Month: January 2024

Self-Portrait with Palm Fronds –Julie Heffernan

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Self-Portrait with Palm Fronds, 2022 by Julie Heffernan (b. 1956)

Books acquired, 26 Jan. 2024

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Last Friday, I drove across a bridge to a library on the other side of the city for a Friends of the Library sale. I was hoping for a nice leisurely afternoon browse, figured I’d find a few titles worth my efforts, and I’d fill out the 10 dollar brown paper grocery bag with books I could trade for store credit elsewhere. I ended up filling the bag almost immediately, mostly with heavy hardbacks, resulting in my weak arm quickly settling into a painful fatigue that killed my browsing vibe.

Here are the books I picked up:

–A paperback copy of Thomas S. Klise’s cult classic The Last Western. It was in the “nonfiction” section, which I didn’t really browse that studiously, but its cover nevertheless stood out to me. I bought a copy of it from an online used bookseller online six years ago (and was very disappointed that the seller had appended a retail barcode sticker to its cover).

–A paperback omnibus of Salem Kirban’s early seventies “prophecy” apocalypse novels 666 and its sequel 1000. I’d thumbed through a worn copy of 666 sometime last year—the title of and its cracked spine calling to me from the shelf of the sci-fi section. Kirban’s “novel” is a millennialist screed conveyed in a tawdry postmodern manner, and it didn’t seem worth the eight bucks the used bookstore was asking at the time—but I didn’t mind snuggling it into the paper bag last Friday, oddity that it is.

–A hardback copy of Don DeLillo’s novel Zero K. I skipped it when it came out, and I don’t think DeLillo’s done anything good since Point Omega.

–A hardback copy of John Barth’s novel Every Third Thought. I think that Barth’s best work is decades behind him, but every now and then I try something newer, and this 2011 novel is one of his shorter recentish efforts.

–A hardback copy of Leni Zumas’ novel Red Clocks. I had never heard of this book, but the spine enticed me enough to pick it up when I was browsing the “sci fi” section at the booksale, and the premise–America has outlawed and criminalized abortion–seemed depressingly dystopian enough to take it with me.

–A hardback copy of Sven Birkert’s collection of literary criticism, An Artificial Wilderness. Includes chapters on Thomas Bernhard, Umberto Eco, Borges, and “The School of Gordon Lish” among many, many others.

–A Vintage Contemporaries Edition of Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From, a collection I have not read in over two decades.

–A hardback copy of Jesse Ball’s novel How to Set a Fire and Why. I liked his 2011 novel The Curfew, so maybe I’ll like this?

–A hardback copy of Jeanette Winterson’s novel Frankisstein; reviews of this 2019 novel intrigued me at the time it was published (and I do like a good Frankenstein riff).

–A hardback copy of Robert Coover’s novel Huck Out West. An amazing sequel to Twain’s novel; I reviewed it on this site years ago. This handsome edition shall replace the ugly advance copy I got years ago. I might need to revisit it in anticipation of Percival Everett’s take on Twain’s Huck’s Jim—James.

–A hardback copy of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s late novel Little Boy, which The Guardian described as a “novel-cum-memoir-cum-grand finale.” (Too much cum, The Guardian.)

–A Library of America edition of The Complete Novels of Eudora Welty. I hate to admit what I will now admit: I love love love Welty’s short stories, but have never read one of her novels.

–A hardback copy of Walker Percy’s Thanatos Syndrome. Again, a late-period work by old master, likely not his finest stuff, but hey. I burned through his first four novels a few years ago—Lancelot was my favorite.

The Magician — Leonora Carrington

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The Magician, 1955 by Leonora Carrington (1917-2011)

Counterfeit | Emily Dickinson

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A Counterfeit — a Plated Person —
I would not be —
Whatever strata of Iniquity
My Nature underlie —
Truth is good Health — and Safety, and the Sky.
How meagre, what an Exile — is a Lie,
And Vocal — when we die —

Emily Dickinson

Condemned to seriousness and silliness, two blood sisters | Miguel de Unamuno

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A little while after arriving in the city, and after he had built up a better than average practice and had acquired the reputation of a serious, careful, painstaking and well-endowed doctor, a local journal published his first story, a story half-way between fantasy and humor, without descriptive writing and without a moral. Two days later I found him very upset; when I asked the reason, he burst forth: “Do you think I’m going to be able to resist the overwhelming pressure of the idiocy prevailing here? Tell me, do you think so? It’s the same thing all over again, exactly the same as in my town, the very same! And just as happened there, I’ll end by becoming known as a madman. I, who am a marvel of calm! And my patients will gradually drop away, and I’ll lose my practice. Then the dismal days will come again. days filled with despair, disgust, and bad temper, and 1 will have to leave here just as I had to leave my own town!”

“But what has happened?” I was finally able to ask.

“What has happened? Simply that five people have already approached me to ask what I meant by writing the piece of fiction I just published, what I intended to say, and what bearing did it have. Idiots, idiots, and thrice idiots! They’re worse than children who break dolls to find out what’s inside. This town has no hope of salvation, my friend; it’s simply condemned to seriousness and silliness, two blood sisters. People here have the souls of school teachers. They believe no one could write except to prove some-thing, or defend or attack some proposition, or from an ulterior motive. One of these blockheads asked me the meaning of my story and by way of reply I asked him: ‘Did it amuse you?’ And he answered: ‘As far as that goes, it certainly did; as a matter of fact, I found it quite amusing; but…’ I left the last word in his mouth, because as soon as he reached this point in the conversation, I turned my back on him and walked away. That a piece of writing is amusing wasn’t enough for this monster. They have the souls of school teachers, the souls of school teachers!”

“But, now…” I ventured to take up the argument.

“Listen,” he interrupted, “don’t you come at me with any more ‘buts.’ Don’t bother. The infectious disease, the itch of our Spanish literature is the urge to preach. Everywhere a sermon, and a bad sermon at that. Every little Christ sets himself up to dispense advice, and does it with a poker-face. I remember picking up the Moral Epistle to Fabian and being unable to get beyond the first three verses; I simply couldn’t stomach it. This breed of men is totally devoid of imagination, and so all their madness is merely silly. An oyster-like breed—there’s no use of your denying it—; oysters, that’s what they are, nothing but oysters. Everything here savors of oyster beds, or ground-muck. I feel like I’m living among human tubers. And they don’t even break through the ground, or lift their heads up, like regular tubers.”

In any case, Dr. Montarco did not take heed, and he went and published another story, more satirical and fantastic than the first.

From “The Madness of Dr. Montarco” by Miguel de Unamuno; trans. by Anthony Kerrigan.

Blog about some recent books acquired, other stuff

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I read Will Oldham’s book On Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy almost a decade and it therefore doesn’t belong in a stack of recent acquisitions, but it’s there—I pulled it off the shelf last week and thumbed through it in anticipation of seeing Oldham play this past Thursday. I even brought the book to the venue, thinking maybe I’d ask him to sign it. But I left it in the car and simply enjoyed Oldham and his pal run through a set of covers and originals. His voice is more resonant, richer, bolder than the last time I saw him live, and even if I didn’t know half of the songs, I enjoyed the gentle chill music on a cold Florida Thursday night. (I suspect Oldham’s short “tour” of Florida is an excuse to get out of the midwestern cold—although he complained it was “fuckin’ cold” here.)

Other books in the stack above are a composite of three or maybe four book store visits. The most memorable visit was to Aeon Bookstore in the Lower East Side of NYC.

Aeon is a small, cozy shop, well-curated with art, philosophy, anthropology, and literature books, as well as an excellent selection of jazz records. The clerk let me handle some first editions of Williams Burroughs and Gaddis, as well as Ishmael Reed and others.

I resisted The Recognitions and The Hearing Trumpet and picked up first editions of Donald Barthelme’s City Life and Don DeLillo’s Ratner’s Star.

Over two or possibly three visits to my local bookshop over the last month, I picked up copies of Stanley Elkin’s A Bad Man, Denis Johnson’s Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, and Carole Maso’s Ava. I also picked up Anthony Kerrigan’s translation of Miguel de Unamuno stories, Abel Sanchez and Other Stories.

I also snagged an advance copy of Percival Everett’s James. Blurb:

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

 

Mary Reading — Edmund Charles Tarbell

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Mary Reading, c. 1916 by Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938)

Debbie Urbanski’s After World (Book acquired, Dec. 2023)

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I plan to start into Debbie Urbanski’s debut After World this weekend. Here’s publisher Simon & Schuster’s blurb:

Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.

[storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc’s assignment is to capture Sen’s life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don’t, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect.

As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen’s whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.

Scolds, schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps | William H. Gass

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When young and full of fellow feeling, Professor Joseph Skizzen had been tormented by the thought that the human race (which he naïvely believed was made up of great composers, a few harmlessly lecherous painters, maybe a mathematician or a scientist, a salon of writers, all aiming at higher things however they otherwise carried on) … that such an ennobled species might not prosper, indeed, might not survive in any serious way—symphonies sinking like torpedoed ships, murals spray-canned out of sight, statues toppled, books burned, plays updated by posturing directors; but now, older, wiser—more jaundiced, it’s true—he worried that it might (now that he saw that the human world was packed with politicians who could not even spell “scruple”; now that he saw that it was crammed with commercial types who adored only American money; now that he saw how it had been overrun by religious stupefiers, mountebanks, charlatans, obfuscators, and other dedicated misleaders, as well as corrupt professionals of all kinds—ten o’clock scholars, malpracticing doctors, bribed judges, sleepy deans, callous munitions makers and their pompous generals, pedophilic priests, but probably not pet lovers, not arborists, not gardeners—but Puritans, squeezers, and other assholes, ladies bountiful, ladies easy, shoppers diligent, lobbyists greedy, Eagle Scouts, racist cops, loan sharks, backbiters, gun runners, spies, Judases, philistines, vulgarians, dumbbells, dolts, boobs, louts, jerks, jocks, creeps, yokels, cretins, simps, pipsqueaks—not a mensch among them—nebbechs, scolds, schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps, dummkopfs, potato heads, klutzes, not to omit pushers, bigots, born-again Bible bangers, users, conmen, ass kissers, Casanovas, pimps, thieves and their sort, rapists and their kind, murderers and their ilk—the pugnacious, the miserly, the envious, the litigatious, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the lubricious, the jealous, the profligate, the gossipacious, the indifferent, the bored), well, now that he saw it had been so infested, he worried that the race might … might what? … the whole lot might sail on through floods of their own blood like a proud ship and parade out of the new Noah’s ark in the required pairs—for breeding, one of each sex—sportscasters, programmers, promoters, polluters, stockbrokers, bankers, body builders, busty models, show hosts, stamp and coin collectors, crooners, glamour girls, addicts, gamblers, shirkers, solicitors, opportunists, insatiable developers, arrogant agents, fudging accountants, yellow journalists, ambulance chasers and shysters of every sleazy pursuit, CEOs at the head of a whole column of white-collar crooks, psychiatrists, osteopaths, snake oilers, hucksters, fawners, fans of funerals, fortune-tellers and other prognosticators, road warriors, chieftains, Klansmen, Shriners, men and women of any cloth and any holy order—at every step moister of cunt and stiffer of cock than any cock or cunt before them, even back when the world was new, now saved and saved with spunk enough to couple and restock the pop … the pop … the goddamn population.

From William H. Gass’s novel Middle C.

Sally — Beth Van Hoesen

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Sally, 1979 by Beth Van Hoesen (1926-2010)

Cold — Remedios Varo

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Cold, 1948 by Remedios Varo (1908-1963)

Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race | Martin Luther King Jr.

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Ever since the birth of our nation, White America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves: one in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy, and another in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice. It is a state of being at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified, and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans.

The step backward has a new name today; it is called the white backlash, but the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities, and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of black power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.

This does not imply that all White Americans are racist; far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion, fought long and hard for racial justice. Nor does it mean that America has made no progress in her attempt to cure the body politic of the disease of racism or that the dogma of racism has not been considerably modified in recent years. However, for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country, even today, is freedom and equality, while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists.

Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on Western civilization. Arnold Toynbee has said that some twenty-six civilizations have risen upon the face of the Earth; almost all of them have descended into the junk heap of destruction. The decline and fall of these civilizations, according to Toynbee, was not caused by external invasion but by internal decay. They failed to respond creatively to the challenges impinging upon them.

If America does not respond creatively to the challenge to banish racism, some future historian will have to say that a great civilization died because it lacked the soul and commitment to make justice a reality for all men.

From Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 address to the National Conference on New Politics in Chicago.

“Nothing at All,” a very short story by Robert Walser

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“Nothing at All”

by

Robert Walser

Translated by Tom Whalen and Carol Gehrig

A woman who was only just a little flighty went to town to buy something good for supper for herself and her husband. Of course, many a woman has gone shopping and in so doing been just a little absentminded. So in no way is this story new; all the same, I shall continue and relate that the woman who had wanted to buy something good for supper for herself and her husband and for this reason had gone to town did not exactly have her mind on the matter. Over and over she considered what delights and delicacies she could buy for herself and her husband, but since she didn’t, as already mentioned, exactly have her mind on the matter and was a little absentminded, she came to no decision, and it seemed that she did not exactly know what she really wanted. “It must be something that can be made quickly since it’s already late, my time is limited,” she thought. God! She was, you know, only just a little flighty and did not exactly have her mind on the matter. Impartiality and objectivity are fine and good. But the woman here was not particularly objective, rather a little absentminded and flighty. Over and over she considered but came, as already mentioned, to no decision. The ability to make a decision is fine and good. But this woman possessed no such ability. She wanted to buy something really good and delicious for herself and her husband to eat. And for this fine reason she went to town; but she simply did not succeed, she simply did not succeed. Over and over she considered. She wasn’t lacking in good will, she certainly wasn’t lacking in good intentions, she was just a little flighty, didn’t have her mind on the matter, and therefore didn’t succeed. It isn’t good when minds aren’t on the matter, and, in a word, the woman finally got disgusted, and she went home with nothing at all.

“What delicious and good, exquisite and fine, sensible and intelligent food did you buy for supper?” asked the husband when he saw his good-looking, nice little wife come home.

She replied: “I bought nothing at all.”

“How’s that?” asked the husband.

She said: “Over and over I considered, but came to no decision, because the choice was too difficult for me to make. Also it was already late, and my time was limited. I wasn’t lacking in good will or the best of all intentions, but I just didn’t have my mind on the matter. Believe me, dear husband, it’s really terrible when you don’t keep your mind on a matter. It seems that I was only just a little flighty and because of that I didn’t succeed. I went to town and I wanted to buy something truly delicious and good for me and you, I wasn’t lacking in good will, over and over I considered, but the choice was too difficult and my mind wasn’t on the matter, and therefore I didn’t succeed, and therefore I bought nothing at all. We will have to be satisfied today with nothing at all for once, won’t we. Nothing at all can be prepared most quickly and, at any rate, doesn’t cause indigestion. Should you be angry with me for this? I can’t believe that.”

So for once, or for a change, they ate nothing at all at night, and the good upright husband was in no way angry, he was too chivalrous, too mannerly, and too well-behaved for that. He would never have dared to make an unpleasant face, he was much too cultivated. A good husband doesn’t do something like that. And so they ate nothing at all and were both satisfied, for it tasted exceptionally good to them. His wife’s idea to prefer nothing at all for a change the good husband found quite charming, and while he maintained that he was convinced she had had a delightful inspiration, he feigned his great joy, whereby he indeed concealed how welcome a nutritious, honest supper like, e.g., a hearty, valiant apple mash would have been.

Many other things would have probably tasted better to him than nothing at all.

Illustration from Ah Pook Is Here — Malcolm McNeill

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Illustration from Ah Pook Is Here, Malcolm McNeill’s 1970s collaboration with William S. Burroughs

Gerhard Rühm’s Cake & Prostheses/Max Blecher’s Transparent Body (Books acquired 11 Jan. 2024)

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I was quite excited earlier this week to get a pair of books in new English translations from the Czech publisher Twisted Spoon Press.

I started in on Gerhard Rühm’s Cake & Prostheses (translated from the German by Alexander Booth) late last night and kept reading and reading, greedily consuming the surreal, poetic “mini dramas” as thought experiments played out in my head. Here’s an early example of one:

practiced biblical saying

catechist : love thy neighbor as thyself.

exegete: i hate myself! (gives the former a hard hook to the chin tho crumples him to the floor).

I’ll admit I didn’t know of Gerhard Rühm, but I’m enjoying Cake & Prostheses and hope to muster a review in the next week or so. Here’s Twisted Spoon’s blurb:

An inveterate experimenter with image and text and music, Gerhard Rühm is truly one of the major figures of the postwar European avant-garde. Yet reprehensibly little of his work has appeared in English. This edition brings together a selection of his work spanning the past seven decades, displaying a wide thematic range (as he has remarked, “there is nothing that cannot become part of one’s poetic universe”) and ingenious combinations of music, pornography, banality, humor, and mythology. The first section comprises “mini dramas,” the text often combined with images and musical notation to create sensorial episodes, the expression of a singular aesthetic perception. The second section is a wry deconstruction of Grillparzer’s play Hero and Leander that juxtaposes original passages with images from a swimming manual and with a more contemporary erotic retelling of the mythological tale. The final section presents 24 short prose pieces: 12 from the early 1950s and 12 from the past few years.

I had heard of the surrealist Romanian poet Max Blecher, but am still largely unfamiliar with his work. Twisted Spoon is publishing his 1934 collection Transparent Body along with some, uh, other texts, in a translation by Gabi Reigh. Blurb:

Blecher’s very first book, the poetry collection Transparent Body, appeared in 1934, in a limited edition for bibliophiles. Yet general recognition as one of the most inventive European writers of his day came only with the publication of two of his three “novels” a few years later. And then he died, at the age of twenty-eight. But since 1930 Blecher had been publishing his poetry, short prose, essays, critiques, and other texts in the leading Romanian periodicals, some even appearing in important French publications, such as Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution. In addition, the past half century has seen the posthumous first publication of many texts in a variety of Romanian editions.

Transparent Body & Other Texts brings together Blecher’s entire output of poetry and short prose, from the earliest texts published during his lifetime to those appearing for the first time only recently. They range from stories in the vein of his fantastical, hallucinatory longer work to aphorisms, reportage, and notebook fragments. The volume also includes a selection of his correspondence with such major figures of Romanian interwar modernism as Geo Bogza, Ilarie Voronca, and Saşa Pană to give a fuller picture of Blecher’s engagement with the avant-garde and literary life even as his health was progressively deteriorating over the course of the 1930s.

I keep hoping the corporations will realize that publishing is not, in fact, a sane or normal business with a nice healthy relationship to capitalism | Ursula K. Le Guin

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I keep hoping the corporations will realize that publishing is not, in fact, a sane or normal business with a nice healthy relationship to capitalism. The practices of literary publishing houses are, in almost every way, by normal business standards, impractical, exotic, abnormal, insane.

Parts of publishing are, or can be forced to be, successfully capitalistic: the textbook industry is all too clear a proof of that. And how-to books and that kind of thing have good market predictability. But inevitably some of what publishers publish is, or is partly, literature: art. And the relationship of art to capitalism is, to put it mildly, vexed. It is seldom a happy marriage. Amused contempt is about the pleasantest emotion either partner feels for the other. Their definitions of what profiteth a man are too different.

So why don’t the corporations drop the literary publishing houses, or at least the literary departments of publishers they have bought, with amused contempt, as unprofitable? Why don’t they let them go back to muddling along making just enough, in a good year, to pay the printers, the editors, modest advances and crummy royalties, and plowing most profits back into taking chances on new writers? There’s no hope of creating new readers other than the kids coming up through the schools, who are no longer taught to read for pleasure and anyhow are distracted by electrons; not only is the relative number of readers unlikely to see any kind of useful increase, it may well keep shrinking. What’s in this dismal scene for you, Mr. Corporate Executive? Why don’t you just get out of it? Why don’t you dump the ungrateful little pikers and get on with the real business of business, ruling the world?

Is it because you think if you own publishing you can control what’s printed, what’s written, what’s read? Well, lotsa luck, sir. It’s a common delusion of tyrants. Writers and readers, even as they suffer from it, regard it with amused contempt.

From Ursula K. Le Guin’s 2008 essay “Staying Awake While We Read” as collected in The Wild Girls.

Study for Degenerate Art — Adrian Ghenie

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Study for Degenerate Art, 2022 by Adrian Ghenie (b. 1977)