Something in this house

 "Something in this house makes it so that I see myself thinking."  Schattenfroh 553

Lots of chunks on writing and reading, this book and books, that I love.  Could go to the text on Kobo and cut and paste some.

Brief coffee with Dennis yesterday morning at Chase.  Glimpses into the wondrous world of his generation, two below me.  He's 32? ish.  Ten years or so younger than David, who turns 37 later this week!  

Dennis keep doing the Ayahuasca retreats at the place on the Hudson valley, Kingston area?  Has been a number of times.  Credits it with great insight about himself and his journey and healing process.  With ChapGPT he has created a few personas with which to talk things over.  Told him about Pessoa's heteronyms.  Could also have brought in Barbara's mother's cast of characters in her late life.  And now Dennis de Brock is writing a faux Rechy novel of his own in weekly or daily installments, sending them.  

Willow is back on her Entwell Tales.  Maybe Fall is the time to take up one's authorial pen persona.

Chase was hopping.  Years since I was there with someone on a Monday morning.  Dennis does also write a journal.  And in his advertising writing days they create persons who are the intended target buyers, give them names, personalities.  

Nodded hello to Wendy Palmquist as she walked by our table.  I had a wee espresso, they used a cute little ceramic cup.  Dennis said hi to a very tall, fit guy in a t-shirt who he later said was a hero who saved a few guys in Iraq warfare, former green beret, now at the Campton fire and rescue crew and in the yoga classes Dennis attends.  

Talked about his courses for Columbia. He described also how AI or Chat is used for papers for the course.  He had one due, wrote it, then asked Chat to grade it for him after he fed in the CV for the professor of the course.  At Columbia he got help from the writing center director, online.  There they can help you with everything from brainstorming your topic to grammar.  He's also got an appt with the Director of University Libraries to talk about how to do research for his courses using the plethora of databases Columbia accesses.  So a grad student now has support networks around him we never even imagined invoking fifty years ago when grad students at Chicago.  It was all cold-turkey, cold immersion, sink or swim.  Although grade inflation was in place and it was pretty hard to actually flunk out.  One guy in our cohort had been also an undergrad English major and carried with him after admission to grad work six or more Incompletes from his course work in the college.   Years later he got a tenured job at UMiss in English.  

Billings' list

 " Exacting as Lentz’s literalism can be, it is also fresh and suggestive. After all, there are plenty of novels that embrace writerly self-consciousness—there are even several that do so by showing a prisoner trying to talk his way out of a prison (Claudio Magris’s 2006 novel Blindly and Elias Khoury’s Yalo, from 2004, are two recent examples that feel like spiritual cousins to Schattenfroh). In each of these books, the unreliability of the narrator’s monologizing can feel unsettling, but it ultimately serves to reinforce a larger settledness about the world outside the book. It suggests that there is a difference between such hyper-articulate (and, in Magris and Khoury’s cases, traumatized) narrators and us, the readers, who have somehow, despite being creatures of language ourselves, managed to hover above its dangers like Romans in a gladiatorial arena. They, the characters, are trapped by language. We, on the other hand, know where the world ends and writing begins—which means that, at the end of the day, we are safe, or at least certain enough about the potential pitfalls of language to stay away from them. "

pre pub essay

by Deep Vellum used this line by Rilke. Beauty is nothing more than a terror that we are still able to withstand  

Josh Billings

 has a fabulous essay review of Schattenfroh on LA RB 

just want to copy and paste the whole thing  so fine and brilliant it makes you weep with hope and joy

Gazing into One’s Own Head

Josh Billings reviews German author Michael Lentz’s novel “Schattenfroh,” newly translated by Max Lawton.

September 9, 2025

September 5 Friday and Schattenfroh

 Call yesterday afternoon while we were watching GH.  Michael McDermand to tell us Nancy died the day before, Sept 3.  Undiagnosed aggressive leukemia.  Hospice moved into the house the same evening or the next after the diagnosis.  Nancy didn't want to try any chemo or other procedures.  That was Friday a week ago.  She died on Wednesday.  Was calm and peaceful and tired most of the time.  Made lots of lists for Mike, Cindy and Bob.  Said maybe in a few months have a gathering for people to tell the funniest anecdote about her they could remember.  Feels still like we are in shock.  Gray morning doesn't help.  Wayne coming at 1 and the Natalie had scheduled a visit at 2 to chat GH stuff and general visit.  Nice visit with Pat last week.  I emailed the group yesterday, shock responses.  

Earlier I had a boost surprise.  We went to Meredith for a dental cleaning for Va.  Sally noted her purple outfit, as I had said she would.  She is very proud that her eldest son has been named master chef at Grand View Hotel in Whitefield.  He and his wife have a free five room house along with other perks.  Driving into Holderness Va said let's see the Inn where Carole's birthday party will be.  Drove in, looked at the asphalt slope by the rear garage that I thought was to be our entrance path.  Young man down there noticed us and I motioned to have him come up to talk about details.  Entrance is really in the front, a brick walk.

I got out of the car to go with him to see the walk and the small places with edges where the transport chair will need to edge up and over.  He looked at me and said are you Bob Garlitz?  Yes.  I took you for Composition my first year at PSC and it was my best course.  You told me something I still remember.  You said just write your essay and when you'r through throw away the first paragraph.  That has stayed with me because I have a hard time just figuring what my thoughts are and what I want to say, so after the first paragraph I finally start finding out.  He was/is a snowboarder from a high school in MA.  Majored in Political Science then taught challenged kids at Sandwich school.  His wife worked for the previous owners of the Inn for some years, also went to Plymouth but maybe a few years younger.  They bought the Inn five years ago.  He loves the change of work.  He asked us if we were related to Jessica Shaw, took a moment to realize it is Jessica Wixson Shaw and Sky Shaw.  He also knows Dave's musician Brendan Dowd (?).  Brendon (or Brendan?) Matthews.  They have a six year old daughter and twin three year old boys.  Thanked him for remembering me and saying hi.  Looking forward to the dinner more now!!  Delightful surprise.  

Oh, and Schattenfroh is super.  As good as, better than, I had hoped and expected.  Tweets say it is already viewed as a masterpiece of German Lit, five or more years old there.  Big reviews coming out in NYRB etc.  I tweeted two lines about it.  It is a book that is in love with how books are in love with books.  And the suggestion that reading K Burke's Epilogue: Prologue in Heaven would be a great companion piece to the novel, as a closing satyr play in comic mode.  Debating about whether to suggest it to Ed on the basis that the translator's tweet says the book assumes you've read your Hegel and Heidegger.  Max Lawton, who I've been following on X for a year or so.  That's how I caught wind of the book and its importance.  He works in four or more languages, mostly in Russian first and took on German because he wanted to translate this book.  I heard some bits of an interview on YouTube with the author, Michael Lenz.  But I'm in that phase of wanting to postpone digging around for commentary until well after I've finished the first read.  Already assuming I will want to read it again.  Love the voices and the flow through the rich materials from German/world lit and history.  Theologies.  Meanderings of all sorts.  

Last week of August 2025

 Heading into Labor Day weekend.  As if that will bring anything.  Markers.  Liturgical tabs.  

Eye procedure in about an hour.  Clearing up or away the obfuscatory smudge on the left eye.  Dr Scott who went to University of Chicago Medical School.  Which years.  Seems about my age maybe a few years younger.  Sent more funds to the kids.  Grateful praying hands emoji from Cécile.  Hope it helps her worry a bit less, especially in this first anniversary of Annie's death.  Sure to be hard for her and her father. They say they will come for Christmas but I'm a wee skeptical.

Doc's laser gizmo would not work.  Postponed until early October.  He said he went to Bowdoin, happiest years of his life.  No reply about Chicago.