NP: A spontaneous exhortation to read a new great book just published in the US. But available in Europe earlier.

[Mark Kohut]

I read a small chunk this morning as I quote....

On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 9:03 AM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, but have you READ it yet?
>
> On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 8:10 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> looks like I lost the line in this THAT SAID THAT, LOL....(self-editing is
>> like cutting your own hair)
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 8:01 AM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Koincidentally 2/2/22 is the 100th anniversary of the publication of
>> > *Ulysses*.
>> >
>> > To celebrate one hundred years since Sylvia Beach, publisher and
>> > bookseller, published James Joyce’s ULYSSES, Hay Festival is partnering
>> the
>> > iconic bookshop Shakespeare and Company, Paris, on a global read-along
>> of
>> > the complete text to be released as a free podcast between the 100th
>> > anniversary of the publication on 2 February 2022 and Bloomsday on 16
>> June
>> > 2022. https://www.hayfestival.com/ulysses100
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Feb 2, 2022 at 12:35 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On The Books of Jacob on pub day, in which Ulysses plays a role
>> >>
>> >> That great modern, modernist, novel Ulysses created and rode a change
>> of
>> >>
>> >> human awareness in a myriad of ways. A humanly felt single day in
>> Dublin
>> >>
>> >> full of cooking smells and shitting and female desire and all kinds of
>> >> thoughts, high and low
>> >>
>> >> it contains wonders precisely but over-the-toply, newly, expressed.
>> >>
>> >> Every time I hear the kids at the Montessori school two doors away play
>> >> noisily in their playground,
>> >>
>> >> I think of a famous line. Those who know, know (and it loses almost
>> >> everything just being flatly repeated here)
>> >>
>> >> "Round about 1910 human nature changed", wrote Virginia Woolf,
>> >>
>> >> no fan of Ulysses but another artist who worked the change of
>> >> consciousness
>> >> in the culture and in her work fully.
>> >>
>> >> Art can do that. Art does that. (He says pretentiously. Swaggering
>> >> Swaggadocia, as a friend said of this streak. Or was it Staggering
>> >> Swaggadocia? )
>> >>
>> >> Ever since I learned of Ulysses and its publication, my fantasy life
>> >> contained the fantasy of being
>> >>
>> >> part of the publishing, the whole Surround, someway,  as it happened.
>> >> Stuart Gilbert's pony* for reading it was
>> >>
>> >> being written while Joyce was writing and publishing parts of it. There
>> >> was
>> >> a circle; there were
>> >>
>> >> thousands of waiting interested outsiders to the circle game.
>> >>
>> >> Today, Feb 2, it seems that another writer of genius (with her
>> translator
>> >> as they are getting more recognition
>> >>
>> >> in recent years; as partial co-authors in some sense)  with, maybe, the
>> >> planning of her American publisher has had
>> >>
>> >> another masterpiece purposely published on Ulysses' birthday.  That
>> rumor
>> >> is circulating; I haven't confirmed
>> >>
>> >> that that is why Feb 2 was chosen but….. The rumor has circumstantial
>> >> plausibility since this work, The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk,
>> >> Nobelist,
>> >> was published in English in England late last fall. I almost ordered
>> one
>> >> from England but indie store concerns in this country took over. That
>> no
>> >> longer matters, the book is out in this country.
>> >>
>> >> The opening teems with Joycean, Bosch-Bruegel-like life
>> >>
>> >> in a small village and its market in Poland in 1759: all the sights and
>> >> smells, all levels of society; themes and characters brought forth to
>> >> capture our attention thematically. With viscerality. "Nerves and
>> endless
>> >> intrigues. Politics."
>> >>
>> >> Books themselves permeate the opening; the worlds they open; a lousy
>> >> translator scene makes one laugh ...there is this line amidst that
>> talk:
>> >> "Perhaps it also has to do with the alphabet---that there isn't only
>> one,
>> >> that there are lots of them; each produces its own type of
>> >> thinking.".....The Tower of Babel is invoked as are the Tigris and
>> >> Euphrates. Ms. Tokarczuk is fearlessly ambitious, yes?; who can't love
>> >> that? ....of a character, "people say ..she has the soul of a man".
>> But
>> >> another woman "doesn't see that supposed masculinity. All she sees is a
>> >> woman who likes to be in charge." A woman punctures the gender
>> stereotype,
>> >> quietly fine, no?
>> >>
>> >> And for one of Ms Tokarczuk's grand important subjects, the meanings of
>> >> women (I know an earlier-published novel) there is THIS:...."the
>> science
>> >> of
>> >> coaxing out bloodstains [women helping a woman during a heavy
>> >> menstruation]. For centuries it has been taught to future wives and
>> >> mothers. If a university for women ever came about, it would be the
>> most
>> >> important subject. Childbirth, menstruation, war, fights, forays,
>> pogroms,
>> >> raids---all of it sheds blood, ever at the ready, just beneath the
>> skin."
>> >>
>> >> Another book as rich as life itself. "If books are not life, then what
>> >> is?"--as someone once wrote. (If you are on Facebook, like the Group
>> page
>> >> entitled this for occasional miscellaneous publishing  and bookstore
>> news)
>> >>
>> >> I urge, beseech you to read this book. I would like a secret society, a
>> >> growing circle, that can allude to it together, openly. Make time when
>> you
>> >> have time to make. It will change your mind. You will live longer, old
>> >> neurons newly aglow. Gut bacteria improved. (But I won't ask)
>> >>
>> >> And, since you won't believe me, ex-salesman, please read Ron Charles's
>> >> wonderfully appreciative and over-the-top review below.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/02/01/olga-tokarczuk-books-of-jacob-review/
>> >>
>> >> *Also, a "pony" could be a cheat sheet or other material used in a
>> test by
>> >> students
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> --
>> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >>
>> >
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>