A Man in Love (My struggle book 2) - , day 2

This man is or was seriously depressed would be my snap diagnosis. He describes the nightmare of the convivial school/ nursery gates world so well - at least I wasn't the only shrinking, horrified scurrier away from the conversations and arrangements that were made.  Usually I had to rush off to work anyway, but I shared the terrible blackness that descended on me whenever I had to attend a school / child focused social occasion. Luckily I was able to palm them off on my wife, but sometimes I had to go. Here's a paragraph from a lengthy and painful description of a four or three years old's birthday that he had to attend with his wife and children:

"The thought of going in and sitting at the kitchen table again was not exactly appealing, so I opened the bathroom door, locked it behind me and stood there motionless for a few minutes. Then washed my face in cold water, dried it carefully on a white towel and met my eyes in the mirror, so dark and in a face so rigid with frustration I almost started with alarm at the sight."


Knausgaard, Karl Ove (2013-04-25). A Man In Love: My Struggle Book 2 (My Struggle 2) (Kindle Locations 694-696). Random House. Kindle Edition. 

It's a point of horrified self-recognition, and it's the second time I've used horrified in this post, because the feeling is that strong.  What have you become when you cannot bear the sight and sound of these good, friendly ordinary people?

A Man in Love (My struggle book 2) - ,

It's a stunning start; probably more so for anyone who has had children and taken them to stay with childless friends.  Perhaps a slightly guilty, but soon shrugged off, sense of recognition from just those same childless recipients of families coming to stay. And maybe a sense of disbelief from those who are childless and don't have families to stay, or have children but don't stay with the childless. And a sense of sadness from those childless who do have children  to stay and love every minute (despite the tiredness), and their visitors who absolutely love going to stay with them and are eternally, and I mean eternally, grateful for their reception.  Karl Ove Knausgaard maybe a bit of a selfish cunt at times, but he's an honest selfish cunt, and there aren't that many of them around, particularly those that can write so well and so accurately. I love reading this book, I have to ration myself so i don't read it all in one sitting.

I can't say the same for Candide , which I've always meant to read and am 1/3 way through. It's of its time I guess, and I'm just speed reading knowing what will come next.  It must have shocked deeply at the time - and rightly so, meaningfully so. It does make me reflect on writing that will endure and writing that is of it's time only - both are important.  Maybe the latter are even more important because they pave the way, they split apart the mindsets of the moment and allow something else in.  

My Father's Tears and other stories - John Updike, Zero Point Neal Asher, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murikami, And I forgot Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasan, and the Shining Girls by Lauren Buekes, and Zoo Story by Lauren Buekes

The three books I have been reading, the Asher finished last night, one of those books you could call High Octane because the violence and the battles and the sci-fi are always ramping up the tension. Readable, though, very readable, though nothing much to write about here, except that the language of porn appears to creep into the book - the arch villainess and evil ruler of this dsytopian earth hears that one of her senior staff likes to to have three men at once because she says she "likes all her holes filled at once".  It's a strange unappealing misfire, a cliche in itself.

MY Father's Tears has some outstanding writing, and also some duds. It must have been released after John Updike's death - I'm sure he would have spotted the repetition of "seemed to know the ropes" about two separate groups of tourists in Spanish Prelude to a Second Marriage, only a few pages apart, you would have thought an editor would to.  The Varieties of Religious Experience, doesn't quite work either, it's a little too obvious, but I can see that he had to find some response to 9/11, and parts of it are fine. It opens well with Dan Kellog's revalation that "There is no God", the opening words of the story, but doesn't add anything that Updike hasn't more fully explored elsewhere in The Beauty of Lilies, or A Month of Sundays, or Marry me - the list goes on, the list of Updike's attempts to reconcile belief and the intellectual imperative of atheism.  But  Delicate Wives is a perfectly formed story. I'm about half way through, but have been knocked off kilter by the Varieties of Religious Experience, and Spanish Prelude -  somehow it diminishes the book as a whole to have not so good stories, which is crazy - although maybe not, it makes you start each new story with a little quiver of fear that it may not be up to much.

Murakami's book I bough while walking in the Brecon beacons in a rare moment of 3G access to download it.  I'm glad I did - his I was going to say "flat laconic style" fits this kind of autobiography, but it's not flat, it's not laconic - it is just so well written in a Murakami way that it gives the appearance of flat laconocism (whatever that is, use your imagination) while flexing  and pushing ideas and images out from the prose.

Carl Hiaasen is a rocking read, the synopsis in the Guardian's recommended summer reads sums it up well - disgraced cop, beauteous coroner, monkey fired from the set of the Pirates of the Carribean for unsavoury behaviour. The rest is plot, guts, guns and fat hot Florida.

Lauren Buekes is another great find, after her free book Moxyland, started buying her books, weird crime/sci-fi , post cyber punk mayhem, witty and funny and disturbing in  equal measure.

Well at least I've written something to day.

Crimes & Misdemeanors

Crimes & Misdemeanors turned out to be a much better film than I thought, having watched the first 20 mins or so and got a bit bored some time ago. It does deal with the two worst fears of the liberal conscience - your loved one going off with a complete arsehole and committing a heinous crime for which you know you should be punished.  But there's a throwaway line, when the Woody Allen character's wonderful Bruno Betelheim substitute (warning , small spoiler here) , who is so full of wisdom and  insight, commits suicide, Woody Allen says 
"I grew up in Brooklyn, no-one committed suicide, they were too unhappy"

Depression and misery and a sense of proportion

Hearing about the death of Ian Banks and watching the last episode of Game of Thrones and the marriage at Frey's castle is not a great way to cheer the day.  Sundays malaise, too much over-indulgence over the weekend, all cast a pall as grey as the sky is today. Out in the garden there is a bird singing, counterpointing the greyness, bringing a sense of proportion. It's not me that's dead, Game of Thrones is not real and our capacity to feel is what makes us human. All the same it feels better to hide away in silence, to pull up the covers and listen to this one bird singing an illimitable song.

A Death in The Family (My struggle book 1) - Karl Ove Knausgaard - day - well I've lost count

Well past the half way mark in this now, and reading some astonishingly raw and real passages - it is a reflective book that makes you reflect in a similar way, so a proper journey. Absorbing, all that stuff people say when they really get int a book, but with a sometimes uncomfortable grittiness that is itself the thing that makes it so absorbing. 

I'm starting to look at some other blogs now, having followed a link from Facebook for one, and found another through looking up some New Agey type training thing - Landmark - which appears to be a direct descendant of Erhart sensitivity training.  Realise that there are all sorts of people who love being pushed to be positive, nay shouted at, forced to cry tears of joy, forced catharsis - all great stuff if you can a) afford it (they charge a lot) and b) have enough credulity to take it all on board. It's the next step from all those inspiring quotes and pictures you get reposted on Facebook, and works off the premise that people really do want to change, and there's gold in them psyches.

I can't talk - I loved all the ecounter groups and therapy groups in the 1970s and early 80s, loved the emotional thrill I got from them - but then they were mostly free. Or self organised - we ran a "therapists group" for some years. I certainly got a lot of self knowledge out of them, and learnt alot about whant made me and others tick. I'm sure I'd be a vey different person if I hadn't undergone them, but, but, but that hasn't stopped me from hurling headlong into things I shouldn't, making dreadful mistakes - or you could say it has helped me do things just right, live a fulfilling creative and happy life, understand where I coming from and where I'm going.

The new play is going to be about that pivotal point when you have achieved - well achieved enough, and you have this choice between continual play and hedonism, and something else potentially of more service and good. 

Brighton Fringe - Sleeping Trees Odyssey, A Death in the Family day - whatever! lost count now, BaggageVarious

A blog is just like a large book - a way though it you get sidetracked and read / write something else. In Brighton Festival time now so reviewing shows almost every night. The first one was a cracker - three man improvised show and none the worst for that. Funny , fizzing with physical inventiveness - I suppose I could post the whole review here, but I'll wait and post the link to the review sites once it's published.

Still reading A Death in the Family, which has some great sustained lyrical writing about being a teenager, first love - it does get that sense of the romantic that overwhelms the sexual, while being so tied up with it.  There's a wonderful passage where he is upstairs with one of his fiorst girl friends, and she takes off her top and bares her breasts.He is, of course  transfixed, but also strangely unmoved - and it captures that huge adolescent sex drive, where all you think you want is access to those mysterious warm folds of a woman's body only to find that there is something missing if the romance isn't there.  I think this compares well with the female experience of having sex and finding it underwhelming and not that exciting (well described in Janet Street-Porters autobiography Baggage, that I just read in one day a few days ago,and countless other women's biogs and fiction).