Starts off so wonderfully, was so psyched about Simon's flowing speeches, some wonderful fun weird sentences through the first 50 pages or so, but theStarts off so wonderfully, was so psyched about Simon's flowing speeches, some wonderful fun weird sentences through the first 50 pages or so, but then it all falls apart when other brothers arrive, the language settles down and it sort of stopped making sense or engaging me as it had through the opening chapters. Don't have the patience these days to power through novels that begin to lose me, especially with the iPad nearby offering reams of anti-Trump scrolling in the week before the election. Might return to it. Probably more so I'll focus on story collections for a while. Brain is fried right now from election scrolling. ...more
Read about 150 pages and am just not up for more at this point. Was wary due to my experience with Blinding about ten years ago -- after a while it juRead about 150 pages and am just not up for more at this point. Was wary due to my experience with Blinding about ten years ago -- after a while it just felt like a hose of high-falutin prose. As with Blinding, the translation is fantastic, exceedingly well-wrought -- it's just that the underlying authorial sensibility is a little much for me. This one, at times it's totally tubular, in that the unifying structural repeating associated shape is a tube, like the lice of the opening pages, like a roll of coins, like the penile organ, like a novel or story (I've heard Marilynne Robinson talk about reading a story being like passing through a reverberating chamber of associations), like the solenoid itself, a fantastic structural symbol, an energy coil placed where it is precisely due to lay lines and mystical global energies but buried beneath the house and essentially ineffectual. Similarly, for all this one's energies page to page, sentence to sentence, phrase to phrase, for all this one's extreme adjectival exuberance/indulgence, there's no s0-called narrative drive through the first 150 pages -- mass micro phrasal energy, no macro storytelling energy. And so it seemed to me ultimately kinda dull, the way fireworks are often dull after a while. There's a fantastic section early on about a writing workshop gone wrong, really fun and well done. There's a sex scene in which the lovers maybe levitate a little. But overall, although I think I'll keep it on my night table and read a few pages here and there, I'm just not really interested in this sort of writing right now. I might try Cartarescu's Nostalgia, but I don't have the patience for 500+ more pages of this right now, although I'm sure if I push on I'll excavate a handful of weird, satisfying delights from the remaining pages of A+ Euro logorrhea. ...more
A collection of magazine pieces centered on the theme of the title. Acquired after reading her recent article in The Atlantic about antisemitism, "WhyA collection of magazine pieces centered on the theme of the title. Acquired after reading her recent article in The Atlantic about antisemitism, "Why the Most Educated People in America Fall for Anti-Semitic Lies," although I felt like there were glaring unfortunate holes in that article regarding Netanyahu et al.'s disproportionate tragic barbaric response to Hamas's tragic barbaric attack on Oct 7, 2023, the latest installment in an endless tragic barbaric knot throughout time, the nightmare of history from which we need to awake. The premise in this, condensed clearly and directly in the title, is at first impactful (about Anne Frank and Holocaust museums) but loses energy with each repetition. Interesting about the Russian Jews of China who established a sort of colonialist haven before they were vanquished by the Japanese. Interesting to learn that the Jews of Libya and Iraq all had their assets seized and were killed or brutally expelled after WWII, and interesting to learn that Jews who came from Eastern Europe to Ellis Island actively changed their names -- ie, names were not changed by immigration officers, who were required to speak three languages and had translators ready. But I didn't quite believe or jibe with her ideas that American assimilation was a response to the same-old antisemitism on a new continent. My father was a third-generation American -- his great-grandfather came from what's now northwestern Ukraine (formerly Eastern Galicia) in the 1880s with two million others after widespread pogroms in Ukraine and Russia. As a metaphor, my father preferred sandlot baseball to synagogue on Saturday mornings. Horn doesn't really account for the myth of the American melting pot, the ideal of the future, of forging one's own way as an individual and projecting oneself into an improved future, the real achievable American dream of being oneself, doing what you want within reason, pursuing happiness, releasing oneself into mass popular culture and namebrand consumerism, but also glimpsing the complexities of reality of the world through consistent reading. She glamorizes to a degree or at least emphasizes the importance of the ancient lineage all the way back to the priests of Mt Sinai, all the suffering throughout those old times and places, the same prayers said by the same group of people often separated from their surrounding civilizations, from non-Jew others who more often than not had serious trouble with the Jews over time. And as a fourth-generation American with a non-Jewish mother and a father who was fully assimilated, other than some lingering North New Jersey mannerisms/expressions, and wanted nothing to do with religion and the lineage or the group, I feel like Horn doesn't acknowledge that we are all one people and that religion and race are constructs that disguise the scientific fact of our extreme +99% genetic similarity. Generally, I read this (skimmed some pieces so marked as "read" and didn't rate it with stars) and came away semi-disgusted with religion and tribalism and everything that separates one another on the basis of profound chronic cultural or linguistic or theological traditions and superficial characteristics. I came away from this thinking the author may have multiple prestigious degrees but she's never had a mystical experience teaching her that we are all one. It sounds silly but John Lennon got it right in I Am the Walrus: "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." Coo-coo-ka-joo!...more
I regretfully bestow upon this immortal classic the objective rating of meh minus. Disappointing (prioritized reading it because it was listed #1 on sI regretfully bestow upon this immortal classic the objective rating of meh minus. Disappointing (prioritized reading it because it was listed #1 on some 50 Greatest British Novels of the 19th-Century listicle I dredged online). But it's just flat-out BORING. Feel bad for all those high school kids forced to read this. Starts well but quickly goes off the rails. Characterization is flat, the LANGUAGE is flat (without modulation throughout), settings are flat (haven't yet read a single "great" description of London), very occasional string of insightful exposition, soporific dialogue. Jane Eyre and Middlemarch are infinitely better in terms of story and prose style. Even Wuthering Heights, which I generally disliked, is better for its intriguing formal peculiarities and unhinged intensity. Dickens may just not be for me. Putting down on page 207, probably never to return. Books > time etc etc etc. Heading back to the Brontes before visiting with Mr. Hardy and Mr. Trollope and then back to George Eliot....more
Read about 40 pages. Can’t concentrate on it. Don’t believe it, don’t care. Occasional cool GGM-trademark passage but otherwise too diffuse and filterRead about 40 pages. Can’t concentrate on it. Don’t believe it, don’t care. Occasional cool GGM-trademark passage but otherwise too diffuse and filtered for me to get into it now. ...more
Putting down on pg 81 -- can't really latch onto the narrative voice, plus the situation is icky. Occasionally cute but I find myself getting launchedPutting down on pg 81 -- can't really latch onto the narrative voice, plus the situation is icky. Occasionally cute but I find myself getting launched into zone outs and then reading back up the page and seeing I slipped on some mid-20th century UK schoolboy slang. Might return at some point but not what I'm looking to read right now....more
Started strong and seemed promising but just not really compelled to read about those evil Christians of yore -- more concerned with their contemporarStarted strong and seemed promising but just not really compelled to read about those evil Christians of yore -- more concerned with their contemporary counterparts....more
Quit on page 50 -- can't read more than five pages at a time. Maybe one five-star paragraph so far and stray killer DJ lines throughout. But feels forQuit on page 50 -- can't read more than five pages at a time. Maybe one five-star paragraph so far and stray killer DJ lines throughout. But feels forced, diffuse, dull. Not into down and out right now, impatient, feeling like DJ is animating a certain awfulness to emphasize eventual transcendence or its lack. May return to at some point. Won't donate my copy for the local library book sale, that is....more
Satirizes the popculturalization of atrocity. Reads like a glorified screenplay. Satirizes character names and description in Morrison's Song of SolomSatirizes the popculturalization of atrocity. Reads like a glorified screenplay. Satirizes character names and description in Morrison's Song of Solomon. Intentionally cartoonish characters and dialogue ("oh lawdy!"). Considering the author's previous novel Erasure, it seems to me that readers are playing interpretative checkers whereas the author's playing chess, that is, he's anticipating and to a degree satirizing in advance a laudatory response to a schlocky page-turnery cartoon that's deemed "relevant" thanks to magical 2666-ish inclusion of Emmett Till. I don't read predominantly dialogue page-turners with cartoonish characters, not even if they suggest hefty ever-present history. I admire the conception generally but read 50 pages in like 20 minutes and put it down disappointed....more
Highly recommend reading any of his other translated novels before this one. Put it down on page 80 after skimming from page 60. Had some interesting Highly recommend reading any of his other translated novels before this one. Put it down on page 80 after skimming from page 60. Had some interesting metafictional moments but the conceit doesn't seem work -- seems false and unnecessary and so I couldn't stick with it and my eye wandered to other books....more
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