(no subject)

[proximoception]

Just past halfway through Suttree after...I don't know, a year? It's a beautiful book, but with no narrative momentum whatsoever and a large amount of extremely dense writing (usually even more beautiful). Sketches from a gnostic dropout-fisherman's album, almost. After this I'll be caught up on him--he'll join Crowley as the only living novelist of whom I've read everything, not counting hidey hole odds and ends. Roth stumped me with When She Was Good and The Great American Novel, and I've not yet dared open Letting Go though it's said to have its fans. I haven't made it through Carson's two prose books yet, despite their being clearly awesome.

Took stock of last year's reading--25 books, employing a charitably wide definition of "book". Not abnormal for the last few years but still depressing. Read lots of book chunks, also typical lately. I think I do read much more attentively now, at least. I read to possess, or at least more so--the longest human attention span is still pretty short, and mine's far, far from the longest. But I read to get and remember all I can more than get to what's next. A point comes when you feel you know what's next, when the bigger mystery becomes what the hell just happened, what the hell is ever happening.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Harrogate's probably my favorite McCarthy character. So lovingly drawn.

I've always liked how the book describes a train as a millipede (page 88 in the Vintage paperback) and then reverses the metaphor and describes a millipede as a train (page 262). Wonder if he knew he did that.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I'm sure he did.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Also, I've still only read Little Big of Crowley. How would you rank his books? Which one should I read next?

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Little, Big six more times!

More realistically:

1. Little, Big
2. Engine Summer
3. Aegypt (The first volume is up with those two, as are various paragraphs, chapters, and hundred page stretches of the latter ones.)

4. Lord Byron's Novel (for the Byron novel itself)

5. The Translator
6. The Great Work of Time
7. The Deep
8. Beasts

Even Beasts is awesome, actually. And there's something to be said for reading his books in order, since the first three play like isolated aspects of LB's ridiculously dense and complete vision (despite lightness of presentation), and Solitudes follows directly on from those. Crowley breaks into his later phase in the '90s, then makes some attempts at synthesis in LBN and especially Endless Things, though I hold something was forgotten despite something else being learned. Maybe that's not uncommon.

Order of composition's a confused matter:

50s-60s: never published proto-Deep
60s: never published proto-Engine Summer
70-75: most of Little Big
75: The Deep revised and published
76: Beasts
76-78: most of the rest of Little Big
79: Engine Summer revised and published
81: Little Big published
80ish-87: Aegypt (v1)
89: Great Work of Time
87ish-94: Love and Sleep (v2)
94ish-2000: Daemonomania
200-ish-2002: Some of Endless Things
2002: The Translator
2002-ish-2005: More of Endless things
2005: Lord Byron's Novel
2005-2007: Endless Things rewritten and published
2007: somewhat revised Aegypt v1 retitled The Solitudes, published
2008: somewhat revised Love and Sleep published
2008: revised Daemonomania published
2009: (any day now) revised (?) Endless Things published

Come to think of it, just read Engine Summer.

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

I was thinking Engine Summer next, but I like your idea of reading them in order. I don't know if the libraries will be able to accommodate that.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I have plenty of spares if you'd like some.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and:

2009: (allegedly) slightly revised Little Big 25 published

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Most of his stories are published in Novelties and Souvenirs: ones I liked a lot include In Blue and Gone--Great Work of Time's also reprinted in there. The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroes is published separately (also available in Conjunctions 39 (I think)) and is pretty great also, in the manner of his late phase. Conversation Hearts I haven't finished yet but it seems uncharacteristically sucky. In Other Words collects his essays, which are usually very interesting.

[parishat.livejournal.com]

what did you think of "The Green Child"? I liked the deliberate eeriness of it. Did I tell you I was visiting HB on the hot summer day he signed hundreds of copies of LB? I took a peek--it'll be a very beautiful book.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

It's going to be so great! I might fake a flu to have time to read it, when it comes out.

"Green Child" I disliked at the time but it's haunted me. Makes me think of what I take to be his sensibility shift post-Solitudes, though I think it was one of his earlier stories. "Into the desolation of reality."

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Another fine story: Novelty, a sort of appendix to both Little, Big and Aegypt. Nightingale Sings at Night is like a Little Big offshoot also. In Blue is a sort of companion to Beasts and Engine Summer.