Hello readers,
The great Jenny Disci, who died about 20 years ago, wrote: review At the London Review of Books. Her rating doesn’t surprise me, but it’s a good example of how to analyze mediocre texts sharply rather than cruel. Instead, it was a few lines from the intro. Here she is on the subject of reading:
When you read, you reveal that you have withdrawn your attention from the people around you. Probably your interests and interests. Who can say? You are not available. The ability to physically exist but not actually exist is that people who are supposed to love and care for you live in their heads and their thoughts are theirs. It’s a disturbing memory. That may be worrisome.
Anyone who reads too much and is disciplined as a child will be familiar with this feeling. (Are the children still scolded for reading too much, or are modern parents kneeling and weeping in joy?)
Today, the “worries” that Diski describes are more commonly felt when you’re with someone who hangs up the phone in a previously shared mental space. It remains eerie, no matter how often this happens, or how often you do it yourself.
According to Diski, the advantage of voluntarily participating in a book is that it is “a way to commit yourself to the vision of an invisible being.” You can’t say the same thing on the phone. Disappearing on your device is being kidnapped — what exactly is it? The charm of colorful moving shapes? “algorithm”? Want to stop boredom and social discomfort?
Below are some objects that you will reach instead if your mind moves you.
— —Molly
“Down the Rabbit Hole”, translated by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Rosalind Harvey
Fiction, 2011
Tired of being imprisoned from your own perspective? Tired of autofiction? Are you anxious to live in a rich mosaic of precocious Mexican boys? This is one prescription.
Tochtli lives in a secluded palace with his father, a drug trafficker, and a series of flashy people. His hobbies are watching samurai movies, reading dictionaries and collecting hats. His biggest wish is Pygmy hippopotamusLooks like a cross between seals and Fujisicles.
The integration of new endangered species is not because Tochtli’s father already maintains a private zoo for lions and tigers, both as a macho exhibit and a convenient way to dispose of enemy carcasses. that It’s eccentric. By Chapter 2, Tochtli is on his way to Liberia. Liberia is the place to go if you are in the mini hippopotamid market.
Someone should launch the world’s most concise novel award and generously give this award the first award (proposed amount: $ 100 million). On page 70, Villalobos summons a complete moral, historical and aesthetic landscape.
Please read if you like: Elmar Mendoza, Günter Grass’s “The Tin Drum”, Richard Hughes’s “Jamaica Gale”
Available from: FSG original
“Connoisseur” by Evan S. Connell
Fiction, 1974
Muhlbach is an executive at an insurance company in New York. On a business trip to the southwest, he wanders around an antique store and is fascinated by pre-Columbian statues. The owner is not an expert, but believes the work is genuine. Mühlbach spends $ 30 to take the little man home. The transaction is quick but monumental. Within an hour, he crossed the threshold from a normal man to an obsessed collector.
Upon returning home, Mühlbach neglects his official obligation to peruse the scholarly texts on the Olmec civilization and the ceramic figurines of the island of Jina. The pursuit of artifacts has become a religion of substitutes, offering aesthetic delight (seeing great specimens), community transcendentalism (at auctions where other collectors live), and even the quest for truth in the process of certification. ..
But is Mühlbach breaking the noble path? Or just indulge in terrible greed? Connell published this novel in 1974, before the 1980s art market entered turbo mode. This is an elegant and intimate portrayal of the lost era.
Please read if you like: SN Behrman’s “Duveen”, Sarah Thornton’s “7 days of art world“Monitor special rare objects on internet auction sites
Available from: Counterpoint (Or if you’re going to scoop up the first edition at a second-hand bookstore Excellent cover).
