Dropping from the Veils of Wednesday
Jan. 31st, 2018 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
I'm glad I let Poetry browbeat me into buying one of their cheap subscriptions recently, because I finished Poetry April 2011 last Friday and David Orr's mean reviews made me laugh in an undignified way in public. On "The Rumored Existence of Other People" in Timothy Donelley: "It almost makes you want to go order lasagna at Olive Garden. . .just to spite the poem's disdain for the world in its sloppy, unfair actuality." That "almost" is itself a little telling.
The poetry was also not bad! There was one poem that made me laugh and cry in quick succession, which may say more about me than about the poem (but what doesn't?) It was Karen An-Hwei Lee's "Theories of the Soul," which you can read here for free, because we live in a golden age if you keep your criteria specific. Poetry is the perfect size for a literary journal - sixty pages of poems, twenty or thirty of reviews and commentary, a couple of letters to the editor in the back. Unsolicited advice for the producers of litmags: No matter how good your material is, three hundred and fifty pages is too much of it.
To Be or Not to Be ("The greatest work in English literature, now in the greatest format of English literature: a chooseable path adventure!") is delightfully hilarious and kept me flipping eagerly back and forth right up to the point at which I developed a massive headache from chooseable path satiation and had to put the book down. This was entirely my own fault as I'd been choosing paths for over two hours, trying to beat my way back to the traditional Hamlet ending. Every ending is enthusiastically illustrated by one of Ryan North's cartoonist friends. I especially enjoyed the book-within-a-book, the chooseable path Murder of Gonzago.
What I'm Reading Now
The Bell by Iris Murdoch (a 99 Novels selection:
This is a novel that wastes no time at all. The first chapter lopes easily through Dora's young adulthood and early marriage like a spindly giant crossing the countryside. It's exhilarating. Then Dora arrives at the small religious community where her husband is staying, and we move just as easily into the lives of two or three other earnest, hapless people with troubles of their own. I don't know where I picked up the impression that Iris Murdoch would be a difficult writer, but it wasn't from reading this book.
One of the characters is a guileless eighteen-year-old who, as we're told on introduction, has just discovered the excellent word "rebarbative." Therefore every time we revisit his point of view, we encounter something rebarbative, most recently "his towel, which was rather grimy and rebarbative by now with the mud of frequent swims, but still serving." This joke could be tiresome in other hands (though I'd still laugh at it, I can't lie), but here it's my favorite thing of the week. I have absolute confidence in Murdoch's unsentimental affection for her characters and her ability to use the word "rebarbative" exactly the right number of times.
I am sorry to have to report that the Dreamwidth spellcheck is unfamiliar with this useful and sophisticated word. Get it together, Dreamwidth spellcheck!
Six to Sixteen is very charming, but will have to wait until next week as work has taken over my life again.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'm spoiled for choice as usual! All other things being equal, which of these two things should I read next: A SF anthology focusing on short stories about scientists, or a biography of Norman Mailer?
I'm glad I let Poetry browbeat me into buying one of their cheap subscriptions recently, because I finished Poetry April 2011 last Friday and David Orr's mean reviews made me laugh in an undignified way in public. On "The Rumored Existence of Other People" in Timothy Donelley: "It almost makes you want to go order lasagna at Olive Garden. . .just to spite the poem's disdain for the world in its sloppy, unfair actuality." That "almost" is itself a little telling.
The poetry was also not bad! There was one poem that made me laugh and cry in quick succession, which may say more about me than about the poem (but what doesn't?) It was Karen An-Hwei Lee's "Theories of the Soul," which you can read here for free, because we live in a golden age if you keep your criteria specific. Poetry is the perfect size for a literary journal - sixty pages of poems, twenty or thirty of reviews and commentary, a couple of letters to the editor in the back. Unsolicited advice for the producers of litmags: No matter how good your material is, three hundred and fifty pages is too much of it.
To Be or Not to Be ("The greatest work in English literature, now in the greatest format of English literature: a chooseable path adventure!") is delightfully hilarious and kept me flipping eagerly back and forth right up to the point at which I developed a massive headache from chooseable path satiation and had to put the book down. This was entirely my own fault as I'd been choosing paths for over two hours, trying to beat my way back to the traditional Hamlet ending. Every ending is enthusiastically illustrated by one of Ryan North's cartoonist friends. I especially enjoyed the book-within-a-book, the chooseable path Murder of Gonzago.
What I'm Reading Now
The Bell by Iris Murdoch (a 99 Novels selection:
Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason.
This is a novel that wastes no time at all. The first chapter lopes easily through Dora's young adulthood and early marriage like a spindly giant crossing the countryside. It's exhilarating. Then Dora arrives at the small religious community where her husband is staying, and we move just as easily into the lives of two or three other earnest, hapless people with troubles of their own. I don't know where I picked up the impression that Iris Murdoch would be a difficult writer, but it wasn't from reading this book.
One of the characters is a guileless eighteen-year-old who, as we're told on introduction, has just discovered the excellent word "rebarbative." Therefore every time we revisit his point of view, we encounter something rebarbative, most recently "his towel, which was rather grimy and rebarbative by now with the mud of frequent swims, but still serving." This joke could be tiresome in other hands (though I'd still laugh at it, I can't lie), but here it's my favorite thing of the week. I have absolute confidence in Murdoch's unsentimental affection for her characters and her ability to use the word "rebarbative" exactly the right number of times.
I am sorry to have to report that the Dreamwidth spellcheck is unfamiliar with this useful and sophisticated word. Get it together, Dreamwidth spellcheck!
Six to Sixteen is very charming, but will have to wait until next week as work has taken over my life again.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'm spoiled for choice as usual! All other things being equal, which of these two things should I read next: A SF anthology focusing on short stories about scientists, or a biography of Norman Mailer?
no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 05:39 pm (UTC)Now that is dedication to detail!
no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 06:38 pm (UTC)