Currently Reading

[nicenick]

nice, i love handke. though for some reason i gave up halfway through goalie's anxiety - i have no idea why since i remember really liking it. i think i may have just forgotten that i was reading it. doh.

what did you make of the aira book? thought parts of it were stunning but had a somewhat aimless final third. read an interview with him where it seems he just writes straight through from page one to the end without much planning or forethought, writing himself into corners to force himself to figure creative ways out of them.

taking a little bernhard breather:

[surfer]

The Aira book is the second one I've read of his (Ghosts is the other one), and I personally didnt think the third part (post- disfigurement) was a letdown. He's an odd writer, I think Herb (another poster) has mentioned this, but these two books almost seem like they were written by different writers. And things happen in his books that are just very unexpected within the course of the narrative. In Landscape Painter, the "incident on the pampas" is a detour (so to speak) from where I thought the storyline was going. But I suppose its not quite as shocking as the climactic incident in Ghosts. But back to Landscape Painter, I think his increasing interest in the Indians (leading to the last scene at the campfire) is indicative of:

1) Rugendas' complete withdrawal into the world of, the act of, painting / drawing. A complete sublimation of his sense of self, post-disfigurement

2) An increasing blurriness between reality and his hallucinations brought on by the need to use opiates as a pain-killer.

3) An identification with the Other-ness of the Indians

so I didnt think the last section was particularly aimless, I thought it led pretty clearly to that final scene around the campfire, with Krause stewarding him while hidden in the shadows. There's a nice symbolism to it. Was it a satisfying ending? I dont know. If I had any complaint about Landscape Painter, it was that I thought it should have been longer, it easily could have been twice as long, I thought the material supported a longer form work, lots of interesting issues and themes to really get into which he addressed, but very briefly. Ghosts I thought was the perfect length.

The Handke I'm enjoying, it's sort of your classic post WW2 European existentialist novella, an almost by-the-numbers existentialist anti-hero and stuttered writing style. Disjointed, cause and effect are no longer connected, that sort of thing.

let me know how you like that Walser, I was looking for Walser recs a few pages back.

[billygomberg]

duh.

[nicenick]

I didnt think the last section was particularly aimless, I thought it led pretty clearly to that final scene around the campfire

hmm, think you've convinced me to give it a re-read. at the time i thought that the climactic incident was so intense & shocking that the shift back to the more measured flow of the final third felt unsatisfying. but i i could see that re-reading with different expectations might prove differently. it's the only aira i've read; looks like i need to track down ghosts sometime.

let me know how you like that Walser, I was looking for Walser recs a few pages back.

just finished, it's a very quick read and i'd highly recommend it. i still think the best place to begin with walser is the short pieces, which really play to his strengths, weird, almost manically digressive little stories with sudden, disquieting shifts in tone. and these great landscape descriptions. "kleist in thum" from selected stories is my personal favorite. of the novels i'd definitely recommend jakob van gunten as a good place to start, less a novel than a series of dreamlike incidents and often hilarious in a slightly disconcerting way:

"To be drilled is an honor for pupils, that’s as clear as day. But we don’t rebel, either. It would never cross our minds. We have, collectively, so few thoughts. I have perhaps the most thoughts, that’s quite possible, but at root I despise my capacity for thinking. I value only experiences, and these, as a rule, are quite independent of thinking and comparing. Thus I value the way in which I open a door. There is more hidden life in opening a door than in asking a question. Yet everything does provoke one to question and compare and remember. Certainly one must think, one must even think a great deal. But to comply, that is much more refined, much more than thinking. If one thinks, one resists, and that is always so ugly and ruinous to things. Thinkers, if they only knew what harm they do. Anyone who industriously does not think, does something, he certainly does, and that is more necessary. There are ten thousand superfluous heads at work in the world. It's clear, clear as day. The generations of men are losing the joy of life with all their treatises and understandings and knowledge. If, for example, a pupil of the Benjamenta Institute doesn't know that he's being polite, then polite is what he's being. If he knows it, then all his unconscious grace and politeness disappear, and he makes some mistake or other. I like running down stairs. What a lot of talk!"

[jkudler]

in need of a new book to read on my phone, just downloaded samples of these:

[surfer]

So I just finished Handke's Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick, which followed Weschler's Everything That Rises: A Book Of Convergences (with Aira in between). Weschler's book is about serendipitous pairs of ideas / people / images that seem to occur to or follow him in the course of his life. So I picked the Handke more or less at random, just something I'd meant to read for awhile, and while reading the Handke, I remembered something about him speaking at Milosevic's funeral, some controversy, so I googled it, and one of the first results that come up, the first one I clicked on is an article for the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/06/r ... wesch.html

Check out who the author is.

[diederich]

Was given The Scar by a friend to follow up Perdido and really love it. Very different feel from Perdido, less subtle, more big ramp ups and reveals. Am pretty sure this one won't stand up to repeat readings though. China Mieville impresses me quite a bit. As a long time fantasy nerd it's so gratifying to read so many smart people of late embracing the genre/weirdness. (See Patrick Rothfuss as well)

Also reading Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance by Patrick Wilson to try and write some papers for an eventual PhD application. Massumi is on hold while I work on these papers. Trying to take advantage of the time between living wage jobs to focus on academic shit.

[grisha]

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

and really enjoying it.

[Wombatz]

I’m also reading Weschler’s Evrything That Rises (because of this thread, so thanks everybody). I find he’s partly a bit easy on himself. When you do art history unto contemporary works, you usually try to find convergent images, you call them references, and when you’ve found some then you have to work and force them to make sense. Weschler tends to just point at the thing and stammer in utter amazement. Which enables him to make some more wayward connections, but I prefer it when he goes the whole way and digs in deeper. The political section I’m in now I find much more inspiring than his image pairings.

[walto]

The next book for my Trollope group is Castle Richmond. I've also been reading quite a bit of Quine and Quine commentary lately.

[surfer]

I’m also reading Weschler’s Evrything That Rises (because of this thread, so thanks everybody). I find he’s partly a bit easy on himself. When you do art history unto contemporary works, you usually try to find convergent images, you call them references, and when you’ve found some then you have to work and force them to make sense. Weschler tends to just point at the thing and stammer in utter amazement. Which enables him to make some more wayward connections, but I prefer it when he goes the whole way and digs in deeper. The political section I’m in now I find much more inspiring than his image pairings.

Agreed. This was the point I was trying to get at earlier.

[crawjo]

This is a very smart history. I'm particularly intrigued by the way the Tokugawa Shogunate used outcasts as executioners in order to distance itself from the spectacular nature of corporal punishments employed against warriors and commoners alike.

[splityourwig]

[mikerol]

as the translator of Handke's GOALIE I am surprised at anyone being able to put it down,
since it sucks you linguistically so into the protagonist Joself Bloch's mind....and being...
here is a portal to no end of handke material on the web:
http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/2010 ... -site.html

i myself am currently malte herwig's biography of handke just published in germany.

http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

[Gaendaal]

Mike Dash - Thug: A True History Of India's Murderous Religion.

A few chapters in, very interesting so far.

[surfer]

Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar

[Jesse]

Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar

It's been many years, but I recall liking this a lot.

[surfer]

Elaborate reading instructions for the book's "second half". Is it worth it?

[Jesse]

If Evan can care for himself in the meanwhile.

[surfer]

Ha! not yet unfortunately . . . . . little guy's screaming "RUNNY NOSE!!!!" at me right now.