Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette

TITLE: Fatale
AUTHOR: Jean-Patrick Manchette
READ: October
THOUGHTS: Picked this up on a whim at the library because I had seen the cover before and because I trust NYRB. Also wanted to read something a little different re: the stuff I usually read (this being a crime-noir-femme-fatale type thing). Expected more out of it. I enjoyed reading it throughout, but I sort of was hoping that it was going to be uhhh 'heftier'? More insipred? I don't know. I thought most of it was well written, with the exception of some slighty-verging-on-ridiculous and/or implaussable scenes (since this book is presenting itself as a realist noir I don't feel bad holding it to those standards (!), etc.). Glad I read it, will most likely completely forget I ever read this book in about a year.

The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov

TITLE: The Zone
AUTHOR: Sergei Dovlatov
READ: October
THOUGHTS: Liked this one a lot, though not as much as 'The Suitcase.' Again the Dovlatov voice being the thing that really holds it all together, along w/ the moral relativity that is rendered very movingly, interestingly, funnily, etc. A few scenes stand out much stronger than the rest. Think I might take a break w/ Dovlatov but I will probably end up reading all of his other stuff, too.

The Leviathan by Joseph Roth

TITLE: The Leviathan
AUTHOR: Joseph Roth
READ: October
THOUGHTS: Can't think of any other word to describe this book other than 'delightful.' Roth's prose, pacing, and story has a very whimsical characteristic to it, though there is also slight traces of irony/playfulness, other stuff, etc. I think the movement of the text -- using a sort of 'cursory' fairy-tale kind of set-up to keep it going pretty quickly, pausing slightly here and there for little morsels/details -- is the most interesting thing about this book. I really enjoyed it, and want to read more Roth, whom I like more than other Roths I think, heee heee. Very nice.

The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel) by Macedonio Fernández

TITLE: The Museum of Eterna's Novel (The First Good Novel)
AUTHOR: Macedonio Fernández 
READ: Sept-Oct
THOUGHTS: Was really really excited to read this. Hooked me w/ concept alone: novel with 50+ prologues plus main novel about "characters" living in a place called "La Novela" (nyuck). The playfulness in this book is a bit out of control, though it can be very appealing/funny/interesting. I think this might be one of those "more interesting to think/talk about than read" kind of things ultimately, because getting through this whole book was pretty difficult at times; a large portion of it is Fernández talking about being vs. nothingness, his ideas on fiction, love, phenomenology, etc. Still way ahead of its time (mostly written in 30's/40's) and a very interesting example of a novel with an overwhelmingly metafictional aesthetic attempting to address very important (though conventional) questions about life and shit. A very inspirational book, really would like to read more about his life/other works. (Also wonder if anything has been lost on me due to my lack of knowledge re: Argentine literary scene during the 30's and 40's).

Patriotism by Yukio Mishima

TITLE: Patriotism
AUTHOR: Yukio Mishima
READ: October
THOUGHTS: I thought this book was incredibly powerful; I really loved it. I haven't read Mishima in probably years now, and I had completly forgotten how he wrote, really. While I am never a fan of flowerlyness/sustained elevated diction, I found his writing here to be incredibly apt/forceful re: the emotional crux of the text, which is ritual suicide. The way that he subsumes the nexus of sex, pain, duty, humiliation, despair, etc under the idealogy of Japanese nationalism/patriotism is super intense, and almost mystifying -- I sort of felt like I was floating through a bizare folk tale the entire time. Really made me want to read (and reread) some more Mishima.

Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas

TITLE: Montano's Malady
AUTHOR: Enrique Vila-Matas
READ: October
THOUGHTS: I have been delaying writing on here mostly because of this book -- I don't really know what to say about it besides that I really loved it and that it was very powerful/moving for me, because Vila-Matas' conception of literature, and what/how literature 'can be' is very close to my own (of course comparatively incipient) ideas/feelings. I feel like anything that I say about this book will be stupid in comparison to its actual brilliance -- like, for example, I feel like this book understands the 'conceit' of metafiction not as something 'simply' signalling its own self-concsioussness/irony, but as using that self-consciousness as a catapult for engaging in the spectre of history and tradition in an incredible (-ly hilarious, heartfelt, deft, learned) way. I wish I was more fluent in Spanish because I would go out and read everything he has written.

Eat When You Feel Sad by Zachary German

TITLE: Eat When You Feel Sad
AUTHOR: Zachary German
READ: October
THOUGHTS: I really enjoyed this book. Probably one of my favorite uses of the ultra concrete/literal/minimal style that is used commonly today. Since I read this book in one sitting (also: I am sick) and the sentences repeat a similar grammatical structure (subject-verb-object or something), the sentences started to feel kind of strange and alienating, despite the appearance of being salient and/or translucent. I guess that kind of reminded me of Grillet. I think the quick/continual movement of events in the text had this slow sort of emotional impact that I didn't expect. On the back of the book it says that Tao Lin calls it strangely avant-garde and accessible at the same time, I would agree. Coooool.

Spent by Joe Matt

TITLE: Spent
AUTHOR: Joe Matt
READ: October
THOUGHTS: The prospect of reading a graphic novel about a 30-something loser who watches porn all day was very appealing to me but I don't think I liked this that much. A lot of shitty dialog/heavy-handed exposition kind of thing. I liked the last section a bit more (it was uhh 'meta'). I would like to read more about masturbation/porn addicts/creeps and how they hate themselves or something.

Hurt Others by Sam Pink

TITLE: Hurt Others
AUTHOR: Sam Pink
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Enjoyed this one a bunch, too. I would say maybe about 30%-40% of the stories in here were sort of forgettable, or felt like 'Sam Pink exercises,' while the rest I really liked, which I think for a short story collection is a good ratio. The memorable ones here deal with everyday weirdness re: something 'specific' (babysitting, playing a boardgame w/ your soon to be ex-gf naked, getting drunk at a party and hating yourself, etc.) in strange and funny ways. The more I read Sam Pink the more his style seems to me like a more absurd/concrete/literal Midwest Thomas Bernhard, except with all of the scorn and anxiety either directed toward the narrator himself or to nothing in particular, I guess just 'the world.' Maybe Bernhard isn't really that accurate, I dunno!

Purgatory by Raúl Zurita

TITLE: Purgatory
AUTHOR: Raúl Zurita
READ: September
THOUGHTS: I really enjoyed this book of poems, and was almost certain that Zurita was used as inspiration for Bolano in his own works (specifically the sky-writing poems). These poems are very heavy; they establish a tone of confusion, tenderness, and desperation that grows exaggerated as the book progresses. Everything becomes a bit more dark and obscure. The religious imagery was closer to an Eckheartian mysticism than any sort of promulgation of conventional Catholicism, despite the Dante title; the central images are deserts, the empty sky, etc. Really neat.

The Suitcase by Sergei Dovlatov

TITLE: The Suitcase
AUTHOR: Sergei Dovlatov
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Picked this up out of nowhere and was blown away. Really, really loved this. I can't believe I haven't heard of this guy before. This is really more a collection of short stories than a novel, but what makes this work is Dovlatov's voice, which after only reading a few sentences was already incredibly engaging, hilarious, and unique. This book made me laugh out loud several times. I was also really impressed by his deft/economical sentence construction -- a very light touch! The voice reminded me a bit of a slightly more comical Bolano: the imposed self-irony, helplessness/fatalism-as-humor, seeming ambivalence re: being a 'writer,' etc. I even found his little anti-Communist remarks more endearing than 'political' or anything that would take itself too seriously. Would recommend this to everyone. Will probably be reading more of him in the near future.

The No Hellos Diet by Sam Pink

TITLE: The No Hellos Diet
AUTHOR: Sam Pink
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Really liked this. I think S. Pink 'steps up' the thing that he is pursuing w/ this one. The use of the second person is both impressive to me and well used. The narration style seems to be more of the same, w/ the 'absurd' thoughts/hypotheticals toned down a bit, which I think is for the better, because the aimlessness, shittyness, and 'despair-as-humor' works just as well without them. What I really liked was the very obvious (yet somehow implicit) interaction b/w the main character, which here I presume is really someone incredibly similiar to Sam Pink, and people that are not white and have come from suburbs. Someone should probably write about that.

Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan

TITLE: Trout Fishing In America
AUTHOR: Richard Brautigan
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Could not get into this at all. Read only about half of it and put it down. Something about this book was incredibly unappealing and uninteresting to me; I really enjoyed In Watermelon Sugar a lot more. The qualities of Brautigan's prose that I didn't like in IWS were just more exacerbated here, and along w/ it a focus on abstract mini-narratives about fishing or some other bullshit. Maybe I could get into this at some other point in my life but not now.

Exercises In Style by Raymond Queneau

TITLE: Exercises In Style
AUTHOR: Raymond Queneau
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Enjoyed this book immensely; thought it was hilarious/very interesting/smart. The gist of this book is that a very banal and uninteresting story is repeated 99 times through different manipulations of language, narrative, and perspective. I think this, to me, is so effective because the story itself is lacking any sort of moral component, therefore lending to the variations the brunt of focusing on the 'writing' as opposed to anything else. It also works because Queneau is a really gifted writer with a deft ear. I went through this book in about two hours, and the more I read the less I began to pay attention to the story and the more I began to notice the ease and familiarity w/ which Queneau inhabited the recurring tropes of very disparate styles. I couldn't really get into the 'permutation' variations, or any of the ones that read like gibberish, but I mostly enjoyed this book greatly and will probably re-read it multiple times.

Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet

TITLE: Jealousy
AUTHOR: Alain-Robbe-Grillet
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Felt similarly to this as I did to In The Labyrinth. This book complicated my ideas re: Grillet; I think his project w/ the novel is incredibly interesting/innovative, but I felt as if my participation in this project of his started to wane a bit 2/3 through the book, as I already had a pretty clear idea of what he was doing, and I knew that reading through the rest of whatever would happen would not really change anything for me about the book, which it didn't, which I also guess is part of the point since a large part of his project seems to be eschewing the privilege given to continuity, climax, linearity, ending, etc etc. I think I need to give myself some time before I read another book of his, but I am still very interested in reading more (and more about) Grillet.

The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier

TITLE: The Mystery Guest
AUTHOR: Greg something
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Enjoyed this book; went through it quickly. Never knew what to make of the voice, it was at times cloying/pedantic, sometimes very funny/out-there. Sort of walked a thin line for me, re: the effectiveness of a deranged 'unreliable male narrator' which I guess seems to be my thing re: first person narrative, but some pull it off better than others. I still liked this book a good amount; thought it worked well; would read something else by this guy.

In The Labyrinth by Alain Robbe-Grillet

TITLE: In The Labyrinth
AUTHOR: Alain Robbe-Grillet
READ: September
THOUGHTS: My first Robbe-Grillet; I think he is an incredible writer albeit a writer you (at least here) have to have serious patience with. The use of the looping structure I found to be incredibly effective, frustrating, tedious (in a good way), etc. Besides the general tedium that sometimes accompanied reading I was really impressed by its execution and found its 'objective' prose language as a 'ruse' or whatever to be incredibly innovative. Definitely a top doggie.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

TITLE: In Watermelon Sugar
AUTHOR: Richard Brautigan
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Very readable novel with a very strange aesthetic. I don’t know if I really care for Brautigan’s prose style but I enjoyed this book a good amount and thought it was pretty interesting.

Try by Dennis Cooper

TITLE: Try
AUTHOR: Dennis Cooper
READ: September
THOUGHTS: This is the Cooper novel I have enjoyed the least so far; seems like it is retreading some themes that were dealt with more interestingly elsewhere. Still very funny and the narrative style of mixed third and first (the third being way more like a first person narrative) I found to be very effective.

An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter by César Aira

TITLE: An Episode In The Life Of A Landscape Painter
AUTHOR: César Aira
READ: August
THOUGHTS: It was amusing to read Aira do a more conventional narrative though I will admit that I think this book is almost entirely forgettable. I guess I really do prefer it when he is in a zanier mood; I went through the book quickly and enjoyed it but I thought it was relatively dull.