Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Three books I read recently and loved: Jean-Christophe Valtat '03', Pascal Quignard 'On Wooden Tablets', Jason Hrivnak 'The Plight House'

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“[Valtat’s] hypersensitive high-school student listens to the Cure’s Pornography but speaks like someone out of Proust ...Valtat manages to re-create the exact unhappiness of lost youth.” —Fabrice Gabriel, Les Inrockuptibles

"03 is about a teenager who falls in love with a girl he sees every morning on his way to school. Nothing else happens in the book. It’s magic." -- Lorin Stein, Notesfromtheunderground.com

"[Valtat] has a magical sense of shape, and a gift for lyrical prose that are rare in modern writing." — La Croix

"Jean-Christophe Valtat is a writer of "beautiful energy." — Le monde









Jean-Christophe Valtat 03
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux

'A precocious teenager in a French suburb finds himself powerfully, troublingly drawn to the girl he sees every day on the way to school. As he watches and thinks about her, his daydreams—full of lyrics from Joy Division and the Smiths, fairy tales, Flowers for Algernon, sexual desire and fear, loneliness, rage for escape, impatience to grow up—reveal an entire adolescence. And this fleeting erotic obsession, remembered years later, blossoms into a meditation on what it means to be a smart kid, what it means to be dumb, and what it means to be in love with another person.

'03 is a book about young love like none you have ever read. It marks the English-language debut of a unique French writer—one of the great stylists of his generation.' -- FSG


Excerpt:

From the bus stop across the street it was hard to tell, but suddenly I understood, seeing the passengers in the van that collected her every morning, that she was slightly retarded. Once you knew, it was easy to make sense of her thin adolescent frame, her black hair spiking up on her little head as though she were enduring some slow, endless horror, her eyes, like those of a heroine in a Japanese cartoon forced open onto the real world, eyes so round and so opaque that if they'd focused on me, I might almost have picked them up like two black marbles rolling in the gutter at my feet. It was harder to guess her age; imagine someone whose growth had suddenly stopped, useless and discouraged or, seeing that it had dwarfed the rest of her, had chosen to freeze her body at a jarring, already awkward fourteen years of age. And yet, at first glance, I had found her pretty; her fragility moved me, or rather, I found it touching that she was so pretty, even as I worried that this pale, poorly articulated delicacy would almost certainly fall victim to the filthy urges of abusive teachers or the fumbling and hasty advances of other disabled children. I was sad that this beauty would never be truly seen by those around her or that, even if they did see it, it could never be communicated to her or that, even if it was, it would never make sense to her.



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'Pascal Quignard is undoubtedly the most iconoclastic of contemporary French authors. Voluble and determined - undoubtedly the two key words that describe the career of this man born in the Eure (in the Haute-Normandie region) in 1948, to a family of grammarians and musicians, a philosophy graduate, editor for twenty years with Gallimard and a successful author following the publication of Le Salon du Wurtemberg (The Salon in Wurttemberg) in 1986, then Tous les matins du monde (All the World’s Mornings), made into a film in 1991 by Alain Corneau, which tells the story of the reclusive life of a forgotten baroque composer, Marin Marais.

'All this could have shaped one destiny, one career, one pattern; but Pascal Quignard never feels better than as the outlaw. As a child he twice suffered episodes of mild autism and during the first of these, it was his uncle, returning from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp, who taught him to speak and eat again by giving him a liquorice stick to suck which looked just like a twig.' -- Catherine Argand









Pascal Quignard On Wooden Tablets: Apronenia Avitia
translated by Bruce Boone
Burning Deck

'An introductory biography places our heroine in Rome, in the turbulent 4th century, when the Roman Empire cumbles, invaded by the "Barbarians" from the North as well as infiltrated from within by the Christian "party."

'Then follow Apronenia's notes written on wooden tablets, somewhat in the manner of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book. She seems quite indifferent to the momentous and ruinous events she witnesses. It's true, she does not like the Christians, who are getting powerful, but her tablets concentrate rather on the daily life of a Pagan matron. It is a most vivid record, full of wry observations, earthy smells, colors and sex, as well as nastiness and powerful emotion, as when she sits by her dying husband or feels the approach of her own death.

'Quignard has redefined historical fiction as both hoax and enigma.' -- Burning Deck


Excerpt:

CXXVIII. Small Sparrows

----In the hedge and on a bare tree and dry, stone wall, small sparrows feed their young.
----I thought -- a palace in ruins.
----A dance of servants, wet-nurses, babies, feeding on a finger.


CXXIX. Things Not to Forget

----Flaviana yesterday at Coru.
----Today at Terracina.
----Tomorrow at Formiae.


CXXX. Things Not to Forget

----Interest due at the Kalends.
----Sandals.


CXXXXI. Things Not to Forget

----Think about polishing toenails.


CXXXXII. Things That Last and Things That Don't

----To the list of things that last, I'll add childhood.
----Aborescent shrubs.
----When waiting for Aulus, who's at the grammarian's, and should have been back more than an hour before this.
----Old age.
----A sea tortoise.
----The death of the dead.
----Insomnia.
----Crows.
----Among things that don't last, you overlooked the immortal gods and impeccable craftsmanship.
----Among things that don't last, subtract love. It belongs to our species like sex organs or the accompanying breats making possible reproduction but not defining anything particularly human.







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"Heartbreak, horror, and impossibly brutal choices may all be yours in The Plight House. This first novel by Jason Hrivnak is like nothing I’ve ever read, and still troubles me." -- Creffield, Dead Clothes Sing

"First Rule of The Plight House: everyone talk about The Plight House. Hrivnak writes like a crazy angel in this addictive, astonishing debut." -- Lynn Crosbie

"Hrivnak succinctly posits a triple-barrelled theme: grief bound tightly with innocence and guilt ... [He] is an elegant and often incisive prose stylist, skilled at image-making and intent on exploring difficult questions of personal and societal responsibility." -- The Globe and Mail









Jason Hrivnak The Plight House
Pedlar Press

'The unnamed narrator of The Plight House receives a letter: his childhood friend Fiona has committed suicide at the age of thirty-three. As children, he and Fiona had constructed a dark and violent fantasy world, an imaginary network of laboratories where they performed experiments upon their neighbours, families and friends. Now, aware that Fiona had used a document from their shared world as her suicide note, the narrator becomes obsessed with the possibility that he unknowingly held the key to preventing her death.

'Invoking the half-forgotten methods of his childhood, he begins to compose a test. Intimate and unrestrained, the test is designed to drive from Fiona all trace of the self-destructive impulse. But by devoting himself to a project that can never bring about its desired effect, the narrator has opened the door to a new frontier of grief. And as he pushes the test yet further into realms of decadence and fever, he precipitates a crisis in his own deeply troubled life.

'Part love letter, part crucible, The Plight House chronicles one man’s obsessive attempt to resurrect the image of a lost friend.' -- Pedlar Press


Excerpt:

In the pre-dawn hours of May 7, 2006, my childhood friend Fiona broke into the elementary school that she and I had attended more than twenty years earlier. She was dressed in layers of threadbare clothes and she carried with her, in a canvas duffel bag, the entirety of her worldly possessions. Fiercely independent and restless by nature, Fiona had spent most of the last decade drifting abroad. She had scrounged her way across three continents, always in search of of the strongest drugs and the bleakest, most ill-starred company. No one knew that she had come back to Toronto, I imagine her simultaneously beautified and burdened by that lack of accountability, the terrible freedom of someone who sleeps where she falls and whose whereabouts are a perpetual mystery.
----Once inside the school, she went wandering down the silent hallways, examining odd trophy cabinets and class photographs for a familiar name or face. In one of the upstairs classrooms, she stood be a window overlooking the schoolyard and for the better part of an hour wept quietly in the dark. Sometime before first light, she went down to the front of the building and locked herself in the anteroom that connects the administration area with the principal's office. She sat down on the little padded bench where generations of the delinquent have awaited their turn to see the principal. There, after smoking one last cigarette, she took off her coat, rolled up her sleeves and opened her wrists with a razor blade.
----


*

p.s. Hey. It's Wednesday aka the new day they exile the residents and clean the rooms here at the Recollets. I can hear the crew out in the hall, so they're starting early, which means an interrupted, delayed p.s. is all but guaranteed. Thus, I'm going to both zoom along and apologize right now for how late this post/p.s. is reaching you today. ** Math, Hey, dude. That's a very good question why that theater piece is called 'Macadamia Nut Brittle'. There's at least one thing about it that my influence isn't responsible for, that's for sure. Vegan Mexican, yikes. What a great idea! I will so thoroughly and religiously check that restaurant out someday. My wave has to be a quick one today too. Waving (not drowning). ** 鈺禎, You are both pesky and diligent. ** Misanthrope, Well, five is my big number, but since ten is two fives, it counts too. Five George Miles novels, five post-Cycle novels. That's my plan. Fives everywhere you look. Dang, WWE Extreme Rules sounds so fun. Cena irritates me too. Batista is a shrug. I can't remember who Randy Orton is. Oh, to just once in one's life feel as happy as Little Show must have felt that night. ** Jeff, Hey, Jeff. Yeah, great stuff, right? ** Mona, Wow, hey, Mona! Great to see you. It's been yonks, as I think, err, the English say. Thanks for the corrective. I'll ... Everyone, as regards yesterday's post, d.l. Mona says 'the 'Info is beautiful' graphic of planes VS volcanos is well wrong. He fuct up big time with his maths and there is now an updated version I put it up at my blog here.' Thanks again, man. You good? I sure hope so. ** Bollo, Hm, I'll wait. On 'Kiss Ass', I mean. I think on 'Iron Man 2' too. I had a moment the other day where I thought, okay, the last one was insanely overrated, but, hm ... It passed. Another clue on your blog? I'll check it once my room is clean and I'm post-homeless. ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, that's right, it was in 'La Cicatrice ... ' in its 'youth'. ** Alan, Me, I laughed. It found my circuitously situated funny bone. ** L@rstonovich, Mm, you have a point. I guess I'd better hope they either don't find the bodies or that I imagined everything. ** Tim Jones-Yelvington, My pleasure, of course. I'll send you stuff to look at today or tomorrow. Thanks, Tim. ** Stan_cz, Oh, I see. Well, that star-studded post-LACC line-up wasn't much help then. I wish I could think of grads. Let me try to query the viewers. Everyone, d.l. Stan_cz has an assignment whereby he needs to write a profile of a Los Angeles City College student or alumni, and this requires him to meet and interview his subject. Is anyone out there by any chance an LACC student or grad, or do you know anyone whom you could suggest? If so, please speak to Stan in the blog's comments area. Thanks. ** Sypha, I've never read C.S. Lewis, and, considering my apparent lack of strong interest in both Christianity and in Lewis' favorite fiction genre, I probably won't, but who knows, and I'm interested to hear about anything in his book that interests you. ** Kier, Hey, and love. ** Wolf, I, you know, love you too, and here's a solar flare hug. ** JW Veldhoen, I don't how much the hard-ons my work inspires have to do with 'gay content'. My mind's just sick and hot and acts like a gay guy's mind sometimes. ** Trees, I hope you don't get post-school/partum depression. I doubt it. If it's threatening then I say, Fuck it, you were too good for it, man. Needless to say I'm liking your musical project's aim. Do you take serially murdered victim requests? I want to hear about the developments no matter what. I can't argue with that PiL comp's contents. Sure, I might have put a bit more 'Metal Box' on it, and a squib or two off album #1, but I like your purer approach. ** _Black_Acrylic, Moms and blog maintaining friends are always right. Didn't they teach you that in school? Fingers preparing themselves to cross violently the minute Friday rolls around. Just be yourself, etc. ** Blendin, A lot of ground indeed, right? It worked for Shakespeare. Better to be cautious when talking about your new work/ ideas/ direction, sure. If I had ever changed my direction, I might even have a comforting anecdote for you. ** Kiddiepunk, Mr. I'm fine, yeah. You'd love the weather we're having, or you will love it. Are you still thinking the 5th or 6th as your return date? Scott will be around until the 14th, it turns out. When I walked by the future gallery with my shopping bags a little while ago, they were hammering and sawing in there, so it's happening if not yet perfect. Come back, Little Sheba! ** Amccartney, I'm really suspicious of the 'self-indulgent' criticism. I'm sure that you like me have heard that term hurled at some of the world's best stuff. The only situation in which I think it might apply is if something is way too long and unimpeachably sloppy. But even that is more about a failure on the writer's part to think enough about the seductive and pleasurable aspects of reading. When it comes to matters of style and content, I think the accusation of 'self-indulgence' is pretty much just laziness or self-indicting prejudice. I don't know. Does that make sense? And you have a glorious Angeleno Wednesday. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Wow, Mikel, it's a trip and a great pleasure to see you, man. Yeah, it was lucky for me that my scene with Sagat involved me telling him to put his clothes back on in effect. I did find him to be a sympathetic, nice, pretty intelligent guy. Can I ask how you are, what you're up to, what you're doing these days? Lovely to see you, Mikel, really. ** David, Interesting. I've got to watch this 'Glee' thing. Your nights are so much more fruitful and rich than mine. I'm such a morning guy. You'll notice in my day reports, I fade off whenever nighttime gets overly situated in the story. There's a reason for that. Yum, euphoria. You made me want to pull out 'Apple & Venus Vol. 1', and so I will. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey, do me a favor, if you don't mind and if it agrees with you. I want to do a post on 'horror' fiction writers. Tell me your ten favorite writers of what might be categorized as 'horror' fiction. I want to use your ten as the basis around which to build the post. You game? I like the Bendy report. He never ceases to complicate and charm. And the mysteriously toppling books story wasn't bad either. I love that kind of stuff. Okay, that cat video was pretty funny. I will not deny it. Thank you. My day ... quiet-ish. Now that I'm back into 'novel rewriting all the time' mode, the entertainment that my days are providing to me is getting less accessible to others. I had coffee with my friend Scott at a different cafe than usual. That was nice. Well, he was. The cafe didn't pass the test. He gave me a copy of the new Locrian album, which is amazing. I talked with Gisele via phone. We have a recording session set up for Friday afternoon where we'll record the sound/text of the 'teenagers finding the dead body' scene for our piece. She couldn't find real teenagers in time, so we're using squeaky voiced adults. I confirmed with the guy who's interviewing me for Butt Magazine today that it was happening today. The last time the Recollets cleaning crew was here, I was berated in French for allowing a thick brown layer of tea/coffee stains to build up on our kitchen sink, so I cleaned up that and the kitchen in general in the evening. Mm, I think I'm out of things to say already. Not much a day. I'll try to use or misuse today in some intriguing way. What did you do? ** Creative Massacre, Dude, you have the coolest Chef in the world, right? How did the ass cake taste? I can see it all now: Ass Cakes Day. Take a picture, and I'll go see if I can find any other good ones online. ** Little foal, Hey. I'm glad my educated (?) guess about your friend made some kind of sense. If you can keep really long time friends, and if there's ongoing value in that for you, it's such a good thing. I have very few friends I knew when I was much younger and with whom I'm still in touch, and I regret losing contact with the ones I did. You friend probably knows he can talk to you about anything if he needs to. I bet he does. I bet it would just be the hardest thing for him to let you know that he knows. Anyway, very bon jour to you, my friend. ** End. Up above are some books that pleased me enormously when I read them of late. I pass the scoop along. Have fine Wednesdays, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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