brief book reviews

 i just ate a big burrito so this might get sloppy

the divorce by césar aira (new directions): bought this on a whim, new, at a local bookstore, feeling rushed to find a book in a story that mainly only sells big five books and bestsellers while some visiting family picked out some kids books. i liked that this seemed small, was by an argentinian author, and was blue. i hadn't started reading it until i saw sebastian castillo had bought it, so we decided to read it together and talk about it. i read it over the course of a few days. it's a funny kind of book, where there's a larger 'joke' about how it's not really about his divorce - he keeps sidetracking into these long, rambling, often surreal (magically real) stories, which are actually the meat of the book. it basically consists of four of these stories, loosely based on a character named enrique. the first of the four stories was least interesting to me - seemed to go on too long and repeat itself a lot. sebastian speculates that part of it being less interesting is its emphasis on an action sequence - people running through a burning building, which neither of us seemed interested in, but i like that sebastian commended him for writing an action sequence that seemed inventive or literary or something. but the rest of the stories i thought were very endearing, interesting, and sometimes funny. style-wise it's very maximalist and playful - lots of interesting words, descriptions, wandering philosophical pondering. i liked the metahumor of, by the time he starts the last story, he doesn't bother really setting it up or tying it to anything, just like, "i saw him walking, and, well, in this part of the city...". unsure if it's a kind of book i'd enjoy reading a lot of, so i appreciated its short length. as part of book club i embarassingly rambled about combinatorial logic to sebastain in a DM until he said he had to go run an errand - this was because of the way aira tends to let a story's natural logic 'balloon' out into an interesting philosophical idea, with one specific instance being combinatorial logic. sorry, sebastian.

second marriage by frederick barthelme (penguin): found myself being 'comforted' by barthelme's prose when i started this one. a very classic barthelme novel that follows the checklist: shlubby divorced guy with a step daughter, extramarital affairs and uncomfortable conversations about them, horny/weird neighbors, driving around in the rain, watching tv, eating at seafood restaurants, weird interactions with strangers on or near a highway. the first half i think i was really great and featured like 4-5 very comedic scenes where he let stupid shit naturally play out for pages at a time, e.g. a guy spilling a bunch of ketchup in a burger king. second half kind of drags on and seems moodier, less engaging. felt interested in how he often writes interactions/dialogue that make no sense to me, usually about people trying to flirt or be act horny around each other. one of the earlier chapters was familiar and i'm pretty sure it was a stand-alone story in moon deluxe. i was thinking idly about how i like how he writes teenage/preteen kids in the 80s/90s in a way that feels like the polar opposite of how these kinds of characters were presented in movies in the same time period, and i like how he writes about father/stepfather relationships with kids in a positive, calm way. felt frustrated/confused by everyone having similar, boring first names (including a dog named Henry) - i kept having to stop and try to remember who Cindy was, who Winnie was, who Cameron was, etc., especially at the end, during a long party sequence where basically all the supporting characters show up. i like how there are a lot of moments where things get really intense or fucked up or otherwise 'extreme' seeming, in a way that feels natural in spite of being unnatural, e.g. a person shooting out a car tire, a guy breaking a diving board and falling into a pool, his neighbor trying to seduce him in a hotel room while eating fried chicken/covered in chicken grease and then later attempting suicide, etc.

i thought i read a third book...maybe not...might just post these two

email vs blog

i want to write something for my blog that isn't just a book review, but i also have many emails to respond to, from friends. i enjoy writing and receiving long emails, but i also, for whatever reason, get paralyzed by the task of responding to a long email. i have been thinking a little bit about what i choose to say in emails vs what i choose to say in a blog post. i think direct communication with someone where you have context, historical precedent, and some amount of mutual vulnerability is freeing in a way that a blog can't be.in an email to a writer, i mentioned writing lots of emails to other writers, and then later included random excerpts from those emails, which was funny to me, sending things i wrote to other people to someone else.

for this blog post i've decided to just list some non-sequitur-seeming lines from emails i've written to other authors. in compiling this, it sort of reads like a bunch of tweets, which seems interesting

excerpts of emails i've sent to other writers

i like the idea of peeing as a defense mechanism, and how effective it's been. it's like it's his niche combat move to compensate for being slow and fat, like a pokemon or something.

i've read some random good things by various people. 

there's a great little scene where the characters are watching some video footage of a riot and a guy beats this other guy's ass, knocks him out cold, then pulls down the dude's pants and psray paints his cock and balls, and the characters watching are like "what the fuck," talking about it, and the one guy is like "yeah no spraying the guy's cock was retarded."

feel like i felt that way and said something to that effect to you a long time ago but now i feel differently. 

the most depressed i ever felt, maybe, was when i was applying for jobs to get out of grad school, but part of that was also knowingly applying for jobs i knew i was unqualified for, in academia, which i'd only get if i could also finish my dissertation, which i knew i couldn't do. 

bruiser is dope (heh)

i go back and forth. i try to send some stuff out throughout the year to stay 'engaged' and like i'm 'contributing' or something. always bummed me out when my favorite authors stopped sending shit to indie mags so i wanna keep doing that to spite them

you gotta trust toddlers

i have some vague conviction that how gen z uses social media will change things in the next few years - there's that push to decentralize/publicize social media but gen z is doing it via public and private networks/accounts. and people are being sick of being sold to, of everything being monetized, of everything they say being potential fodder for retribution in 1-10 years

feeling embarassed about you 'already knowing' birds have 2000+ feathers

i've only seen one person directly/indirectly shittalk me/the book

i've been waking up every day at 5:45 to do chicken chores for months now and do i breathe in the bright morning air, look at trees, smile and think of god in the details? no, i just blearily carry out my duties and then try to go back to bed as soon as possible. it's stupid, and i feel stupid for thinking it'd be different.

every time i think of the author, eugene marten, i think of the comedian, eugene merman, who did this stupid and weird internet show in like 2008

i remember listening to george saunders on otherppl and him saying something like "what you want to write might not be what people like - you should find what people like and write that" and it left a bad taste in my mouth. i don't think i care about what people like in a broad sense, and am more interested in what interests me or feels innovative or interesting based on my experience or perception of writing.

i get uncomfortable meeting people or talking to strangers