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Summer's almost done and there's no summer reading list thread yet? =) What are you Zornlisters reading?

Books I've really enjoyed are: Curtis White "Requiem". Quite enjoyable, despite the pretentious description on the back. Fragmented stories about famous composers, an English prof surfing the net for porn, a "prophet" inteviewing murderers and madmen, bestiality, but the most exploitative parts are the potshots at NPR and Terry Gross. Stevie Smith "Novel on Yellow Paper". I think Bush has got both the dictators and the cenobites! Jalal Toufic "Over-Sensitivity". Film/art criticism that reads more like poetry, deals with voice-overs, dance, radical closures. Helps to be familiar with Resnais, Duras, Hitchcock, and Tarkovsky. Mentions "friend and ally John Zorn". Guess Zorn's cultural zionism is not an issue of contention. Raymond Federman "To Whom It Is Concerned". An author plans an (autobiographical?) novel about two cousins, both who lost their family in the Holocaust, reuniting in Israel. Robert Creeley "Collected Poems". Forget the years, but this is the (big) early collection. My favorite goes something like Send me your poems/ and I'll send you mine./ Together we'll declare spring//And jeer at the others/all the others//I'll send you a picture/ if you send me one too. (so poorly paraphrased) On deck: Stephen Levinson "Pragmatics" & other linguistics textbooks Thomas Bernhard "Three Novellas" Uwe Timm "Morenga" Ronald Sukenick "98.6" P. Friere "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

I'm taking Joseph McElroy's Actress in the House (from the first couple of chapters it may be the most clearly written in a convention sense of all his books); Lyn Hejinian's Border Comedy ( along non-narrative poem in many sections all of which seem to all of the vowels all the time. For anyone who care, Hejinian is married to ROVA's Larry Ochs, she co-edits a series of books for a press named Atelos with support from Hips Road (the non-profit that also supports Tzadik), & Border Comedy is dedicated to Zorn.); & Lavish Absence by Rosmarie Waldrop (a memoir about her translations of and collaboration with Edmond Jabes) with me on vacation this weekend.

Lyn Hejinian's "My Life", an (also non-narrative) autobiography which devotes a prose poem to each year of her life, is really quite good. Is Clark Coolidge at all affiliated with this group? He put out a book years ago called "The ROVA Improvisations", which consist of a series of improvised poems to ROVA songs, then more poems based on the improv'd poems (sort of like Ostertag does poetry). I tried CC's "Solution Passage" but couldn't understand a word. Is Atelos still functioning? It doesn't look like their website has been updated lately, and I thought years ago they mentioned brining out a new work by Fanny Howe but now now word...

When I'm back home in mid-August, I hope to spend some time with Immemory by the French film maker Chris Marker, which is a CD-ROM published by Exact Change

I can't believe that no Marker films have been released on DVD! There's only the English version of La Jetee on one of the "Short" DVD magazines and his work on "Night and Fog." Ben _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail