On The Nightsand…
Thanks for the photo Kensey.
So Many Books by Zaid - Just picked this up on a recommendation by Hal but I have to say it’s some pretty basic shit. He talks about all the reasons why the book will avoid obsolescence.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Nafisi - Kensey just finished it. She liked it.
Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun - Currently reading this. So very dope. Before you rush out to buy this you should know that Hamsun was an infamous Nazi sympathizer and went so far as to gift his 1920 Nobel Prize to Goebbels. An asshole of the highest order but a great stylist whose influence on modern writing can’t be overlooked.
The Medium is the Massage by Mcluhan - Classic, in a dope pocket edition…picked this up at Green Apple. Zaid up there has some weird obsession with Mcluhan.
Surrealist Subversions - Dope collection of pieces from and about American Surrealists. Picked this up from the Autonomedia table at the Anarchist book fair. A good collection to have on hand. They include some pretty obscure shit.
Novels in Three Lines by Feneon - All time favorite. From the New York Review of Books:
“Novels in Three Lines collects more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life presented with a ruthless economy that provokes laughter even as it shocks. This extraordinary trove, undiscovered until the 1940s and here translated for the first time into English, is the work of the mysterious Félix Fénéon. Dandy, anarchist, and critic of genius, the discoverer of Georges Seurat and the first French publisher of James Joyce, Fénéon carefully maintained his own anonymity, toiling for years as an obscure clerk in the French War Department. Novels in Three Lines is his secret chef-d’oeuvre, a work of strange and singular art that brings back the long-ago year of 1906 with the haunting immediacy of a photograph while looking forward to such disparate works as Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and the Death and Disaster series of Andy Warhol.”
A Maysles Scrapbook - Kensey just got this as a gift. Looks pretty dope.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I’m sorry, but I can’t let _So Many Books_ be dismissed with one perfunctory phrase (”pretty basic shit”) without a respectful salvo in return. “Basic” to whom? Yes, it’s true that _SMB_ does not spade any new turf. No, it’s not incendiary. Nor is it, I guess, instantly intoxicating for incendiary glossers. Easily read in one sitting, I would characterize _SMB_ as a lucid, delightful pause in our so-called conversation about books and publishing … a capsule for loose, snob-worn thread. I for one am tired of having this conversation more or less alone. For me the value of _SMB_ is not revelation but concise predication for more informed–or at least more graceful–rumination. I wish I had a friend in the room like Zaid. I find his deceptive incisions and parched wit very appealing. Zaid turns to me and says that one’s personal library is their “intellectual genome.” I like that.
April 30th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Fair enough.
Zaid in the room would soon wear thin.