Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)

It's only fitting I found this book at a Goodwill, nestled haphazardly between AOL For Dummies and some generic spy thriller written by a guy who looks suspiciously like Tom Clancy.

It sat on my shelf untouched for over a year, the drab image of the World Trade Center on the cover a constant reminder of the day none of us will ever forget.

This work, which spans the entire second half of the twentieth century, seems to know everything that will happen in America during the 22 years following its publication, peeling back the cover on a society defined by wealth and production, growing too quickly and too complexly for any one person to truly understand.

No other book has captured that conflicted feeling you get of a beautiful view tainted by a smokestack, of trash washing up on the beach, of taking out your recycling before driving your car to Wal Mart to buy your groceries.

It gave me a better understanding of life in America before I was born, a reminder that life in the 90s wasn't the utopia that I remember it as. The Underworld was always there--brooding, festering, plotting--at times disturbing and others so romantically pure. Of course it was.

I still do not feel I fully understand the main characters but I don't think that is the point. This is a book about dealing with life while realizing there are forces so far out of our control. The realization that we could be vaporized in a second by weapons of our own creation if we don't drown in our own waste and finish off ruining the planet first--and our complicity in all of this. This is modern America.

Thanks, I didn't know this. This makes reading it a bit easier in my mind.

Highly recommended (the entire series):

Uncle John's Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader, has a hallowed place in my home.

The Series is so much better than trying to plow through that Blowhard, Plato. And so much more informative.

uncle-john-s-bathroom-reader

After a few months took this back up , got 2/3 through and switched to the paper version which was much better. Look, it's an interesting book written by a clearly talented writer. It's creative & taught me, I think, what it was like growing up in a ten child Belfast family during the Troubles. But the narrator's voice is annoying. Take, for example, this paragraph highlighted in the NYT's review (which is too harsh)

That needs editing. A number of reviews say Milkman is a short story spun out over 368 pages (some of those mean it as a compliment). There is truth to this. e.g IMO if you gave a talented editor a week they could produce a 200 page version by removing entire chapters and cutting out a bunch of repetition and it wouldn't read like an abridged book and would possibly be superior. Milkman is not a bad book, perhaps it's a good book - but it's not a Booker winner.

I quite liked Milkman, but I guess it helped that I liked the authorial voice, and so that passage works fine for me.

I got about halfway through this on audible before deciding I probably wasn't the target audience and also that 1, the author was definitely female and 2, I feel bad for her husband if she has one. The main protagonist is constantly biting the head off of whoever's near by whenever she feels bad even if they have nothing to do with whatevers bothering her and it's written as if this is a perfectly normal way to behave.

I'm also not really a fan of fantasies where a tiny minority of people have super powers, just feels like it's lazy world building and makes half the story really predictable as the protagonists discover and 'level up' their powers.

The narrator wasn't great either otherwise I might have stuck with it.

I'm also pretty picky about fantasy books so I wouldn't assume the average person won't like it just because I didn't.

My kid got assigned 1984 for school. Having never read it I had to remedy that.

Yikes And people put those Alexa thingys in their house voluntarily!

Also, where did all the cats and dogs go? I’ll I recall were rats and bugs

Finally finished Pillars of the Earth. I struggled for the first 200 or pages, but after that... wow. The story gets set up so well that it somehow manages to be fast paced for the remaining 700 or 800 pages. I still don't understand how. The book's scale is that of a trilogy, but the speed never lets up and keeping it as one book works well.

I felt like every main character was developed more fully than just about any other book I've read. It was amazing to see characters who were now 50 year olds thinking back to things which happened when they were younger than 10. It really made the characters seem like real people.

It was really an impressive feat, and if the next two books about Kingsbridge are half as good then I'll enjoy them immensely.

Half as good is about right

Reading this book Shadow Cities about squatter culture & history. Mostly focuses on four large squatter communities (the book is squarely pro-squatter so the author prefers this term to slums) that the author spent some time living in - Rocinha, Kibera, Sultanbeyli, and Dharavi

Haha that's too bad.

Summary of Oedipus Rex using California vanity plates:

ONCEPON ATIME LONG AGO IN THEBES IMKING. OEDIPUS DAKING. LVMYMRS. LVMYKIDS. THEBENS THINK OEDDY ISCOOL. NOPROBS.

OKAY MAYBE THEREZZ 1LTL1. MOTHER WHERERU? WHEREAT MYDAD? NOCALLZ NEVER. HAVENOT ACLUE. INMYMND IWNDER WHOAMI? IMUST FINDEM.

JO MYWIFE GOES, “OED DON’T USEE? WERHAPPI NOW LETITB.” IGO, “NOWAY. IAMBOSS. DONTU TELLME MYLIFE. INEED MYMOM. II WILLL FINDHER. FIND BOTHOF THEM.”

SOI START SEEKING DATRUTH ABOUT WHO IAM. ITGOEZ ULTRAAA SLOWE. THE SPHYNXS RIDDLE WAS ACINCH BUT NOTTHIZ.

SUDNLEE WEHEAR SHOCKING NEWS. WHEN IWASA TINY1 THISGR8 4SEER SED IWOOD OFF MY ROYAL OLDMAN THEN MARREE MYMAMA. SICKO RUBBISH, NESTPAS? WHOWHO COUDBE SOGONE? STIL MOMNDAD SENT MEEEEE AWAY. MEE ABABI AWAAAY.

NOWWWWW GETTHIZ. MANY MOONS GOBY. IMEET THISGUY ONATRIP. WEDOO RUMBLE. WHOKNEW? ILEFTMY POP ONE DEDMAN.

UGET DAFOTO. MAJOR TSURIS. JOJO MYHONEE, MYSQEEZ, MYLAMBY, MIAMOR, MYCUTEE, JOJOY IZZ MYMOMMY.

YEGODS WHYMEE? YMEYYME? LIFSUX. IAMBAD, IAMBADD, IMSOBAD. STOPNOW THISS HEDAKE. FLESH DUZ STINK. ITZ 2MUCH PAYNE 4ONE2C. TAKEGOD MYEYES! AIEEEEE!

Still pretty good though.

A month or so back in the dead thread the great poet Marie Ponsot was mentioned. I’ve been roaming through her The Bird Catcher and this poem I’ve come back to again and again.

REMINDER

I am rich I am poor. Time is all I own.
I spend or hoard it for experience.
By the bitten wound the biting tooth is known.

Thrift is a venomous error, then, a stone
named bread or cash to support the pretense
that I’m rich. I am poor; time is all I own…

though I hold to memory: how spent time shone
as you approached, and the light loomed immense.
By the bitten wound the biting tooth is known,

though scars fade. I have memory on loan
while it evaporates; though it be dense
& I am rich, I am poor. Time is all I own

to sustain me—the moonlit skeleton
that holds my whole life in moving suspense.
By the bitten wound the biting tooth is known.

Ownership’s brief, random, a suite of events.
If the past is long the future’s short. Since
I am rich I am poor. Time is all I own.
By the bitten wound the biting tooth is known.


Marie Ponsot

And there is the other side of poetry, the low side of the road
Charles Bukowski

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/14/smashed

That's really nice.

Donald Fagen's book Eminent Hipsters is really good, I think from 2014 or 15. Not a full-blown memoir, more a collection of autobiographical essays about things that were important to him. I remember reading the one about the radio humorist Jean Shepherd a few years ago at Slate.com and thinking it was excellent, evidently the whole book is that good.

Fagen is half of the legendary Steely Dan Fagen-Becker duo btw, Becker died a couple of years ago iirc.

Fagen on Jean Shepard

I second the recommendation, but I don't read them in the bathroom despite the title.

Kirsch is very good on Bukowski's limitations:

I thought so too. You picked the central quote of the article yet like John Prine sings “100 million Elvis fans can’t be wrong”. I loved him as a young man...what I remember of his poetry the title of a book of poems The Days Run Away like Wild Horses Over the Hill The only thing of his I’ve grabbed in recent years from my shelf of his work is the R. Crump illustrated rendition of a short story. Buk found his Boswell right there I tell you

Bukowski might have written better if he hadn't been drunk all the time!

Perhaps being drunk all the time limited Bukowski's output. Thus making the world of poetry less of a wasteland.

I don't think I ever read a Bukowski poem, but I really liked his short stories.

There's a short poem of his I like where he tells his girl basically "Let's get drunk and play Scrabble". For some reason that really hit me right and I never forgot it. There's a good documentary on him that used to be on Netflix, probably still around somewhere. Tells you about all you need to know about the infamous Bukowski. Evidently working at the post office was more stressful than you'd think, they'd give him regular tests on sorting and ****!