Sexus by Henry Miller
Where to read it: Drunk on a bus, struggling to make your head stop spinning in uncomfortable ways.
Where to buy it: Used bookstore by a university. The paperback copy MUST provoke a vague feeling of digusts. Hold it and weep
In all honesty, the person we’ve charged with writing up the reading list (a.k.a. me) has only read Nexus, the third installment in the Rosy Crucifixion trilogy. However, since the list was selected by the editorial board, where one of us has read the whole thing, it only makes sense to include the first installment. Either way, it’s Miller, so the paragraphs are dense, the prose vivid and visceral, obstinately plotless, and a strange sexual tension fires up the whole thing.
Miami by Joan Didion
Where not to read it: Cuba or Florida. Might be controversial. Even more dangerous: reading it on a US warship stationed off the coast of Venezuala, might be court martialed.
What its best for: Sagacious points made during conversations about present politics.
Given the United State’s recently reignited (but never truly dormant) passion for dubious uses of military force in the Americas, Didion’s Miami is more relevant than ever. Keenly documenting Miami in all her eighties Cuban glory, Didion dances with the politics of exile: hatred for Castro, conspiracy, revolutionary spirit on the left and the right. Everything comes together in Miami. Flights to Caracas, and arms shipment to Nicaragua, Didion’s portrait paints Washington as a looming ghost, blowing empty statements into the air that take on a life of their own, moving events and spurring hearts. Read it to get Venezuela’s present predicament, and damn it, because it’s Didion!
Proluky by Bohumil Hrabal
Potential problems: I cannot find any information about an English translation existing.
How to fix them: Learn Czech. Or Slovak and then wing the translation. Or read another book by him.
Colloquialisms taken to their extreme, the simplest way to sum Hrabal up, runaway sentences littered with commas, unending and stretched across entire pages, he’s the drunk at the bar who derails your night by talking your ear off, yet he remains endearing, he remains exciting, his empathy never fails to shine through, and in Proluky he writes about his own life from his wife’s perspective, that empathy shines brighter than ever, because after all talking about ourselves is the easiest thing in the world.
Junglist by Two Fingas
Read if you love: Intellectualizing your nights out, not intellectualizing your nights out. Both work. Nights out are reccomended though.
What not to ask: If the author’s have written other books.
A book banged out by two teenagers who’d barely read a novel, let alone written anything even approaching the length of one, collaborate on a work of social geography about the jungle and drum ‘n’ bass scenes in early 90s London; doesn’t that sell itself? Banged out at the rhythm of the drums, it pulsates the energy of its scene, its youth, its stupid confidence, and succeeds in transporting the reader more than the vast majority of polished or literary works. Who knew album sleeves could provide such an education in writing! Synesthetic, observant, candid yet never comically sincere, Junglist is lightning in a bottle – it has no follow up, it has little literary regard, and still, it is absolutely teeming with life.
Scultping in Time by Andrei Tarkovski
Who to reccomend it to: People who claim to have watched Tarkowski’s films. Doesn’t matter if they actually have.
Who not to reccomend it to: People who have seen Tarkowski’s films. They’ll want to watch them with you (joking, the editorial team is firmly pro-Tarkowski).
Tarkowski is a genius and Sculpting in Time clearly lays it out. Time becomes the greatest power of cinema, squeezed and stretched as necessary, we’re made to imagine single moments of Tarkowski’s life leaving ripples later on, moments of action turning to years of reflection, and finally a three hour film. I mean, he’s a genius, why not read it?
Bonus: Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
because who knew he was still alive? Actually, after reading Shadow Ticket, who knows if he still is?
