thinking i'd soon be getting to the good stuff, but we're FINALLY at his art career, and it's still pretty bland prose. which is a bummer, because i've liked some of weschler's other stuff quite a lot. i think the latter part of the book was written much later than the earlier part and added as a kind of addendum, so maybe if/when i get to that, it will be more insightful. there's a sense in the early parts of spending way too much time laying the groundwork for his audience, and maybe a more contemporary version will assume a higher level of background knowledge.

-jesse

[jon abbey]

funny to see jon say specific things resonate with him so much, because i am finding that with all the early stuff about gentrifying st. paul.

I think his deal is that he just throws so much in there that the stuff that resonates sticks and the stuff that doesn't gets forgotten.

[jkudler]

but the level of detail is just incredible. like the specifics of the car's idiosyncrasies and such.

[jon abbey]

yep, it's amazing. he's taken 8 or 9 years each to write his last two books, and it shows.

[Herb Levy]

also kind of slogging through lawrence weschler's "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees," his bio/oral history of the artist robert irwin. i recalled hearing a lot of good things about this, but so far it's kind of tedious. too much unembellished biographical details and not much insight or value added. i was blazing through it at first thinking i'd soon be getting to the good stuff, but we're FINALLY at his art career, and it's still pretty bland prose. which is a bummer, because i've liked some of weschler's other stuff quite a lot. i think the latter part of the book was written much later than the earlier part and added as a kind of addendum, so maybe if/when i get to that, it will be more insightful. there's a sense in the early parts of spending way too much time laying the groundwork for his audience, and maybe a more contemporary version will assume a higher level of background knowledge.
-jesse

Not sure how far you are in the book yet, but it does get better, long before the new edition's added material. Compared to Weschler's other books (except the companion Hockney book) it IS quite different, it's an oral history rather than a critical or analytical text.

If how Irwin got where he did (& how he thinks about his career) isn't of interest to you, the book may not get much better for you. But, for better or worse, that's what the book is.

[jkudler]

Not sure how far you are in the book yet, but it does get better, long before the new edition's added material. Compared to Weschler's other books (except the companion Hockney book) it IS quite different, it's an oral history rather than a critical or analytical text.

If how Irwin got where he did (& how he thinks about his career) isn't of interest to you, the book may not get much better for you. But, for better or worse, that's what the book is.

yeah, that's what i am realizing! that is potentially interesting to me, but so far, the dutiful transcription seems to almost verge on hagiography. and it's also just kinda boring. i do hope it will get more interesting as it gets into work i find more interesting, but the "artist flailing around to find his voice" is just a bit cliched, even if it's real life. but thanks for the info/tip. i'll probably keep it at.

either way, i'm pretty sucked into "freedom" now, so. . .

-jesse

[surfer]

also kind of slogging through lawrence weschler's "Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees," his bio/oral history of the artist robert irwin. i recalled hearing a lot of good things about this, but so far it's kind of tedious. too much unembellished biographical details and not much insight or value added. i was blazing through it at first thinking i'd soon be getting to the good stuff, but we're FINALLY at his art career, and it's still pretty bland prose. which is a bummer, because i've liked some of weschler's other stuff quite a lot. i think the latter part of the book was written much later than the earlier part and added as a kind of addendum, so maybe if/when i get to that, it will be more insightful. there's a sense in the early parts of spending way too much time laying the groundwork for his audience, and maybe a more contemporary version will assume a higher level of background knowledge.

-jesse

Funny you mention Weschler, I just bought Everything That Rises: A Book Of Convergences and am thinking about reading it next. Have you or Herb read that one?



I picked it up because I'm interested not so much in (visual) art criticism, but in writing that seeks connections and threads across disciplines and media. I tried Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece, but it wasnt quite what I was hoping for.

[jkudler]

i read a handful of those, in mcsweeneys i think, and really liked them. i should get that book. it's a lot about visual art, but specifically about finding interesting connection and references. he was a longtime new yorker writer, and it kinda comes out in that sort of erudite, slightly pompous, intellectually omnivorous curiosity. i actually just now realized i have another book of his new yorker essays that a friend who studied with him gave me.

-jesse

[surfer]

specifically about finding interesting connection and references. -jesse

thanks Jesse. I was just flipping through it this weekend and some of the connections he makes are:

the burn out grill facade of the WTC at ground zero, and the David Caspar Freiderich painting (one can see both on the cover of the book); Richter's "Reader" (and the one of his wife's head turned away) and Vermeer (a really obvious pairing imo), Pollock and some photos of galaxies colliding, and Rothko and a moonscape.

Anyways, the book is in a fine cloth hardback with really nice glossy reproductions. McSweeney's does a nice job publishing, recommended on that front.

[Jesse]

Darren, that is a terrific, at times brilliant, Weschler collection. I wove a small piece of it into a blog entry awhile back.
The Rothko link is masterful. The Ground Zero photos, linked to a great range of paintings, is astonishing, almost an illustrated guide to Jung's notion of archetypes.

[Jesse]

Cross posted, we both were hit by the Ground Zero essay.

[mudd]

i'll chime in and say i too really enjoyed the weshler book.

m

[surfer]

cool thanks guys. I'm going to read it next.

[surfer]

I just bought Everything That Rises: A Book Of Convergences .

Funny / Sad inscription from my used copy that I just discovered:


Shelby,

MFA Congratulations!

Much love,

Mom, 2006



How desperate / pathetic do you have to be to sell back a book your mom gave you 4 years after you got an art degree?