the mudd up book clubb rolls into 2016 with Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village (2006, trans. 2011). This book is a lot. It’s set in the rural Henan province where Yan grew up in a poor peasant family. Dream is an exquisite, queasy, and nuanced tale of a village dealing with ‘the fever’ & … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village
There’s a larger story to be told about how the Mudd Up Book Clubb met at Brazenhead, the best bookstore in the world, for nearly 4 years! About how Michael had to leave Brazenhead’s secret apartment location (& how I recorded its silence — a shareable portrait of the clandestine bookshop’s unique acoustic space)… but … Continue reading Mudd Up Book Clubb: FRAN ROSS – OREO
The March Mudd Up Book Clubb selection is Pamela Lu’s Ambient Parking Lot. A first-person plural novel (“part fiction, part earnest mockumentary”) about an ambient band! In other words, we are clearly the target audience for this under-appreciated gem from 2011. It is loopy and sweet and funny and ostensibly less crazy than Sorokin’s Ice … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Pamela Lu’s Ambient Parking Lot
The Mudd Up Book Clubb rolls into 2015 with a Chinese communist crime novel about a poet-cop! We’ll meet on Sunday January 25 to discuss Qiu Xiaolong’s Death of a Red Heroine. Set in early 1990s Shanghai, the novel uses the form of a police procedural to portray Chinese society in transition, old Maoists and … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Qiu Xiaolong
Last selection of the year: Hungarian writer Ãgota Kristóf’s hypnotic, powerful (and short) debut novel The Notebook. Published in 1986 it is a bracing language bath, narrated in first-person plural by limpid & disturbing young twins in the midst of wartime scarcity. First part of a trilogy (whole trilogy is great). Kristóf’s stark minimalism reads … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Ãgota Kristóf’s The Notebook
The Mudd Up Book Clubb rides again. I’m trying to fit in 2 more meetups before 2015 arrives, so to that end: On Sunday November 30th, we will meet in Manhattan to discuss Jo Walton’s My Real Children. Published earlier this year, it’s an incredibly moving novel about an elderly woman with dementia who remembers … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Jo Walton’s My Real Children
On Sunday August 24, we’ll be meeting to discuss Senselessness (2004, 2008 English trans.), a dynamite novella from Central American author Horacio Castellanos Moya. It takes the form of a monologue, so everything we get comes from the mouth of, as the book jacket text describes, “an alcoholic, atheist, sex-obsessed writer [who] finds himself employed … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya
[Etel Adnan] Summer reading time! On Sunday July 6th we’ll meet in Manhattan to discuss Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose. This remarkable novella was written in 1977 by Lebanese artist Etel Adnan. These days Adnan is more recognized for her painting — she was a quiet hero of the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Elsewhere, Adnan’s words … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose
The Mudd Up Book Clubb returns to Manhattan on March 9, to talk Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall (1962, English trans. 1990). It is graceful. It is crushingly good. It discusses cows, cats, and foraging in great detail, such that this harrowing narrative of thingness and survival is never far from pellucid (if unsettling) meditation on … Continue reading Mudd Up Book Clubb – MARLEN HAUSHOFER: THE WALL
Dear Winternet, I have been remiss in letting you know what we’ve been up to at the Mudd Up Book Clubb. Back in June, we read Iris Murdoch‘s first novel, Under The Net (1954). I stumbled across this at the impossible bookshop, and picked it up on the strength of its first page (“I find … Continue reading MUDD UP BOOK CLUBB: Iris Murdoch, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Subcomandante Marcos
