Now reading...

[Matthew]

The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. An early Twain book, where we see Samuel Clemons turn into his Mark Twain character -- the straight-talking, unimpressed, American outsider, who renders "truth" upon his readers, with cynicism, wit, and humor.

[ejp626]

Finished up Bleeding London. It was ok, not great. I was able to guess one significant plot point from almost the beginning.

Am partway into Open City by Teju Cole. It's pretty good, though it reads a fair bit like a diary and not a novel.

[Jazzmoose]

I finally started "Atlas Shrugged" on holiday. I'm quite enjoying it thus far (only 150 pages in)

You have a stronger stomach than I.

[Leeway]

AN ACCIDENTAL MAN - 1971 - Iris Murdoch

One of the few Murdochs I hadn't yet read, this could properly have been called, "A Dance to the Music of Time," although I think Iris is much more interested in the Platonic than Powell.

[BillF]

British journalist Richard Williams' essay "Gifted" about Dupree Bolton published in Granta (Spring 2000).

[Leeway]

NO SIGNPOSTS IN THE SEA - 1961 - Vita Sackville-West

The premise (one can hardly call it a plot) is journalist Edmund Carr finds out he has only a few months to live. When he also learns that Laura, a woman he loves, is taking an ocean cruise, he books passage on the same ship. The story is mostly the thoughts and philosophical musings of Edmund and Laura. VSW's intelligence keeps it from becoming mawkish (usually), and there are some interesting twists. Here again we have another of those shipboard stories that seem to constitute their own genre.

[Royal Oak]

I finally started "Atlas Shrugged" on holiday. I'm quite enjoying it thus far (only 150 pages in)

You have a stronger stomach than I.

You are the second person in this thread to express their distaste for the book. I haven't found anything in it so far to explain why this should be so. What's the story?

[ejp626]

I finally started "Atlas Shrugged" on holiday. I'm quite enjoying it thus far (only 150 pages in)

You have a stronger stomach than I.

You are the second person in this thread to express their distaste for the book. I haven't found anything in it so far to explain why this should be so. What's the story?

Ayn Rand is considered the patron saint of a certain brand of libertarianism. While she was never a full-fledged follower of Nietzsche, she shared the belief that superior individuals shouldn't be shackled by lesser men. Generally, her work is noted for its hatred of collectivism, its love of individualism, and its admiration for American capitalism (taken from here: http://atlassociety.org/objectivism/atlas-university/deeper-dive-blog/4444-response-by-william-thomas)

My personal animus towards her followers makes me completely unwilling to ever crack open one of her books.

[Jazzmoose]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. As far as her work on it's own, I consider her to be a lousy writer with morally bankrupt ideas, but probably wouldn't have made the comment if that was all there was.

[ejp626]

Speaking of mixing politics and literature, I am generally sidelining the PEN authors who felt it was in bad taste to give the Charlie Hebdoe staff an award for courage. I will make a few exceptions on a case by case basis, but generally only if the book was still in my queue at the library or something similar. One of these authors is Teju Cole, and sure enough the library told me last week that I had Open City waiting for me. I hadn't really been that gripped by Every Day is for the Thief, though it turns out he actually wrote this before Open City (but Open City was published first). Open City has become quite the novel of ideas, and I find myself drawn in more and more. It's pretty good actually.

[alankin]

Elizabeth Kolbert -- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

About the Anthropocene (you can look it up). Spoiler: we did it.

[BillF]

Been reading Brigid Brophy, Anglo -Irish critic, novelist, journalist, crusader for animal and author rights, open marriage, bisexuality, vegetarianism. A sharp mind, a neat wit, a puckish sense of humor, an elegant sensibility. Her praises are as satisfying to read as her skewerings (love her take-downs of "Lucky Jim" and Henry Miller). Turns out she was also an intimate friend of Iris Murdoch, in what was a fraught friendship. Recently, over a thousand letters from Iris to Brigid were made available (Brigid's letters to Iris were destroyed at Brigid's direction). "Hackenfeller's Ape," the tale of a zoology professor and a caged Hackenfeller Ape (a fictitious species) having a meeting of minds; the book won the 1954 Cheltenham Prize for best first novel; Murdoch's "Under the Net" came in second, certainly a misjudgment, although Brophy's book is fun to read. Brophy is one of those minor talents who are often more fun to read than their more esteemed contemporaries.

Thanks for getting me on to this author, Leeway. Have just read Hackenfeller's Ape, which I would describe as a moral fable, rather than a novel, akin perhaps to Orwell's Animal Farm - and I don't say that merely because of similarities in the subject matter. Beautifully written - there's a quality to mid-20th century English literary prose which we have now sadly quite lost. Also on my "to read" shelf is Brophy's The Finishing Touch, but first I'm going back to jazz autobiography with this:

[Royal Oak]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. As far as her work on it's own, I consider her to be a lousy writer with morally bankrupt ideas, but probably wouldn't have made the comment if that was all there was.

About 200 pages in now, and I'm still not sure how it is offensive.

[Head Man]

Finished this on holiday recently.. well plotted and written, as ever by him...recommended.

Now part way through this....

... lots of very interesting (to me) background to the London folk scene in the 60's and 70s. In fact not a great deal about Bert Jansch after reading a third of the book. I guess that will come later, although he does seem to be a rather enigmatic figure.....

[BillF]

Finished this on holiday recently.. well plotted and written, as ever by him...recommended.

Yes, a good read.

[jlhoots]

Jo Nesbo: Blood On Snow

[HutchFan]

[Simon8]

[BillF]

Long time since I read it, but I recall it as one of the best of the Greenes

[A Lark Ascending]

Now part way through this....

... lots of very interesting (to me) background to the London folk scene in the 60's and 70s. In fact not a great deal about Bert Jansch after reading a third of the book. I guess that will come later, although he does seem to be a rather enigmatic figure.....

Excellent book. Harper is very good on wider context - his McLaughlin bio is probably even more slanted towards background over individual biography.

[ejp626]

Ivan Vladislavic The Restless Supermarket

I've been meaning to read this for ages. It's about a man in Johannesburg who has retired from proof-reading telephone directories. He spends a fair bit of time in and around Hillbrow. He is sort of struggling with all the changes that happened to South Africa over that period. I'd say he reminds me a bit of some of Nadine Gordimer's characters (the ones that were less politically active naturally). There seems to be a bit of wordplay, but I've just started. Anyway, so far so good.

[Leeway]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. As far as her work on it's own, I consider her to be a lousy writer with morally bankrupt ideas, but probably wouldn't have made the comment if that was all there was.

About 200 pages in now, and I'm still not sure how it is offensive.

I guess the knock on Rand is that the plot is contrived, the characters wooden, and the philosophy a paean to utter selfishness. OTOH, she has many acolytes, so I suppose you'll have to read through and decide for yourself.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Alec Wilder’s ‘American Popular Song: the great inventors 1900-1950’

I started reading this yesterday. I’ve given up now, after half a dozen pages of chapter two (which is about Jerome Kern).

I’ve never, ever, read a book so obviously intended for an audience of 647 real people, fifteen hundred music students and thirty thousand designers of academic curricula. I never want to read another one. A small excerpt from the Kern chapter will serve to illustrate the point.

“There were, indeed, occasions upon which he reverted to his enthusiasm for English and Viennese musical manners, and he never could have been called a truly ‘swinging’ writer of songs. One can’t imagine him being excited by Duke Ellington’s music, let alone the experiments of Gerry Mulligan with a ten man group (a “tentet”). But there stand those melodies, straight and healthy, and ever green.”

Well, thanks to Alec Wilder for that last sentence. It’s always a great pleasure to read a beautiful sentence, and that’s definitely one. But in the next paragraph, he really hits you in the face with a pile of dogshit.

“Shelton Brooks had no European cage to escape from, though he grew up in Canada and loved Victor Herbert’s songs. Irving Berlin fought his way up out of extreme poverty and had no time to indulge in “culture”. As for George Gershwin, by the time he became culture-conscious, he was so indelibly labelled an American product that he risked his identity by slipping into European musical mores. Let’s say he [who? Gershwin? Berlin? Brooks? Kern?] settled simply for French harmony [!?!?], as did most arrangers of the thirties, excepting the driving Negro swing band arrangers.”

So what the buggering hell is “French harmony”? No clue. No footnote even to refer to. Does he mean harmonies frequently utilised by Debussy, Faure, Satie, Ravel, Franck, Hindemith, Berlioz, Poulenc, Alkan or Saint Saens? (And which? They’re certainly not all the same.) Or was he referring to older musicians, like Couperin, Rameau, Leclair, Boismortier, Marais or Lully? Or to a bunch of composers of French pop songs in the first third of the century? Well, does it make a difference? To which the response has to be, how would one know?

I readily admit to not being a musician. Further, my music education ended when I was fifteen. Most people would, I think, say the same. So I find the entire basis of Mr Wilder’s book completely impenetrable. This is set out in the introduction, by James T Maher.

“Early in the preliminary research that led to this book, the author decided to devote its content to the popular song per se. He also decided to emphasise the music, and to touch only incidentally, with respect to analysis, on the words of the songs. The two elements, as the text makes clear, cannot be separated. One may talk about words, or one may talk about music, but one cannot talk about song and mean anything less than the combination of the two.”

Well that’s common sense. So this unpromising statement means that Wilder knowingly attempted to half do a job that couldn’t be half done. And more, because almost every time Wilder includes the musical notation that illustrates the point he’s making (well, I have to assume it illustrates it), he avoids putting the relevant words above or below the notation. It’s right to say that, for me, the one time he did that, for ‘St Louis blues’, I got the point straight away. So Wilder’s decisions have deliberately made it impossible for the average music lover to get anything meaningful out of his book. Well done, Mr Wilder!

So if, after reading this, anyone in Britain (or Paris - I'm visiting Paris next month) would like a copy of the book, I’ll send it to them, for nix. Just PM me an address. However, I’m not paying foreign postage rates for something that I’d otherwise sling in the recycling.

Yes, I know I'm a heathen.

MG

PS - when I was looking for the correct cover of the book, I noticed this one

Good Lord, what an inimical-looking guy! I had to look at what songs he'd written and the only one listed in Wikipedia that he wrote the music for that I can ever remember hearing is 'I'll be around'. A good song but one I can do without, especially after seeing the above photo.

[paul secor]

Calling Jeff.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Calling Jeff.

Oh yes

MG