what are you reading now?

[IdleRich]

Agree Rich - I’ve picked up All the Devils are Here after the enthusiastic discussion earlier. I’ve also got The Sea View Has Me Again: Uwe Johnson in Sheerness by Patrick Wright which is also heavily based in Kent.

As a thread this kind of limps along and then flames into life before dying down again which I have kind of got used to - the same for the threads on individual books/writers - Prynne/Pynchon/Pound/ Melville are the only ones I can think of that have had a relatively healthy existence

Agreed. I do wish people would nip into this thread a little bit more, because I do reckon most people (or most dissensian types at least) tend to be reading something most of the time don't they? And the beauty of this thread is that you're not being asked to provide a huge essay or justification - just a paragraph or two. And while it is a good resource it could be a better one.

 

[IdleRich]

Oh, I was just using punk as an example of how I could pick some subject and then just toss out some theory based on circumstantial evidence, I wasn't critiquing the Laurel Canyon bloke directly - I'm not even sure that the book I read was by the same guy as the blog to be honest, I've been too lazy to fact check

The Laurel Canyon scene is interesting, although when it comes to "Canyons", it is the late 60s Topanga Canyon scene that I'm more interested in - home of the "Spiral Staircase" party house, snuff films ( allegedly ), satanic sacrifices ( allegedly ), and rampant drug abuse...

which proves that your suspicion that I like nasty sleaze is entirely correct!

and that may be why I am enjoying the Simon Raven books, and intend to read the Arms To Oblivion series in its entirety - should finish Sabre Squadron tonight and make a start on Fielding Gray

Oh sorry, I obviously didn't read your post properly at all there, d'oh.
I bet it is the same guy though, what you're saying does sound like what he said, the stuff about the parents being military leaders etc
Yeah Raven is a perfect example of that and it makes perfect sense that you would dig it. You probably already know it but the Fielding Gray character is based on the author himself. He claimed that being molested by the PE teacher at his school was a great experience but as far as I recall that particular misadventure doesn't find its way into the books. In fact a number of the characters are based on real people - the massively cunty one with a double-barrelled name is Jacob Rees-Mogg's father.

 

[william_kent]

Oh sorry, I obviously didn't read your post properly at all there, d'oh.
I bet it is the same guy though, what you're saying does sound like what he said, the stuff about the parents being military leaders etc
Yeah Raven is a perfect example of that and it makes perfect sense that you would dig it. You probably already know it but the Fielding Gray character is based on the author himself. He claimed that being molested by the PE teacher at his school was a great experience but as far as I recall that particular misadventure doesn't find its way into the books. In fact a number of the characters are based on real people - the massively cunty one with a double-barrelled name is Jacob Rees-Mogg's father.

There is a passing reference to an 'unpleasant incident' in regards to Fielding Gray and his school in Sabre Squadron, but it isn't expanded upon - I did wonder if that was an autobiographical reference. I think part of the appeal, for me, is that I suspect that he is doing savage and vicious character assassinations on people he knew...

 

[IdleRich]

Yes indeed. And I think that you can find out precisely who he is sticking the knife into with a quick google. Though obviously a lot of them might not mean much to us a few decades after the books were published.
Did you ever read A Dance to the Music of Time? If not it's almost the flip side of the Arms to Oblivion series. It doesn't have the same feeling of sleaze just below the murky surface, but it is a fantastic thing in itself, again conveying this powerful sense of time through the huge number of characters and their experiences. @woops is a big fan I know.

 

[jenks]

Yes indeed. And I think that you can find out precisely who he is sticking the knife into with a quick google. Though obviously a lot of them might not mean much to us a few decades after the books were published.
Did you ever read A Dance to the Music of Time? If not it's almost the flip side of the Arms to Oblivion series. It doesn't have the same feeling of sleaze just below the murky surface, but it is a fantastic thing in itself, again conveying this powerful sense of time through the huge number of characters and their experiences. @woops is a big fan I know.

I’m just on another re-read of Dance half way through second volume for the third time - he’s excellent on those big set piece occasions where he brings his characters together. He’s compared to Proust but I think it’s not really accurate - it’s long, but not as long as Proust and it’s about posh people but the narrator is far more knowing and less self absorbed. Again I think many are drawn from real life but less as an act of revenge.

 

[version]

the way i remember it their dads werent regular conscripts they were pretty high up in the establishment. it was suggestive rather
than conclusive which is the way conspiracy theory works as a rule

Yeah, I haven't read the book but I know of it. Jim Morrison's dad commanded the US Navy during the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Zappa's was a chemical weapons guy at Edgewood Arsenal. I've heard Zappa's manager was an arms dealer at one point too. There's definitely some intriguing stuff around that scene.

 

[IdleRich]

I’m just on another re-read of Dance half way through second volume for the third time - he’s excellent on those big set piece occasions where he brings his characters together. He’s compared to Proust but I think it’s not really accurate - it’s long, but not as long as Proust and it’s about posh people but the narrator is far more knowing and less self absorbed. Again I think many are drawn from real life but less as an act of revenge.

Yeah even Widmerpool is... well, he is a terrible monstrous character but there is a kind of admiration on the part of, not even the narrator but actually the author behind him, of his (KW's) relentless all-conquering thick-skinned mediocrity which means that no amount of mocking from those with taste or personality can ever deflect him from his laser like focus on his goals - whatever they actually are, cos all the other more aesthetically developed characters consider them too mundane and prosaic to ever even try to understand them, and as a result they are never really passed on to the reader either. And in think that in that sense there is a sort of sympathy for him in that despite the fact that everyone hates him and is laughing at him all the time and that he can never even understand that, he does in many ways achieve far more than them. So you do perceive this sympathy... and then he does something totally dreadful again and the pendulum swings back the other way.
And the book is genuinely very funny at times but in a way that is hard to describe because it's often the product of years spent with characters watching them become who they are and then suffering as a result. But someone hears you laughing and asks what is so funny and you have to say "Well there is guy and he is the kind of guy who does this but because of this other guy who is more like this and they are in this situation which is..." and, you can see their face falling and you tail off saying that you can't really explain it.

 

[IdleRich]

I get the impression that Anthony Powell is the type to say "well you know, a chap tries to be frightfully discreet doesn't one, some of my creations may be at least partly based on a number of fellows one knew at school or in the army, but really they are an amalgamation of certain characteristics which were indeed in present in those places. Basing a character on one actual real person and revealing it to the world would actually be rather spiteful and vulgar wouldn't it?".
And I see Raven as more the type to say something along the lines of "Yes it is entirely based on that terrible cunt Rees-Mog and I left the name as close as I could so that everyone would know it was him and hate the slimy bastard a little bit more than they already do. In fact that kind of glorious revenge is one of the chief advantages of being a published author".
I have to admit that often when someone does something to me leaving me fuming, i often think "Right, that's it, when my book comes out the paedophile will be called Version" (just for example I mean).

 

[version]

There was a discussion of this re: that 'Cat Person' story recently after it came out that the author had based it on real people. Someone tweeted something about treating writers like cops and never, ever speaking to or associating with them lest you find yourself skewered in their work.

”My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.”

-- Joan Didion

 

[woops]

I get the impression that Anthony Powell is the type to say "well you know, a chap tries to be frightfully discreet doesn't one, some of my creations may be at least partly based on a number of fellows one knew at school or in the army, but really they are an amalgamation of certain characteristics which were indeed in present in those places. Basing a character on one actual real person and revealing it to the world would actually be rather spiteful and vulgar wouldn't it?".
And I see Raven as more the type to say something along the lines of "Yes it is entirely based on that terrible cunt Rees-Mog and I left the name as close as I could so that everyone would know it was him and hate the slimy bastard a little bit more than they already do. In fact that kind of glorious revenge is one of the chief advantages of being a published author".
I have to admit that often when someone does something to me leaving me fuming, i often think "Right, that's it, when my book comes out the paedophile will be called Version" (just for example I mean,

I know what you mean but if you read AP's memoirs and journals he does name some models but they meant nothing to me. They're off their time

 

[IdleRich]

There was a discussion of this re: that 'Cat Person' story recently after it came out that the author had based it on real people. Someone tweeted something about treating writers like cops and never, ever speaking to or associating with them lest you find yourself skewered in their work.

Well you know to be on your guard now after the paedo thing above.. actually that's something different isn't it. On the one hand there is listening to people and grabbing their anecdotes and so on, which I suppose you can dodge as discussed. But the other thing where someone hates you and uses your name for the stupid guy in his book who shits himself in public is a different issue. I am surprised it doesn't happen more often really, I know it's considered childish and silly' but I don't see that putting a lot of people off. But off the top of my head the only example of that I can think of off the top of my head is Goldfinger in James Bond. Can anyone suggest more?

 

[version]

Apparently that really graphic nose job sequence in V. was Pynchon taking a swipe at a Jewish girl he'd dated. I dunno whether she was called Esther irl though.

 

[entertainment]

haven't been able to get into anything lately now this week i had to give up on 100 years of solitude by Garcia Marques and Sexus by Henry Miller

maybe it's time to have a crack at Pynchon finally.

it's that or Tolstoi i think

 

[luka]

if you cant get into anything i dont think its time to hit the pynchon. why not start something easy and enjoyable and get back into the reading habit like that? maybe a comic book with some cool pictures or a detective novel?

 

[entertainment]

if you cant get into anything i dont think its time to hit the pynchon. why not start something easy and enjoyable and get back into the reading habit like that? maybe a comic book with some cool pictures or a detective novel?

i know how to read thank you, it's because i haven't liked the books

 

[linebaugh]

Nightwood - Djuna Barnes

Early so I can only comment on the prose but its great. Its got this very satisfying sequential order to it. Where other writers have this spatial logic to their sentences- the sentence communicating with itself outside the flow of time - Barne's sentences have a quality of clicking together as soon as youve collected all the final clause.

 

[linebaugh]

@jenks have you read it?

 

[IdleRich]

I have, many many years ago. There are two versions right, I dunno how much they differ and i don't know which one I read and that always bugs me. Same as The Magus.

 

[IdleRich]

Would have thought a lot of people here have read it.

 

[IdleRich]

I'm reading a new fantasy thing called Mordew by Alex Pheby. Just read a review and thought it sounded good so I grabbed it.
The obvious comparison is Gormenghast, a weird and horrible gothic world with disgusting slums drowning in 'living mud' which randomly gives birth to deformed 'dead life' half creatures which die after a few minutes. Something really properly grimey about it which I really like, reminds me a little of Hard To Be A God in that respect, but at the same time it also somehow reminds me of the Narnia books, or at least how I remember them being after a lifetime of not reading them.