Will anyone ever be allowed to write a sentence about what's worthwhile about a Go-Betweens song or record without also writing one about how they didn't have hits or get that famous? Can the work be the subject, and the standard, once in, oh, 40 years?
Franz Nicolay, Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music. Pro keyboardist's interview-based acct of sidepersons like himself. It takes related skills to write such a well-organized, theory-informed 3rd-person book instead of a memoir. Gave me insight into my own "career"; can recommend. #readin26
Guillevic, Geometries, trans. Richard Sieburth. "Euclidiennes" (1967) in French; 40 short poems voiced (?) by various plane and solid figures (scalene triangle, cone, parabola). Charmingly idealist; so, at odds w/ the militant CP sonnets I'm familiar with. These could make good art songs! #readin26
Edna O'Brien, The Love Object. 8 late-'60s stories, varied in tone, pace, pov, on women's thwarted desires, whether at the hands of a particular man, society, or their own illusions. Fine realist prose; "Paradise", one of 2 bookending (& sexy) mistress stories, doesn't earn its length. #readin26
Li-Young Lee, Behind My Eyes. A deep image poet, if I grasp the term. I read him mainly for how his poems move forward (by verbal repetition, paradox, and wisps of narrative; less involved w/ rhythm, anaphora aside), but he's also devastating on his parents, and family life in general. #readin26
Zachary Leader, Writer's Block. Not an advice book; mostly a survey of psychoanalytic accounts of the concept, and their roots in Romanticism, plus long case studies/close readings of Wordsworth & Coleridge. Never having studied them, I didn't know the latter was such a wreck of a person. #readin26
Should I write to avoid exercising, or exercise to avoid writing?
Michael McDonald FACT: he cannot sing the letter G
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory, A Very Short Introduction. Emphasizes speculative, destabilizing character of the field; as much about big ideas (e.g., identity) as their application to lit. works. Probably as clearly written as such a book can be. Treatment of Marxism seems a bit thin. #readin26
Don Cherry & Graeme Ewens, Eternal Rhythm: Conversations and Travelations. Oral memoir of global jazz legend, w/ add'l text by UK friend/archivist Evans. Best on early L.A./NYC years w/ Ornette; frank on D.C.'s drug use. Jumps around after that, but so did he. A real bio would fill a gap. #readin26
Michael Anderson, Locative Poesis. Obscure, L.A.-based Language-adjacent writer: short 1987 book typeset by Diane Ward. The "Europe" half is a Cook's tour there of atomized, macaronic travel notes; "America," covering CA/"the West," is better-observed, w/ wisps of narrative and Latinidad. #readin26
Analytic and continental philosophers going nyah-nyah-nyah at each other 280 characters at a time is not only incredibly interesting and intellectually productive, it's novel and never tiresome.
Ann Beattie, Secrets and Surprises. 1978 collection of sad realist tales, most from p.o.v. of a couple's weaker, more passive half. Didn't expect the post-hippie milieu, w/ refs to "tokes," "screwing," & Michael Hurley. Favors dialogue, detail over metaphor; can be moving despite flatness. #readin26
I'd say that Possession ties Willy Wonka for film least in need of a remake.
Emma Tholozan, Self-Worth, trans. Emma Ramadan. 2024 French novel: a phil. grad's boyfriend vomits 20€ notes; she can't cope when he stops. Unsubtle consumerist satire, but warmer than V. Latroncio's Perfection. Unevenly written, w/ some good lines: "We have the nightmares of our class." #readin26
Gerald Murnane, The Plains. His most-lauded book, but not the one I get the most out of. Marvelous, mood-altering prose, like Ashbery's 3 Poems at times, but I sense the effort it cost to create his "Inner Australia." Lacks the inevitability of some later, just as imaginative, work. [re] #readin26
also not lost on me that as democratic socialists are winning some elections, a new red scare targeting anarchists, antifascists, and their allies is digging in hard, and today handed down 30, 50, and 100 year prison sentences to activists and organizers
tfw a publisher is so transparent, considerate & genuinely excited about your book that you ask yourself if you shouldn't hold out for one that treats you like shit
What, if anything, would be the 2026 equivalent of Was (Not Was)?
Dag Solstad, Shyness & Dignity, trans. Sverre Lyngstad. Oslo h.s. teacher's marriage and career fall apart; a long flashback explains how/why, sort of. Narrative voice can recall Bernhard, but in close 3rd person, and more glum than furious. Won't change your notions of Nordic literature. #readin26.
David Huddle, The Writing Habit. Craft essays by a short-story writer, more aesthetically conservative than me, but honest and sensible. Particularly good stylistic analysis of Mansfield's "The Garden Party." As for the writing habit, he recommends a discipline I do not (yet) have. #readin26
Aaron Shurin, Involuntary Lyrics (2005). 85 14-liners w/ end-words borrowed from Shakespeare's sonnets. The rhyme schemes are scrambled; the prosody, free and varied. Results range from telegraphic "language things" to love (sex) poems in a post-AIDS shadow. Unmistakably Bay Area writing. #readin26.
Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, Clear and Simple as the Truth. Explicates the "classic" prose style of, e.g., Descartes and A.J. Liebling, its rhetorical stance, governing assumptions, uses, and - crucially - limits. The text itself is a persuasive exemplar of the style. Good book. #readin26
My radio show this week was largely a tribute to Sonny Rollins, inc. versions of his "Oleo," and "St Thomas" by other artists (James Carter, Jim Hall/Ron Carter, Paul Bley), and tunes on the same changes as "Doxy" ("Ja-Da," Monk's "Sixteen"). Archived for two weeks: spinitron.com/KSPC/pl/2250...
The Manila Folder Mon Jun 1 with Wax Eloquent on KSPC Claremont 88.7FM
spinitron.com
Donald Kuspit, Redeeming Art: Critical Reveries. Assorted essays, 80s/90s. Clearer on big art-world issues than on individual artists; his perspective is psychoanalytic, but the best piece critiques that field's notions of "the artist." Often drags in Adorno, who taught him in Frankfurt. #readin26.
