bookshelves: currently-reading
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""What to still this gnawing of termites in my Punch and Judy box?""
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by Abe Kōbō
Well, that offer was only good yesterday. But I think it's fair to say you deserve five stars on any day. So here are five stars for you. Would you like them all at once or over the course of the rest of the year? ]]>
How could I not like this? Kafka check. Beckett check. Burroughs check. And that easy going Japanese narrator later associated with Murakami... check. Oh, and of course being himself check too.
I generally don't love books with huge libidos. All the masturbating and measuring of penises might've turned me off in another book. What can I say? I'm modest, maybe repressed, who knows? But this book seemed not to be so much about sex as the defamiliarization of sex in a modern bureaucratized, science-obsessed world. There are lots of hidden microphones, and polygraph machines, and squawking loud speakers: too many for sex to be enjoyable that's for sure. At one point the narrator goes running down the hall because he hears his young female charge (who has a bone gelatinizing disease) moaning in agony... but when he arrives of course it's not agony, it's... the other thing. He looks away. And I think: how strange our itches are. Why are agony and pleasure at their most extreme so close to the same thing? So many paradoxes. In this book about a hospital that is endless, everybody is a doctor, everybody is a patient. We're all a little bit messed up.
Yes there is a certain dissatisfaction that comes from being given everything you want in a novel (paradox). I should've read this about five years ago, back when I discovered The Kangaroo Notebook. Oh well that's not Abe's fault, but mine. Stars, stars, everybody gets as many stars as they want today. ]]>
One of the most purely entertaining books I've ever read. Honestly, when I finished, I held it to my chest with a purr.
I was a bit nervous at the start. I mean, was this just going to be some guy capitalizing on the fact that Borges never wrote a novel? Saying to all the Borgesians who are a bit glum over the fact: "Hey everybody over here! I got your Borges novel! Your Borges stamped key chains! Borges coffee cozies! Going fast!"
Well the book was an homage, definitely, almost a piece of fan fiction, but an extremely respectful and astute one. The guy obviously knows Borges down to his fluids and neurons. At the end he crafts this letter written from Borges to the narrator, and the rhythms and diction are so spot on I had to go look at the publishing date to make SURE Borges hadn't participated somehow. No, he was dead by the time this book was written, and admits as much in the letter. The book was full of little touches and nods like that. This book distills and collects so much of what I love about Borges.
Okay, how's this for super clever? Borges stars as the sleuth in a very Borgesian detective story (it relies heavily on a mirror), set appropriately enough in Buenos Aires at a literary conference on Edgar Allan Poe, who a) invented the detective story and b) was a primary if not THE primary influence on Borges and c) was also the primary influence of H.P. Lovecraft, another Borges favorite. The puzzles in this book quickly move from forensics to philology, as you'd expect.
While Poe and Lovecraft definitely have their qualities, I'll admit they can be a little too pulpy for me. I think I like them best as busts in the library of Jorge Luis Borges. Herein lies one of the main pleasures of this book for me: examining those two writers through Borgesian eyes (excuse the irony there), through his love of semiotics, of misdirection, and of obscure and fantastic scholarship. The letter, mentioned above, was only one of the many ways that Verissimo exploited the meta-fictional "Is this this real or not?" possibilities of the story. The last word of the book is "verisimilitude" a word which I think, in its connotations toward both truth and the simulation of truth, captures the spirit of this book; and it makes me wonder if the universe is really so kind to have honestly named this author Verissimo.
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by Trenton Lee Stewart
Those caps on Willy Wonka's teeth WERE pretty creepy fun. I like a director who explores the dental possibilities of the story he's telling. ]]>
Nate
read and liked
seisyll's
review of The Mysterious Benedict Society:
"
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...more "So Sticky told her about his name, and then Kate revealed that she had always wanted a nickname herself. “I’ve tried to get people to call me The Great Kate Weather Machine,” she said, “but nobody ever goes along with it. I don’t suppose yo
by Raymond Chandler
Here's one of my favorite quotes from The Big Sleep. Perhaps "razor sharp descriptions" reminded me of it:
"If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat — just to see what ran out of it."
"Caterpillar blood," I said.
I concur. Chandler's talent was style way more than it was mystery writing. Thank God. ]]>