GRWM 01
Get Reading With Me
Get Reading With Me is a mid-monthly report.
This August has been comprised of loose ends and endings themselves (1. preparing to move and 2. moving). One consequence of the latter is that I am currently dispossessed of most of my books. Taking this as a positive however because my attention is now restricted to fewer materials than usual. I am also the new owner of a cute ice-blue laptop after ten years of using the same barely-functional/ever-fossilizing MacBook Pro. IMO September is the other January (forever academic calendar) so I’m happy to approach the fall new year semi-cleansed of overstock, blank slate, blank storage disc, etc.
The following: desk inventory, currently reading, recently read, & random
Desk inventory ⋆
Photograph of my parents on their third date, 1982
Photograph of my grandmother on her wedding day
Very old copy of Peter Pan
Royal Crown Derby China teacup with pencils and a Peroni bottle opener inside
Print from the Cartier exhibition at the V&A (made me cry)
Mug that says REDHEAD (black coffee)
Pigma Micron 005 black pen
Pink hydrangeas in an empty rose lemonade
Currently reading ⋆
Peter Handke, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
It sometimes feels like all of Handke’s stories are about a woman being killed because a man is dying
Peter Handke, The Weight of the World
Pithy notes, funny, incisive. Some gluttony to reading a work composed of these short-form entries because each is so sating unto itself, kind of makes me sick. I had been wanting this book so I was surprised to find a pristine copy at the used book store. I’d love to excerpt some of this but it’s difficult to even select one page over another. Would have to do it with eyes closed. A+
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
If not now, when.
Recently read ⋆
Susan Bernofsky, Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
Really enjoyed though I don’t often read biographies. Bernofsky doesn’t idealize Walser, yet her (warranted, given decades of dedication to his work) affection is palpable and the book reads easily as a result. Her approach as a storyteller is nuanced and human. The organic quality of listening to someone recount the life of a close friend.
I was lucky enough to find a copy of Gitta Honegger’s biography of Thomas Bernhard (The Making of an Austrian) shortly after finishing Clairvoyant of the Small. I have yet to read beyond the introduction but my cursory impression is that Honegger’s tone is more academic and thesis-driven than Bernofsky’s. This is probably appropriate, as in my opinion there are stronger philosophical underpinnings to Bernhard’s work than to Walser’s. One of the few books I brought in my carry-on. Looking forward to reading next month
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
I’ve had a mass market paperback copy of Madame B forever and I finally read it last month. Always interesting to test a classic (or test oneself against it), particularly one so canonical that it’s almost self-evident. I often feel the most affirming and essential experience of the work of art is when a classic surprises and delights you both in virtue and spite of such status; this gives me more faith than reading something new and innovative. Madame Bovary is not my perfect novel personally but I appreciate being able to grasp its significance in literary history. However, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” I get him now
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Pathological random ⋆
Opening to a page in Chekhov’s notebooks (same vibe as the Handke)
Drawing in Katherine Mansfield’s journal: despair! despair!
Reddit comment I came across = a good story
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I like this question/poem about GRWMs (Get Ready With Me, from which this segment’s title is drawn), especially “holding court with the camera”… Next time Get Reading With Me on video à la OG YouTube beauty guru provenance
XO Peace:
PR
Cool cool cool, pocketing some of these recs