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Jan. 7th, 2006 02:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionSome books read October-December:
Heart of Darkness: Third or so time through it, which I didn't mind; what I did mind was having to hear my substandard teacher and her substandard students discuss Achebe's attack--the only way the story's approached anymore--so I sat those classes out. In hindsight this might have been what got me in bad with that instructor. As for the book: Great writing, structurally beautiful, Marlow's confusion is clearly Conrad's own. Which makes political readings moot as hell, along with most others.
Checkpoint: A Nicholson Baker story in dialogue form, set all in one hotel room, about one man talking another out of assassinating Bush. Amusing, echoing many of your own feelings, though so topical as to be presumably unreadable by 2010. The crazy one's right about steak.
Decreation: Most recent Anne Carson collection, beyond excellent as usual. Heavy on dramatic pieces, which is great as she's very fun with dialogue. The title essay is fascinating. The first half of the book is a bit obsessive about Antonioni. Watch Red Desert prior to reading, is my advice.
The Good Soldier: Another reread. Didn't like it so well this time: another case of an author not making sense of their own feelings and opinions re. what they're portraying. Ford verges on Brideshead Revisited-style Catholic propaganda, then seems to reject that, then comes back toward it. There doesn't seem to be a plan to the religious intrusions, is the thing: the novel is about a particular man's confusion, so confusions in the narrative itself are uselessly distracting. Tolstoy's Confession written on a broken Rubik's Cube. By no means a bad book, though. There's a paragraph near the end I absolutely love and may post.
Trilogy: H.D.'s attempt, during and after the Blitz, to divine something enduring, some end to cultural and personal anxiety. Religions are mixed, revised. There are attractions (I like the shell poem best), but seeking salvation through externals is an unpoetic enterprise. For me, poetry is self-embodied salvation, a place not a map. Or maybe a place that is its own map. "And by the incantation of this verse..."
To the Lighthouse: Best-constructed novel I can think of, and among the loveliest. With people the more you see the more you love (more, not "longer"). Woolf figures out the math of this: as soon as you love someone all through, you are outside them, you are free. Exorcism through a kiss. Unique end product: a family novel in the voice of liberation (Operation Shylock, The Rainbow, Aegypt etc.). Other glories: the sea and its changing meanings, motherhood as an aesthetic, the deservedly famous intersection.
Ulysses and Jude I need to bring myself to finish. Is there some print or internet version of "Penelope" that punctuates it? I find it awfully annoying as is.
The Stars My Destination: Fun, hyper '50s sci-fi novel.
Ammons' Selected Poems: I love Ammons. Seashore floods and fractals become the movements of the spirit. A very American sort of poetry, very "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Ammons is so clear though, and never drops an essential element: he is in each poem. Him, the landscape, the movement in question. His and Stephen Crane's verses should be among the first taught. That's what poetry's getting at, kids, no matter how Dantean, how baroque. These dartings, those ugly attractions. You here now this because.
Peer Gynt: Deeper in than my pituitary gland.
The English Patient: Teeth-grindingly "sensuous" and pretentious, though I guess it has its strong points. The bomb stuff was fascinating.
Also read lots of Mamet plays, of which "Bobby Gould in Hell" was the most fun.
Heart of Darkness: Third or so time through it, which I didn't mind; what I did mind was having to hear my substandard teacher and her substandard students discuss Achebe's attack--the only way the story's approached anymore--so I sat those classes out. In hindsight this might have been what got me in bad with that instructor. As for the book: Great writing, structurally beautiful, Marlow's confusion is clearly Conrad's own. Which makes political readings moot as hell, along with most others.
Checkpoint: A Nicholson Baker story in dialogue form, set all in one hotel room, about one man talking another out of assassinating Bush. Amusing, echoing many of your own feelings, though so topical as to be presumably unreadable by 2010. The crazy one's right about steak.
Decreation: Most recent Anne Carson collection, beyond excellent as usual. Heavy on dramatic pieces, which is great as she's very fun with dialogue. The title essay is fascinating. The first half of the book is a bit obsessive about Antonioni. Watch Red Desert prior to reading, is my advice.
The Good Soldier: Another reread. Didn't like it so well this time: another case of an author not making sense of their own feelings and opinions re. what they're portraying. Ford verges on Brideshead Revisited-style Catholic propaganda, then seems to reject that, then comes back toward it. There doesn't seem to be a plan to the religious intrusions, is the thing: the novel is about a particular man's confusion, so confusions in the narrative itself are uselessly distracting. Tolstoy's Confession written on a broken Rubik's Cube. By no means a bad book, though. There's a paragraph near the end I absolutely love and may post.
Trilogy: H.D.'s attempt, during and after the Blitz, to divine something enduring, some end to cultural and personal anxiety. Religions are mixed, revised. There are attractions (I like the shell poem best), but seeking salvation through externals is an unpoetic enterprise. For me, poetry is self-embodied salvation, a place not a map. Or maybe a place that is its own map. "And by the incantation of this verse..."
To the Lighthouse: Best-constructed novel I can think of, and among the loveliest. With people the more you see the more you love (more, not "longer"). Woolf figures out the math of this: as soon as you love someone all through, you are outside them, you are free. Exorcism through a kiss. Unique end product: a family novel in the voice of liberation (Operation Shylock, The Rainbow, Aegypt etc.). Other glories: the sea and its changing meanings, motherhood as an aesthetic, the deservedly famous intersection.
Ulysses and Jude I need to bring myself to finish. Is there some print or internet version of "Penelope" that punctuates it? I find it awfully annoying as is.
The Stars My Destination: Fun, hyper '50s sci-fi novel.
Ammons' Selected Poems: I love Ammons. Seashore floods and fractals become the movements of the spirit. A very American sort of poetry, very "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Ammons is so clear though, and never drops an essential element: he is in each poem. Him, the landscape, the movement in question. His and Stephen Crane's verses should be among the first taught. That's what poetry's getting at, kids, no matter how Dantean, how baroque. These dartings, those ugly attractions. You here now this because.
Peer Gynt: Deeper in than my pituitary gland.
The English Patient: Teeth-grindingly "sensuous" and pretentious, though I guess it has its strong points. The bomb stuff was fascinating.
Also read lots of Mamet plays, of which "Bobby Gould in Hell" was the most fun.
