A biography of Gray Barker, an early UFO zinester who shaped much of the lore and imagery surrounding the US UFO phenomenon, as well as other paranormal incidents, like the Mothman and Flatwoods Monster. McKee creates a charming but also troubled portrait, you can see how the alienation of being a gay guy in West Virginia in the 1950s-1980s contributed to his fascination with UFOs, the paranormal, and the often-derided "contactees" (who were rejected by those seeking a more dignified and scientific meaning behind the UFO phenomenon)... This could manifest in both uncommon empathy for those with other "atypical" lifestyles and beliefs, but also being well-adapted to a lifelong state of plausible deniability... he loved a good hoax but would always leave it for the reader to decide... draw your own conclusions! Another fascinating thing about this book is the attention the author gives to formal publishing and self-publishing technologies, and how they developed and influenced the spread (and economics!) of UFO-related publishing from the earliest documents and newsletters in the 1950s to deluxe hardbacks, hand-cut zines, and back again. The Saucerian's antagonisms and drama are also hilariously recognizable to any contemporary fandom. A cool book that ties many unique and very interesting threads together!
A bunch of deep-ass Art History Classic™ analysis of some great paintings where scenes of miracles, eternal life, etc are mingled with the tradition of realism in European painting-- where the material and here and now inevitably intrudes and interacts with the ideal. The chapter on Breugel's Land of Cockaigne obviously appealed the most to me, and did not disappoint, but even the ones on artists and works I felt less strongly about were really informative, philosophically knotty and rich. He ties all this into a politics of leftist pessimism/cynicism, which was a little tough for my natural utopian thinking to take but again, really meaty and provocative. It made me realize how impoverished, in the sense of reducing visual or multimedia works to like... syntactical "content" which then determines analysis, a lot of criticism is across the board nowadays, since everything has to be a 1000 word post that leads up to the Why X is the Y We Need Right Now (or not) argument. It felt like a challenge to read some stuff that makes deep formal and psychological observations/leaps/questions instead... can I do something like that?
The other stories here were "A Man and His Dog" (1918), "Disorder and Early Sorrow" (1925), "The Transposed Heads" (1940), "The Tables of the Law" (1944), and "The Black Swan" (1953). I'm typically not much of a short story reader but I do really love Thomas Mann and also "Mario and the Magician" is an early fictional depiction of hypnosis, so it's relevant to my research for my next novel lol... Anyways these are all more novella-length. I was surprised how much I got into them even though the basic subject matter of most of them... dogs? A pastiche of early translations of Indian myths? The book of Exodus??? ... were things that I would typically say are almost certainly uninteresting. But no, I do just really like the way he writes about the experience of philosophy and thought alongside daily life, internal contradictions, embarrassing impulses, etc, no matter what his sensibility is put towards. "The Tables of the Law" surprised me; I'm familiar with "realist" takes on bible stories and often find them even more tediously cheesy than the original text. But this one introduced a perverse and very human cynicism and self interest, to Moses, but also to God Himself, that broke through my initial resistance to the topic. "The Black Swan" is also notable for having a scene where I had to dog ear the corner of the page for it being so horny. I think people really sell short how weird and also funny Thomas Mann is, this made me want to go in on my long-threatened The Magic Mountain reread soon.
Jane Jensen is kind of a genius IMO? I got totally obsessed with Gabriel Knight 2 when I played it with Stephen, and putting it next to Phantasmagoria, which, while equally visually weird and wacky plotwise, just does not really have the sauce when it comes to writing or characters, and leans back a lot on predictable or even offensive 80s/90s horror movie tropes (the hickish idiots subplot is truly, truly unbearable). Jane Jensen's writing avoids all that while weaving together a bunch of fun characters in a plot that incorporates the gleeful tourism guide style omnivorousness that's so charming about Mirrors, as well as a historical mystery involving King Ludwig II suppressed homosexuality that extends into the present via an immortal werewolf lover. It is as goofy yet charming as playing the game all over again. It really makes me want to read some of her other novels (including pseudonymous gay romances!)
I LOVED this but it's so hard to know what to talk about. It's 1130 pages long and basically does not have a plot beyond following how the various people surrounding the establishment of a group to plan some great celebration of Austrian culture in 1914 (uh oh!) basically waste their time and defer making any sort of decision. Which sounds awful, and as a pure satire it would be tedious. Discussing it with Stephen, he was like, well the difference between like flat satire and what's going on here is that flat satire is just like, ha ha, this guy is dumb! (and not me) whereas this novel more directly confronts the horror that, contextually, anyone can be truly clueless. Alongside the march to disaster, which you care about because these characters, up to the most craven and irritating, are depicted so dimensionally and humanely, there's bizarre moments of joy and pleasure, and agonizing moments of insight only just missed. So it's a political "types of guy" novel in a similar sense to The Magic Mountain, but also to a surprising extent a lot about gender and desire and granular day to day experience... a bit of grist for trans readings and anti-family readings as well. It's one of those novels that can only be summed up in the experience of reading it! Try it!!! You might like it!!