Route Guidance is Not Advice

That line shows up on the map in the car.  Apple's lawyers and VW's lawyers covering things against all future possible lawsuits.  There would be a whole new genre for writers: use only lingo designed for protection against all future possible legal actions.  

31 Nov 

Days later I realized I had misread "not active" as "not advice."  I like that misreading and will keep the post.  

Bluesky chains on Schattenfroh are good because people are quoting great lines from it.  

Happy I put aside Szalay book unfinished.  Happier still to be into Moresco's Clandestiny, the first story the Blue Room perfect childhood adolescence transition.  Did I ever have a notebook at that age for writing anything down?  I rode my bike all over Johnson Heights for hours on end.  

What did I read?  Was that when I read Treasure Island?  Before that the princess on the glass mountain in the book series with wonderful illustrations which must have been 1920s neo-medieval-romantic.

back to more than one book

that Ancestry update came in email from Ancestry over a week ago.  

Schattenfroh is an easy, fast read, full of pleasure. Someone on X mentioned that it was fast, I was glad to see that. 

It is so good that it ruins other books for a while.  Had to work hard to get through Slalay's London and the South East.  It had some moments but felt labored over and patched together lego-like, not even that well fitted together.  These days I'm back to having four or five books ready to hand, read a chapter of each or a few pages at a time and pick up another and do the same.  Some passages in each one now snag some interest.  Liked some of Szalay's Innocent so far.  Catching on to how to read and enjoy Robert Glück's Jack the Modernist.  Some passage in there just excellent.  Looked up Daniel Kolitz's pieces on Adderall and Garielle Lutz.  Both excellent. His Harper's piece right now on Gooning the talk of the town at the moment.  Von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas completing my education.  Also doing a few pages a day back in Lobo Antunes' What Can I Do and finding it much more pleasant that way.  

All readings prompt memories and you would think that, at this age, I would want to stop all the time and write down more of my memories.  Why do I not?  Too overwhelming an idea.  I see the dark interior of St Marys church on an afternoon.  How big it looked and felt, comfortably so, with light coming in through the stained glass windows.   

ancestry changes

 

England

• Southeastern England & Northwestern EuropeNew28%
• West MidlandsNew13%
• North East EnglandNew8%

Western Europe

• Southern Germanic EuropeNew39%
• The Netherlands3%

Celtic & Gaelic

• Munster, IrelandNew7%
• Central Scotland & Northern Ireland2%

rainy Tuesday evening 14 October

The post-Columbus Day rain that drops all the leaves off the trees, except for the oak.  Week or so later.

Finished David Szalay's Flesh.  Two days after finishing Lentz's Schattenfroh.  Quite a contrast.  

Woolf and Beckett

 Found most interesting his high praise for Beckett and Woolf in his list of most influential writers upon his work.   

"Virginia Woolf’s language is incredibly elegant. She practises admirable wave aesthetics and employs a language that glides through consciousness without marked breaks. Her handling of characters is truly unique. The narratological questions that underpin any act of reading — “Who speaks?” “Who sees?” — become highly relevant for my own writing when she addresses them. Is it perception that is being described, or consciousness? Where lies the difference between the two? Or is there none? These are the questions that, prompted by my reading of Virginia Woolf, accompanied me when I was writing Schattenfroh."

Beckett, Woolf, Peter Weiss, Gertrude Stein, Claude Simon, Peter Handke, Kafka, and Rilke

What fascinates me about Rainer Maria Rilke is his paradoxical thinking and rhythmic gestures, and the fact that the form of his poems often has a homologous effect on their semantic levels. Rilke wrote the most incredible line I know: “Die Vögel fliegen still durch uns hindurch.” (“The birds fly silently through us.”)

The Untranslated.  

incomprehension phases

 Lentz "On the other hand, the so-called naive reader is the ideal one: he reads without preconceptions, untroubled, and is not disturbed by occasional incomprehension — in life one does not always understand everything, and reading is part of life. Taking things literally reveals wondrous networks of meaning that appeal to all the senses; it sparks the imagination directly. It allows for a kind of reading that feels almost tactile."

interview with Lentz today

 today The Untranslated posts this fabulous Interview with Lentz. 

passage 

Schattenfroh is not a realist novel, but it does contain realistic elements that can make it all the more threatening. The uncertainty of the question of where Schattenfroh, the novel, is set — in the interior world or the exterior world, or in both — which has always accompanied my writing, spawned from the outset the phantasmagorical deliria that I considered more fitting than a straightforward realism of representation. On the contrary, for me these deliria were realistic in the sense of representing fear. Literature can pass through walls. It can also enter consciousness. It can move between levels effortlessly.

first pass through

 Finished the book at 3:11 today, 10.11.2025. have two copies, just in case 

enjoyed it all the way through, in awe of it too, two days after the Nobel to the Hungarian can't help but think it should go next year to Lentz.  Everything I had hoped it might be and more.  Many good reviews of it up at various places.  My favorite is still the one by Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado on pghrev.com Totality Without Signification

Maps, buildings, cells, devices, printing, golems, crucifixions and tortures, Bavarian Catholicism, Luther and Lutheranism, God and self, Self and gods, obsessions, raptures, divinations, divigations, definitions, uncertainties, unknowings, clouds, chambers, Mother, brother and Father. Death. Wondering about death, when will it come, how will it happen, who will know.

6 Oct Stannah Kaput again

Monday. Stair climber not working again.  Chris due to show after noon.  Same as three days ago.  Shows number 2 on the window but switches to 3 as soon as we try to go down.  Reading day.  Willow up in the blue chair.  Towels washing.  Rachel is able to do Wednesday.  Maybe I will finish Schattenfroh today or tomorrow.  What would Robert Lax do?  What would Dennis Brock do?  Wait.  Appointment reminder for George Culler showed up on the watch this morning.  October 13, same day a year ago that Annie Dessertenne died (if info correct).  Not noted on the family photo calendar.  Just pre-registered for the Telehealth visit with Culler.  Acorns dropping have been making a racket past few weeks.  Dry. Drought. Hot today, will reach high 70s even 80.  Kim and Owen should be in Albq from last night.  Every morning the same questions about the headaches.  Is it the caffeine, lower or higher, is it the adaptogens in the mushroom dusts,  is it too much water or too little?  Is it butterfat or peanut butter fat?  Is it something in the granola or the fruits, either the dried fruits in the granola or the fresh fruits layered on top or within the granolas?  Today it was a few slices of pink lady apple.  Is it the chocolate itself in the adaptogenic cacao powder added into the water?  Is it the yogurt?  The yogurt mixed with a bit of milk?  The zero yogurt or the yogurt with 1% fat or the other one with the 2% fat? Am I sounded yet just a little like the narrative voice of Schattenfroh?  By page 828 surely I should be able to mimic it just a bit.  How much longer is it than Infinite Jest?  could one even compare them.  Deep Vellum has not published exactly what Font it is using in the printed edition.  The name of the book designer is given, I could look it up once again if I wanted to put that here.  But if I google Infinite Jest, how many pages will it say?  Should I go onward and backward and commit myself to reading Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy at last?  1079 the number google gives for IJ.  1300 pages as an average for modern, full editions.  The mark of odd beauty pulls all glyphs from the printed page. 829 So much fun he has with the antique details of the old printing process, including the making of the lead type.  Makes me realize that of course because of Martin Luther the printing of books is essential to the national characters and histories of the Germanic peoples because Luther printing his books and translations liberated all of Central Europe and before it Germany from the imperial crowns of Rome.  The Reformation and its wars and slaughters created modern Germany and Europe as surely as Rome before it created post-Athens Europe.  The delegator, the deletion mark in proofreading. Just as I pulled the micro-ed mushroom and spinach pasta from the oven, Chris from National Mobility phoned and walked to the front door.  He is wrangling with the lift as we type.  Will he have a solution to keep this from happening in the future?  Will be buy a new lift?  This one is five years old.  

3 Oct Teensy Bits of H

sent this note to Ed and then realized what a great post it would be 

repair guy still not finished yet---satisfying that it has taken him a while, three or four up an down the stairs so far . . . .  his name is Jordan, luckily when I called back he was close by in Ashland.  10:12 am

Hi Ed   

Thought you might get a chuckle from seeing how I 

dip a finger into the brew for a few seconds at a time 

thanks to posts others throw out like this one this

morning on the evil X site.  

“Philosophy is the opposite of all calm and assurance. It is the whirlwind into which man is hurled, so that alone — without fantasy — he may grasp Dasein.”

Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

Balloons ballooning now there.    Our friends from CO will use our house starting Monday for a few days.   

Really glad Betsy will use it to see you over Thanksgiving.  

Virginia stuck upstairs this morning, luckily repairman here now to get the stair climber to work again.  

In my flash of anger earlier I couldn't stop myself from saying in Abq this would not be a problem!!

What can you do?  I'm on page 728 out of 1001 in Schattenfroh (German novel--translator says it helps to know both H and H so no doubt I'm missing hundreds of nuances and hilarious hidden jokes! 

Hope all goes well there.  

Bob 

Jordan left around 10:30. We made it to the appointment with Dr Philips at Mid-State.

Yesterday Dr Scott did the magic restoration cleaning with his laser and my left eyesight is as clear and bright as it was after the first cataract procedure.  Miraculous.  

1 October

Rilke needs only a few lines to make one forget all about novels.  You need a novel so as to forget yourself.   682. 

Dox walk at noon,  Gorgeous day.  Topped that off with lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches at George's.