Attention Span 2010 – Anselm Berrigan

Thomas Bernhard, trans. Sophie Wilkins | Correction | Vintage | 1975

Thomas Bernhard, trans. Ewald Osers | Old Masters | Chicago | 1985

Hoa Nguyen | Hecate Lochia | Hot Whiskey | 2009

Allison Cobb | Green-Wood | Heretical Texts | 2010

Murat Nemet-Nejat | The Structure of Escape | Talisman | forthcoming

David Markson | Reader’s Block | Dalkey Archive | 1996

Ralph Waldo Emerson | “Experience” | various | 1844

Robert Bresson, trans. Jonathan Griffin | Notes on the Cinematographer | Green Integer | 1975

Eleni Stecopoulos | Armies of Compassion | Palm | 2010

Lorine Niedecker | “Wintergreen Ridge,” in Collected Works, ed. Jenny Penberthy | California | 2002

Fred Moten | B Jenkins | Duke | 2010

Pattie McCarthy | Table Alphabetical of Hard Words | Apogee | 2010

Jean Fremon | The Paradoxes of Robert Ryman | Burning Square/Brooklyn Rail | 2008

Jess Mynes | Sky Brightly Picked | Skysill | 2009

Alice Notley | Reason & Other Women | Chax | 2010

Karen Weiser | To Light Out | Ugly Duckling | 2010

Stanislaw Lem | Fiasco | Harvest/HBJ | 1987

Ann Lauterbach | “Or To Begin Again” | Penguin | 2009

Robert Fitterman | “This Window Makes Me Feel,” in Rob the Plagiarist | Roof | 2009

More Anselm Berrigan here. His Attention Span for 2009, 2007, 2004. Back to directory.

Attention Span 2010 – Meredith Quartermain

Thomas Bernhard, trans. Richard and Clara Winston | Gargoyles | Vintage | 2006

A poem/novel that takes it all in: man & nature; man & industry; man & art—generations of the human animal.

Thomas Bernhard, trans. Ewald Osers | Old Masters: a Comedy | Quartet | 1989

This droll piece consists of the narrator’s thoughts as he stands in a particular room in a gallery waiting for his friend, a distinguished music critic, who on a daily basis, likes to come to this room to contemplate the image of a white-bearded old man (like himself it would seem). The museum attendant is the only other character.

Lisa Roberston | R’s Boat | California | 2010

Rousseau’s boat has extended itself, with Robertson’s customary wit and inventiveness, which inevitably turns comfortable subjectivity on its head.

Robert Walser, trans. Susan Bernovsky | The Tanners | New Directions | 2009

An early, autobiographical novel, but then all of his work is autobiographical. Life’s journeys torqued by a deeply feeling and crazily, stubbornly, beautifully resistant mind.

Robert Walser, trans. Susan Bernovsky | Microscripts | New Directions | 2010

At last the microscripted manuscripts (lengthy stories drafted entirely on one side of a post card) are available in English. Even crazier, more deeply feeling, more stubbornly beautifully resistant. We also learn much from the accompanying introduction, such as that Walser wrote out his novels non-stop, without correction, in a matter of six weeks, simply for the pleasure of fine handwriting.

Javier Marías, trans. Margaret Jull Costa | All Souls | HarperCollins | 1992

Set in Oxford and concerning the sojourn of a Marías-like Spanish professor, the tale spins around translation, both linguistic and cultural. His send-up of dining at high table is side-splitting.

Javier Marías, trans. Esther Allen | The Dark Back of Time | New Directions | 2001

In this novel Marías amuses himself by examining the relation between “real” characters and the ones in his novel All Souls. Very witty, post-modern foldings and refoldings.

Javier Marías, trans. Esther Allen | Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico | New Directions Pearl | 2010

Impersonation takes on a whole new meaning in this Elvis encounter.

Javier Marías, trans. Margaret Jull Costa | Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear | New Directions | 2005

Obviously I’m hooked on Marías. This one examines othering—when do we see the other as evil—when do we cross that line?

Kate Eichorn & Heather Milne, eds. | Prismatic Publics | Coach House | 2009

Featuring interviews and work by Nicole Brossard, Margaret Christakos, Susan Holbrook, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Karen Mac Cormack, Daphne Marlatt, Erín Moure, M. NourbeSe Philip, Sina Queyras, Lisa Robertson, Gail Scott, Nathalie Stephens, Catriona Strang, Rita Wong, Rachel Zolf. In other words, a ground-breaking collection in Canadian letters.

Sina Queryas | Expressway | Coach House | 2009

I read Queryas for her panache, her in-your-faceness, her tightly woven structures.

More Meredith Quartermain here. Quartermain’s Attention Span for 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004. Back to directory.

Attention Span 2009 – Meredith Quartermain

Thomas Bernhard | Frost | Vintage | 2008

Translated by Michael Hofmann, this novel, which involves a despairing artist in a gloomy Austrian town, contains some of the most poetic, painterly prose I’ve come across.

Aaron Peck | The Bewilderments of Bernhard Willis | Pedlar | 2008

Pure poetry, even though it’s called a novel.

Lisa Roberston | Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip | Coach House | 2009

Who would not want to be whipped by such a magenta soul?

Margaret Christakos | What Stirs | Coach House | 2008

Christakos’s poetry is one of those best kept secrets I want to tell everyone.

George Stanley | Vancouver: A Poem | New Star | 2008

Stanley’s response to Paterson and Maximus—he never lets you forget how city thoughts are made.

Daphne Marlatt | The Given | McClelland & Stewart | 2008

This is the third novel/poem in Marlatt’s trilogy that began with the groundbreaking Ana Historic. It won the BC Book Award for poetry.

Louis Cabri | —that can’t | Nomados | 2009

Cabri is extremely inventive at recombining clichés, advertising slogans, corporate capitalist blague and popular sentiment so that they deconstruct each other with great humour and irony.

Michael Boughn | Dislocations in Crystal | Coach House | 2003

I read Boughn for, among other things, his syntax.

Michael Boughn | 22 Skidoo | BookThug | 2009

Boughn is to sentence as Miles Davis is to trumpet.

Peter Culley | The Age of Briggs and Stratton | New Star | 2008

One of the subtlest, drollest poets in Canada.

Myung Mi Kim | Commons | U of California | 2002

A very political book without being polemic, which explodes language away from its comfortable links to things and shows how violent it can be.

More Meredith Quartermain here.