Breakfast In The Ruins (197o) - by Michael Moorcock
A weirdly cozy one. Maybe it's a cis-het pop trash artist exploring his inner queer that draws me in. His use of genre & popular form as a means of examining class divides, mayhap. Or it could simply be that there's a part of this book which Knows The Gutter, as a creature of cities, and from such earthy vantage is clear-eyed enough to see up our collective trouser leg. This is a book that knows what's what-what & when's never quick enough. Lost track of the number of times I've read it. Like its deadened (dead-end?) narrator, I'll keep coming back.
A Million Betrayals (2oo7) - by Michael Moorcock [essay, in 'London Peculiar & Other Nonfictions']
The Third Policeman (197o) - by Flann O'Brien a.k.a. Brian O'Nolan
More comfort in dislocation. A deeply queer text. Perhaps merits a closer reading on the homoeroticism of hell, as conceptually present here. Also deadly earnest in its circular humour & wit. My first read, back in 2003, was disquietingly uncanny; the book's prose struck me as clammy as stained glass in a bombed-out church, but its absurdity & prosaic beauty wooed me, too. By the end I was determined to own a copy for myself. Essential. Read every other year.
The Fourth Policeman (1997) - by Hugh Kenner [essay, in 'Historical Fictions']
The Condition of Muzak (197o) - by Michael Moorcock
Ahh, Mister C, Mister C. Not a novel so much as a technical triumph. Doesn't stand alone the way the other books in the Cornelius canon can... But it does speak to me, personally, profoundly, as a little kid lost in a world that could care-- and chooses otherwise. I never wanted to be a rock god, magic christian zillionaire, or silver screen diva. Dandy messiah to the age of science, tho? A tastily craven condition indeed, and this book's a shot in the arm against it.
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors (2o23) - by Ian Penman [essay, booklength]
Obsessions & methods, methods & obsessions. A lovely sprawling meditation. About the only questions I had that it didn't answer were RWF's performance & wardrobe in Kamikaze 1989.
Death Is No Obstacle (1992) - by Colin Greenland, interviewing Michael Moorcock
More methodology. Alternated this with Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors for a few days. If I read this at least twice more all Moorcock's methods will probably be engraved on my forehead in reverse for ready reference. Worth reflecting on, if you're like me and a dumbass autodidact.
Unstrung: Rants & Stories of a Noise Guitarist (2o21) - by Marc Ribot
Funny. Anecdotal. Educational. Bite-sized essays. Still nibbling.
Der Sandmann (1816) - by E.T.A. Hoffmann
Let's write this bit first, then circle back to capsule thoughts about the rest of my reading.
Opening para: Ever slept on an author? To, like, a historical degree? That's me, last night, realizing that 'The Nutcracker' is based off a Hoffmann short story. Hoffmann's been on my mental radar since Grant Morrison was on Doom Patrol-- not because of a direct citation, mind, but because my magpie mind never throws any reference out! Someway I conflated the title of 'Tales of Hoffman' (Doom Patrol #50) and the opening of 'Anyhow Stories' (D.P. #44) to suggest Morrison was using his classical education to browbeat me into reading E.T.A., someday.
Second paragraph: I don't know Lucy Clifford's work from a gap on a shelf, but I have a strong suspicion her Anyhow Stories, published in 1882, owe no small debt to E.T.A.'s fucked up little horror parable about schizoid psychosis & the fear that we could be, are being, replaced by machines capable of every human falsity including "love". Glossing 'The New Mother' this morning, I note motifs of stolen eyes, weird prosthesis, and mechanical simulacra. The influence must be there... But is influence the point? Or is influence just the flu? A nightmare you catch, a hiccough you can't quite shake free?
Concluding para. 'The Sandman', surprisingly to me, has rather incisive insight into the shit women put up with from men, particularly lust-addled men. The character of Clara is the sanest figure in the entire tale, and has the most clear-headed attitude. She's basically a psychologist, compared to the protagonist, who's a total fucking freak. The events of the story might not actually be Nathaniel's fault, it must be said; he might have contracted some sort of brain-damaging illness in his youth, as there's reference to a childhood fever... But whether his brain's gone soft or not, he's all in for bangin' automata, and he seems only too ready to kill & maim to get his rocks off. *
* Couldn't help wondering whether Hoffmann was aware he had syphilis, at the time of writing. According to the timeline he was diagnosed in 1907. Semirelevant footnote...?
Paranthetical coda: there's a structural curio here in that the story starts off in epistolary fashion, with three letters, then descends into the voice of a minor character to start the story anew and recount events with an omniscient eye. There's a tidy device introduced at the opening of this middle third, to explain things, essentially saying that "The Sandman would be an interesting story, told normally, but it's more edifying to explain events out-of-order," arguing how informality & unfamiliarity should be enough to draw a reader in, the way someone in a heightened state of emotion should be interesting to the casual observer.
To wit, reading this short hot on the heels of Moorcock explicating the mechanics of his storytelling was choice. Totally forgot Todorov wrote about Hoffmann's 'Sandman' in 'The Fantastic', too.
The Little Friend (2oo2) - by Donna Tartt
It's been two years since I finally read 'The Secret History' (1992). Overdue. Cracking it now.
