Bookreview

Review Notes Introduction “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Ch 4 “‘You are the only man I ever heard of,’ Mengel said to me this morning, ‘who has a bad conscience about what he did in the war. Everybody else, no matter what side he was on, no matter what he did, is sure a good man could not have acted in other ways.’” TB: Squaring w/ my people-inherently-good thing. Should probably condition good-at-birth and then address that when they get lost, they still want to be good. But they find other lost people who create different meanings for the word ‘good’ that are within their power. Ch 9 “It wasn’t that Helga and I were crazy about Nazis. I can’t ssay, on the other hand, that we hated them. They were a big enthusiastic part of our audience, important people in the society in which we lived. They were people. Only in retrospect can I think of them as trailing slime behind. To be frank—I can’t think of them as doing that even now. I knew them too well, worked too hard in my time for their trust and applause.” Ch 13 “Those whose orders I carried out in Germany were as ignorant and insane as Dr. Jones. I knew it. God help me, I carried out their instructions anyway.” Ch 18 “Because you could never have served the enemy as well as you served us,” he said. “I realized that almost all the ideas that I hold now, that make me unashamed of anything I may have felt or done as a Nazi, came not from Hitler, not from Goebbels, not from Himmler—but from you.” He took my hand. “You alone kept me from concluding that Germany had gone insane.” TB: Chilling. Remember the moral. Wonder if any of these loudmouth podcasters have read this. Ch 21 “An eighty-eight was set up in it, and the gun was manned by boys about fifteen or sixteen years old. There was a success story for Heinz’s late wife—boys that young, and yet with men’s uniforms and a fully-armed death trap all their own.” Ch 28 Kraft, oblivious to me in my leopard skin, fired again. He was using a Luger as big as a siege howitzer. It was chambered and bored for mere twenty-two’s however, making anti-climatic peewee bangs. Kraft fired again and a sandbag two feet to the left of the target’s head bled sand. Ch 29 “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.” Ch 39 Jones wasn’t completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined. (p) Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell—keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year. (p) The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in mose cases. (p) The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information— (…) That was how Nazi Germany could sense no important differences between civilization and hydrophobia. Ch 43 “There are plenty of good reasons for fighting,” I said, “but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where’s evil? It’s that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It’s that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.” “It’s that part of an imbecile,” I said, “that punishes and vilifies and makes war gladly.” Review Wow! Another certified Vonnegut classic. I have yet to read one that I haven’t liked. When I was debating what book to read next (choices were this and South and West by Didion), unanimous support for this across two Discord servers. One friend said this is their all time favorite Vonnegut. ...

Review Notes p10 - I had imagined the Second World War as a punishment specifically designed to deprive me of my father, had counted up my errors and, with an egocentricity which then approached autism and which affects me still in dreams and fevers and marriage, found myself guilty. p14 - …I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center. I did not much want to talk about this. p115 - I seem to have been rewarde, out of all proportion to my generally undistinguished academic record, with an incommensurate number of prizes and scholarships (…) and recommendations and special attention and very probably the envy and admiration of at least certain of my peers. Curiously, I only remember failing, failures, and slights and refusals. TB: I relate to this just a little bit. p117 - At the center of this story there is a terrible secret, a kernel of cyanide, and the secret is that the story doesn’t matter, doesn’t make any difference, doesn’t figure. The snow still falls in the Sierra. The Pacific still trembles in its bowl. The great tectonic plates strain against each other while we sleep and wake. Rattlers in the dry grass. Sharks beneath the Golden Gate. In the South they are convinced that they have bloodied their place with history. In the West we do not believe that anything we do can bloody the land, or change it, or touch it. p126 - Part of it is simply what looks right to the eye, sounds right to the ear. I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look “right” to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places. Review I liked it! Reading about the South is always a little fascinating. The regionality of this country is at times hard to reconcile, especially today with this vague monoculture and supposed shrunken world. I did not grow up in The South, but I grew up in a place that was quite insistent it was Southern, and would you please remember that, everything in their character insisted. ...

Review Notes The Feminist (p1) p11 - But if agonizing about being a creep is what proves he’s not a creep, and he stops worrying about being a creep, wouldn’t that make him a creep? p13 - Taking trips and seeing movies and attending events all seem pointless without anyone to experience them with, so it feels like his life cannot progress or even truly begin until he has found someone who will return his love. Pics (p31) Interesting portrayal of texting. No bother about picking up a phone really, just hard cuts to different type and formatting. Some discussion of scrolling through… p46 - The friendship, it seems, has been quietly ruined by its reckless redistricting. … thinking about how his rejecting her to preserve their friendship is exactly what ended it, how it used to be a happy voluntary arrangement, and has now become something she is forced to settle for. p47 - Alison realizes she has nothing new to report about her life that doesn’t in some way involve trying to get over him. p63 - She knows casual sex isn’t inherently degrading, and any stigma around it is backward and boring, so it’s extra annoying that her own experiences are failing to affirm her, convincing her that she must be doing things wrong and is somehow different, otherwise she would not be finding herself reigniting the slut-shame she thought she’d intellectually smothered in college. p65 - No surprise, then, that she finds solace in the simplicity of hate—how comforting it feels to hate Neil, how succulent the fantasy that the world’s full complement of injustice could be concentrated in one stupid guy, and that to hate him silently, invent ways to undermine him, conscript others into this project, was to increase the world’s fairness. p71 - What hurts the most is knowing that his rejection of her was fair. p91 - And she will feel the same, nothing, and think, maybe I am nothing, and this is the best I can offer to others, my absence in their lives, though they will never notice it or thank me. Still, their lives will be better for it. Agegao, or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression (p92) p95 - After a year goes by with his sexuality still theoretical, Kant suspects he must build his resume. The apps, everyone says, the apps! But when he tries one it feels like a minuscule butcher shop, an infinite display case of rumps, loins, and wursts. Quickly he acquires a horrid efficiency at rejecting men on the basis of a two-inch photo or two-line bio—for having close-set eyes, or long gums, or because they kayak, believe in astrology, say they have “man fur.” Even as he is vexed to discover his unjustified pickiness, what really inhibits him is imagining the men on the other end looking at his own unsmiling, gormless photo and laughing at it. p108 - So all of this caretaking is just pointless sublimation, Kant knows, he really is a genius at channeling his bullshit into laudable endeavors, and it only deepens his conviction that he’ll never be able to give Julian the easy loving he deserves, so maybe he should end things before they get any more entangled, so that it won’t hurt as much to leave him. p111 - Kant realizes it sounds like he’s fishing for compliments, and that in doing so he might find the lake empty. He apologizes and stares at his stupid face in the sideview mirror, getting sucked into an emotional gravity well where he pities Julian for dating such a loser, and resents Julian for pitying him, and pities himself for being pitied, all of which cancel out into silence. Just a ton of notes between 108-120. p125 - my note, not from book: This book having the strange effect of me seeing my anxities in others & the stuff like this and making me feel pleasantly normal by comparison. Hex code for perfect homemade simulacum - (#)F6F3E9. No comment. Our Dope Feature (p143) No specific notes on this one, just an overriding sense of what an asshole the narrator is, and how horrible. So little insight and of course that is the point. Main Character (p170) p200 - my note: Realizing this book is taking every thought and emotion that rejection unsettles and stretches them out far, far, into their maximum. Sometimes even past satire and into total absurdity. p201 - …the years I’d wasted in self-recrimination for betraying myself when there was no self to betray. p231 - I guess we feel responsible to the image of ourselves we’ve installed in other people’s heads. p238 - my note: hilarious introduction of the author into this sort of meta-narrative in a quasi-fourth-wall break. Really enjoyed all this. Sixteen Metaphors (p244) My note: This little collection of metaphors is pretty depressing. So, basically, I like most of them. A lot of them are pretty mean-spirited about the self. Very in line with the rest of the book. p245 - There are plenty of fish in the sea. But you’re not a fish, just an ugly idiot trying to catch one. p246 - On a road trip, your friends in the front seats are enjoying their conversation; you can barely catch a single word. When you try to lean forward and contribute, they listen, kbut you can tell they’re annoyed by the effort to include you, so you stop trying. By the time you reach your destination, they’ve forgotten you’re in the car at all, and they drop the car off at the rental place with you still in it. You consider saying something about it, then think better of it, because you don’t want them to feel bad. Re: Rejection (p249) Another snicker-inducing meta-narrative. It basically summarizes the short stories and pokes holes in them. Lots of fun. p257 - Perhaps this is why the protagonists of Rejection each at some point, after restlessly shuttling between concealing and revealing, eventually retreat to isolation, their only sure defense. p258 - …the final irony, one that at least your writing seems to grasp, is that rejection is not one-way, and always comes paired with its opposite. For a rejection to be settled, first you–the reject–must hear, and comprehend, and accept. Review I have been habitually in the book store on Saturdays around 10 or 11am for no good reason since getting back into town. I have a 4x4 IKEA KALLAX shelf at home stuffed with unread books and a pile of books on my coffee table and on my record player just staring at me. Yet, I keep going to the store. Anyway, I saw this sitting on the new arrivals table and had a skim of the inner jacket and a random page and thought, well, fuck it. Why not. ...

Review Notes p50 - That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly. p55 - “Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. “Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.” p60-61 - The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea. p64 There are three things that are brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to be cramped. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence. He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all. p66 - “I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.” ¶ The thousand times he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it. The page made me think of Hamlet. “…to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them…” Hamlet holds a special place in my heart and I suppose I see it in many things. p88 - I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him mad. (TB: were it so easy.) p103 - “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” p104-105 - It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides I believe it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it. ¶ I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are paid to do it. p110 “I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.” (TB: feeling like you’ve ruined something in the seeking of it or the attainment of it, or of its vision, anyway.) Now is not the time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is. p115 - What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do? ¶ “Fight them,” he said. “I’ll fight them until I die.” p117 - I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to fight again. Last. TB: Even knowing that Hem did not enjoy ideas of theme in story, it is hard for me to read this as anything but an analogy for the struggle of self against. Against nature, self, etc. Ideas of persistence, despair, hope, skill, and will. Also the idea of corrupting or destroying a thing in the seeking or achievement of it. Published 1952. Hem died by suicide in 1961. — # Review ...

Review Notes “He says opening bottles is what makes drunkards,” Bill explained. “That’s right,” said Nick. He was impressed. He had never thought of that before. He had always thought it was solitary drinking that made drunkards. Pages 46-48. Nick is exploring the end of his relationship and is clearly depressed and trying to put on a brave face in front of his friend. His friend is telling him all the ways in which he is better off, which is always high on the list of things you do not want to hear and do not believe, anyway. Then the idea of hope comes to him. Then, of course, he is happy. “He says he’s never been crazy, Bugs,” Ad said. “He’s got a lot coming to him.” Review This short little book of short stories from Hemingway is good. I’ve read some of these, mostly the Nick Adams stories, before in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway which I’ve gotten about halfway through on my Kindle years ago. ...

Review I am not a great lover of poetry and am usually stumped by it. Historically if poetry isn’t a haiku or in iambic pentameter I am a little too dumb to read it, because I don’t know how to make it sound in my inner voice. Don’t ask me to read it out loud. I am self-conscious of this blind spot. I tried reading The Waste Lands last year and was totally bumfuzzled by it. ...

Review This did not work for me and I detected that quickly. Ronin is a great short, and it’s one of those things that I don’t think having more of is that much of a good thing. There are many, many characters in this book. Too many, I think. I wish it had focused on the Ronin and Fox and left many of the others behind. It felt too scattered and felt very long and drawn out because of that. Every time we got to a Kouru chapter I wanted to skip it because I found that character and their story uninteresting. ...

Review Notes / Quotes Ch 1 What Writing Is & Does Then there is the other secret. There isn’t any symbolysm (sic). Ch 2 The Qualities of a Writer The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. Good writing is true writing. Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood. Ch 4 What to Write About The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life—and one is as good as the other. Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damn hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you. Love is also a good subject as you might be said to have discovered. Other major subjects are the money from which we get riches and poores. Also avarice. … Murder is a good one so get a swell murder into [your] next book and sit back. Ch 5 Advice to Writers All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Remember to get the weather into your god damned book—weather is very important. Ch 6 Working Habits Mice: Do you know what is going to happen when you write a story? Y.C.: Almost never. I start to make it up and have happen what would happen as it goes along. The minute I quit trying to write the rest of it is easy. Ch 7 Characters Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to by symbols. Ch 13 The Writer’s Life …Had never had the real old melancholia before and am glad to have had it so I know what people go through. It makes me more tolerant of what happened to my father. But [Bernard Berenson] I think we should never be too pessimistic about what we know we have done well because we should have some reward and the only reward is that which is within ourselves… I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket. All criticism is shit anyway. Nobody knows anything about it except yourself. Review A nice little book collecting notes on writing from Hemingway over his career and across his publications. It is probably foolhardy to read a book about a writer’s habit in search of your own habit, but it is at least interesting to compare and contrast. I thought a lot about Stephen King’s On Writing while reading this. King writes 10 pages or thereabouts a day. Hemingway might write 400 words according to this book. Neither is right nor wrong, it’s just the work of the writer. ...

Review Notes “What those ancient Greeks (who, after all, did have a bit of understanding of philosophy) assumed to be the task for an entire lifetime because expertise in doubting is not acquired in days or weeks; what was attained by the old, veteran combatant (==who had preserved the equilibrium of doubt through every seductive snare, fearlessly denying the certainty of the senses and of thought, uncompromisingly defying the anxiety of self-love and the flattering advances of sympathy==)—in our times, this is where everyone begins.” Abraham: “Lord in heave, I thank you; it is after all better that he believe me to be a monster than that he should lose faith in you.” What provokes such dedication to a thing so terrible? SK asks: what sin could be more frightful than this? “No one who was great in the world shall be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and everyone in proportion to the greatness of what he loved.” “the power whose strength is weakness, great through the wisdom whose secret is foolishness, whose form is madness, great through the love that is hatred of oneself.” “The entire content of his life is contained in this love, and yet the situation is such that it would be impossible for this to become a reality, impossible for it to be translated from ideality to reality.” “Only inferior natures forget themselves and become something new.” “For only in infinite resignation do I become transparent to myself in my eternal validity, and only then can there be talk of grasping existence by virtue of faith.” “By virtue of the absurd…” ==“Thus, then, my intention in telling the story of Abraham is to extract from it, in the form of problems, the dialectical element it contains, so that we might see what an enormous paradox faith is, a paradox that is capable of turning a murder into a holy act that is well-pleasing to God, a paradox that restores Isaac to Abraham, which no thinking can master, because faith begins precisely at the point where thinking leaves off."== (end of the Preliminary in the Problemata). In Problema I, extended discussion of the sacrifice of a daughter for ’the good of the whole community’ and what a hero that makes the father, and even moreso the fiancé. Not heroic! What the fuck! In Problema I re: a peasant more or less and approaching the King’s chamber. See page 77 for full context. “On the contrary, he should find joy in observing every rule of decorum with happy and confident enthusiasm, which is precisely what will make him openhearted and cheerful.” Difficult to suppress the chortle I made at this. Get real. “It is far more difficult to receive than to give—that is, if one has had the courage to do without and has not proven a coward in the hour of need.” Review I picked this up because it is at one point referenced in God, Human, Animal, Machine, and then I also saw it referenced in Carl Roger’s On Becoming a Person, which I was thumbing through in the bookstore the other day. I picked this up with little knowledge of Kierkegaard beyond those two citations, other than a vague awareness of his status as a philosopher/theologian. ...

Review A friend gifted this book to me for my birthday last month. I’m glad they did, because I’d have missed it otherwise! I did not quite know what to expect going in, but it proved to be a lovely mix of memoir, history, and question-asking. Very me. I’m going to keep this constrained to just my experience reading the book. This has been one of my most notated books in recent memory and a lot of my notes are questions. I’m going to resurrect my dusty substack to meander through some of those. I’ll edit this review later with links to those posts. ...