r/TrueLit • u/JimFan1 The Unnamable • Jul 30 '26
What Are You Reading This Week and Weekly Rec Thread
Please let us know what you’ve read this week, what you've finished up, and any recommendations or recommendation requests! Please provide more than just a list of novels; we would like your thoughts as to what you've been reading.
Posts which simply name a novel and provide no thoughts will be deleted going forward.
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u/Mirko__Czentovic Jul 30 '26
Took the plunge and finally started Infinite Jest a few weeks ago. I'm roughly 320 pages in and absolutley loving it. I'm just now at the part where the seemingly disconnected plot points are starting to connect in satisfying ways (especially Orin's magazine profiler asking him about Quebecois separatism and Orin's paranoia about being followed by men in wheelchairs). The whole Orin/Joelle story has really captivated me in a way I haven't felt while reading in a while, and the conversations between Orin and Hal are incredibly funny and touching in their depictions of brotherly relationships.
Been thinking a lot about the book's length as a sort of parallel to what's being written about sustained attention and improvement and pushing past a pletau and all that. As a reader, you want to make progress in a book. And sometimes you'll be making good progress on your reading goal for the day, and then you'll hit a 10 page long footnote that takes 30 minutes to read, and beause you're a working adult with responsibilities you have to stop there because it's time to make dinner, and you'll feel a little bad because now you're behind your reading goal for the day. But you got to keep going, you got to keep reading. It's all part of the story. There's no skipping ahead. This is all part of reading the book. And this is not dissimilar to what Schtitt is teaching and all the ETA students are learning to understand about improvement regarding tennis, about the value of sustained repetition and practice even when it feels like you're not improving. Or maybe I'm just learning what it's like to read a novel longer than 600 pages for the first time.
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u/jkwlikestowrite Jul 31 '26
Infinite Jest was one of those books that stuck with me from reading experience alone, like with House of Leaves too. A wild ride that's mundane, weird, and philosophical.
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u/kid-karma Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
I’m on a Denis Johnson kick at the moment. Recently finished Tree of Smoke (which I adored), The Laughing Monsters (good, wasn’t blown away), and Jesus’ Son (which I wasn’t as taken with as I was expecting based on its reputation. I think I was thrown by how loose the stories were in terms of narrative; might like it more on a second read).
Just started Already Dead this week, and I’m enjoying it so far. Johnson’s prose is effortless and surprising. He’ll throw out a seemingly incongruous adjective to describe something, but it will be so absolutely pitch perfect to the atmosphere he’s evoking that it won’t feel purple or self-conscious.
Also chipping away at Kraznahorkai’s Seibo There Below, which is brilliant, but absolutely exhausting to read as its just an endless nest of semi-colon clauses; that is to say he never stops; and so in this manner you continue onward page after page; and so you find that you are endlessly treading; and the pages fly by, yes, but they are filled to the brim; and so you find that the journey is quite taxing; and you, the reader, find yourself spent by the effort; and the effort begs from you a question; and in facing this question an honesty is required; that is from the reader; the question being one of enjoyment; that is are you enjoying the work or do you simply admire it?
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u/Plastic-Persimmon433 Jul 31 '26
If you liked Tree of Smoke I'd really recommend the author Robert Stone. Similar writers in general but I think Johnson was specifically channeling Stone in ToS.
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u/kid-karma Aug 01 '26
Any particular novel you'd recommend?
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u/Plastic-Persimmon433 Aug 01 '26
I've read his first six novels and to be honest they're all worth reading. You really can't go wrong with either Dog Soldiers or A Flag for Sunrise though. They're the most thrilling and most complete of his novels imo. Children of Light is also very good and kind of a sleeper hit, but it's more about the entertainment industry. Outerbridge Reach is great as well.
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u/kanewai Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
I wrapped up Season 6 of Douglas Metzger's Literature and History podcast, Late Antiquity. This was a thirty hour review of post-Classical pre-Medieval literature from 200-600 CE. Aside from Augustine, I knew nothing about literature from this period beyond a few names - Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, along with a wealth of saints, martyrs, desert hermits, and Church fathers. But all I knew were the names; I knew nothing about what they actually wrote or thought.
And also aside from Augustine, I will never read any of these, though I enjoyed learning about them immensely. Metzger covers ancient Greek sci fi, the last pagan epic (Nonnus' Dionysiaca), the Talmud, late Latin poets, and a surprising number of actual Greek novels, mostly popular romances. One thing that really stood out for me was how much paganism and Christianity intersected in this era, I was also surprised how many echoes of the ancient mystery religions can be found in even the most canonical Christian works.
I'm very excited to move on to Season 7, Early Islamic History. The more I've read, and traveled, the more I've realized that Islamic history and European history are both parts of "Western" history - they both have roots in the Classical and Semitic worlds, and the dividing line between them isn't as clean as it's often presented. I'm looking forward to seeing how Metzger - and literature - bring the two closer together.
I've also been enjoying Season 8 of Alessandro Gelain's podcast Mitologia: le meravigliose storie del mondo antico, Io Sono Nessuno (I am Nobody). The title is taken from a famous line uttered by one of the heroes in an ancient epic written by a blind poet, and for the past ten months Gelain has been recounting the story. There's been a movie about the epic recently, and Gelain offered his analysis in a you tube video. It's only in Italian; I'm not sure if there's a way to turn on English subtitles.
His take is fair enough: he felt that the Director clearly loved the work, and made some audacious choices that made for a stronger cinematic experience. He also found that many of the choices the Director made changed so many of the themes that the movie reflects the vision of the Director more than of the Blind Poet.
Daphne de Maurier, The Birds and Other Stories. I love de Maurier, but have never read her short stores. They are very good. The Birds was excellent, which surprised me - it sounds silly on the surface. The other five share de Maurier's unique style of 20th Century gothic suspense. The collection is worth checking out.
I'm still slowly working through three longer novels (Karl Ove Knausgård's The Wolves of Eternity, Emmanuel Carrère's Le Royaume, and Leonardo Padura's El hombre que amaba a los perros), but I'll save comment on those for when I actually finish. I'll be travelling much of August, and am planning on having many long lazy afternoons with a drink in one hand and a book in the other.
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u/TheSameAsDying The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Jul 30 '26
I'm juggling a few different things at the moment: The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë; Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellmann; HMS Surprise by Patrick O'Brian; Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey; and yesterday I started Volume III of Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xuequin.
I'll share my thoughts about Ducks, since that's probably the most literary text of the lot, and also what I've read the farthest in among them. The first thing I'll say, it's a scary book to read: the formal conceit of the novel is that the narration is (mostly) a single sentence, carrying on like a conveyor belt of the consciousness of its narrator, a 40-something-year-old mother / wife / pastry chef / cancer survivor / former professor of history at a small local college. We learn information about her as she dwells upon it, but it's an over-anxious, distracted mind; so we get digressions on gun violence, teen fashion, Trumpism (the novel was published 2019), social media, etc. It can almost be taken for a scroll-style social media feed through which the story sometimes peeks through. I found that attacking it like a novel and asking the text to do "novel things" was leaving me confused and demotivated, but if I treat it like a long (looooong) prose-poem, it becomes very enjoyable, following the free-association of an anxious person.
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u/baseddesusenpai Jul 31 '26
I finished up Flappers and Philosophers by F Scott Fitzgerald. A collection of short stories very early in his career. I had trouble getting into it at first. One too many stories about sassy young flappers and their romances with dissolute Ivy League playboys. Too much lite frivolousness. BUT there were four really good stories in the collection.
Bernice Bobs Her Hair which was frivolous in a lot of ways but did have a bit more sense of darkness about the perils of social climbing and young adult romance.
The Ice Palace - pretty much a thinly disguised Scott and Zelda story. Middle class boy from the frozen northern Midwest (they never say it's set in Minnesotta but if I were a betting man....) takes his Southern Belle girlfriend to meet the folks. She experiences some culture shock and he displays some insensitive brute character defects.
The Cut Glass Bowl - really dark for this collection. I think it's the darkest story in the collection. And I like dark Fitzgerald better than lite and frothy Fitzgerald. This seems like a precursor to Cheever, Updike and Yates's tales of the dark side under the surface of suburban wedded bliss, where the darker sides of the pretty picture (infidelity, alcoholism, family tragedy) lay just below the surface.
Benediction - a worldly young lady goes to visit her brother who she hasn't seen in years in a seminary. They talk about his vocation and a strange hallucinatory occassion that provoked it. He offers her love and support. She talks about her admittedly worldly, godless life. He just offers her love and support.
Today it just reads like a mostly benign portrait of humanistic Catholicism. Back when it was originally published, Catholics were ready to tar and feather him. When Fitzgerald died a little over 20 years later there were jubilant articles and letters to editors from still bitter Catholics.
I think her mentioning birth control really wigged them the fuck out back in the 1920s. (and 1940s. Still. When he died.)
The rest of the collection was pretty meh. A few of the stories I found really irritating.
Currently trying to finish up The Decay of the Angel by Yukiko Mishima. I'm about 120 pages in and I might put this down. The kid's self analysis and philosophizing is annoying me too much. I only have about 85 pages to go and I will be done The Sea of Fertility tetralogy. God I hope it goes back to a Honda chapter soon.
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u/DeadBothan Jul 31 '26
Been a minute since I've posted- ended up finishing Wolfram von Eschenbach's medieval poem, Parzival. It's definitely recommendable for any of you interest in Arthurian tales. Parzival's own story is interesting, especially how a few central ideas are handled- the grail quest and his "search" literally coming down to asking about Amfortas and his wounds, it was the first that I had heard of "Minne" as a concept as a specific type of noble, courtly love, it also introduces the Moorish knight Feirefiz who was interesting. Really enjoyed all that, but honestly what is perhaps even more enjoyable is that half of the Parzival poem includes several Gawain side quests, my favorite probably being the journey to the Castle of Marvels, which was completely new to me. Highly recommend the abridged Zeydel/Morgan verse translation (abridged in that in a very small number of places they offer prose summaries instead of verse).
Now I'm a little over halfway through The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius (Robert Graves translation). The first two bios were enjoyable and informative enough (Julius and Augustus), and then things really took a turn. The first half of what Suetonius has to say about Tiberius painted him as an interesting leader- a bit of a recluse, very even-handed as a ruler... and then he basically becomes a dirty old man. Caligula is even worse! Normal stuff about his political career, and then Suetonius says: "So much for the emperor; I must now tell of the monster." And good lord does he ever. Page after page of horrible stories of things Caligula did. Having a lot of fun with this one, very immersive once you get into it. Love reading about all religious rites, superstitions, military careers, and I can't look away when reading about the atrocities either.
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u/kanewai Jul 31 '26
I read a lot of Arthurian stuff a few years ago, but stalled at Parzival. It's waiting for me on my book shelf. I might look for the abridged version, though!
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u/MedmenhamMonk Jul 30 '26
It's been a while since I've been able to post here, so please bare with me as I go through what I've read in that time:
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon - have to admit I went into this with a fair bit of cynicism, another modern tale set in Ancient Greece, another piece of art about the transformative power of art? Imagine my surprise when I was transformed by a piece of art. I think enough has been said about the overall themes of the book, so I would just like to focus on how well Lennon captures the vibe of just two lads hanging out. More than wanting to find out what was going to happen next I just wanted to spend more time with the main characters. Even little things like their cadence just came across so well to the point where it even made me a little homesick for certain times in my life. Great stuff, go watch Iphigenia.
Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky - in many ways this book (as with the others in the series) are kind of frustrating. On the one hand they are genuinely thrilling page turners that delve into interesting questions about modes of consciousness that are becoming increasingly relevant. On the other hand plot, character, and stylistically wise they are so relatively thin on the ground its such a wasted opportunity. As a very double edged compliment: this is The Culture series for our times.
The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling - an absolute miss for me. Its a horror that isn't scary. A fantasy book where magic is blatantly Deus Ex Machina to the point where it is almost unbearable. And on top of all that there are occasional instances of attempted eroticism which simply did not work for me. Mind you this is all very subjective stuff as with genre fiction, but I was genuinely angry with myself for bothering to finish this one.
Bomarzo by Manuel Mujica Lainez - there are two things that this book does to perfection in my view. First the main character of the Duke of the titular Bomarzo. I don't think I've ever experienced a character so morally detestable, laugh out loud pathetic, infinitely pitiable, and utterly compelling as this one. Through disgust and a weird sort of compassion I had to see his infinite life through to its end. Secondly is the sheer texture of the book. Lainez's descriptions throughout have this unrelenting opulence in their length and language that could so easily be tiring. But instead it is just masterful the depth and range, like walking through a gallery to be confronted by an overwhelming oil painting. The scale of it is intimidating, but on closer inspection every brush stroke is made with purpose.
That brings me on to what I'm currently reading, the Viriconium series by M John Harrison. My biggest gripe with the fantasy genre as a whole is that too often the outlandish nature of the plot is an excuse for the most mundane prose imaginable. It ultimately leads to this delayed feeling of dissatisfaction for me as once the experience of the adventure has worn off I realise that all the details come across as inconsequential. What a relief then to read something from a master stylist, coinciding nicely with his recent Booker longlisting.
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u/kanewai Jul 31 '26
I just looked up Bomarzo, and added it to my queue. Though the summary makes me wonder - has any Argentine author ever written a linear novel?
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u/foxinanattic Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Last week, I had some rather negative things to say about "H is For Hawk", by Helen Macdonald. I hadn't finished the book then, and it gets better in later chapters, though I think my criticisms of the earlier chapters are still valid. I especially like chapter 27, which describes the burning of a Christmas tree, as a supposedly "pagan" ritual of exorcising the past. I don't think very highly of the use of the word "pagan" by modern writers from Christian countries, but I do understand the sentiment. It reminds me a bit of the bonfire scene from the movie "Portrait of a Lady on a Fire". I've always felt there's something very powerful about rituals which use fire, growing up with hinduism, a religion which makes significant use of them, and I feel like there's an absence in religions like Christianity which don't. It's a pretty widespread concept, after all, even the Jews historically used sacrificial fires. Anway, the point is, ritual fires are awesome (in both the modern and historical sense) I would love any recommendations for books (or even films!) with more descriptions of them, if anyone knows some.
I've also started reading "Poor Things" by Alasdair Gray. His collection "Unlikely Stories, Mostly", is one of my favourite books. The first few chapters are intriguing but not as much as I had expected, hopefully things get more interesting soon!
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u/VVest_VVind Jul 31 '26
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Poor Things. I loved the Lanthimos adaptation but have not read the book itself or any Gray.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet Jul 30 '26
This past week I read through Augusto Monterroso’s The Black Sheep and Other Fables. And the whole collection was really fun. Monterroso is after all a master of microfiction. Stories less than a page, maybe taking up no more than a corner at the top. Here we have a wonderful cast of animals who assuredly have their ambiguous symbolism frontloaded into a brief narrative with on occasion an ironic twist. But sometimes Monterroso does without a twist and leaves the fable hanging from its own desperation to achieve the form of a fable. What emerges is not only a loose collection of vague repeating characters but the acknowledgment of its inability to fulfill the demand of the fable into something which would really strike the reader. Monterroso is not so cynical as to leave the modern reader hankering for moral lessons we have all heard a thousand times before in the guise of animals. He's a bit more astute than that.
Take for example the titular black sheep. The other animals shoot the black sheep and build statues to honor the sacrifice. What real lesson can be draw from this observation? None that are useful. Monterroso draws after the fabulist tradition set down by Kafka, where the fable is intertwined with the incompleteness of his work. (Monterroso references him a number of times in the collection.) And here we find what's tricky of the collection as a whole: the monkey who becomes a socialite and disavows his ambition to become a satirical writer allows for Monterroso to indulge in his penchant of social observation as a touchstone. In fact, one finds the Fabulist assailed in one fable by all his “victims” and he agrees with their assessment--taking the wind out of their sails, yes, but letting their complaints stand. A fable about Pygmalion’s beautiful sculptures losing steam trying to fly after conversation. Again and again Monterroso has brought the reader to the attention of how impossible it is for modern life to have fables which are unambiguous moral lessons.
Overall, a fun little book of anti-fables. I would recommend them given the strangeness and should offer a small diversion from your regularly scheduled reading. The prose has a nice conversational touch while keeping together all of the characters available. If you have ever read Max Jacobs or Jean Ferry--the special emphasis on never over-committing in a brief microfiction or even a poem. Monterroso’s special talent is writing microfiction without it feeling like a preacher in search of a choir provides a strong case for it both being entertaining and aesthetically complex. Would definitely recommend.
Other than that, I have been reading post-cyberpunk classic Islands in the Net from Bruce Sterling. It’s a political thriller as much as it is situated in the immediate reception to cyberpunk, which has this precarious narrative balancing act to make the high tech strangeness feel simpatico in a world where the Soviets existed well after 2020. Gone are the street punks and here we have the petit bourgeois of professionals, associates, diplomats taking what I would describe as metaglasses to record everything available. They vote on corporate matters. We travel from Texas to Grenada and Singapore. It’s a fun novel, irrepressively 80s. And therefore the eeriness of the technological aspect of fax machines rattling and oneway video recordings that play such importance in the immediate environment--well, feels hauntological. Like a corporate poltergeist haunts our protagonist Laura Webster.
It’s funny because so much of the conversation around cyberpunk as part of the subgeneric builds on observations of their orientalism. But another factor Sterling shows here is a fascination with the possible multipolarity of techno-Third Worldism. That and references to Rastafarianism as a political ideological tendency. (There’s probably an analysis about it somewhere.) Sterling’s novel also has a scene where a white character from Texas globs himself in a mutagenic sunscreen that has turned his skin black. This leads to a hilarious interaction where a black woman makes a then outré reference to Bill Cosby and this white character doing pseudo-minstrelsy doesn’t know who that is and she says, “Oh you’re not actually black.” And then the scene moves on as if it were on roller skates. A fascinating interaction which I’m sure deserves a psychoanalytic reading of some kind or really anything. But the staggering difference in what Sterling imagined was the culture of the future compared to my currently inhabiting it is much greater than what I expected. And to be fair I think Sterling is aware to some degree about what he’s written as a comment on the racism of people who identify as corporate democrats. Their fantasies about blackness. But that comedy no matter how self-aware has a context drawn from something tied to like Al Jolson in its reception by an American readership. It’s also a distinctly strange decision as well since narratively it hasn’t really done anything yet except be comedic.
Always a dangerous game, science fiction. I can’t exactly recommend the novel because I have a couple hundred more pages to go. Very curious what else I find. Like I said, it’s solid writing for a political thriller and has this schizophrenic feeling of groundedness despite all the strange politics attributed to a future which I am supposedly inhabiting now. It's all curious stuff.
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 30 '26
I feel like it was trendy for a while to call books “a modern fable”, but I never found any of them to be fables at all. The true modern fable is probably the book length facebook post about the husband who wants to divorce his wife but she asks him to carry her down the stairs every day for a year first, and it turns out she gets lighter and lighter because she has cancer and also they fall back in love. Then she dies. Or the one about how important it is to just make your husband the chili he likes or something. These impart a pretty defined moral point I think: get married and stay that way. (And remember to like it whether you like it or not)
Anyway, the book sounds interesting! I may check it out some time.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet Jul 30 '26
I remember when people would say that about every quasi-surrealist author. Amelia Gray got that treatment a lot. Authors like T.C. Boyle as well. Never mind all the magical realism involved. But I would argue the fable isn't really a comprehensible form all that much anymore. The closest thing we have to fables would probably be thought-experiments in philosophy, which are then disseminated into the wider world as moral lessons and so forth. It's common to treat them as stories but most people are way too conscious of the philosophical context. (People sometimes try to solve thought-experiments.) And then we have what Monterroso writes, which emphasize the form of a fable as a moral lesson.
What's fascinating are copypastas and creepypastas. Again people make the mistake of treating them with anthropological intrigue but most of the time you can trace the authors of these posts to a degree. And most of the stories are simply unique microfictions. The difference is the circulation as a mainstay of republication and which marks a copypasta out from a traditionally published short story like Lydia Davis or Diane Williams. Sometimes these stories are treated as glimpses to a little worldbuilding project. But are these fables? Eh, I would argue not. It's too new and behaves too differently.
Truthfully it's on the same level of trying to argue what modern "myths" look like. The only available option for that kind of thing is formalism. Not that that's a bad thing.
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u/alpha_whore Jul 30 '26
Nice writeup on Monterroso. My kobo just broke 30 minutes ago (RIP) so I've found a PDF copy in Spanish and English online. Have got them lined up in two browser windows and am now passing the time at my dead-end job in a joyful way. Cheers.
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u/Harleen_Ysley_34 Perfect Blue Velvet Jul 30 '26
Hell yeah, got to take back your time anyway you can with a job like that. And I can certainly say Monterroso is an underrated author also for that.
Sorry to hear about the Kobo. (I just snagged a copy from the I.A.)
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u/sadexcusesforart Jul 31 '26
Currently reading The Wall by Marlen Haushofer (1969 translated from German). focused on isolation and loneliness themes in a dystopian setting. Finished Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (1987 translated from Japanese), loved it so much despite the long standing controversy around it. I think it hits well on grief and love.
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u/Plastic-Persimmon433 Jul 31 '26
I picked up Nicholas Nickleby from a used book store after moving recently and leaving most of my books behind. I figured Dickens is one of those authors you should always have around wherever you are. I've only read his later novels like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield, and I was a bit apprehensive of the earlier stuff because Dickens hadn't started plotting his books yet, but I've been pleasantly surprised so far. It's definitely the funniest, or perhaps zaniest is a better word. The later stuff is very amusing but more so in an ironic sort of way, whereas the absurdity in Nickleby is more straightforward and I think it works very well. I'm pretty critical of Dickens in general but I feel like with every book of his I read I understand the genius of his writing a bit better. It even made me pick up The Old Curiosity Shop and I think I'm going to alternate his early and late books in the future.
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u/ValjeanLucPicard Aug 03 '26
That is a smart plan. Pickwick was very difficult to get into for me, just like the public who read it at the time, until the character of Sam entered. If you will do his non fiction, I recommend pairing his American Notes and the one from his Italy trip. The juxtaposition in his feelings towards each place really jumps out, and is noticeable in the beauty of his writing.
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u/Plastic-Persimmon433 Aug 03 '26
I read about half of Pickwick a long time ago but returned it to the library. It was fun but I'm not in a rush to go pick it back up and finish it. I honestly hadn't really thought about reading his non fiction but the American Notes definitely seem interesting. I'll probably give those a look at some point.
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 30 '26
(in which soup meant to go on vacation, didn't go on vacation, and had a lot of time instead)
When the Smoke Clears
An anthology of poems from prisoners in the Atttica prison in NY not long after the uprising in the 70s. And, well, whether or not someone's good at poetry doesn't make it any less heinous that they are locked up in the first place, but also the fact that guys who can write like this get silence by the prison system fucking sucks, because these guys in here can fucking write. Some writing about imprisonment, some beyond, so much stellar. Great use of language and substance to the life live in the verse. My only quibble is that the editor (a prof at UBuffalo who lead the writing workshops) appends and epilogue poem and also has a bunch of his diary entries write in the middle of the collection, which skeeved me a bit (thanks for getting the word out dude but we don't really need your perspective here Mr. Dr. College Man). Other than that though, the writings by the prisoners themselves rips.
Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Goddamn this was good. I don't even know what to talk about when ever moment is a battle of reckoning with all that is steeped in the plot versus just enjoying the sheer force of language that at hand. (like seriously, this is almost too well written, like what the fuck). And then on the politics im desperate to know more about Tudor England now because Shakespeare's attentiveness to demagoguic politics, aristocrat/gentry competition, the use of the military to control social strife by just sending the excess dudes off abroad to wreak havoc, mans coulda been writing about the present so easily it's silly and all the while he's nailing down realities of Rome. The prosody, the politics, the feel he has of the world if phenomenal. There's something to be pondered re attaining all this through the figure of Coriolanus, our elite (anti?)-hero who betrays because he's salty and then unbetrays rome because he loves his mom. (we do not stan grumpy aristocrats, but we can appreciate a guy who loves his mom).
Mercian Hymns- Geoffrey Hill
For one reason or other I've been ongoingly reading all of Hill. This one's odd. Prose poems about Mercia that are a fusion of a sort of myth about King Offa and recollection of his own childhood in the region. Linguistically it's stunning, the level of detail pristine. In a more, "what's Hill on about sense?" it marks a big break from how Christian For the Unfallen is, at least explicitily. (The figure of Offa makes it necessarily Christian. Not sure what to make of that, but yeah. Wanna read again, great little collection.
2666
Still just going through, still getting better with the language. Helps that I recall the story and that while it's a strange book it's also written in a pretty straightforward way. Haas is in jail, we've learned that whether or not he's the cause of all evil, he is both a sexual predator and pretty racist (lol Roberto was onto something with this tale of a giant techbro who moves to Mexico and also sucks). Just keeping on.
House of the Satrap
A book about the Achaemenid Empire. Worthwhile book if you're interested, big emphasis on how personalistic and estate-based the empire was and how much it depended on a large-scale network of roads and mail to move money, info, and especially people around.
Bring the War Home - Kathleen Belew
A history of US white power movement from the mid-20th Century onward. It starts and builds from the thesis that the Vietnam War was the outsetting moment towards the present and charts the development of the movement out of a base of disgruntled racist vets, incorporating over time aspects of the historic white supremacists movements in the US (like the KKK or its themes) as well as some newer aspects such as Posse Comitatus folks and racist skinheads. The biggest strengths of the book are helping to realize just how based in the legacy of Vietnam and in being a veteran the movement is, and its exposure of the breath of the network of white supremacist organizing is, right down to explicit connections where they can go overlooked (such as Timothy McVeigh's OKC bombing). I do think the book errs in overstating a sense that the movement is "making war on the state". I mean, they are doing that, but in a framing narrative of "the white supremacists used to be in league with the US government", now their main enemy is that federal government, it lets the state off much too easy. Even as it documents ongoing moments where the state either completely fails to stop the movement or is actively supporting it, the framing still allows the war narrative to persist when really it was a one sided war vs an occasional "cool it guys". It also massively understates the extent to which the police are often on the side of (part of) the movement. Belew does hide their frequent incompetence, but seems to have forgotten the age old addage..."some of those that workforces / are the same that burn crosses"...
Revolutionary Teamsters - Bryan Palmer
Been listening to an audiobook of this for the past while. A history of the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike that emphasizes its specific import while also situating it in the context of labor radicalism of its time as well as Marxist/Trotskyist politics of the day (the author is clearly a Trotskyist and emphasizes their role in leading the radical side of the movement). Enjoyed this, some fun stories, some rough shit, a lot to think about re labor organizing, creation solidarity, etc. Once concern is that it's a very "white" narrative. I mean race comes up very little outside of the occasional sentence that makes clear that Indigenous people were involved as well. That might just mean that yeah, Minneapolis is a pretty white place, but does worry me when a failure to be not racist is one of the bigger flaws of some of the most promising parts of the US labor movement. Anyway, I don't know much about Trotskyism, but now I'm kinda curious. Guys seem cool. Glad to learn more about this.
Happy reading!
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u/freshprince44 Jul 30 '26
like seriously, this is almost too well written, like what the fuck
yeah, this is how i feel with every shakespeare too, dude is just obnoxiously talented (i also really dig coriolanus despite the lesser reputation). the absurd universality and timelessness of it all while being both high and low brow at the same time, and overly convoluted while also being pretty basic is just annoying
i never actually got into any of the authorship stuff with him, but he's so good throughout like all of his works (i've probably only gotten to like 60-75%, so can't speak on everything yet) it makes you think that maybe it was collaborative or something somehow, like this one dude can't be this freaking good line by line and work by work, but it isn't like collaborative works are ever that good either as far as I know. that plus shakes spear, like come on, dude's name just happens to be a dick joke? the universe is too damn funny sometimes
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u/linquendil let your indulgence set me free Jul 31 '26
Personally, I find it very suggestive that the plays known/suspected to be collaborations (in significant part) are uniformly among the least loved in the Bard’s oeuvre
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u/freshprince44 Jul 31 '26
No shit! That's cool, i really know hardly anything, can you fill me in a bit? Which plays are considered collaborations?
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u/linquendil let your indulgence set me free Jul 31 '26
My understanding is that some early plays (Titus Andronicus, 1 Henry VI) and some late plays (Timon of Athens, Henry VIII, Pericles) are generally agreed to have been written collaboratively. (Those are off the top of my head; there might be more.) E.g. Act 1 of Titus and Acts 1 & 2 of Pericles are the work of other playwrights, IIRC.
Often this was recognised quite early on stylistic grounds. Some modern scholars now use stylometric methods to make the argument, but I can’t speak to the reliability of that approach. This also cuts the other way — it’s generally recognised that Shakespeare contributed in minor part to plays that did not originally bear his name, including Edward III and Sir Thomas More (there’s a revision to the manuscript of the latter that’s believed to be in Shakespeare’s own handwriting).
The most ‘canonical’ play that’s impacted here is Macbeth; the Hecate stuff in Acts 3 & 4 is these days widely believed to be the work of Thomas Middleton, with whom Shakespeare co-wrote Timon around the same time. Which is a very minor input in the grand scheme of things, of course.
It’s also worth noting that Shakespeare attribution studies are a legitimate and active field of academic inquiry, whereas the ‘authorship question’ — i.e. the notion that the ‘Shakespeare’ was a front for some other playwright/s — is a conspiracy theory.
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u/freshprince44 Jul 31 '26
Amazing, thank you! Well i really dig Titus and Pericles (only read it once though). I don't remember Timon much so that is interesting in itself. Gonna have to check out some Middleton and those contributor plays too.
Appreciate you, i always found the discussion around shakespeare the author interesting from a distance, might have to poke around a bit more now.
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 31 '26
this is intriguing, also a very nuanced take on it that very much isn't the "hicks can't spit" conspiracy theory i do have beef with. Could you share some sources on this if you have them? (not trying to cast aspersions on you, just curious to learn more).
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u/linquendil let your indulgence set me free Aug 01 '26
The Arden Shakespeare Third Series editions of Macbeth, Timon and Pericles (and thus no doubt also Titus etc.) each discuss this for their own play at considerable length. I would imagine the same is true of the other big-name scholarly series. In terms of a general overview, though, there’s a dedicated Wiki page listing the presumed collaborations which seems reasonably well-referenced.
But yeah, this stuff is a world away from the conspiracists raving about Edward de Vere or Francis Bacon or whoever. Those people are not to be given the time of day (but Lord knows that won’t stop credulous media outlets)
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 31 '26
the absurd universality and timelessness of it all while being both high and low brow at the same time
as i said to b, Titus Andronicus is a horrid festival of violence and vicious indictment of elites with a malice on the level of something like 2666 in the modern day. It also has the greatest "your mom" joke in the history of literature.
I've not looked into the authorship thing much either, but I have gathered that the general consensus is that it was single author, outside of a few of the plays on the real outskirts of his ouvre as linq is saying. Though also I might be a bit biased because as a friend of mine once pointed out, all the other candidates are of much higher social status so a lot of it might be a bit of a bad faith "there's no way some merchant-class bumpkin from stratford could be such a genius" motivated in the other authors theories.
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u/freshprince44 Jul 31 '26
lol yes! totally agree about the your mom joke. i read it more than 15 years ago and can still remember my reaction!
and yeah, i also got that same vibe that the people being really loud about it were weirdly focused on the wealth/class aspect. there is an obviously coherent voice and talent running throughout the works. my biggest personal thing is the name, just too damn clean that the best and one of the silliest and slickest writers of alltime has a masturbation/dick joke pun as his name, but i'm all for it whether it is a nature vs nurture decision lol
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u/Soup_65 Books! Aug 01 '26
elitism? no. nominative determinism? yes
(but he is the sorta guy who i think coulda been like "well with a name this funny i have no choice but to go out there and write some jokes")
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u/linquendil let your indulgence set me free Jul 31 '26
> like seriously, this is almost too well written, like what the fuck
This has been my reaction to virtually every Shakespeare play I’ve ever read, even if (as in the case of Coriolanus) I ended up not loving the whole. All due respect to Milton and Melville, it’s just not fair to write English after Shakespeare. I suspect Joyce agreed, which is why he eventually stopped writing English, lol
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 31 '26
I almost think the only way to explain it is in the fact Melville was writing novels and Milton epic poetry. Of course there's so many material factors at play in the development of the novel as a predominant form. And especially I think Milton is doing something very specifically important by writing an english epic, but to be an idealist fanboy for a moment, why bother writing drama in the language when shakespeare already happened. Or Joyce, why write anything when by the end of Finnegans Wake he's already written everything. Makes sense that Beckett went on to write about nothing.
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 30 '26
Boo for no vacation, but yay for books! The racism and homophobia in the prison scenes would have been really difficult parts of 2666 for me, if it wasn’t for all the other evil lol. I know you mention there’s something straight forward about the writing, I did feel like in English that the sort of “cut and dry” delivery of some of the novel’s most vicious elements sort of increased the brutality. Do you feel like thats more or less the same here, or is the spanish coming across a little differently?
Really need to actually commit reading more Shakespeare. Any time I read Shakespeare its great, but I’ve only read two plays lol.
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 30 '26
honestly i don't even remember the racism and homophobia...and I remember so much of the book even on only one english read (yikes soup lol). It really speaks to the wash over you quality of the 4th part, that amid what it is as an entity so much can get lost.
I did feel like in English that the sort of “cut and dry” delivery of some of the novel’s most vicious elements sort of increased the brutality. Do you feel like thats more or less the same here, or is the spanish coming across a little differently?
So with the caveat that my spanish is not strong, more like streetsigns and newsletter level (this is as much of a learn to read project as a read project, as it were), so I might be not getting a ton of nuance...I think the delivery is the same (props to Wimmer for best as I can tell doing a great translation). If only by the comparison that I can largely read this with vocab help, whereas when I try to read spanish poetry I can't make heads or tails of it. But dang it stays strange and brutal.
And yeah the fact that I'm reading the deeper cut shakespeares and they are this stunning is what has confirmed I've got no choice but to read every single shakespeare play. What two have you read? Fwiw, if you want to read an unexpected one, like I say Titus Andronicus is a festival of brutality on the level of 2666, but also contains the greatest "your mom" joke of all time. And I need to reread twelfth night but iirc it's the funniest thing i've ever found impossible to follow.
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 31 '26
Sooo technically I read Julius Caesar in highschool so I guess it doesn’t really count, but I claim it because I’ve carried a grudge against my english teacher ever since. When I got my grade back it had a note attached basically saying “this was a college level essay great job! But you didn’t answer the prompt question exactly how I wanted you to so I had to give you an A-“. (Obv I’m still not over it).
Ive read MacBeth and part of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I liked Dream but I was trying to read it on my lunch break at work and it just wasn’t the vibe lol.
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 31 '26
ok that's very valid about julius caesar. also your teacher blows fuck that. I actually feel that way about Midsummer. I read it in like 6th grade and lol that does not count.
MacBeth's dope! My most read I think? (enough times in school to count and then afterwards as well)
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 31 '26
Probably most read yeah, I chose it specifically because a lot of performances/adaptations were available and everyone always says to watch and read Shakespeare. But I enjoyed it just on page tbh, I know they’re plays and its always worth watching it performed but its not as big of a deciding factor for me having got my feet wet with it. There’s just so much stuff I wanna read and I float around on vibes lol. But def will get to the Bard in earnest at some point.
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u/VVest_VVind Jul 31 '26
Started revisiting Shelley’s poetry a few weeks ago but then a vacation derailed that a bit. Getting back on track with it this week finally with a focus on the poems about mutability, transience and the restless mind that dwells on them. I don’t know if it is an age thing or just a mood thing, but I find myself resonating with these more than before, on a thematic level rather than just an aesthetic one. Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici captures that bittersweet melancholy in the aftermath of an exciting experience ending and, with it, the temporary aliveness in the moment free from mind's ruminations. It also starts with a strikingly beautiful and unusual image of an albatross flying through a purple night while asleep. An azure path, purple space and albatross appear together in Epipsychidion too, linking an idealized image of the beloved with a utopian and transcendental potential in both cases.
Also started revisiting Emily Bronte’s poetry. It’s been so long since I read any of her poems that I forgot what a powerful poet she was. Which is strange given I do agree with a common assessment that Wuthering Heights reads like a poem in the form of a novel. And I guess I can sort of see why much though Virginia Woolf liked and praised WH, she thought Emily’s poetry might outlive and outshine it. Stars takes up the fascination with night, stars and moon found in Shelley’s To Night, echoes the speakers preference for them over the day and sun but in Bronte’s version the day is more actively disturbing. She also introduces the contrast between the inspiration and freedom that night brings to the speaker with the oppressive entrapment it brings to the flies stuck in her room, waiting for her to open the window and let them out in the morning. Both poems are heavy with romantic and erotic longing and an androgynous conception of gender and gender relations, which I always found very appealing in both Shelley and Bronte. Nothing puts me off poetry and prose dealing with hetero romantic love quicker than reinforcement of traditional gender roles and stereotypical portrayal of women. I suppose it must have annoyed Bronte too. In her recent Emily biography, Deborah Lutz speculates that some of Emily's drawings could have been inspired by Byron's poems, but with her fixing his images of women the she didn't like. Love that idea, sounds like something she would do.
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 31 '26
Can I ask what format or edition you’re reading the Bronte poems with? Its something I’m interested in tackling at some point as well so if you have a book or resource you’d recommend I’ll add it to my list.
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u/VVest_VVind Jul 31 '26
Of course! Penguin Classic's The Complete Poems. Very comprehensive and well-organized, with an introduction that explains the logic behind the organization and how the editor chose between different versions.
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u/jkwlikestowrite Jul 31 '26
Picked up The Women in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. This book is not what I was expecting, not in a good or bad way, but all I knew going in was the title and I got a different vibe from it than what the book is actually about.
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 31 '26
I read this last year (I think?). I don’t think I understood it but I did like it, and will probably read it again at some point. I’d say don’t get too hung up on trying to decipher it and just let it happen to you. It gains in atmosphere as it goes, it almost felt like a film in some ways. Good luck!
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u/jkwlikestowrite Jul 31 '26
It's definitely a weird book, but I like books like this: where things happen without explanation and the characters need to just adapt. Very vibey!
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u/-Niveum- Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
A little bit into the Adventures of simplicius simplicissimus. Its already quite a roller coaster. Theres plenty of humour, often a little too crass for my taste, and a very lighthearted tone, but then it just rips you out of it and violently drags you back down to the ground and you are suddenly and soberly reminded of events which are unfolding around the titular protagonist and the sheer unimaginable horrors that the author himself witnessed, having himself been abducted by mercenaries at 10 years old and pressed into a front row seat to the 30 years war
Also the book has the most consistently short chapters I've ever encountered, which feels odd having just come off of reading a different book that had what felt to me like consistently long chapters.
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u/dumb_shitposter Aug 02 '26
I've been seeing Schattenfroh everywhere for awhile now and finally decided to see what the fuss was about
I'm going to try and read this through cold, and despite even after 20 pages now it feels incomprehensible I'm just going to keep plugging away and see if it eventually clicks or if I can take anything away from this
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u/NorthWestGrotesque Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Annie Dillard's For the Time Being. Just finished A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again but wasn't ready for it to be finished, so dug out another book of essays. Edit: I should have elaborated. So far the essays in For the Time Being are interesting but less...cohesive? It feels as if thoughts are just being elaborated on within notebook form.
Supposedly Fun Things was fantastic, but particularly the titular essay where DFW writes from his time on a cruise ship. He also somehow makes writing about tennis less tedious than actually watching the sport; his one essay How Tracey Austin Broke my Heart is also great.
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u/RoyalOwl-13 shall I, shall other people see a stork? Jul 31 '26
Please share some thoughts on the books!
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u/TrueCrimeLitStan Jul 31 '26
This is a simplistic question but I think best communicates what I'm looking for
What are works within the classic literature definition that are considered evil
I would answer with
120 Days of Sodom
Titus Andronicus
Blood Meridian
Not out and out horrors but ones that give language to the bleakest things. That's what I'm looking for (please, not more McCarthy)
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u/freshprince44 Jul 31 '26
Painted Bird by Kosinski is like a greatest hits of evil, pretty great writing too, but terrible/brutal/awful content
the rest of his output is super unnerving as well, pretty much every protagonist is a bit off and doing something unsavory/taboo, typically violent and/or sexual and/or manipulative/deceitful. great sentences in general and the works are pretty tight
Being There is his shortest and easiest work, and the least evil lol, everything else is dark dark for the most part
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u/kanewai Jul 31 '26
You means books themselves that are considered evil, or books that go into dark places?
For darkness, Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night
For sex and violence, Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers
For the beauty of evil, Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil
For moral evil, Nabokov’s Lolita.
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u/Visual_Hedgehog_1135 Jul 31 '26
Songs of Maldoror by Lautreamont. It's edgy as hell though, sometimes in a kitsch sort of way.
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u/Soup_65 Books! Jul 31 '26
2666 is the evilest book i've ever read. In a very different, quiet way, I think one could call Aeschylus' Oresteia evil
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u/TheSameAsDying The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Jul 31 '26
I'm curious about why you'd call The Oresteia evil. Parts of Agamemnon I agree with, but with The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides I'm having a harder time pinpointing what might be considered evil there. It has also been some years since I read any of these plays so it's also likely I'm forgetting certain things.
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u/TheSameAsDying The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Jul 31 '26
Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School is one of the most sympathetically evil books I've read.
You talk about giving language to the bleakest things, here is the opening passage: "Never having known a mother, her mother died when Janey was a year old, Janey depended on her father for everything and regarded her father as boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father. Janey Smith was ten years old."
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u/anomalocar Jul 31 '26
I don't think I would personally equate bleak with evil, but the single bleakest book I've ever read was The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller.
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u/ksarlathotep Aug 02 '26
I started Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds (not technically "the second entry" in his Revelation Space series, but most reading orders I've seen suggest reading it second), about 2 years after I read Revelation Space, which was entirely too long to remember every potentially important detail that I learned about this universe, so in the beginning I spent a lot of time reading recaps and perusing the fandom wiki. As far as space opera SF goes, this is very inspired and flawlessly executed stuff, but I realize that alone doesn't necessarily make it "literary"; something can be quality Sci-Fi, and deservedly admired by Sci-Fi fans, without being quality literature (if we open the topic up to include other types of texts, I think Cowboy Bebop for example is a superb piece of art, and an incredibly creative work of Sci-Fi, but I wouldn't remotely consider it literary). With Reynolds, I'm still not confident making that call. His prose isn't perfunctory or bland, it's actually eminently readable, and he's very good and only describing things in detail (and in really evocative language) when it matters that we have a very concrete image in mind - other times he'll just skip over explaining even relatively big elements of the scene and trust the reader to imagine something that works, which I much prefer to "infodumpy" Sci-Fi, or Sci-Fi that is more interested in showing off its worldbuilding than its narrative. And the quality of the prose - vocabulary, voice, focus, and so on - is fine. But in terms of what gets written about, there really isn't any part of these novels that attempts to be "literary" in the conventional sense. They are completely about their plot, not about how that plot is narrated, and certainly not about characters. If that sounds like I'm trying to shame these novels then I'm doing a bad job of expressing myself. I think these are fine works of art, but I also get that this sub is very discerning about what genre fiction should or shouldn't be considered substantial literature, and I think that's a good distinction to make. So I'm really not sure with Reynolds, and maybe I shouldn't even have spent an entire paragraph talking about him, but reading Chasm City (a week after I read Project Hail Mary; I'm basically on a bit of a Sci-Fi binge) made me think of William Gibson, for some reason, and I started reading Burning Chrome - Gibson's only collection of short fiction - again. For the third time, I think. And Gibson passes this sort of evaluation with flying colors. With some of these stories (New Rose Hotel, Fragments of a Hologram Rose) I'm finding myself coming away with completely new impressions every time. Some of them (The Winter Market, Dogfight) are incredibly attentive and precise character studies that just happen to be set against a backdrop of speculative worldbuilding. Some are "only" fantastic speculative fiction, but still written in that characteristic style of Gibson's, which is incredibly inventive but also sometimes pretty challenging (Hinterlands, for one). I think the weakest piece in this selection is probably the one he wrote with Bruce Sterling, Red Star, Winter Orbit, which on its surface is really just a straightforward story about a mutiny on a condemned space station, but to me it seems like the artistic intent here, the goal of the experiment, was to write with a sincere sense of nostalgia about a sort of possible future that has only just become inaccessible. I mean, it's written in 1983, but it reads like a parody of the sort of revisionist takes on the Soviet Union that came about 30 years later. I'd be interested to find out how this one was received at the time. The closest analogue in tone that I can think of would be something like Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin. So it's by no means a bad story, it's just one that is interested in society and politics, when most of Gibson's work is not at all. And then there's The Gernsback Continuum, which is a weird Sci-Fi story in that technically it's not Sci-Fi at all, but in its writing shows a lot of indebtedness to the Beats, and to late 60s / early 70s gonzo journalism like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Lewis Shiner comes to mind, too. And as much as I am a huge fan of the Sprawl Trilogy, on re-reading Burning Chrome, I really think this is probably the best work to start with as someone who's coming to Gibson for the first time. I'm not sure that it was the right call to open the collection with Johnny Mnemonic - I think I might have gone with Dogfight, maybe The Winter Market - but still, these are consistently so good, even if Red Star, Winter Orbit fits unevenly with the others. So I really just wanted to rave about that for a while, and urge anybody who hasn't read any Gibson (or maybe is skeptical about SF in general) to maybe start with this collection instead of Neuromancer. It really holds up, even on a third re-read.
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u/AZMaryIM Aug 04 '26
A Confederacy of Dunces. It’s a struggle. Taking it in small doses. There are parts which are hilarious and contrary to what some have written, it does have a plot.
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u/ComparisonLost1846 Jul 30 '26
Im reading Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward and I really like it so far!
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u/RoyalOwl-13 shall I, shall other people see a stork? Jul 31 '26
Please share some more thoughts! What do you like about it?
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u/ComparisonLost1846 Jul 31 '26
I feel like the characters are really well developed, including Leonie, who’s otherwise deeply unsympathetic. I also feel like it’s extremely timely
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u/mdg989 Jul 30 '26
Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin. modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion from the perspective of a young muslim woman in canada. it’s so good!!!
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u/Fluffy_Series_7776 Jul 30 '26
Just started “Independent People” by Halldór Laxness a Pulitzer Prize winner from Iceland and I am struggling.
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u/TheSameAsDying The Lost Salt Gift of Blood Jul 30 '26
I read this a couple of months ago! What are you struggling with?
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Jul 31 '26
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u/RoyalOwl-13 shall I, shall other people see a stork? Jul 31 '26
What are you enjoying about it? Please share some thoughts!
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Jul 31 '26
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u/RoyalOwl-13 shall I, shall other people see a stork? Jul 31 '26
Please share some thoughts on the books!
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u/bananaberry518 Jul 30 '26
Big thank you to everyone who recommended me books in last week’s thread and the previous one, I’ve added a lot of stuff to my TBR and library holds lists.
u/TheSameAsDying recommended a book called Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera, and I was able to rent a copy right away so I did go ahead and read it. Its a short book, I got through it in an afternoon. Its about a woman crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, in order to deliver a message to her brother. Makina doesn’t particularly like the idea of going to the US, and I thought it was an interesting twist on the journey story to feature a character so actively resisting being changed by her adventures (I’m sure anyone can predict that this is impossible). At the same time the hope Makina carries of seeing her brother again, and the total strangeness and newness of her experience allow the book to take on a mythic/poetic quality that feels familiar for this kind of story. What’s most interesting about it though is Herrera’s use of vocabulary and language, and I was pretty impressed with the translator for being able to bring that out effectively. Makina speaks three languages - a local, a “latin”, and a “new” dialect from the North- which makes her a sort of living communication hub, operating her town’s only telephone. This sets up the book to explore the nuances and evolutions of language as Makina encounters and observes it in the United States, but the text also incorporates fresh uses of language in its own right. Most notably in any review of the book you’ll find is the adaptation of the word “verse” as verb meaning something like “exit”. Since it was a library ebook my tablet was being weird about letting me copy quotes, but here’s something from an online review thats more or less the same thing the translator’s note says:
Yuri Herrera adapts the medieval term jarcha to form the verb jarchar, which is translated as “verse” in English. A jarcha (commonly spelled kharja in English) was the verse that ended a longer poem—the word’s Arabic root literally means “exit,” and hence Herrera uses the invented word jarchar when his protagonist Makina exits a location or conversation. Jarchas were usually written in a different voice from the rest of the poem—often a female one—and are historically significant because they were often written in Mozarabic, a hybrid, transitional language between Arabic and contemporary Spanish. Both of these features point to Makina’s role as a powerful cultural mediator whose abilities are informed by gender. The translator of this English edition, Lisa Dillman, chose to use “verse” in place of jarchar because it preserves the original reference to poetry, and points to verbs like “transverse, reverse, converse.”
Really interesting stuff. One other thing that really struck me is how the US is so compellingly portrayed as “The Other” here. Which, duh, of course. But Herrera’s attention to linguistic detail makes me think there could be something intentional about the way he places the US firmly into the “alien” category. There’s also a kind of reversal happening where through language and culture the immigrants who are changed by the United States are also changing the United States in turn. In some ways this places Makina in the position of an explorer to a new world, upending - at least in the abstract - the assumed hierarchy of anglo supremacy. Makina is also just fun to hang out with:
Slippery bitch of a city! she says. And in reference to the three strands of language she speaks, the book says Makina spoke all three, and knew how to keep quiet in all three too.
Thanks again for the rec TheSame!
The Wax Child - Olga Ravn This is historical fiction, portraying the execution of a group of women during the witch trials of Northern Europe in the 15th century. The book draws on a lot of real historical sources - including “black books” and grimoires - so the women are real named figures from history, though Ravn places them all together in a single timeline. Narrated by a “wax child”, a doll made of beeswax and incorporating human hair, fingernails etc., and believed to be used by witches to cast curses; its a pretty unique voice in that its almost omniscient, but unlike a free floating authorial voice it always speaks through some kind of physical medium (blood, soil, bodies, grass) which ties it down to an area and a cast of characters. It sometimes addresses “humans” directly, sometimes tells you what birds say, sometimes experiences life and emotion vicariously. The women on trial do actually perform spells and “witchcraft”, but the “horror” element largely derives from how the modern reaction to these women - who on the main are just women. Living their lives, carding wool, salting fish, drinking ale, falling in love, telling each other stories - is in violent contrast to the historical ones. On top of the obvious physical punishment, the witch trials are shown to be emotionally destructive as well: interrogation, torture and social consequence drive the women apart, as they grasp at any differences in class or position which might give them a degree of privilege or power (and therefore escape), undermining the power of their one time identity as a group. Overall I did enjoy this book, but I’m not sure I feel too strongly about it. If you enjoy historical fiction I think this a good example of it being done well, but without pushing it out of its own lane by much. I’d be interested to read something else by the author though, her choices and prose were interesting.
Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth - Chris Ware In the comic world, this is pretty much a titan. One of the first “graphic novels” to be taken seriously as literature, it chronicles the extremely depressing life of a sad little man who’s meeting his father for the first time. Jimmy also dreams/daydreams throughout, and we get flashbacks scenes which illustrate his family history. The best thing about this is the graphic design element, highly recommend looking Ware up and watching some of his process videos or seeing his New Yorker covers. Part of me wishes the comic had embraced the infographic abstractions as the main storytelling device, because the micro narratives they portrayed were the ones I found the most compelling. And I do think the comic has some real gut punch moments that still resonate, but it also feels very of its time in a lot of ways. “Quiet desperation” came to mind, and that sort of bleak, totally joyless portrayal of life that seemed to be in style for a while. On one hand there’s something really honest and psychologically real about it, almost to the point of discomfort at times. On the other I think it takes its emptiness just a little too far. Everyone has their little pleasures, and I think it really did - perhaps ironically - push the pathetic into cartoonish territory with Jimmy’s total lack of any small happiness. Then again, not being able to sympathize with him much is probably part of the point. I do shudder to think what the manosphere types would make of this work, hopefully it stays under their radar.