Currently Reading...

[Wilfrid]

Way behind with this thread so here's a year end roundup of loves and hates, omitting what I don't have strong feelings about.

Recommended

Alfred Perry, Garrets and pretenders : a history of Bohemianism in America

Alice Fulton, Sensual Math, Felt, Barely Composed (three poetry collections)

Fleur Jaeggy, Sweet days of discipline

Nicholas Blake, Thou Shell of Death and The Beast Must Die

Thomas Doherty, Pre-code Hollywood : sex, immorality, and insurrection in American cinema, 1930-1934 (boy have I seen a lot of movies from the early '30s)

Patricia E. Palermo, The message of the city : Dawn Powell's New York novels, 1925-1962

Ottessa Moshfegh, Homesick for another world  (the short stories)

Ann Hood, Kitchen yarns : notes on life, love, and food - I have read a lot of food-related memoirs over the last few months, most of which have one or more of the following faults:

• They think they're funny but they aren't 
• They are poorly written
• The author is squeamish about food

Hood is an exception. Serious and thoughtful. I didn't realize until the closing pages that she is married to Michael Ruhlmann.

Just no

Lesley Chamberlain, Rilke : the last inward man - I thought I remembered her book about Nietzsche in Turin was okay, but she dabbles more widely in philosophy here with embarrassing results. Example: a remark about Wittgenstein's "message to his generation." He published on book in his lifetime, a highly technical work of philosophical logic. Does she think he also had a radio show or something/

John Burnside,  The music of time : poetry in the twentieth century - Long, as you might expect from the title. I will finish it tonight and I bet I start yelling at it again. He's a poet, critic and professor English, but of course he can't keep his hands off philosophy. He is obsessed with the final sentences of that Wittgenstein book I just mentioned, the Tractatus. If he was a bit more keen on the first few sentences, he might be able to better state what the last sentences might mean. I don't expect him to cope with the bulk of the book.

But it's not just philosophy.  He misstates (surely knowingly) what Rilke is talking about in the first Duino elegy. There's a chapter on translation, but some howlers in the actual translations in the book - I don't mean controversial choices, just obvious mistakes. If this wasn't a library copy I would enjoy throwing it at the wall. Thank god I didn't buy it.

 

[Wilfrid]

I am going to ceremoniously put down this 400-plus page Burnside farrago 20 pages from the end. In the last chapter, he addresses O'Hara's "The Day Lady Died" and insultingly accuses the poet of trying to drag some fake "African-ness" into the poem. He also suggests the poem represents the poet on a "meandering ramble" through the city, whereas anyone who has a clue what O'Hara's job was knows it represents a quick lunch break from MoMA.

Grotesque book, and I blame the editors too, if any.

[Chambolle]

The First Three Minutes, again ... but it's taking me hours upon hours to get through ... then again, I'm trying to verify a lot of this stuff and see if I really believe it ... but I'm skeptical by nature ... but I gotta admit that the author is no dummy ... frankly, he's pretty effing brilliant

[StephanieL]

After reading a Vanity Fair article about Gloria Swanson's autobiography Swanson on Swanson, I've been tackling it online.  Lots and lots of details, but the early days of moviemaking really were something.

[Wilfrid]

That was a good VF article, certainly with plenty of surprises.

[hollywood]

I hadn't touched a Walter Mosley tale in some time.  For whatever reason I grabbed his "Every Man a King" and began reading.  It's involved, enough plot for two novels by most writers.  Eventually the threads do merge.  I still do not get the selection of the title although two characters do have the name King. There are a few Easter eggs, lots of geography of places familiar and unfamiliar, lots of brown liquor, conspiracies of sorts and so on.  Ultimately our hero Joe King Oliver has to sort through various facts, conflicts of interest, physical threats and so forth to somewhat resolve the various dilemmas.  Spoiler alert: He'll be back.