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Summer Reading
Part Two
by Karina Wolf
Against Nature (Joris-Karl Huysmans)
For the budding aesthete and all levels of control freak (meaning, of course, all New Yorkers), Huysmans offers a solution for anyone who wants to escape the discomfort and ennui of seaside and summer. I took another look during a bad trip to Nettuno, which is the Italian twin city to Belmar, NJ.
This is anti-beach reading in the best sense. A wealthy Parisian retreats to a country house in order to devote himself to a life of aesthetic refinement and dies as a result of his excessive pleasure. The book’s plot is said to have directed the behavior of Wilde’s Dorian Gray , causing the main character to live an amoral life of sin and hedonism.
Compleet Molesworth (Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle)
Hilariously illustrated, the Molesworth series recounts the eponymous character’s years at St. Custard’s, a 1950s English boarding school. Half the fun is deciphering the slang; the anti-hero’s misadventures prefigure Harry Potter and Burgess’ Nadsat lingo.
Also clears up any niggling questions you might have about parts of speech:
Social snobery. A gerund ‘cuts’ a gerundive:
You Can Get There From Here, Shirley MacLaine
I love Hollywood memoirs and I love Shirley MacLaine.
She can be the most scenery-chewing of actors and often writes the purplest prose; she is also candid, funny and connected—she knows everyone. In this volume (there are quite a number), she chronicles working for the McGovern campaign and traveling as a delegate to China.
Scandinavian authors who I’m going to read any second: IMPAC award-winning Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses; the Norwegian Norwegians read instead of Nazi-sympathizer Knut Hamsun, Tarjei Versaas (The Ice Palace); and Scandinavian crime writer Henning Mankell (The Man Who Smiled).
The Best of Myles (Flann O’Brien)
Collected works of the Irish humorist best known to Lost viewership as author of The Third Policeman.
I just spent a month rooming in an 100 degree, un-air conditioned apartment with three PhD students who felt compelled to quote Homer at the dinner table: “That would be Chapman’s Homer—the Homer of Keats? The version used by Shakespeare?”
These vignettes kept me from triple homicide. O’Brien, writing as Myles na gCopaleen, composed the columns for the Irish Times. Keats and Chapman are depicted as Hope and Crosby-esque pals whose misadventures conclude in puns worthy of the Marx brothers.
Karina Wolf is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbles here.
OH KARINA HOW WE WISH THAT YOU WOULD KILL AGAIN
“Check the Meaning” – Richard Ashcroft (mp3)
“God in the Numbers” – Richard Ashcroft (mp3)
“Lord I’ve Been Trying” – Richard Ashcroft (mp3)
“Return of the Grevious Angel” – Gram Parsons (mp3)
“We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning” – Gram Parsons (mp3)
“Hearts on Fire” – Gram Parsons (mp3)
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING
Molly reviewed Knocked Up.
Jeff was confused by a message we left him.
We had an interesting conversation with our parents.
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[...] In Which We Advise Reading For The Budding Aesthetes In Our Midst [...]
Pingback by In Which Your Guide To Fine Realist Literature Is Tao Lin « This Recording July 8, 2008 @ 2:05 pmUmm, while I’m always happy to see any mention of Against the Grain (or Against Nature), I think you seriously missed the mark in your synopsis. For one thing, Des Essentes, the main character, doesn’t die “as a result of his excessive pleasure” at the end of the book, but rather is advised by his doctor to seek the company of society, from which he has become increasingly withdrawn. His true crisis is existential, which is why the book is so remarkably modern in tone and its pessmism (albeit one rooted in Schopenhauer) so corrosive, and why it was featured as “the little yellow book” in Dorian Gray. Also noteworthy is that the narrative (and yes, the prose is exquisite!) is rooted in the kind of contemplation and “memoire involuntaire” that would be taken to the highest level a few decades later by Proust. (In short, Huysmans was in part reacting against the tedious school of realism espoused by Zola and Co.) Oh and not coincidentally, it’s seriously gay and campy in a way that’s pretty much mindblowing when you consider that it was written in the 1870s.
Comment by The Gay Recluse July 8, 2008 @ 6:21 pm[...] can prove tricky indeed, but luckily I’m here to help. Let me walk you through several examples that may at first [...]
Pingback by In Which Sarah Has The Courage To Read These Books So You Don’t Have To « This Recording July 10, 2008 @ 2:51 pm[...] Karina on her summer reading [...]
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