Just a note on recent arrivals:
Mattin/Taku Unami - Attention (hibari-w.m.o/r) hoo-boy.....
Abjector (Tim Goldie) - [sic] (hibari - w.m.o/r) er.....
Robin Hayward/Annete Krebs - sgraffito
Fessenden - v1.1 (other electricities)
Eric Carlsson/David Lacey/Paul Vogel/Martin Kuchen - Chipshop (Homefront)
Ordered the Tashi recording of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time.
Began reading Cao Xueqin's "The Story of the Stone", volume 1 of the classic Chinese novel, written around 1760.
Purchased Vol. 3 of Proust, "The Guermantes Way". A multi-year project, making my way through. Always meant to but then a few years ago was seriously prodded by my wonderful cousin Jana, so....Hey, Jana!
You are onto the third volume of In Search of Lost Time Brian? I'm impressed, I've read only the first and have been hanging fire for maybe two years before starting volume two. Really should get to that...
ReplyDeleteYeah but it's been a year and a half or more since I finished volume two, so it's not like I'm blazing through the things.
ReplyDeleteIt's obviously a different kettle of fish, but I often find myself relating it to Joyce as I'm reading int he sense of coming across numerous passages that are just jaw-droppingly brilliant in both language and observations and then reading five or six pages and stopping, going, "Wait a minute." having entirely blurred out on them.
It does kind of make you wonder how those sentences run in French, though.
ReplyDeleteCame across yr blog in a search for my old teacher Alton Pickens. Then it started to seem like we must have been in the same class--I remember the Incredible String Band concert, too. I can't seem to find a proper Pickens bio, but I have found myself thinking of him lately.
ps
ReplyDeletehttp://claudiassurfcity.blogspot.com
Hi Claudia!
ReplyDeleteHad I stayed there to graduate, my class would've been '76. I studied with Pickens in '72-'73 while a student, then '75-'76 on my own. That ISB concert was in the winter of either '70 or '71 (I remember a snowball exchange afterward) while I was still in high school in Poughkeepsie.
I last saw him in the mid 80s sometime, when he attended a Joe McPhee concert at Soundscape over on West 55th St.
He was easily the most important art teacher I ever had the fortune to work with. I've never seen a real bio of him anywhere, though.
I read The story of the Stone as part of a chinese civilisation course I took at uni. Don't remember a thing about it though, too many wearyingly long chinese novels read in too short a time. Maybe I'll give it another go.
ReplyDeleteI'm about 100 pages into Stone. There's a certain "type" of novel that drives me nuts, that devoted to political or familial dynasty intrigue. Nothing bores me more. This one, so far, has more than I care for on that account, but we'll see. That plus my idiot Westerner inability to keep Chinese names straight in my head.
ReplyDeleteI graduated from Vassar in 1972. I majored in Chinese and minored in studio art—hence, Pickens. Who I liked. Then I became a writer. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteA multi-year project? A couple years ago I used a month off from work to read the entire thing in 30 days. It was easy, really. 100 pages a day for a month. But then, I wasn't working and didn't really have much to do at the time. Easily the best book I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteYeah, well I'm more on the level of ten pages at a time while sitting in the bathroom at night.
ReplyDeleteLack of time to just read is one of the real downsides to doing so much listening and writing (while working a regular job).
btw, I don't understand people who don't read while taking a dump. How could you not?