Looking at Art with Alex Katz

This book has been on my bedside table for months - over a year probably - and I've dipped into it regularly, for the bursts of great art yes, and even more so for Katz's short, opinionated, craft-driven words about it. Whether or not I agree, or even have any kind of technical frame of reference for understanding what he says, each precis (or digression) illuminates not only the piece - and the artist - in question but also, as the title promises, ways of looking at art in general.

"Sci-Fi: Mythologies Transformed" (Science Gallery Melbourne)

Asian, First Nations, women's and queer intersections with and re-visionings of science fiction.

(w/ Jade)

Beachwood Sparks - Across the River of Stars

Nice enough but kind of bland.

Helen Oyeyemi - Parasol Against the Axe

Parasol Against the Axe is a puzzling, deliberately disjointed book that demands close reading to make sense of it on any level - including the most basic, to grasp the action of what is happening, never mind the deeper, nested dimensions of what it's about. So was it worth the effort? I'm not entirely sure, but reading it was never less than pleasurable, its voice isn't quite like any I've encountered before, and both the stories it tells and what passes for its central characters - Hero Tojosoa, Dorothea Gilmartin, and the city of Prague and its various avatars - are distinctive and sharply sidelong.

Rosali - Bite Down

Pretty nice and in many ways a bit of a throwback to various early 2000s indie-folk/country acts - at different points reminding me of the Dearhunters, the Last Town Chorus, that almost randomly acquired 'Between the Lines' compilation and (more recently) Nadia Reid. First two songs "On Tonight" and "Rewind" are especially immediate, and strong.

Lucy Crehan - Cleverlands

At this point it feels safe to say that education is an enduring interest.

(previous read)

House of the Dragon seasons 1 & 2

This show is entirely watchable, and works in a mode of modern fantasy in many ways first defined by the ASOIAF books - political, military and individual machinations with realpolitik and power at their centre, and magic woven into the backdrop rather than foregrounded. Even here, while dragons are depicted as both source and symbol of magic in this 200 years prior to Game of Thrones Westeros, they're primarily treated as being like any other resource and source of power, albeit an overpowered one (to me they don't really register as characters in their own right).

There's an article that diagnoses the problem with the later seasons of Game of Thrones as being that the show's storytelling shifted from being primarily sociological to primarily psychological; House of the Dragon is probably more evenly balanced across its first two seasons. I'm not sure if that's related to how slowly its events move, building up towards fullscale war rather than focusing mostly on the battles themselves. There's still some intrigue in where it's going, although probably more so in how it gets there, and to a lesser extent what it has to say about power and society, and individual choice.

(previously, season 1)

Johnny Blue Skies (Sturgill Simpson) - Passage du Desir

So relaxed-feeling and at home in its own country music skin that you could almost miss how well put together these songs are. They slip by easily, but they've got a heft that keeps them away 'easy listening'.

Deb Olin Unferth - Wait Till You See Me Dance

I don't know to what extent she was a trailblazer and influence on others vs being simply one among a loose group of other in similar vein, but the problem with this collection (which I'd been keen to track down on the strength of the title story) is that the stories in it too exactly exemplify a strain of lit fic that was very present about 10 to 15 or 20 years ago without being distinctive among them in any particular way. So it's kind of over familiar and kind of dull even though a number of them are actually of some quality.

Kelly Link - Stranger Things Happen

Kelly Link's stories nearly always make you want to work out what's happened in them, which doesn't tend to be straightforward even on the level of basic plot and action. More often than not that's accompanied by a sense that even once the puzzle of the action of the story has been solved (more or less), there's another layer to what's going on in them - so that what they're really 'about' has multiple oblique, interlinked layers.  

This was her first collection and the first I read, a while back. I appreciated it more this time, having better learned how to read her since. Interesting also to see some recurring motifs and patterns, some still reappearing in her most recent stories.

"The Girl Detective" stood out and I found myself wondering about its emotional core (I haven't verified this but my sense is that each of her stories has one). Is is that the girl detective is looking for her mother? Or is it that the narrator is looking for that which the girl detective is (which includes, without only being, the person who is always looking for their mother)? Or something else altogether?