Full disclaimer: I haven’t read this book, but this doesn’t prevent me from letting you know that it is the most sensational release of the year, a trFull disclaimer: I haven’t read this book, but this doesn’t prevent me from letting you know that it is the most sensational release of the year, a truly barnstorming performance liable to rattle the most recalcitrant of roosters. When I first didn’t pick up this novel, I was amazed at the depth and breadth of the world created in the pages—I felt like I was actually there, taking part in whatever was happening in the plot, if there is a plot. I felt I was rubbing shoulders with the larger-than-life characters, if the characters have shoulders, and I never wanted to leave this wonderful world, even if I was never actually there, or if there is a world in this book and not merely a shed. I can honestly say that the author, Brianna Hinson, which is an anagram of Brinish Annona, which means a very salty deciduous shrub similar to a soursop, is no slouch when it comes to putting words in order on a screen for an indeterminate number of pages, and could never be called a soursop herself, if she is indeed a she, and if she is in fact not a soursop. In conclusion, although I haven’t read this book, I know in my inner regions that the text itself is on a par with a similarly-written novel in the genre that was semi-successful and published by an actual publisher in terms of quality, and this text is really worth your time and investment. You could even, like me, not read this novel at all, merely inhale its essence and know you were in the presence of greatness, and be sure to leave five stars on this page and tell all your friends to leave five stars on this and every page where the novel features, because ultimately the appearance of greatness is more important these days than greatness itself. But not in this case! On sale now from wherever the book is on sale....more
I want to keep this concise. Self-indulgence is the mark of Cain. Here are my twelve favourites from each month.
JANUARY The Manuscript Found in SaragosI want to keep this concise. Self-indulgence is the mark of Cain. Here are my twelve favourites from each month.
JANUARY The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Jan Potocki). A Spanish picaresque novel written in French by a polymathic aristocrat and suicide. Across sixty-six nights, Walloon officer Alphonse resists the erotic lure of Islamic conversion in the form of two Islamic temptresses, and listens to a series of yarns-within-yarns-within-yarns. an epic monster, a monument to classic and timeless storytelling that happily shares a plinth with The Arabian Nights for sheer logorrheic magnificence.
FEBRUARY King, Queen, Knave (Vladimir Nabokov). A summation in senryu: Dim late-teen tailor / lusts after Teutonic wilf / in heaven-kissed prose.
MARCH The Prime Minister (Anthony Trollope). In this novel from 1876, taken from contemporaneous political events, Prime Minister The Duke of Omnium is almost scandalised after refunding a scoundrel’s £50 election expenses when a proto-tabloid hack pens an exposé. A scintillating reminder of the lost art of the political novel.
APRIL The Faculty of Dreams (Sara Stridsberg). In a series of short chapters, alternating between fictional dialogues with Valerie Solanas and the narrator, her mother, her head quacks and her lovers, and ruminative and inventive imaginings of her fractious, skittering past and that past in relation to her mental decline, Stridsberg creates a Solanas who is at once unbound to her abusive, wayward childhood, although unable to hold back the horrors of a paranoid schizophrenia that would consign her to a footnote of feminism and Factory lore.
MAY The Futurological Congress (Stanislaw Lem). A frenetic, benzedrinical helter-skelter masterwork of neological loopiness and warp-nine schizomania, served in a tureen of insane, prophetic, and batshit prose that maintains a neck-snapping pace of breathless imaginative dizziness across 129 faultless pages.
JUNE Ducks, Newburyport (Lucy Ellmann). That fact that this is a 1000-page novel in the form of a list of an Ohio homemaker/baker’s anxieties and neuroses, and the fact that across these intoxicating and scathing and fear-scorched pages the whole of contemporary America is encapsulated, and that fact that I had the pleasure and privilege of reading this work of serious and searing kindness and humanity, and the fact that I have been a long champion of Ellmann’s work, and success is now barking at her door, make this one of the defining reading experiences of the year.
JULY The Origin of the Brunists (Robert Coover). Coover’s first novel is a little powder keg of astonishing creativity that seems to have blown and burned relentlessly over five decades.
AUGUST Lucia (Alex Pheby). In this stunner, Pheby reconstitutes the fragments of fact known about Lucia Joyce, the schizophrenic only daughter of Nora Barnacle and Jimmie Joyce. In a series of unstinting scenes lingering on the mistreatment and exploitation of Lucia’s body (at the hands of her uncle, brother, father, and employers), the novel presents a clinical and compassionate snapshot of an enigmatic and unknowable historical casualty, with alternating chapters on an unearthed Pharaonic tomb (presumably inspired by the famous photo of Lucia posing in Pharaonic apparel) with illustrations. A highly original and beautifully written novel that summons up Lucia with far more flair and aplomb than an another cacademic hagiography.
SEPTEMBER The War in the Air (H.G. Wells). One of Wells’s many entertaining and energetic novels that I read this year, respect is due to one of the true visionaries and prestidigitators of literature.
OCTOBER The Bostonians (Henry James). Verena Tarrant, a talented mouthpiece for whoever’s views, falls in with rabid proto-feminist sourpuss Olive Chancellor and her circle of female-emancipating spinsters, much to the mirth of her crooked parents. Into this awkward tableau walks Mississippian antihero Basil Ransom, a classic republican who prefers his women shutting up and looking cute in corsets and praising the thickness of his whiskers. Across the sprawl of this incisive and engorged masterpiece, the power dynamic between the sexes and the setting is explored in riveting waves of plump, pristine over-explanatory prose.
NOVEMBER The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. The sixty stories in this comprehensive volume are honest-to-goodness cigar-chompin’ charmers, whether Twain’s in the mood for a frolic, for a scathing assault on the cruddiness of the human race, for a first-person ramblin’ monologue, for an examination on the brutalising effects of the American dollar on the American character, for a full-on blunderbussing of so-called incorruptible small towns, for an hilarious pastiche of Sherlock Holmes stories, for an epistolary yarn told from the perspective of a horse, for a slapdown of the hypocrisies of religious fussbudgets, for a pastiche of Wellsian sci-fi, for a peep into the diaries of Adam and Eve, for a sneering indictment on the barbarism of southerners to their slaves, to a scathing conclusion that the kindest fate for the living to is to be dead.
DECEMBER Einstein’s Beets (Alexander Theroux). An act of wondrous obsession, cataloguing in typical rambling exuberance everything Theroux can summon up on the subject of food over 800- beautiful pages.
BOOK OF THE YEAR: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann.
Have a salient New Year, you merry band of jackanapes....more
The point of this non-book is that BOOKS ARE NOT THINGS TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY. Are you following? The point of this non-book is that PUBLISHED BOOKS SHOThe point of this non-book is that BOOKS ARE NOT THINGS TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY. Are you following? The point of this non-book is that PUBLISHED BOOKS SHOULD NEVER HAVE THE SENSIBILITY OF INTERNET MEMES. Is this clear? The point of this non-book is that WE TAKE OUR LITERATURE SERIOUSLY, WE DO NOT APPRECIATE BOOKS BEING RELEGATED TO FADDISH LOLS, HALF-SECOND EYEROLLS, OR INDIFFERENT HMMS. Am I pounding this into your weary cranium? The point of this non-book is that Manny, a man committed to cheering on the finest literature, a man whose obsession with language borders on the mythical, a man whose irony levels are beyond human comprehension, is telling you straight: IF YOU THINK THAT WE ARE GOING TO SWALLOW SOMEONE’S UNCHEWED MENTAL DETRITUS AS LITERATURE, IF YOU THINK YOU CAN DEVALUE OUR BEAUTIFUL, PRECIOUS LANGUAGE BY DOWNTRUMPING OUR DISCOURSE, THEN WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL YOU ARE PAINFULLY CRUSHED BY OUR UNTIRING AND UNYIELDING BRAINS. Have I made myself semi-transparent? The point of this non-book is that WE MUST FIGHT FOR OUR LITERATURE. THANK YOU, AND WORSHIP MANNY.
(P.S. GOODREADS, EVERYTHING ON YOUR WEBSITE IS BROKEN. EVERYTHING I SAVE IS NOT SAVED, EVERYTHING I POST IS NOT POSTED, EVERYTHING I DATE HAS TO BE REDATED. YOUR WEBSITE IS BECOMING A GERIATRIC OLD BIDDY SLOWLY SHUFFLING TO THE GRAVE. I DON'T LIKE THIS)....more
A tree in a South American rainforest is crying. His mother stretches a consoling branch around his shivering trunk. “Why does daddy have to die?” he A tree in a South American rainforest is crying. His mother stretches a consoling branch around his shivering trunk. “Why does daddy have to die?” he blubbers. “Honey, I told you. An important man with an MA degree from Cambridge University wants to make an obvious point about an unpopular politician.” A small bird perches on the young tree’s wet branches. “What sort of point?” he asks. “He wants to show that this politician is not a very nice man and not very competent as the leader of a large country.” The tree brushes away the bird. “And daddy has to die to help make this point?” “Not only your daddy, honey. Such is the popularity of this book, thousands of other daddies and mummies have to die too. But it is an important point, and almost amusing too. It is troubling that this important man had to publish a whole book, from which he will profit thanks to the very person he is criticising, however, it is not my place to question our human superiors. Their remarkable logic and reasoning is not something we should claim to understand.”...more
A tree in a South American rainforest is crying. His mother stretches a consoling branch around his shivering trunk. “Why does daddy have to die?” he A tree in a South American rainforest is crying. His mother stretches a consoling branch around his shivering trunk. “Why does daddy have to die?” he blubbers. “Honey, I told you before. Don’t be a sap. A British author, performer, and entrepreneur wants to express a thought that is almost amusing.” A small bird sups at the tears on the little tree’s bark. “What sort of thought?” he asks. “He wants to show that male humans are obsessed with sexual intercourse, and that their obsession with sexual intercourse is somewhat inhibiting and unproductive in relation to modern gender expectations.” The tree brushes away the bird. “Any daddy has to die to help make this point?” “Not only your daddy, honey. Such is the popularity of this book, thousands of other daddies and mummies have to die too. But it is almost humorous, honey. Remember that millions of humans, our superiors, will smirk at the title and order the book for a friend, who will smirk at the title, and then frown heavily upon opening the actual book. It is their way, son. We cannot claim to understand the magisterial intelligence of our betters.”...more
As a retrograde, backward-looking fustian author, or as Mr. Saint-Barthélemy (i.e. Alexander Akyna) has eloquently captured me in one of his witheringAs a retrograde, backward-looking fustian author, or as Mr. Saint-Barthélemy (i.e. Alexander Akyna) has eloquently captured me in one of his withering Wildean comments, a “self-important [writer who] embodies the cliché of the talentless prick who does what has been done decades ago, once the path is save [sic] (and pointless, especially when talking about contemporary art [postmodernism] and not traditional one) [???]”, I confess to a complete ignorance regarding the NEXTmodernism movement (or proto-NEXTmodernist movement, as this book’s blurb states.) How (proto?)NEXTmodernism is different from postmodernism or other -isms is the vexed question. This poetry collection is described as “poetic vomit in a stream of consciousness”, and favours a random outpouring of emotions and thoughts to any particularly metrically well-hewn poetic style. And this is fine. However . . .
The postmodern innovations of the 1960s (about which I assume this author is aware, as the nod to Barthelme indicates) also explored violent scatological writing (Burroughs, Acker, et al). In fact, the automatic writing of the surrealists, the genre this most resembles, stretch back to the 1920s, and automatic writing itself stretches back to the 1870s (perhaps even further). So I would tender, respectfully, the idea that if we are talking about what has been done ages ago, that this author bear in mind the tenor of his own work, before making uninformed and tedious personal remarks as to my own books (and I make no claim to innovation in my own work). As to my being self-important, I can easily return the volley by asking the reader to view any of the author’s self-rated five-star reviews of his own works. The only real way to innovate is to have a thorough understanding of the movements that preceded your own, and to take your leaps forward in full knowledge of how and why your own art breaks new creative ground. There is little evidence of this, for me, in this (proto?)NEXTmodernist work.
I am happy to engage this writer in further debate, or even an exchange of works, if gentlemanly conduct can be maintained....more
Is this the most chunderous book title ever penned? Or is it this author’s previous, By Light We Knew Our Names? There is something about that first-pIs this the most chunderous book title ever penned? Or is it this author’s previous, By Light We Knew Our Names? There is something about that first-person plural that makes me recoil at the cloying horror . . ....more
Let me backflip to the essentials: I read one wonderful novel in 2016, called The House of Writers. That novel was written by a man, and I know that mLet me backflip to the essentials: I read one wonderful novel in 2016, called The House of Writers. That novel was written by a man, and I know that man, because I am that man. I possess the fingers attached to the torso attached to the head containing the brain that devised the words in that novel that this man wrote. I am that man-writer. Nothing else I read in 2016 particularly grabbed me. That title again: The House of Writers. Thank you. I am a man....more
Did you know Kafka’s favourite farm implement was a plough? Did you know Kafka loved blue-eyed five-year-olds called Joris? Did you know Kafka was a sDid you know Kafka’s favourite farm implement was a plough? Did you know Kafka loved blue-eyed five-year-olds called Joris? Did you know Kafka was a slovenly eater of shellfish? Did you know Kafka had a pet cockatoo with a fondness for Mozart? Did you know Kafka’s favourite member of Thee Headcoatees was Kyra? Did you know Kafka’s skill for replacing light bulbs was deemed “lamentable”? Did you know Kafka once poured baked beans over Max Brod’s head? Did you know Kafka’s skill at softshoe was praised up and down the street? Did you know Kafka’s letters to Felice were intended for Max Brod’s mum? Did you know Kafka once made a movement that has not been documented and added to the heap of profitable Kafka mythology and scholarship that chokes up our world? Did you know that Kafka’s fondness for semolina is significant to someone somewhere? Kafka was so AWESOME. Kafka the Man. Kafka the King. Kafka the Legend. KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKA KAFKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA . . . ....more
Author Diamante Lavendar has a question for you: “What is your opinion on experimental writing, such as what I have done with The Secrets of Yashire?”Author Diamante Lavendar has a question for you: “What is your opinion on experimental writing, such as what I have done with The Secrets of Yashire?” Her pioneering novel occurs “within the framework of a young girl’s mind” (only within the framework, not the actual mind itself, so that must mean the layer of neural tissue suspended in cerebrospinal fluid—a technique that evaded even Joyce himself), and makes use of the protagonist’s italicised thoughts inserted between a third-person narrator, and later an eerie subconscious voice that expresses itself in a copperplate gothic bold with a colon after and before the close of the speech marks, thus: “:HI.:” This technique of placing colons within the framework of conventionally formatted dialogue is another of example of why The Secrets of Yashire is destined to become one of the most important works of experimental writing of our time. If you are willing to wise up to this reality and change, the future is Diamante. The future is Lavendar.
The voice spoke with great authority. She felt compelled to do what it said. What if I don’t want to see? The elevator doors opened. In front of her was a tunnel. It looked like it was underground. The air around was damp and cold. “:WALK DOWN THE TUNNEL.:” I’m scared. I don’t want to. “:YOU MUST. I AM GOING TO SHOW YOU WHERE YOU WILL END UP IF YOU DON’T CHANGE. YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU.:” I don’t want to. “:YOU MUST.:” (p.~6~) ...more
Praise the heavens. Now there’s a second inexplicably overly popular novel that people who barely read two books a year can list as one of their favouPraise the heavens. Now there’s a second inexplicably overly popular novel that people who barely read two books a year can list as one of their favourite novels on their Goodreads, Facebook, and dating profiles. And now there’s another inexplicably overly popular novel I have to ignore, while the world fires missiles of contempt into my head, bearing the inscriptions: “But this is so POWERFUL. It is about INJUSTICE and stuff. You are an IDIOT for not reading this.” Looking forward to not reading or rating any of your reviews of this one come June. ...more
Sorry, Rod. Whenever we make love, I cannot help but yelp, bray, howl, and pant-hoot in ecstasies unknown.
Our first time: AAAAOOOOOWWWWW! Second: LovSorry, Rod. Whenever we make love, I cannot help but yelp, bray, howl, and pant-hoot in ecstasies unknown.
Our first time: AAAAOOOOOWWWWW! Second: Love’s been GOOOOD to MEEEEE!!! Third: Yesyesyesyesyes. Nonononono! PerhaAAAAAAAPS! Fourth: Ayeyeyeyeyeyeyeyeeeee! Fifth: Oh Rod! You are so profound about the human coommmmmming-dition! Sixth: My bearded bard, my bearded bard, oh, love me bearded BAAAAARD! Seventh: Let’s go inside, it’s freezing in this snoooOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHwwww!!
This really is a thumping good read. And ultimately, we're all on this earth to please ourselves. So hey . . . pass the dessert trolley and make mine This really is a thumping good read. And ultimately, we're all on this earth to please ourselves. So hey . . . pass the dessert trolley and make mine a double....more
“Pithy and irrelevant quote from philosopher to make this review sound important.” — Bobby McFerrin
Long out-of-context passage from the novel in itali“Pithy and irrelevant quote from philosopher to make this review sound important.” — Bobby McFerrin
Long out-of-context passage from the novel in italics unrelated to the stuff I am about to discuss in the review that sort of hangs there seeking an explanation and that also sounds somewhat profound and rubs off some cred on me for picking out such a seemingly perfect and deep-sounding line to whet your appetite even though you have probably skimmed the whole thing because you fail to see the relevance. (p679)
Big hyperbolic opening. I have been to the Himalayas, Easter Island, Neptune, and Dundee, and never have I encountered words on the page that have rocked me to the core of my deep deep soul as this. I have kissed Cardinal Ratzinger’s mitre, Warren Zevon’s left pinkie, and Liam Neeson’s elbows, had five marriages and nine divorces, but nothing in my whole entire life compares to when I sat down and read this big-because-the-font-is-huge doorstop that everyone else loves and W.H. Smith agrees is a masterpiece.
Now for the strange, shrink-ready “personal” response. Emotions can be emotional. We can gaze into our souls and find dark things there, like old bananas or burnt toast. Sometimes overcoming struggle can be a struggle and we need the love of loved ones to help us overcome the emotional struggles with our loved ones. Out hearts beat like metronomes alongside the hearts of everyone else on the planet’s hearts, which beat similarly, unless they have stopped. Those people are dead. Our families can be terrible and drive us to do crazy things, like burn down the house and run off with a My Chemical Romance groupie who leaves us penniless in the pub toilets after taking our virginity. It is reassuring to know that there are always people there for us, if we have enough mobile credit and remember the hotline to the Samaritans.
Further exaggeration as to how this book changed my life, without ever getting into the specifics. The characters. The plot. The words. The pages. These have reshaped the entire structure of my life and will sit deep inside my heart forever, until the next book comes along that does the same thing and offers me the same reaction and I write the same review but with different swooning self-important waffle that is really about ME and MY LIFE and not really about the book at all, and shows that these books are never really appreciated for their artistry, but for the way they appear to touch our lives and appeal to the feelings and emotions we think we have that make us good people, when we aren’t too busy going about the everyday business of gratifying ourselves and never demonstrating one tenth of this well-deep so-called love-of-the-world by being kind to a person we haven’t allowed into our private little bubble of pre-tested and pre-approved people.
Read this because I am more important than all of you. Now give me my 1,829 likes and I will ignore your comments except the ones that say how amazing I am. ...more
“They” are keeping everything covert. “I” spoke to “them” yesterday and “they” said “they” simply refused to reveal “their” instantaneous slimming tec“They” are keeping everything covert. “I” spoke to “them” yesterday and “they” said “they” simply refused to reveal “their” instantaneous slimming techniques to the heil-pulley and pubbeyshites out “there.” Before “I” left, however, “I” managed to sneak “their” tips on a poorly placed printout, and here “they” “are”:
1. Eat forty mandarins and a knob of butter at 3.26pm every day while balancing a beaker of FizzPop on your head. All the cellulite will recede back into your thighs and seep out your pores in caramel form. 2. Kill a shepherd hourly. Not the same shepherd. The essence of dead shepherd will seep into your fatty tissue and cause severe shrinkage. Very soon you will be free from tubbiness, if forever haunted by the shepherds you slaughtered. 3. Yodel noisily between sentences at work and at home. When everyone leaves you, you will lose many pounds sobbing into your mattress. 4. Break a thousand eggs into the bath. Writhe around in the yokey bath for seven days. Having not eaten for seven days, you will have lost a plop of weight. 5. Begin a regular exercise regime, cut out fatty foods, eat a balanced diet with plenty of fruit and veg. And sleep with Bill Cosby. 6. Invade Estonia on a rickshaw. Enslave the population and have a fruit smoothie.
So “there” “you” have it. The secrets “they” didn’t want “you” to know, the “bastards!” ...more
In the shower just now, I suddenly had a Eureka moment. The aspect of this current censorship war that's been upsetting us most is the feeling of poweIn the shower just now, I suddenly had a Eureka moment. The aspect of this current censorship war that's been upsetting us most is the feeling of powerlessless. Goodreads can arbitrarily change the rules, and they hardly even bother to respond when we complain. But we are not powerless. There are twenty million of us, and only a few dozen of them. We just need to get a little more organized, and we can easily resist.
So here's one concrete way to do it, based on the legend of Hercules. You will recall that Hercules had a difficult time against the Lernean Hydra; every time he cut off one of its heads, ten more grew back. We can do the same thing if we adopt the following plan:
1. Back up all your reviews, so that you have a copy of everything you have posted.
2. If you think that one of your reviews has been unreasonably deleted by Goodreads, repost it with an image of the Hydra at the top.
3. If you see someone else posting a Hydra review, make a copy of it and post it yourself.
We can improve this basic scheme with a little thought; for example, it would be better to have a place where we keep HTML marked-up source of reviews, so that they can immediately be reposted with the same formatting, and we need a plan for duplicating deleted shelves. But we can sort that out later. Without getting too bogged down in the details, I'm sure you see what will happen. The net result of Goodreads unreasonably deleting a review will be that it immediately comes back in many different places.
People who know their Greek mythology will be aware that Hercules did in fact defeat the Hydra, and Goodreads can use the same method if they dare; they can close down the account of anyone who participates in the scheme. That will work, but I am not sure that anything less drastic will be effective. I think Goodreads will be reluctant to escalate to this level. A large proportion of the most active reviewers are now part of the protest movement, and they would be losing much of the content that makes the site valuable. Even more to the point, the media have already started to get interested (maybe you saw the article in the Washington Post). They would love the story, and it would create a mountain of bad publicity for Goodreads and Amazon.
I'd say the odds are heavily in our favor. Why don't we try it? I promise now to respond to any Hydra calls.
*
BANNED! MANNY IS NAUGHTY AND SHOULD BE STOPPED, MY KIDS ARE FED UP DRINKING HIS EVIL IN EVERY CUP. TOGETHER WE CAN STOP THIS MENACE BY FORCING HIM TO SHAVE OFF HIS BEARD! THAT WAY HE WILL LOSE ALL HIS POWERS, AND WE CAN PREVAIL AT WHATEVER IT IS WE WILL PREVAIL AT! MWAHAHAHAHAaaahha*coughcough*scuseme . . . ...more
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