Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film by Alan K. Rode
Curtiz directed so many pictures that a truly comprehensive account could have devolved into tedious box-checking. Rode does an admirable job balancing narrative momentum with critical perspective, breaking down how Curtiz could bring a cinematic dynamism to the least promising material. He doesn't shirk from Curtiz's poor (autocratic, monomaniacal, almost consistently amoral) character either.
The Memoirs Of Two Young Wives by Honoré de Balzac, translated by Jordan Strump
Pretty juicy epistolary novel but maybe not the best Balzac starter.
Nobody Runs Forever
Ask The Parrot
Dirty Money all by Richard Stark
A very satisfying end run for Stark/Westlake's unbeatable Parker series. I don't find serious fault with any of the Parker books, but I admit I could see, from 1997's Comeback to 2002's Breakout, the author straining a bit to fit the nearly primeval Parker into the modern world of cyber-crime and that sort of thing. In these three books Stark/Westlake stops trying and returns to first principles and the results are delightful. The last page of Parrot is as good as anything Westlake ever achieved.
Ezra Pound Poet: The Epic Years
Ezra Pound Poet: The Tragic Years both by A. David Moody
Epic, tragic. An advocate for his subject, Moody often bends over backwards to justify/rationalize Pound's more arguably unforgivable statements/choices but overall he's pretty persuasive. It's one of those stories where as much as you understand the grave injustices committed, you can't imagine it unfolding any other way.
The Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound
The edition edited and annotated by Richard Sieburth. To be honest I still can't say I've finished it yet. Is it even finishable? A monolith of modernist density and human suffering.
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
A good read, and meaningful.
Chicago by David Mamet
As Mamet novels go, it's way better than Wilson. It begins as promising genre exercise and ends as a pedantic convulsion.
God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake
A necessary palate cleanser after the Mamet. B+ Westlake, better than most such writers' As.
System of Dante’s Hell by Amiri Baraka
Not exactly what I was expecting but pretty damn great.
Sharp by Michelle Dean
Dean's survey of female thinkers/critics is crackling, illuminating, and cleverly constructed. The author, a friend, has written a book both (I hate to use this word but it fits here) necessary and entertaining.
Carla Bley by Amy C. Beal
An excellent academic study of one of my favorite composers/musicians. I am not adept enough to have gotten all of the technical stuff in its analysis but I still learned much.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
A "where have you been all my life" book
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien
It did not quite hook me as I'd hoped it would, although its harrowing final third is really something
The Chandelier by Clarice Lispector
Lispector's mode here combines stream-of-consciousness with an almost parallel contemplation/analysis of said consciousness. Not easy sledding but awesome
The Silent Woman by Janet Malcolm
On Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and others. One of several books that Sharp tipped me off to. Great.
Space Odyssey by Michael Benson
Extremely enjoyable of course. I still wish I could find that crazy paperback Jerome Agel put together though.
The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy
Another Sharp pickup, also great.
Border Districts by Gerald Murnane
Best act of literary legerdemain I've witnessed in some time.
Caddyshack by Chris Nashawaty
My old friend and colleague Chris did a fine job on the making of a film I'm kind of inordinately fond of.
Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler
A recommendation from Robert Gottlieb's Avid Reader. Funny but in several respects overfamiliar.
Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein
Philip Roth recommended this in an interview. It did not disappoint. Tight, cogent, spectacularly researched.
The Mise en Scene by Claude Ollier
Decent early-ish New Novel.
Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson
Everything she writes is worth reading.
Transit
Kudos both by Rachel Cusk
I think Transit is the best of the trilogy begun with Outline. Questions of "autofiction" and women's writing and all that notwithstanding, Cusk's knack for the How We Live Now philosophical conundrum and her dry pellucid writing make for much readerly intrigue.
Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh
I think one reason Greil Marcus does this kind of "everything is connected" cultural history/analysis better than Walsh managed here is not just due to Marcus being a better writer—it's also a matter of confidence. Other writers have dissected Marcus' ostensible errors better than I'd be able to sitting here in my in-laws' kitchen and I'm not interested in posing a referendum here. But Marcus puts it on the page with such authority that the connections he draws seem, to use a favorite word of many, thrilling. Walsh's too often seem like what they are: implausible.
Keith Rowe The Room Extended by Brian Olewnick
An exceptional biography of the experimental musician that, among other things, puts paid to the notion that the avant-garde is the express territory of the bourgeoise academic. Olewnick unearths Rowe's extreme working-class roots (think How Green Was My Valley minus "Green," or anybody ever having any fun, ever, etc.) and shows how Rowe's sensibility connected later to a political ethic. Along with that is an engaging story of how Swinging London floated some avant-garde boats that never would have gotten out of the dock otherwise, and acute musical analysis.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A true corker, and in some unexpected ways.
The Nature Of The Beast by Louise Penny
More fun with Inspector Gamache.
A Memoir Of Gaudier-Brzeska by Ezra Pound
Very much a product of its properly indignant time.
Basic Black With Pearls by Helen Weinzweig
As audacious as advertised.
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Cornyn
Grim, compact.
Room To Dream by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna
He doesn't tell what the Eraserhead baby is, but the book is still revelatory and delightful.
Blitzed by Norman Ohler, translated by Shaun Whiteside
Reading between the lines you see that Ohler applied a good deal of speculation to the documentation he unearthed; nevertheless, he makes his case. I wonder if the second volume of Volker Ulrich's Hitler biography will draw from Ohler at all.
Understudy for Death by Charles Willeford
There's more enthusiasm in the writing than the plotting in this newly unearthed Willeford, and that's just fine.
Runnin' With The Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen by Noel Monk and Joe Laydon
As advertised.
The Three Ecologies by Felix Guattari
Boy are we screwed.
Last Stories by William Trevor
Also as advertised. Finely wrought and heartbreakingly true, but it also makes you wonder how the hell Trevor conjured himself out of bed in the morning.
Reminiscences Of An American Composer and Pianist by George Walker
I picked this up, and a good deal of Walker music, after hearing Ethan Iverson and Miranda Cuckson play a Walker piece at their wonderful June show at Brooklyn's Spectrum. Ethan read a passage in which Walker's grandmother recalled he life as a slave: "They did everything but eat us," she told her grandson. Walker's reminiscences are dry, very no-nonsense, and very much the work of a man who knows his own mind. He doesn't explore in explicit terms the meaning of an African-American musician immersing himself in European classical music; he makes implicitly clear that (among other things) for him the meaning of the work is the doing of the work. I've been very rewarded too by the CDs of Walker's work I've acquired. This excellent interview with Walker, conducted by Ethan, is an excellent jumping-off point. Walker died at age 96 in August.
The Outsider by Stephen King
The first section of the novel builds up a mystery with a tension that's practically excruciating. It's almost understandable that King breaks the thread — sustaining this for a full 500 pages or so is almost too much to ask. The rest of the book held my attention and gave me a lot of pleasure but man, those first 120 pages or so...
The House Of The Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars by Daniel Beer
I don't remember if it was this or Pogrom that inspired my friend the Self-Styled Siren to grieve over my grim reading habits. And yup, this is grim. But it's also really fascinating and an apt prequel, so to speak, to the much more idiosyncratic Gulag Archipelago.
Other Traditions by John Ashbery
Adapted from a series of lectures. Here Ashbery holds forth, with typical erudition but also a relatively relaxed timbre, on idiosyncratic poets who exercised some influence on Ashbery's sensibility if not his actual practice. The well-known Ashbery hobbyhorse Raymond Roussel is represented; this also set me off in search of Thomas Lovell Beddoes and John Wheelwright.
Records Ruin The Landscape by David Grubbs
I'm slightly ashamed that it took me so long to get to this spectacular piece of cultural history and criticism, a book that among other things did a spectacular job of explaining my own audio sensibility to me.
Art, Mystery by Mayo Thompson
My friend Mayo, whose stewardship of The Red C/Krayola is but a small portion of his overall artistic profile, was kind enough to have Drag City send me a copy of his limited-edition debut novel, a wry globetrotting satire of curatorial misdemeanors in the fine arts.
That Was Something by Dan Callahan
The very excellent critic and person Dan's debut novel is a lovely and pointed memory play that is also very funny and pretty dirty.
Travels With A Donkey in the Cévennes & The Amateur Emigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson
A friend who was traveling to the Cévennes mentioned the first volume, alluding to the slim possibilities he'd find a friendly welcome in the region. I was motivated to return to Stevenson for the first time since childhood and was rather glad I did.
The Town by William Faulkner
Taking my own sweet time through the Snopes trilogy.
Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power by Robert A. Caro
Volume five isn't close to finished yet, so I feel I've got a leg up. I intend to tackle both two and three next year.
An Anthology Of Pure Poetry edited by George Moore
Mentioned in the Ashbery, a nifty collection that arguably doesn't always strictly hew to Moore's definition of "pure," but that's part of the fun.
Spring Torrents by Ivan Turgenev, translated by Leonard Shapiro
Turgenev. He's good. Check him out.
Rod Serling: His Life, Work, And Imagination by Nicholas Parisi
I read this frustrating book because I was reviewing it, for Film Comment.
Pale Horse Rider by Mark Jacobson
Nobody writes about the weird tendrils of American life like my hero (and pal, and Girlfriend Experience co-cast member) Mark. This investigative semi-biography of conspiracy theorist William Cooper is startling, frightening, funny, odd, and strikingly compassionate. A must.
The Solitary Twin by Harry Mathews
The late, great Mathews' final novel is also an exemplary work, a nesting-doll narrative in the fine Oulipean tradition.
Dark Lady of the Silents: My Life In Early Hollywood by Miriam Cooper and Bonnie Herndon
Because of the frank and disparaging tidbits on the back of the dust jacket, I had this pegged as the silent-movie-actress version of Miles Davis' autobiography, and it kind of is. But it's also strikingly different, not only because she doesn't call anyone a "motherfucker." It's an engaging and valuable window into an era that's very much misunderstood these days.
The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman
Weinman, with whom I'm friendly, is an indefatigable and endlessly curious researcher, and a searching, authoritative writer. This book goes into great detail on a real-life kidnapping case that Humbert himself cites in his Nabokov-contrived "memoir." She also grapples with the responsibility of the artist in taking off from actual events. I think she's a little too hard on Nabokov but also that she asks a lot of the right questions of him, and of readers.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
More harrowing than any of its film adaptations for sure. The Scottish-inflected dialogue rewards, nay, demands close reading.
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
Inspector Gamache meets Blue Murder at St. Trinian's. Well, not really. One of Penny's better contrivances, served up with the usual self-seriousness, which she somehow makes a little more palatable here.
Bing Crosby Swinging on a Star: The War Years 1940-1946 by Gary Giddins
The incredibly long-awaited second volume of Giddins' Crosby biography brought me more of that old unalloyed pleasure than, I think, any other book I read this year. He doesn't soft-sell Crosby's domestic failings but instead examines them with a clear-headed perspective and context. And his depictions of the singer's incredible generosity as both a home-front entertainer and ambassador to the troops in Europe, and how "White Christmas" became THE army anthem of homesickness before it became THE Christmas song are fascinating. It also got me listening to old Crosby records again, never a bad thing.
Glass Houses by Louise Penny
I anticipated getting the new Kingdom of the Blind as a Christmas present so I wanted to be all caught up on the Gamache series. Well, I did not get Kingdom of the Blind as a Christmas present.
The Count Of 9 by Erle Stanley Gardner
The good folk of Hard Case Crime have been reissuing the Cool & Lam detective agency yarns that ridiculously prolific Gardner wrote under the pen name A. A. Fair. I never got into Perry Mason (no reason) but thought I'd check this out on a whim (also to read some unselfconscious genre fluff after the Penny, who could stand to be a little fluffier TBH) and was moderately satisfied. Solid construction, snappy dialogue, lotsa old-school sexism, no fancy stuff. Put a stack of them in front of me and I could probably consume them like peanuts, which might wind up being to my spiritual detriment somehow.
Kafka’s Last Trial by Benjamin Balint
A terrifically cogent account of not just the suit that determined where a substantial portion of Kafka's archives would be housed, but of the various betrayals that made Kafka the giant of literature he is today. A paradoxical tragedy that Balint wisely chooses to contemplate with a scholarly sobriety.
War and Peace (Volume 1) by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Anthony Briggs
Second go-round with this, in a different translation than first time. Tolstoy. He's good. Check him out.
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