Also a Poet, Ada Calhoun (a). An unusual combination of autobiography and biography, where the three main characters are Calhoun, her father Peter Schjeldahl, and the poet Frank O’Hara. O’Hara seems mostly a stand-in for artists in the East Village in New York in the ’60s, so I suppose that’s the real third character. E.g. Ada got her name when Ada Katz, (apocryphally?) the most painted woman of the 20th century, suggested it at a dinner party. (Ah, as I type this I realise I liked that form of biography in The Bully Pulpit too (#16), where the three characters were Taft, Roosevelt, and early 1900s muckraker journalism.) Calhoun’s father had tried to write a biography of Frank O’Hara 50 years ago, and recorded interviews for it, but failed to complete it. Long after, he gave Calhoun the tapes, and that led to this book. I recommend listening to the audiobook version, since those original recordings are interspersed and made me feel a little more Village.
A History of Disappearance, Sarah Lubala (p). My favourite poems were ‘Honeymoon’, ‘New Braamfontein’, and ‘Elegy for Girlhood’.
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (p). Someone recommended Denis Johnson when I told them I liked Raymond Carver (#36 in 2016), but the despair in these short stories was too sudden/vicious for me. I guess I need to be handheld into despair to feel it. That said, I can see why people really like Johnson, which is more than I can say of some other 20th century American greats I’ve tried (#22). This is a nice reading/discussion of one of the best (though, warning, horrible) stories in the collection, ‘Emergency’.
War with the Newts, Karel Čapek (author), dramatised by George Poles (a). I listened to the 2005 BBC radio adaptation, so arguably this is neither a book nor audiobook and doesn’t deserve an entry? Ah well, I liked it, so it’s making the list. Satirical science fiction from 1936 about the discovery of intelligent newts who get exploited for labour by various world powers to increase civilian and military production. Relevant to anxieties of the day, and to some anxieties of 2023.
The Sandman: Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman and several artists (p). Graphic novel that follows the Sandman series I haven’t read. Mixed feelings. I later watched an episode of the Netflix adaptation, and didn’t like it.
Genentech, Sally Smith Hughes (a). I’ve wanted to read this for a while, since Genentech is a (the?) standout biotech company from the last 50 years. Finally someone recorded an audiobook version – thank you, whoever is responsible! Tidbits from the story: the co-founders were 1 unemployed VC really into recombinant DNA and 1 lead scientist with an itch for commercialisation (who was able to recruit more scientists). Seed round from Kleiner Perkins, who took board seats and helped Genentech fundraise for the next decade (careful what you sign up for). The big product goal was to make human insulin, and one co-founder wanted to go straight for it, but the rest of the team convinced him they should go for somatostatin first as a proof of concept for the technology, despite the smaller market; they spent $515,000 across mostly academic settings, and it worked. The mayor of South San Francisco encouraged them to open lab space in SSF, and they went for SSF over Berkeley partly because they thought Berkeley might have local ordinances against recombinant research (similar-ish to Stripe moving from SF to SSF after Prop C in 2018/19?). Indeed an “unfair” advantage they had as a privately funded company is that academics at UCSF and Harvard working on recombinant DNA were funded by the NIH, and NIH guidelines said you had to use the highest biosafety level lab in case recombinant DNA escaped – which UCSF/Harvard didn’t have access to, so one of them went to France where the regulations were less(!) restrictive. Apparently since gene synthesis machines didn’t exist yet, scientists had to create the strings molecule by molecule?(!) Genentech signed a deal with Lilly, the largest provider of insulin at the time, structured as $3M in milestone payments with 6% of future royalties on sales going to Genentech and 2% to City of Hope. They only had 5 scientists on staff at the time.
The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories, Leo Szilard (p). Short stories written by one of the creators of the atomic bomb. I found the middle four more provocative than the title story, though thought they were all wonderful/jarring. (Given my job, I of course enjoyed ‘The Mark Gable Foundation’, as well as the philanthropy digs in the first story: “He regarded the bylaws of the foundations, which provided that grants for research projects be allocated by a simple majority vote of the trustees, as an ingeniously contrived device to make certain that no imaginative project was ever approved.”) One difference vs today that comes through is how seriously people took game theory in the early nuclear age. Szilard also makes some implicit incorrect predictions of what Germany will be like decades after the war, and of the power of the Church. Otherwise, there’s much eerie continuity with today. Some quotes from the introduction: “He believed that such a process [nuclear fission], if properly harnessed, could produce cheap power and thus advance human welfare–but it might also lead to a terribly powerful weapon. Initially stressing the peaceful prospects, Szilard even planned how most of the profits could be used to fund science.” “Szilard resented that the A-bomb project, initially conceived by working scientists … was being controlled by the military … It was not that he objected to power residing in an elite, but in his mind it was decidedly the wrong elite.” “His concerns did not stop him from joining in the rush to develop the bomb.” “Because of government-enforced secrecy, there could be no open dialogue with the public, no education of the general citizenry, and thus scientists on the project had even a greater moral responsibility than usual.” “Nine days after Hiroshima, Szilard finished an elaborate proposal for saving the world. His plan looked forward to world government.”
The Houseguest and Other Stories, Amparo Dávila (author), Matthew Gleeson & Audrey Harris (translators) (p). Recently translated short stories from Dávila, a Mexican author who I’d never heard of until happenstance book store browsing. I’d classify all the stories as domestic horror, dominant emotions fear and paranoia, recurring theme of familial duties destroying you. E.g. inheriting from a brother two dogs who trash your house, force you to end your relationships, move out of town… Taking care of a son/brother who’s so demanding that your parents die of heart attacks and fatigue, then he burns the house down. Several scenes reminded me of the claustrophobic middle section of The Days of Abandonment (#29), where the main character is locked in her apartment with her children.
Life Ascending, Nick Lane (a). A sweep over billions of years, covering “the ten great inventions of evolution”: the origin of life, DNA, photosynthesis, eukaryotes, sex, movement, eyes, hot blood, consciousness, and death. It reads like narrative textbook that applies a particular lens (evolutionary theory) to discuss broad biological phenomena. I imagine it gets plenty wrong along the way (the consciousness and death chapters raised some suspicions), but what a ride. It’s the kind of book that makes me feel grateful to be alive today. How could people make sense of the biological world before DNA, transcription, and translation were discovered? That was pretty recently! Indeed, how before the theory of evolution itself? I wonder what concepts future people will pity us for not having.
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan (p). I’ve wanted to read this book for a while without having any clue what it’s about. Probably in part due to the great name, but also a sense that Egan is on a short list of living authors people talk about in serious tones. Great from the first page. One nicely worded phrase: “a faint appreciation for the beauty and inelegance of a man undressing.” Plus some San Francisco, including a scene at the since-closed Mabuhay Gardens, and a sentence that made me feel at home: “Where we live, in the Sunset, the ocean is always just over your shoulder and the houses have Easter-egg colors.”
To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (p). Incredible. Slower reading than a normal novel, but so worth it (and faster for me than Mrs. Dalloway (#17), which I also loved). Woolf describes things so exhaustively that I realised after finishing the book I had crisp visual images of every scene. Poignant throughout. “What is the meaning of life? That was all–a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.” The daily illuminations that give ordinary life the possibility of transcendence; hearing Woolf describe them is special. (I’m reminded as I type of this scene in Soul.) Plus, the mercurial oscillations from the heights of ecstasy to depths of despair makes the poignancy hilarious. I want to quote the whole book, so instead I’ll limit myself to quotations of things I laughed at in the first 30 pages: “that wretched atheist who had chased them–or, speaking accurately, been invited to stay with them–in the Isles of Skye.” / “she made him feel better pleased with himself than he had done yet, and he would have liked, had they taken a cab, for example, to have paid for it.” / “Her shoes were excellent, he observed. They allowed the toes their natural expansion.” / [For context on this one, the father is a philosophy professor:] “The Ramsays were not rich, and it was a wonder how they managed to contrive it all. Eight children! To feed eight children on philosophy!” / “I respect you (she addressed silently him in person) in every atom; … you live for science (involuntarily, sections of potatoes rose before her eyes)” / “‘Nature has but little clay,’ said Mr. Bankes once, much moved by her voice on the telephone, though she was only telling him a fact about a train, “like that of which she moulded you.”‘ / “She stroked James’s head; … what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead.”
A Coastline is an Immeasurable Thing, Mary-Alice Daniel (a). Memoir of growing up in Nigeria, England, and the US, finding sense across many identities (Fulani, Hausa, non-believer, Californian…).
The God of San Francisco, James J. Siegel (p). I suppose I could have gotten this from the title, but it’s only after typing out some of my favourite quotations below that I realise this collection is about gay life as religious experience. “I am a pillar of fire. I am/ an extraordinary conflagration.” My favourite poem was ‘Twenty-Nine Days of Rain’ (“But now I’m tired of beauty/ and laughter. … / San Francisco was a mistake. / … I was wrong.”). The title poem was good too, as was ‘Stars’ (“we are all small creatures/ seeking a fraction of this light,/ this duality in fishnets” (!)). ‘Elegy for the Castro Funeral Home’ made me cry (has a poem done that before?), once I got to “…made them into handsome young men again.” Indeed I had to close the book and stare into space after the first two lines: “One hundred years and you are gone./ Death is not the business it once was.” Many parts of the other poems made me feel at home: “feel/ the soft fingers of the ocean air.”, “Castro bartenders have a heavy pour,” mentions of Dolores Park, Castro Theater, Twin Peaks Tavern, Moby Dick, Midnight Sun… “for the bartender who knows my order,/ where my tab is always and forever open.” (Hi Nate and Patrick)
Deal: New and Selected Poems, Randall Mann (p). A different San Francisco poet, with a longer collection. (Upsold at Fabulosa Books when I went to buy Siegel.) These ones were hit and miss for me, but some lines were simply perfect: “Desire, that heretic,/ is stealing, spider-fingered, all the hours.”, “wanting,/ again, a man I do not want.”, “All/ my ambitious/ friends want/ to talk about/ is joy.”, “I am neither young nor old.” And as always I love a good opening line: “For once, he was just my father.”, “So much has gone to shit. My hair. The state.”, “The birds/ are relentless.” Then several clever lines that I’m not sure how I feel about: “nothing gold can. Say”, “the center cannot fold.”, “everything here is false, beauty not truth:” (OK, I like that one), “I walked into a stanza.”, “I’m very pro-noun.” My favourite poem by far is ‘Queen Christina‘. Runners up were ‘Leo & Lance‘, ‘Translation’ (from Proprietary, not the ‘Translation’ from Breakfast with Thom Gunn), and ‘Lone Palm’, a poem remembering a bar I have many fond memories in myself – that “deco dish/ of golden fish” on the tables!
A Hundred Lovers, Richie Hofmann (p). Of a theme with the two above, though the poems are shorter and more lingering. ‘Spring Wedding’, ‘The Fables’, and ‘French Novel’… I have lived ‘French Novel’ and would relive it as many times as I’m allowed. “There are hours in this apartment/ when all you see is dust,”, “lavender, red amber, and flower of pomegranate.”, “My teeth were yellow from coffee and wine.”
Judas Goat, Gabrielle Bates (p). Debut collection. You open the book and get slapped in the face by the first poem (‘The Dog‘). Some other favourites: ‘The Mentor’ (“keeping language close to my mouth/ as if I were reading to a match that had to last my life.”), ‘Self-Portrait as Provincial’, ‘”Person” Comes from “Mask”‘ (“Complete focus can resemble utter distraction, just like/ there’s a point where my lover begins to look like a stranger”), ‘In the Dream in Which I Am a Widow’ (“the Spanish statue of the falling angel,/ …/ We lived, remember? Briefly, near it.”, “I heard the door open, blessed the opening,”, “heady jessamine,/ the poisonous vine’s scent sweet, aneurysmal sweet,/ swelling our brains against our skulls.”), ‘Judas Goat’ (“We, of our ends, are perhaps all this oblivious:”, “the shackling pen” for a poet!), and ‘The Lucky Ones’.
I Shall Not Be Moved, Maya Angelou (p). My favourite two poems were ‘Is Love’, a short one, and ‘Our Grandmothers’, a long one. Some nice phrases from others: “peach petals and/dogwood bloom”, “grunting/ prettily”, “pure paradise/ …/ where the music is jazz/ and the season is fall.”, “I’ve sailed upon the seven seas/ and stopped in every land,/ I’ve seen the wonders of the world,/ not yet one common man.”
Making of a Manager, Julie Zhou (a). I’ve been around Bay Area tech management culture for long enough that there wasn’t much new in here for me, but it’s short and listenable so I finished.
Only As the Day Is Long, Dorianne Laux (p). This is a collection of Laux’s poems throughout the decades, with some new ones at the end. So many incredible poems and incredible lines. ‘Tooth Fairy’ about parents (“a love/ so quiet, I still can’t hear it.”), ‘Bird’ (“dead roses in a jam jar.”), ‘Afterlife’ (about waitresses, again “your fist full of roses”), ‘Dog Moon’, ‘Death of the Mother’, ‘My Mother’s Colander’, ‘Ideas of Heaven’ (about nurses, with a ! final stanza). Then these three are simply extraordinary: ‘Dust‘, ‘How It Will Happen, When‘, about grief, and ‘After Twelve Days of Rain‘ (some similarities to ‘Twenty-Nine Days of Rain’ above, but goes right to the core; that said the poem didn’t move my friend Korin (too cinematic), so be warned).
The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse (p). I have been waiting to read this book for fifteen years, since my dad first described the plot to me. Monkish academics live a materially simple life in a future century, placing “beads” next to each other in provocative orders – where the beads are symbols representing “All the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras … reduced to concepts”. I feel guilty reporting that the book was long and repetitive. Guilty because the idea of the glass bead game means so much to me. I’ve often thought about it, and had saved this book up as a treat for a trip alone. (I read Hesse’s Siddartha on my last trip alone 5 years ago and loved it; #19.) All that said, spending time with the idea while reading the book had its gifts, with a century of cultural evolution to learn from beyond what Hesse had to work with. At some point reading I realised that the power of online meme accounts is they’re playing a less intellectual version of the glass bead game well: tweets placing widely-enough recognised cultural touchstones in surprising orders incredibly compactly, sometimes so provocatively that they become brain worms. Here‘s an example of the Glass Meme Game. Then Alexander Chee’s second essay in the book below made me realise after the fact that you can interpret Tarot as a glass bead game where intentionality is removed and only interpretation of the order and relation of symbols remains. Perhaps what stands out most from the century of hindsight, though, is the lack of social and technological progress in Hesse’s imagined 2300s. The game players are all male, which contributes to the boredom reading. Artificial intelligence could not have informed Hesse’s conception of the beads, though that’s where my mind often turned. The powerful systems of the 21st century have not come from symbolic processing, and I suspect there’s something deep to that about the relation between world and concept (perhaps the next systems will prove me wrong!). Yet those systems parse all creative output in a fixed number of repeated tokens (say 50,000), and learn “concepts”/features in often surprising ways. A reimagined version of the glass bead game could offer a positive intellectual vision for AI systems, as the bounds and connectedness of intellectual life get pushed out.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee (p). Book of beautifully written essays. I read them at a similar time to two friends, so we brought copies to Churchill and other Castro locations, sharing quotes to savour them.
Disasterama!, Alvin Orloff (p). A less literary but equally wonderful autobiography of life in San Francisco, 1977-1997. Told chronologically as Orloff moves to San Francisco and meets new friends – i.e. you’re safe for ten-ish chapters, then the characters start coming to ends you’d expect. But the book’s driving force is joy and humour. I moved to San Francisco and met many of the same characters forty years later. That’s how it feels. Alvin works at the bookstore two blocks away from where I live, and now I’ve met him too!
Jacob Trefethen 