Scan barcode
casparb's reviews
941 reviews
Ooga-Booga by Seidel Frederick
bemused by the NYT's description of this as some unholy crossbreed of larkin and ashbery, Ithink critics just up & lose their shit when they encounter sustained rhyme. If anything this is the muldoon zone. although I find Seidel's usually in worse taste, with less charm . how many times do yu have to rhyme 'debonair'
Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard, Sezer Duru
Bernhard one of them big boy have-you-ever-reads, maybe I'm too cautious to Not be a hipster. I Iiked this, gradually, obviously ibsen's his big intertext but this book also works as a cheeky answer to the (invited) question - what if a man was grouchy & wrote Woolf's The Waves. it's the right length, too, the end doubles things back and justifies some of the slowness, I feel ... anyway I'll read some more
The Blue Absolute by Aaron Shurin
QUEER SENTENCES as brian teare says, in combo with Eric Sneathen's Don't Leave Me This Way, looks like I was unaware of a whole queer odyssean vibe, a moment, sun-drenched, aegean. This my first from Aaron Shurin & I'm well pleased, essentially a collection of mid-length prose poems, some very good and vibrant, with visible care & it's nice and easy to sit with. I'm wondering who else picks up these environments
Stoner by John Williams
eh; a big n famous classic, lauded by the likes of julian barnes & ian mcewan, which says a lot. ... it's kind of the Campus novel model, complete with bangin yr students & so on. my my. the writing itself is competent and even good at times, but you get a sense of general authorial bitterness as a motivation which discourages me , it's presumptuous. but what do Iknow
Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans
somebody eating chcocoltate cakes several : you don't need all that
The Monster Loves His Labyrinth by Charles Simic
oddly my first simic book as such , largely aphorisms with longer bits flung in ... it's a dangerous form , espceically for Guys of this type , it's very hard not to sound extraordinarily pompous . Simic gets off relatively lightly , having - to all appearances - the politics of a very Centrist dad . Ican't bring myself to dislike him for it even if we're sick
The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe
neat little group bio, not turgid but generous & plenty ... not especially Captivating either , until the final fifty or so pages when the weight of history & aggregated failure. heaps up & tumbles onto things .. yeah Iwas tearing up when Roe's talking about the first Durand-Ruel NY exhibition
Don't Leave Me This Way by Eric Sneathen
very funky little run thru of 14ers & AIDS / patient zero ... curious about what's next 4 eric
Look at Me Now and Here I Am: Writings and Lectures 1909-1945 by Elizabeth Sprigge, Patricia Meyerowitz, Gertrude Stein
this is she it is stein. this is. she it is this is she.
Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity by Marc Augé
following de Certeau, a banger ... throwing this together w/ Koolhaas, Vermeulen, Lefebvre, Benjamin