tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-94549492024-03-13T11:45:29.168-04:00jebi_seThese modest scribbles will reflect an appetite for reading and whatever else drifts into focus. This platform will not ascribe to any agenda or civic responsibility. As noted, the width of such will be devoted to criticism and citations.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.comBlogger1183125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-44431747239606296462013-09-08T13:53:00.001-04:002013-09-08T13:53:49.449-04:00Several MonthsMatters have lapsed. All my insights go to goodreads these days. New Pynchon will also mean that samizdatshould boogie again: even if it is a solo act. <br />
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Cue the Billy Idol.<br />
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Javier Marias remains the man. Steven Moore's alternative history of the novel manages to inspire and irritate. jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-68539570930354408502013-05-02T17:54:00.001-04:002013-09-08T13:50:10.520-04:00To FlossThe most misspent day in any life is the one when you've failed to laugh." - Chamfort
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My days have been prudent and rife with mirth. Here's four novels I really liked.
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Where Tigers Are at Home byJean-Marie Blas de Roblès
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Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías
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Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
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Hourglass by Danilo Kiš
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How about a favorable view of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1549920/">The Last Stand</a>? The director Kim Ji-woon
is a hero of mine. As bonus, how often do you see Luis Guzman as an action hero?jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-67102889229679938252013-04-29T08:21:00.004-04:002013-09-08T13:54:57.683-04:00Visegrad<i>It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others</i>. - Julian Barnes<br />
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I read essays from Mr. Barnes upon arrival in Belgrade, that one day when I had yet adjust. Such was benign in itself. I awoke before dawn and walked through the slumbering city. I read at every stop waiting to change money, ingest espresso.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">It isn't day, or year for that matter, when I travel to a new country. So it was last week when I went to Bosnia. Sarajevo and Visegrad were the two stops. There is much to ponder, marvel and mourn about each.</span>jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-26469650011622216392013-03-03T18:44:00.002-05:002013-03-03T18:44:26.133-05:00March<span lang="EN">Time is cruel these days. A good friend is dying. Aside from my wife and futball, I've lodged inside reading as an escape. I've surrounded myself with Balkan novels and then lately read Frankenstein and Hunger. Shirley Jackson has held my hand this weekend.</span>jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-15659535022767533652013-02-02T11:40:00.000-05:002013-02-02T11:40:00.033-05:00The Difference Between Misfortune and CalamityIf Mr. Gladstone were to fall into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity. -- Benjamin Disraelijon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-14827438203700199382013-01-21T10:39:00.002-05:002013-01-21T10:39:54.909-05:00ScaleOnly by concealing a theme can you approach its total description. --Adam Thirlwell on Danilo Kisjon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-22726936319491619882013-01-13T16:46:00.001-05:002013-01-13T16:46:30.265-05:00This SucksThere's either a pesky bug or my blog has been hacked. I hate that, though I wasn't exactly exhausting the creative possibilities within. <br />
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my favorite album for 2012 was Beth Orton's Sugaring Season. My favorite films were Le Havre, Margin Call and Coriolanus.<br />
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A top ten for literature would involve The Leopard, A Naked Singularity, The Rachel Papers and The Road To Wigan Pier. My discoveries for the year were Goncalo Tavares and the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal. I hope that isn't too pedestrian.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-19201127397030210922012-12-02T12:13:00.003-05:002012-12-02T12:13:58.926-05:00Heft and StrainIt is wet here. A gray rain which begs one to prefer not to at every opportunity. My weekend reading has been tunnelling through Charles Palliser's Quincunx. It is sort of a goodreads group read. It has certainly elicited a series of sighs form me personally. Following the weight of Laura Warholic, I have been blessed with a certain grave self-awareness. <br />
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Between these hulks I have enjoyed The Road To Wigan Pier, which I regard as amongst the best that I've read all year. There has also been a collection of Greene's short fiction and a novel by Martin Amis. jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-16540723531125258342012-11-18T17:21:00.000-05:002012-11-18T17:21:14.536-05:00100 BooksThanks to goodreads I have a visible metric to chart my reading. Such has been my progress. One third of my completed books have been in translation. One third of those are from the French. Most of the 19th Century novels were also from the French.<br />
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That said, most of what I <u>complete</u> remains novels from the Anglo-American world. Not many Russians so far this year and only one German. <br />
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Today I completed Laura Warholic: The Sexual Intellectual, a nearly 900 page doorstopper from Alexander Theroux. I remain uncertain as to where to proceed next.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-33853000573555443432012-11-09T18:40:00.000-05:002012-11-09T18:40:03.017-05:00Cures and QuestionsThe election is over. Matters persist. Life lists and drifts. I likely read less this past week than any this year. The election, Champions League and a zealous patch of congestion left me sprawling. Reading Alexander Theroux's Laura Warholic and Balzac's A Harlot High and Low concurrently also left me akimbo. <br />
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Here's to changes and new opportunities-- in the Premier League. We imbibe claret (Aston Villa) while the other heavies trade blows. jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-5771395365359116892012-10-29T16:52:00.002-04:002012-10-29T16:52:35.807-04:00What Can Be Left Behind?A fellow named Matt Gould passed away about a month ago. He wasn't exactly a friend. We would see each other and share a laugh and that was about the extent of it. I learned of his death the weekend I read Zadie Smith's essay about her father in Changing My Mind as well as Christopher Hitchen's posthumous Mortality. One can't be sure where presently resides in the life spectrum. I find it fair to guess that my future is now small than my past. I'm rather okay with that. I have liked read 14 books since my last posting and trip to Chicago. I reflect and ponder. <br />
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CNN is on today, which is rather strange. The hurricane is bearing down upon Long Island and i hope that Joel and Lena have been sensible and fled to higher ground with plenty of beer at hand for the siege.<br />
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I'm reading Zola at the moment, been relishing the ghost stories of Dickens before I retire. I'm rather congested and I have an ear ache but my thoughts are elsewhere this afternoon.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-57280136367831424752012-09-23T17:08:00.002-04:002012-09-23T17:08:40.578-04:00On The CampaignGoodreads is a good many things. It offers a peer resonance which I truly appreciate. It is also a habitat for all the bullshit which plague the rest of the Internet. Allow this post to focus on the benign aspects. It was trawling the waters in the grand old GR that I discovered China Mieville for which I am grateful. It was also this virtual region which enkindled hopes reading more speculative literature. This was a mistake. Case in point: R. Scott Bakker who like most of his ilk penned a trilogy of otherworldness. I bought the first two books and read 400 pages before deciding that such was insufferable and that I was nursing an active hatred of the book. I switched back to reality and read a half dozen books in a week by Alejandro Zambra, Italo Calvino, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith, Virginia Woolf and regrettably Diane Setterfield. <br />
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This humanist endeavor continues its truck. My observations and reticence continue. jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-54580923078522835822012-09-08T11:38:00.003-04:002012-09-08T11:38:57.547-04:00Cement GardenMarshaling evidence is weary work. It is taking some time to convince myself that I don't care for Fantasy, high literary or otherwise. I truly loved two novel from China Mieville but the rest is beyond rubbish. It is white men speaking gravely: insert your partisan jokes here.<br />
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I took a detour and read the above mentioned novella from Ian McAbre. A breezy peek into disorder, McEwan triumphs with creating a disturbing situation appear rather normal, good intentioned and, practically, inevitable. As I said elsewhere, it isn't Lord of the Flies, but Graham Greene's The Desctructors which is a carnage cousin to The Cement Garden. We don't see man go all feral, but rather an industrial process is underway, oblivious to observation. The reader squirms.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-66918686435372929392012-09-04T19:32:00.005-04:002012-09-04T19:32:56.098-04:00Heady TimesTwo of my favorite people came to visit last month. Books were forthcoming. Tihana gave us a copy of Berlin Stories by Robert Walser. Joel sent us a copy of The Philosopher's Touch a work by Francois Noudelmann concerning Nietzsche, Sartre and Barthes at the piano. I really loved this book, largely for the images depicted of Sartre and Nietzsche. I recognize that Clive James may wish to kick my ass for my adoration of JPS, but I'd wish to arrest such an assault by stating that it is the aesthetic Sartre that I find so endearing, not the political.<br />
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I've also read another Iain Banks novel, Dead Air. I then made time with Elizabeth Bowen but it wasn't the proper setting. I'm now deep into a biography of Mao. much like Robert Service's biography of Trotsky, it wishes to discredit all evidence of merit or accomplishment in the subject's tenure. Apparently both Trotsky and Mao ignored and abandoned their children. Somehow, I find this a rather wrongheaded approach.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-52628183441650883842012-08-23T06:59:00.001-04:002012-08-23T06:59:50.518-04:00Almost ForgotWhile Tihana was here, I found and acquired an ARC of Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis. It is a wonderful, disturbing read. I'm not claiming that Marty is growing soft, but it is a different turn form the likes of Yellow Dog. I do fear it won't resonate with us Yanks. The aspect of relegation in the premier league is a the core of a wonderful joke in the novel, one which pass by ethereal to most here.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-23950865990907566362012-08-21T18:08:00.003-04:002012-08-21T18:08:24.919-04:00Don't Know, ReallyA few weeks back this next post was going to focus on my concerns about Dark Knight Rising and Meet John Doe; sure, literature was going to be examined, but I was going to note how both films terrified me: perhaps vomiting over Robert pattinson playing T.E. Lawrence would follow, but i was going to stand tall and review Lanark which I finished. I then read Juan The Landless by Goytisolo and The Business by Iain Banks. Alas, I find myself tired and crotchety.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-85590124014894999662012-08-02T18:33:00.001-04:002012-08-02T18:33:24.660-04:00Sweeping Without The ArcI've read most of Jonathan Lethem's Ecstasy of Influence and have enjoyed such. The one point which lingers is Lethem's admission that if on a desert island he would rather have the complete works of Barbara Pym than those of Thomas Pynchon. That resonated with me. it recall Jacques Roubaud's obsession with fiction by English women. <br />
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I can't be expected to perform well these days. I feel ill at ease. I've grown weary of the latest pronouncements concerning one of the greatest writers of the last century. It isn't Gore Vidal I'm referencing, but instead Harlan Ellison and James Ellroy. This flattened scape of the virtual and new technologies is leaving me clammy; much more than the brunt of the ongoing heat.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-56718679589311789162012-07-29T18:21:00.003-04:002012-07-29T18:21:50.360-04:00FinishedThe Recognitions was finally completed today. Dense and disturbing, the novel wasn't a satire as much as a meditation on decay and mendacity. It should be noted that I felt the higher mechanics of the project sailed past me. That said, i crossed that uncharted zone, now if some friendly Stanley will arrive and elucidate, I'll be even happier.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-5683292724113046642012-07-21T15:01:00.003-04:002012-07-21T15:01:55.296-04:00Aware and AwashThe slog through The Recogniitons continues. Despite being at p. 500 I can find no momentum as the density of each page, each exchange grounds me to a virtual crawl. <br />
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I had never read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson until Thursday evening. It is less haunting than simply gripping, as the story focuses on our ancient fears and suspicions towards justice and destiny in our mass age. I thought that Suzanne Collins should be pelted with copies of the story. <br />
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I also read HHhH by Laurent Binet, a fictional treatment of the life and assassination of Rinehard Heydrich. It was compelling but uneven. Strange enough, Binet found the voice of history in Vollmann's sweeping Europe Central.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-12159879148159662772012-07-06T17:01:00.000-04:002012-07-06T17:01:40.389-04:00A New MonthIt is time to be smart. the Euros, so well received, have now passed into lore. First, though, we need a joke.<br />
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Two cows are standing in a pasture grazing, as that is what cows do, chew and munch without devoting much time to the bovine condition. One of the cows happens to nurse a loquacious streak after aheming a moment, said, hey bud, you hear about that Mad Cow Disease? His compatriot paused in his mastication and said, yeah, but I'm not worried, I'm a helicopter.<br />
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I finished four books since my last post, most notably A Naked Singularity, which is a significant novel, finding resonance on those higher registers of narrative and all around juicy novelness.I can't recommend the novel enough, so I won't.<br />
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I am now going to read The Recognitions and am awaiting a pulse of activity on samizdat per our summer Musil read.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-26610998145881342002012-06-15T15:04:00.000-04:002012-06-15T15:04:09.189-04:00SmonkTom Franklin is often brilliant. His novel Smonk is often hilarious, except when it is nihilistic. One can smile at grisly humor. I know I do.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-90171446646521887822012-06-10T18:04:00.002-04:002012-06-10T18:04:46.232-04:00My BurdenIt is time for the Euros, that's the European Championships. I've been enthralled with all six matches so far. It may sound masochistic as Joel has selected The Man Without Qualities as our summer read on samizdat. preparing for this, I devoured four books last week: Bolano's Skating Rink, Sebald's book of micropoems Unrecounted, James Ellroy's White Jazz and the late Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I enjoyed all of them immensely, especially the latter two. Mr. Ellroy is wicked strange, successful in burning the dross off of narrative. I thought White Jazz suffered when the plot went gonzo towards the end, but Bradbury was masterful in tone and pace, even if his novel offered few surprises, especially given that I have loved the film adaptation for years.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-32356913695345632452012-06-02T17:53:00.002-04:002012-06-02T17:53:33.485-04:00No Longer GuessingLondon, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. One would like that to be China Mieville, perhaps, but it isn't. Its Patrick Hamilton, really only known now for penning Rope and Gaslight, but was also a fascinating novelists and NYRB recognized that rereleased his major novels a few years back. I just finished The Slaves of Solitude and while it had Pymish elements, one could plot a tradition from Jane Eyre to Bridget Jones, it was the horrifying context that allows this boarding house drama to succeed. Located near Reading, the house is full of inhabitants forced to flee the blitz and endure privations which maintaining an illusion of propriety. Hamilton's protagonist, one Miss Roach, is wonderfully human: insecure, bookish and prone to misunderstanding the motives of others (am I looking in a mirror or what?)Miss Roach lingers, even if she is forced to tote a flashlight during the blackouts and curse the runs of events which have left her - alone, and often lonely.<br />
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Earlier in the week, I chewed through Kawabata's Beauty and Sadness and was charmed by the novel's vistas and silences. The subcurrents of the novel were problematic as character motivations appeared glib and authorial.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-77399418695457659822012-05-26T10:05:00.001-04:002012-05-26T10:05:49.093-04:00Osvaldo GolijovMaybe Alien 3 is an allegory concerning AIDS. The film does waste the chops of several thespians of rank. It isn't bad, though.<br />
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The Scar is rumbling to its conclusion. I think I will then read The Skating Rink by Bolano or some Iain Banks that I bought this week. It will likely then be a shift back to Mieville.jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9454949.post-937752199004809032012-05-24T19:11:00.000-04:002012-05-24T19:11:24.966-04:00I would go out tonight. but I haven't got a stitch to wearThe week has unfolded to witness my surviving an acute sinus meltdown and then proceed through the remainder of my holiday with nary a complaint. I read Personal days by Ed Park on Monday and it enjoyed it, which translates into I really liked the final third of the novel. the preceding elements struck me as a collection of workplace aphorisms, mourning the death of irony and grimly oblivious to what constitutes actual labor. <br />
You know,I love Great McGinity. I know that Sturges made better films, Sullivan's Travels and The Lady Eve, but there is something visceral and eternal about that fable. I am looking forward to the new Regina Spektor album. If you haven't noticed, I am trying to distract myself from summer away from soccer.<br />
The China Mieville revolution continues. I am nearly finished with my third novel of his this month and will likely read three more. That said, I find the speculative bend growing weedy. Joel has proffered hope on the samizdat front and lends purpose to things. For those interested in art films on horrible situations, we have seen a pair of French films detailing the troubles in Africa: White Material and Johnny Mad Dog are both incredible films but exact quite a price form the viewer<strike>. </strike>jon faithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04375593165985428533noreply@blogger.com0