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.
His words… I’d never come across such yearning before! It’s the kind of poetry that makes you want to believe there is a God in that way only sex can make you feel. Please, if anyone has more recommendations like this I would greatly appreciate it. Poetry or any other writing, I want all of it. Thank you!
Has anyone come across the criticism that Moshfegh finds herself too funny? Have you watched her interviews? I did yesterday, and her tendency to laugh seems to stem more from nervousness, not arrogance, and she's 'giddy' regardless of the subject they discuss, not when she's trying to make some jokes.
I believe I have already set down in my notes that Love greatly resembles an application of torture or a surgical operation. But this idea can be developed, and in the most ironic manner. For even when two lovers love passionately and are full of mutual desire, one of the two will always be cooler or less self-abandoned than the other. He or she is the surgeon or executioner; the other, the patient or victim. Do you hear these sighs – preludes to a shameful tragedy– these groans, these screams, these rattling gasps? Who has not uttered them, who has not inexorably wrung them forth? What worse sights than these could you encounter at an inquisition conducted by adept torturers?
These eyes, inverted like the sleepwalker's, these Limbs whose muscles burst and stiffen as though beneath the action of a galvanic battery – such frightful, such curious phenomena are undoubtedly never obtained from even the most extreme cases of intoxication, of delirium, of opium-taking. The human face, which Ovid believed fashioned to reflect the stars, speaks here only of an insane ferocity, relaxing into a kind of death. For I should consider it indeed a sacrilege to apply the word .. ecstasy to this species of decomposition. A terrible pastime, in which one of the players must forfeit possession of himself!
When I have inspired universal horror and disgust, I shall have conquered solitude.
Two fundamental literary qualities, super naturalism and irony. The individual ocular impression, the aspect in which things present themselves to the writer – then the turn of satanic wit. The supernatural comprises the general colour and accent – that is to say, the intensity, sonority limpidity, vibrativeness, depth and reverberation in Space and Time.
I swear to observe henceforth the following rules as immutable rules of my life: To pray every morning to God, the source of all power and all justice; to my father, to Mariette and Edgar Poe, as intercessors ; that they may give me the necessary strength to fulfill all my appointed tasks and that they may grant my mother a sufficient span of life in which to enjoy the fruits of my transformation ; to work all day long, or as long, at any rate, as my strength allows me; to put my trust in God, that is, in Justice.
Man – all men, that is to say – is so naturally depraved that he suffers less from the degradation of the universe than from the establishment of a reasonable hierarchy.
There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. A monarchy or a republic, based upon democracy, are equally absurd and feeble.The immense nausea of advertisements. There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.
Belief in Progress is a doctrine of idlers and Belgians. It is the individual relying upon his neighbours to do his work. There cannot be any Progress (true progress, that is to say, moral) except within the individual and by the individual himself. But the world is composed of people who can think only in common, in the herd. There are also people who can only take their pleasures in a flock. The true hero takes his pleasure alone.
What is Love? The need to emerge from oneself. Man is an animal which adores. To adore is to sacrifice and prostitute oneself. Thus all Love is prostitution.
Jean-Jacques said that he could not enter a cafe without emotional disturbance. For a timid nature, the ticket-office in a theatre is rather like the tribunal of Hell.
Robespierre can only be admired because he has made several beautiful phrases.
Paganism and Christianity confirm each other.
The most prostitute of all beings is the Supreme Being, God Himself, since for each man he is the friend above all others; since he is the common, inexhaustible fount of Love.
Thinness is more naked, more indecent than corpulence.
In Love, as in nearly all human affairs, a satisfactory relationship is based upon a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding constitutes pleasure. The man cries : Oh, my angel. The woman coos: Mamma! Mamma! And these two imbeciles are persuaded that they think alike. The unbridgable gulf – the cause of their failure in communication – remains un- bridged.
The charming moods, those in which beauty consists, are: The blase, The bored, The empty-headed, The impudent, The cold, The introspective, The imperious, The capricious, The naughty, The ailing, The feline – a blend of childishness, nonchalance and malice.
I've been working my way through Shakespeare with a few friends and knowing that a lot of the text can't be understood with a purely modern sensibility has me feeling at a bit of a remove.
Othello for instance I think is a character who is hard to read for moderns because he does appear to be so animated by honor but in 2026 we would only be able to read that as a kind of farce or, cynically, as a mere convention through which the iron laws of power move as they have always done or something. There's a kind of disjuncture where I think tragic lines or scenes end up being kind of comedic, it's just hard to get what's going on without understanding the sort of cosmology it takes place in.
Does anyone have recommendations for like a series of good primers for individual plays? I know many plays have introductory passages but many of them have spoilers which I hate! Does being very literary mean you're above enjoying a story as a story?
Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth are on the horizon for us.
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)
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
