I read it back in November, and I feel like this quote from an article by Jonathan Franzen sums up my thoughts well:
There were quotations in Latin, Spanish, Hungarian, and six other languages to be rappelled across. Blizzards of obscure references swirled around sheer cliffs of erudition, precipitous discourses on alchemy and Flemish painting, Mithraism and early-Christian theology. The prose came in page-long paragraphs in which oxygen was at a premium, and the emotional temperature of the novel started cold and got colder. The hero, Wyatt Gwyon, was likable as a child ("a small disgruntled person"), but otherwise the author's satiric judgments and intellectual obsessions discouraged intimacy. It was a struggle to figure out what, or even who, the story was about; dialogue was punctuated with dashes and largely unattributed; Wyatt himself dwindled to a furtive, seldom-glimpsed pronoun ("he"); there came brutish party scenes, all-dialogue word storms that raged for scores of pages.
I loved it, and will definitely read it again at some point, but wow was it a beast of a book. Don't know if you're local, but Gaddis' papers are all at Wash U, and as I work there, as soon as we're back in the office I'll see about going to see them, I reckon.
I’m trying to read more often. I’ve always been self-conscious about it. I don’t read quickly, but my comprehension is fine. It’s just speed. That, and the fact that school sucked the joy of reading away from me for a while, kept me from reading for a long time.
But hey, I finished reading Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep a few weeks ago and I’m about 20% of the way through Pet Sematary.
I’ve also been listening to audiobooks while driving to work, mostly about leftist ideas. I felt awakened by David Graeber’s Bullsh*t Jobs (sorry for the profanity masking, but it’s the title), and now I’m listening to Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists.
I read it back in November, and I feel like this quote from an article by Jonathan Franzen sums up my thoughts well:
There were quotations in Latin, Spanish, Hungarian, and six other languages to be rappelled across. Blizzards of obscure references swirled around sheer cliffs of erudition, precipitous discourses on alchemy and Flemish painting, Mithraism and early-Christian theology. The prose came in page-long paragraphs in which oxygen was at a premium, and the emotional temperature of the novel started cold and got colder. The hero, Wyatt Gwyon, was likable as a child ("a small disgruntled person"), but otherwise the author's satiric judgments and intellectual obsessions discouraged intimacy. It was a struggle to figure out what, or even who, the story was about; dialogue was punctuated with dashes and largely unattributed; Wyatt himself dwindled to a furtive, seldom-glimpsed pronoun ("he"); there came brutish party scenes, all-dialogue word storms that raged for scores of pages.
I loved it, and will definitely read it again at some point, but wow was it a beast of a book. Don't know if you're local, but Gaddis' papers are all at Wash U, and as I work there, as soon as we're back in the office I'll see about going to see them, I reckon.
I am indeed aware of that. I grew up here but live in KC now, happen to be visiting at the moment. Went to Left Bank Books and snagged a copy of JR. Not enough time with all I want to do these few days in town to stop by either the Gaddis or Gass archives alas.
Just finished this, which is one of the finest studies of the transatlantic slave trade. This is a groundbreaking book because prior histories about the slave trade focus on data--aggregates of numbers from ships logs and accounting books. This book also looks at correspondence to and from the Royal African Company (a private firm involved in the African slave trade) from 1675-1725, including from slavers, shipbuilders,officers and crewmen, buyers, and so on. As depressing a subject as it is, it does an excellent job explaining all aspects of the trade from the perspectives of people involved in it, including the captives before, during, and after voyages.
So my kiddos (6 and 9 now) are obsessed with Harry Potter. They both finished the entire series awhile back, and I decided "hey, this weirdo book about child wizards channeling the occult...maybe I should read it too, just to make sure the thing they already read is appropriate for them." I'm a good parent.
Anyway, some observations:
-I appreciate the thinly veiled allegory to the rise of Nazi/totalitarian ideology. Rowling does a good job showing what gaslighting and propaganda is, without ever having to tell you that's what it is.
-I know Rowling is now considered Official Problematic because of her anti-trans stance, but the books have generally positive messages about acceptance and appreciation of people who are different than you.
-The hook-nosed goblins who control the wizarding banks did make me feel pretty meh, though.
-I could tell that the ending was gonna feature one of those "The fifth element is LOVE" kind of lessons. But it worked here.
-Harry can always read the mind of Voldemort, but it's never really explained why Voldemort isn't just reading the mind of Harry (since Harry never properly learns Occlumency). Thus, Voldemort should have had no trouble finding where Harry was hiding.
-Gotta love how Rowling names characters. If it's a bad guy, they get a name like Insidious Darkhouse. If you're a good guy, it's like Cloudlace Lovehaver.
-I won't say too much about Snape. Not sure I'm buying his story line, though.
-Am I supposed to now read all the other stuff too, like Cursed Child (the play) and the Fantastic Beasts stuff?
Forgive any unbecoming infidelities to proper grammar and whatnot, I'm lazily copying and pasting this from a more casual milieu. (GRB only gets me at my best, I missed you guys.)
Ulysses is of course tremendous, even without an appreciation of the original Odyssey or the benefit of an annotated close-read (which I'll arm myself with next go-round). Joyce's facility with language is beyond compare: not just his gift for mellifluous and lyrical prosody, but his unswerving fidelity when it comes to recreating the styles of various forms of English, as well as his seemingly divine inspiration for devising entirely new, alchemical forms in which to mold and transmogrify the capabilities of language. I was actually surprised at its aesthetic breadth; my advance familiarity with Ulysses largely stressed its substantial (even ultimate) expression of stream-of-consciousness, and so our introduction to Leopold Bloom led me to expect an entire novel of his haphazard, disjointed inner monologue. (which to be clear I would've absolutely [expletive] with.) discovering the freedom with which Joyce leaps to and from wholly oppositional aesthetic sensibilities, and the skill with which he plumbs them, was an endless fascination.
I also can't help but consider Ulysses in light of the novel I read immediately prior: The Recognitions. not for any aesthetic overlap (Gaddis was rather insistent that he never read Joyce, despite his favoring of using dashes instead of quotation marks to denote dialogue), but for one of the central obsessions of The Recognitions' protagonist, Wyatt: an aspiring artist whose severe Calvinistic upbringing is a source of great tension between his spirit and his art. one of Wyatt's operating principles is his theologically-derived belief that he must, as God, show as much care and attention to the second as to the hour; to conceive of each pixel of his art with the same focus and dedication as the creator of all. this is essentially an operating thesis for Ulysses, a novel which portrays the course of an entire day and explodes it in such detail and from so many different angles (Joyce famously said that he hoped one could recreate the Dublin of his youth from the details of his novel) that, through sheer narrative invention and linguistic dexterity, transubstantiates the mundane into the sublime.
I have Finnegans Wake on hand and have sampled the first six or so pages. that will be the first novel I read the first go-round with annotations, but I have to say, it's superficially delightful even if you can't grasp it. (you can't grasp it, nobody can grasp it.) a shame Joyce died, because apparently another scholar and critic (can't remember which) was prepared to interview him at length and annotate the novel much like Stuart Gilbert did for Ulysses (working through his criticism right now).
speaking of Gaddis, I'm reading J R now. THE GAWD.
So my kiddos (6 and 9 now) are obsessed with Harry Potter. They both finished the entire series awhile back, and I decided "hey, this weirdo book about child wizards channeling the occult...maybe I should read it too, just to make sure the thing they already read is appropriate for them." I'm a good parent.
Anyway, some observations:
-I appreciate the thinly veiled allegory to the rise of Nazi/totalitarian ideology. Rowling does a good job showing what gaslighting and propaganda is, without ever having to tell you that's what it is.
-I know Rowling is now considered Official Problematic because of her anti-trans stance, but the books have generally positive messages about acceptance and appreciation of people who are different than you.
-The hook-nosed goblins who control the wizarding banks did make me feel pretty meh, though.
-I could tell that the ending was gonna feature one of those "The fifth element is LOVE" kind of lessons. But it worked here.
-Harry can always read the mind of Voldemort, but it's never really explained why Voldemort isn't just reading the mind of Harry (since Harry never properly learns Occlumency). Thus, Voldemort should have had no trouble finding where Harry was hiding.
-Gotta love how Rowling names characters. If it's a bad guy, they get a name like Insidious Darkhouse. If you're a good guy, it's like Cloudlace Lovehaver.
-I won't say too much about Snape. Not sure I'm buying his story line, though.
-Am I supposed to now read all the other stuff too, like Cursed Child (the play) and the Fantastic Beasts stuff?
I will totally get into this tomorrow. I've read all those books a million times and as somebody who has lost a lot of his fondness for the material while still remaining admittedly indebted to the series for providing me with a memorable and enriching experience during a formative time in my life, it's a rich tension. [expletive] Rowling for sure, though.