Read Some More Books

 

The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World

Benjamin Bratton

 

I really like the Verso Book Club, which is where I got this from. They send out books every month and it forces me to read more than I normally would and outside of my normal interests.

 

This book was an interesting short little thing, arguing in my reading for a large conception of the social – against the atomized person and thinking of us all as part of a system. I think it works but my main critique is that it exits in a weird middle ground. Part of me wanted to see it expanded. Then there’s another part that wanted it tightened up. For example, there’s a whole chapter against Giorgio Agamben. When I was reading it, I was like “Why is there a whole chapter about this guy I’ve never heard about?”. And it seems like the whole issue was on me, since reading this book I have seen at least a dozen references to Agamben. Again, thanks to the Verso Book club for expanding my theoretical horizons.

 

East of Eden

 

John Steinbeck

 

I’ve been on a bit of a Steinbeck kick since the pandemic started. I reread Grapes of Wrath at the beginning because I was worried about the economy crashing. In that reading I found a much better book than what I remembered from being forced to read it as a high school student.

 

Grapes of Wrath may be his most famous book, if because it is the bigger book of his that gets pushed by those high school students. I think that is an oversight, as East of Eden is the better book, I think. I guess that it doesn’t get taught because a good part of it centers on a house of ill repute.

 

But also – it does take a while to get going. Steinbeck here is writing a broad and epic sweep and must build the setting and the characters and then put them together. He does it so well though. There are places where he creates a character with such depth and complexity, and he does it in just a paragraph or two. It’s something that you can see and point out how well he does it but impossible to really saw just why it works. It’s just genius at work.

 

He also, in these pages, creates one of the most hate-able female characters ever put to the page. He just captures this psychopathy so well you must wonder who in Steinbeck’s biography he modeled from to create this character. Who hurt you, John?

 

So, this book just builds, grows, and has an incredible momentum right up until the end, an end that just gob smacks you. In my opinion it is one of the top dozen or so novels I have read. It’s amazing and you should read it.

Read Some Books

 Independence Day:

 

I say to myself periodically I should read more from the past, to get a better sense of the literary world’s shifts and ebbs. Since I went to school 20 years ago now the 90s were in the recent past. There wasn’t a lot of classes that hit on anything really later than the 80s except for the couple of classes I took that were deliberately focused on more contemporary lit.

 

That is to say I didn’t read Richard Ford, ever. The cover I have notes that this book won a Pulitzer. The blurb on the back calls the main character “one of the most unforgettable characters in American fiction”.

 

The problem is that it is not a good book. I was reading this, thinking of the parties that people had feting Ford and the people with professional jealousies looking at him and thinking that their work was just as good. Ford must have lapped up the praise!

 

Here’s my critique as an angry high school reader: Nothing Happens.

 

I kept waiting for something to happen. And then a minor thing does like on page 400 of a 450-page book. But its low stakes. I had to force myself to read the last 30 pages just for my own mental checklists.

 

A book doesn’t have to have things happen to be interesting. The other problem is that Frank Bascombe is boring. We spend the whole book in his head, and I have no idea how there are three other books with this character at the center. I’ll never read them to find out. And none of the other characters are interesting either. He’s a real estate agent dealing with uninteresting clients. The love interest is a cypher. The ex-wife maybe has some depth, but we don’t see much of her. The only character with a real spark is his son, Paul. Center the book around him and make it half the length and maybe it works.

 

But as is, it doesn’t work.

 

However, here’s the paradoxical thing, the book feels technically well written. It’s like a model for an MFA class for structure and sentence-level elegance! Even with that, it’s not a good book. You don’t need to read this one.

 

Capote in Kansas:

 

When I pulled this off the shelf, I figured it was tied in with one of the movies about Capote that came out a while back. But it’s not. It is an independent graphic novel take on Truman Capote writing “In Cold Blood”. What’s interesting is that the book has one of the victims of the crime as a character who Capote talks to as he’s trying to figure out how to tell the story of the Clutter family, who was killed. There’s also some speculation about Capote and his feelings towards one of the killers that makes the book push the edge of nonfiction.

Overall, it works even with the supernatural element (though I must admit that I thought the character was alive for most of the time she was in scenes and then once I realized what was going on I had to reevaluate things). It does make me wonder in the bigger picture we are fascinated with the story of Capote’s writing of the book. Is there any other text that gets similar treatment in the culture? I can’t think of one offhand. I should also note that I did like the art, a strong use of the black and white to aid in the storytelling.

 

The Grande Odalisque:

 

I liked this book. It was sexy and fun and read like the storyboard for an action movie that I totally would watch if it was on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Who doesn’t like female French art thieves?  

Three Reviews, 4.11.2021

 

Tomorrow sex will be good again by Angel

 

I’m a member of the Verso book club where the publisher sends you a book every month. It’s cool and I like supporting independent publishers.

 

I have enjoyed most of the texts that I’ve chosen from the list.

 

This one didn’t really do it for me. It’s a thin hardback I read over a couple of days and then the next day I really couldn’t articulate what I read – It wasn’t bad so I’m not mad that I read it, but it also wasn’t good, so I have warm memories of it. At best it was forgettable, and I feel bad since I might not be the direct audience, but I do consider myself a feminist ally. So, this is just my incredibly subjective opinion, and your mileage may differ.

 

Money: A Suicide Note by Amis

I had this book on my shelf for years and I recently picked it up because I was looking for something different. The first book I read from Amis was Time’s Arrow, and I loved it so much I went and bought a handful of this other books, but it seemed like Time’s Arrow was just a one off and I didn’t seem to like the other things I tried to read.

 

I did finish this one though. And I have to say I think it is the worst book I ever finished that I read on my own. I usually don’t have a problem putting books down if I don’t like them,  but I kept chugging on this one and I don’t know why exactly. Amis does some stylistic things here that I would normally like- the main character is the narrator, and he breaks the fourth wall, there is a secondary character who is a writer named “Martin Amis”.

 

The problem is that the main character is one of the unredeemable creatures. I think Amis was going for a Catcher in the Rye / Confederacy of Dunces thing, but it doesn’t hit. John Self, the main character is an 80s guy doing horrible 80s things in New York and London, and for me it isn’t interesting. He’s horrible but I don’t care about him in that I don’t want him to succeed or fail. That’s not great when the book is so character driven.

 

 

Years of Rice and Salt by Robinson

This is an interesting book. Before I read it, the only thing I knew was the premise – that it was an alternate history positing what would happen if the black death had been more fatal. Perfect pandemic reading.

 

Thoughts: I was expecting it to be more focused on the empty European continent that it was. Shows how Eurocentric I am.

 

The individual stories are impressive. Robinson had to do this larger world building, but then get more specific about not only the culture but how they might have changed as there was greater divergence in the world as it is and the world as he dreamed it. This does make it a bit hard to read, as you get used to one set of characters and the situation and then it moves on.

 

There is in the world he builds a parallel to the actual world, so there are equivalents to Newton and Einstein and Columbus, but they have different names and native tongues. Were I drafting a paper on this book, that might be the thing I focus on. Is Robinson positing some sort of teleology in technological development?

 

Ultimately as a novel it doesn’t really work because it’s not building to anything narratively, it just cycles and fades. But it’s hard to complain because that’s really history, right? One dang thing after another.

 

There is one story that centers around a kid who is captured and made into a eunuch and that was very troubling and hard to read part. But it did make me do more research on eunuchs, a thing I was not expecting happening from reading this text.