13 Questions for Seth from W.A.S.T.E. Mailing List
Seth is a non-authoritative devotee of anything and everything related to Thomas Pynchon. He runs a small Instagram feed, YouTube channel, and SubStack, all focused on difficult and demanding literature. He was a guest on our The Crying of Lot 49 episode and is joining us again for two new episodes on Gravity’s Rainbow.
Seth, self-portrait
What are you reading currently and why?
One of the salient byproducts of having (admittedly undiagnosed) ADHD, is a width of attentional focus that — to borrow a munitions metaphor — more closely resembles birdshot than a hollow point shell. As you can imagine, I’m ping-ponging between a few books at the moment, all of which are working on my consciousness in unique and meaningful ways.
Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz translated by Matthias Friedrich (@nordicnovellas) and Max Lawton (@maxdaniellawton), which is being published by [redacted] in [redacted]. Max kindly gave me a prepublication digital copy, as he knows I’ve been lusting after it since 2019 when I found Andrei’s (@theuntranslated) review of it. Why am I reading it? Read this review and tell me you don’t want to read it too. It’s the second time in my reading life – the first being Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes – that I felt as though I was walking through a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Summa Kaotica by Ventura Ametller, translated by Douglas Suttle. Doug, who runs the press Fum d’Estampa, has been heroically translating this uncut gem of a novel for the past few years, and what a bacchanalian marvel it’s proven to be thus far. I’m reading this partly on reputation as a perverse and carnivalesque recapitulation of Catalonia history, and also simply on the strength of FdE’s output. They’re publishing the second volume in the duology, Resta Kaotica, next year.
I can’t believe I’m typing this… Finnegans Wake by the inevitable James Joyce. I had no intention whatsoever to read this anytime soon, but Karl over at @underreadgerman put out a video commenting on the work of several writers whom I admire, with the Wake a comparative framework. I picked it up out of second-hand curiosity and impulse and am surprised how much enjoyment I’m getting out of it, in spite of its proud obscurity and hostility to the casual reader. Pray for me…
What book most altered your taste in literature?
It’s almost painful how predictable this response will be, but my money’s on The Crying of Lot 49. Prior to that point, I was bouncing rudderlessly between bog-standard conventional realism, New York Times Top 100 fodder, memoires of public figures, and niche non-fiction. Pynchon helped me titrate my own taste down to a profile that more closely resembles what I read today. I found the narrative impenetrability, the historical referentiality, the irreverence, and the lack of definitive closure were a perfect combination for enjoyment and post-reading reflection. I didn’t understand what I was reading at the time but knew this was an author with an intimidating intellect, writing in a voice that pulled me along, regardless of how much went over my head on the first pass. I still regard it as one of his best, even if he (allegedly) doesn’t himself.
Describe the last time a work of literature affected you physically.
I gutturally laughed out loud to the point of diaphragmatic cramping when I read Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers. There’s a scene wherein one tech bro is compelled – under protest – to rub suntan lotion on author tech bro’s back, and the delivery this is pitch perfect. Despite taking himself too seriously for my taste (not without his merits mind you) one of the characteristics of Cohen’s narration and scene structuring is how goddamn funny it is. By my estimation, he is the only living author who could justifiably be considered a formal and thematic successor to William Gaddis, despite having (obviously) more of a Semitic bend.
Please share a passage from the book nearest at hand.
“Our own barbaric civilization, in awe of the act of creation, does not respect creation at all.”
A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas, translated by Imre Goldstein.
Ain’t that the fucking truth. Reminds me of a tweet from @corpseinorbit earlier this month:
“I don’t generally believe much in humankind, but if the last month has taught me anything, it’s this: given enough time and resources, humanity WILL find and kill God.”
Brief sidebar: If you’re a translator from Hungarian, you’re a goddamn hero. Thank you for your work. There are so few of you, and the literature being produced in that country is stunning. We need you.
How do you treat the books you read?
I used to abuse my books with highlighters, pens, tabs, and dog-ears to the point that all spinal integrity fell by the wayside. That is until the concept of a “first edition” came to my attention and I realise I had annotated the living shit out of a first edition of Gravity's Rainbow. Thankfully, only the paperback and not a first printing, but that one still stings. Since my shelves are now healthily (though far from exclusively) stocked with out-of-print first editions and short-run Dalkey Archive novels (William H Gass’ The Tunnel a personal favourite among them), I’ll only tab and lightly underline in easily replaceable paperbacks. If readers of this find themselves in Sydney sometime, drop by my place and I’ll show you that Gravity’s Rainbow copy I marked up to bits; you’ll probably want me committed.
What quality do you most appreciate in a novel?
No second thought needed here: prose. Personally, I strongly believe no other element in fiction supersedes the quality of the prose and the exuberance of the language. What is the purpose of having such a baroque and extensive mine of linguistic material at our disposal, if not to use it to express the conditions of our existence that couldn’t be done in any other form? This is why I have no time for conventional realism as a formal rubric anymore.
What is the purpose of having such a baroque and extensive mine of linguistic material at our disposal, if not to use it to express the conditions of our existence that couldn’t be done in any other form?
Who is an author you feel should be more widely read?
Can I offer more than one? William T Vollmann is well-regarded but not widely read, so he would be my knee-jerk pick. I would also offer up the Scottish transplant turned Southeast Asian nomad who goes by the nom de plume “New Juche”. His novella Bosun stunned me into submission last year and have since become an ardent fan. His latest project is a multi-medium periodical, Gallows Fruit, which just published its first volume under the title Heat Death. Absolutely worth the price of admission if you’re interested in exploring the capacities of literature on the fringes of the attention economy.
What book are you avoiding reading?
None actually, and it’s a damn good feeling. I just spent the last week while my partner was away on business polishing off a quarter dozen guilt bricks I’ve been neglecting for the better part of 6 months. I suppose now’s the time where I have to review them…
What book do you find overrated?
I don’t really like to “dunk” on books where possible. Regardless of how tedious or undercooked a work of fiction may be, that’s still the fruit of someone’s labour and should be considered with a degree of sensitivity. Self-indulgent disclaimer out of the way, I think the reputation of McCarthy as America’s prophet, and Wallace as a generation’s Joyce are both wildly overcooked. Both are immensely talented writers whom I enjoy and admire, but there are a number of stronger prose stylists with fiercer intellects who are working who should be wreathed with their status instead. You want to see where literary fiction is headed? You’re going to need to look outside of the English language (with only a few notable exceptions). The future is in translation, and our translators’ names should be on every cover. Without them, the form stagnates.
What book would you like to be the last one you read before you shuffle off this mortal coil?
While I’m coming to terms with the fact that GR is and will likely remain the terminus of Pynchon’s intellectual ascendency, Mason & Dixon is either tied or a close second. LOT 49 may have introduced me to the author, but M&D cemented him as my all-time favourite. Here, he hedges in his hatred for the deeply evil American project and instead forefronts a hopeful form of apolitical humanism you might recognise from his earlier work in V. Normally I would consider that an inexcusable compromise, but he’s still sure to remind us all of the genocide, subjugation, and terror the Land of the Free (asterisk not included) was founded on. He hasn’t forgotten his authorial mission, he’s just not as punishing in doing so as he is in GR. You can actually leave M&D not feeling sick to your stomach and there’s something to be said for that.
If you were to design a literature course around a singular word what word would that be and what three books might appear on the reading list?
Damn, I could take this in a number of different directions. I’ll try to skirt around the edges of a politically-charged tangent here, but if I were to go with a concept in the form of a word that has been occupying my mind lately, it would be a toss-up between “Apartheid” or “Colonialism”. I would love to run a course that traces the lineage of colonial oppression from its more conventionally understood roots in the last century (think Conrad’s Nostromo or Benedetto’s Zama) forward into the twentieth and twenty-first century with technocapitalist forms of oppression, erasure, and occupation. I would offer A Bended Circuitry by RSS, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, The Lost Scrapbook by Evan Dara, and Witz by Joshua Cohen, though those are just ideas off the top of my head and would need more time to think critically on it.
(Oh, and that last one (Witz) is still a read in progress, so I reserve my right to change my mind on it. Guess I should’ve included that in the “currently reading” section huh…)
If you were to die and come to life as a character in a novel, who would you like to be? Who would you, in a just universe, actually be?
Pass. Though I’m happy to carry on forever as a tourist in the consciousness of the fictive, I have no desire to apply for citizenship.
Why read literature?
One life’s not enough. How’s that for a pithy note to send off on?