new-ish fiction: neil gaiman's "a study in emerald"

a thought came to my mind: because i've always been terribly afraid of jail sentences, i feel hesistant about posting mp3s here. however, since this thing is supposed to be primarily about literature, i have decided to put up links to good short stories every once in a while.

the first story to be thus honored is neil gaiman's "a study in emerald." i don't really know whether it'll make sense to you if you haven't read something by h.p. lovecraft at some point in your life, so here's a primer: this writer (lovecraft, that is) developed an intricate cosmos populated by all sorts of creepy, pseudo-divine alien entities with funny names like cthulhu or nyarlathotep, and there's the constant threat of them being unleashed upon the unwitting human population. aesthetically, lovecraft drives home the feeling of constant, lingering malice by making frequent use of a quite limited set of adjectives (think "blasphemous," "unnameable" etc.) and generally refraining from actually describing the monsters that haunt his protagonists, focusing on the psychological terror of the - mostly doomed - characters instead. if you ever wondered where a good deal of metal bands get their lyrical inspirations from - here's the source. the hellboy comics and movies are also related.

i read lovecraft when i was really young and i'm not sure whether he's a great author (as, among others, borges and houellebecq think) or just another cheap pulp novelist from the first half of the 20th century. luckily, one doesn't have to ponder such questions any longer, because neil gaiman delivers a short story which juxtaposes lovecraft's cthulhu myth with the world of arthur conan doyle, thus adding a healthy dose of irony which makes this sort of thing palatable for grown-ups, not just role-playing, sex-deprived teenage nerds (i hope).

neil gaiman - "a study in emerald"

hope you don't feel like lovecraft in brooklyn after reading this one. now,"ph'nglui mglw'nafh cthulhu r'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," indeed!

new music: dreamsludge and video gamers gone bad

i've come to notice that there are quite a few artists heavily influenced by endless hours of pushing buttons in front of a computer screen. no, i didn't all of a sudden realize that there is electronic music composed and produced on computers out there, but rather people like dan deacon and max tundra whose main sources of inspiration seem to be soundtracks to old video games. both "which song" and "get older" are beautiful, over-the-top exercises in blissed-out melodic weirdness which perfectly capture the excitement of a night spent in front of, i don't know, giana sisters while entertaining juvenile fantasies about girls. yes, i consider that sort of thing to be exciting. oh, while i'm at it: the depreciation guild has a somewhat similar approach, although they merge purely synthetic sounds with shoegaze rock in the vein of mbv and the likes. their album can be downloaded for free, so count yourself lucky.

in other shoegazing news, i discovered the label crucial blast whose artists seem to be into creating an unlikely yet interesting mixture of pop, sludge metal, noise, and - yes - shoegaze. i say " seem to" because i don't have the resources to actually buy some of their records at the moment, but once the money starts flowing, count me in. how can you not love a label that is responsible for inventing the subgenre "dreamsludge"? see, no one thought of it before, but the world is a happier place now.

a mixed bag of this'n'that

i should have expected this. posting my reading schedule seemed to promise some sort of rigorous literary exercise programme which would force me to read like a professional athlete. circle training: huxley, gaddis, crowley, and then a bit of marquez for cardio. what i failed to consider, however, is that i can only keep up that kind of discipline for a very short time. as so often, money is lost, gym memberships are abandoned, piles of books left unread.

i didn't stop reading though. far from it. the only thing is that i, despite of my impending bankruptcy, bought a huge load of other books. these i even managed to read, so there's an upside. let's have a look at some of them:



there's nothing more frustrating than coming up with a seemingly bright idea and then stumbling across someone who had that very idea way before you and acted on it far more convincingly than you'll ever be able to. case in point: this blog and nick hornby's "the complete polysyllabic spree." essentially a reader's diary he wrote for the US magazine believer, this is hornby at his best. even though i initially had little interest in most of his choices (a lot of british literature and remote american authors) , i still read the book cover to cover in two days. i didn't care for his last few novels, but once he's writing about his cultural obsessions - as he did in "fever pitch" and "high fidelity" - you just can't help being swept along with his enthusiasm. this man could probably even write a book about soccer and i'd still be interested. uh, wait, he actually did.

anyway, now i'll have to add another two books to my reading list: "citizen vince" by jess walter and "what good are the arts" by john carey. hornby's approach to keeping up a reading schedule also made me realize that it would help if i didn't only read novels but the occasional non-fiction book as well, just to spice things up a little. which leads us to another work finished during the christmas holidays:


yes, i know. uninspired and populist, this choice, no? well, i don't really mind because I'm ready to admit that i've been fascinated by the man ever since he decided to run for presidency. this book did little to lend further support to my enthusiam, but it also didn't diminish my view of the president elect. instead, what i got was page after page of deliberate dialectical reasoning which i've come to reckognize as being typical of lawyers. i don't know what it is, but being a succesful practitioner of the law seems to require a mock-regal, slighly dozy tone as well as tirelessly weighing one argument against the other without necessarily arriving at any sort of conclusion.
which, however, makes for a great meditative reading experience. on the one hand ... on the other hand ... still, there's no denying that ... relaxation guaranteed. the literary equivalent to a massage (although i never had a massage. it's actually supposed to be quite painful, isn't it?).

other honorable mentions: max goldt's "qq" (great as always, but since i'm writing about anglophone stuff here, i'll leave it at that). finished "the solitudes" and currently halfway through "love & sleep" (as promised, an entry on john crowley will follow sooner or later), while i've nearly given up on marquez. i wonder whether i should take to heart hornby's advice for people struggling with difficult books they're not really enjoying: "please, please: put it down. you'll never finish it. start something else."