Amanita augusta

At the end of July! In California! Spectacular.

Reading roundup

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

I first read it when I took an undergrad course in Woolf. I liked it then, though I found its stream of consciousness and frequent changes in perspective challenging. Less challenging today, which I like to think reflects my maturity and breadth as a reader. Stylistically, every sentence reads like poetry, in a good way. There is more social criticism than I remember. One of the great works.

The Friend
Sigrid Nunez

A girl and her dog. And her grief. I could have lived without the philosophical digressions about writing, but the book is overall engaging and lovely. Now a not-so-major movie at a theatre or streaming service near you. 

Long Island
Colm Toíbín

I loved Brooklyn. This is the highly praised sequel, which I found disappointing and dull. Maybe I have been reading too many virtuosic writers, including Woolf and Banville, and Toíbín's style is just so dry in comparison. I was looking forward to finding out what became of Eilis Lacey, the complex and compelling hero of the first book, and indeed she is here, and still admirable. But ultimately this is Jim Farrell's story. And Jim is no Eilis. The ending reads as if someone tore the last few pages out of the book before handing it to me. I know, it's on purpose. But I couldn't muster much interest in learning or even wondering whatever would become of Jim.

The Last Policeman
Ben H. Winters

This is a pretty conventional crime novel, with an appealing young detective, embedded within a pre-apocalyptic near-future dystopia. You see, a large asteroid will collide with Earth in a few months. Dystopia is really too strong a term, since, naturally, different people react to this impending doom in different ways, and not all of the ways are bad. That said, not surprisingly, suicides are up, and many people– including cops– are not inclined to dwell on whether a slightly suspicious suicide might not actually be a murder. After all, why does it matter? But our young hero and narrator Henry Palace can't help himself and, of course, suicide it's not. Published in 2012, pre-COVID and pre-Trump, there is an innocence to the narrative that you may find refreshing... or depressing...

Mrs. Dalloway

Just read it. Or read it again. One of the best novels ever. Not as difficult as I remember.

Anat Cohen

The clarinetist appeared at Stanford Jazz Saturday night in her duo with the Brazilian seven-string guitarist Marcello Gonçalves. They've been playing together for quite some time, and their ease and rapport show through. Given the instrumentation, the overall flavor is choro, but ranges more widely. They played several arrangements of pieces by Moacir Santos, some Jobim, some Nascimento, and then to preview their latest project, some Bernstein. The music does not push the envelope, but is varied and lovely. Recommended.

End of an era at KCSM radio

KCSM, "the Bay Area's jazz station," recently announced the "retirement" of longtime DJs Dick Conte and Michael Burman. Turns out their retirements were of the involuntary type, apparently required by an interpretation of CalPERS rules. Conte:

“It wasn’t my idea,” he said in an email to the Chronicle. “Michael Burman and I were forced to retire due to a CalPERS rule, which doesn’t allow retired annuitants to work for any CalPERS facility.”

Conte is referring to a rule that limits retirees drawing a pension from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System — such as those working for public institutions like the College of San Mateo, which operates KCSM — to temporary positions only, with a cap of 960 hours per fiscal year.  

Worse news still for fans of the station, on the air this morning the venerable Sonny Buxton announced his own retirement as of the end of next week, saying "it's time." Buxton, well into his 80s, seems to have been experiencing some health issues recently, so maybe his departure is truly voluntary. The recent death of another KCSM stalwart, Leslie Stoval, may have been on his mind. 

Between the three of them, these guys possess encyclopedic jazz knowledge– in particular Bay Area jazz knowledge– that comes with a deep love of the music and an eagerness to share their wisdom, not to mention their experience as musicians. Their tastes are all pretty mainstream, and if they have a higher tolerance for the Hammond B3 than I can muster, I forgive them that. I'll miss their friendly familiar voices and deep playlists. 

OBBB passes the Senate

"A true Washington gaffe is always a confession, and Vance’s is this: Trumpist populism offers its adherents nothing but the demonization and expulsion of immigrants. In return, generations of Americans will be left sicker and deeper in debt." Lydia Polgreen, NYTimes.

What's not to like?

Barbara Gowdy, The White Bone

I read The White Bone not long after it was first published in 1998, and I re-read it last week. I have not read another novel like it, and recommend it to everyone. A capsulized description would be something like: A sad and heroic quest story written from the perspective of African elephants. Gowdy heavily researched the lives of these creatures, and she tried very hard to get into their heads, bodies, and culture for this story. Of course, if you are a human who populates your story with non-human animals, some  anthropomorphization is inevitable, and often it's the whole point. Watership Down, for example, is as I remember it a tale featuring rabbit characters who are a lot like humans. Gowdy is after something bigger here, but because we humans cannot actually get into the heads and bodies of other creatures, the results must be judged as an act of imagination, as literature. 

The philosopher Thomas Nagel's famous essay asked "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" and his conclusion as I understand it is: we simply can't know. Gowdy uses story-telling to try to convince you otherwise, at least for elephants. Humans, by the way, do figure in her story, and for the She-ones (elephants), it is we, fallen creatures, who are alien and inscrutable, not to mention cruel and dangerous. You can hardly blame them for thinking so.

Reading roundup

Two by John Banville  

The Untouchable
The Sea

I've now read each of these novels twice. They are deservedly praised. Of the two, I think The Untouchable is Banville's masterpiece: a virtuosic, unsettling though often humorous fictionalization of the life of Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge Five. The first-person narrator and protagonist, Victor Maskell (Blunt), has led a double life along many dimensions– as a spy for the Soviets and closeted gay man– and his deceptions definitely extend to himself. It is also a twisted story of unrequited love. Especially, it is a glorious exercise in style– I found myself wanting to read many of the sentences over again, wondering just how Banville pulls it off, page after poetic page.

The Sea, another novel written as a first-person reminiscence, is shorter; exceptionally well written and structured as well. In the end, the plot didn't quite convince me. Still, a fantastic book.

Three Japanese novellas

Snow Country
Yasunari Kawabata

Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto

The Emissary
Yoko Tawada

I had read Snow Country before. It is justly regarded as a classic. The Kitchen is perhaps a trifle, but delightful. The Emissary is a near-future dystopia, deliberately quirky... too deliberately, in fact. 

Miscellaneous "entertainments"

A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles

A Certain Justice
P.D. James

Luminous
Sylvia Park

Exordia
Seth Dickinson

Of these, the P.D. James is– unsurprisingly– the best read. Nasty victim, nasty suspects... Dalgliesh and Miskin, getting it done. The Towles book is sweet, but the writing did not "cast a spell," as the blurb promised. The last two, sci-fi books, received some critical accolades, which goes to show that sci-fi critics have low standards and/or are starved for good literature. Luminous is a robot book, with a somewhat interesting kid robot character and a fairly perfunctory dose of family drama. But how many indifferently written disaffected robot books can you read? Exordia is a sprawling pull-out-all-the-stops alien encounter hard sci-fi meets woo-woo sci-fi with extended high-tech battle scene mess. I suppose it is the beginning of a series that I won't read.