Jeff > Recent Status Updates

Traveling so I've got nothing but Jeeves with me. And in this one - no Bertie Wooster! The new characters are a nice change of pace and I like the group dynamic so far, but this is a much more placid affair than the madcap screwball antics of earlier Jeeves. Also, this is set in the 50s! How the times change.

"I smile to keep from howling, I sing so I won't pray or curse"

"The heart of the matter is knowing whether evil (or sin or crime or whatever you want to call it) is random or purposeful. If it's purposeful, we can fight it, it's hard to defeat, but we have a chance, like two boxers in the same weight class, more or less. If it's random, on the other hand, we're fucked, and we'll just have to hope that God, if He exists, has mercy on us. And that's what it all comes down to."

"Then, humbled and confused and in a burst of utter Mexicanness, I knew that we were ruled by fate and that we would all drown in the storm, and I knew that only the cleverest, myself certainly not included, would stay afloat much longer."

"A renowned clerical and philological conductor of a weekly publication of this kind, whose surprising proficiency in Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic, to which he had devoted by far the greater part of his life, peculiarly fitted him to pronounce unerring judgement upon works of taste in the English..." Moby Dick and Pierre wrecked Melville's career. Moby Dick was reappraised. I get why Pierre wasn't. But it's funny!

Goodreads is actually useless and doesn't have the Robert Baldick translation listed. I've been on the lookout for years for this and finally splurged on a used copy shipped from Australia. Pierre Louÿs didn't invent lesbianism but he did act as Paul to Sappho's lady loving Jesus when he published his popular literary forgery Songs of Bilitis and put the terms lesbian and sapphic into circulation.

Bolaño gets no credit for writing humourous and erotic sex scenes. The two de Sade reader scenes (María and Luscious Skin, and Belano and the Simone) are funny in different ways.

"You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can't hold on to her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement."

Verdant gothic. Like Rousseau on methamphetamines. I understand why this destroyed what was left of Melville's career, but I'm loving it.

According to Wikipedia, Pierre was met with pejorative review headlines like "Herman Melville Crazy." A few chapters in all I can say is Herman Melville Crazy (complimentary).

"Death found him composing the posthumous works of his heteronyms." This book is funnier, smarter, and bleaker every time I read it.

I don't think Bolaño's humor is appreciated enough.

On my 12th (give or take) reread my poor copy is finally falling apart 😭

Andy Serkis narrated audiobook. His Gollum hits differently when he is shrieking right in my ear while I'm listening to this at the gym.

Freedom of speech is great, but could we consider banning some male authors from writing from the perspective of women characters?

Just reading Pierre here and also Powells how the fuck do you not have ANY edition of this book in your system?? Herman fucking Melville! Embarrassing how often I go there and they don't have what I'm looking for. The Strand would never God I miss the East Coast.

Psychological ambiguity as objectivity. Giving voice and personality to the great men of history while keeping their true inner selves out of reach. Can we ever really know the men behind the propaganda and image-making and mythologizing? Why is this the question Boomers care about?

Patricia Highsmith supports gay wrongs. In 2026 we don't need friends of Dorothy, we need friends of Ursula.

I'm also on letterboxd! send your smutty film recommendations my way https://letterboxd.com/jefflandale/

"At once the wound gushed blood as black as clouds, as when a woman from Maeonia or Caria stains ivory with purple to make a horse's cheek piece, which is stored inside an inner chamber, and great numbers of charioteers are longing to possess it [...] - Menelaus, so were your handsome thighs all stained with blood, so were your handsome calves and shapely ankles."

Homer is so horny for his bloodstained boys.

Been reading and rereading Homer since I was 12 but this year after watching a bunch of gay erotica from the 60s - 80s the Iliad is opening up in a whole new way. Kenneth Dover will be vindicated.

Nearly 100 pages in and the plot is "can millionaire writer who we insist isn't like RICH rich overcome his writer's block from his wife dying? The writer's block is impotence." The dead wife's characteristics are great tits and gives blowjobs. This reads like bad Murakami. I am dying send help

The back cover made this sound like an English de Sade, but so far it's broad comedy with some ominous gothic foreshadowing.

"Then, as discreetly as a pimp who has conveyed a customer to a whore's crib, he left." I'm starting to suspect I haven't missed anything by not reading King before.

feels animated by the same spirit as 40k: shove a bunch of cultural, technological, religious, and ideological signifiers into a mixer and then strain it thru a grimdark fascist cheese strainer. except in this case it's all russian so i'm only familiar at best with like half of the ingredients. this is gonna be a ride!

'Ah, Stilton,' I said, and, what is more, I said it airily. The keenest ear could not have detected that the conscience was not as clean as a whistle. One prefers, of course, on all occasions to be stainless and above reproach, but, failing that, the next best thing is unquestionably to have got rid of the body.

not gonna finish this re-read. i love serge and thought with everything fashy going on now would be a good time to revisit his gulag novel, but the romanticism, quietism, and honestly the marxism of the characters aren't resonating.

Goodreads won't let me leave updates that are a few thousand characters long, so I guess I'll save it for a review? Lots of interesting stuff here but also signs every few pages that the author got the confident sloppiness that Harvard and the ivies trains their students in.

I would die for the Blackwood sisters. They'd probably oblige. 6 out of 5 stars.

I'm mad Goodreads doesn't let you do multiple reviews of a book.

Got this at Sydney's recommendation! Lots of thoughts so far.