Jeff > Recent Status Updates

Every page has a bon mot which mediocre writers would kill for.

The translation inevitably adds a frustrating friction to the kind of polyvocal, multimodal writing that I can tell ought to be a smooth flow. There's interesting stuff here, but I'm working hard to not get lost.

Jeeves objects to Bertie's awful new mustache, which inexplicably attracts the brainy and beautiful Florence Cray. I didn't expect to find a Jeeves story that resonates with the Portland situation so much.

Violent and tender and devastatingly attuned to the soft totalitarianism of America in the period.

Acerbic edwardian cattiness. So much side-eye you'll need to see an optometrist. A healthy queer culture would have elevated H. H. Munro to patron saint status. I'm savoring every sentence!

Got this at the recommendation of a bookseller at the Harvard Bookstore on my last trip back east when I couldn't find the Wodehouse I was looking for. He was right - this is cunty Edwardian wit. Algorithms could never.

I'm so jazzed to go thru this again after all these years.

Menander walked so that Seinfeld could "what's the deal???"

I turn to right and left, in all the earth / I see no signs of justice, sense, or worth / A man dies evil deeds, and all his days / are filled with luck and universal praise / Another's good in all he does - he does / a wretched, broken man who. All despise.

"a man who disobeys God's commands abandons himself to bewilderment."

I'm always impressed by how Muslim theology seems much closer to ethics than the transcendental morality that Europe and by extension America has been cursed with since Christianity and probably neoplatonism if you wanna go that far back.

Made the mistake of getting 200 pages into this 900+ page translation and learning that the bastard editors excluded the introduction which has the Shahnameh's sources, cosmology, and acknowledgement of its patrons. IF YOUR EDITION IS ABRIDGED FUCKING LABEL IT AS ABRIDGED.

Now many horses / rattled between the channels of the fighting. / Their sturdy necks pulled empty chariots. / They missed their drivers, who lay on the earth, / more dearly beloved by vultures than their wives.

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.