Quentin Ferrari > Recent Status Updates

Just finished scaling Mount Purgatory.... The Purgatorio was delightful in too many ways to track completely. On top of this, the whole book so far makes me want to be a better person. It also offers alot of useful guidance. What's not to like?

Just finished Paradife Loft. The question of what it means for Milton to write this is fascinating. His theology tears itself apart in these pages. If the book is so troubled, to what degree is this Milton's attempt at education / communication vs a confused, fallen soliloquy in which Milton tries to solve the problem of free will for himself? At any rate, this was awesome, if exasperating. Happy to study this one.

Mann dignifies music - a repeated target in Magic Mountain - and assesses it in relation to theology. If theologies are logical systems that explain the ultimate reality (god), those logics inform the way one writes the music that serves that reality. If our theology is too rational or irrational, it becomes demonology. Excited to see what reality Adrian's musical genius comes to serve. Lots of engrossing fun here!!

Thinking of deleting my goodreads. I've been flying through books without paying super close attention to them and I feel like I'm missing out on alot with the way I'm relating to lit as of late. Some recent close reading has helped but still..... lmk whatcha think if you have thoughts

Oh man I love rereading. The third time through makes the Benjy section feel much more simple, precise, and intentional than it felt initially. Some fellow students and I read the first 20 or so pages aloud. It was so cool to see people having lightbulb moments all round the table. I had many of them too - I feel like I'm finally understanding this, or at least I'm misunderstanding properly. So much fun!

Really, really cool poetry collection. Most sections compare crystals and language. All use fresh styles/forms. Occasionally it comes off clumsy or cliche in a way that jars for me, but this is an invigorating, enthralling book that is more than the sum of its parts. Would definitely recommend if you're open to chemistry, geology, and avant-garde poetry. The "Glass" and "Geode" sections are my favourite so far.

Going very slowly and liking this alot. What else can be said?

Read this if you're interested in psychogeography, Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Ducasse), or Andre Breton, the latter's actually named in here. It's a novel made of wanderings, with lots to say about what/where/why surrealism is, the power of imagination, the low-class parts of 1920s French society, and how place affects our imaginations. Very funny at times. Will be reading Nadja/Maldoror soon cause of Aragon

Perhaps this is just a hangover from Mann's Magic Mountain or some vague mood thing, but there's an extra weight on me during this reading that grates a bit: Mrs. Dalloway rarely even gestures at humour. Still, VW is unique, and the emotions, thinking, craft, and vision (social+artistic) are all top notch. I'm appreciating Dalloway far more deeply this read, just coming to appreciate lightness more these days.

Quite a fun read. I surely underestimated the effect of so many mildly funny jokes here (vs gut-busting ones). Mann's mirror between narrative time and diegetic time is well-done and apt. Hans is a fun character among many fun characters, and the story seems to be getting more fun every chapter. The writing makes me care about illness history in a way I didn't think I could. Excited to get deeper in. I'll love this!

Pleasure reading inspired by my Modernism course. Musil and Zukofsky should fill the hole between today and next week, when I have to start The Magic Mountain. Törless is very, very good so far, though I'm not far. Musil's focus on youth psychology is extensive. At page 27 I feel like I know Törless better than half the kids I grew up with. Guess I can't lazily put off The Man Without Qualities forever......l

This is the first book assigned in a class on modernist novels, a great starting point. It's essential because it unseats the old, linear sense of temporality. So excited to be rereading this. Some lines in Wells just ooze with resonances from the literary history that follows: "Story be damned!" said the Time Traveller. "I want something to eat." Story be damned indeed - that's not how I'm best nourished either.

Pretty fun, playful, if impenetrable, stuff. Stein can be hilarious. Definitely some type of literary cubism here. Even with little reading time, I'm liking lots (though gleaning little). This is about as odd as a book can get before losing me

Already funny, haywire, and inspirational. Here's the first poem(? or are they definitions?). Cubism, anyone?

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

WCW reading my mind a half-century before I was born:

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours [...] for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds[.]

Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive.

WCW is shifting focus a bit--no more small town eccentrics. But by part 3 the language has a really drunk quality that I find intriguing and fun. Amazing prosody. Haven't been understanding everything, but that's what rereads are for. For now, I'm loving everything I'm getting out of this.

Just finished part 1. How inspiring!!!! WCW is great at catching all our affective ties to place, and explaining the links between people, their expressions, and the place they come from. He's got a keen eye for the small-town eccentric, which I very much appreciate. Ofc the prosody is amazing as well. "I am aware of the stream that has no language, coursing beneath the quiet heaven of your eyes."

Loved Life Studies. Why did I think For the Union Dead would be so bad? I should have finished both collections in 2020, when I first finished got acquainted with Lowell.

Casual read. O'Hara's interests and gets easier to follow as the collection goes along. Or perhaps the poems get better. He's at his most delightful when his verse is more mundane. Will have to read again to get the most out of this. Still, it's fun even on the surface.

Some decent poems in here, but something's tiring about O'Hara's verse that I can't exactly identify.

His collections can be really, really well polished. Though there are bangers like "Aubade" in the uncollected poems, they can be significantly less interesting than those collected. I love Larkin's stuff, and wanted to finish this volume off completely. Just got Whitsun Weddings/more uncollecteds to go

Deciding to finish this one off finally. It can be really unfun, really clunky, and really try-hard compared to Last Stories. But Vollmann refuses to drop his usual artistic passions, so of course the writing is spirited enough (note to self: save pun for review of Last Stories) to engage me throughout. W.T.V.'s eye/mind are perceptive/thorough enough to impress me. Lots of inventive story concepts in pt 2 as well