"War and Peace" (Gob Squad - Malthouse)

So this was fun - an enjoyable riff on some weighty themes (history, moral responsibility, the nature of war and human society, &c) with a light touch and all the usual devices of contemporary fourth wall-breaking theatre in play, complete with live singing of Coldplay song ("Viva La Vida").

(w/ Erandathie - also not one but two other people from the branch happened to be there)

Michel Faber - The Book of Strange New Things

I don't think I've ever read a novel with such a sympathetic portrayal of Christian religious faith at its centre (admittedly, this might in part be due to my reading habits). And what makes The Book of Strange New Things really impressive is that it does that through the creation of a genuinely realistically flawed character, the missionary Peter - the same is true of Peter's wife, Bea, although for most of the time we meet her only through her written messages as transmitted across space and via Peter's thoughts and memories of her - and while exploring the associated big questions about the nature of humanity, love, and our relationships with other people and with ourselves in a story that makes you want to find out what happens next.

The oddly self-contained staff members at USIC's base and the initially affectless-seeming indigenous (alien) people of Oasis are equally mysterious - on the surface perfectly suited to their roles (uncomplaining worker, unquestioningly welcome convert), yet with that very nature creating doubt and a sense of possible threat. Can they really be as they seem? At the same time, Peter's distancing from himself - the sense of identity lost or maybe subsumed in his various settings - and from Bea, as well as from the increasingly apocalyptic news (which he registers with a convincing mutedness) from home, plays out like both an existential fact and a struggle for what might, perhaps, be his own humanity or even soul, in something close to the most understated way imaginable (at least, given the alien planet setting).

What is the voice that he hears when in moments of need? To what extent are the two sets of inhabitants on the planet metaphors for aspects of human nature, society or possibility? Should the ending be read as hopeful (I think so)?

Ezra Furman - Perpetual Motion People

Jumps a bit all over the place and I hope it's not because I know that Furman identifies as queer that the word 'fey' comes to mind in describing this music. "Haunted Head" definitely the highlight.

カノエラナ - カノエ参上。 (KanoeRana - Kanoe Sanjou)

Energetic j-pop. Bought accidentally (misread tag in shop) but not hard on the ears. (web)

"Still got to wake up and be someone" / "It's not gonna kill you": Angel Olsen - My Woman

Terrific stuff. Equally piercing and compelling on the shorter, rock-y pieces making up most of its first half and the soulful, moodier drifters on the back end during which I sometimes find myself holding my breath; in that second category is "Sister", on which I got stuck the other day while walking around with the album on:

(previously - Burn Your Fire for No Witnesses)

"O'Keeffe, Preston, Cossington Smith: Making Modernism" (Heide Museum of Modern Art)

"It is surprising to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract ... The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint." -O'Keeffe 

Three artists working at around the same time, with a common forward-looking orientation that includes a certain blurring of representation and abstraction that makes the 'modernism' label apt, and all interested in the possibilities of landscape and flowers as subjects - also, all women.

Cossington Smith - "Landscape With Flowering Peach" (1932)

This was the first time that I'd come across Margaret Preston, and I quite liked her. And I hadn't before seen a whole group of Cossington Smith's paintings together, and was taken with her colours, especially the blue-greens.

Preston - "Implement Blue" (1927)

Cossington Smith - "Landscape at Pentecost" (1929)

But Georgia O'Keeffe was, of course, the main event. I think most if not all of the pieces came from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and the selection leans a bit in the direction of her landscapes and more abstraction-tending paintings (there's only a couple of, relatively early, flowers). O'Keeffe is probably one of the artists whose work I spend most time looking at in books but, like the previous exhibition of hers that I've seen (Helsinki, a few years back), this one reminded me how much more her paintings glow when actually present.

The exhibition also brought home the number of different modes in which O'Keeffe worked, including the way that earthiness and light coexist in her hues.

And, most of all, it reminded me of how wonderful all of these paintings are, and how much one can get lost within them.

(w/ Laura and Rob)

Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase

A Wild Sheep Chase was the first Murakami that I read, and it's a big one for me; I think of Hard-boiled Wonderland as my favourite, but it's A Wild Sheep Chase that, over time, came most iconically to symbolise his novels and general style and effect in my mind.

Actually, it's a lot to live up to. But, ten years on, it stands up. That interplay between his attention to the phenomena of the ordinary - the details of colours and weather, the mundane textures of individual moments, hours, days - and the way that the extraordinary intrudes through the very spaces that mark one's sense of alienation from the real, it still has its effect. Breeziness and weight, disconnection and sorrow.

***

In part read last Saturday afternoon lying out in sunny Carlton Gardens, Beatles and then Coldplay.

***

Also, having only very recently read Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, his first two novels - and the other two in the so-called 'Rat trilogy' - before this one, I now have the chance to go through all of them in order - which I very well may.

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick (Chris Van Allsburg & others)

It makes you wonder just how early - and, indeed, how - taste is formed. 

By good luck, I was exposed to Chris Van Allsburg at the ideal time - I must have been about nine or ten - and, while all of the ones I read (or possibly, had read to me by teachers?) caught my imagination, it was the especially dreamlike and unexplained The Mysteries of Harris Burdick that most captivated me. The black and white illustrations with their suggestive captions, not to mention the metafictional framing that added to the mystery about the images' provenance and nature, were irresistible.

As a book - well, as a text or object at all - it was one of a kind, and it stayed with me over the years that followed, as a personal classic and totem.

So it's both surprising and a touch marvellous that this collection of very short stories, one for each image and each by a different author (although the introduction by Lemony Snicket plays the same games as the original in suggesting there is misdirection at play), so aptly captures the spirit and, yes, the mystery that inheres in both image and original fragments of words; each succeeds in getting something of the picture's essence without reducing or constraining it.

There's the sense of wonder and magic (child-like but, evidently, enduring) as well as the foreboding and the sinister, sprinkled through the stories, as well as a strong emotional charge running through several; Cory Doctorow's "Another Place, Another Time" and Kate DiCamillo's "The Third-Floor Bedroom" stand out in that respect and are two of the highlights. Also particularly good, and more on the unnerving side, are Sherman Alexie's "A Strange Day in July" and M T Anderson's "Just Desert" (that last turned into an out and out nightmare of the existential - in the fullest sense - kind).

Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life edited by Graydon Carter and illustrated by Risko

There's a certain interest in seeing the themes that recur, and also the types of answers that people give, either to particular questions or to the question set as a whole. But the ones that most interest me tend to be the responses of people who I 'know', and which tend more towards the musicians than the socialite types (also well represented: general movie and entertainment business folk); Bowie's is delightful (available in full on brainpickings - which is what led me to the book), and likewise Tom Waits' (which is less hard-boiled than one might imagine, although still somewhat so). Surprisingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger's is one of the wittiest, for all that it leans heavily on self-deprecation and therefore has plenty of material to work with. Also featured, Donald Trump (2004) - not particularly egregious though he doesn't come across wonderfully either, unsurprisingly.

Most quintessential answer must be Johnny Cash's: If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be? Dust on the wind.

But Bowie's is the last word: What is your motto? "What" is my motto.

Haruki Murakami - Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973

It was only a couple of months ago that I read (re-read?) Wind, but it left such a light trace on me that I found I wanted to read it again. There is something very disconnected about it, and all the spaces around which it's built, well they could be artful or artless and it wouldn't much matter.

* * *

The Rat could see that she was trying to establish a kind of perfection in her small world. He was well aware that required an extraordinary degree of determination. She wore only the most modest yet tasteful dresses over fresh, clean undergarments, applied an eau de cologne with the fragrance of a morning vineyard to her body, took great care in choosing her words, asked no pointless questions, and appeared to have practiced smiling in the mirror. Yet these things only added to the Rat's sadness. After a number of meetings he guessed her age to be twenty-seven. That turned out to be spot on.

* * *

Pinball, 1973 is similar. It has the same air of perpetually interrupted - deferred, perhaps - bildungsroman, in which there's no evident progression and the structuring motifs appear to be both circular and transient, and at the same time inescapable. The separation of the narrator and the Rat removes one of the particular charms of Hear the Wind Sing, but there are other encounters - some extended - to take its place. The attention to rain calls forward, as does much else.

* * *

I undressed and got under the cover with the Critique of Pure Reason and a pack of smokes. The blanket smelled of the sun and Kant was impressive as always, but the cigarette tasted like soggy newspaper on a gas burner. Shutting my book and closing my eyes, I was half tuned in to the twins' voices when the darkness dragged me down.

Zadie Smith - NW

Since reading White Teeth pretty soon after it came out - it was a gift, and of course I still have the copy, inscribed (inter alia) "this is the 'Book' that must be read. Will it live up to all its hype in your opinion?"), I've followed along with Zadie, at times quite closely and at others at more of a distance, but always feeling that kind of kinship that develops only with writers who seem to possess both a sensitivity and a sensibility that sits closely to one's own - heightened by the sense that her growing as a writer, visible through her writing, was in parallel to my own growth as a person (and reader).

And by now, I'm firm in believing that she is one of the finest voices going around today - remarkably sane, insightful and clear, and a beautiful user of words. In fact, I can't think of a writer who I like more than her when it comes to short-form critical non-fiction and analysis (e.g. - and I think she's continued to get even better since that collection). But it's her novels that I always think of as her main work, and oddly, there's never been one that I've unequivocally loved - White Teeth was a rush but very much a First Novel (albeit a very good one), The Autograph Man (which I have always, possibly excessively, been down on) and then On Beauty, which was very good and yet somehow didn't carry me away with it. Funny that.

And now NW, which came out several years ago but I've only just got round to it. And actually I think it's her best yet. It focuses on three main characters, or maybe four - Leah Hanwell, her best friend Natalie (born Keisha) Blake, Felix Cooper and Nathan Bogle. It's structured so that you get first one perspective and story, then another (somewhat overlapping), with back and forth in time and events and so on - but it works well, particularly opening with Leah and only later giving us the fragmentedly episodic version of Natalie's life (she was my favourite character).

It's a mark of Smith's skill and artistry that I could see a lot of conscious choices being made about how she put together those related stories and brings them to a close, and particularly the endings, which neatly - and aptly - evade traditional resolution of the kind that might satisfy anyone looking for conventional story or character arcs, even of the 'quiet and internal revelation' types - without finding it at all distracting. (There are certainly crises for Felix and Natalie in particular, as well as the extended struggle of all four, but the roles they play in the narratives - both each individuals' and the book's as a whole - resist the usual narrative function.) And similarly, that her adoption of different voices from section to section - sometimes jumping from one to another in the space of a page - feels natural and in service to the novel's concerns (indeed, integral to them), rather than a barrier to them.

In some respects, that gets taken too far - the pages teem with characters, little stories, voices, and many of them never 'go anywhere' as such. Their contribution to NW is to form part of a patchwork rather than anything more direct. But 'direct' isn't what Smith aims for here, and I think if her intended content is the lives of people like these and how it is experienced (rather than to tell a story with any really recognisable beginning, middle and end), then the form and content are well matched.

Is this the one that I can at last point to as a great novel written by Zadie Smith? I don't think so, but I do still think that it will come. And in the meantime, despite its imperfections, it is still something very fine and the best she's done yet.

An aside - a large majority of the characters are 'brown' and that's very relevant to the setting and (family and other) relationships, and it was a good reminder for me of the assumptions that we make that, despite that, my starting assumption for nearly every new character was that they were white before being reminded by some telling detail in the text.

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre

Impromptu visit - we saw this while driving past on an errand and when we popped in it was full of people; judging by the free alcohol, it seemed like there might have been an exhibition opening today or something similar.

It's a decent sized mansion (two storeys, 14 rooms), built in 1900, and the art (several smallish exhibitions) is arranged within it and in some cases in direct conversation with the building and its furnishings. Pretty good, and included a Siri Hayes photograph of Merri Creek ("Lyric Theatre at Merri Creek", 2003) - every time I see something of hers, I'm struck by it...she's very good.

Also liked Stephanie Hicks' collages, especially the quasi-symmetrical ones like "Some certain thing I" which reminded me a bit of Rorschach blots (I've always liked collages!), the Ben Taranto and Bertra Fraval pieces comprising "Expanded Gaze" and the "In production (ways to reside)" room installation.

(w/ Erandathie)

True Detective season 1

Spectacular.

Rei - Orb

Heard in Tower Records, Shibuya. Brightly energetic guitar-y music (the liner notes list the specific guitar she plays on each track) that skips across rock, pop, indie and even blues, and doesn't allow its (ample) quirks or the occasional cutesy touch to get in the way of the momentum created by the songs themselves. Sounds (a bit) like KT Tunstall, but peppier.

(web)

Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

Once I had my ear in for this, it was pretty good! But I don't think I've ever really liked anything psychedelic rock-y except the odd Pink Floyd and Flaming Lips album and even then almost despite the aural trappings. So maybe the gustiness and squalling and stomp is a bit lost on me.

"10th Anniversary Retrospective of Nam June Paik: 2020: Who is the one Grinning ?+?=??" @ Watari Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

Paik is a bit too conceptual for me - although he has his moments...

Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes

A 'stand alone' but I think would've been richer with the benefit of the 'series' books that came before it. Still, given that it's almost entirely given over to one big battle and that Abercrombie is good at this (I haven't read anything of his before), no bad holiday read.

Keigo Higashino - The Devotion of Suspect X

Apparently something of a phenomenon in Japan and has spawned a successful film as well as adaptations in other countries. I found it only quite interesting - maybe because puzzle-based detective stories have never that much excited me. It's neatly done though.

Attack the Block & Assault on Precinct 13

The one gets compared to the other so I watched them both. Both are pared back and tension-making; both good. I liked the aesthetic of Assault (1976), including John Carpenter's soundtrack and the urban western feel, and the main crim (Wilson) is played by an actor with leading-man chops. And I liked that Attack the Block is so much fun, rip-roaring action while also so much full of the social commentary without it getting in the way.

Manuel Gonzales - The Miniature Wife and other stories

Stories of the fantastic that seek the human essence in their conceits. Nearly all of them have an interesting idea at their base, but most don't get much beyond seeming like an exercise in working through that idea. Still, there's plenty of potential here - and I actually picked it up because I read some intriguing notices about Gonzales' more recent novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack!, which I'll now definitely get to when it's more readily to hand. The stories that had a bit extra for me (often because they had a bit more bite to them): the one about the video game character, the one told by the zombie, the one about deciding to escape the mall, the title story.