May Books Vanquished by Hades 2

I read a fair amount in May, but due to the disastrous twin effects of Hades 2 and taking a week long vacation to “socialize” with “friends” instead of “stuffing” “words” inside my “eyeballs,” I have checked out a good many books from the library and have finished approximately four. as such, this book blog post will include some books I’m currently reading but have not yet finished.

books I finished and enjoyed:

The Survival of the Bark Canoe, McPhee - Come on. Was it a surprise. “Oh, here’s John McPhee again, writing another great book!” Really fun book where I learned a bunch of facts about bark canoes that everyone else already knows. In addition to the lengthy profile of Vaillancourt, irascible canoe prodigy, McPhee includes an extended account of a canoeing trip he and his friend took with Vaillancourt and Vaillancourt's friends. I don’t think I’ve ever read McPhee so hmm plainly irritated with his subject’s bullheadedness, though it’s tempered by respect for Vaillancourt's skill at building and repairing canoes–vital when a canoe develops a tear, but one does wonder just how irked he would’ve been had this episode not occurred… I’ll be honest, this book did make me want to get in a canoe and start rowing. maybe not the camping thing. I think I’d be happy doing the rowing part alone. Vaillancourt has a delightful website straight out of the 00s that I hope you all visit at least once.

Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, Malcolm - Not sure what it is with New Yorker writers with last names that begin with "M." Something about them is really doing it for me?!

I’ve been feeling real Freudian lately–I think because of the recent Discourse around Therapy Speak that has unfortunately floated its way into my irl social media feeds/and also the trauma/PTSD article that came out a while back in the Intelligencer but also because Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology has a pretty extensive section where she does a reading of one of Freud’s case studies and uses it as a way to shape out the directional metaphor (“straightening the line” vs going slant/queer, sexuality+identity shaped by repetitive action, going against the grain/line etc.), and I was like, oh, right, this is how I usually see Freud used in papers: as a text to analyze and respond to/against… you can argue that this is a post-Freud world, where his ideas are largely ridiculed or seen as absurd/harmful/backwards, but you can see signs of his influence pretty much everywhere: the way we conceive of our unconscious motives, defense mechanisms, projection, the importance of the fantasy life, repetition compulsions, sexuality as a major force of motivation etc. Listing all of these out, I’m like, okay! I have no original insights whatsoever… no problem!!! I am a normie.

Malcolm’s Psychoanalysis was published in 1982 and covers Freudian theory of transference, psychoanalysis as a career, and the state of psychoanalysis of that time. It’s a slim book but a really fun one for me–I think because I enjoy industry books when they’re not about c-suite/finance/tech (unless it’s to gawk in horror) and because it feels oddly quaint. Just recently I was reading an article about people finding their therapists on TikTok. Okay, now imagine a psychoanalyst setting up a ring light.

What most interested me here was the description of how one feels going through psychoanalysis, both for the therapist and the patient: there’s uneasiness, dependency, frustration, and boredom on both sides, and a real sense of ritual and subjugation and endurance that I found fascinating, along with the way the psychoanalyst Malcolm spends the most time interviewing describes the eventual goal of psychoanalysis: a few more degrees of freedom in your day-to-day life. Maybe this is what people tell you in regular therapy, too… anyway, I had a great time reading this. I think a lot of people will probably hate it on subject alone.

I also finished Lucy Sante’s I Heard Her Call My Name... I do feel like this would’ve benefited from another editing pass, along with reminding Sante that she can’t just say “I read this book and this book and this book and this book” and be done with it–she also has to say what effect it had or share some insights with the class?! A mash up of a late in life transition memoir and a growing up/maturing as an adult in New York City in the 60s-80s; imo it’s a bit thin on the NYCart scene side and I’m too deep in Dumb Transgender Discourse to get much out of the transitioning side of this… I do think that it is a WILD move to publish your coming out e-mail in your memoir?! Maybe people who are less willfully evasive than I am feel differently.

Books I’m reading now that I’m really grooving with:

The Summer Book, Jannson - IT’S FINALLY JUNE which means I can read Jannson’s the summer book… I really wanted to read it right after The True Deceiver, but then I was like oh no, I should do this seasonally. that way it’ll all match. Anyway great so far, very different vibes, will update later.

The Merchant of Prato, Origo - ever wondered about how 14th century Italian merchants conducted trade and became moderately rich compared to their fellow city dwellers but not ultra rich as compared to the Big Trading Houses? This is the book for you! A biography of Francesco di Marco Datini, a guy I’ve never heard of but now know quite a lot about. I really love this so far: Origo’s insightful, curious, and takes great pains to reconstruct life as it was. There’s a quote in the introduction where Origo says that to write a good biography, you cannot begin by seeing through people; one must understand them as they see themselves first and in the context of their world, and I thought this was delightfully practical writing advice. The preface also includes an attempt to explain different units of measurement and that page scared the shit out of me. I found it incomprehensible in the same way I find cardinal directions frightening and obscure. Luckily everything else has been lovingly detailed and quite comprehensible.

Purity and Danger, Douglas - I’m eventually going to run out of renewals for this but no one has asked for it back so I will simply continue reading this at a rate of one chapter/3 weeks

also reading one dud of an essay collection, but everything else has been soooo good… good job for me