Nice. So glad to see Death of Ivan Illyich on there. For a time it was my favorite Tolstoy, which is saying a whole, whole lot. Probably need to revisit it. What did you think?Quoting baby doll (view post)
On a related note, what other stories did you read? Happily Ever After I thought was brilliant, a bitterly realistic depiction of love.
Stuff I've Watched out of *****
The Last Duel - ***
Only Murders in the Building: **
Squid Games: **.5
The other stories were "Family Happiness," "The Kreutzer Sonata," and "Master and Man." I thought the first section of "Family Happiness" dragged a bit, though it got more interesting once the troubles started, and I struggled to get interested in "The Kreutzer Sontata" and "Master and Man" to little avail. In the former, the story is merely an illustration of the narrator's eccentric views on human sexuality (which I only subsequently learned that Tolstoy shared), and the latter only became compelling for me once the characters got trapped in the snow. I found "The Death of Ivan Illych" more interesting and the character's last-minute redemption is more convincing than in "Master and Man," but on the whole, it would appear that becoming a crazy religious fanatic had a largely negative effect on Tolstoy's art.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Updated for the end of September/beginning of October. Total number of books read: Twenty-four, counting The Complete Cosmicomics as two and a half: the original Cosmicomics (1965, twelve stories) and Time and the Hunter (1967, eleven stories), plus eight more from World Memory and Other Cosmicomic Stories (1968), two from Cosmicomics Old and New (1984), and an alternate version of one of the '68 stories.
I was tempted to include just the '65 stories on my list as most (but not all) of those in Time and the Hunter aren't really stories so much as descriptions of static situations that bring the book to a dead halt, but there are also some pretty delightful ones in there as well (such as "The Origin of Birds"), and "Solar Storm" from World Memory... may be my favorite of all the Cosmicomic stories. (It's definitely in the top five.)
Robert McKee's Story is compulsively readable and there's a good bit of practical advise in there once you get past all his broad generalizations. At one point he claims that Hollywood movies dominate the world market because there haven't been any interesting European films since the early '80s when Bergman retired, but while it's entirely possible that he likes La Promesse less than I do, the fact that he mentions it at all in a book written in 1998, even in passing, suggests that he sees too many non-American movies to believe such nonsense.
A few other points on Story: I simply can't get on board with his claim that symbolism only works when the viewer doesn't notice it, which strikes me as vaguely mystical. (Does his awareness the symbolism in Les Diaboliques and The Terminator ruin those movies for him, and how precisely are those movies different from Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Piano, which he chides for their overbearing symbolism?) Also, the assumption that European funding agencies are pretentious and that real filmmakers work in the commercial mainstream is an ideological bias that McKee never examines. And finally, for someone who literally declares war on clichés, he sure loves the term "café criticism," which appears no fewer than three times in the book.
Inherent Vice is easily the weakest of the four Thomas Pynchon novels I've read (the others are V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow, and I have Against the Day and The Bleeding Edge on my shelf). As a Pynchon novel, it's never as wild and weird as the best sections of V. and Gravity's Rainbow, and as a straightforward detective story, I can't say that I was ever very curious about what happened to the missing developer and ex-girlfriend or who shot the former's bodyguard, and there are way too many characters for me to keep track of them all.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Updated for the end of October. Total number of books read: twenty-seven.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
End of November. Total number of books read: Thirty-two.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
Updated for the end of the year, since I'm not likely to read anything over the next two weeks. Total number of books read: thirty-three.
Just because...
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild
The last book I read was...
The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain
The (New) World
1. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
2. Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
3. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
4. Looking for Alaska - John Green
A much better mix of high concept ideas and linear plot than Inherent Vice. The internet and its role in modern society combined with the events surrounding 9/11 is a perfect place for Pynchon's trademark theme of paranoia. Ultimately I can draw a parallel between this Mason & Dixon, as well, which was a story about exploration and triangulating the unknown into fully developed realms. Set in 2001, the internet was still a fairly unknown entity, and Pynchon's DeepArcher (read: Departure) creation about the unexplored, encrypted parts of the deep web are beautifully realized. And their quick, inevitable commercialization signifies how much faster events happen than back in colonial times. Aside from some minor characters like Russian mobsters appearing in what are supposed to be important emotional moments that felt out of place, I don't really have much negative to say about it. Really fun, insightful, and at times haunting novel.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
Yeah, the navigation of the web and its mysteries, as well as the study of how fringe organizations try to mobilize exposure of scandalous events, were all well explored by Pynchon. Some of the foreboding (noses sniffing out incoming fear) was a nice touch, and almost everything with Maxine's dealing with her ex-husband and children connect Pynchon's themes to basic struggles of re-connection and family after the disaster, in ways that comment upon that adoption of ideology, but still suggest what is frayed and hesitant in such reconciliation. Still not sure if I like how indifferently Maxine is to transgressive sexuality--treading a close line between rape and consenuality--all in the name of learning more about the mystery, but that's really my biggest complaint.
Really want to read Mason and Dixon after this--this was such a reminder of his talents, since I hadn't read his prose since 2004.
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
1. Nobody Move - Denis Johnson
2. The Crazed - Ha Jin
3. Native Speaker - Chang-Rae Lee
1. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
2. Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
3. The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
4. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
5. Looking for Alaska - John Green
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
1. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
2. Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
3. The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
4. The Road to Los Angeles - John Fante
5. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
6. Looking for Alaska - John Green
John Fante is criminally underdiscussed. He's kind of a cross between Knut Hamsun and Bukowski. He writes very defiant, self-aware narration about misfit characters that can't escape their own fantasies. There is a tone of amusing desperation, confusion, and yearning. Just a great literary voice.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
Fiction
1. Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
2. Night Film - Marisha Pessl
3. NW - Zadie Smith
Non-Fiction (Primarily Econ/Social Science books)
1. Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
2. The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford
3. The Worldly Philosophers - Robert Heilbronner
4. Think Like a Freak - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
5. Superfreakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
6. Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes - Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich
7. Nudge - Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
8. Triumph of the City - Ed Glaeser
1. Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
2. Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon
3. The Last Picture Show - Larry McMurtry
4. The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe
5. The Road to Los Angeles - John Fante
6. The Art of War - Sun Tzu
7. Looking for Alaska - John Green
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
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