Litspot Network

Sept. Asimov's & Bend Sinister

After finishing Pynchon’s latest, Inherent Vice, I went back to Nabokov.

I took a trip to Chicago to see Bad Religion, who played with Pearl Jam, and put the latest Asimov’s in the bag. I read a decent story, called “Camera Obscured,” the first night. It’s a piece by Ferrett Steinmetz that comments on the video/podcast/blog/feed culture that permeates the lives of American youth.

The trip was short, just one night. In the morning I started Bend Sinister on the patio of the Hard Rock hotel on Michigan, iced venti coffee nearby.

What amazing prose! And how fitting that the first image of the novel comes into view in such musical terms, as Nabokov describes,

The continuation of her voice came into being as if a needle had found its groove. Its groove in the disc of the mind. Of his mind that had started to revolve as he halted in the doorway and looked down at her upturned face. The movement of its features was now audible.

After lunch at the top of the Hancock building, we made our way back home.

Here’s what I put in my luggage to read on a recent trip to Spring Green to see Henry V, at American Players Theater.

August Asimov's & Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice is Pynchon’s latest novel, a detective story that is, like most Pynchon, filled with lots of characters doing lots of drugs, filled with  paranoia, and quests for the sake of questing.

It’s probably his most accessible book to this point, actually, and feels a whole lot like Vineland in many ways. I’ll be posting on it once I complete it.

Asimov’s is something that I recently resubbed to and am enjoying. I subscribed to Analog, too, and I have gotten to a few of the shorter pieces in that journal, but once the semester starts, trying to keep up with both will become increasingly impossible.