Cusk

[Mark Kohut]

I have read her, just one.......I feel I do not get her, understand what
she is doing ultimately, mostly because
I don"t. ...she is doing what you say and I feel I did not try hard enough,
did not find the right clues
YET.......technically magnificent I'll agree....but somewhere I'm not, not
yet......she made me feel old
and set in my reading ways and therefore stupid...."it's me not you" I'd
tell her. As if she would care nor should she.

And it all ties into, is in fact an analogy of some kind indirectly. She
wrote an essay once on being in a book group.
I forget the book, but Chekhov (but could only be stories then?) or
Chekhov-like comes to mind. All that nothing happning
except everything subtlety........but the point of her piece was that
everyone else fidn't like it, found fault, all the usual stupid
reading shit--'couldn't identify', didn't like the characters, nothing
happens, etc.....

We are left genuinely knowing Rachel was so beyond all that that it,  the
group consensus almost baffled her. (I could be projecting a world here)
...but not really. She was figuring them out precisely.
..
THAT being Common Readers.......


On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 7:47 PM John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Has anyone on the list read Rachel Cusk's trilogy (I think maybe you
> have Mark K?)
> I've had bouts of waking in the night recently and have read almost
> all of the three books entirely between the hours of 3am-7am, but it's
> easily the most accomplished writing I've encountered in years, maybe
> decades. I don't want to try to describe what she does but it reframes
> so much of my thoughts on fiction that I am constantly left marvelling
> at what she's done.
> Probably the closest comparison is Sebald; I also think of the
> Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth (maybe because I read her recently
> too).
> It's technically magnificent but also does things with
> subjectivity/objectivity and the whole philosophy of narration that
> are profound and striking.
> That said, I could imagine a lot of readers thinking it was just a
> bunch of conversations.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>