Have I not been reading the informed blogs? This is already old: there is apparently a working version of Xanadu – Windows only. Huh? Ted Nelson (yes, the one-and-only Ted Nelson) presents it in a video here, in a Google-talk: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8329031368429444452. Via http://www.futureofthebook.org/archives/2007/10/ted_nelsons_still_on_the_job.html.
Like cleaning your desk: make a list of recently read books. (Including some that you’re currently reading, or will read in the near future).
It is cleaning the desk. Having made the list, I may put the books on the shelves, and this list will be the remainder/reminder.
William Gibson, Spook Country
I’d just embarked on reading Gibson’s latest when Omar sent me the warning: “this is Gibson’s worst book”. Well, it didn’t make a difference as having read everything by Gibson, I simply wanted to read this one too. Having finished it, I now wonder why I put in those hours of reading time. The novel never seems to start off. Gibson’s style is bland, and the words did not conjur up images. It is interesting to see that Gibson speculates on locative media, but the concepts he comes up with are not very imaginative (I have heard better ideas in workshops), and the connection he makes with the themes of privacy and surveillance are not very convincing. One is left with the ‘vintage-Gibson-plot’: here’s an elaborate plot ‘plotted’, which, a the end, turns out to be a cover up for something else. Almost everything is a mystery, as none of the characters has any idea about what is happening and why. Neither has the reader. And to be honest, I did not really care about it. Of course there are a few nice scenes and in the first few pages I did become interested in the character of the journalist. But it’s not enough. I’ll wait for the next one.
Jonathan Raban, Surveillance
Actually, I’m reading this one now and haven’t progressed further than page 84. It is a contemporary, conventional novel in the DeLillo-vein, half White Noise, half Mao II, updated for post-9/11. I read the first chapter immediately after finishing Spook Country and it became painfully clear how much Gibson’s novel was lacking in simply making the reader imagine a world through words. Surveillance may be a conventional novel, and you almost see how Raban positions his puppets, and how approaches the themes (security, surveillance), but he does it skilfully and it makes the novel an enjoyable read and an enticing analysis of contemporary western life.
Harm Nijboer, De fatsoenering van het bestaan
I did a little write-up for Harm’s PhD-thesis earlier. See below.
Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees
I reviewed Moretti’s An Atlas of the European Novel years ago for Mediamatic, not really knowing who Moretti was (yeah, an Italian literary theorists, with a leftist background, I knew that). I enjoyed the use he made of maps and diagrams for the analysis of novels, and his style of mixing his own text with diagrams, maps and quotations. Graphs, Maps and Trees, subtitled Abstract Models for Literary History, takes all this one step further and proposes the use of graphs, maps and trees as methods for doing literary history. The book is short, convincing and very clear, and it makes one long for many more of the sort of studies that Moretti undertakes. It might be more sociology than hermeneutics, but I love this sort of sociology. The only aspect that I am a bit worried about is Moretti’s frequent referencing of biological models and evolutionary theory (Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould and D’Arcy Thompson are mentioned a few times). My worry mostly derives from the fact that it’s a bit too easy to suppose that form works exactly the same way in literature as it works in the biological realm. (That doubt being uttered here, I can immediately add that it does fit quite neatly. Yet I hope Moretti will not exchange all of his Marxian inclinations for evolutionary biology).
The Ends of the Earth, An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic/Antarctic
Two front sides: one for writing on the Arctic (ed. Elizabeth Kolbert), one for the Antarctic (ed. Francis Spufford). Spotted it in the nice bookshop in Rockport. Just a very nice collection of (literary) writing on the Poles. I sometimes read a chapter.
John J. Babson, History of the Town of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Including the Town of Rockport
This must be one of my craziest acquisitions: the 1972-reprint of Babson’s 1860 history of Gloucester, bought in Gloucester (where else?). I actually read about half of it until now. Naturally I bought it as an intertext for Olson’s Maximus Poems, that deal with the early settling of Gloucester, and Babson lists all the early inhabitants of Gloucester and relates their histories. Babson was the first to write the history of Gloucester, it was one of Olson’s favorites. Babson delved deep in the archives, and it seems there is not much he missed, except for the history of Cape Ann prior to 1623 (Samuel Camplain landed in Whale Cove in 1606, and many Basque and Portugese fishermen must have paid visits to Cape Ann between 1606 and 1623). It is fascinating reading – at least for someone who’s gotten interested in Gloucester through Olson. Local history, as the history of a place, how it is formed and formatted through various forces, has captured me.
Thomas Dresser, Dogtown, A Village Lost in Time
A booklet that is probably only for sale in and around Gloucester. It tells the story of Dogtown, the settlement near Gloucester that was abandoned during the 18th century – the last house was torn down in 1845. Now it is a wood – F. and me walked through it from Rockport to Gloucester – where the remains of the settlement are still visible. It’s strange place, that features in Olson’s Maximus Poems.
(And then there is the Babson Boulder Trail, a trail along boulders that have words carved into them, like an early 20th century idealistic/business/labour version of the Stages of the Cross: Ideas. Study. Be On Time. Courage. Intelligence. Use Your Head. Spiritual Power. Work.)
Good wikipedia-page about Dogtown with pictures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown,_Massachusetts.
Babson boulders: http://www.thedacrons.com/eric/dogtown/babson_boulders_gloucester.html.
More Dogtown: http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/ccarlsen/poetry/gloucester/dogtownhistory.html.
(Ah well, you can do the surfing and browsing from here…)
Jack Kerouac, On the Road, The Original Scroll
I started reading Kerouac when I was 17. Stopped when I was 20. So this is a return after many, many years. And a happy return it is: it is a joy to read, it is much better (and sadder) than I remembered, and it is not a (re)discovery of the autobiographic Kerouac, nor of the mythic Kerouac, but of Kerouac the writer. Excellent essays too. Still 30 pages to go.
Tom Clark, Charles Olson, The Allegory of a Poet’s Life
I guess this biography is necessary reading for whomever would like to understand Olson. It gives an excellent overview of his life, and a very good insight in his troublesome psyche. And what a mess he made of his life. I think I am interested in Olson also because he is too bookish, too abstract, too didactic. Clark mainly writes about Olson as a character, and much much less on his poetry, or his (equally messy) theories and poetics. That is fine, but it makes it the biography of the character, not of the poetry. Anyway, I still ‘devoured’ it.
I went to Gloucester. I entered the public library. An excellent library – certainly if one takes into account how small Gloucester is. And there are shelves with all the books on Gloucester, and everything of Olson is there. And everything of Vincent Ferrini, the epic poem about Dogtown by Marsden Hartley, Babson’s guide to Cape Ann, and much more.
There’s a 2007 documentary on Charles Olson in Gloucester that is currently being shown in the US. It’s made by Henry Ferrini, entitled Polis is This, Charles Olson and the Persistance of Place. It’s about Olson, Gloucester and the importance of poetry in everyday life. (I haven’t seen it, but it won a first prize in the 2007 Berkeley Video and Film Festival, and John Malkovich is the narrator). Trailer at the website: http://www.polisisthis.com/Polis/Home.html.
Insightfull review here: http://olsonnow.blogspot.com/2007/08/michael-boughnreview-of-polis-is-this.html
Finished reading Albert B. Lord’s The Singer of Tales: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LORSIY.html. There was nothing new for me in this book – I’d got it all studying Literary Theory and having Frans de Valk as a teacher – but it was a joy to read the full 220 pages. And I’d say it’s compulsory reading for anybody studying performance/poetry and/or rap and poetry.
Related: The Milman Parry Collection, http://www.chs.harvard.edu/mpc/index.html.
A not very precise entry for Lord at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Lord.
“According to Fielding the whole world of letters was becoming a ‘democracy, or rather a downright anarchy’; and there was no one to enforce the old laws, since, as he wrote in the Covent Garden Journal (1752, no. 23,1), even the ‘offices of criticism’ had been taken over by ‘a large body of irregulars’ who had been admitted ‘into the realm of criticism without knowing one word of the ancient laws’.”
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, The Hogarth Press, London, 1987 (1957) p. 58.
“‘The present age may be styled with great propriety, the Age of Authors; for perhaps the never was a time in which men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education, of every profession and employment were posting with ardour so general to the press.’
‘The province of writing was formerly left to those who, by study or appearance of study, were supposed to have gained knowledge unattainable by the busy part of mankind.’
Dr. Johnson in the Adventurer, 1753, quoted in Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, The Hogarth Press, London, 1987 (1957), p. 58
And into Schmidt again as well, as I received a little booklet as a present: Arno Schmidt in Bargfeld, from the series “Menschen und Orte” (“People and Places): http://www.atelierfischer-berlin.de/menschenorte/menschenorte_re.html. A nice little book, that brings the Schmidt-fan nothing new, nothing but an opportunity to read again an account of his life, and his work (“Arbeit, Arbeit, Arbeit”). The photographs also are well-known, but because I do not own any books on Schmidt except for the Rowolth-biography, they are very welcome. I’m always fascinated by photographs of writers desks…. I enjoyed it so much (the nearness of Schmidt’s world) that this morning I quickly picked a Schmidt-book from my shelves to read on the train to work. I re-read the ‘short story’ Schwanze and am beginning to also see the humour of the later work of ‘der Arno’ leading up to Zettel’s Traum. I left the newspapers unread today.
Page 120 already! Two days of reading, well, just a few hours, and I’m on page 120 of the Maximus Poems! Of course the whole thing is more than 600 pages long, but still… This is possible thanks to the style of these poems. This is not poetry to re-read. This is not poetry of precise, quotable lines, there are hardly stanzas that one would like to go over again and again, to savour all the music and meaning. (Those that stand up to this test are those one will find in the anthologies). Approach it with an expectation of finding ‘finished poems’, and one will find Olson a rather messy and careless word-smith. Olson lets the sound determine the syntax and the flow of words; this is poetry to read, line after line, ‘listening’: imagine a big man speaking aloud to you (Olson was a big man). He (Maximus, not Olson) talks on and on, makes little mistakes, comes back to the same points, repeats. Speaks sometimes in prose and at other times in verse. And slowly, while reading, the image of Gloucester takes shape, the early history and economy of it, the ‘locality’, the muthos – Olson trying to be a Herodotos to Gloucester, not a Thucydides.
Read the Maximus Poems that way, and you’ll find it fascinating. (Well, I do). And the image of Gloucester becomes becomes more and more clearer and multifaceted the further the poem progresses, the more Maximus ‘talks’.
(Of course, I write this after having read ‘only’ 120 pages…)
(Now that I finally upload this account of my reading experience – written down on a train, travelling to Groningen – I’ve progressed unto page 180).
Finished reading Falling Man on sunday. As I am a bit of a DeLillo-specialist (having read all of his prose and most of his plays) I guess I have to give my opinion here… Falling Man is a novel about the effects of 9/11 on the lives of a group of Americans – DeLillo-characters, all with something to hide, a secret maybe, though this ‘something to hide, this secret, might be just nothingness, a big hole. It’s a novel on the scale of Endzone or Players. It doesn’t compare badly to his earlier prose at all. I say this because his novels after Underworld seemed to be the work of a free-wheeling writer returning to his subject matter, without any urgent reason. Whereas in the earlier prose DeLillo seemed to struggle – sign of urgency. Underworld was a sort of summary of all of DeLillo’s earlier concerns and themes, which resolved most of the loose ends and problems of the earlier novels – (a reason why I never feel compelled to pick up that book a second time, yet continue to read the others. like Americana). Though sometimes praised by reviewers who discovered DeLillo through Underworld, The Body Artist, Valparaiso and Cosmopolis are simply the least interesting works from his oeuvre. The lack edge, and even seem false/fake sometimes.
Falling Man, I think, is simply the book DeLillo had to write, although he might not have longed to write it. It has to exist. Without it, there’s a lack in his oeuvre. Libra is the novel which defines the ‘postmodern age’; all of his other novels project a world that is running toward 9/11. One could even say that DeLillo’s prose pointed towards 9/11 in an eerie way.
And to be silent then, afterwards, after what for the New Yorkers signifies catastrophe, would be too much. I can imagine, that being DeLillo one feels compelled to take the impact of the catastrophe as subject matter.
Falling Man then, might not be Delillo’s best novel, but it’s all there. The characters, the short sentences, the distanced, ‘objective’ observations, the scenes that seem to be overexposed (a metaphor I’ve used for years trying to describe DeLillo’s style, and never have been able to explain in detail). Maybe a critique could be that DeLillo doesn’t delve deep enough into the post-9/11-American-soul, nor deep enough into the soul of the terrorist. (The theory was already there in Mao II, the soul I guess in Libra). Maybe a critique could be that most of what DeLillo tells, reminds one of the journalistic accounts of 9/11. But even if that is the case, it is there: descriptions of the impact of the planes, of people going down the stairs of the WTC, of the moment just before the impact. And these descriptions are precise. DeLillo-esque (which is scary enough I guess, for a writer, to describe historical scenes and then someone saying that such scenes are DeLillo-esque…)
But that said, this book is not about terrorist or terrorism, not at all about victims, not about ‘our age’ It is a novel about the soul of white, well-to-do Americans and their secrets (see above). It is also an attempt to look into the soul of an Arab terrorist, but this fails just as it fails in Mao II: it makes sense, theoretically. It shows how ‘we’ (Westerners) think terrorists think, and bringing European terrorism in, does not alter that. It shows the surface. But it might also be that there is no more. That said, not many writers go where DeLillo goes, and the prose in Falling Man doesn’t sound false or weak for one sentence. It’s ‘Delillo’ – and in the world of his characters, 9-11 was always already there.
Well, I could’ve also pointed you to Omar’s review at: http://www.cut-up.com/reviews/detail.php?id=561.