{ Tuesday, March 11, 2003 }
Paul asked what books I bought recently. Here is a list:
• The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus. Seems to be universally lauded. I read the first 10 pages or so at 6 AM this morning, after I read
• How the Blessed Live by Susannah M. Smith. I should know better than to start reading a book at 1:30 in the morning. I was up until 5 finishing it (it is not long).
• Seven Pages Missing by Steve McCaffery. The site says: "In two massive volumes, Steve McCaffery, Canada's most challenging, experimental and innovative poet/critic amasses the best of his previously published and ungathered work." I bought both volumes.
• Fathomsuns and Benighted by Paul Celan. It was about time I acquired more Celan. If anyone knows anything about good alternative translations let me know.
• Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew by John Felstiner. Having just seen The Pianist by Roman Polanski, the holocaust and Celan's experience of it is much on my mind.
• From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabes Reader translated by Rosemarie Waldrop. I know almost nothing about Jabes; I suspect I will like him, but this is a shot in the dark.
• Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s edited by Mark Wallace and Steven Marks. Given the other books listed here, this purchase should make good sense.
• Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology by Stephen Wilson. This book was mentioned in an article by Darren Wershler-Henry and sounded intriguing.
• Lucy Orta:Process of Transformation by Lucy Orta et al. Orta was trained as a fashion designer and her work is often in the form of clothing and tentlike structures. I saw this book in Paris last year, and coveted it.
• Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science by Christian Bok. After interviewing Bok last week, I wanted to read some of his critical work. I tried to get my hands on this book at the library, but they didn't have it.
• The Four Books that are in Print of Christopher Dewdney. This purchase also an outgrowth of the Bok interview, as Dewdney was a great influence on Bok's first book Crystallography, another book I was trying to find. (It's listed for $150 on abebooks.com, but Bok said they were typesetting a second edition this week.) I'm just thrilled with Dewdney. He writes a species of poetic scifi, shot through with Burroughsian paranoia.
• Dark Spring by Unica Zurn. Zurn was a bit of a nutbar, and Hans Bellmer's lover -- I can understand how being in a relationship with the guy who made those horrible/revolting/fascinating poupées could drive you out of your mind. Dark Spring sounded interesting and was brought out by Exact Change, so why not?
• I now have to run out the door, so I'll just list the rest without links or commentary:
Maps of the Mind
by Hampden Turner, C (because I've been wanting this for a while)
Bayamus and Cardinal Polatuo: Two Novels
by Themerson, Stefan
Adventures in 'Pataphysics
by Jarry, Alfred
Maldoror and Other Writings
by Lautreamont, Comte De (because I lost my copy)
Undying Love Or Love Dies
by Toufic, Jalal (at Paul's suggestion)
Les Enfants Terribles
by Cocteau, Jean (at Demian's suggestion)
Three Paths to the Lake:Stories
by Bachmann, Ingeborg
When I say binge, I'm not kidding. So now I get to hear from you. What have you bought lately?
LINK | 2:38 PM | TB
Ha! Thank you very much for the Hampden-Turner title and author! I've been looking for this book for almost eight years, as I could not find it after I had browsed through it in the library or bookstore. I figured I could do it easier with searches for illustrated epistemics or somesuch, but here you go. Thanks again. I'm feeling lucky. I wonder if I'll find a long-lost brother next.
Allan | March 11, 2003 3:22 PMI just bought The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I wanted to buy Ulysses by Joyce, but I couldn't find a good edition, nor could I find one with an attractive cover/typeface/decent quality of paper. Is it just me, or does having a nice cover, font and paper make reading the book better?
Tom | March 11, 2003 3:23 PMJust got and read (in one day) the lovely 'fugitive pieces' by anne michaels. Beautiful, brilliant prose writing about a Jew facing the horrors of moving to Toronto. ahem, that was a joke. Worth the read if you like Canlit. Methinks she's Canada's version of Winterson.
stewert would appreicate the fact that today i'm reading colin moock's actionscript TDG2. huge geek points for me there.
I too give high praise to Exact Change! Good people.
it always makes me aglow to stumble across fellow experimental literature lovers!
checking out consumptive.org today, i ran across a mention re: steve mccaffery. mccaffery was a prof of mine (as was dewdney), so i instantly e-mailed th tokyo-based blogger to learn more abt how he'd tracked down Coach House (have you been to Coach House in Toronto? absolutely my favourite place in th entire city). he responded that you were th source.
and here you are, and how glorious your site is!!
while you're on a book-buying binge, i'll throw in a few more wicked awesome titles which you might like, if you haven't already read them...
spiral agitator by steve venright (pub: Coach House Books)
she would be the first sentence of my next novel by nicole brossard (pub: the mercury press, which - incidentally - is where i work!!)
when FOX is a thousand by larissa lai (press gang pub?)
excessive love prostheses by margaret christakos (pub: Coach House Books)
the tapeworm foundry by darren wershler-henry (pub: House of Anansi)
very cool to see mention of derek beaulieu on yr site. he's one of my fav'rite ppl.
a.raw | March 11, 2003 5:52 PMThank you for the recommendations, A.Raw! -- I've never been to Coach House, but someday I will make the trip.
I have Guernica by Nicole Brossard, but not the one you mentioned -- have you read that? is it good?, and I have Excessive Love Prostheses, which I've read bits of, and I downloaded the Tapeworm Foundry from I forget where, but haven't read any of them in their entirety yet. I'll move them up nearer the top of the 'to be read' stack.
Tom, one of the books I forgot to mention was Sputnick Sweetheart (hardcover copies are on sale at Powells for $5.95 or something).
Caterina | March 11, 2003 7:23 PMAt your house are there shelves after shelves after shelves and a little old bespectacled ladys who shushes you when you talk too loudly?
PS | March 11, 2003 7:37 PMhaven't read Guernica, but I've gone through some of Brossard's Mauve Desert and French Kiss. all textual phenoms. Nicole's actually featuring at my reading series in April. i'm so excited i could kiss a duck!
have you read any Gail Scott? she's another wonder to check out. she has a neat website called Narrativity as well, which you might like (has short pieces by Christakos, Brossard, Acker, Scott, etc etc etc etc).
a.raw | March 11, 2003 9:22 PMIt's all non-fiction since November: Écrits sur l'Art by J.A.D. Ingres, The Ego Ideal by J Chasseguet Smirgel,
Applied Herneneutics by Hans Georg Gadamer, La Vie Sexuelle de Catherine M., The Protean Self by Robert Jay Lifton, In the Vineyard of the Text by Ivan Illich, Fast Cars/ Clean Bodies by Kristin Ross, The Madonna of the Future by Arthur Danto, the Door of Liberation by the Geshe Wangyal, and Leonardo Da Vinci-Master Draftsman, the 20 lb. must-see Met exhibition catalogue.
Last time out it was Letters from a Lost Uncle by Mervyn Peake, Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin, Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes, The Emblem by John Manning, and Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8): A Memoir of Love, Exile and Crosswords by Sandy Balfour.
misteraitch | March 12, 2003 4:53 AMI so rarely *buy* books now that I'm poor again - my library account is another matter entirely. However, I was so taken with Lauren Winner's "Girl Meets God" that not only did I buy a copy for myself at Powell's, but have been buying it for friends too. Perfect description of Winner's spiritual journey.
Susan | March 12, 2003 12:57 PM1. Why We Run by biologist Bernd Heinrich. Almost as poetic, educational and engaging as his Mind of the Raven.
2. In the Box Called Pleasure by Kim Addonizio. Either you or Mark Woods turned me on to her poetry. Since I write short stories I thought I'd see what her first book of prose was like.
3. Beyond Growth by Herman Daly. An economist who knows what's wrong with classical economics, and how to fix it.
If you read one more book about a writer's Holocaust experience and how he tries to make sense of it, read Fateless by Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian writer. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002. The book is one that you cannot put down and that lives in you. It just can't be explained. It has to be read.
Kertesz said that the English translation is very poor quality, and he wants another translation to be done, but i don't think that happened yet. So unless you read Hungarian you will have to make do with the current one.
Kati | March 13, 2003 12:53 AMCaterina,
Wow...that is some list! I love meeting people who are so into reading, especially with such an esoteric appetite. It seems that so many of my friends have abandoned reading or read very infrequently because of demands of job, kids and home.
My recent reads:
The Writer and The World, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River...all by VS Naipaul.
Temperament by Stuart Isacoff
Wooden Boats by Michael Ruhlman
Digital Gehry by Bruce Lindsey
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
On my to-read stack:
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Inner Navigation by Erik Jonsson
Thanks everyone for all the great lists! Can't wait to check them all out!
Paul | March 13, 2003 11:24 AMJabes is wonderful - I would especially recommend "The Book of Margins," also translated by Rosemarie Waldrop. I can never read more than a bit of him at a time because I want it to last forever.
As for Celan translations, I don't think anyone is better than Felstiner.
Have you read Carole Maso or David Markson?
Eve | March 13, 2003 1:30 PMA House for Mr. Biswas (Naipaul), Fables and Fairy Tales (Tolstoy), Sartor Resartus (Carlyle), starting in on The Uses of Enchantment (Bettelheim).
I just picked up a huge pile of books from my parents (culls), and so have a very peculiar collection of books. Must dispose of them (sell or donate), but I can't do that before I read them first, now can I?
Felicity | March 13, 2003 9:14 PMI have also tried to curb my book buying and focus on the library lately, but I did pick up a copy of Italo Calvino's Under the Jaguar Sun at the Wheaton Library Used Book Sale. I also found a nice hardbound copy of Is Paris Burning? for $1.00, which I have often heard about but never read. My only other recent purchase was Washington Post reporter Lynn Duke's Mandela, Mobutu and Me, which chronicles her four years as the Washington Post's only reporter in Southern Africa from the time that Mandela became president of South Africa until Mobutu was overthrown in Zaire. I bought it because a friend had invited me to join him at a book talk by Ms. Duke at TransAfrica. Her stories in person were compelling, so I had to get the book. (I also wanted something nice to give my wife since she was not able to come).
Bill | March 16, 2003 6:44 AM'Age of Wire and String', you have to read in one sitting, I think, otherwise you lose sense of the vocabulary that he's working with. I called it 'a Reimann geometry of language' when I wrote about it some time ago. It's an astonishing book.
nick | March 19, 2003 12:02 PMCurious to see a response to Bok's Pataphysics...just looking at it now and a google search led me to this page. Isn't Dewdney fabulous? Have you read Dennis Lee's new book, UN. Amazing. Also Harryette Mullen. I've also just ordered everything of Carole Maso I could get my hands on, along with Lydia Davis and Diane Wiliams...and on and on...but another time.
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By the way honey, Visa called ...
Stewart | March 11, 2003 3:18 PM