Books and Tunes November 30th, 2018
For Thanksgiving, I worked a shift on the crisis hotline, ate at two vegan dinners, briefly explored Jumbo’s Clown Room, and finished up at an all night Thai spot, because I vegan food kind of sucks. But, in fairness, regular Thanksgiving food kind of sucks also. Apart from that I also read and listened to the following.
Notes on Music:
Yeah, that’s a Grease cover on there, and it’s dope.
All the music I listen to lately is such predictable indy stuff.
Except Billy Woods.
Or is that likewise on brand?
Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson – A surreal collection of stories set in New York and a fictional suburb in the first half of the 20th century. I thought the more directly supernatural ones were somewhat hit or miss, but the heart of it—a novella entitled Girl with the Golden Hair, about a cad wandering around New York and making bad decisions-- was thrillingly modern-feeling, sad and poignant and rung with things that still feel true. Except for some surprisingly odd depictions of heterosexual intercourse, the specificity of which was responsible for getting the book banned upon release (though this might have been intended as an aesthetic punishment, I can’t say.) Anyway, it made me feel wistful and warm for chilly Manhattan, it might do the same for you.
The Hansa by E. Gee Nash – Oh for the age of the gentle(wo)man historian, when any minor aristocrat with a C-level from Oxbridge could write a wide-ranging, faintly researched tome about whatever peculiar aspect of European history suited her fancy. I learned frankly very little about the Hansa, the league of German merchants which controlled much of the North Sea during the late middle ages, but upside this was one of those books that was printed on that really stiff, dry parchment paper, where little bits flake away like erudite confetti. I used to read a lot more of those.
Beast in View by Margaret Millar – A miserable heiress is plagued by a series of mad, threatening phone calls; when her aging stock broker is hired to find the source, he uncovers a great chunk of misery and misfortune. Probably there would not be much argument that no genre so effectively skewered the superficial morals and staid mores of mid-century America like the classic noir, and Beast of View does very well in that vein—in its cruel but convincing dissection of its characters foibles. The plot itself is a little scattershot, but it’s got a sharp ending.
The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric – The history of the town surrounding the eponymous bridge, which links the Turkish East from the Christian West, from the structure’s erection until the start of World War I. I’ve had a fascination with the Western Balkans, which is to say the former-Yugoslavia, since my brother gave me Rebecca West’s superlative Black Lamb and Gray Falcon when I was in high school. (Which, if you haven’t read, is one of the best things ever written). With joy do I remember being escorted through Belgrade by a blue-eyed Slav; with gratitude do I recall the pair of Romani who let me rest in their antique shop in Kotor, the father plying me with oranges and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Anyone can love anything, and any particularly idiosyncratic affection, carefully nurtured, can offer insight into the nature of the species. Still I am glad my particular passion lay in the Land of the Southern Slavs; its slate peaks and bright blue bays and winding rivers. In so far as one can speak of a national character (about which I am always uncomfortable) the southern Slavs always seemed to me to be the most bi-polar of a bi-polar people; possessed of a rich, life-affirming passion and also of an undeniable capacity for savagery. These are, in any case, the essential themes of this beautiful book. The horrors and joy of human existence, and our capacity for kindness and cruelty. As the centuries turn, the inhabitants of a small town in Bosnia find the implacable hand of human events bearing them from misery towards destruction.
Impossible not to note with sadness that the presumable basis for the bridge, the Stari Most, an arch of silver, was destroyed during by partisans in the ’93 war (though rebuilt after). Oh, pitiable world of which we are a part.
Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino – Three short stories, out of a proposed five celebrating one of the physical senses. I don’t know how to review three short stories. I liked the second more than the first, and the third more than the second. My initial feelings about Calvino have softened, but I’m still not sure I’d include him in my top rank of fantasists.
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones — An adolescent follows his family of white trash werewolves on a episodic series of misadventures through the American south. The mechanics are clever, and it feels honest in its depiction of poverty, but I thought some of the stylistic flourishes could have been toned do and the broader plot doesn’t quite do service to the underlying idea.
Gustavus Adolphus by Michael Roberts – I went through a Wars of Religion phase, as do, I assume, all red-blooded American males, but it had been a little while since I’d spent any time with Wallenstein and Tilly, with the White King and the Emperor. This was a short but thoughtful and genuinely well-written discussion of the life of the Swedish Thunderbolt, Protestantism’s great champion and one of the foremost military geniuses of his age. Not sure who shares this interest besides me, but you could do worse.
Girlfriends, Ghosts and Other Stories by Robert Walser – A scattershot selection of commentary from everyone’s favorite late dual-empire stylist (fuck you, Stefan Zweig!) There’s a lot of stuff in here about happy walks in sunlit woods, and the joy of a beer and a good pretzel, threaded through with the sort of melancholy which saw the author spend the final quarter of his life in a mental institution. Sometimes I bought into it, often times I felt that the writing was over-precious, like I was making a meal out of marzipan. I don’t love Walzer, but I appreciate how other, kinder readers would.
The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan – An English couple on a tryst in a foreign city get embroiled with a strange couple. A savage and vigorously disturbing exploration of sexual sadism. I can’t recall reading something and feeling so disgusted afterward, which, given how much I read, is a compliment. Which is to say, this was extremely discomfiting, but not without artistry.
To Marry Medusa by Theodore Sturgeon – A single polyp of a vast alien intelligence lands by chance in a drunken bum, frustrating its attempts at world domination. Like last week’s More Than human, I thought this was clever and well-written and undermined by a lot of third-act philosophizing, truly the bane of mid-century science fiction. Still, for a genre I don’t really enjoy, I kind of enjoyed this.
Mochette by Georges Bernanos – A series of miserable things happens to a girl in rural France. This is an example of that sort of very self-consciously ‘Catholic’ novel, possessed of a morbid affection for misfortune and portraying despair and salvation are flip sides of the same coin. The older I get the less sympathy I have for this peculiar form of self-indulgence, which seems uncomfortably close to masochism. I’m pretty much with Orwell on Waugh, and even Flannery O’Connor’s immense genius stumbles against her endless parade of limbless unfortunates. But, like both of those authors, I wouldn’t dream of denying Bernanos’s talent and skill. Not for me, maybe for you.
The Temple of Gold by William Goldman – Goldman’s sad passing propelled me to check out this coming of age story, to the best of my knowledge the only non-genre novel he wrote. It’s Goldman’s first book, and not his best, and while there’s probably an interesting few hundred words to get here about the way in which Goldman’s genius as a crime/horror/western/fantasy/etc/writer don’t lend themselves to this more traditional task, I’m not going to bother with them cause I got other shit to do. Nil nisi bonum, and all that.
The Balkan Wars by Andre Gerolymatos – A discussion of the national character of the Balkan peoples as developed by the last half-millennium of more or less constant warfare. I thought the arrangement was a little peculiar—it’s almost but not quite chronological—and there is an uneven dedication to the specifics of the various conflicts which are kind of confusing. But it’s well-written and pretty-even handed, almost an impossible task when discussing the dozen competing national groups taking part in the tableau.
Modern Man in Search of a Soul by CG Jung – Rather than waste a lot of time discussing the development of psychology, the rest of the review is going to be a scattershot series of impressions about a (fairly) seminal text in modern culture.
· As a therapist, I’d take Jung over Freud, but in terms of scathing observations into the nature of humanity, I’ll take the Austrian.
· Still, Freud was completely batshit, I’m glad someone got to point that out.
· Then again, collective memory is also garbage and I don’t know how anyone could seriously hold to it. That, for instance, the ancient Greeks associated horses with the sea is of no relevance to a patient’s dream unless your patient happens to be a classicist.
· I am skeptical of trying to force narrative coherence on the output of the unconscious mind; you can barely do it with the output of the conscious.
· Also, magic isn’t real.
· Still, there’s a joy to the thing, an honest affection for the human species, an acknowledgement of ignorance combined with a willingness to improve the lot of others that I could get down with.
Henri Duchemin and His Shadows by Emmanuel Bove – A collection of lovely, sad, strange short stories. I particularly liked the one where a man destroys everything in his life just to prove he can do it.
The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales by Patrick K. Ford (trans.) – This is of anthropological interest but, apart from a comically long and peculiarly engrossing description of the knights of Arthur’s court, I can’t imagine anyone enjoying it for its literary merit.