everything like before by kjell askildsen (archipelago press): looked up books that had one the same norwegian literary prize that uncle kok's first book won and found this guy. unsure if this is the book that won, however. short story collection about sad norwegian people in complicated relationships. interested in its emphasis on older/elderly people. noticed a trend in sort of revealing that a given character was involved in killing someone toward the end of a story, but liked it as a conceit - exploring things like how people would, realistically, handle learning that someone they're starting to get to know is actually a convicted murderer. also enjoyed the 'classic lit fic' stories about couples in doomed/bad relationships, being passive-aggressive with one another, feeling sorry for themselves, etc., but with less self-importance or pity, maybe. also like the norwegian-style emphasis on stilted/awkward conversation, people saying things strangely/self-consciously, etc. noticed that several of the stories are more or less riffs on the same exact idea, e.g. 3+ stories about different couples going on vacation in greece and suffering infidelity problems. enjoyed most the stories where people sort of accidentally do/say really shitty things and struggle to communicate. would recommend, interested in reading more by him.
hunts in dreams by tom drury: read after enjoying the black brook. this one is much shorter and takes place over a long weekend, basically, through four alternative POVs but within each POV extends to follow some other people in their orbit. enjoyed more than the black brook. enjoyed the general vibe, flow, setting, and characters. nothing really terrible or dramatic happens. everyone seems more or less normal and relatable in spite of their unique neuroses. enjoyed the early 2000s, rural midwest setting, sort of like the end of the small town world. people wander into each other, take their time doing stuff, go out into nature, watch tv. enjoyed its joy williamsian quirkiness without the joy williamsian drama. found myself looking forward to reading it and inhabiting its world when i wasn't reading it.
the end of vandalism by tom drury: turns out this is his debut and technically involves most of the characters from hunts in dreams, but is readable out of sequence. less concise and polished than his later books but i still liked it a lot, especially the meandering slowness of the various character arcs and random scenes, the extended nature/home writing passages, and the various little jokes such as introducing the high school health teacher as someone who infamously confused a whole class of 9th graders by describing the penis, during intercourse, as "hard and crusty." cried briefly on the train during the unexpected stillbirth scene. would highly recommend tom drury, based on having read and enjoyed three of his books; lent it to my mother because it's set in iowa, and she later returned it to me while grimacing, noting she had only read a little bit of it and hated it.
nightwood by djunba barnes: bought at a used book sale because of it being described as a contemporary/modern feeling lesbian love story from the 30s. not a big fan of the style, but laughed a lot at the absurdity of the first several chapters focusing entirely on "the jewish moral character" and some loser dude, with no women or lesbian sex anywhere. skipped around and still didn't like the prose, gave up.
replacement by tor ulven (dalkey archive): had this on the shelf for a while. it's currently the only ulven novel translated into english, and comes with a big afterword by stig saeterbakken, who is an author i like a lot. it's a sort of fragmentary narrative that unceremoniously moves between different, sometimes vaguely overlapping, characters/perspectives, and shifts from third to second person early on, then back again at the end. the style emphasizes mundane lists and prolonged meditations on physical descriptions of scenes or objects, such as how the light shines through a curtained window for ~3 pages at a time, but which never feels boring or uninteresting. as such there isn't really an overarching plot, but threads between sections are alluded to, and the individual narratives are almost all separately very compelling -- enjoyed thinking of how the various sections could have been shuffled in any order and probably result in a just as compelling book, which i typically would consider kind of lame, but i think the strength of the writing here sets it apart. especially enjoyed the confidence to move perspectives without having to have some kind of third act reveal or clever framework to define/explain it. enjoyed the details and specifics of most individual character arcs, the varying levels of standard norwegian litfic personal bleakness, and the times when an image or idea is referenced across different arcs. would recommend. hoping more of his work is translated sometime soon.
sunflower by tex gresham (spaceboy books): a large book, physically, that evokes david foster wallace in both its physical largeness and writing. stylewise, it leverages chapter-by-chapter shifts in perspective/character to disorientingly describe a conspiracy involving film, aliens, murder, and nutritional supplements set in the near future. includes a lot of things i associate with david foster wallace and other postmodernists like pynchon: it is vaguely sci-fi adjacent (set in the near future to allow for fantastical/satirical cultural changes, as a form of social and pop cultural commentary), long dialogues between people with arcane passions, silly names, people with quirky/irreal character habits/traits (a guy with two ears on the side of his head, a woman who wears long read gloves to cover horrific scars, a fucked up dwarf kinda guy, a guy without a tongue, etc), and people starting sentences with variations of "and but so." in spite of this (or because of it) i generally enjoyed it, felt curious about how the plot would resolve, and considered the settings and scenes both interesting and vividly described. i felt like the jokes/ideas based on its near-future setting were a mixed bag -- there's mention of Chairman Musk and SpaceX, 'the obama assassination,' an earthquake having physically split apart california, some sort of concentration campification of fat camps, ad drones, and lots of vaping. there's also -- because it's tex -- a lot of references to film, which i mostly didn't get or care about, but never felt like were pivotal to generally enjoying the book. unlike wallace i felt like the tangents into things outside tex's purview were under-researched and less immersive when they touch on things a reader may be more familiar with -- in my case it was the bullshit jargon used to talk about programing and machine learning, so i assume this may be the case for other things. my understanding is that wallace was able to (afford to, may be key here, by way of major press advances) fully research the complex scientific/mathematical/fiduciary/literary/philosophical concepts that made the arcane digressions/obsessions in his books famous and compelling, whereas tex instead usually brushes over this with some wonky jargon and allusions to move the plot forward. also unlike wallace (or specifically infinite jest), the chapters are shorter, so the changes in perspective feel more frequent and jarring, vs. the way that infinite jest will spend a good deal of page count immersing you in the new perspective/setting/character before making oblique references to the rest of the work to connect things. here it is more condensed -- while it's a long book, i felt like it probably could/should have been longer and really explore the space and setting of everything, especially since the writing itself is good, an effective blend of moving plot and description, engaging action, interesting characters, etc.; I basically didn't think that the emphasis on quickly alluding to the overarching conspiracy plot and action sequences was required to keep me interested chapter by chapter. but maybe this is also due to shifts in literary norms, or editorial advice to sell more copies, or a meta-commentary on pop culture, or tex's love of schlocky film, or something. anyway, i'm feeling like it's unfair to knock the book by contrasting it with books by david foster wallace, but it also feels inevitable -- writing a book so deeply in conversation with another work like this will invariably force it to be scrutinized in terms of where it innovates or distinguishes itself (or doesn't). but i think it's a good book and scratches similar itches without trying to hard to seem clever, which to me is a positive. made it halfway through then lost interest, possibly due to not having read it fast enough to retain the plot/characters in my head. would recommend/have recommended to others.
memoirs of a polar bear by yoko tawada: have enjoyed other books by tawada. this one is about a polar bear who can talk and write and who writes a memoir. not a big fan of the whimsical style or constant necessity of emphasizing that the narrator is a polar bear interacting with the world, which is sort of the entire conceit. not super compelling plot or stylewise. probably won't finish.
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