orbis quintus

No, i have not abandoned The Recognitions. My head’s been killing me, so reading Murakami was the other option, something light and breezy until the skull stops throbbing. I’m only 100 pages in, and still think that Gaddis is pretty funny. Bill says that i’m in for some seriously bleak shit as i get deeper in. Maybe i should quit while i’m ahead, and stick with the misguided notion that Gaddis is a comic writer.

Omega Minor. After finishing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, instead of picking up Gaddis, i grabbed Omega Minor instead. It opens with one of the more clever descriptions of a blowjob that i’ve read in awhile, then diving into some loopy musings on the narrator’s conception. I’ve never made it too far into Tristram Shandy, and barely remember any of it, but just watched Winterbottom’s movie A Cock & Bull Story last Thursday…

(It feels like i got what Winterbottom was trying to pull off, but it became too meta for me. I would have preferred more direct intrepretation of Sterne’s text, even if it’s technically impossible. A few weeks ago, i watched Greenaway’s The Falls for the first time, and he invoked Borges and Calvino more effectively without ever directly referencing him than Winterbottom did with Sterne… i think. Yeah, yeah… one day i need to tackle Tristram Shandy in earnest, instead of relying on a movie and a slipshod, half-forgotten reading of the text.)

Jakob von Gunten. Robert Walser is one peculiar bastard. I made it halfway through it a few weeks ago, then put it aside, as he’s just as weird as Daniel Paul Schreber in his own way. I’m not confident in reading him as a painfully self-aware Panglossian Prole is correct.

Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. This is madness. I knew it was madness, but I keep wandering into these areas because i keep mistaking this material as side-splittingly hilarious. Sometime last fall, i ran across Artaud’s heroin letter yet again. I’ll post that and other Artaud reactions later.

The Ten-Cent Plague. Kat borrowed it from work for me. This first 40 pages were business stuff that i knew from other recent books concerning the early years of comics, but the censorship story is taking shape. There are some strange characters here.

My other reason for not posting as i was watching yet more television, much to my embarrassment. I avoided Battlestar Galactica until now, as i loathed it even as a boy in the late ’70s, and more recently, because it seemed like a bunch of gung-ho, “timely commentary” military bullshit… okay, now i get it. My reactionary attitude towards most popular phenomenons has gotten pretty severe again. Sorry.

Gotta get the hell out of the house. This hermit gig is driving me batshit insane. Kat has the day off, so we’re hitting the road.

For no apparent reason yesterday, i grabbed up some Gurdjieff to laugh at, and then rolled on over to a copy of Colin Wilson’s The Occult to find what book he was referencing when he writing about Gurdjieff meeting with Aleister Crowley.

This morning i wake up to find that Fernanado Pessoa corresponded with Crowley, and Pessoa’s heirs are planning to auction that correspondence off this fall. Portugal is not pleased. NYT article manages to turn an angle about nationalism on the rise in Europe, but isn’t it usually the case that a collection of one writer would be better served by being kept intact?

Regardless, it’s a connection between two eccentric characters that i wouldn’t have made without this article.

Kat reports that she had an incident regarding the issue of The New Yorker with the cartoon of Obama dressed as Osama and his wife in paramilitary gear. A woman came in yesterday desperately looking for it. That particular BAM has not carried The New Yorker since i worked there, as i was the only one who read the damned thing, aside from two different professors from SLU.¹ The staff didn’t know that, and tried their best to track it down. When they couldn’t locate it, they offered to call Covington to see if they could hold it for her. The woman refused, angrily insisting that Obama didn’t want anyone to see this issue and conspired to have them all pulled.

I offered to come to the bookstore to scrawl out cartoons of this woman and anyone else who makes similar claims. I could draw her getting mounted from behind by a donkey, whilst licking the balls of Osama. If it’s in a cartoon, it MUST be true. However, people like this woman are common in this neck of the woods. I’d seriously cramp my hand scrawling out these cartoons.

The New Yorker is the problem that more concerns me. It’s mindblowing that the editors did not comprehend that this cartoon will be taken more literally than all of the reports by Seymour Hersh on Iraq and Iran. Oh, there’s an incivive piece inside this issue chronicling the rise of Obama? Irrelevant. I’ve read some silly fucking bastards insisting that the cartoon is great satire. No, it’s not great satire. If A Modest Proposal was first published in a nation that already had a deeply ingrained tradition of cannibalism, it wouldn’t have quite worked as “great satire,” would it?

1. And all three of us were too cheap to buy it. [↩]

Eh. It’s probably the most popular Murakami and i wound up taking less away from the book that i hoped. It’s was enjoyable, enough that i was carrying around the house to read while doing chores, but it’s already slipping away from me. My reactions:

• For years, i arbitrarily stuck an S at the end of Chronicle, and still have no reasonable justification.
• I read more of this book years ago that i remembered. It wasn’t until i made it halfway through the book that I got to a point that hadn’t been read before.
• Murakami’s depiction of an irrational, incomprehensible universe is still appealing to me. The suggestion that there are rules and reasons for inexplicable happenings, but are never laid bare is a good thing. The forces seem that much bigger without naming and defining them.
• Bill told me that he read Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World, but abandoned it, as he finds Murakami, “Too something… cute, slight, dreamy… something.“
• Some of the same things that Bill finds distasteful, i probably find most compelling in Murakami, a muted psychedelia, but cute doesn’t seem to apply to very much that i’ve read. This particular book has one of the more disturbing rape scenes that I’ve read in awhile. There is an element of whimsy in all of his works, but it seems like a child’s totem to cling to in defense of existential horror. His universe seems equally populated with shoggoths as boojums.
• Those two missing chapters from the English translation are annoying.¹ From what i’ve read about them, they would add little to my reading of the novel, but knowing that they exist is frustrating. Abridgements of any kind make me uncomfortable.
• Although i do like his books, they are kinda like Mad Libs, aren’t they? I get the Vonnegut comparisions now, with his variations on a single theme, including recurring elements (the shape of ears, jazz, the occupation of Manchuria, sisters as extensions of each other, weird trollish messengers, ect.)

1. They aren’t in my copy. [↩]

The Literary Saloon has a long post on discovering that Danilo Kiš’ first novel Mansarda is in English translation on a small press with little distribution. The books is short and the price is expensive, but if you’ve read Danilo Kiš, it’s worth it. The publisher is Serbian Classics Press. This edition of Mansarda was released in 2008. Although the site does not seem to have been updated since 2004, that 2008 date means that they must still be active.

Officially, i’ve completed more books in the past six months than i completed in all of last year. However, last year i was still reading a lot of stuff without bothering to complete them, especially in the short time that i was still working in the bookstore, reading stuff on breaks or overnight. Despite all of this free time, I’m not sure if i’ve technically read more than before, although it still seems likely.¹

Omega Minor and Laura Warholic are at the post office waiting to be picked up. Both of these books were intimidating me with their length. That nagged at me so much that i overcompensated. Over the weekend, i tackled Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles ((Owned it for ten years, but i’ve procrastinated completing it that entire time)) and Gaddis’ The Recognitions.²

Masochist.

1. This is not just about reaching an arbitrary number. There is a specific reason as to why I feel pressured to complete more books. Fortunately, it doesn’t weigh on my mind as much as it did last autumn, but occasionally, that thoughts of that possible future creeps in. [↩]
2. Started it once back in 2005, and again in 2007, but have no idea where i left off either time. Here it goes again. [↩]

One of those things about that Tournament of Books forgotten by everyone except an obsessive weirdo like me that really bugged me was:

If we are all nerds, then The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is about all of us. Likewise, the strange, fascinating Savage Detectives is about other people—other, cooler people (poets! “Visceral Realist” poets!) leading more interesting, cooler lives.

No. Wrong. The Savage Detectives was misread by this person. These “other, cooler people” were fuck-ups and failures. Most of them died, insane, miserable and/or broke. Some died just as violently as Oscar. Whatever… it’s the “If we are all nerds” that bugged me more.

Junot Díaz comes across as a decent, honest guy, and his “nerd” credentials are stellar. When i read the reference to Oscar playing Aftermath!, a game that i’d never knew about other than from ads in Dragon magazine,¹ i was impressed. However, again, since the rise of the internet, the self-infatuation of “nerds” has been suffocating. If you give the secret handshake, you can cruise a long way just by being part of the tribe. If Díaz wants to write about Grand Theft Auto IV², that’s cool, but it’s not going to make me like his novel more.

However, if we’re going to play this game of allegiance to writers through a kind of tribal affinity of nerdery, Roberto Bolaño has worked Avalon Hill games into two books, as well as the odd-in-retrospect game Escape from Colditz.

NLitA’s Gustavo Borda is a funny pisstake on several libertarian sci-fi authors³ and Zach Sodenstern is a post-Randian, post-apocalyptic writer. (This feels like a cross between Harlan Ellison’s A Boy & His Dog and L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth.))

NLitA’s Max Mirebalias’ first heteronym was Max Kasimir. Sound a little familiar? It’s almost certainly a reference to the Casimir Effect and the twin paradox, now co-opted by Lost.

The skywriting murderer-poet Alberto Ruiz-Tagle of Distant Star becomes Carlos Weider, creator of an obscure, byzantine wargame detailing the War of the Pacific, object of interest for members of the Philip K. Dick Society.

He might have been a globetrotting junky who fancied himself a poet, but he didn’t have any fear of indulging in some nerdy pasttimes.

1. I had issues numbering back to the 30s. [↩]
2. Never played it. Not my style. [↩]
3. especially Heinlein for me [↩]

These are going to be some timid comic book reactions. I’m not exactly comfortable doing this yet, as honestly, most of the time i don’t mind all that much reading a bad comic book. I don’t have much expectation invested in it. Despite having read more comics than the experts, i don’t know that much about the craft (or call it art.) It’s brightly colored popcorn for the most part. Here we go:

• Trinity. Compared to Countdown, it’s “good,” but compared to anything else, it’s limp and unambitious. In addition to a lackluster story, it suffers from that same insufferable framing technique that jackass Meltzer used in the re-launch of JLA, having other characters deliver commentary on the actions and character of the heroes. Is DC so stubborn that they are going to stick with this
• Final Crisis. Yessss… this is the good stuff. Like Seven Soldiers, this is going to mean far more to me in trade paperback, as it’s denser in meaning and will prove to be far more rewarding in re-reading. I don’t mind working a little with the comic, looking for clues in contrasts and patterns. Nope. Nothing much to say about it yet. I like aspects of DC these days (the only titles i bought in the ’80s were Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, ect.) , but don’t know its corners as well as i should.
• Avengers: The Initiative: Slott keeps fixing what Bendis fucks up in pretending that he has a Grand Vision, while having a hundred times more fun doing it. It doesn’t matter if the patches aren’t perfect, because there’s entertainment in it, little ironic and slapstick moments. Instead of the long journey of Jessica Drew/Skrull Queen Veranke, we get a loopy scene in a cafeteria in which two Skrulls fear that one has busted the other because of a combination of strawberries and pickles. That he turns a legacy character from the ’50s into the focus, with a magic visor that reveals the invasive aliens is awesome, directly connecting the ’50s alien invasion movies to the current version. What was a reinterpretation of the New Universe’s The Pitt has become a title that look forward to than most. Less melodrama, more goofy pop. Yay!
• Hulk. This Red Hulk storyline certainly is big and dumb. It’s a waste of time. Bleh. I don’t care how old school it seems to be.
• Wolverine: Origins. Even without Dillon’s sucky art, the series remains cringeworthy. I shouldn’t care at all about Wolverine any more. That’s a holdover from the ’80s, when almost everything that i read from Marvel centered around the X-Men. Daniel Way’s effort to make Wolverine into a more vicious monster in his past grates. Yes, Wolverine is and was a killer, but having him as an actual villain of the same brand of casual cruelty as Sabretooth is too monstrous for me to accept with that particular character. It’s not fun. It’s not insightful. It will be ignored in continuity in the years to come. Wave the magic wand now, and make it go away.
• Secret Invasion: Runaways-Young Avengers. Aw, when i saw Miyazawa’s art, i kinda thought that McKeever (I don’t pay attention to who is under exclusive contract much) would be on board, but Yost, writer of the abomination that is the current X-Force is. It’s silly that these two teams keep getting thrown together for a crossover tie-in whenever there is a Big Event. It makes sense, as both comics have a legitimate connection to Skrull storylines, but they are so distantly sidebarred from the main plot, why bother at all?
• Teen Titans. Come to think of it, McKeever’s no McKeever either. It seems i just like him on Spider-man Loves Mary Jane. This Dark Side Club arc felt like a very pale reflection of the storyline in which the New Mutants were dragged into the gladiatorial pits of the Shadow King, in the Claremont/Sienkiewicz era.
• Superman 677. Superman is hanging out with his buddy Hal Jordan in space, playing frisbee with his super-powered dog, casually calling each other by first name, makes a weird, almost lecherous, remark about the daughter of a fellow hero who dated that other Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, a woman who died before Hal Jordan was resurrected. Oh fuck it. It sounds ridiculous, like a petty continuity obsession, but it’s lazy writing and bad characterization. Superman assessing the sexual conquests of Hal Jordan almost enviously is creepy.
• New Warriors. Craptastic. I’m shocked that this wasn’t canceled after the first couple of issues. How has this lived longer than The Order?
• Runaways. When Whedon’s run started, i expected a lot more from him (as i had yet to watch Buffy for the first time, and knew his reputation.) Now i don’t know. I’m suspecting that when i read it collected in a trade paperback, this is going to feel a lot less insulting than his run of Astonishing X-Men. For a six issue arc of a steampunk (ick) version of Gangs of New York, it was a departure from his usual schtick, which would have probably ended with Nico sacrificing herself. It feels like a whole lot of disposable nothing, but that’s not a bad thing.
• Black Panther. I glanced at it out of boredom, to find that Monica Rambeau makes a one panel appearance in the most recent issue as a captive…. in her old Avengers Captain Marvel costume. Yuck. Since Aaron Stack’s appearance into Ms. Marvel, i was holding out hope that while Nextwave might not be in continuity, some of the characterizations and costumes might stick. I would gripe that he doesn’t know how to write Storm, but no one really does. Hudlin has improved a lot since he took over the title, but this is still not a comic that i look forward to reading.
• Ms. Marvel. For all of her history, she ought to have a personality. It has a big supporting cast of “quirky” characters, lots of references to old storylines… i should like it more. I reckon for the same reason that it amused me that Ellis’ Aaron Stack appears in it that it seems off. It never quite clicks. Looking up Brian Reed to find that he wrote New Avengers: Illuminati makes sense of it all. His characterizations of established characters are often way off. I keep reading it (and many others) just to keep perspective of the range of quality in superhero comics.
• X-Men: Legacy. The rise of Mister Sinister (and Apocalypse) were the beginning of the end of my immersion in mainstream superhero comics. Things went downhill very quickly, and i wasn’t all that dismayed when my local comic shop folded. Cajun Gambit was always irritating, confusing New Orleans with Acadiana. Oddly, i kinda dig this. Not much is happening, and i’m not even sure if this qualifies as a good comic, but there is something mildly entertaining about having some of gray-shaded characters who are either working for redemption or self-preservation. I’m waiting to see how this unfolds, whether an interesting new depth to Marvel’s mutant timeline unfolds or just a bigger mess.
• Uncanny X-Men. Hell yeah. Get them out of New York. It reminds me of the run of Uncanny X-Men back around 170 to right up to the Mutant Massacre. That might not have been a classic period, but it seems like one of the least oppressively dark ones. It’s a little ironic that the writer of the grim Captain America and Daredevil lightens up this X-Men title.

Yep. Still grousing about authors who need more books in English translation.

A few years ago, i read Angélica Gorodischer’s Kalpa Imperial, and loved it. It seemed like Small Beer Press pulled off quite a coup with its publication. The reviews were all stellar and as i’m poking around the internet this evening, it seems to have sold well, as there are an awful lot of blogs, profiles, ect. listing Kalpa Imperial as a favorite book.

That was 2003. Five years later… nothing. Small Beer Press is a small operation, and don’t seem to have any works in translation in their roster. I don’t expect any other big efforts in translation coming from them.

Zoran Živkovi? appears to have broken through to consistent English translation releases, (first on Prime, and now on Aio,) because he has built a fanbase in the sci-fi reading community. Gorodischer received a heavy hitter introduction with Ursula K. Le Guin as her translator. Kalpa Imperial even had a NYT review… but nothing since then.

What happened? Is Gorodischer not interested in an English language audience at this point in her life because she has other priorities? Are the rights of her other works tied up in weird legalities? It cannot be a case of there just not being any Spanish language translators willing to tackle the job, right?¹ Here’s a bibliography from this site:

• Short stories with soldiers (1965) short stories
  
• Opus Two (1967) novel
• The Wigs (1968) short stories
• Under the Yubayas in Bloom (1973) short stories
• Chaste Electronic Moon (1977) short stories
• Trafalgar (1979) short stories
• Imperial Kalpa (1983) novel
• A Bad Night (1983) short stories
• Vases of Alabaster, Bokhara Carpets (1985) novel
• Mango Juice (1988) novel,
• The Republics (1991) short stories
• Fable of the Virgin and the Fireman (1993) novel
• Prodigies (1994) novel
  
• Survivorship Techniques (1994) short stories
• The Night of the Innocent (1996) novel
• How to Succeed in Life (1998) short stories

In an interview with Gorodischer from 2004 with the seemingly defunct Fantastic Metropolis, she seems quite enthusiastic about the possibility of more of her books being published in English, especially Prodigios (Prodigies,) which she concedes might be tough.

1. I hate myself for being monolingual. Yep. Working on that little problem. [↩]

In fixing some news alerts and creating new ones, i stuck Muharem Bazdulj in, and turned up an interview with Bookslut that i missed last year. He said that his latest book was Giaour and Zuleika, concerning Byron in the Balkans, and it was in the process of being translated to English, but there was no publisher yet.

It’s late June of 2008. There has to have been some progress. The Second Book came out in 2005 on Northwestern University Press, on the Writings from an Unbound Europe series, but that series seems to have been wrapped up.

Dalkey Archive? New Directions? Archipelago?

Please, someone get more Bazdulj in print in English…

…just not 2003’s The Concert. According to a Polish site of which i’m relying on a spotty Google translation, It’s about a U2 concert held in Sarajevo in September 23rd, 1997. No matter how important that concert is supposed to be, i loathe U2.

In the attempt to dig up something new, i tracked down a Bazdulj essay on translation and English as well as a YouTube video that i don’t understand a word of, frustratingly.