I didn’t enjoy The Emigrants as much as I remember enjoying Rings of Saturn or Vertigo, but it’s been a few years since I read those titles so it could just be a matter of my ever-changing becoming.

re: Banquet Years…the thing I appreciate most about it is Shattuck’s attention to Alfred Jarry, who has otherwise been sorely neglected by English language readers despite the fact that his work has had (I would argue) the most significant influence on 20th century avant-garde practice.

I also liked reading Shattuck’s chapter on Erik Satie, whose music I have loved for a long time, but whose personal life I knew little to nothing about.

It’s a fun read. I recommend it, especially if you dig biographies. It’s not a heavy scholarly examination of the avant-garde or of the individual artists’ works, it’s more like portraits of the artists.

yeah, greenstreet is incredible. each word in her poems simultaneously engaged undid hurt elated cracked me. her poems aren’t for reading. they’re for something else entirely, a word i can’t quite create-synthesize yet. one day, perhaps.

I came to Spinoza through Deleuze, so my reading of Ethics was somewhat prescribed (but not in a bad way, I don’t think).

I keep hearing/reading about Joshua Cohen’s work. I need to check it out.

I look forward to your post on Kate Greenstreet — I always read & enjoy her stuff in lit journals, but have yet to read an entire collection.

As for me….between today and last Monday evening, I’ve read/am currently reading:

WG Sebald – The Emigrants

Gilles Deleuze – Bergsonism

Alfred Jarry – Days and Nights

Kenneth Goldsmith – Fidget

Roger Shattuck – The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France – 1885 to World War I

Going through Paula Fox’s The Western Coast.

Reading a Columbia lit journal from a few years ago.

Schutt-going back and forth between her two ss collections.

Lydia Davis – Samuel Johnson is Not Indignant.

Ethel Rothan’s work on the web.

to echo: yeah, all three mlp chaps were enjoyable. read them earlier this week but forgot to mention them in the post.

i like your reading list, dan. any more recommendations? i’d love to hear them. drop me an email sometime.

This week I read Birkensnake’s second issue. See the post above for my thoughts on each story.

I read and reviewed Gerte Jonke’s Calvinoesque The System of Vienna.

Read the entire November issue of elimae.

Essays by Cara Benson and Michael Martone for my writing craft book that came in last week. Both are excellent.

Two other books that I may or may not be reviewing.

“Notes of a Lyric Artist Working in Prose: a Lifelong Conversation with Myself Entered Midway” by Carole Maso that I wrote about here:
http://bigother.com/2009/11/07/break-every-rule-part-2/

Assorted odds and ends.

Read Steve Yarbrough’s forthcoming novel, Safe From the Neighbors, and enjoyed it as much as anything else he’s read, which is very much.

Read the three most recent chaps from MLP and really liked them.

Have begun Matt Baker’s novel, Drag the Darkness Down, from No Record Press.

The new Hobart online edition rocked.

Some more of StoryGlossia 36.

Just finished up “The Cartographer’s Girl” by Matt Bell in the new issue of Gulf Coast and continue to be amazed by Matt’s writing.

And a bunch of stuff published the last couple of months in online journals trying to gear up for Best of the Web 2010.