Ryan Berger > Recent Status Updates

Very funny (but also part of a genuinely very interesting dimension to Rollins’s practice) is how he keeps talking about how hugely important for jazz players to stop smoking and purify their bodies and then decides “well I guess if you don’t use your lungs to play then smoking is fine”. Rhythm section gets to have all the fun per usual.

'Twilight' by John W. Campbell - A fascinating thing you see with early Science Fiction, and I don't know if there's an existing term, but so often the stories are all framed as tall tales one person who experienced the events tells to an audience rather than actively placing us in the narrative as it unfolds. Here is an example. The Time Machine is another. The previous story is yet another.

Every time I read Calvino I'm filled with an overwhelming desire to teach him.

I’m like half joking but this is indistinguishable from the writings of some 13th century samurai

Fascinating entry into the "unrequited love toward a woman who does not care if you live or die" subcannon.

Yet another amazing book I can never talk about in public

This is a slightly older book, but it’s remarkable (and depressing) how many of these fake-reading strategies that kids use popped up in my own classroom. The problem is very well outlined. Very good at addressing objections the reader might have so far. Now let’s see if anything remotely workable as a solution comes up in a post-AI world.

Yes I’m doing PD on my second day of summer break.

Not done yet but might become my go-to rec for these types of books.

*honk*

My summer reading anthology. Trying to stay connected with SF because so much of my reading is moving away from it.

“A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G Weinbaum - The (accepted) first appearance of an intelligent, anthropomorphized, non-human, true alien in Science Fiction. So in a way it is foundational, and establishes many First Contact concepts. Besides that, nearly unreadable as a SF adventure story.

Is this a safe space to talk about how I started this because a local bookstore was doing a summer-long readalong for it and I was the only person that showed up for the first meeting and I think they cancelled the rest due to lack of interest

No? It's not a safe space? Well you should have said something earlier.

"I think the quadruple rhyme is one of the most fun things there is to do in a song. It's necessarily relentless: The ear is ready for a new beginning when the third rhyme comes, and then is made to understand that it's under assault when the fourth one lands"

So good. Yes I'm just finishing up March now. I'm busy!

So much fun. This might be my favorite Calvino!

An Atlas-level lift. Of all the significant Big Difficult Books I've read, this might be going for the highest degree of difficulty (maybe Gravity's Rainbow has more but who knows what Pynchon is talking about).

SO bleak. Shockingly funny. Sweeping. Aching. Through only the first third of the book, its greatness is undeniable.

HOLD ONTO YOUR ASS

The first two stories in this book didn’t do much for me but the last one was quite good.

Sebald is an interesting read for me because he is so astronomically outside of what I am trying to do in my own fiction, and I’m almost always looking for inspiration in some way in all books I read. The word I want to use to describe my enjoyment is “platonic” but that’s not quite right.

"Other Factors" - Okay. Alright. Maybe I was wrong about Gaitskill. This was simply one of the best short stories I've ever read about the struggle for enlightenment vs Life's Bullshit, this time taking the form of NY careerism and friend breakups.

Absolutely monumental. Makes me like the rest of the collection more in hindsight!

"Trying to be" - Decided to give Gaitskill one more chance on a sick day and I'm glad I did. This was very good, hit close to home for something I've been feeling often in this first year living in NYC.

Kinda sucks :/

This is fun because it’s taking me back to undergrad. This is depressing because it’s taking me back to undergrad.

Either way a very well constructed history of Mass Comms so far. This part is good. But also not elegantly written FWIW. I expect a dip the closer we get to present day.

Not that anyone will care but now having read the book, that Guillermo del toro adaptation was (for whatever else it was) one of the most unfaithful adaptations I can recall seeing. Such a far cry from the original tone and texture.

Dance in America - MAGNIFICENT!!!! Finally some fucking nourishment. Can't even describe how much I not only loved it, but how it was a breath of fresh air after sitting through Mary "mid" Gaitskil.

"Connection" - Every story in this collection makes me so bored, so annoyed, so ready to form A Take, and then there's something mildly interesting I find that pokes through and prevents me from DNFing the whole thing (Lethem has sung the praises of Gaitskill multiple times and I just don't see why). As mid as it gets.

I'm very annoying and dismissive of literary adaptations but I can't get it out of my head that if somebody turned this into an HBO miniseries, it would be a runaway phenomenon.

I wish this surprised me more but it's playing out exactly as I'd expect it to as I hit the halfway mark.

"An Affair, Edited" - A story, I guess, about weak women and how people in college seem annoying the moment you leave.

Every story continues to be at my personal Mendoza Line for fiction

I know Borges is not the first to do this, but it's fascinating to listen to a great poet as scientist. So far almost every poem has alluded to light as it is literally and emotionally felt-- both in all the great nostalgic/beautiful ways and also the literal truth of light arriving from distant galaxies to illuminate our cul de sacs. Superb!

"A Romantic Weekend" - Exciting premise (two people who consider themselves masochists disappoint each other), but something still leaves me cold. Fascinating choice to allow both characters' internal monologues.

"Something Nice" - Reminded me, of all authors, of Chekhov. A lot of this collection so far has been about erotic/romantic fact vs fiction, this one brings it right to the foreground. Best yet but still eh

Hm. I have a take brewing.

I have been coming back to this reading all over the place and I think I'm REALLY ready for it now and having so much fun. Love a Barthelme story like nothing else.

"And certainly, when the power of God shows up in your swing, and the people start to notice, you could always stop swinging, or at least swing worse: That'll get them off your back, won't it? But you won't do that now, will you. If you were that sort of power wouldn't have shown up in the first place."

My GOD this book is so good and I'm a month behind for no reason other than laziness.

It's fucking April!