^^P78 translation as close reading & theft. Shoutout to volume translator Ann Goldstein!

P90 “Translating is an art: the transfer of a literary text into another language[…] always requires some type of miracle.”

P130 “the motivation to write is always connected to the lack of something we would like to know and possess, something that escapes us.”

P142 “I wish every book I write were the first, I wish I had a new name every time.”

^^P21, Calvino on the avant-garde (of 1957)

P139 “A great book is valuable not because it teaches us to know a definite individual, but because it presents to us a new way of understanding human life, applicable to others as well, and which we, too, can use to recognize ourselves.”

P140 “Thus writing a book becomes an experience of initiation, involves a continuing education of oneself, and this should be the goal of every human action.”

^^p125 Calvino on Italy, Italian language

P127 “What language is the book of the world written in?”

P138 “A book, books. The thought that books are generated by books, as if by a biological power of the written page can be distressing: if the written matter passes through the hand that writes, and the author is only a tool of something that writes itself independently of him, maybe it‘s not we who write books, but books that write us.”

Not clear who edited/selected these excerpts from Calvino‘s non-fiction writing on writing—the Calvino estate? No intro, no context, just Calvino on translation, Italian language, Italian novel, folklore, reading, “Homo legens,” sitting, publishing, the absolute book. Fave= interview w/ Tullio Pericoli on imitation & style & influence & “progress” in painting & lit. P88 “Novels are like wines in that some travel well and some travel badly.” 2023

Illustrations in flat, bright color blocks reminiscent of Matisse. Women holding teacups, tools, cabbage, grudges, children, instruments, books, lovers, each other. Lotte Lenya holding Peter Lorre. Repetition fuels anticipation: what woman will be next? What will she be holding? Sometimes holding is strength, sometimes fragility. Holding on not to fall apart. One woman after another. Somehow the strange community Kalman creates makes sense. 2022

1. I am not a genius
2. Writing novels is hard
3. Geniuses accomplish hard things
Murakami w/ his annoying equivocations. So many “I don‘t mean to says” & “on the other hands” it feels like reading in circles. “I don‘t like literary prizes, but it feels good to win them.” Make your claim or leave the novels to speak for themselves. Irritating, but that‘s the Murakami aesthetic? The novels irritate, but also fascinate. That‘s missing here. DNF 2022

^^p37 Love the housebuilding second-guessing ridiculousness of “Poolhouse Plans.”

P24
it all happened, it all happened
i(t all) ripened, gladdened, slackened, saddened

P43
today I walked my racism in a harness collar
through flatbush, through ditmas park
i called it buck. i told it to heel, heel, heal.

P44
have you seen the light in
_________‘s studio? that light.
there, all is order and beauty,
luxe calme et volupté.

When you shoot this hard & confidently, there will be some wild misses & some truly beautiful hits. Just-past-middle-age poems of remembrance & evaluation & confusion & compromise & decline & regret. Some lines so spot-on & evocative, some seemingly wishing for failure. I love this abandon, but the failed stanzas are real. Includes a set of sonnets, not really a form made for wandering. Details as precision or as inside jokes? 2022

Killer TITLES to these poems (re “Ode to Fried Chicken‘s Appearance on Scandal,” “Why the Jive Bird Sings,” “Two White Girls in the African Braid Shop on Marcy and Fulton”). Prose poems are faves, the insistent, sometimes rambling arguments on Black bodies, female desire, art and resistance, bad moods. Playing with form (tests, investigations, questionnaires). P90 “The gap in Angela Davis‘s teeth speaks to the gap in James Baldwin‘s teeth.” 2019

^^P 321 Grief‘s dizzying spell.

P 315 “From then on, everything feels like those moments just before you wake in the morning. I am not asleep but somehow still dreaming, the world an ambiguous combination of reality and hallucination.”

P 208 “I am pulled out of my head back into the world I know best. The world of winners and losers.”

Good observations on ambition, competition, athletic excellence, the will to win, rivalries, the small changes of form & mentality that can lead to breakthroughs, fear of loss and of losing, challenges of competing in an aging body. Section on grief breaks into disorienting flashes, mimicking character‘s brokenness. Jenkins Reid‘s easy, fluid prose. Lots of tennis research! Using sportscasts to fill in exposition, move plot = smart device. 2022

y el hecho de que llega a existir en palabras
and its coming into words.

Para nosotros todos, amantes, habladores
as lovers or users of words
el problema es éste this is the difficulty.
Lo que se pierde what gets lost
no es lo que se pierde en traducción sino
Is not what gets lost in translation, but rather
what gets lost in language itself lo que se pierde
en el hecho, en la lengua,
en la palabra misma.

—Alastair Reid
1978

?

Anthology on language diversity, identity, marginalized language, migration, displacement, heritage, exile, Polari, para-poetics, interarts translations, transformation of message & meaning. Pastiche, some translation classics (Spivak, Steiner, Derrida). But many excerpts so short it feels like misrepresentation. P142 “The notion of ‘untranslatability‘ was given a singular twist by Apartheid… grounds for institutionalising separateness.” 2019

^^[11 Gunshots] by Vanessa German
Response from gun reform activist Camilla Williams: “Are we talking the sexy gun violence or the ugly gun violence? […] Where I am from it‘s the ugly gun violence where it seems no one gives a damn! It‘s hell—in order not to be scared you have to not be afraid to die.”

33 The Crisis lady says It‘s OK to cry.
Keisha says she been ran out of tears.

60 One man, two guns, fifty dead—
Two men kissing.

The pain in these poems. Piercing, aching, raging, mournful lines on gun violence, each followed by a reflection from a victim, relative, activist, doctor. Call & response is effective—a pause, story, insight to break up the intensity of the poetic lines. Premiere poets (Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jericho Brown, Rita Dove, Mark Doty, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ocean Vuong +++). Poems to rip you open. Visceral, relentless read. This will stay with me. 2017

Slow & subtle. 45-yr-old Gil, orphaned but wealthy, moves from NYC to Phoenix & makes friends w/ the neighbors. Activity vs. passivity, bullying vs. kindness, human activity vs. nature, resistance vs. avoidance. Clipped sentences, quirky humor. Couples. Grief & ghosts. Wealth & responsibility. But Gil‘s lostness edges annoyance. P176 “A lazy solution, his form of self-defense: throw money. But it was better thrown. He felt a little lighter.” 2022

Ok I get the hype. “No-nonsense” 1960s single mom, precocious child, celebrity rise, canine narrator, all in quaint, confident prose. But (like the ? for “Supper at Six”): who is the audience? Everywoman, based on book sales. Opposing sexism & celebrating women‘s work always need retelling, but this feels fluffy? Paddle pressure when I wanted power 20s. P290 “That‘s what the audience needed to see: a woman who both demanded respect & got it.” 2022

Everett stirfry, familiar ingredients: wordplay, puns, naming, pop culture, race, philosophy, games, academia, solitary protagonist. Following up on little Ralph Townsend from “Glyph,” now a math prof at Brown studying nothing. Supervillain revenge caper, playing w/ genre. P. 6 “I have spent my career in my little office […] contemplating and searching for nothing. […] I work very hard and I wish I could say I have nothing to show for it.” 2022

^^p245 Jackson MS “publicly, unapologetically Black,” 💜 marching band depiction (gleaming horns, left right precision) but some metaphors seem overlinked, askew (“musicians consistent as seasons of crops”).

P168 “‘Why didn‘t enough change?‘ one answer is this: domination is creative as well as consistent.”

P176 “Staying alive on the grounds of your ancestors‘ murder and abuse is no small matter. It requires a living witness to their alchemy.”

Centralizing South in American mythos. Black Belt, Appalachia, historical re-enactments, family, exile, personal history, “the myth of surface gentlemanliness,” “the wages of whiteness,” freedom fighters, florid Southern flora, monuments, Spanish moss, plantation beauty & brutality. Extended riff, essays insightful & playful if sometimes meandering. Writing sharp & engaging, weaving incantations. Evocative & provocative. 2022 National Book Award

Medieval detective story. John Reve, village priest, tries to keep a foundering community together following the death of the richest man in town. Circular structure, reverse chronology. Lyrical, evocative prose. So many SMELLS. Isolation, faith, secrets, superstition, confession, seasons, nature, grief. A bit heavy/ponderous, but got its hooks in me. Light snark in narrator adds humor. Who wants the bridge to the wider world, who resists? 2018

^^p17 I just have to make it through this month. I will be happy after this. I‘ll prove it. I will be HAPPY.

^^ p81 I can be anything on the page.

^^Those beautiful Klimtesque/woodcut curls!

Hidden face, falling, sliced identity, anonymity.

Lots of metanarrative, interruptions, layering of stories. Character development shown through repeated returns to coffee shop, evolving interactions. A very self-aware narrative.

Autobiographical graphic novel recording six++ months in cartoonist‘s life through isolated period of COVID. Effective mix of styles from stick figures to realism to photos. Invites reader to draw a page. Depression=gloomy mountain figure. Scenes w/ child & teen selves. Struggle with self-worth, fear of slip to narcissism. Tough subjects, but lovely, hopeful. Self-discovery, ambition, self-deprecation, generational trauma, suicidal ideation. 2022

Charming. Words like incantations, intimacy of the inside joke, collaborative art, obsessions of adolescence, releasing creative projects to the world, coming of age, self-discovery, thrill of secrets & small transgressions, high of doing something weird. P47 “We sat there, the words rolling on a loop, again and again, until they didn‘t mean anything, again and again, until they meant something, again and again, until they meant everything.” 2022

^^President Sweet Honey in the Rock! Alice Walker imagining, reminiscing, loving friends & the natural world, resisting violence and racism, insisting on love. 1984

P106
Surely the earth can be saved
by all the people
who insist
on love.

P23
You would choose
not to come back again,
you say.
Except perhaps
as rock or tree.
But listen, love. Though human,
that is what you are
already
to this student, absorbed.
Human tree and rock already,
to me.

McConnell was Vonnegut‘s student at Iowa, now a writing teacher herself, and her name should really come first on this volume—lovely insights on writing & process with Vonnegut as a catalyst. Style comes from caring, set-up=arousing curiosity through informing, writing as an act of good citizenship, writing as entertainment, swoopers and bashers, the “third player,” reader as collaborator. JOKES! P343 “If this isn‘t nice, what is?” 2019

Novella in episodes. Coming of age, impossible love, memories of Mexico, resisting nostalgia, class conflict, cultural change, influx of American products, city in transformation. P33 “I looked down Avenida Álvaro Obregón and said to myself: I‘m going to hold onto my memory of this moment because everything that now exists will never be the same again.” P70 “So ancient, so remote, such an impossible story.” 1963, trans. Katherine Silver 2021

A Catholic priest, a small town sheriff, a young man haunted by visions and nightmares, obsessed with garbage, comforted by his therapist. Paranormal forces, multiverse jumping, conspiracy theories, traveling through the portal of the Black Barn. Urban / rural. Gothic horror / sci-fi. The one who smiles in the dark. Amazing artwork by Andrea Sorrentino. Moody mystery, but illustrations stronger than writing/character development. 2021

Grendel the nihilist-Romantic loner, ruminating & chewing up Danes. A comic monster, smiling rage. Much strangeness. Energetic prose sometimes mimicking epic verse. P8 “(Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.)” P28 “The world resists me and I resist the world.” P44 “Thus I fled, ridiculous hairy creature torn apart by poetry—“ P138 “Tedium is the worst pain.” P173 “Is it joy I feel?” 1971

Meteors full of omnimetal (somehow both potent energy source & potent drug) sprinkle northern MN.💥Many directions to explore—rare resources, exploitation, family drama, military dominance, corporate greed—but ends up with stock characters in increasingly outrageous situations. Too many twists. P48 “It‘s like the gold rush meets the oil rush meets the height of the steel boom in the Iron Range. It‘s f*ing bananas.” Plot is bananas, too. 🍌🍌🍌2021

Condensed (thankfully!) arguments from his lengthier works. Historical & theoretical, somewhat reductive on reasons for & solutions to global economic inequality. French, Euro focus. Optimistic on improved economic conditions & equality (but going back to 1700 to get this vantage!). Will it take large-scale crisis (war, worse pandemic) & collapse of asset values to continue towards less inequality, or can govts find a more measured approach? 2022

Currents of anxiety & determination run through this story collection, with shared characters slipping into each others‘ stories: migrant workers facing deportation, teen mothers, worried sisters, ghosts. Just enough unsaid to bring stories crackling to life. Vulnerability. Hesitation. Survival. Opportunities lost & found. Central Valley CA. Precise, quiet lyricism. “Farmers don‘t pay on Fridays.” P172 “Trust is a test, don‘t you think?” 2022

Bots keeping each other company. Current anxiety over AI CREATING media (Midjourney, ChatGPT)—SecUnit and ART have skipped creation and are now media CONSUMERS, bonding over their favorite shows. 🤣 “Becoming human.” Good pacing. AI with clear sense of duty makes strong MC. Clever use of security cameras & feeds for description. P65 “Humans are nervous of me because I‘m a terrifying murderbot, and I‘m nervous of them because they‘re humans.” 2018

Written intent is to combat recent “campaign of disinformation” in US public discourse but short essays are maybe not the form? Feels superficial to tackle big American stories & distortions in 10 pgs or fewer. Topics include American exceptionalism (term coined by Stalin), the “vanishing Indian,” immigration & US role in human displacement, settler colonialism, market fetishism, Lost Cause & confederate monuments, state-sanctioned violence. 2022

Down with narrative arc! Death to climax! Alison makes a case for non-standard narrative structures, praising patterns in nature: meander, spiral, explosion, radial, fractal, cell, tsunami. Some good examples (Sebald, García Márquez, Lispector), but tons of omissions (Calvino, Borges, Pavić, Vonnegut, Bolaño), few “stun gun” insights. Section on pacing, “narrative hydraulics,” Wolff‘s “Bullet in the Brain” strong. Narrative by accumulation. 2019

^^p145 granddaughter of Hiroshima bombing survivor describes pattern of grandfather‘s kimono seared to his skin

P134 the killer is killed: “I imagine Canción […] singing his killer a song that is both sad and sweet, about a Lebanese Jew who long ago gave a guerrilla fighter a couple of dazzling gold pens, one final song before the crack of one final bullet exploding in the dark tropical night.”

P92 “Everybody knows that Guatemala is a surreal country.” Reading Turkish coffee grounds, playing badminton with a machete, Kaibiles (brutal Guatemalan special ops forces), grandfather‘s kidnapping. Imposter & identity (Jewish, Guatemalan, Syrian/Lebanese.) “I arrived in Tokyo disguised as an Arab.” Pretty title=name of brutal killer known for singsong voice. Descendants of catastrophe finding connection. Bit like Bolaño. Searching. Trans. 2022.

^^p171 “Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. […] Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
So it goes.”

P29 “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral.”

Time for this decade‘s visit to Tralfamadore & the ceremonial counting of the “so it goeses” (over 100!). Personality fracturing. Survivor‘s guilt. Simultaneity, getting unstuck in time. Outrageous, inane logic of combat. Luck, chance. Detachment in the face of brutality. “So it goes”=refrain for death of lice, death of novel, as much as for soldiers & civilians. Clever time travel trope, the everpresentness of traumatic event. Poo-tee-weet? 1968

Not my fave collection of Li‘s, but still strong. Determination & melancholy. Isolated characters. Fear of emotion. Deep pain dulled by denial. Memory. Records. Family. Pain built up over years. Kindness of strangers. Beautiful, glancing prose. P222 “They were lonely & sad people, all three of them, and they would not make one another less sad, but they could, with great care, make a world that would accommodate their loneliness.” 2010

Heartfelt & hilarious. Graphic novel depicting tough conversations with drawings of flat, expressionless faces. Blank stare in face of bigotry, misunderstanding. Absorption/refusal. Dissonance. Emotion in language, not image. Motherhood, daughterhood, interracial families, dating, marriage, identity, professional success. Section on 9/11 so evocative of that time of loss & confusion. Open w/ her own biases. ???s asked & answered. Intimate. 2019

^^P232 “so much to dance about”

Pxvii “Every story, whether truth or fiction, is an invitation to imagination, but even more so, it‘s an invitation to empathy. The storyteller says ‘I am here. Does it matter?‘”

P11 “The comedic surprise I‘m always trying to get to in the column is hope.”

Dystopia trend, appeal of apocalypse: p219 “How are we supposed to tell the people we love that we love them if we‘re not five minutes from being destroyed?”

Smart, hilarious, sometimes a little too cute observations on “how to save your soul in America” from R Eric Thomas‘s gay, Black, funny-as-hell perspective. Coming of age, coming out, family, faith, pop culture, Pride parade, all things Whitney, identity, queer iconography, work, Black History Month, love. References from “A Raisin in the Sun” to Mr. Rogers‘ opera. P60 “A little Malcolm X-y, a little Music Man-y. What more could you want?” 🤣 2020

Another biographical work from Patti Smith, this time in photos. 366 snapshots revealing her construction of self: family, friends, pets, musicians, writers, heros, graves of heros, travels, talismans. Love her intimacy, attitude, her wonder at the world, her whole Patti self. 💜 2022

^p34 Patricia Lockwood on “It‘ll End in Tears” by This Mortal Coil, connecting w/ Liz Fraser‘s voice

P101 Will Harris on Warren G: “Rhythm exceeds what can be said; it transcends material hardship […]. But in the moment of flow, everything becomes synonymous. It‘s a philosophy you feel in your toes, an aporia in which sound and self dissolve and become briefly one whole. Which is to say, you can only understand it while you‘re listening to it.”

Writers (mostly Brits) reflect on albums that shaped them. Lovely evocations of deep listening, the way songs interweave into eras, life moments. P109 “One consequence of musical purchases being so fraught with risk for my generation was that we remember the ‘virgin plays‘ of albums for the rest of our lives.” P134 “There is just nothing better in this world than Sly Stone‘s purr. If he doesn‘t make you feel real you must already be dead.” 2021

^^ p233 transformation rather than restoration

P26 “I find myself searching for the gap between people‘s experiences and the stories that organize their suffering, sometimes defining the course of their lives.”

p212 “I‘ve endowed my pill of choice with mystical capacities—it contains the things I‘m not but wish I was—and merely the idea of swallowing such a thing has healing power.”

Diagnosis as relief, danger of conforming to diagnosis.

Stories of deep trauma=always open to exploitation, which Aviv mostly avoids by withholding judgment of patients & instead judging treatment. Psychoanalysis vs. psychopharmacology. Narratives of illness. Being in uncertainties. Mysticism. Generational trauma. Systemic racism. Overprescription. Conclusion? Come at people as they are: individuals, influenced by “an interplay between biological, genetic, psychological, and environmental factors.”2022

Circling thru exes, letting go of the past. Snarky, propulsive voice. Trying too hard? Mentions Bechdel test, fails on purpose. NYC LES. Golconda device=unnecessary? P122 “If you wait long enough, anyplace will become a barracks of the romantic undead, a sprawling museum of personal bombs. But would all my bombs go off at once?” P209 “I was a sane person imitating a broken person imitating a sane person, which did not feel sane, not at all.” 2022