by bill | Nov 11, 2023 | Read it in books |
In honor of Kurt Vonnegut’s 101st birthday today, I’m taking a break from the ongoing Bowie thread to talk about something I just read.
The first story in Look at the Birdie, “Confido” — which was written, but not published, sometime in the early 1950s — is about a handyman who works for a company that makes hearing aids. In the course of tinkering with microphones and speakers, he accidentally invents a machine that talks to you. He describes it to his wife like this:
“What is it every person really wants, more than food almost?” Henry had asked coyly, showing her Confido for the first time. He was a tall, rustic man, ordinarily as shy as a woods creature. But something had changed him, made him fiery and loud. “What is it?”
“Happiness, Henry?”
“Happiness, certainly! But what’s the key to happiness?”
“Religion? Security, Henry? Health, dear?”
“What is the longing you see in the eyes of strangers on the street, in eyes wherever you look?”
“You tell me, Henry. I give up.” Ellen had said helplessly.
“Somebody to talk to! Somebody who really understands! That’s what.” He’d waved Confido over his head. “And this is it!”
After this conversation Henry goes to work, leaving Ellen alone with Confido — who, it turns out, is a horrible gossip with an endless string of snarky things to say about the neighbors. When the kids come home from school, she is still in her housecoat, knee-deep in slander.
(more…) by bill | Nov 5, 2023 | Read it in books |
After finishing Player Piano I decided to go back and reread some of Vonnegut’s stories, which constituted the majority of his output from that period. Imagine my chagrin to find Welcome to the Monkey House missing from the library. Also gone: the posthumously released story collection Bagombo Snuff Box.
I guess I must have loaned/given them to somebody? This vaguely rings a bell. In fact I seem to remember giving away more than one copy of Monkey House when the fancy updated edition was released some years ago. Fortunately neither it nor Snuff Box was expensive to reacquire. They are currently en route from Fife, WA and Kansas City, MO respectively.
In the meantime I started reading another story collection I found on my shelf, Look at the Birdie. Here’s the first sentence of the first story. I think it bodes well.
The Summer had died peacefully in its sleep, and Autumn, as soft-spoken executrix, was locking life up safely until Spring came to claim it.
by bill | Nov 4, 2023 | Read it in books |
Books Acquired:
Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers
Richard Brautigan, The Tokyo-Montana Express
Will Hermes, The King of New York
Progress Made:
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
H.P Lovecraft. The Complete Fiction
Charles Shields, And So It Goes
Books Finished:
Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
This was a tough month for reading — book reading, at least — due to travel and other distractions. I did get through two New Yorkers, which leaves me with 4 in the pile. Fortunately the subscription lapsed so I have all the time in the world for those.
In the end I finished only one book in October, and it was one I’d read before, though it felt entirely new. Player Piano was Vonnegut’s first novel, vintage 1952, and though it started a little slow — he was not quite the lean, mean writing machine he would become — I found myself really getting into it. And its portrait of a world where automation has put most of the human race out of work felt incredibly au courant in this age of AI anxiety.
From my reading in And So It Goes, I know now that the Ilium Works — the technological u/dystopia where the novel’s protagonist, Paul Proteus, works — is a thinly veiled version of General Electric’s Schnectady Works, where young Kurt Vonnegut was employed. And Proteus is a version of Vonnegut at that time: He appears to be set for life in a job that most people would envy, but he is discontented. To walk in corporate lockstep is not in his nature.
(more…) by bill | Oct 5, 2023 | Read it in books |
Books Acquired:
Kingsley Amis, Take a Girl Like You
Tim Mitchell, There’s Something About Jonathan
Cornell Woolrich, The Black Curtain
Progress Made:
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines
Charles Shields, And So It Goes
Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
Books Finished:
George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone
Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Cornell Woolrich, The Black Curtain
I was almost caught up on The New Yorker when suddenly two issues arrived in three days. Fuckers.
Fortunately my subscription is up in about a month, so there’s no real hurry. In fact it’s always nice to have an unread issue on hand, as is there is a certain kind of day for which The New Yorker is just the thing — a day of air travel with a longish layover, say, or one afflicted by a mild hangover.
I realized recently that without being conscious of it, I’ve never counted anything other than book reading as “real” reading. Newspapers and magazines can be informative or entertaining, but are ultimately ephemeral — you don’t put them up on a shelf to look handsome and scholarly; you don’t cross them off your list (or write about them). But once you read a book, that’s one less book you haven’t read.
(more…) by bill | Sep 3, 2023 | Read it in books |
Books Acquired:
Marc Leeds, The Vonnegut Encyclopedia
Sean L. Maloney, The Modern Lovers (33 1/3)
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Progress Made:
D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel
Mark Twain, The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
Charles Shields, And So It Goes
Books Finished:
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
Gore Vidal, Death in the Fifth Position, Death Before Bedtime, Death Likes It Hot
Gore Vidal’s three mystery novels — written in the early-to-mid 1950s under the pseudonym “Edgar Box” — were perfect summer reading: plot-driven and involving, but with enough literary panache to placate one’s inner English major. I ripped through them in a trice, and used some of the time left over to learn more about Gore, who was a complicated guy. Just to give you an idea, here’s an excerpt from his Wikipedia page:
Vidal would cruise the streets and bars of New York City and other locales and wrote in his memoir that by age twenty-five, he had had more than a thousand sexual encounters. Vidal also said that he had an intermittent romance with the actress Diana Lynn, and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter. He was briefly engaged to the actress Joanne Woodward before she married the actor Paul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles.
Vidal enjoyed telling his sexual exploits to friends. Vidal claimed to have slept with Fred Astaire when he first moved to Hollywood and also with a young Dennis Hopper.
In 1950, Vidal met Howard Austen, who became his partner for the next 53 years, until Austen’s death. He said that the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not have sex with each other: “It’s easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does.” In Celebrity: The Advocate Interviews (1995), by Judy Wiedner, Vidal said that he refused to call himself “gay” because he was not an adjective, adding “to be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved. Watch out. I have never thought of myself as a victim… I’ve said — a thousand times? — in print and on TV, that everyone is bisexual.”
(more…) by bill | Aug 4, 2023 | Read it in books |
Books Acquired:
Martin Amis, Heavy Water and Other Stories, Night Train
D.M. Thomas, The White Hotel
Gore Vidal, Death in the Fifth Position, Death Before Bedtime, Death Likes It Hot
Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury
Progress Made:
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
Gore Vidal, Death in the Fifth Position
Books Finished:
Martin Amis, Heavy Water and Other Stories
Martin Amis, Night Train
Richard Brautigan, Dreaming of Babylon
Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury
Note: This month’s entry is on the long side. I’d like to guarantee that it will be worth it, but I can’t in good conscience do so. Sometimes things must just be written, irregardless, know what I mean?
Dreaming of Babylon was an easy read, with short chapters that start halfway down the page. Too easy, really — I was enjoying it, and then it was over. The central mystery is never resolved, or even explored in much depth, not that I really expected it to be. Despite being subtitled “A Private Eye Novel 1942,” this is Brautigan, after all.
(more…)