Some books I’ve been reading

Herein are described suc­cinctly, and with affil­i­ate links, some things I’ve got­ten recently to read. Said links are there, you know, in case you want them (because they’re good). Or in case you want any­thing else of the sort one gets from this large online retailer.

Just sayin’.

A per­sonal his­tory of OuLiPo, from a recent mem­ber. The result­ing first-​​person asyn­chro­nous faceted work is an hon­est biog­ra­phy and expla­na­tion of the constraint-​​players’ club, rang­ing from its pre­his­tory to future. Too many folks con­fus­edly con­sider OuLiPo to be a rather mathematically-​​tinted but oth­er­wise mun­dane facet of Sur­re­al­ism, or a more reasonable-​​seeming and obses­sively con­sis­tent ‘Pat­a­physics, but as Becker makes clear: it ain’t. And rightly not. A pleas­ant read, and to be frank a game-​​changer for the man­ner of read­ing among the sus­cep­ti­ble: Even now I think back and search for the oulip­ian con­straint Becker must have used in fram­ing the book….

Sure, Byron was weird. But the thing I’ve been learn­ing belat­edly about his­tory and the lives of all those old-​​timey writin’ lit­er­ary folks is how much of their lives is spelled out and yet remains opaque. I mean, I scan old mag­a­zines and as a result end up read­ing a goodly num­ber of them, and yet that sense of, “WTF?!” as an oblique satire or anony­mous homage rolls by remains a con­stant part of my expe­ri­ence. This book, a focused slice of pol­ished the­sis no doubt, clears at least a few cob­webs I’d stum­bled into through the years: sure Byron got around. But Cather­ine Lamb, the crazy minx, comes off in this detailed analy­sis an awful lot like Sher­lock’s Irene Adler: the one from the TV show, I mean, with the naked­ness and the extreme smarts and the gift of pubic hairs in blood and all. And then there’s occultists chan­nel­ing posthu­mous Byronic verse, and the pas­tiches that were ragged satire, and… it gets a bit thick, a bit too schol­arly now and then. But there’s a cos­tume drama or two tucked in here, with naughty bits and verse and all that good stuff.

I’m a sucker for Delany’s prose. I grabbed this as a “sim­i­lar work” from some­thing else I haven’t yet read, and am lik­ing it quite a bit (not least because it helps me under­stand a bit more of Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which even a col­lege junior (as I was when it first came out) couldn’t hope to really ever fathom. (And yes, I’ve nested paren­the­ses three deep. (We’re talk­ing about Delany!) Four.)).

Amus­ingly enough, I’m read­ing Mina Loy because the edi­tor bought a mag­a­zine from me on eBay. What? You didn’t think I Googled the buy­ers of my per­sonal col­lec­tion of zines? Feh; fat lot you know. Hav­ing spent way too much time lately among the orig­i­nal works of the Pro­gres­sive Era, I now want to stage an anar­chis­tic shuffle-​​up: Woolf, Loy, and Voltairine.

Some­where between Zinn and Holton on a scale of History-isn’t-quite-what-you-were-taught (and Wouldn’t It Be Funny if the Con­ser­v­a­tives Actu­ally Knew What They Were Defend­ing), Levin­son is about the prospect of reform. Which is to say: Con­sti­tu­tional Con­ven­tion, to clear up some of those long-​​standing “dif­fi­cul­ties” that remain to date among our hal­lowed fore­fa­thers’ argu­ments, mis­un­der­stand­ings, and crappy opaque com­pro­mises. Yeah, that’ll happen.

I am in love, frankly. Sci­ence books that are self-​​consciously about nar­ra­tive: not rehashes of the god­damned Great Men in Lab­coats trope, but nar­ra­tives that explain the sci­ence itself. How is it we came to be allowed to think of an Ice Age? How is it we came to con­sider that there could be other “men”, miss­ing links, pro­to­hu­mans, and ulti­mately the actual hob­bits and giants we now accept? And (per­haps most inter­est­ingly so far) how is it we’re allowed to call the Pleis­tocene any­thing at all, to shift its mode of def­i­n­i­tion away from the habits and norms of ear­lier con­ven­tions to the point where it’s defined com­pletely dif­fer­ently from other epochs: by ice, and Man. Sci­ence books should be more about sci­ence, like this one is. Not a pop­u­lar­iza­tion so much as well-​​written lit­er­ary crit­i­cism Of Sci­ence!

It’s that time of year. O what might she have wrought, had she sur­vived? Read every­thing she ever wrote, I’m telling you. I’m re-​​reading this, and then her short sto­ries, which I have here by my hand, complete.

I’m mak­ing books. You’ll see. Hendel’s book comes highly rec­om­mended, and I sec­ond that height: It’s not advice, nor crafts­man­ship, but rather a col­lec­tion of thoughts from many hands on how the text block works (and is worked). Inter­views with design­ers from many places, clas­si­cists and out­ra­geous tweak­ers, with an empha­sis on how and why any book looks like it does. And what that look means.

I remem­ber the cud­geling I got years ago when Cliff Pick­over asked on a fan list whether he should use Palatino or Times New Roman for his “new book”, and I said he should actu­ally use a real font, and design the pages, and make it nice. I don’t know what Sec­ond Cul­ture those folks came from, but they really abhorred the notion that font choice and design was as impor­tant as the damned words on the page. I’d post a link, but I can’t recall the names of the books he finally printed in Palatino, alas.

And there you have it.

Every­body Says I Should Read This. And I’m read­ing it. Slowly, actu­ally, not least because I see, then think. Back up and see, then think. Too easy to have all one’s assump­tions and obser­va­tions brought together and miss the points of fail­ure. So far, I haven’t found those points of fail­ure, so I’m read­ing slowly, think­ing, and read­ing more. But I knew imme­di­ately he was right.

Imag­ine a manic twelve-​​year-​​old Eng­lish [sic] boy was allowed to out­line a novel pub­lished in install­ments in the Boy’s Own Adven­ture Mag­a­zine. Lovely fluff, with meta­tex­tual stuff sprin­kled lightly through­out. Is it sus­tain­able? I’m told it may well be.

One thought on “Some books I’ve been reading

  1. they really abhorred the notion that font choice and design was as impor­tant as the damned words on the page.”

    Had a frus­trat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with a friend about this. His com­ment was that one of the things that attracted him to his field is the lack of care in pre­sen­ta­tion. It’s “all about the sci­ence” and that a put together talk or paper is often mask­ing some sort of prob­lem with the facts.

    It con­firmed that I shouldn’t be allowed to get within 20 feet of academia.

    On Book Design is going into the queue.
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