Links for June 11th
Mandy Moore, old film, Julian Barnes' Sense of an Ending, Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift
Hope you had a smooth week. Short links, long block quotes from books this week.
Links
Check out these nice shots from a roll of film this guy found in a camera at a thrift shop.
This is a totally delightful interview with good ol’ Mandy Moore, especially if the pop of the years 1999 and 2000 is seared into your brain. (I personally attended one of those Backstreet Boys concerts in 1999, and they did indeed fly on wires from the ceiling of what is now Capital One Arena.)
Lastly,
Light book commentary
Big reading week in the book space:
A. I finished Guns of August, and my capsule review (possibly more next week about the tragedy of WWI) is: Barbara Tuchman really popped off with the writing.
B. I read, in a single sitting, Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending, which goes in a direction I thought it would, then really goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Has some interesting, if painful, observations about memory and understanding. Also has this line that semi-feels-true?
Margaret used to say there were two sorts of women: those with clear edges to them, and those who implied mystery. And that this was the first thing a man sensed, and the first thing that attracted him, or not. Some men are drawn to one type, some to the other. Margaret — you won’t need me to tell you — was clear-edged, but at times she could be envious of those who carried, or manufactured, an air of mystery.
C. Lastly, I read Humboldt’s Gift (technically, I finished it, as I’d read the first 100 pages at some juncture). Saul Bellow’s Herzog is, like, one of my favorite books of all time, and I like Ravelstein quite a bit too; I really love the sort of uneasy balance between being a realist and matter of fact, and being sort of hopelessly dreamy soul that sometimes crops up in his books. Humboldt’s Gift is a strange (and long) book, which largely takes place in remembrance, and joins up bitter divorce proceedings, a manic mafia member, a lightly fictionalized Delmore Schwartz, mysticism, and a lot of thoughts about death. Anyway, you still get all the great high-brow, low-brow movement through the writing. Like this, ahead of the narrator’s brother’s heart surgery:
‘…Do you remember all that? Well, I’ll tell you why I bring it up — there are good esthetic reasons why this should not be wiped from the record eternally. No one would put so much heart into things doomed to be forgotten and wasted. Or so much love. Love is gratitude for being. This would be hate, Ulick, if the whole thing was nothing but a gyp.’ But a speech like this was certainly not acceptable to one of the biggest builders of southeast Texas. Such communications were prohibited under the going mental rules of a civilization that proved its right to impose such rules by the many practical miracles it performed, such as bringing me to Texas from New York in four hours, or sawing open his sternum and grafting new veins into his heart.
And then this one about the sister-in-law:
During the operation Hortense hadn’t wanted my company…I recognized a kind of boundlessness or hysteria in my affection which, in her place, I would have avoided, too. But on the phone there was a tone in her voice I had never heard before. Hortense raised exotic flowers and hollered at dogs and men — that was her style. This time, however, I felt that I shared what as a rule she reserved for the flowers and my attitude toward her changed entirely.
Truly go in for this always.
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.