Acquired:
Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Jorge Amado
Judgment on Deltchev, Eric Ambler
Passage of Arms, Eric Ambler
Yellow Dog, Martin Amis
Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
Rock, Chuck Klosterman
Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground, Richie Unterberger
Offloaded:
Progress Made:
Martin Amis: The Biography, Richard Bradford
Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground, Richie Unterberger
Finished:
The Dark Frontier, Eric Ambler
Passage of Arms, Eric Ambler
We Can Build You, Philip K. Dick
I’m writing this a little earlier than usual as we are off on an international adventure for the nest few weeks.
I just finished Passage of Arms, which is absolutely top-drawer edge-of-the-seat Ambler. The Dark Frontier was a notch down. Judgment on Deltchev is queued up next, but I am trying, trying not to run through them all. October is likely to be a light reading month, as we will be traveling in Japan for most of it.
I had hoped to finish Vineland before the trip, but that now seems unlikely. You can’t force-feed Pynchon; either you’re in the mood or you aren’t.
The Martin Amis biography is turning out to be one of the better ones I’ve read in a while, entertaining in its own right beside whatever you might learn about the subject. (The fact that I’m making very slow progress on it is my fault, not Bradford’s.) I loved this passage, in the course of which Amis ends up articulating exactly my own views on the Religious Question:
‘I was six or seven years old, and filling out a school registration form, and I came to the disquieting question, which seemed to visit me from a different world. I ran into the hall and shouted up the stairs, “Mum! What religion are we?”1There was a long silence, then: “Uh, Church of England!” Yes, thank God for the Church of England, it didn’t commit you to anything at all. In truth, though, “Church of England” was a mortal lie. We weren’t even that.
‘It was only much later, in the States, that I actually entered a church with friends of the family, and I had a wafer put into my mouth. It seemed grotesque. Even as a child I felt that religion encroached upon me, and I couldn’t believe that so many others believed in it. Even during my Bible period, I was more a bibliophile than anything else. What it said was a mere curiosity. I liked the gold edging on the book. I was repelled by worship. As Kingsley said — I think someone was heckling him at an event in the sixties — you can believe what you like, “but do it in your own time, in private,” like masturbation.’ He pauses, as if about to qualify what he has said. So I ask.
‘No, I’m no longer a “proselytizing atheist.” Being an atheist is an irrational position. It is presumptuous, and crabbed. The right place to be is right on the brink of agnosticism, about to tumble into… atheism. About to but…. We need to know more about the Universe, because to human beings the Universe is still very mysterious. I was talking recently to a friend of mine… and he said, ”We don’t even know what electricity is.” We certainly don’t know how galaxies are formed, why they don’t fly apart. We’re still ten Einsteins away from even a basic understanding of the Universe.
‘So, to say “I am an atheist” is a bit previous, isn’t it? I mean, the basic fact is that the Universe is much more intelligent than we are. So that gives you pause, I think.’
As detailed elsewhere, Richie Unterberger’s Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground landed on my doorstep with a loud and ominous thump. It it a massive tome, large enough to easily fit the author’s last name horizontally on the spine:
Did I really need another massive VU book, when I’ve still barely cracked Dylan Jones’s Loaded or Will Hermes’ King of New York? Of course not, but questions of “need” are beside the point. Any idea of “finishing” these things is beside the point. Life is a journey and as the sage tells us, “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arrival.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Apologies, dear reader, if that sounds a bit hostile. Perhaps, as a man who has rarely finished anything, I am a tad defensive on this subject. As detailed elsewhere, I have a perverse attraction to the idea of the great project that can never be completed.
One dissolute day in the bookstores of Berkeley brought me:
- Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, which had been on my list for a while, and there it was…
- Judgment on Deltchev, one of the dwindling number of unread Amblers…
- Yellow Dog, an Amis that I’ll get to when its time comes…
- and Double Indemnity, which I got because it was near the Ambler and I was out of control!
And to top it all off, I just a couple days ago learned of the existence of Chuck Klosterman’s Rock, which its publisher describes as
A work of speculative nonfiction based on a question that has never been considered or (in all likelihood) even asked: What if The Beatles had only developed a cult following while the Velvet Underground emerged as the most popular band in the world?
And of course I had to have it. It will accompany me to the Land of the Rising Sun, where I am mercifully unlikely to acquire many books. Though you never know, do you?