catalog

Well-known member
I don't, but the name Jenny Hval rings a bell. Experimental / avant garde music scene?

Let us know if it's any good.
 

jenks

thread death
As well as Monument Maker mentioned previously (which I’m enjoying even if it is a formless mess.) I’m also reading the latest Percival Everrett - his I am Not Sidney Poitier was one of my favourites last year - this is similarly a mix of playful narrative styling with much to say about identity and racism in the US. As well as these, I’ve got the Patrick Wright biog of East German writer Uwe Johnson - more like an act of psychogeography than a straight life of the artist. There’s Laura Elkin’s book on Paris on the go and I’m re-reading Dance to the Music of Time (up to 5th volume.) it seems like a lot but I don’t watch much telly and my kids have left home. (I’m not far off finishing the Cantos which I started in January.)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Finally started In Parenthesis. It's courageously written, not really like anything I've read before. Only read the first two parts. Will report back when I've read some more.

Edit: that was meant to say "gorgeously" but got autocorrected, but it kind of makes sense in context anyway, so I think I'll leave it.
 
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other_life

bioconfused
Gershom Scholem - "On the Possibility of Jewish Mysticism in Our Time" & Other Essays (ed. Avraham Shapira, trans. Jonathan Chipman) (JPS, 1997, First Ed.)
 

other_life

bioconfused
other library pickups:
Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire (ed. & trans. Roger Shattuck) (New Directions, 1971, First Ed.)
Alejandra Pizarnik - The Galloping Hour: French Poems (ed. Patricio Ferrari, trans. Ferrari and Forrest Gander) (New Directions, 2018, First Ed.)
Georges Bataille - Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Stoekl, Carl Lovitt and Donald Leslie, Jr.) (University of Minnesota Press, 1985, Tenth Ed. (2004)
Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa... (ed. & trans. Edwin Honig) (The Swallow Press, 1971, First Ed.)
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
other library pickups:
Selected Writings of Guillaume Apollinaire (ed. & trans. Roger Shattuck) (New Directions, 1971, First Ed.)
Alejandra Pizarnik - The Galloping Hour: French Poems (ed. Patricio Ferrari, trans. Ferrari and Forrest Gander) (New Directions, 2018, First Ed.
Georges Bataille - Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Stoekl, Carl Lovitt and Donald Leslie, Jr.) (University of Minnesota Press, 1985, Tenth Ed. (2004)
Selected Poems by Fernando Pessoa... (ed. & trans. Edwin Honig) (The Swallow Press, 1971, First Ed.)
Putting the edition, year and publisher really is going above and beyond. I salute you!
 

catalog

Well-known member
This jenn ashworth book I've nearly finished is very good. It's mainly about her experience of being operated upon when she gave birth and how harrowing it was (she goes through it in excruciating detail).

but she writes in a sort of expressionist way, where she starts on that issue and you have eg a paragraph of detail about how annoying the nurses are, then she moves onto talking about a childhood memory of mormonism, then from there to technical discussion of chernobyl, insomnia, how she browses Internet forums and watches serial killer YouTubes etc

Sort of knits /flows together like ripples she keeps returning to, so that by the end, you've had the same theme crop up a few times.

There's also some fairly heavyweight literary theory and biblical exegesis thrown in as well as stuff about teaching (she works as a lecturer).
 

jenks

thread death
There is a real sun-genre of literary trauma writing at the moment - usually women writing about how awful, painful events have continuing effects on their lives. Alice Hart Rick’s Ill Feelings, for example. There was also a whole anthology by Dodo Ink called Trauma. Some of it is good writing but it can be quite wearing reading it. Sophisticated misery.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I've not heard of those authors and I suppose I could uncharitably call this sophisticated misery, but there's enough other stuff to make me think it's like one of those LRB diary pieces but a lot longer.

It's got something in common with I love dick by Chris Kraus or argonauts by Maggie Nelson, but a different framing topic and also handled in what I suppose I would call a more English way?

Like quite plainly written and with some good dark humour. Not trying to be clever or deep.
 

woops

is not like other people
Men and Apparitions? I read that earlier in the year. I liked most of it an awful lot. I’d be interested in what you think of the final section.
No it's called the complete madame realism, but I'm enjoying it so much I'll get that one next.
 
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