forty-two: february 2005

2.28.2005 monday
 Light by M. John Harrison Wandering, densely written SF tale tries to be literary and for the most part fails. Involves a serial killer, AI, virtual reality, and quantum mechanics. Tech-heavy, unsatisfying, and misogynistic. Concludes lethargically.. Mildly interesting but undeserving of its reputation.
-Catherynne
 2.27.2005 sunday
 Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet Genet reacts to being immersed in a world of restrictive hierarchy, erecting this work behind bars on scrap paper: a prisoner's sexual fantasies turned into a surreal, ambiguous litany of freedom colored by indulgent metaphor, crime and homoeroticism in murder and war.
-Rick
 2.26.2005 saturday
 Maiden Voyage by Denton Welch Memoir of a wealthy English adolescent in 1930's Shanghai, told in candid first-person. Begins shrouded in icky entitlement; emerges as an affecting confession. 16-year-old Welch is an amoral Charlie Brown within a Graham Greene novel. His pettiness and ennui are equally effective.
-Dan
 2.25.2005 friday
 Incarnate: Story Material by Thalia Field Nearly impossible to describe, these pieces ("poems" seems archaic) chart their own relations to the page, to character, to setting, among classical themes and contemporary disquietude. They incite curiosity about process as much as adventurousness in understanding. The doors are wide open.
-Erika
 2.24.2005 thursday
 Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Why do they always call the saddest people comedians? A zany, madcap romp through suicide, madness and existential despair. A desperate prayer that life is somehow sacred despite all evidence to the contrary. Plus it has wacky pictures of flags and assholes.
-Brian
 2.23.2005 wednesday
 Senses of Walden by Stanley Cavell Philosophy as meditation. Cavell examines the interplay of text and place, the work of civilization, the migration of birds, the bible, Heidegger, Homer, and the thickness of ice in winter. Less about Thoreau or Concord than about the limits of individual perception.
-Timothy
 2.22.2005 tuesday
 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein From everything to nothing in seven steps. An attempt to dig the foundations of the House of Logic, so that, once you have climbed up out of that trench you can throw away the ladder. Now I think I should shut up.
-Brian
 2.21.2005 monday
 The Captain Lands in Paradise by Sarah Manguso A city with a sense of humor. Transparent buildings and yet still the surprise every time someone exits the elevator to straighten their clothes in the window’s reflection. You are staring into. The glass between you and them. This is a discovery.
-Jen
 2.17.2005 thursday
 The Seasons by Merrill Gilfillan A meditative slowness permeates snapshots (via delicious vocabulary) of a noticing mind--most often an observer, though two poems are condensed journals from one apiece of the poet's doings. Specificity does a dance ("mild import mazurka") with readerly empathy: shared breezes.
-Erika
 2.16.2005 wednesday
 Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles by Jacques Derrida A brief, hypnotic account of Nietzsche's engendering of writing, and how, one day, he forgot his umbrella. Maddening, difficult and euphoric, filled with sails and veils, closer to poetry than prose, a dream that makes you sigh even as you grit your teeth.
-Timothy
 2.15.2005 tuesday
 Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson The saga of Liza Normal and her rise and fall and rise up from the Normal Family Dinner Theater. A genius satire on the corrupting power of the lust for fame. Imagine Chuck Palahnuik with a heart – with real characters, even. Funny.
-Brian
 2.12.2005 saturday
 Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester The bad: an irritating writer, and the book seems padded with every historical or sociological tangent that can be drawn through the story. The good: Winchester is a geologist, and the parts that are about the science of the story are informative.
-Brian
 2.11.2005 friday
 Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine Categorized as a lyric essay, this genre-bending book-length meditation on death and pharmaceuticals and war and writing and the liver and contemporary USA is entirely compelling, entirely true to its own shape and preocupations. Even the endnotes insist on a full attention.
-Jen
 2.9.2005 wednesday
 Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche Arrogant, misogynistic and just plain wrong, Nietzsche invites you to challenge his presumption every other line. The questions he asks, however, the demands he places on philosophy, are formidable and necessary. As difficult to imagine modern thought without it as to like.
-Timothy
 2.8.2005 tuesday
 Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit Walking comes from tree-climbing, and is vital to poetry. Landscape is a function of walking. Paths are a human right. Walking is political, and change occurs in a step-by-step actuality. Solnit is perennially fascinating, plaiting topics into stunning intersections.
-Erika
 2.7.2005 monday
 Phaedo by Plato Dying, Socrates says we must remember to think like him to be transmigrated, unchanging Forms trump le monde, and there’s no use crying over drunk hemlock. It’s a good read to learn how we got into this mess in the first place.
-Burke
 2.6.2005 sunday
 One Step Behind by Henning Mankell So far my favorite of Henning Mankell's novels about the soft-boiled Swedish investigator Kurt Wallander. If you read them in order, you get the larger story of Wallander's declining health, failed relationships, and how Sweden has gone to hell in a handbasket.
-William
 2.5.2005 saturday
 The Elements of Style, 4th ed. by Strunk & White I read this book while sitting in a chair. A hard chair. It was a nice book. An easy read. Strunk and White didn't mince words. You too can learn to write like Hemingway. Or maybe not. Also recommended: the AP Stylebook.
-Matthew
 2.4.2005 friday
 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Read it. Eleven day of mild flu and nor'easter, well-bundled tallow-burning, severely restricted company, and being haunted by both limpid dreams and a waking sensation of dreadfully poignant physical fallibility, would do well as a backdrop. Extra: eat moldy biscuit.
-Erika
 2.3.2005 thursday
 The Island: Poems by Michael White Like Rilke set in the American desert. Image-laden and ethereal but entirely honest. The poems are let out in long gusts, seem to begin almost by accident. Dedicated to the poet’s late wife— rooted in the grief of remembrance, but humanizing. stunning.
-Stevie Lynne
 2.2.2005 wednesday
 Ecocriticism by Greg Garrard An introduction to 'the New Critical Idiom' which reads like the work of an undergraduate, Garrard's book takes so sceptical a view of his material as to render it virtually meaningless. Literary theory consisting of little more than jabs at disfavored authors.
-Timothy




BACK TO FORTY TWO