Photo: goodreads
Remember, on the first day of school, you will be asked what your did on your summer vacation. I hope you’ve been writing. Honestly, I’m stalled out waiting for notes. I tried to jump back into a screenplay outline that feels dead on the vine in this post-Barbie landscape. Actually, Barbie has nothing to do with it. When do you declare a patient dead? DNR? Now that I’ve finished War & Peace, I’m determined to read a lot of really short books that also promise to change my life. I’m starting with Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector. So far, it’s brilliant. And she wrote it when she was 23. Fuck me dead.
What are you reading? What’s inspiring?
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Betsy Lerner 
Speaking of short, reading a lot of Claire Keegan. Brilliance, brevity, perfection. Also just blurbed for a book that has become my new #1 on the list of favourite books: Gin, Turpentine, Pennyroyal, Rue by Christine Higdon. Just exquisite
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, a book on writing by George Saunders. His book Lincoln in the Bardo is brilliant. And writing 5 days a week, sometimes exploring markets on weekends.
All best. Glad you’re back!
You make me laugh so hard, Betsy! I’m reading Janet Malcom’s “Still Pictures,” “Magnified,” by Minnie Bruce Pratt (RIP), and Louise Gluck’s latest, “Winter Recipes from the Collective.” All brilliant!
Cheers from “hot as hell” Fresno!
Phyllis
I’ve just finished reading Convoy HG-76 taking the fight to Hitler’s U-boats which is pretty self-explanatory. A bit like Brexit, but with friend of the moron’s moron, Boris Johnston below water. Up periscope. Where the Crawdad’s Sing is worth a look. Bit of light reading.
Writing. Struggling to write. Thinking of writing, and then lots and lots of deleting. Etc.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of driving about the state, too, so, I’ve been listening to audiobooks. One that is blowing my mind is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Never in a million years did I think I’d “read” a book about gamers/gaming. I’d just signed up for Spotify and it was listed as a favorite, so I thought why not. Hooked immediately. Chapters and chapters later, still hooked, mesmerized, and truly blown away.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is SO good that I went on a Zevin binge and read Young Jane Young, The Storied Life of AJ Fikry, and The Hole We’re In. But Tomorrow is best of all. I couldn’t stop thinking about that part with Marx.
And, like Bobbi, I discovered Claire Keegan, and loved Foster, and Walk the Blue Fields, and today I read Small Things Like These which was lovely. And I’m finishing up the Lucy Barton books by Elizabeth Strout, home to some of my favorite characters ever.
I also liked The Candy House, mainly for that last section which I have read approximately six hundred seventy-two times. Yellowface was fun. The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, if you need a good cry. Oh! And the Ocean Vuong book, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. WOWZA. That book.
I’m always way behind what everyone else is reading, but whatever. The books are new if they’re new to me.
I started to do the same thing! Go on a Zevin binge. It’s funny b/c I had no idea she wrote The Storied Life of AJ Fikry until I looked her up the other day. And yes, that PART with Marx. . .
When I’m done with my “work” reads (books for blurbs) I’ve got to check out Claire Keegan’s work. I read On Earth -and I absolutely loved the story part, not so much when he broke the rules and wrote certain passages the way he did. But, writers like that get to do the unusual. Like you, I’m never reading the latest, mostly because I’m still reading books I purchased 3-4 years ago. 😒
“What are you reading? What’s inspiring?”
War and Peace, as previously discussed.
Richard P. Feynman’s Lectures on Physics. In its way, as long as W&P.
Various legal materials, as always: currently I slog through Kayleigh McEnany’s sworn testimony before the J6 commission, during which she displays herself a well-coached witness by repeating the phrase, “To the best of my recollection” so many times (575 in a 322-page double-spaced transcript) that I ran the redaction subroutine in Adobe on the PDF to blank out the noise and make the passage smoother (it seems at times she is saying, “To the best of my recollection, I don’t recall if I recall”); and also, as soon as it dropped from the presses I read Inquisitor Smith’s 45-page indictment of the 45th person (I’ve read Smith’s previous indictments in closely related matters; he does good work, knows how to tell a story).
And yesterday, I began reading my way through my Ukraine War digital library, chronologically.
There are inspirations of various sorts in these readings. The long and whirling story of persons set in a long-ago time of great historical note. The well-reasoned display of the precise and intricate and often mysterious ways in which our universe is structured. The reassuring ways in which legal structures are maintained, so that society may function as something other than a vast unending pit of bloody exploitation and vengeance. And how one person can change the world in one instant through words — “I need ammunition, I don’t need a ride.”
Y’know, Tetman, I do not have the brainpower or patience or focus required to read those weighty important books you spend so much time reading. Yet once in a teal or thereabouts moon, I land at your website and fill my insubstantial boots with the daily quotes you lovingly curate from such works.
And every time, I feel a bit better, perhaps somehow wiser, certainly wider and deeper, in a very good way.
Those, and your Gordon Lish notes, are an amazing resource for any writer hoping to better themselves.
I know both have helped me to write better stories.
So, thank you.
As for reading, I just read The Apple Tree by John Galsworthy. Oh yes, I fell deeply in love, had my heart broken, vowed to read it again right away, couldn’t bring myself to go through it. And yet… there will be time… (but do I dare?)
Well, therein lies problem…
“Mal-adjusted to life—man’s organism!”
After, I felt i then had to read “MURRAY’S Hippolytus of Euripides,” which The Apple Tree had been built on.
Weighty and important, all that felt
Weighed down with important thoughts, me, now..
Yet still, somehow, so hopelessly weighed down, I am in love.
“The Apple-tree, the singing, and the gold.”
Here’s to you, and to great writing, and to love, despite its weight.
Hey, harry, as always, it’s good to see you again. I don’t know if you heard the news, since it happened early last spring, but Franny, the cat who could read, has passed away.
On to other matters. For what I read, well, War and Peace — I gotta, I put that off far too long. Feynman? Here’s my secret — I don’t try to master the math. It suits my purposes to recognize that it shows how precisely the pieces of physical reality fit together, so I skim across the top of it and go for the wordy meat. Once you get into electromagnetic fields, you are in a strange world. Yes, we’re all there, but don’t think much about it. I tell you, James Clerk Maxwell was a monumental figure. The political and legal stuff I read, well, of course I do. Not only is law the field I plow for dollars, but look at what has happened to the United States. One thing I think is certain — the events of the past seven years have awakened Americans to the function of law in their culture and in the world. And to Ukraine — my wife’s parents were WW2 refugees from Ukraine. Ukraine matters more than average in our home. Slava Ukraini!
One book I neglected to list that I was reading was Gertrude Stein’s ‘Last Operas and Plays.’ That’s okay, because I’m not reading it any longer. I got about halfway through and yesterday abandoned it. I kept waiting for it to grab me, and it did not. In fact, it was one of the most boring books I have ever read. I recognize that she is important to the history of literature, but I would not recommend that particular book to anyone who is not a scholar with a narrow focus and professional need.
I put down the Stein and moved on to the next book in my Little Free Library stack, ‘Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America.’ Looks to be interesting. Gah, there’s so much to read! Best get to it.