Finally, I move to book two of Library of America’s Kurt Vonnegut: The Complete Novels set. I skipped Cat’s Cradle as I read that a few years ago. Rosewater is probably the Vonnegut I’ve seen referenced the most outside of Slaughterhouse Five, and hooks well into the rest of the Vonnegut world. In reading his other books, I can recall Eliot Rosewater being mentioned several times, though it’s hard to remember the exact details now. Kilgore Trout makes an appearance too, and how can one be mad at that? ...

February’s book club pick. I felt excited to vaguely engineer the polls such that we could finally cover a Semiotexte title, not to mention one that I was certain would be weird and gay. The certainty proved well-founded, because I more or less am not sure what happened in the book, but I enjoyed every page, such that some of these very sad paragraphs can be enjoyed. Gary Indiana’s book is at least faintingly autobiographical, though whose to say just how much. Some parts seem so clearly translated from real people that I refuse to believe their synthetics. I did not read the introduction before reading the book so became educated that at least one character seems to be directly inspired by Susan Sontag, which I found just delicious. ...

In my re-read of Stoner recently, several people suggested that I try his other books, especially this one and Augustus. I picked both of them up. Butcher’s Crossing did not start well for me. The opening with the young man coming to the edge of the wilderness, this felt familiar but fine. We have to get the plot going, sure. In the opening chapters when our protagonist Andrews lays eyes on a working woman named Francine, we enter the world of tropes and I felt frustration and quickly. Andrews of course falls for Francine within a few moments, but the frustration comes with Schneider, the skinner, invoking a sense of jealousy and anger. Believe me, I know what jealousy and anger feel like. I don’t necessarily feel interested in reading the thousandth book to feature a young man getting jealous and angry over someone they’ve just lain eyes on. This story mounts in the closing pages of Part I and I nearly put the book down, such was my irritation and boredom. ...

This is a short little novella from George R. R. Martin that is currently airing on HBO. After episode “Seven” I realized I should grab the book, and so on ThriftBooks purchased “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”—a combined edition of The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword, and The Mystery Knight. This first of the three novellas is very good! I did not take notes on it and read it in one sitting. As in the TV show, my favorite line is probably, “One need not intend harm to do it” from Prince Baelor Targaryen. ...

1/2026 Review John William’s Stoner is the January 2026 selection for my Small Press Fiction Book Club. My history with the book is intertwined with that club; initially a fellow member recommended it to me back in probably early 2024, and then the my friend and the club’s first facilitator let me borrow her copy of the book. I found a lot of kinship in Stoner (in my first review I use the words ambivalent and aloof, two words that a therapist once used to describe a younger version of myself). ...

See my review of The Passenger. Notes Non-exhaustive. Notes from the second read are flagged with (2). p23 (2) - Is that the purpose of entertainment? If you can call it that. To raise doubts about the world? p24 - If you had to say something definitive about the world in a single sentence what would that sentence be? ¶ It would be this: The world has created no living thing that it does not intend to destroy. p28 - Talking is just recording what you’re thinking. It’s not the thing itself. When I’m talking to you some separate part of my mind is composing what I’m about to say. But it’s not yet in the form of words. So what is it in the form of? There’s certainly no sense of some homunculus whispering to us the words we’re about to say. Aside from raising the spectre of an infinite regress—as in who is whispering to the whisperer—it raises the question of a language of thought. Part of the general puzzle of how we get from the mind to the world. A hundred billion synaptic events clicking away in the dark like blind ladies at their knitting. When you say: How shall I put this? What is the this that you’re trying to put? Maybe we should move on. As you say I like to say. p30 - Mental illness differs from physical illness in that the subject of mental illness is always and solely information. p33 - Yes. Look. It’s a broken record. I’m doing this for you, not for me. I was given a letter to deliver and told not to read it. And I read it. And I cant unread it. Time’s up. p39 - I dont know. I’m not sure what memory means. For one thing. One of the problems is that each memory is the memory of the memory before. You cant remember the occasion of the actual memory. How would you do that/ You just remember remembering it. And only the most recent memory at that. TB: Perhaps this is something well established somewhere. I am deeply skeptical of the way in which it is phrased here. p54 - No. I knew something. Anyway, my forebears counting coppers out of a clackdish are what have brought me to this station in life. Jews represent two percent of the population and eighty percent of the mathematicians. If those numbers were even a little more skewed we’d be talking about a separate species. ¶ Isn’t that a bit farfetched? ¶ No. It’s not fetched far enough. You can have separate histories in the same house. Darwin’s question remains unanswered How do we come by mental abilities that have no history? How is it that the brain seems to prepare for what’s coming? No idea. How much of the brain’s circuitry is undedicated, simply awaiting the arrival of new opportunities? Any? How does making change in the market prepare one’s grandchildren for quantum mechanics? For topology? TB: Um…… p61 - The arguments about Truman’s decision generally center around the loss of life in a land invation. My father had another take on it. He thought that if Japan had been defeated in a land invasion there would have been no miracle of reconstruction after the war. That Japan would have been humiliated as a nation and would have entered into a long decline. But as it was, they were not defeated in battle. They were defeated by witchcraft. p66 (2) - The foundational problem. What to do about Frege. The Grundlagen. The beginning of the end. What are we doing and how do we know. An insight. Does omething know? Is that possible? And if it does what must we become in order for it to tell us? The Langlands project. Things that are not ever going to tell me what I want to know. ¶ I see. ¶ I don’t think so. Mathematics is ultimately a faith-based initiative. And faith is an uncertain business. p67 - Wittgenstein was fond of saying that nothing can be its own explanation. I’m not sure how far that is from saying that things ultimately contain no information concerning themselves. But it may be true that you have to be on the outside looking in. You can ask what is even meant by a description. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? I dont know. What can you say of any attribute other than that it resembles some things and not others? Color. Form. Weight. When you’re faced with a class of one you see the problem. It doesn’t have to be something grand like time or space. It can be something pretty everyday. The component parts of music. Are there musical objects? Music is composed of notes? Is that right? The complexity of mathematics has shifted it from a description of things and events to the power of abstract operators. At what point are the origins of systems no longer relevant to the description, their operation? No one, however inclined to platonism, actually believes that numbers are requisite to the operation of the universe. They’re only good to talk about it. Is that right? TB: The “Cube” line is quoted in The Brutalist (quoting Wittgenstein, not this, one would imagine). p79 - Yes. I suppose that sometimes the unconscious will keep working on certain dreams, revising them, hoping you’ll get it. That’s not the interesting part though. ¶ What’s the interesting part? ¶ The interesting part is that it knows that you havent gotten it. It doesnt really have anything to go on. It’s a mind reader? Sometimes it will just keep trying the same story over and over. It’s stuck. It has no place to go. The recurring dream I’ve had is also pretty unusual—unheard of, really—in that the dreamer is not in it. MORE Kekulé. p84 - Memory has substance. It’s not nothing. TB: Does this not in a way contradict what this same character was saying on p39? p84 - Sure. If you have a patient with a condition that’s not understood why not ascribe it to a disorder that is also not understood? TB: Ha. p90 - The man I wanted wouldnt have me. So that was that. I couldnt stop loving him. So my life was pretty much over. p92 - Its general vacuity aside there seems to be a ceiling to well-being. My guess is that you can only be so happy. While there seems to be no floor to sorrow. Each deeper misery being a state heretofore unimagined. Each suggestive of worse to come. p96 - How would a child know how the world should be? ¶ A child would have to be born so. A sense of justice is common to the world. All mammals certainly. A dog knows perfectly well what is fair and what is not. He didnt lean it. He came with it. Would you like to get more fanciful? ¶ In for a penny. ¶ More fanciful would be the understanding that the idea of justice and the idea of the human soul are two forms of the same consideration. . . . The unjustice over which [children] are so distraught is irremediable. And rage is only for what you believe can be fixed. All the rest is grief. p100 - . . .It says: Take a look at this. What do you think? Then you wonder why the shower is cold. Or the soup. Is this doing math? I’m afraid it is. How is [the unconscious] doing it? We dont know. I’ve posed the question to some pretty good mathematicians. How does the unconscious do math? Some who’d thought about it and some who hadnt. For the most part they seemed to think it unlikely that the unconscious went about it the same way we did. What was surprising to me was the insouciance with which they greeted this news. As if the very nature of mathematics had not just been hauled into the dock. A few thought that if it had a better way of doing mathematics it ought to tell us about it. Well, maybe. Or maybe it thinks we’re not smart enough to understand it. p105 - What was the dream? Or the vision or whatever it was. ¶ I saw through something like a judas hole into this world where there were sentinels standing at a gate and I knew that beyond the gate was something terrible and that it had power over me. ¶ Something terrible. ¶ Yes. A being. A presence. And that the search for shelter and for a covenant among us was simply to elude this baleful thing of which we were in endless fear and yet of which we had no knowledge. TB: Interesting choice of words re: Judas hole. This is another word for peep hole, but of course the connotation here is assigning the role of Judas to the observer. p121 - Yes. What’s even more remarkable is that there is no prototype of the violin. It simply appears out of nowhere in all its perfection. TB: This is just not true. p122 - What dictates that? About the lights. ¶ I suppose it’s just what’s on the road. ¶ In the sense of something coming? ¶ In the sense. TB: Bit of The Road, bit of the “what’s coming” from No Country. p137-138 - Have you ever lost a patient to suicide? ¶ Yes. Once. ¶ … ¶ Did you attend the funeral? ¶ Odd question. Yes. I did. ¶ How did that go? ¶ About like you’d expect. Or worse. No one would speak to me. ¶ Did you think they would? ¶ I hoped they would. I was just trying to do what I thought was right. I could see it their way. An unpleasant figure lurking in the corner. An unwelcome guest. I’d never seen people so ruined by grief. You become accustomed to people’s gratitude. You take it for granted. Thank you Doctor. You dont think about it. But blame is deep and abiding. I stood around in my black suit for a while and then left. TB: emphasis mine. p141 - Love is quite possibly a mental disorder itself. TB: Sure feels like it. p143, discussing the panic of drowning vs the calm acceptance of people falling from great heights. - Yes. If you’re drowning then at some point you’re going to have to make a decision to breathe in the water and die. You may think that the decision will be made for you, but even if you cant hold your breath for another second you can hold it another millisecond. And of course it’s not a choice but a decision. You have to make the decision to kill yourself. There’s nothing like that in falling to your death. The movies dont get that right either. There’s no kicking and screaming. You’re absolved of all responsibility. You’re quits. TB: A particularly ungracious view. p144 - TB: Lots of discussion here about drowning at depth being an agonizing experience. Interesting that somewhere else, drowning and depths are described as some of Western’s terrors. Also interesting in that Western becomes a depth diver. Hard not to understand this as Western punishing himself for his sister’s suicide. p147, Alicia discussing her suicide plans - I’d always had the idea that I didn’t want to be found. That if you died and nobody knew about it that would be as close as you could get to never having been here in the first place. Contrast with this line, from the very first paragraph of The Passenger: “She had tied her dress with a red sash so that she’d be found.” So, we must assume that she had a change of mind. p155 (2) - TB: The problem with all of this is that we don’t know what to make of Alicia. We know she’s smart, precocious. We know she has some kind of interaction with the ‘horts.’ But we have no real reason to imagine her talk here to be sane or reliable. Sometimes, it feels as though CM is writing down conversations he’s had / overheard at the Santa Fe Institute. p162 - Didnt you think that you could find someone else? ¶ There wasnt anyone else. There never would be. There wasnt for him either. He just didnt know it yet. p164 - Yes. At spring break we’d gone to Patagonia Arizona to an inn there and I couldnt sleep and I went to his room and sat on his bed and I thought that he would put his arms around me and kiss me but he didnt. I hadnt known until that night that at its worst lust could be something close to anguish. I thought that something had changed at dinner but it hadnt. I’d become concerned that if I died he would think it his fault and that was a concern that was never to leave me. A friend once told me that those who choose a love that can never be fulfilled will be hounded by a rage that can never be extinguished. p165 - What was he afraid of? ¶ Depths. p169 - TB: Alicia refers to her brother as dead here. But I think if we’re tracking, at this time he is comatose in Italy. And apparently doesn’t wake up until after she dies. I don’t think this is completely clear, timing wise. p171 talking about The Kid - At the end you were actually fond of him. ¶ He is small and frail and brave. What is the inner life of an eidolon? Do his thoughts and his questions originate with him? Do mine with me? Is he my creature? Am I his? I saw how he made do with his paddles and that he was ashamed for me to see. His turn of speech, his endless pacing. Was that my work? I’ve no such talent. I cant answer your questions. . . . I no longer have an opinion about reality. . . . The first rule of the world is that everything vanishes forever. To the extent that you refuse to accept that then you are living in a fantasy. TB: eidolon = phantom; apparition. p173 - Mental illness doesn’t seem to occur in animals. Why do you think that is? ¶ . . . ¶ They’re not smart enough? ¶ I don’t think that’s it. Cetaceans are pretty smart and they dont appear to be afflicted with lunacy. I think you have to have language to have craziness. p175 - What makes it interesting is that language evolved from no known need. It was just an idea. Lysenko rising from the dead. And the idea, again, was that one thing could represent another. A biological system under successful assault by human reason. ¶ . . . ¶ Yes. It [the unconscious] solves problems and is perfectly capable of telling us the answers. But million year old habits die hard. It could easily say: Kekulé, it’s a fucking ring. But it feels more comfortable cobbling up a hoop snake and rolling it around inside Kekulé’s skull while he’s dozing in front of the fire. It’s why your dreams are filled with drama and metaphor. TB: I believe this is the only mention of Kekulé by name, though this problem dominates the entire book. Author: Cormac McCarthy ...

Note on Review This review covers both Passenger and Stella Maris. Review At the end of 2022 I walked into the bookstore and bought Cormac McCarthy’s last true novel, The Passenger. Published a few months prior to its companion novella (though I am not sure what it really is) Stella Maris, Passenger follows Bobby Western, the last of Cormac’s lonely men. My first read of Passenger left me concerned that I’d missed a series of memos, had been left out of some conversation. It felt aimless and disinterested in itself. I hoped that Stella would fill in gaps or provide some sense of completion. It dashed those hopes on its publication. ...

This is my second Murakami book, and there’s a better than not chance it’ll be my last. Norwegian Wood seems well regarded by most people, reviews on Goodreads mention frequently that it is the book “everyone in Japan has read.” It has been recommended to me somewhat highly, though not always as a ‘good’ representation of Murakami’s broader ouevre. Unfortunately, the things I bumped against in my first Murakami read (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) are all here, and in huge force. There are maybe six major characters, and four of those are women. Our protagonist is good at most things, in that he has no trouble with school, no real problem finding work, seems to infatuate women, and apparently fucks so well that at least one of the female characters swears off sex afterwards. Do you think this sounds true to life? I’ll get back to the sex in a minute. ...

“Sex was the reply to any question.” There’s a lot of sex in this book, and a lot of it is quite hot to read. But it is not exactly smut. There is something in it of the loss of sense, the obliteration of the person by way of pleasure into nothingness. All that aside, a lot of it is also simply hot to read. I bought this without knowing anything about it in the NYRB sale. I saw the penis-graced cover (in what I will call an art style I do not like, apologies to the artist Louis Fratino), saw that it was apparently pretty gay, and figured why not. The back jacket has a quote from William S. Burroughs: ...

Ernaux’s short book exploring the knowledge of her sister, unknown to her and deceased before she was ever contemplated, let alone born. A chance overhearing shadows her life. I appreciated, as always, Ernaux’s cutting and raw writing. There is a little less in this one for me to grab onto, but I think we’re lucky to have the opportunity to go along with her as she processes these ideeas. ...