I've Been Reading Lately - March 2024
Looks at books by David Diop, Kim Fu, Timothy Snyder, and more!
A not-so-regular look at what I’ve been reading and enjoyed.
At Night All Blood Is Black - Davis Diop (translated by Anna Moschovakis) (FSG, 2020)
A nightmare vision from the trenches of World War One. People die slow and agonizing deaths on the battlefield as commanders order the rank and file to charge mindlessly at machine guns. A Senegalese soldier watches his best friend bleed out slowly as they beg for their suffering to be cut short. Meanwhile his commander doesn’t speak his language, doesn’t know his customs, and most importantly doesn’t think of him as an equal. Diop’s book is dark and soon spirals out of control as it moves from mud and blood-soaked trenches to an idyllic French countryside. I couldn’t put this one down or keep it out of my mind.
On Tyranny - Timothy Snyder (Tim Duggan Books, 2017)
Perhaps a surprise best seller and one that I see a lot of copies floating around used book stores and thrift shops, one thinks that perhaps Timothy Snyder’s book is one that thankfully didn’t come true. But maybe it already was true before he wrote it and his warning is more a reflection back on how we went so badly wrong.
To wit: ‘Remember that email is skywriting,” writes Snyder. But this is a warning to a society we already have: The NSA has been doing warrantless wiretaps for over two decades now. Again: “Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.” Those of a certain age may remember some 40 Sinclair Media stations airing Stolen Honor on the eve of the 2004 election in a blatant attempt to push voters away from John Kerry’s campaign. “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.” And in a bitter twist, one sees the “mandate freedom” stickers from those who wish to limit the freedom of others: LGBTQ people, visible minorities, socialists. I liked Synder’s little book, but then I also liked Focault’s introduction to Anti-Oedipus.
The Return of Munchausen - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (translated by Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov) (New York Review Books Classics, 2016)
It’s hard to really weigh something like this. A short novella that’s a parable for the lost hopes of the Soviet revolution under Stalin, The Return of Munchausen nominally follows the outlandish adventures of the larger-than-life Baron. But not really. Indeed, it’s mostly about Munhausen’s lectures on spending time incognito in Soviet Russia and on Krzhizhanovsky’s feelings about life and literature. This is a book that’s steeped in Russian culture and history and probably requires a more thorough guide than I for one to really get at. Is it fun? Yes. Does one need a degree in Russian history to get the most out of it? Well, the 20 pages of footnotes certainly helped a novice like me. Your mileage may vary.
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century - Kim Fu (Coach House Books, 2022)
In 12 stories, Kim Fu takes readers into the darkness. Not darkness as in evil, exactly, but darkness as in the backdrop around the fire on Who’s Afraid of the Dark. With stories about abandoned dolls, the border between sleep and being awake, and 3D printers, Fu writes unsettling, vaguely disturbing fiction that’s hard to put down. At her best she straddles the line between horror and literary fiction that’s comparable to Alison Rumfitt, Gretchen Felker-Martin, and the Never Whistle At Night anthology. When she doesn’t quite connect it feels more like something from an older horror TV anthology, the sort of thing I still enjoy. I’ve yet to read Fu’s other books, but this one convinced me to pick up For Today I Am A Boy. Watch this space.
Suppose a Sentence - Brian Dillon (New York Review Books, 2020)
Something of a literary flaneur, Brian Dillon is one of those guys who seems like they’ve read everything and has opinions on them all. In this collection he dissects English prose style and how it’s evolved over the centuries. He starts all the way back to Shakespeare, up through Bronte, and finally the 20th century: Susan Sontag, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Anne Carson.
As an instruction manual or a teaching reference, it’s lacking. It doesn’t explain how the sentences work, how the use of tenses or clauses change the meaning, nothing technical like that. But as an expression of the joy Dillon gets from reading it’s fun. One gets the sense of joy he feels from weighing a sentence's balance and of how it rolls off the tongue with multi re-readings.
This is a guy who enjoys writing with a sense of elan. To wit: “We see as the lost lady sees, or rather does not see because none of it is real to her, and before we know it… we are part of the dream or diorama too, we’ve been merged with the unreal city, become a figment of those blue eyes.”
Style can be a contentious thing - to some it’s everything, to others needless ornamentation. I know what camp Dillon sets up in and I think his neighbours there would enjoy this one.