Monday, March 31, 2014

The Way the World Is Not Astonished at You












  • Hamster chides me for not mentioning United's 2-2 tie v Chicago this past Saturday. First, I didn't go - I hate afternoon games to start, I really hate afternoon games in pouring rain in 35 degree temperatures. Once I would have gone anyway, but this is the accurate state of my fandom at this moment in time. They have home games the next two Saturday nights. I'll go to those.
  • Blanchot, for those of you who do.
  • Getting it all in: If A Naked Singularity bears comparison to the meganovels of Pynchon, Gaddis, and Wallace, it is hard to say that it advances beyond the achievements of these earlier works, either formally or thematically. To suggest that this novel probably should not be considered innovative is not to undervalue its own achievement. At a time when ambition in American fiction is most often expressed in the "social novel," in hybrid genre forms such as the post-apocalyptic narrative and tepid forms of magical realism, or simply in securing a contract with a mainstream publisher, it is refreshing that a writer is willing to be more formally adventurous, in a mode less assimilable to prevailing expectations of "literary fiction"--so much so that no agent or publisher was willing to take a chance on this book. The most foolish miscalculation on the part of those who concluded this novel was not worth publication is in the assumption that readers would not find it engaging because of its unorthodox structure, but in fact once we have oriented ourselves to its method the novel is quite entertaining (if at times disturbing in its portrayal of the dysfunction of out "system of justice"). In the novel's expository passages, Casi's voice attracts our interest, and de la Pava's control of language in general should be apparent to any serious reader. I was holding this book Saturday. I tried it once but that was in during the worst of the reading slump. Will try again.
  • Prunella's latest playlist.







SONNET

Bill Knott

The way the world is not
Astonished at you
It doesn't blink a leaf
When we step from the house
Leads me to think
That beauty is natural, unremarkable
And not to be spoken of
Except in the course of things
The course of singing and worksharing
the course of squeezes and neighbors
And the course of course of me
Astonished at you
The way the world is not



6 comments:

  1. Apathy is a great way to conserve energy. Whoever told you it's a disease was just a complete dumbfuck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, a cosmic Fuck You to Male Yallinger anyway.

      Delete
  2. DCU game review (copied from 2013):
    Possession, blah, blah, blah, improvement, blah, blah, not enough, blah, blah, bite, blah, blah, moments, blah, blah, mental lapses, blah, blah, blah....

    ReplyDelete
  3. I read Naked Singularity, and on occasion my -Meh- flirted with a -Hmm- and even once or twice with an -Oh-. Amongst my readerly friends, though, I've been the outlier, so perhaps it is "just me."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. When I tried it I was deep in a reading slump. I'd read lots of good buzz about it so I was foolishly thinking it might break me out. I can give it a much fairer chance now.

      Years ago I held myself to a silly moral standard: once I started a novel I was required to finish it no matter what. Thankfully I no longer hold myself to that standard. Sadly I no longer hold myself to that standard.

      Delete
  4. Ok, first, if you're not going to a DC game, you need to let your fanbase know ahead of time—esp. when the games are on Sat. afternoon TV. Your humble narrator was busily scanning the very few fans who were in the stands to spot yours and Landru's asses.

    Now, that's out of the way, my biggest problem with Naked Singularity was the dialogue. It was as if it were only an outlet for the writer to express arguments he was having with himself. If you got lost in a dialogue which didn't have cues such as 'Bill said' or 'I said', etc., you couldn't distinguish who was saying what. The characters really didn't differentiate well, on the whole in general and in the dialogue in particular. Philosophical arguments made up a large part of the text, and they all sounded the same.

    ReplyDelete