Michael’s Comments (group member since Mar 07, 2009)

Michael’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Jonathan wrote: " . . . i think i made a post back in the old group about markson's most recent novel, 'the last novel', which i heard good things about . . ."

Jono: Did Will Miller every write one of his priceless philosophers sketches on Wittgenstein?

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Wittgenstein's Mistress

I have no idea what this book is about. I liked the title and have heard great things about it. Nevertheless, I plan to damn them thar torpedos and lead a group read of this book come hell or highwater sometime after I get back from vacation June 5th.

Here is a summary from Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly -

In this unsettling, shimmering novel, the reader is immediately drawn into the world of a woman who has gone mad because she is the last surviving creature on earth. Sitting at a typewriter in a beach house day after uncharted dayshe keeps no calendar or clocksshe pours out her thoughts on music, art and ancient Greek legends, and remembrances of her travels across the globe in abandoned cars, looking for other living beings. But after a while, some discrepancies creep into her rambling, compelling monologue: an accident that she first says took place in New York now occurs in Leningrad; memories become distorted by imaginings. Were they ever really memories in the first place? By the end of this seamless stream of consciousness, there is no distinction between fantasy and reality, past and present. Markson (The Ballad of Dingus Magee) keeps the reader off balance and finally unsure of even the foundation of his character's madnessperhaps she is alone only because she believes she is.

Now that sounds creative. But is it any good?

Some more reviews from Amazon:

5 Stars: Unspeakably magnificent, October 18, 2001
4 Stars: Highly recommended and not only to art historians!, December 1, 1998
5 Stars: Heavens to Betsy, March 15, 2001

Cool. Let's read the "Heaven's to Betsy" review, shall we?

My, my, what a book. Such a difficult journey, for me: the endless art, historical and literary references were daunting. And the one-sentence-paragraph style and internal dialogue subject matter so jarring, especially after having just finished reading Infinite Jest (Wittgenstein's Mistress was a DFW recommendation). But I read on, aided by episodes of hilarity (such as the scene in which various painters and cats convene in the narrator's brain, or the speculation about whether Penelope really would have waited around for Odysseus' return) and moments of harrowing poignancy (the gravestone promised by a husband on a son's grave existing in the mind but not in reality). Well, it's hard to describe. But the last twenty or so pages were so intimate and frightening in their sadness as to make you want to reach into the book and hold her head to somehow stop the lonliness. Don't give up on this book.

Hey, that's interesting. I didn't know the DFW connection. And just so happens I'm taking bothInfinite Jest and Wittgenstein's Mistress with me on vaca. Coolness.
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Ester wrote: "...when a question was posed to me I didn't understand a word...guess I'm not good at being put on the spot..."

My brother, the linguist, told me once that the first word one needs to learn in a foreign language is "um". In French that oh-so-useful word is: "attend". Used with a poised index finger, this word can be repeated mulitple times while one pulls their actual response together. This was magical advise from my brother; use if for the forces of good. ;)

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Dan wrote: "You are definitely right about this Hugh. I was surprised at her being annoyed by Hal since I was always fascinated by his grammatical talk and conversations with Orin. After hearing her take on Ha..."

My copy of IJ just came in the mail. I'm off to Taos and points north and west come June and fully expect to have the reading time for this tome. Dan's feedback has really got me stoked that these 1200 pages are going to fly.

Bonita wrote: "unedjamacated..."

Awwsome use of vocabulary Senora Bonita.

Just to get warmed up, I reached back into the archives to the discussion of Greg Downs’ Spit Baths, a Flannery O’Connor Award winner. A couple of the things he said at that time have stuck with me ever since and I wanted to share some quotes from him just to start:

Flannery was definitely one of my heroes, though I confess the Catholic thing all went over my head when I was first reading her. I lived in an uber-Protestant (mostly Baptist world) and had never been inside a Catholic church. One of my cousins did marry a Catholic, but it actually caused a big divide in the family, with people not speaking for years and so on. So I missed a lot of the ideas and images that I'd later realize were there. What I didn't miss is the aspect that Alice Walker praised in O'Connor's writing, the easy she dismissed all the crap about ladies and gentlemen that screwed up southern writing for so long. She wrote about characters that were like my crazy cousins and uncles and neighbors, and that helped open my eyes to the stories that were out there. That you didn't have to be living in an old plantation house to have a southern story, that in fact the stories outside of the plantation houses were, by far, the more interesting stories. It's hard not to put her right up near the top of the southern clan. How about you?

And this one, which pretty much sums up southern lit in two words:

As a line by line writer, I could read him {Faulkner} all day. As an observer of human nature, he's Shakespearean in a way that I fundamentally am not. If every writer in the end is a Shakespearean or a Dickensian (not in terms of influence but in terms of the way they think about character and fate) then I'm on the other side, as I suspect Flannery O'C was. There are enormous personalities who set drama in motion, but 1) there aren't that many of them and 2) many of them are not fundamentally interesting people unless they are speaking in Shakespeare's or Faulkner's sentences, while the comic, plainer folks are often not only more amusing but more interesting. I'm interested in small people operating in big worlds that shape them, while I think Faulkner may have been the opposite, big people in small worlds.

Here is a link to the original thread in the FFv1 MySpace group…

Spit Baths

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Jonathan wrote: " . . .my only worry is i don't want to wake up the baby . . ."

I love this. Might start calling you "Pops", Pops.

Pops

Dan wrote: "I will be flying solo, closest family is in Philly which means you w..."

So maybe you should be polishing off a DVD set of Northern Exposure. And we'll keep a place set for you at Thanksgiving.

You'll also get a chance to get to know Buffalo (OMG, bad-bad-bad) and Toronto, which is cool. Do you know how to ice skate? Ever play hockey? You also might want to read London's cabin fever story, In a Far Country. ;)

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Lauren wrote: "I'm oh so happy for you, Dan!

My announcement is this: some celestial being is sending me signs that my love life (and apparently my life in general) is doomed. I'm taking this with a grain of sal..."

Um, Lauren...don't know how to break this to you honey but, maybe sit down: we're all doomed. One of Deb's 1st graders came in all excited the other day. I guess a hampster had passed away of something.

"Guess what I found out!"
"What honey?"
"Do you know that we are all going to die! [When were they going to tell me about this!? This is extremely important news!:]" (I extrapolated the last part.)
"It's OK honey, it won't be for a very, very long time."
"So, you knew about this already?"

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Dan wrote: "Ok here it is, the announcement. I'm no longer a librarian just by degree. I now have a position as a librarian for one of the SUNY colleges in upstate NY. So I am going from one of the hottest pla..."

This is GREAT news Dan, and a big load off of your shoulders I am sure. Do you have friends/family in update New York, or are you just soloing in like that guy in Northern Exposure?

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Margaret wrote: "Came back to read this for the compare stories thread. SO we have a spy who is caught and is telling a story. We only get to listen in at the part where he is about to be caught. The man Madden is..."

RE: He becomes hyper-aware and places significance on meaningless circumstances...

Bingo! But I am sorry, is this something that needs to be cured? I thought "significance" was the goal here, not the enemy.

I think the relevent question/questions are whether/not any/all such significance is subjective/objective, personal/universal, etc.

But I guess one could question whether such significance is healthy/hurtful. The goodness of it is something I've always just assumed I guess; nothing to fear here, consider the liles of the field and all. But it is an interesting viewpoint, that there is some harm to be found in non-grounded, misleading significance...and I am opening to listening about it.

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Brian wrote: "came in a little brown box today from some south american river..."

Brian, I thought the outfit you refer to was named so because it was an all woman co-op. Learn something new every day. Had no idea it was an offshore operation. You sure it isn't an all woman co-op out of St. Paul, MN?

Lauren wrote: "My play opens a week from today!"

I like this thread. :) Break a leg kiddo.

FYI. Happy Birthday to me this week; just moved up to the 54th floor. View is great. Also bought Deb a new car this week. Always a big deal bringing the new car home. We are going Diesel and hope to be able to compost our fuel within a couple of years. Go Biodiesel!

To echo Micha, it is a YAY FOR CUPCAKES kind of morning.

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Brian wrote: "...a horse being beaten on the road and couldn't remember where... finally remembered... crime and punishment...
"

Wasn't this in the Brothers K., bit C&P?

I found I enjoyed this story. (Deb brought out a book she gave me Xmas 2002 of Murakami’s short stories and it looks like it too will go on the “to read” pile shortly.) The writer came across as a nice guy, and there was a sense of humor, a lightness, to the story which made it appealing despite a certain existential shrug to it all (“And that's what a poor aunt is. Her existence is her reason. Just like us. We exist here and now, without any particular reason or cause”), despite the rather clever references to litter, despite some affected world-weariness for coolness sake. He seemed very Japanese in that. The narrative was disjointed – for example, the episode with the daily TV program, the longer digression about the children on the train – but not ‘fractured” in a modern sense, maybe more oriental in its concentration on specific scenes, microcosms of a larger reality found in everyday, natural settings.

I’d like to echo Patty and Bonita’s appreciation for the opening scene. I thought it was wonderfully written. This opening scene a good example of the “haiku-ness” I detect in the writing;

- distinct examination of a particular experience
- brief, descriptive, with a minimum of commentary
- a focus on nature

And of course the litter and pollen, described beautifully as another “light;

“…a chocolate wrapper discarded on the lawn gave off a proud sparkle, like a crystal at the bottom of a lake…”

“…the sunlight was enfolding yet another kind of light, like one Chinese box inside another…”

As for the “poor aunt”; I thought this a clever concept. I liked the way the author steps back and includes a linguistic analysis of the concept, and particularly liked the way he incorporates this discussion into the rather humorous interview on the TV show. The concept itself, as a central theme to the story, reminds me of the way Poe will build a story around some concept which has attracted his eye for the bizarre, most notably his Imp Of The Perverse.

But is it strange that Murakami reminds me of Poe?

I also like Mare’s comment on the Poor Aunt being another of the stereotypical family members sitting down to a dysfunctional family’s dinner table; include in her list the Absent Father, the Very Quiet Child, the Drunk Fiancé, the champagne-on-a-beer-budget Overspending Spouse.

I think his theme, though, at least to me, addresses the over-arching narrative about his relationship to his “friend”. It is to this story that the various episode keep returning. I sensed that the author was holding back on his relationship to her and the invisible monkey on his back a metaphor for what prevented him from crossing over into intimacy with her. When he realizes the Poor Aunt has left, it is towards this friend that progress is made. Just my take on it; but I can easily identify with seeing myself as a cancerous dog, as a dentists’ chair, or as a scar-faced teacher in the eyes of another. Any excuse real or imagined not to trust my heart to another.

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Ben wrote: "man, these mondays come around fast.... i still haven't gotten to reread the murakami or the garden of forking paths.... and i still have never gotten to the o henry!

I'm with Ben on this. Just got around to reading the Murakami this weekend and letting it marinate now. I also wanted to go back and re-read Garden of Forking Paths. Just keep the threads open Shel and we can post to them as we catch up to you.

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So Dan, how is "Infinite Jest" going? Shel's recent New Yorker article on DFW's posthumous "The Pale King" was fascinating. Had a nice long excerpt from the as yet unpublished novel which I would definitely recommend reading.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday!
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Shel wrote: "Finally!

I just uploaded the March 9 New Yorker article that includes an excerpt of his upcoming posthumous novel. I almost split them up, but they kinda go together. Worth the time spent reading...."

Thanks!

Patty wrote: "I put both books up as our current reads. I didn't put end dates, because I have no idea how long we want to read them.

Also, I think Swanny was going to lead the Big Sleep read, is that true? And did/will anyone volunteer to lead Wittgenstein's Mistress? "

I've still got to purchase WM, let alone begin reading it. I have just set up a week the first week in June to go out to Taos (sans famille) for a retreat; should get some nice reading in there between hiking in the mountains. Sometime thereafter I should be able to moderate a WM thread if still desired. I mean if the book is worth it. Confession: I voted for it on title alone. ;p