a pulp book of sci fi popcorn trash that obscures a horrifying bleakness about not only the state of humankind, but a menacing ambivalence and suspenda pulp book of sci fi popcorn trash that obscures a horrifying bleakness about not only the state of humankind, but a menacing ambivalence and suspended state of skeptical cruelty in all potential life in the known and unknown universe. nonetheless, liu struggles overtime through plot twists and drama and shocking entertainment to prove to you that HUMAN LOVE can vanquish such terrible darkness. this trilogy has been the greatest surprise and joy to come across this year and although i’m holding my breath to read the last of the three (i don’t want it to end) i just cannot wait to see where it could possibly go from here in the unfurling of escalating scale and drama. ...more
i can completely understand why this is the sun from which all of ernaux's other books are satellites and planets and small asteroids in hurtling trani can completely understand why this is the sun from which all of ernaux's other books are satellites and planets and small asteroids in hurtling transit of emotional space... it's certainly what pinned her the nobel prize, the award that sent me on my now two year endeavor through her bibliography. and while this isn't my favorite of her novels, it is an accomplishment that one could not dare describe as anything less than a masterpiece, a magnum opus, the kind of nouns people throw at anything daunting in its spectacular scope. but this is more than anything else you'll read, a lurching mass of Scope and Scale that hauls over a half century of french history in the breathless, vivid body of one microsmatic life. cultural history and autobiography mingle into a fresco of humanity that reflects the very movement of time itself... slow in the past and increasingly faster, more urgent, out of control, frenzied. but to make still that speed is the masterstroke of the effort, affirmative of a beauty and essential truth in the art of literature and creative expression.
ernaux describes too many things too beautifully for me to pick a single favorite quote, but here's just one from the top of my notebook: "we would be amazed to find ourselves a part of this huge and nebulous population whose dim roar, rising from the highways morning and night, seemed to imbue us with an invisible and powerful reality."...more
this efficient and cutting essay on japanese aesthetics by one of the nation's best novelists is in a single stroke beautiful, mournful and very funnythis efficient and cutting essay on japanese aesthetics by one of the nation's best novelists is in a single stroke beautiful, mournful and very funny. tanizaki manages a deft summary of the eastern world's penchant for darkness and shadow in cultural juxtaposition to the west and a nostalgic yearning for a particular look of things now faded into the gleam of westernization and neon lights. nowhere else in the whole of human's literary output will you find such elegant contemplations on the physiological and meditative use of a restroom, of a wall, of a lantern, pottery, ink and paper. though he argues that the handsome and ethereal jet of the world he pines for will likely never find its place back on earth, he accomplishes an acute fossilization of that aesthetic so convincing one conversely imagines that such a sensibility is perhaps immortal and everlasting...more
experiencing loneliness in my own life, i turn again and again as i do like every month or so to one of the remaining ernaux novels i haven't touched experiencing loneliness in my own life, i turn again and again as i do like every month or so to one of the remaining ernaux novels i haven't touched yet. so funny that i seemed to have bypassed all of her "important" work (The Years, The Happening) in favor of these controlled distillations of her erotic ego. The Young Man is not so different from The Possession or Simple Passion but is still a rewarding half hour that stretches the distance between genitals into the distance between two people, between two people from the civilized world, between life and death. beautiful prose abundant as always: "I would like to be inside you and come out of you so I could be like you."...more
what a marvel to witness the full blossom of rooney’s writing as the strands of henry james, jane austen, joyce, all present in her voice before, now what a marvel to witness the full blossom of rooney’s writing as the strands of henry james, jane austen, joyce, all present in her voice before, now pull cohesively together for the first time into what is easily one of the great contemporary literary works. intermezzo, a novel about the interval time between grief and acceptance, features writing of the interior being so private and universal it can stagger and attack the reader in its voice. beautiful lighting and descriptions of the rain slate a fearsome depiction of the emotional and sexual mind as it’s never been rendered before. a total romantic conclusion, the summit of what all literature is working for… which is really an accomplishment when the medium has been so recently drained of its innovative power.
“life, after all, has not slipped free of its netting. There is no such life, slipping free: life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things.”...more
phenomenal: not necessarily in the way i tend to like my science fiction (sexual, confrontational) but by means of curiosity and inspiration. althoughphenomenal: not necessarily in the way i tend to like my science fiction (sexual, confrontational) but by means of curiosity and inspiration. although cixin's writerly voice only ever makes it thumb deep into the psyche of an individual, when it comes to the workings of the universe and the possibilities outstretched before humankind he is fathomless. something like a protonic detective novel, he introduces several great questions of science and then picks at them for thrilling, satisfying entertainment fodder that simultaneously manages to generate real inquisitiveness about the laws and workings of reality in the reader. i found myself bristling with questions and hungry to discuss the novel in a fashion i imagine old school sci fi readers used to experience many decades ago, before the world caught up with the genre's ideas and structures.
beneath the intrigue, there is also an ethical question about survival and destruction, how to reconcile with a bloody universe's momentum towards oblivion. do we devote ourselves to panspecies communism? spiral into decadence, already well aware of our fate? how does the individual justify his existence in the yawning horror of inevitability? contextualized by the cultural revolution, depicted with gory intensity here, these matters are hotter and more urgent than ever. not sure if i'll find myself agreeing with cixin by the end of these novels but i am already starving to spend more time pondering my own philosophy in the midst of his imagination...more
a stirring and provocative book of sexual honesty in the twenty first century, very bold! i like this trend of young twenty-something writers stirringa stirring and provocative book of sexual honesty in the twenty first century, very bold! i like this trend of young twenty-something writers stirring the pot with unapologetically grisly erotic novels (also encountered last year in Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan, Sally Rooney, et cetera) where the popular asexuality of the current moment feels quite deliberately molested and sullied. by thoroughly confronting a kind of sex -- in this case, a "queer" woman fizzling out of a homosexual relationship for a polyamorous one with a man -- that pisses off common sensibilities, something very actual and accurate comes out, the dangerous meat and matter of how human beings come to know one another through intercourse. real somatic grossness and the actual fleshiness of sex is mostly absent in fishman's beautiful and empyreal prose, but she presents something far more intense and urgent. really glad i read it
"sex forces you back into awe -- reveals how difficult it is to know someone, just how much attention and self-delusion are required to conjure love."...more
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