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Strung me around like some necklace that you never gave
I am not sleeping enough. I haven't been sleeping enough for weeks. Months, really, at this point. I have written no poems since the first week of June. I am barely managing to write about books or movies. Several pleasant things have happened this week and yet I feel exhausted to the point of nonexistence: I am having trouble thinking about anything, except that I don't have the option of turning my brain off, either. I feel like I am scraping thinner and thinner and I haven't broken in the last year and a half, so chances are I won't now, but the idea of just keeping on in this state is agonizing. I suppose this is the mindset in which Beckett plays take place. Does anyone want to be in a Beckett play, or does it just happen to them? I thought once I'd gotten Christopher Fry.
Henry Roth's Call It Sleep (1934) not only does not fall apart in its second half, it winds up to a firecracker finish of prose poetry and polyphony and some of the best timing I've seen in a novel lately. David who lent it to me warned me that it "has a kick like a mule," but he did not warn me that I would close the book just smiling in pleasure at the skill of the language. It reminds me oddly of Phyllis Gotlieb's Why Should I Have All the Grief? (1969), her only non-genre novel; both are deeply Jewish and vividly, unconventionally written. I don't know if there is any link between them. For purposes of this post, I don't know if it matters. (Don Marquis, I know she loved.) Read both! But I've evangelized more about Gotlieb over the years, so take from this post an unambiguous recommendation for Henry Roth. I know nothing about his later novels; they were published either at the very end of his life or posthumously and not all the editing was done by the author. Call It Sleep, though, is terrific.
I have to go back to trying to fall asleep. Tomorrow morning, the dentist.
Henry Roth's Call It Sleep (1934) not only does not fall apart in its second half, it winds up to a firecracker finish of prose poetry and polyphony and some of the best timing I've seen in a novel lately. David who lent it to me warned me that it "has a kick like a mule," but he did not warn me that I would close the book just smiling in pleasure at the skill of the language. It reminds me oddly of Phyllis Gotlieb's Why Should I Have All the Grief? (1969), her only non-genre novel; both are deeply Jewish and vividly, unconventionally written. I don't know if there is any link between them. For purposes of this post, I don't know if it matters. (Don Marquis, I know she loved.) Read both! But I've evangelized more about Gotlieb over the years, so take from this post an unambiguous recommendation for Henry Roth. I know nothing about his later novels; they were published either at the very end of his life or posthumously and not all the editing was done by the author. Call It Sleep, though, is terrific.
I have to go back to trying to fall asleep. Tomorrow morning, the dentist.
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Thank you. I got about two hours, which was really not enough, but today has already involved soft-serve ice cream and good political news and I am currently baking a lemon cake, so I think I will survive the day.
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I really appreciate it. Today has been sleepless but positive, which at least I enjoy!
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(My wife and I just watched the recent film "A Field in England", which she summed up as "Waiting for Godot, as if directed by Ken Russell." I didn't exactly enjoy it, but it made me oddly happy that such a strange thing could exist.)
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I loved A Field in England, honestly. And totally agree about Ken Russell. It is a good thing to have art like that in the world.
OPEN UP AND LET THE DEVIL IN
Re: OPEN UP AND LET THE DEVIL IN
Not unless you count a couple of episodes of Doctor Who, although I know he's directed an adaptation of Ballard's High Rise that I am really looking forward to. Talk to me about Kill List? I'll try to get hold of it.
Re: OPEN UP AND LET THE DEVIL IN
In a good way. I would show it with said film in an evening, and probably end the night with Hot Fuzz.
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I don't think so—it's not a mysterious problem—but thank you for the offer.
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*hugs*
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Thanks. I have to get up at aaagh o'clock both tomorrow and Sunday, so I'm going to try heading to bed really early tonight.
*hugs*
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I've never read any books by Phyllis Gotlieb, but clearly I must!
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Thank you! Today I napped for about an hour and a half in the afternoon; it was surprisingly pleasant. I dreamed of staying awake through the sunset, which was not at all how today's meteorology worked.
I've never read any books by Phyllis Gotlieb, but clearly I must!
You must! She is amazing. Her science fiction all takes place in the same future continuity, about six hundred years from the time of publication, in which Earth or Solthree is one of a number of inhabited planets who participate in a Galactic Federation, no one travels faster than light, empathy and telepathy are common forms of communication, and most of her protagonists are not human. The formative novel with which I discovered her is A Judgment of Dragons (1980), the first of a loose trilogy about the telepathic red alien cats of Ungruwarkh; the first novella "Son of the Morning" is one of my favorite science fiction stories and one of my favorite stories of the Yiddish fantastic at once. Late in high school, my parents gave me her then-latest novel Flesh and Gold (1998), which got me to realize she was still alive and still writing and led directly into the period of college where I searched used book stores for her back catalogue while keeping an eye out for new releases. As far as prose goes, I did in fact collect the complete set, including the one printing of Why Should I Have All the Grief? (1969), which I recommend very highly if you can find it. It is written in the same compressed, poetic style as her genre fiction and it's one of the earliest English-language novels I've read myself that deals explicitly with the Holocaust. Her first novel Sunburst (1964) gave its name to the Sunburst Award. I am also very fond of her last novel, Birthstones (2007), which has queer protagonists and families. She died in 2009. Her poetry is also extraordinary, but much more difficult to find; I only own the selected verses Red Blood Black Ink White Paper: New and Selected Poems 1961–2001 (2002). Brandeis' library was a godsend in that regard.
Basically, I love her and she seems to be much less well known than I feel she should be. Possibly the situation is different in Canada. I don't live in Canada, so I just tell everyone I know to read her.
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You have made me excited about reading Henry Roth.
Nine
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It's gotten sort of half-stitched up. I didn't get much sleep last night, or this afternoon for that matter, but I've had a really nice day. Currently waiting to see whether we will be able to take my father to the car show tomorrow at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum, or whether it's going to be rained out.
You have made me excited about reading Henry Roth.
Even if the early parts are a slog—which I don't think they will be—the book will pay off for you in the final chapters. They're a knockout.
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(I understand that it's worthwhile and meaningful to address the possibility of meaninglessness and alienation, but ... it's a memetic plague)
I would like to see you move up to a more joyful thespian experience.
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I expect he thought he was . . .
(Rob has a friend who wants to direct him in a production of Waiting for Godot, and I really want to see that. I've also enjoyed Jack MacGowran in Beginning to End (1965). Otherwise I'm pretty sure Beckett is not what I should be reading right now.)
I would like to see you move up to a more joyful thespian experience.
Thank you. Me, too. I've had them before!