reconstructing the year's reading (so far)

ok - the year begins with the french, the goncourt brother's journal and renee mauperin (this goes with germine lacerteux by them that horsemouth read last year), words - jean paul sartre (horsemouth had a sartre / de beauvoir reading binge a few years ago - only really adieu where sartre dies affected him particularly).

journals are of course big with him, wartime notebooks - marguerite duras, anais nin - journals vol.2, two stories and a memory - guiseppe di lampedusa, a death in the family - karl ove knausgaard, homicide: a year on the killing streets - david simon, miami - joan didion, the air-conditioned nightmare - henry miller.

then there are his theoretical dabblings, shoenberg's 'moses and aaron' - worner, fear and trembling - kierkegaard, althusser: a critical reader - gregory elliot (just the introduction), chronicles of consensual times - jacques ranciere, the melancholy science - gillian rose (love's work by her remains amazing), modenist radicalism - stephen crook, often read in a hurry in university libraries.

then there is his ongoing interest in utopian commune and political movements (a hangover from his work on ranciere perhaps - and in particular his on the shores of politics), the democracy project - david graeber,the literature of labour - h. gustav klaus, documentary and educational films of the 1930ies - rachael low, selected writings of the transcendentalists, alternative communities in 19th century england - dennis hardy.

then there's the russians (horsemouth will have to do some catching up here - he's got a short story collection and herzen's ends and beginnings to be getting on with), the elaghin affair and other stories - ivan bunin, moscow circles - benedict erofeev. the erofeev in particular was amazing.

... and then a few 'modern' novels written in english for when horsemouth was bored, hangover square - patrick hamilton, goldberg: variations - gabriel josipovici, julius winsome - gerard donovan (largely borrowed from andy).

as usual when he reconstructed the list he found he'd missed out a few books, ones he'd read electronicaly also tended not to make the list. he needs a further list as well - one of accessions (books bought or received).

book list til april

• miami - joan didion
• documentary and educational films of the 1930ies - rachael low
• words - jean paul sartre
• wartime notebooks - marguerite duras
• shoenberg's 'moses and aaron' - worner (some)
•  hangover square -  patrick hamilton
• fear and trembling - kierkegaard - introduction and first few pages
• the literature of labour - h. gustav klaus (most)
• anais nin - journals vol.2 (all)
• goldberg: variations - gabriel josipovici (all)
• althusser: a critical reader -  gregory elliot (introduction)
•  the record as artwork (1977 fort worth art museum) - germano celant
•  the democracy project - david graeber
• chronicles of consensual times -  jacques ranciere (several articles)
• modenist radicalism - stephen crook - (dips)
• a death in the family - karl ove knausgaard
• julius winsome - gerard donovan (all)
• the air-conditioned nightmare - henry miller - (dips)
• the elaghin affair and other stories - ivan bunin
• moscow circles - benedict erofeev
• two stories and a memory - guiseppe di lampedusa
• a history of the church in the middle ages - f.donald logan - most
• selected writings of the transcendentalists - some
• alternative communities in 19th century england - dennis hardy - dips
• renee mauperin - goncourt brothers
• the melancholy science - gillian rose - some
• homicide: a year on the killing streets - david simon (all)
• the goncourt journals

the inauguration of british summer time

both duras and sartre are stuck with their childhoods. wartime diaries is a little disappointing - the stuff that is recorded for the first time here is better written (and so more convincing) elsewhere, the cookie-cutter kernels of wisdom designed to enable each fragment in the notebook to be self-sufficient do not work, and cannot until they are excised and the fragments made whole. their lives could not be more different - sartre the bookish child of alsatian grandparents, duras the white trash colonial girl gone bad.


with the rolling back of horsemouth's sickness (he's been ill with a filthy cough for about a week now) came the return of his quotidian anxieties. realistically, when horsemouth had a fever, the shivers, a raging cough and a week long headache he could not be expected to consider politics and music - but he has just picked up the guitar for the first time in a week and so his 'duties' cannot be far behind. he tried out the latin riff for tv eye on the resonator (following iggy's vocal emphasis) - this would be a companion piece to don't fear the reaper as cuban son. of course horsemouth should really hurry up and commit more of his music to recordings - he's done some nice things but really he's no further forward than when he was forty - or at least, crucially, he has no evidence to demonstrate that he is.

the sun has moved its way through the block opposite and now sets beyond it's furthest edge (shining into the northernmost recess of horsemouth's flat) this happened sometime around the inauguration of british summer time (horsemouth was adrift in time spending as much of it in bed and asleep as possible). horsemouth once awoke in what he took to be the early hours of the morning only to discover it was 9.30pm at night (only to realise it was really 10.30).

every cough says to horsemouth remember thou art mortal and proclaims unclean unclean to every creature (with a heart and lungs) in earshot.

one of sartre's schoolfriends bernard dies - and almost immediately his double walks into the classroom - the teacher (in shock) asks him his name - paul nizan -

 'nizan was the most obsessed: sometimes in center of the city, he would see himself as a corpse; he would get up, his eyes swarming with worms, grope for his round-brimmed borsalino, and disappear; next day we would find him drunk, among strangers.'

ramakrishna in pittsburg (pleasure ruins) fetishize the manuscript object

it doesn't look too bad out so far. horsemouth has finished the vietnam set portion of duras' wartime journals - from whence (well at least from the translator's comments) comes the last part of the title of today's blog - they think about releasing the journals in a a facsimile copy with the handwriting, the erasures and the drawings intact, they then retreat (faced by the expense of the finished book)  and say this would be to fetishize the manuscript object in its physical form  when the text itself is so lucid, so eminently portable.

horsemouth also read large chunks of the observer review 25.01.15 and did a shopping run.

in the observer review a number of things (mainly) struck him - one was the phrase stuffocation (suffocation sic.) seemingly opposing minimalism - having less stuff - as too puritan, it offered the collection of experiences instead 'to have or to be' in a kind of reinvention of erich fromm, not that anyone was admitting it wasn't an entirely new thought that had dropped complete from out of the skies. horsemouth is a hoarder - downsizing and decluttering  is unlikely to appeal to him - capitalism would like him to be more flexible, to be able to 'drop everything within fifteen seconds if you see the heat coming around the corner'  but this isn't him.  it would take him several years in the wilderness to read everything he hasn't read yet, re-read what he wants to re-read in his collection. this does not stop him from wanting to go out and buy more books.

in thinking inside the box sean o'hagan observes polly harvey recording a record in a box beneath somerset house and complains of how boring the music recording process is. he cites joan didion as evidence. but recording (for horsemouth at least) is much more like building a house (or painting a picture) than it is about the release of spontaneous seconds of musical performance and communication when the recording itself  is played. for horsemouth it is about craftsmanship - about laying firm foundations, building solid walls, careful attention to detail and  knowing when corners can be cut (and when they can't) - for people to feel free to emote they must be confident that the backing will not intrude (or that if it does intrude they can handle it) they must feel supported.

just as capitalism would have us streamline our lives to make us more flexible workers (whilst trying to sell us tat to compensate us for those losses) it also feels uncomfortable with the slowness care and skill that production actually takes (preferring magical spontaneous moments 'captured' on video). (this is of course a fantasy)

that said this weekend horsemouth did not attempt any music nor go and see any played.
 

'the automobile stands forth in my mind as the very symbol of falsity and illusion.'

henry miller grumps it around america (by car of course) unable to put pen to paper. horsemouth has also been reading (and desecrating in the manner of city am) ruin lust the pamphlet for the ruin lust exhibition (from whence the pleasure ruins portion of the title) - it is not the pleasure of ruins but their institutionalisation as pleasure gardens, the kind of garden presented to their neighbours in bouvard and pecuchet.

pittsburgh is no longer the industrial powerhouse it was when henry miller visited - it is the very heart of the rust belt (horsemouth would like to go), kenneth patchen becomes the symptom of the whole of ohio (anais nin couldn't stand to be near him).

horsemouth mainly reads for the story, he has to slow himself down (often to desecration speed, to the recomposition of the text from fragments) to read the text properly with due care and attention, to see how the text's effects have been achieved or have arisen. for this reason he finds only what is new in the marguerite duras wartime notebooks interesting. her work, her archives, her sayings, are recorded with the fidelity devoted to benjamin (his archives in facsimile).

-------------

on the subject of his book stash neither e-bay nor e-readers (nor indeed sneaky pdf files) work for horsemouth - he needs the pleasure of browsing, of fortuitous discovery, the thrill of the chase, a bargain or a luxury, the book to glow in the stacks or to climb out of the bag and into his hands on the journey home. new covers make horsemouth want to buy the book afresh. one day, whilst bored, horsemouth reviewed some friend's bookshelves - he must admit he did rather enjoy this.

exxon

uuurghgh! they've poked horsemouth with a stick and he's awake. last night (well, this morning actually) he dreamt of being a peacemaker - mind you he was pushing a bicycle up a hill at the time (in the midst of a crowd of people pushing bicycles up a hill). wednesday he is involved in a painful decision making process.

horsemouth has stopped saving - but at least he has some savings - it's not like he's already mortgaged his future work.

in his wanderings (falafel wrap waterloo three squid) at dolden street near gambia street horsemouth found a house once occupied by mary wollstonecraft (mind you the week before he'd fund another st. alfege church in a backstreet). he dipped into tate modern and felt slightly out of place reading marguerite duras' bloodthirsty if fictionalised account of torturing nazi collaborators (in the wartime diaries during the liberation of paris) while surrounded by peaceable (if bored) euroyouth.

on his way into work yesterday several streets were blocked off - he thinks it's an unexploded german bomb discovered on a building site.

monday was the anniversary of not one but two tanker disasters - what are the odds? horsemouth and ross once wrote a song about the exxon valdez tanker disaster - sadly they sang it valdez not valdeeez - over the years it mutated from folksong to rave anthem to rave anthem with slide guitar - the rave version (written by mickey mann pressure of speech) became the basis of his tracks x-0n and x-beats.

'it was a beautiful, natural death, quite startling in its perfection.'

there's not much privacy and dignity in violent death. david simon, in homicide: a year on the killing streets gives us one, an elderly music teacher over near hopkins university dies on her daybed, the score for a mozart piece on her piano, the radio (tuned to a classical station) plays ravel's 'pavane to a dead princess'.

 'it was a beautiful, natural death, quite startling in its perfection.'

the cops feel like intruders.

but for their usual clientele the indignity does not stop with death - there's been a black widow murdering husbands (and other family members) for the insurance - an exhumation is ordered on one of her dead husbands - they go to the cheapest city cemetary and exhume the body - after the dissection they notice the hospital tag on his wrist - it's the wrong name - they go back, consult the burial plans, exhume again, again there's a hospital tag, again it's the wrong name. the supervisor tells them the bodies might have moved, the workers say that on rainy or snowy days the boss just lets them bury the bodies in a mass grave regardless of the cemetary plan. looking down the list of names the detective recognises many of the same names as the homicide bureau's clients - cases they've worked, some they've solved, now buried in a mass grave by the city as cheaply as possible.

strangely with the black widow murdering family members there were other family members who were aware of it. for the cases that make it to court the dead are of course not present to see the justice enacted in their name - even where the victim names their murderer with their dying breath it might not be admissible on the basis that they may not have been aware that they were dying.

when he visits his parents horsemouth sometimes goes with his mother to the churchyard to ensure that his grandparents' graves are being kept clean. he'll finish the david simon sometime today - then it's either henry miller the air-conditioned nightmare or a death in the family karl ove knausgaard

what will you find in the horsemouth folk archive?

the triumphs of hope over experience, dark equinoxes, utopian experiments, air-conditioned nightmares, sky-technology bureaucracy, lodowicke muggleton and john reeve the last witnesses, dreams, plans of attack and defence, remembrances, titles of books, potential creditors, obsessive phrases, monuments, the dance of the inhabitants of the invisible city of bladensburg, the penance for eating horse meat, a requiem for misissippi john hurt, but above all remember this ...

the kingdom of heaven is within you

how can I be a folk?

the lowing of cattle, gemeinschaft / gesellschaft, Allopia, potatoes, bunin, fruitlands, the utopia experiment, apocalyptic communes, insomniac philosophers, beachside donkey rides, the fine art of jumping ships, the intellectuals get off their horses, agapemone, the co-operativist and economical society, the same rages, the same rebellions, musics for piano, whistling, microphone and tape recorder, the key utopian question,'how do you get to utopia? by rainbow or railway?'

and am I born to die?

morrissey, jeff buckley, king crimson, ''life is beautiful', mayakovsky (who committed suicide aged 30), benedict erofeev, samizdat, learning styles survey - zero as a 'reflector', away the crow road, 'the mob begin to think.', social technologies, the categorisation of animals in ancient china, he flinched and turned away, he begins to cry 'his tense, trembling hand sought mine on the tablecloth', he has misunderstood spem in alium.

fragments of unremarkable style.