Piet Hein's Grooks (#poem)

 

Nothing is Indispensable

(Grook to warn the universe against megalomania)

The universe may

be as great as they say.

But it wouldn't be missed

if it didn't exist.

Those Who Know

Those who always

know what's best

are

a universal pest.

Problems

Problems worthy of attack

prove their worth by hitting back.

 

The Road to Wisdom

The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain

and simple to express:

Err

and err

and err again,

but less

and less

and less.

-Piet Hein

 

Piet Hein (1905-1996) was a Danish polymath (theoretical physics, city planning, inventor of the Soma Cube puzzle...) and like all Scandinavians, but especially the polymathic ones, was perfectly fluent in English. He wrote short, aphoristic poems he called grooks (gruk in Danish), a word he made up in both languages. The English versions were done with the assistance of Jens Arup. Martin Gardner in his Mathematical Games column was a huge fan, but do I remember reading about him in Scientific American when I was a nerdy eight-year-old? Not really...but I could have! (Since I was a nerdy eight-year-old, who got a subscription to Scientific American every Christmas.)

They often come with pictures:

Not all of these come from Grooks 2. There were at least six volumes in English (and more volumes in Danish) in the sixties and seventies.

One last...

 

What Love is Like

 

Love is like

a pineapple,

sweet and

undefinable.

-Piet Hein

Two Novellas (Kushner, Algren) #NovNov

Rachel Kushner's The Mayor of Leipzig

So, I was putting my name on the list at my library of Kushner's new novel Creation Lake (I'm currently 256 and my library has 127 copies) but then I saw there was this book The Mayor of Leipzig that came out in 2021. Where did that come from? I never heard about it. Send me that! 

They did. Conveniently, it turned out to be novella length.

An unnamed woman artist, forty-five years old, based in New York, tells her story. She goes to Germany. She meets her gallerist in Cologne and from there travels on to Leipzig, where she will have an exhibition. "After lunch I went to the exhibition space where I would have my show and that part gets technical, so I'll spare you." We're given some speculation on art, learn about her artist friends, about her analyst, whom she doesn't see any more.

We also learn that her story is being ghostwritten by Rachel Kushner, who "probably understands less about me than you will, after you read this." Amusingly the protagonist accuses Rachel Kushner of being art groupie, though based on The Flamethrowers, maybe she is.

We also learn about Spencer Schlosnagle, the mayor of Friendsville, who's a real person. Google him, the protagonist says, and I did. A strange enough story.

There may be a ghost involved--our protagonist says she ought to talk to her analyst about it, but then she's not seeing her analyst anymore--and then there's the 'Mayor' of Leipzig, who's probably not the mayor, but is like Spencer Schlosnagle in Spencer's other famous feature.

Interesting enough, occasionally amusing. It's not The Flamethrowers and I assume it won't be the equal of Creation Lake either. 

70p., but it's large print with lots of white space. It's short for a novella, maybe more long short story instead.

Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make

I'd wanted to read this since I read the biography of Nelson Algren in summer. (Well, I'd probably wanted to read it before then, but had half-forgotten.) My library didn't have a copy, but I found one when I was in Chicago recently.

It comes out in 1951 and it's Algren's personal history of Chicago until that time. Or maybe it's a prose poem. "By its padlocked poolrooms and its nightshade neon, by its carbarn Christs punching transfers all night long; by its nuns studying gin-fizz ads in the Englewood Local, you shall know Chicago."

Algren is interested in the underside of Chicago life, and likes the people who also care about the downtrodden. Jane Addams and Richard Wright are heroes in the book; the first edition was dedicated to Carl Sandburg. He doesn't like the rich and the powerful and the righteous, and goes after them hard.

It's pretty fascinating, even if it's more atmosphere than actual information. You probably want to get the edition shown, and I don't just say that because I went to high school with the editor Bill Savage. 😉But the notes (by Bill Savage and David Schmittgens) are nearly essential. I grew up in Chicago, I know who Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin were (shady Chicago politicians, are you surprised?) but even I found the notes hard to do without.

130p in this edition, with those notes, a fun introduction by Studs Terkel, and a somewhat sour afterword from the second edition by Nelson Algren himself, who'd become a bit of a grump by the sixties.

This book is the source of the famous description of Chicago:

"Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real."

 It's Novellas in November!

 

 

Charles Causley's Eden Rock (#poem)

Eden Rock

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:

My father, twenty-five, in the same suit

Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack

Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress

Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,

Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.

Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

 

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight

From an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screw

Of paper for a cork, slowly sets out

The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

 

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.

My mother shades her eyes and looks my way

Over the drifted stream. My father spins

A stone along the water. Leisurely,

 

They beckon to me from the other bank.

I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!

Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

 

I had not thought it would be like this. 

-Charles Causley

One more Charles Causley and I'm done with the book for now. This is likely his most famous poem; at any rate it's the one I first saw anthologized and made me want to read more. It comes from his final book of poetry for adults, which came out when he was 71, though he lived on fifteen years after and wrote several more books of verse for children.

Non-Fiction November: My Year (so far)

 

Time to look over my year in non-fiction! It's hosted by Based on a True Story. My non-fiction reading was about 20% of what I've read, which is a fairly normal number for me, maybe a little on the high side.

Themes and Highlights

Mostly books about books, which is pretty common for me. Some standouts:

 

Brian Dillon. Dillon is a contempoary Irish writer. I read two by him this year: Objects in This Mirror and Affinities. Affinities is his most recent (2023); Objects in This Mirror is from ten years ago. Dillon, in addition to writing about books, was the editor at an art magazine, and both these books have a lot of art criticism.

 

Guy Davenport. Davenport was a poet and classicist who died in 2005. His book The Geography of the Imagination, which first came out in 1981, was reissued earlier this year with an introduction by John Jeremiah Sullivan. It was pretty great.

Carlo Levi. An Italian writer and painter. Christ Stopped at Eboli is his memoir of internal exile during the Fascist era. After protesting against Mussolini, he was sent to live among the peasants in Basilicata. I read it just before going to Italy in the spring. (Yay!)

Konstantin Stanislavski. My Life in Art is the autobiography of the great Russian theatre director from 1924. It was my spin book for the first Classics Club spin of the year.

Mary Wisniewski. Algren: A Life is a biography of the great (but depressing!) Chicago writer best known for The Man With a Golden Arm, made into a movie with Frank Sinatra in the title role. A well-done biography.

 

A link to all the non-fiction that made it on to the blog this year.

Upcoming

Well, I have several books from the library which I hope to read soon, but the next non-fiction book will be Nelson Algren's Chicago: City on the Make, which I managed to find while on a recent trip to Chicago. It's also novella-length. 😉

Which look fun to you?