I felt there was more to this book than I found. Three timelines, three generations of sorts. Strange motions in language and story. I wasn't enraptured, but kept curious, excepting magic realism, not really finding it. But there was a strange book that one of the characters does not understand, and as such keeps reading it, over and over again, until it makes sense.
Part of the settings, L.A. in the 60's, sounded very familiar.
Saturday, 15 April 2017
Cixin Liu - "The Three-Body Problem"
Interesting enough by itself, about aliens who can for sure take over the earth, and communicate this, to a strange satellite post in the north of China.
Yet it failed to capture me. Too long ago to remember why, though.
Yet it failed to capture me. Too long ago to remember why, though.
Lisa McInerny - "The Glorious Heresies"
Amazing sentences, on every single page, time and again, and an impressive speed, but after reading it for a while, noticed I'm still not too taken with any of the characters to care too much for them.
He left the boy outside its own front door. Farewell to it, and good luck to it. He wasn't going to feed it anymore; from here on in it would be squared shoulders and jaws, and strong arms and best feet forward. He left the boy a pile of mangled, skinny limbs and stepped through the door a newborn man, stinging a little in the sights of the sprite guiding his metamorphosis. Karine D'Arcy was her name. She was fifteen and a bit and had been in his class for the past three years. Outside of school she consistently outclassed him, and yet here she was, standing in his hall on a Monday lunchtime. And so the boy had to go, what was left of him, what hadn't been flayed away by her hands and kisses.
They had gone to the pictures, they had eaten ice cream, they had meandered at the end of each meeting back to her road, holding hands. And lest they laid foundations too wholesome, they had found quiet spaces and dark corners in which to crumble that friendship, his palms recording the difference between the skin on her waist and on her breasts, his body pushing against hers so he could remember how her every hollow fit him.
Deirde Allen was as stubborn as she was tough, which may have sounded like an admirable mix, but as far as Jimmy could tell it simply meant she was too stupid to know when she was wrong and too slow to notice the consequences.
- but then it pissed him off that he couldn't approach her on his own two feet. That he was no more upright now than his father. That uselessness was hereditary.
Ellie looked worse than her exertions sounded. She frowned all the way through the piece and then turned and faced her audience like she'd been instructed to do so by a voice in her head which intended later to encourage her to burn down an orphanage.
He left the boy outside its own front door. Farewell to it, and good luck to it. He wasn't going to feed it anymore; from here on in it would be squared shoulders and jaws, and strong arms and best feet forward. He left the boy a pile of mangled, skinny limbs and stepped through the door a newborn man, stinging a little in the sights of the sprite guiding his metamorphosis. Karine D'Arcy was her name. She was fifteen and a bit and had been in his class for the past three years. Outside of school she consistently outclassed him, and yet here she was, standing in his hall on a Monday lunchtime. And so the boy had to go, what was left of him, what hadn't been flayed away by her hands and kisses.
They had gone to the pictures, they had eaten ice cream, they had meandered at the end of each meeting back to her road, holding hands. And lest they laid foundations too wholesome, they had found quiet spaces and dark corners in which to crumble that friendship, his palms recording the difference between the skin on her waist and on her breasts, his body pushing against hers so he could remember how her every hollow fit him.
Deirde Allen was as stubborn as she was tough, which may have sounded like an admirable mix, but as far as Jimmy could tell it simply meant she was too stupid to know when she was wrong and too slow to notice the consequences.
- but then it pissed him off that he couldn't approach her on his own two feet. That he was no more upright now than his father. That uselessness was hereditary.
Ellie looked worse than her exertions sounded. She frowned all the way through the piece and then turned and faced her audience like she'd been instructed to do so by a voice in her head which intended later to encourage her to burn down an orphanage.
Michelle Gurevich - "Lovers Are Strangers" (Party Girl)
Found this a long time ago. Low throated late jazzy sad songs. Hints of Marianne Faithful.
Joseph Heller - "Catch 22"
Amazingly crazy characters! You can see the true war's madness through the lines. But what - so far - has been missing is any real narrative that will make you care a lot about its characters.
'They're trying to kill me,' Yossarian told him calmly.
'No one's trying to kill you,' Clevinger cried.
'Then why are they shooting at me?' Yossarian asked.
'They're shooting at everyone,' Clevinger answered. 'They're trying to kill everyone.'
'And what difference does that make?'
Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
'Who's they?' he wanted to know. 'Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?'
'Every one of them,' Yossarian told him.
'Every one of whom?'
'Every one of who do you think?'
'I haven't any idea.'
'Then how do you know they aren't?'
'Because...' Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.
Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs om them, and it wasn't funny at all. And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier. There was nothing funny about living like a bum in a tent in Pianosa between fat mountains behind him and a placid blue sea in front that could gulp down a person with a cramp in the twinkling of an eye and ship him back to shore three days later, all charges paid, bloated, blue and putrescent, water draining out through both cold nostrils.
Orr sniggered as he shook his head. 'I did it to protect my good reputation in case anyone ever caught me walking around with crab apples in my cheeks. with rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good story. But I never knew if it got across or not, since it's pretty tough to make people understand you when you're talking to them with two crab apples in your cheeks.'
The nightmares appeared to Hungry Joe with celestial punctuality every single night he spent in the squadron throughout the whole harrowing ordeal when he was not flying combat missions and was waiting once again for the orders sending him home that never came. Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they would begin to have shrieking nightmares of their won, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from the separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds.
'They're trying to kill me,' Yossarian told him calmly.
'No one's trying to kill you,' Clevinger cried.
'Then why are they shooting at me?' Yossarian asked.
'They're shooting at everyone,' Clevinger answered. 'They're trying to kill everyone.'
'And what difference does that make?'
Clevinger was already on the way, half out of his chair with emotion, his eyes moist and his lips quivering and pale. As always occurred when he quarreled over principles in which he believed passionately, he would end up gasping furiously for air and blinking back bitter tears of conviction. There were many principles in which Clevinger believed passionately. He was crazy.
'Who's they?' he wanted to know. 'Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?'
'Every one of them,' Yossarian told him.
'Every one of whom?'
'Every one of who do you think?'
'I haven't any idea.'
'Then how do you know they aren't?'
'Because...' Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration.
Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs om them, and it wasn't funny at all. And if that wasn't funny, there were lots of things that weren't even funnier. There was nothing funny about living like a bum in a tent in Pianosa between fat mountains behind him and a placid blue sea in front that could gulp down a person with a cramp in the twinkling of an eye and ship him back to shore three days later, all charges paid, bloated, blue and putrescent, water draining out through both cold nostrils.
Orr sniggered as he shook his head. 'I did it to protect my good reputation in case anyone ever caught me walking around with crab apples in my cheeks. with rubber balls in my hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good story. But I never knew if it got across or not, since it's pretty tough to make people understand you when you're talking to them with two crab apples in your cheeks.'
The nightmares appeared to Hungry Joe with celestial punctuality every single night he spent in the squadron throughout the whole harrowing ordeal when he was not flying combat missions and was waiting once again for the orders sending him home that never came. Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe's shrieking nightmares that they would begin to have shrieking nightmares of their won, and the piercing obscenities they flung into the air every night from the separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds.
The Invitation
Enjoyable enough AFFF-ish film about friends coming together more than two years after tragedy of a dying child of main character and his ex. Quite predictable and some scenes were repetitive. Also, the "shocking end" was, well, mehhhh. But good for a late Friday evening.
45 Years
Charlotte Rampling stars in this amazing film about a long slowly unraveling marriage. Amazingly subdued story with strong emotional currents without ever needing strong visual or audio cues.
Friday, 14 April 2017
Trentemöller - "Spinning" (Fixion)
Hypnotic electronics, female voice, slow impending beat, wheezing synths. Quite good.
values of β will give rise to dom!
The very first use of Unix in the "real business" of Bell Labs was to type and produce patent applications, and for a while in the early 1970s we had three typists busily typing away in the grotty lab on the sixth floor. One day someone came in and observed on the paper sticking out of one of the Teletypes, displayed in magnificent isolation, this ominous phrase:
But the phrase itself was just so striking! Utterly meaningless, but it looks like what... a warning? What is "dom?"
At the same time, we were experimenting with text-to-voice software by Doug McIlroy and others, and of course the phrase was tried out with it. For whatever reason, its rendition of "give rise to dom!" accented the last word in a way that emphasized the phonetic similarity between "doom" and the first syllable of "dominance." It pronounced "beta" in the British style, "beeta." The entire occurrence became a small, shared treasure.
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html
values of β will give rise to dom!It was of course obvious that the typist had interrupted a printout (generating the "!" from the ed editor) and moved up the paper, and that the context must have been something like "varying values of beta will give rise to domain wall movement" or some other fragment of a physically plausible patent application.
But the phrase itself was just so striking! Utterly meaningless, but it looks like what... a warning? What is "dom?"
At the same time, we were experimenting with text-to-voice software by Doug McIlroy and others, and of course the phrase was tried out with it. For whatever reason, its rendition of "give rise to dom!" accented the last word in a way that emphasized the phonetic similarity between "doom" and the first syllable of "dominance." It pronounced "beta" in the British style, "beeta." The entire occurrence became a small, shared treasure.
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html
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