Nov 3 two pages of Antunes first thing. The way to read him. Finished watching Wim Wenders' The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. Watched first half yesterday evening. Now to read the book by Peter Handke. Will be my first Handke book. Listed as being his first book. 1970. Movie in 1972. Year we moved from Chicago to Plymouth. But first book was 1966, The Hornets. Not translated. Nobel in 2019. Born 1942. Generation or more after Bernhard. Half generation, Bernhard born 1931. Blurb on back of the book by Richard Locke says Handke rejected all categories of experience "as species of linguistic fraud." Movie made me think of Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner movie--and book too I guess. Last night we caved and paid full price to watch grand finale of Downton. Had not seen the previous movie so clueless about a few of the story chinks. Later I think I did see that Wenders movie way way back and had no clue what to do with it. Lunch today with Elkins, duke and duchess, on their way north to Stowe after the terrors of summer on the Cape. Cécile asked if we could get tickets to see Jack and the Beanstalk Dec 30 at Winnepesaukee Playhouse. So that is on. Tiny book by Lentz arrived, Motherdying. Prize for it. Now to drop everything and read it. Maybe. Blurb on back of Moresco clues me in to it --"fabulist"--of, course, the figure of And from fables about the east. Ah, so, Lentz picking up Arabian Nights armature. Our post-war generation said what else can we do but go back and re-find the fables and tales of our great traditions. Uncle Leroy and aunt Nancy gave me a book of Mythology for Christmas one year. Captured my attention. Beautiful line drawings throughout. Gordian's knot. Ulysses.
from The Point Magazine under title "Sanctify Yourself" one paragraph
Many postwar West German writers have wrestled with the incomprehensible atrocity that’s been their burden to bear. Lentz accepts this guilt too, but what sets him apart is his anger. He directs it most forcefully at conservative Germans like those on Düren’s city council, so committed to their repressive ethics that they risk repeating what brought about their annihilation in the first place—their dependence on authoritative figures for their own salvation. Everything, Lentz stresses, even this very book, is borne from this heritage. It’s why, until he begins to question his circumstances, the narrator is a willing participant in the creation of Schattenfroh. “The goal of art is compassio,” he observes, “taking part in and being part of the sufferings of Christ. Art is thus an eternally arcane theology. However, it’s not yet settled whether it’s a positive or negative one. The drasticness of the representation is tied to the notion of salvation.” And furthermore, he wonders, as his doubts deepen, “what justification would pain have if Jesus never existed?”
and the final one
But what will draw readers to Schattenfroh in the years to come is the intention behind the grandiosity, the vision amid the chaos. “Germans primarily consist of the recollections of others,” Lentz writes, “a Mass of Incorporation” where “each act of dying is a murder that is avenged by a birth.” The same could be said of Schattenfroh—an impassioned, ruthless argument for rebellion against the Catholic Germanic order Lentz finds so intolerable, and a startlingly personal argument for literature as a source of redemption. It kills the past in order to avenge it with the birth of something new. Finally he has found a kind of suffering worth living for: the labor of creation.
quite a good article. by Michael Barron. Who is he? As good as this piece is, superb and perhaps the most accurately detailed I've read so far, I felt some remorse that it exists because it is too good---the triumph of the analytic mind once again pulling the skeleton out of the living body into the anatomy lesson. I sent the piece to Giorno hoping to interest him in reading the book but by the end of the essay I despaired because it ruins completely the sense of how reading the book feels to the readers. Critical analysis be damned. Read the book and re-read the book but don't convert it into encyclopedia entry.
oh well
another smart young puppy----pissed most likely that he was not invited to be part of Deep Vellum--
Michael Barron is a writer and editor of fiction, journalism, translation, and criticism of various sorts. He is a former book editor for the houses New Directions and Melville House. In 2020, he was awarded the Axion Foundation/E.L. Doctorow Fiction Fellowship at New York University. He currently serves on the board of the literary publishing house And Other Stories and is working on a novelized portrait of Washington D.C.
michael[at]michaelbarron[dot]co
ok so he's a quester with adhd
I started telling stories as soon as I learned how to talk.
When I was in the tenth grade I wrote my first novel, which could be described as “The Breakfast Club meets The Book of Revelations.”
Since then I’ve written several considerably better stories. My short fiction has appeared a number of publications. I am also in the process of revising a novel and I am pursing writing independent comic book scripts.
I do most of my writing on our ugly yellow couch while one of our cats snoozes beside me (see below). When I’m not reading or writing I’m either working as a librarian in Baltimore County or training for a marathon with my brilliant wife. I have been fortunate enough to visit seventeen countries (including Chile, New Zealand and Ireland). I have worked on a number of big budget film sets and interned at Nickelodeon Studios. I am also undertaking a never-ending quest for the world’s greatest hot sauce!
I'm going to be envious-nasty here and say based on the high quality of this essay his analytical gifts are superior to his novel writing gifts.
writing a novelized portrait of Washington D.C.
I am touched that in listing his world travels he does specify Chile.
Way too snarky about this guy's great review essay. Blame it on the weird px coffee I've been trying. Paraxanthine replaces caffeine in Rarebird coffee. Bizarre approach to the problems coffee give us. Engineering solution for engineers. Doesn't wash with poets and artists. Is there a px chocolate?
to Chris Via yesterday
