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Some lines from "Autumn" by Ali Smith

9/26/2017

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Picture
Ali Smith's Autumn is the first of four seasons novels. I understand they are independent novels, but I'm sure they will talk to each other in fascinating ways. Critics have considered it the first major post-Brexit novel. While it does cover some of that territory, it's much more than that. The dread about the results of "The Vote" can be directly applied to America. It's immediate and expansive. No wonder it's shortlisted for the Booker. 

This is a book that has an extremely dense thread count. It's not linear. It read like a long prose poem. I don't know that I've read too many novels that are this "experimental." But Smith is being careful as much as she's being playful. Nothing feels capricious (except when it's inentional). The quotes I've copied below are fairly bleak, but I promise you, there is a pervasive "stop and smell the roses"/"rise above the muck" element that I adored. The autumn here is often hot and humid. Leaves are falling. Winter is coming, but there are wondrous bursts of color and life. Much like the autumn I'm experiencing right now.

The primary story involves the close friendship between Elisabeth, a young art professor and her old, dying neighbor Daniel. There are imagined conversations, dreams, flashbacks, and cringe-funny passport renewal scenes at the post office. We also get to see Elisabeth working on her dissertation on Britain's pop artist Pauline Boty.

I was able to finish this in a couple days. I've never read Smith, but I'm keen to try others.

The opening sentences:
"It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Again. That's the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it's in their nature. So an old man washes up on the shore. He looks like a punctured football with its stitching split, the leather kind that people kicked a hundred years ago."

(Elisabeth frequently reads to Daniel. One of the books is A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens.)


And it continues with lines like these:

"Can you be hungry and dead? Course you can, all those hungry ghosts eating people's hearts and minds."


"Someone killed an MP, she tells Daniel's back as she struggles to keep up. A man shot her dead and came at her with a knife. Like shooting her wouldn't be enough. But it's old news now. Once it would have been a year's worth of news. But news right now is like a flock of speeded-up sheep running off the side of a cliff."


"Anonymous people start to add tweet-sized comments about Daniel beneath Daniel. They are commenting on his ability to change things. The comments get more and more unpleasant. They start to make a sound like a hornet mass and Elisabeth notices what looks like liquid excrement is spreading very close to her bare feet. She tries not to step in any of it."


"The pauses are a precise language, more a language than actual language is, Elisabeth thinks."


"He had a voice off old films where things happen to well-dressed warplane pilots in black and white."






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Books 2017

9/25/2017

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A list of books read in 2017
​(finished titles only--many, many more have been abandoned for a number of reasons)

  1. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
  2. We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge
  3. The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan
  4. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  5. The Way of the World by William Congreve
  6. All That Man Is by David Szalay
  7. The Winshaw Legacy by Jonathan Cod
  8. Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
  9. Peter and the Starcatcher (the play by Rick Elice)
  10. Saga Vol. 5
  11. Saga Vol. 6
  12. Saga Vol. 7
  13. The Idiot by Elif Batuman
  14. Love's Labour's Lost by Shakespeare
  15. King Henry VI part III by Shakespeare
  16. The Untouchable by John Banville
  17. Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash
  18. Transit by Rachel Cusk
  19. Touch by Courtney Maum
  20. The Maker of Swans by Paraic O'Donnell
  21. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
  22. Autumn by Ali Smith
  23. The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller
  24. Look At Me by Anita Brookner
  25. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
  26. Equivocation by Bill Cain
  27. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
  28. Failure: A Love Story by Philip Dawkins
  29. You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann
  30. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
  31. All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
  32. The Aspern Papers by Henry James
  33. You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
  34. Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
  35. The Information by Martin Amis
  36. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
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Movies 2017

9/25/2017

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An on-going list of the movies I've watched in 2017
  1. My Cousin Vinnie
  2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  3. LEGO Batman (in theater)
  4. The Nice Guys
  5. Keanu
  6. Love's Labour's Lost (Globe production)
  7. Emma (PBS miniseries)
  8. Get Out (in theater)
  9. What We Do in the Shadows (twice)
  10. And Then There Were None (PBS miniseries)
  11. OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies
  12. Man Up
  13. Dr. No
  14. For Your Eyes Only
  15. Wonder Woman (in theater)
  16. Love's Labour's Lost (Branagh musical)
  17. Music and Lyrics
  18. The Island
  19. Pandorum
  20. The Lady Vanishes
  21. Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee)
  22. Warcraft
  23. Night Train to Munich
  24. Munich 
  25. Blind Date (2015 French comedy)
  26. High Society
  27. Dunkirk (in theater)
  28. The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened
  29. The Holiday
  30. The Dark Tower (in theater)
  31. Some Like It Hot
  32. The Dark Crystal
  33. Big Night
  34. The Constant Gardener
  35. Masterminds
  36. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
  37. Murder by Death
  38. Blade Runner (final cut)
  39. Gosford Park
  40. IT (in theater)
  41. Alien Covenant
  42. Dragonheart
  43. Howards End
  44. The Night of the Iguana
  45. The Little Hours
  46. Colossal
  47. Clue
  48. Blade Runner 2049 (in theater)
  49. The Mummy (w/Tom Cruise)
  50. The House
  51. Dan in Real Life
  52. The Nightmare Before Christmas
  53. Thor: Ragnarak (in theater)
  54. Murder on the Orient Express (in theater)
  55. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
  56. A Christmas Horror Story
  57. Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (in theater)
  58. While You Were Sleeping
  59. Pillow Talk
  60. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  61. Fear of Fanny
  62. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in theater)
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