Books I Read March 21st, 2021

I remain upright.

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The Other Side by Alfred Kubin – A journey to a foreign land/the depths of the unconscious as understood by a German illustrator of the early 20th century. Weird and disturbing and vivid, if kind of listless.

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Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams –

The thought returns: Why have I not

but for imagined beauty where there is none

or none available, long since

put myself deliberately in the way of death


Or, alternatively:

Just as the nature of briars

is to tear flesh,

I have proceeded

through them.

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The Summer Book by Tove Jansson – An old woman spends the summers with her motherless granddaughter on an island in the gulf of Finland. I love, love, love Tove Jansson. Her descriptions of nature (which I usually can't really stand) are sublime, and her vignettes of family and childhood beautifully vivid, cruel and sweet. Such a delight.

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Clinch by Martin Holmen – A sociopathic bisexual ex-boxer turned loan collector is drawn into a murder in pre-war Stockholm. Nasty! A well-executed example of the genre.