Author: Biblioklept

“Sorokin and the Rest of Us,” an essay by Svetlana Satchkova on the anxiety of Vladimir Sorokin’s influence

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Gregory Klassen, First Day of the Season, 2023

The Fall/Winter 2023 issue of Evergreen Review includes an “Sorokin and the Rest of Us,” an essay by Svetlana Satchkova on Vladimir Sorokin.

The essay includes a number of illustrations by Gregory Klassen, who illustrated Max Lawton’s translation of Sorokin’s shocking novel Their Four Hearts.

From “Sorokin and the Rest of Us”:

Why is Sorokin in a class by himself? Why is he the only contemporary Russian writer who takes these kinds of risks? If we imagine Russian literature as earth with the sky above, Sorokin would be sitting up on a cloud together with Tolstoy and Chekhov, while the rest of us––his Russian contemporaries––would be confined to the earth’s surface, maybe some of us having risen as high as the tenth floor of a building. Present-day Russian literature isn’t very original and is forever ripping off Anglophone fiction. This matter is personal to me, since I’m a Russian writer myself or at least I was before I made the United States my home and started writing in English.

So I don’t mean to praise Sorokin as much as I mean to ask: why are we as a whole not more interesting? There must be reasons for this that have to do with the soul, with imagination, and with courage––and also with history and the current milieu. What has prevented me from being a writer like Sorokin? Would I even want to be?

Plagiarism

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Thomas Chatterton (1770), English poet and forger, arsenic poisoning

Heinrich von Kleist (1811), German author, poet and journalist, gunshot

Manuel Acuña (1873), Mexican poet, ingestion of potassium cyanide

Amy Levy (1889), British writer, inhaling charcoal gas

Per Sivle (1904), Norwegian poet and novelist, gunshot

Sergei Yesenin (1925), Russian and Soviet poet, hanging

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1927), Japanese writer, overdose of barbital

Kostas Karyotakis (1928), Greek poet, gunshot

Charlotte Mew (1928), English poet, Lysol poisoning

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1930), Russian and Soviet poet, gunshot

Vachel Lindsay (1931), American poet, poison

Hart Crane (1932), American poet, jumped off ship

Austra Skujiņa (1932) Latvian poet, jump from a bridge

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935), American writer, chloroform overdose

Robert E. Howard (1936), American author, gunshot to the head

Horacio Quiroga (1937), Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer, drank a glass of cyanide

Alfonsina Storni (1938), Argentine poet, drowning

Walter Benjamin (1940), German-Jewish literary critic and culture theorist, morphine overdose

Walter Hasenclever (1940), German poet and playwright, overdose of Veronal

Marina Tsvetaeva (1941), Russian poet, hanging

Virginia Woolf (1941), English author, essayist, and publisher, drowning

Stefan Zweig (1942), Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer, barbiturate overdose

Osamu Dazai (1948), Japanese author, drowning in the Tamagawa Aqueduct

Cesare Pavese (1950), Italian author, overdose of barbiturates

Sadegh Hedayat (1951), Iranian writer, carbon monoxide poisoning

Ernest Hemingway (1961), American writer and journalist, gunshot to head

Sylvia Plath (1963), American poet, novelist, children’s author, gas inhalation

Charles R. Jackson (1968), American writer, barbiturate overdose

José María Arguedas (1969), Peruvian novelist and poet, gunshot

John Kennedy Toole (1969), American novelist, carbon monoxide poisoning

Paul Celan (1970), Romanian poet, drowning in the Seine

Yukio Mishima (1970), Japanese author, poet, playwright, film director and activist, ritual seppuku disembowelment

John Berryman (1972), American poet, jumped off the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Yasunari Kawabata (1972), Japanese writer, gas inhalation

Alejandra Pizarnik (1972), Argentine poet, secobarbital overdose

William Inge (1973), American writer, carbon monoxide poisoning

B. S. Johnson (1973), English novelist, poet, literary critic, sports journalist, television producer and filmmaker, cut his wrists

Anne Sexton (1974), American poet, carbon monoxide poisoning

Jens Bjørneboe (1976), Norwegian novelist, hanging

Frank Stanford (1978), American poet, gunshot

Jean-Louis Bory (1979), French writer, gunshot to the chest

Breece D’J Pancake (1979), American short story writer, gunshot

Wally Wood (1981), American comic book writer and artist, gunshot

Arthur Koestler (1983), Hungarian-British author, novelist, barbiturates

Richard Brautigan (1984), American writer, gunshot

Alice Bradley Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) (1987), American writer, gunshot

Hai Zi (1989), Chinese poet, lying down on railroad tracks

Jerzy Kosinski (1991), Polish-born American writer, suffocation with plastic bag

Charles Crumb (1992), American comics writer and artist, overdosed on pills

Gu Cheng (1993), Chinese poet, hanging

John O’Brien (1994), American novelist, gunshot to the head

Walter M. Miller Jr. (1996), American writer, gunshot

Hunter S. Thompson (2005), gonzo journalist, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, gunshot

Thomas M. Disch (2008), American writer, gunshot

David Foster Wallace (2008), American author, hanging

Ned Vizzini (2013), American author of young adult fiction, leapt from a building

Mark Fisher (2017), English writer and political theorist, hanging

Anthony Bourdain (2018), American chef, author, and television personality, hanging

Victor Heringer (2018), Brazilian novelist and poet, winner of the 2013 Prêmio Jabuti, self-defenestration

David Berman (2019), American musician and poet, hanging

24 frames from Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy

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From The King of Comedy, 1982. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Cinematography by Fred Schuler. Stills via Film Grab.

Uncle George — Mervyn Peake

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Uncle George by Mervyn Peake (1911-1968)

Blog about John Crowley’s novel Beasts

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I finished John Crowley’s 1976 novel Beasts this morning. Loved it.

Beasts is not quite 200 pages, each of its nine chapters centering on a different character’s perspective. Crowley’s writing is rich and poetic here, as readers of his 1981 opus Little, Big might expect. In that novel, likely his most famous, Crowley conjures a vast, deep, detailed world; Little, Big is big big.

Beasts is little big: each of its nine chapters might be read as a short story in which we get a glimpse from one perspective at a balkanized, dystopian post-USA. A species of genetic hybrid called leos are corralled on reservations or outright hunted by the militant Union for Social Engineering; what remains of the Federal Government vies for control with various Autonomous zones; utopian cultists try to hide from the world; slavery has returned under the guise of contractual indentured servitude. A mutant fox, the trickster Reynard, plays kingmaker behind the scenes. The nine chapters refuse to explicitly connect the pieces of the world the present; that is the job of the reader. As Joachim Boaz puts it in his excellent, thorough review of the novel,

Beasts embodies a fascinating dialogue between nature and civilization, man and animal…  Do not expect a straightforward narrative for many chapters function more as mood pieces.  Each is part of a mosaic of images, characters, and philosophies that struggle to survive, or are altogether snuffed out, in a rapidly collapsing Old Order.

That imminent collapse is where Beasts leaves us, its final line a utopian promise: Shall we begin?

Elsa Morante’s Lies and Sorcery (Book acquired, 31 Aug. 2023)

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NYRB is publishing a new translation of Elsa Morante’s Lies and Sorcery by Jenny McPhee.

“From Below, as a Neighbor” — Lydia Davis

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“From Below, as a Neighbor”

by

Lydia Davis

If I were not me and overheard me from below, as a neighbor, talking to him, I would say to myself how glad I was not to be her, not to be sounding the way she is sounding, with a voice like her voice and an opinion like her opinion. But I cannot hear myself from below, as a neighbor, I cannot hear how I ought not to sound, I cannot be glad I am not her, as I would be if I could hear her. Then again, since I am her, I am not sorry to be here, up above, where I cannot hear her as a neighbor, where I cannot say to myself, as I would have to from below, how glad I am not to be her.

There is such an abyss between one story and the other, or between a story and the lack of a story, between the lived experience and the reconstruction | César Aira

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Imagine a brilliant police detective summarizing his investigations for the husband of the victim, the widower. Thanks to his subtle deductions he has been able to “reconstruct” how the murder was committed; he does not know the identity of the murderer, but he has managed to work out everything else with an almost magical precision, as if he had seen it happen. And his interlocutor, the widower, who is, in fact, the murderer, has to admit that the detective is a genius, because it really did happen exactly as he says; yet at the same time, although of course he actually saw it happen and is the only living eyewitness as well as the culprit, he cannot match what happened with what the policeman is telling him, not because there are errors, large or small, in the account, or details out of place, but because the match is inconceivable, there is such an abyss between one story and the other, or between a story and the lack of a story, between the lived experience and the reconstruction (even when the reconstruction has been executed to perfection) that widower simply cannot see a relation between them; which leads him to conclude that he is innocent, that he did not kill his wife.

From César Aira’s short novel An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter; translation by Chris Andrews.

Do Nothing and Let Them Laugh — James Ensor

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Do Nothing and Let Them Laugh, 1939 by James Ensor (1860-1949)

Correspondence – Erik Thor Sandberg

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Correspondence, 2021 by Erik Thor Sandberg (b. 1975)

Steven Moore on the wild talents of Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, and the occultist Charles Fort

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At Socrates on the Beach, there’s a nice long essay by critic Steven Moore that traces the occult influence of Charles Fort on Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis.

From “Wild Talents: Pynchon, Gaddis, and Charles Fort“:

Pynchon and Gaddis are “wild talents” not in Fort’s original sense, but in their daring willingness to incorporate such exotic material into their novels, which previously had been confined to science fiction, fantasy, and occult novels. At any rate, it is an extraordinary coincidence that two of the greatest American novels of the 20th century evoke Charles Fort, of all people, despite what he thought of coincidences.

Stairway — Edward Hopper

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Stairway, 1949 by Edward Hopper (1882-1967)

The Letters of Gustave Flaubert (Book acquired, 26 Aug. 2023)

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NYRB has a new one-volume edition of Francis Steegmuller’s translation of Flaubert’s letters. Their blurb:

Here we have Flaubert’s youthful, sensual outpourings to his mistress, the poet Louise Colet, and, as he advances, still unknown, into his thirties, the wrestle to write Madame Bovary. We hear, too, of his life-changing trip to Egypt, as described to family and friends, and then there are lively exchanges with Baudelaire, with the influential critic Sainte-Beuve, and with Guy de Maupassant, his young protégé. Flaubert’s letters to George Sand reveal her as the great confidante of his later years.

Steegmuller’s book, a classic in its own right, is both a splendid life of Flaubert in his own words and the ars poetica of the master who laid the foundations for modern writers from James Joyce to Lydia Davis. Originally issued in two volumes, the book appears here for the first time under a single cover.

RECENT HISTORY OF THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD | Don DeLillo

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The day after that he experienced what at first he thought might be some variation of déjà vu. He’d finished lunch and stood at the door of a corner restaurant, able to see, at a severe angle, the lean elderly man who frequently appeared outside Federal Hall holding a hand-lettered political placard over his head for the benefit of those gathered on the steps. He, Lyle, was cleaning his fingernails, surreptitiously, using a toothpick he’d taken from a bowl near the cash register inside the restaurant. The paradox of material flowing backward toward itself. In this case there was no illusion involved. He had stood on this spot, not long ago, at this hour of the day, doing precisely what he was doing now, his eyes on the old man, whose body was aligned identically with the edge of a shadow on the façade of the building he faced, his sign held at the same angle, it seemed, the event converted into a dead replica by means of structural impregnation, the mineral replacement of earlier matter. Lyle decided to scatter the ingredients by heading directly toward the man instead of back to the Exchange, as he was certain he’d done the previous time. First he read the back of the sign, the part facing the street, recalling the general tenor. Then he sat on the steps, with roughly a dozen other people, and reached for his cigarettes. Burks was across the street, near the entrance to the Morgan Bank. People were drifting back to work. Lyle smoked a moment, then got up and approached the sign-holder. The strips of wood that steadied the edges of the sign extended six inches below it, giving the man a natural grip. Burks looked unhappy, arms folded across his chest.
“How long have you been doing this?” Lyle said. “Holding this sign?”

The man turned to see who was addressing him.

“Eighteen years.”

Sweat ran down his temples, trailing pale outlines on his flushed skin. He wore a suit but no tie. The life inside his eyes had dissolved. He’d made his own space, a world where people were carvings on rock. His right hand jerked briefly. He needed a haircut.

“Where, right here?”

“I moved to here.”

“Where were you before?”

“The White House.”

“You were in Washington.”

“They moved me out of there.”

“Who moved you out?”

“Haldeman and Ehrlichman.”

“They wouldn’t let you stand outside the gate.”

“The banks sent word.”

Lyle wasn’t sure why he’d paused here, talking to this man. Dimly he perceived a strategy. Perhaps he wanted to annoy Burks, who obviously was waiting to talk to him. Putting Burks off to converse with a theoretical enemy of the state pleased him. Another man moved into his line of sight, middle-aged and heavy, a drooping suit, incongruous pair of glasses—modish and overdesigned. Lyle turned, noting Burks had disappeared.

“Why do you hold the sign over your head?”

“People today.”

“They want to be dazzled.”

“There you are.”

Lyle wasn’t sure what to do next. Best wait for one of the others to move first. He took a step back in order to study the front of the man’s sign, which he’d never actually read until now.

RECENT HISTORY

OF THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD

CIRCA 1850–1920 Workers hands cut off on Congo rubber plantations, not meeting work quotas. Photos in vault Bank of England. Rise of capitalism.

THE INDUSTRIAL AGE Child labor, accidents, death. Cruelty = profits. Workers slums Glasgow, New York, London. Poverty, disease, separation of family. Strikes, boycotts, etc. = troops, police, injunctions. Bitter harvest of Ind. Revolution.

MAY 1886 Haymarket Riot, Chicago, protest police killings of workers, 10 dead, 50 injured, bomb blast, firing into crowd.

SEPT 1920 Wall St. blast, person or persons unknown, 40 dead, 300 injured, marks remain on wall of J. P. Morgan Bldg. Grim reminder.

FEB 1934 Artillery fire, Vienna, shelling of workers homes, 1,000 dead inc. 9 Socialist leaders by hanging/strangulation. Rise of Nazis. Eve of World War, etc.

There was more in smaller print fitted onto the bottom of the sign. The overweight man, wilted, handkerchief in hand, was standing five feet away. Lyle, stepping off the sidewalk, touched the old man, the sign-holder, as he walked behind him, putting a hand on the worn cloth that covered his shoulder, briefly, a gesture he didn’t understand. Then he accompanied the other man down to Bowling Green, where they sat on a bench near a woman feeding pigeons.

From Don DeLillo’s novel Players.

Labor — Will Barnet

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Labor, 1935 by Will Barnet (1911-2012)

“Marabou” — Joy Williams

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“Marabou”

by

Joy Williams

The funeral of Anne’s son, Harry, had not gone smoothly. Other burials were taking place at the same hour, including that of a popular singer several hundred yards away whose mourner fans carried on loudly under a lurid striped tent. Still more fans pressed against the cemetery’s wrought-iron gates, screaming and eating potato chips. Anne had been distracted. She gazed at the other service in disbelief, thinking of the singer’s songs that she had heard now and then on the radio.

Her own group, Harry’s friends, was subdued. They were pale, young, and all wore sunglasses. Most of them were classmates from the prep school he had graduated from two years before, and all were addicts, or former addicts of some sort. Anne couldn’t tell the difference between those who were recovering and those who were still hard at it. She was sure there was a difference, of course, and it only appeared there wasn’t. They all had a manner. There were about twenty of them, boys and girls, strikingly alike in black. Later she took them all out to a restaurant. “Death … by none art thou understood,” one boy kept saying. “Henry Vaughan.”

They were all bright enough, Anne supposed. After a while he stopped saying it. They had calamari, duck, champagne, everything. They were on the second floor of the restaurant and had the place to themselves. They stayed for hours. By the time they left, one girl was saying earnestly, “You know a word I like is interplanetary.” Continue reading ““Marabou” — Joy Williams” →

Milking Practice with Artificial Udder — Evelyn Dunbar

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Milking Practice with Artificial Udders, 1940 by Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960)