think this blog is retired/dead for now !

The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai

TITLE: The Melancholy of Resistance
AUTHOR: László Krasznahorkai
READ: January - February
THOUGHTS: I don't even know where to start with this book. This is the third time I've tried to sit down and write something about it but have felt totally incapable. It took me a month to read its 314 pages. This is one of the heaviest, most unremittingly bleak and powerful books I have ever read. I remember watching The Werckmeister Harmonies when I was 17 or 18 and feeling like it was probably one of my favorite movies. I feel similarly to this book. The writing itself is very intense, very beautiful (in a very devastating-not-pretty way), and is seemingly spiritually traversing both the refuse that litters the earth and the possibility of reaching into some sort of black hole that is both very far away and surprisingly/not-surprisingly very near. Talking about this book makes me very hyperbolic. The first time I tried to write about it I used four separate ocean-related metaphors unconsciously -- which makes me think that this books creates the need to use a specific form of language to even begin to access a way to speak about it. The Sebald blurb on the book sez (and it couldn't be said better): "This is a book about a world into which the Leviathan has returned. The universality of its vision rivals that of Gogol's Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing." This book deserves much more than this silly little write up, but at the moment I still feel like I can't say anything. Reading this book (and alternately writing about it) feels like standing very close to an insurmountable brick wall, slowly crumbling, large pieces of cement threatening to leave a large gash or crater on your skull. I will ruin the book's last sentence, which is preceded by the (very precise/exacting) description of the decomposition of a body: "It ground the empire into carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur, it took its delicate fibers and unstitched them till they dispersed and had ceased to exist, because they had been consumed by the force of some incomprehensible distant edict, which must also consume this book, here, now, at the full stop, after the last word."

Things by Georges Perec

TITLE: Things: A story of the sixties
AUTHOR: Georges Perec
READ: January
THOUGHTS: My first Perec, which I was very excited for, but I did not like this book, or at least, I did not enjoy reading it. I guess I shouldn't say I didn't like it. Perec is obviously a very gifted writer and the approach here is novel enough and thematically coherent. In the stead of interiority there is only focus on the material/ephemeral details of young-people-life -- seems like an extension of the kind of stuff Robbe-Grillet and that ilk were doing, except that surface level detail is extended over larger periods of time and with a decidedly more sociological focus. Which brings me to my second point: this novel seems very much of its time -- '68 era Paris (though I think the novel takes place a few years before) and appears as a sort of 'critique' (is it even?) of the material and advertising culture of the period. I guess that was probably exciting when it was published but not exciting to me now since I dun read Baudrillard lolol (sorry). I don't know. The conceit of the novel became uninteresting to me about 30% through and I had to slog through the rest. Still planning on reading more Perec this year, and since this was his first novel I'm not really holding it against him!

The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra

TITLE: The Private Lives of Trees
AUTHOR: Alejandro Zambra
READ: January
THOUGHTS: Kinda been slacking a bit with this blog, finished this book a while ago. Really enjoyed it! At first thought it was going to be relatively 'light' but the last 20-30 pages or so really got to me. Who says "meta-fiction" (ugh) can't be emotionally affecting! Want to read the other Zambra that's translated. I probably should have written about this book when I finished it because I can't really think of anything to say about this now. This guy has a real nice touch and I like the things he does. There.

Thomas the Impostor by Jean Cocteau

TITLE: Thomas the Impostor
AUTHOR: Jean Cocteau
READ: January
THOUGHTS: Saw a copy of this for like five dollars at the Strand and bought it on a whim since I've never read any Cocteau and it looked short. I enjoyed it. I like Cocteau's writing. It has some of the stylistic elements that I think were probably popular in the early 20th century which lends a certain sense of confusion on the narrative level at times, though there are chunks of prose that are just wonderful. Like these:

"He was believed. He did not have to take precautions nor count the cost. A star of falsehood led him straight to his goal. And so he never had the preoccupied, hunted look of the trickster. Without knowing how to swim or how to skate he could say 'I skate and I swim.' Everyone had seen him on the ice and in the water." (pg. 50)

"On Sundays, with the machine-guns overhead shouting out the monotonous laughter of grinning skulls, and the engines whose droning would suddenly deepen from pale blue to black velvet, the officers of the Royal Navy played tennis." (pg. 77)

"He did not want to know if his love was reciprocated. He could say with Goethe: -- I love you; what is that to you?" (pg. 87)

"Yet deaths were of no consequence in the sector. Although a civilian death is the common lot, it keeps its prestige. Death can even award a certificate of good life and good behavior. People cannot help thinking, well! The man has just died. He is dead for all that. So he was not just anyone. Perhaps he was a better man than he seemed to be. But at the lines, as if the prevalence of death, wounds and continual risks made every man die more than once, death was converted into small change and lost its value. The rate of exchange was incredibly low. So the dialect of the sector seemed brutal to those who came from the land-of-few-deaths. Indeed, no-one said, "poor so and so," but "he could easily have taken cover." (pg. 114-115; there are some paragraph breaks in this section, but I am having trouble formatting them correctly, so, uhh, whatever!)

  Yeah, enjoyable stuff. I am curious to read more Cocteau. I felt like the depiction of WWI in this book was convincingly dream-like, with a glaze of un-reality that mollifies the experience of death/pain for the characters, which I assume was a necessary coping mechanism, at least that is what it appears like presented here. Reminded me at times of Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood.

The Map And the Territory by Michel Houellebecq

TITLE: The Map and the Territory
AUTHOR: Michel Houellebecq
READ: January
THOUGHT: Was excited to read this when I heard Houellebecq was setting a novel in the contemporary art world. Does this novel mark the beginning of a newer "mature" phase in Houellebecq's work? I think you can count the times he uses "cunt"/"pussy"/"cock" on two hands! Which is impressive. Definitely a much more laid-back, restrained Houellebecq on this one -- not so much emphasis on misanthropy and vitriol though the characters are as adrift and seemingly hopeless as ever. I really enjoyed this novel. Houellebecq is always a pleasure to read, even at his most belligerent.  I think this novel made me realize that Houellebecq is much more of a classical, conventional novelist than people want to give him credit for: he really knows how to write narrative, and he always creates a center for his characters in the text; they are always the most important aspect. What is also interesting is how Houellebecq builds on his own mythology by placing himself directly in the text -- there is an author named Houellebecq in the novel who has written all the same book as the IRL Houellebecq has, and also lives in Ireland; it is very funny/enjoyable watching Houellebeq (the real one) have so much fun. Houellebecq is also very clearly what I would call a social novelist -- his didacticism -- something that I've found somewhat distasteful in the past -- is a central part of his writing, and it is certainly informed by a voluminous background of 19th century social thinkers. It seems like Jed, the main character, in his attempts at giving somewhat unfiltered accounts of the existence of working people on the verge of the 20th century into the 21st resembles Houellebecq's own cataloging of 'the world as it is' -- and perhaps he shall be remembered for that as well. I think the problem with Houellebecq is that it is difficult for the reader to create distance between the bursts of proselytization in the text and how 'seriously' the IRL Houellebecq is beholden to these pronouncements on human culture. It seems to me, the more I read him, that Houellebecq is more mirroring the fragmented form of 'intellectual discourse' of the world by interpolating these chunks of human culture orientated criticisms into his narratives, and by doing this, he is more exposing the level at which 'people today' speak and think about things -- and this sometimes takes the form of very ugly, biased, misogynistic, racist, etc speech -- though in comparison to his other books I've read even that is toned down significantly in this one. Houellebecq has always reminded me of a hornier weirder Woody Allen sometimes -- he vacillates between being joyful and/or accepting of the 'condition' of being a human being today, in all of its contrivances and absurdities, but then frequently falls back into an overwhelming cynicism/nihilism. I feel that this books is much more hopeful than other Houellebecq texts I've read -- the only thing that awaits the characters is old age and death but I think Houellebecq is trying to suggest that, like the art work that Jed does in the book, and the work that Houellebecq does in the novel 'that's just what you have to deal with.' Really enjoyed reading this book, might go back and read some of the Houellebecq I haven't read yet.

Brodie's Report by Jorge Luis Borges

TITLE: Brodie's Report
AUTHOR: Jorge Luis Borges
READ: December-January
THOUGHT: Wrote about this right after I finished it, when I was feeling inspired:

 "After Fictions and The Aleph, this might be my favorite Borges collection. I actually may like it more than The Aleph. In terms of style, Borges is really straightforward and literal here. There are still a lot of the Borgesian turns of phrases, 'fake prologues', etc that are to be found in other Borges, but all of these stories lack any kind of baroque affect, faux-academic diction, etc. Not to say that those things are bad! They work very well when appropriate, like in his earlier stuff, but here I much prefer the plainer style.
    I think the central aspect of Brodie's Report seems to be Borges' obsession with violence, which I think definitely seems comic given his status/mythology as a writer: someone much more concerned, in his day-to-day life at least, with libraries than with knife fights. There are a lot more of the latter than the former in this collection. What I find interesting is the way in which Borges deals with violence in these stories. There was one line in particular, I don't remember which story it was from or the line verbatim, but the scene went something like this: a young boy is visiting an estate somewhere with his cousin, and out of nowhere it appears as if there is going to be a knife fight among two of the guests at the estate. Everyone at the party obliges this request, and follows the two fighters outside, obeying the impulse. At this the narrator says something to the effect of, "we all felt ourselves being pulled into the whirl/void of the violence to come, both being fascinated and disgusted by it." -- not verbatim but you get it!
    Borges, in many, if not all of these stories, is suggesting that violence is as inherent in the fabric of the universe as anything else that might be given cosmic significance, and despite its perennial role, has yet to be understood; it's impulses are nevertheless still obeyed. The fact that Borges articulates this in very simple stories, written simply, many of them dealing with knife fights, rivalries, even spiritual violence, is astounding. I think I have read in some places that people have written off later period Borges somewhat. I imagine that Borges' fascination with gauchos seems to be a bit "romantic," or at least something surprisingly contradictory given Borges' general bookish interests. I feel as if Borges is locating violence in temporality, a temporality associated with his national heritage, in order for the violence depicted to be granted a kind of timelessness -- the idea of violence as a timeless enigma/aspect is frequently alluded to in these stories. The gaucho can be replaced with cowboys, Nazis, Alexander the Great, or ancient cultures drinking the blood of virgins, whatever.
    I also find it appropriate that someone like Borges is writing about gaucho knife fights: by being inherently removed from the kinds of tales that Borges is spinning (both in time and in terms of his 'personality') Borges is granted the ability to link the violence of the gauchos to a more universal violence, the violence that permeates everyday existence in a way that is continually baffling, despite its recurrence. I remember reading something that Edouard Leve said, I think maybe in the except of Autoportrait that I read, that despite his repeated exposure to it, acts of cruelty always retained an aura of 'unreality' to them -- that one has a hard time comprehending their existence as they are happening.
    Not all of the stories are about gauchos, and those are also some of the best stories in this collection. "The Gospel According To St. Mark" might be one of my favorite Borges stories I have read.  "The Elderly Lady", "The Duel", and "Guayaquil" are also stand-out stories to me, none of them directly pertaining to gaucho violence. I felt as if the title story was an alternate of "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" -- the creation of a world, I don't know
    I really, really enjoyed reading this, one of Borges' best I think. Only three story collections to go and I am finished with the Borges (fiction) oeuvre! That makes me very sad.

The Tennis Coart Oath by John Ashbery

TITLE: The Tennis Coart Oath
AUTHOR: John Ashbery
READ: December-January (ABANDONED 2/3)
THOUGHTS: Another abandoned book! In 2012 I will not have mercy. Ashbery is really hit or miss with me. His obfuscation is sometimes alluring, sometimes frustrating, sometimes boring. I really only liked a handful of the poems I read, and of the ones I liked I barely remember most. The experience of reading them was enjoyable, though no content was gleaned. Like, a guided hallucinatory drug experience through an imaginary place where you can only remember the emotions you felt as you were going through, and nothing of the terrain. I really wanted to read Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror, but after reading this and Some Trees I was Ashbery'ed out. Sorry bro!!

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

TITLE: The Tin Drum
AUTHOR: Günter Grass
READ: December - January (ABANDONED 1/3)
THOUGHTS: I have been corresponding with someone about this book, and so therefore have already written a good amount about it. That does not auger well for a thought-out lengthy write up here! I have abandoned this book for now, at about 200 or so pages in. I finished the first book, and have about 400 pages left. There are a few reasons why I was not completely enamored with the text, and despite that I could harp on it for a while, I will try to just limit myself to essentials. First...the structure. I found the structure of this book to be slightly frustrating. There are three books in The Tin Drum, each with several chapters, and each chapter is named. The effect of this is that each chapter has its own little module of narrative, at least from what I read. What I mean by this: a chapter begins, we are already familiar with Oskar and the people he knows, and the chapters relates an anecdote involving him and other people. Each chapter follows the same pattern: self-contained module of narrative that very slowly threads a larger overarching story and then stops. Repeat. Why I find this frustrating is because I feel as though each chapter presents itself more as a short story that only very occasionally doles out important information about the characters. Speaking of the characters: I never took to Oskar's form of narration. Something about it strikes me as excessively coy, 'quirky', affectedly 'innocent', etc. I understand what Grass is doing, he is creating a very strange idiosyncratic character, a character who would be considered on the 'fringes' of society, and using this character as a way in which to depict 'history happening to someone' -- or something to that effect. Anthropologically the book is of course very interesting: a perspective into what life in Germany during those very dark times was like, for someone not aligned with the Nazis. I don't want to sound too harsh on the book, I thought it was good, and I did enjoy reading it, it just took some unnecessary effort to pick it up each time I did, and my patience started to wane. I might pick it up again. The last chapter of the first book I found to be very powerful -- pertaining to Oskar's experience of Kristallnacht. In 2012 I unfortunately want to abandon more books if they are not winning me over, simply because there is too much to read!!! Sorry books!!

OK!!!

Alright, alright, I am back and have decided to just make this into a 'normal blog,' despite my initial resistance to such a thing!! This blog's overarching aim will still be the detailing of books that I have read, mostly, but I think I will perhaps add other things as well!

Also, would like to add that perhaps in 2012 my approach will be slightly different, in that I will attempt (perhaps) to write about the books that I have read at greater length, and perhaps with a smidgen more seriousness -- though I suppose that will vary widely on the book. Here's a song:

N.B.: in case I actually do what I set out to do (an incredibly rare thing) I would like to disown every 'review' I have written here. Sorry! "Priests don't have opinions" - Diary of A Country Priest; I am priestly in nature!

-S.C.

THE END

I guess this blog has reached its terminus??? Or has it??? I am, at the moment, considering just taking out the '2011' and making this blog either:

• "Every Book That I Have Read 2012-30XX" ?
• an actual 'person' blog, like, where I talk about things (do I really want to do that?)
• leaving the blog inert as of tomorrow

What's going to happen?? The Mystery.

2011 is probably the year I read the most amount of books. That is good! I hope to read more in 2012. I was thinking of making some charts and lists about the books that I read but now I just feel like that's probably not going to happen. The consensus is that most of the books I read in 2011 were great. That is great! The only books that I didn't finish in 2011 were Kobo Abe's The Face of Another and Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America. Counting those books as a 'single' book (huh?? what kind of logic is this??), in 2011 I read about 78 books! Cool! Though to be fair, I have been reading quite a bit recently, and just have not gotten around to finish the following:

• The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (recently finished 'Part 1', about ~200 pages in)
• Brodie's Report by Jorge Luis Borges (about ~40 pages left)
• The Tennis Court Oath by John Ashbery (about ~30 pages left)

So that's it! Maybe! Happy New Years! If you have read this, thank you!

Best,
Sebastian

The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño

TITLE: The Romantic Dogs
AUTHOR: Roberto Bolaño
READ: December
THOUGHTS: Have read a bunch of the poems in here already. I enjoyed this poetry collection, though I have to admit that my opinion of these poems is obviously filtered through my already-existing obsession with Bolaño. There was actually probably more here that I disliked than 'liked'...well maybe that is a bit harsh! I think there are some aspects of Bolaño's poetry that I don't really enjoy, and I think it's because it is in his poems that his most sentimental impulses come out. Stuff like "no one is braver than poetry" or whatever...maybe I have a diminished opinion of the importance or 'bravery' of poetry...Zurita did, like, scar his cheek or whatever, and Bolaño was arrested when he was younger than I was, and poets today probably just complain about iPhones or something...well I guess writers today in general, or really just any young person born in the mid to late 80's living in the United States. There are definitely a bunch of poems in here that I really enjoyed. I also feel like the tonal and syntactic quality of his poems are an interesting counterpoint to his fiction, in that it sort of crystallizes the "Bolaño tone" and distills it into colloquial speech mixed with some sort of weird image-based-mystery-cum-abstraction thing. I also enjoyed the themes/setting for a lot of these poems: prostitutes, Mexico City as smog and violence void, sci-fi opining, putting your head into a black hole and thinking about that, etc. Yeah, good good I like it all, etc.

In Praise of Darkness by Jorge Luis Borges

TITLE: In Praise of Darkness
AUTHOR: Jorge Luis Borges
READ: December
THOUGHTS: Technically only read the prose pieces from this book, as my Borges collection doesn't have any of his poetry in it. The stories were all wonderful. As I have been making my way through the Borges oeuvre chronologically, and given that his most highly regarded work was written in '40's, I expected the Borges stories later on to lessen in quality. I have not found this to be true yet. It seems like as Borges got older he was able to condense what he wanted to do in an even smaller amount of space, even though most of his classic stories are only about 7-10 pages long. Some of the most powerful stories in here are about two or three paragraphs; I was particularly emotionally affected by "A Prayer." Also really love Borges' prefaces to all of his collections, something that by today's standards might seem 'lame' -- but I think I would like seeing more people writing prefaces to their own work in the future.

Some Trees by John Ashbery

TITLE: Some Trees
AUTHOR: John Ashbery
READ: December
THOUGHTS: Feel like I read poems pretty frequently but rarely sit down and read 'full' poetry books so I am going to try to rectify that in the coming months or so. Been thinking of getting through some Ashbery canon, decided to start chronologically. This honestly did not do much for me. I was bracing for the incomprehensible, trying to get into a zone where I can 'soak up' that kind of stuff, but it left me dry. Aside from "The Picture of Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers" and maybe a few others I mostly have already forgotten all of the words in this book. I dunno. I might be a dolt, but with poetry that is largely written in abstract and un-literal/concrete language my sensibility for what makes a poem work is incredibly murky and unintelligible. I guess it becomes closer to music, more about "feeling" or something, and I wasn't feeling it. Still about three or four more Ashbery books to come, and this was his really early stuff, so maybe I will come to like all of that a lot more! I really like "How Much Longer..." and "The Skaters" and the poems I've read in "Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror" so I have a feeling I will like the later stuff better.

Europeana by Patrik Ouředník

TITLE: Europeana
AUTHOR: Patrik Ouředník
READ: December
THOUGHTS: Have never read a book quite like this! I guess I would call it a kind of deconstructive narrative history of the 20th century, as much as that might make some (me) cringe. Despite its consistent deadpan tone and syntactic clarity there is no creedence given to historical linearity or even really any conventional idea of history. Dalkey calls it a novel, and I like that. It is much more a novel than a non-fiction text; it just so happens to be a novel written entirely with 'factual' elements, which I really like and I find exciting. Reading this made me tremendously curious about Patrik Ouředník, whom I have never really heard of before reading about this I think. I might have seen his name on some websites but no ideas or titles attached itself to the name. I would recommend this book to pretty much everyone. The structuring element along with the the tone really make it work for me. Because the tone feels so distant it, at times, almost felt like I was reading a story about a foreign world, that perhaps has nothing to do with the one I inhabit, which I take to be part of the conceit of the book. It almost felt like reading a 120 page version of the "Findings" section in Harper's. Great great yes. 20th century was a mistake and the 21st century will be weirder probably !!!

The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño

TITLE: The Third Reich
AUTHOR: Roberto Bolaño
READ: November-December
THOUGHTS: Enjoyed this, though didn't think so at first. The first hundred pages were a bit meandering and felt more like an exercise or 'practice novel' (the manuscript for this dates back to '89, which is about 4 or so years before Bolaño published The Skating Rink, which I believe is his first published novel? I could be wrong.) The book was close to 300 pages, which for Bolaño's shorter works is a bit long; at times I felt like this could have definitely merited a shorter length, though maybe the slow pace does well for the book's overall atmosphere, tone, etc. It very slowly develops into the perennial Bolaño narrative: a story with somewhat innocuous origins delves into a kind unseeable and unverified looming terror -- for the last third of the book you slowly suspect that something terrible is going to happen and then things just sort of peter out in both an anticlimactic (which is never a bad word in Bolaño) and emotionally confusing/diffused way. I would say this book stands well among other Bolaño novels. I don't think there is a single thing he has written that I have disliked, though I think this book will probably end up lumped into a grouping of 'lesser works' in the Bolaño oeuvre. Still lots of fun and not a boring moment, despite its slow pace.

My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec

TITLE: My Two Worlds
AUTHOR: Sergio Chejfec
READ: December
THOUGHTS: Damn this book....after reading Vila-Matas' incredible preface for this book I was practically bouncing off of the walls with excitement to read it. It really is, I think, incredible. An antecedent, or perhaps just contemporary I guess, for this kind of writing is definitely Sebald: the solitary walker's soliloquy, and the nebulous, amorphous text that follows -- also dense, beautiful (thought more plain stated here than in Sebald, which I actually really like) and also brimming with a million things that it simultaneously is and isn't; it is also about a 100 pages long. I will admit that the narrator's philosophical, emotional, and social concerns all seem to mirror my own quite closely, so maybe that plays a part for why I feel such an overwhelming kinship with this book and its author, but there is something about this kind of writing that is incredibly exciting to me -- probably one of the most exciting books I have read this year. One of the things I have found out about myself by keeping this blog (man this sentence can only be embarrassing or stupid or both) is that I have a tendency to be able to write at great length and with great ease about books that I either thought were ok or don't feel particularly attached to. With this book, as with the other books that I really loved this year (Vila-Matas, Bolano, uhh others (don't feel like looking at my list)) there is a very real trepidation in my attempts to try and articulate why I have admired them so much, as if any stray or thoughtless remark will either smudge the book's reputation (a reputation which I am seeking to exalt and represent) or either just make me look really stupid, in that my reasons for liking something will appear to be fraudulent, inauthentic, barely articulated, superficial, etc. The knowledge that my experience with this book has been both the experience of filling myself into an inanimate object as much as it has been an experience of reading someones voice creates some weird kind of familiarity and estrangement, a relationship I think is present in the book between the narrator and the world he encounters and perhaps suggests the same kind of problem and/or weirdness of reading the traces of someone elses' existence, like the thing you're holding in between your hands. I don't know. My head is jumbled. All of these thoughts are nonsense.

Death Sentence by Maurice Blanchot

TITLE: Death Sentence
AUTHOR: Maurice Blanchot
READ: November
THOUGHTS: I feel like I probably have to read this book another two or three times to understand it on a level that is satisfying to me. That being said I was into this book, though I felt like it dragged at some points, probably mostly because of my inability to keep my head on while going through the text. I went through the second part in one sitting; it was a large chunk of unseparated text to get through. Blanchot's approach is really interesting to me...it manages to be both very refined, restrained, grounded but also abstract and 'free-floating' or something. On the sentence level he is very clear; the words are very sharp and textured sort of clearly, but once you begin to pile the sentences on top of each other the structure seems to lose its capacity to hold the sentences' coherency. The only other way I could describe it would be to say that you could isolate each sentence in this book, and they would certainly yield clear readings, but once grouped together into a 'coherent' text the thing starts to break free at the seams, which given Blanchot's aims and ideas re: writing is obviously intentionally done and executed skillfully. I still feel like my experience with this book was like meandering through a daydream that I can now only half remember, even though I finished it only a few hours ago. I would like to read some other Blanchot and then come back to this one. I have definitely not ever read a book quite like it, though Grillet, Bataille, et al. are definitely all in this ilk.

ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound

TITLE: ABC of Reading
AUTHOR: Ezra Pound
READ: November
THOUGHTS: Always fun to listen to people who speak with great authority, and I think that encompasses a lot of the fun here, though that is not to say that there isn't a lot to learn. Ezra Pound is very funny, very ardent about his ridiculous beliefs, though there is merit to a lot of what he says, of course. I don't want to go through all of the arguments he makes, but it seems that he is arguing, to a large degree, that if there is a form that something encompasses, like a poem form, or a novel form, it has an origin, roots, historical formation, etc. -- and that to truly understand the modern permutation of that form, you have to understand its history, embody it in your own study/reading, and ultimately be able to move forward with that historical knowledge in your own work. What results from that belief, though, are pronouncements like, 'unless you can read Latin, ancient Greek, Provencal (n.b. - what the fuck is that lol), archaic Italian, and old(e) English, you can't REALLY understand poetry, you can only pretend to.' Which is of course very funny, completely ridiculous, whatever. I understand what he is saying, though of course there is, within all of this, a gigantic assumption made about literature, that is, that just because Homer wrote some words and it was called 'literature' and fucking some other guy (let's say, James Joyce) wrote some words and caled it 'literature' that they are somehow the same thing. Here, I am perhaps transgressing beyond 'my thoughts on this book' into 'my thoughts on the history of literature and why Ezra Pound is an idiot sort of', but I think that given the confluence of influence re: that context seemingly determines even the language surrounding how to describe something, literature for Homer, James Joyce, and Dennis Cooper all mean incredibly different things, as all of those people exist(ed) in incredibly different worlds, to the extent by which calling everything Literature as if there was some sort of metaphysical unity that the written word has been beholden to might be a bit of stretch, if not completely ignorant of the discursive bullshit that allows you to think the way you do (up is up, down is down, etc.). Despite the fact that I disagree with Pound on probably more than less, reading this is a bit of a window into that time period's criticims and thought, and perhaps explains a bit of the proclivities people like Pound, Eliot, and Joyce were so fond of that appear so snobbish and embarrassing by today's standards (to me). It was very fun and informative to read, and I enjoyed reading it throughout.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

TITLE: The Sun Also Rises
AUTHOR: Ernest Hemingway
READ: November
THOUGHTS: I think I am deathly allergic to something in my house, most likely dust, but I'd like to imagine that it is some sort of secret poison filtering/floating through my breathing air, coming to slowly kill me, which it has identified as its target. I have sniffled all day, snot running down my nose, and read the last 150 pages of this book in one sitting, mucus constantly threatening to soil the pages, which I have thankfully avoided since I don't own this book. I believe it has taught me a lot about the 'realist narrative' despite that this is supposed to be a book that has defined a generation that is supposedly seeking to distance itself from anything that would be associated with the 19th century. If this was the book that defined that generation then I either feel bad for that generation, or at least think that they are a bunch of retards and its probably good that most of them are dead and that the world is humming without them. Heehee. I don't know. I enjoyed this book in the same way I would have enjoyed a Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy because I'm holed up in a hotel room somewhere with nothing to do. Hemingway's prose style. This guy isn't really one for complexity is he! I guess that is cool. In all honesty I can see how this kind of writing has influenced a few generations of American writers, from Carver to Roth to whoever. And also, I guess because I have already read so many versions of this, those other versions having been influenced by other books that had been influenced by other books that had been influenced by this book, it felt like I wasn't reading anything particularly new or exciting. This wasn't a particularly exciting read for me at all. I don't know, I feel, for reasons obscure to me, some desire to shit on this book. I will be reading The Great Gatsby next, because I have not read that since I was 15, and I done grown up since then. I remember liking it when I was 15. I think the only other 'major' Hemingway I haven't read at this point is "For Whom The Bells Toll" and "A Moveable Feast," both of which I intend to read eventually.