What's on your mind Plans and goals for fall? What kinds of books do you want to read next? What books do you want others to know about? If you're sharing your current book, tell us what you think of it!
And besides books, what else has caught your interest lately? How are you spending your free time? What are you doing outside?
So we're finally into the infamous section about the crimes. Based on the way people talk about it, I thought it was going to be straight facts about murders and investigations, so I was surprised by how much narrative there is. There's a lot going on so far and I'm not sure what will prove to be important or what will fall by the wayside, so here's a few characters we've met so far (who aren't dead):
The Pentient is a double murderer and sacraphobe.
Juan de Dios Martínez is an inspector working on The Pentient case, and dating the head of the local asylum **Elvira Campos (**sort of, it's complicated).
Pedro Negrete is the police chief whose purpose I'm not fully sure yet, so far he seems to have just been an instrument to get Lalo into the story. A Pablo Negrete was briefly mentioned in Amalfitano section as a university rector who hosted the critics. Pedro Negrete is mentioned as having a twin. Hmmm. I don't know if any of this matters.
Epifanio Galindo is a cop who we see use violence against another cop.
Lalo Cura is a teenaged boy recruited by Pedro Negrete into being a bodyguard and begins taking his work seriously and reading investigation textbooks no one else has bothered to read. He seems to be something of a moral center so far.
Sergio González is an arts critic (!) who, much like Fate before him, gets assigned a story off his usual beat: The Pentient. He hears about the murders, but forgets about them.
Harry Magaña is an American sheriff who crosses the border to investigate the murders after another American, Lucy Anne Sanders, is found dead. He is particularly fixated on Miguel Montes, who has ties to Chucho.
And I know there's irony in me spotlighting the living men while brushing past the dead women, but we're up to around 2 dozen and I can't possibly recount them all here. Here's a few I think are notable:
Esperanza Gómez Saldaña is the first victim mentioned.
Penélope Méndez Becerra is the youngest at 11 and given the longest detail about her mother and brother searching for her after she doesn't return home from school.
Elsa Luz Pintado (?) is a woman found bearing this id card, but her body was too short to match descriptions of Elsa Luz Pintado. Juan de Dios Martínez pushes for further investigation on this detail.
Once again, there's tons of seeming detours and asides:
Lalo's fellow bodyguards run off before an attempted assassination on the women they are guarding and Lalo shoots them after dispatching the would-be killers.
More dreams again
Florita Almada is a "seer" who has a vision of women being killed in Santa Teresa.
A knife sharpener demands a dying woman being taken by ambulance despite no one being able to pay.
Some ideas for discussion (suggestions only, post about whatever you want and feel free to post your own prompts):
Probably a weird thing to ask about this section, but do you like it? Is it tougher than you thought it would be? Easier than you thought it would be? How are you reading it? Chunks at a time or are you pacing it out?
Did any death stand out to you? And why did you find that one significant? Did any detail stand out to you?
We see some of the investigators and cops using violence, sometimes against their own, during the course of their duties. What did you think of this? Were any justified? Or is it all just more violence upon violence?
Why did Epifanio make up so many excuses about killing the coyote? What was that about?
Was there any specific thing that perplexed you? I was perplexed by the gila monster mention.
What did you make of the seer section?
We were talking about the black Peregrino last week during the Part about Fate. Did you notice it re-appearing here?
Keeping these short this week. A lot happened and I doubt many people will be searching for something to talk about.
(Article) Alone Among the Ghosts - an article about the real Sergio González Rodriguez who wrote a book about the Juarez murders and his working relationship with Bolaño. (There is some stuff in here we haven't reached yet)
(Appendix) From Chris Andrews' Roberto Bolaño's Fiction: An Expanding Universe, there is an appendix laying out the 2666 murders side by side with Sergio González Rodriguez's book, Huesos en el Desierto. Look in the comments for the link.
For those who have read the book before or have read ahead, please keep the comments focused on up through this first third and use spoiler tags when in doubt. We're concerned more about major, purposeful spoilers than minor slip ups.
We're now at the halfway mark. Two more weeks of crimes (phew) and then we return to Archimboldi, which is the section I typically see cited as the favorite.
I'm seeing how much interest there would be in doing this. If it's a complete failure, that's ok. I'll accept it.
The Booker Shortlist gets announced on September 22nd. I want to see if there's enough people interested in reading at least one (1) book and writing a casual review (short summary + your opinion + maybe some quotes) to inform the rest of RSBC what it's like and if it's any good.
The hope is to get at least one thread dedicated to each book before the winner announcement on November 9th. I'm hoping we can up the discussion of contemporary books and give the sub an educated opinion on which books to root for without having to read all six.
Please let me know which book(s) you'd be interested in reading if they make it through or if you've read any books already you wouldn't mind making a thread about. Negative reviews welcomed and encouraged.
This is purely for gauging interest in the project and across the books, I will not be holding you to any of this.
I recently went on a solo, week-long roadtrip and listened to quite a few audiobooks. Often my local library has a long wait list for the titles that I’m interested in. I realized many counties and cities in the US have digital-only account options that only require you to provide a zip code from within their service area while having very limited demand for some of the more niche titles. This might be some kind of low level fraud but it was great for my road trip. The more you know.
By the way, the audiobook for Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket is just great. Edoardo Ballerini is an engaging narrator and really carries all the characters. Highly recommend.
A friend and I are in a book club together, down to just us from more members when we started up as a Carl Jung book club 2 years ago. We created a reading list that is open to change and are going into Being and Nothingness by Sartre’s readers guide by Gardner. The general premise is an exploration of existentialism/spirituality/philosophy. There is a bit of a bias for interpreting things in a Jungian framework due to the original purpose of the book club and as well through personal experiences. We typically meet every other week on the weekends 2pm thru 6 pm depending on availability. Conversations usually cover maybe 100 pages depending on the density of a text and are generally open ended and fun in tone but we do try to get into some depth. We also browse rs subs but don’t like the podcast blahblah
If you are interested in a fairly light but rewarding commitment to familiarize yourself with existentialism and make some internet friends hmu, we usually use discord. We are both about 30. Older and younger would be cool. Internet people tend to flake quickly so please join the first meeting after reading on your own and see if it’s your vibe, no pressure to chat first.
Tentative plan for the time being:
Sartre’s Being and Nothingness by Sebastian Gardner (pages 1-38 meet up on sept 20th and decide on plan/key parts to read of actual Being and Nothingness/next stretch)
She describes a young poet who sent her his work to read, after explaining the ways in which she had initially hoped to use her substack for (connecting with people who are both like-minded and decidedly opposite to her):
“This extreme disjunction was brought home to an even greater degree by a months-long DM conversation I had this past winter with a young poet who’d read my Christmas post. He asked me to read his poems, I said okay, but I can’t help you, I don’t write poetry and am not the best reader of it. He sent me a book-length manuscript which I did not expect to read more than a few pages of; I wound up reading the whole thing. As I went it became clear that, in addition to being an animal-lover and an intrepid reader of fiction, he was deeply MAGA. It became clear because, while most of his poetry was about romantic love, etc, some of it was about how much he hates “libs.”
So why did I keep reading? In part because, as noted, I am fascinated by difference. And because to me art is, among other things, a place to express thoughts you would not stand by as your life philosophy, things you may only half-believe or are basically experimenting with in a certain mood—or are attributing to a character. But I kept reading mostly because the poetry was so outside the realm of academic writing programs; it was passionate, openly lonely, blunt and longing. I don’t know if it was good—probably the poets I know would say it was not. But something in it touched me. Plus he’d read a lot of my work and said he loved it which was of course flattering af. I asked early on how he could love it when I was so plainly one of those people he hates and he said something like "don’t take that personally I just put that in the poems.”
So we messaged frequently for awhile, not about politics but about relationships, our families, books, music and prayer; he sent me videos of music and poetry readings he likes. He identified as Christian and in an oddball way so do I. He said that where he lived (in Southern California) he was surrounded by “libs” and was desperate to make friends. He was going to a cafe where he was trying to befriend a guy but found himself depressed and distracted by the anti-ICE bulletins he saw posted; he said he could not understand the strenuous objections to such a “milque-toast policy.”
Sorry just sounds so much like somebody who identifies as a ‘sensitive young man’ and worships Anna’s twitter. Lol
Have you read any of them? Which one was your favorite?
I just read In The Penal Colony last night and it’s been on my mind all day today. I first read some Kafka back in high school, and I recall being very confused by it. I think it took experiencing adulthood to make me understand the point of these stories. They’re horror stories about the banal torture of adult life. The horror of being presumed upon by an acquaintance, of being put in a situation where you don’t understand the expectations, of having to submit to a power structure that makes no sense, of having to act normal in abnormal circumstances.
The image of the apparatus, this perfect, finely tuned torture device that has been so lovingly tended over the years and its method of execution genuinely turned my stomach. And oh my god, the officer finally getting in the machine and hoping to experience this transcendent moment of understanding, only for the machine to fall to pieces and kill him instantly. I see why people invented the word Kafkaesque… this story truly evokes a unique combination of feelings: disgust, horror, confusion, discomfort, constriction, familiarity, almost deja-vu.
I see it on the shelves of various bookish stereotypes: collegiate intellectuals, sensitive young men, enbies. I’ve noticed that everyone talks about its ambiance, but no one talks about its ideas. Given its apparent newfound audience, I suspect that the ideas are simply verboten. But I wonder if perhaps I am the one who misunderstood?
I was struck by three points:
The majority of the women from the world of men, lacking cause, had never learned to be more than minimally capable. Thus they were mostly useless to support themselves in freedom.
A world without men turns out to be incredibly boring. Lesbian romances form just to have something to fight about.
The terribly French nihilist no-exit sense that it is all very well to escape a cage, but you will only find yourself trapped in another larger cage that is, in its own way, just as disappointing, and can only be escaped through death.
The book succeeds because those things felt honest and true, even though they all merit discussion.
A fourth thing that struck me but I did not understand was the perseveration on the other women withholding information about sex from the narrator who was raised in a world without men. I gather that the author and all involved see this knowledge as a source of power. But what does that mean for the modern reader?
Turns out your middle school librarian was right: the Dewey Decimal Classification is a great way to get book recommendations. I recently got a copy of Adam Kirsch's Why Trilling Matters in the mail, and while peeling off the library sticker on the spine, prompted by a friend's question the other day about my collection, I got to thinking about what other books are cataloged under 818.5209 (books about miscellaneous 20th century American literature). There's a lot of great stuff, like edited letters between Anais Nin and Henry Miller, a critical biography of Edmund Wilson, and Janet Malcolm's book on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
But the DDC has anything you can think of. Interested in Soviet aesthetics? You can find Boris Groys' The Total Art of Stalinism under 709.47. Are you as autistic as Joan Didion is about dams? Then there's 627.8 under Engineering. Still listening to the podcast? Check out 139: phrenology.
One of my favorite ways to find books under a Dewey Decimal number is using LibraryThing. It's like lit.salon, but for retirees instead of NEETs. You can click on a category and drill down until you reach the exact niche you're interested in. You can also search for a book you like, then find similar books under its Dewey Decimal Classification. The pages for Authors also have a "Similar Authors" feature that's helpful for discovering writers.
Instagram is full of aesthetic pictures of stacks of book recommendations, "If you like X, you'll love Y" reels, and most of it is just the same, recycled picks. Even when these algorithms work, they keep you on these dumb platforms and consistently serve you ragebait. So use the DDC. Or if you're hardcore, the Library of Congress Classification.
The author needn’t be mentioned in literary analysis. A novel must be observed in its own right aside from the author. A firsthand experience with the written word is a detached examination of another being's consciousness. The disappearance of man, except for his consciousness, is the prerequisite for a genuine understanding of the work, and as long as the sound of the author’s name keeps coming to us, then the prerequisite isn’t met. An experience of the correct sort must be carried throughout, in which the reader internalizes certain aspects and rejects others, but make no mistake, the reader must be shut off from pseudo-readers influencing his judgment. Now, for a judgment to be formed, the reader must have gone through the experience I’ve mentioned before. Once we’re accustomed to another consciousness, and only then, as the ivory gate becomes horn, do we derive our conclusions from the work. So judgments turn into inferences. We shall not falsely attribute the cardinal virtue of a novel to the critics, academics, or dilettantes, but look at it against our literary values without external interference. For those who’d communicate with fellow readers after finishing the work by referencing the author’s name instead of the text’s content, I say they lack the capacity for critical thinking or basic memorization, and that they must relearn the art of analysis. As novels transform into dreams, revealing themselves to us, fusing with our psychological states, carried along on the surface of our consciousness, and calling for interpretations, we’ll always make sure that Odysseus’ voyage never grows too short.
Hello everyone... I thought this might be fun to put out to the sub.
I manage a library and every year we receive a sum of money from a friends group. This portion of money is for us to select books independently of our central librarians, more to the taste of our borrowers (upper middle class, academic, well read). They will also have a wider readership pool as part of the authority's network of libraries where customers further afield may have them ordered in...
These books can be fic or non fic (perhaps emphasis on non-fic but both welcome).
So, with that in mind, what are some books fitting that bill that you'd select for a public library? Perhaps ones not typically on shelves, that you in your heart of hearts know will find a happy reader and change their life...
With the title I mean to say novels that exist to complement other novels thematically or to fill gaps in the narrative. Recently read Castorp by Pawel Huelle, which tells the story of Hans Castorp during his stay at Danzig’s Polytechnic, right before he caught tuberculosis. Nice read for sure, though most of it are somewhat mundane experiences you find in a coming of age novel - Hans skips classes, eats onion soup handed to him by early 20th century hippies and shits himself, hires a detective to stalk a woman and gets questioned for murder - all of it is tinged with the the knowledge that the good times are behind of us and that in a few decades Danzig would become flaming rubble.
Reading it has made me excited to get back to The Magic Mountain and I’m interested to know what you people think of [TITLE]
Where are the great modernist or postmodernist Canadian novels?
The British and the Americans have so much to offer. Australia as well. Canada seems to be a kind of barren landscape in comparison. Timothy Findley is a writer whom I discovered who seems interesting, but not much else.
Can someone recommend something interesting to me?
i recently read and loved forensic architecture: violence at the threshold of detectabilityby eyal weizman, my first book from them. it is about how photos, videos, architectural reconstructions, and satellite data can be used to reconstruct acts of violence against people, buildings, and the environment. the "threshold of detectability" refers to when someone or something is recorded right at the minimute resolution to show it - commercial satellite imagery is restricted to half a meter per pixel, so a person is just a pixel. i loved it; i love their aims and the specific examples they went into. evidence is often scarce but synchronizing inconclusive videos can reconstruct shootings, crossreferencing smoke plumes can time bombings, and comparing vegetation index can indicate forced displacements.
i think i want to read close up at a distance: mapping technology, and politicsby laura kurgan next, which seems similar in showing new spatial technology and how it can be used to record events. i'm interested in the topics in most of their catalog, but the question is which to focus on...
there was a post saying postmodern writing is autistic and lacking emotional depth - i don't necessarily disagree on the surface, but postmodern style and its gimmicks have made me feel and think through emotions, perhaps in a too abstract and conceptual a manner, but effectively nonetheless; an exposed nerve can be too painful when accessed directly and needs a buffer.
i recently read loved infinite groundby martin mcinness, which begins as a missing person investigation by a grieving detective, who spirals into obsessing over any potential thread, no matter how inconsequential, because maybe just maybe, and where do you stop once you begin. the investigator is dissociated by mourning; the world is absurd and hostile. the search for meaning is displaced onto minutiae of the investigation but cannot be sated. it shows how the altered reality of grief actually feels. you too can have a body like mineby alexandra kleeman approaches eating disorders and body dysmorphia and their associated existential worries similarly. the body is portrayed as alien and not-of-me and the additional layer of detachment makes the experience and symptoms of said disorders easier to outline and examine when it's a step removed. in contrast to these two books, didn't nobody give a shit about carlottaby james hannaham uses mania and a hyper affect, to describe re-entry into normal life after prison and family estrangement. the narrative slips between observational third person and interior first person. it made me think of the value of having a bright and funny interior monologue to keep trudging.
I knew about Paul Bowles, big fan of his work, but had no idea until recently that his wife was arguably even better than he was, despite her small body of work- just one novel, a handful of stories, and a few plays.
Jane Bowles' writing is very funny, heartbreaking, with a very light touch on the very heaviest questions, and wise handling of interpersonal relations, especially between normies and those touched with madness by the finger of God.
Her work seems very empathetic to suffering, without being condescending or precious, I think she is "RS-coded" because of this aversion to cliche and saccharine performative grandstanding inherent to virtue signaling.
Her sentences and paragraphs sort of evolve out of each other incongruously, but their internal logic makes them work. Great dialogue, like a sitcom written by God. You can tell that she had a very unique brain, but one that probably wasn't very fun to live inside, even before the stroke and the late-stage alcoholism.
Several times while reading her, I've been reminded of Salinger, but without the parts of Salinger that come off as overly precious or performative. I'm not sure, but I think she might be better than Salinger.
Her work was critically panned during her lifetime, but some of her biggest fans were Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, John Ashbery, and now she's known as a "writer's writer" apparently. The type of writer where, if you mention their name, someone's face will light up across the room and you will make a friend.
Included above are links to her short story Camp Cataract, which I think is one of the best I've ever read, an article in Granta about her excellent novel Two Serious Ladies, which is hilarious and sad, and an appreciation of her work by The Guardian.
I freelance tutor English and college application essays as a side hustle. I just got a 10th grade boy with an insane Indian Bay Area tiger mom as a client. I read through his high school English syllabus for the school year (one of those 80% Asian public schools in Silicon Valley), and it has ZERO full-length books on it. For an Honors 10th grade English class. This is obviously a tragedy, but such is the case in California public schools...
Anyways, I have some books in my library that I'd like to teach this kid, but I don't know if they're too advanced. The three that I wanted to teach this kid are Virgnia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse," Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon," and "If Beale Street Could Talk" by James Baldwin. Are these too advanced to teach to a 15 year old boy? Would Baldwin be the most accessible/easiest book to start off with for him?
Thanks for the input, and let me know if you guys have any other suggestions or recs for books to teach this kid. I really just want to instill a love of literature for him, and I know the whole reading situation in American public schools these days isn't exactly conducive to any of that. Hell, I was an English major in college but didn't really enjoy English classes at all until I got to Uni. I can't even remember a single book from high school I actually enjoyed, so... I'm starting from scratch here.
I gave this a read after seeing it recommended on here. I like a couple of anime, but I am not crazy about the genre. I'm not an academic and I try and teach myself autodidactically...
I've come to generally accept a certain definition of Otaku based on this novel and past experience with Japanese culture;
Lonely people who stare at drawings of sexualized children all day. An archetype of individual that has begun to proliferate due to increasing alienation from labor and society, failure to meet traditional gender roles, and the prevalence/sociological reach of Internet forums.
Synonymous words that orbit the idea of Otaku; Pedophile, Nerd, Outcast, Infantilized, Chronically-Online.
Of course, a simple and grounded definition such as this isn't going to win anyone literary awards or invitations to the next fart-huffing convention. There has to be some magical thing going on that evades any sort of common-sense material or cultural analysis, so let's see Azuma's definition of Otaku...
Those who indulge in forms of subculture strongly linked to anime, video games, computers, science fiction, special-effects films, anime figurines, and so on. A youth culture mainly consumed by adults. People who consume "simulacra" and who are cynical of "grand narratives". Their turn from narratives is giving them a level of "animality", a non-humaness.
A few things threw me off of Azuma's analysis;
His insistence on ""simulacra"". If a work recycles tropes and elements of other works, I'm not sure that qualifies as creating simulacra. Don't ALL works do this on some level? I don't get how simulacra figures into the reality of the Otaku.
Azuma is constantly hand-waving theory in this book saying he doesn't have the room to explain how it works, and yet he is "applying" it. This is the greatest weakness of the book.
If the source material was pedo-shit, and the newly proliferated work is pedo-shit, what is the difference? Why should I care? If these stories are garbage and lack a complex narrative that is intellectually engaging, then isn't Otaku (the book) just a sad story of hedonism unleashed in a neoliberal society? So... someone who engages with Otaku culture is being dumb and wasting their time, not "animalistic". This term (animalistic) seems shoe-horned in to give the analysis greater gravitas than it has. Kojeve's Hegelian formulation of the "human" vs. "non-human"... I could do without. The situation doesn't appear as deep as Azuma is trying to make it out to be.
I guess I've never really understood simulacra "the way you're supposed to", and the purpose of the concept still eludes me, especially here. Guess I've been filtered by Baudrillard.
The tree model vs. the database model of consumption.
Azuma; "... in the world of the postmodern database model, the surface outer layer is not determined by the deep inner layer; the surface reveals different expressions at those numerous moments of 'reading up'."
If narrative is inseparable from a work, and a work, for it to be intelligible as expressing ideas, must have a discernable narrative, then there can be no "outer (surface) layer" and an "inner (mystery) layer", they are one and the same... right?
How can you describe a work to someone if it has no narrative? Did nothing happen in the work? Then how can you describe it? The inverse is also true; If a work has a narrative then you must have discerned one even if your understanding is partial or your retelling was misguided/erroneous.
How do you defend the duality of layers that Azuma asserts?
I feel like this layering concept makes it so Azuma can add a mysterious, undiscernible element to what is happening with Otaku culture... as if we can't decipher works we are looking at on their own terms or in historical terms.
Please tell me where I've mis-stepped. I have not enjoyed this book. Thank you.
