Scan barcode
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘I write to see what is inside my mind,’ author Amina Cain tells us in her non-fiction work A Horse at Night: On Writing’, adding that ‘for me, it is often far better, healthier, than recording what I know is already there.’ This exquisitely gorgeous and insightful little volume is her ‘diary of fiction,’ being both a look at the craft of writing and reading as well as reflections on her own life. A short but powerful little book, I found this to be as illuminating as it was intoxicating to read, enhanced by reading it alongside Cain’s novella Indelicacy which was written around the same time. The interplay of both books was an exciting experience seeing both theory and practice of the ideas expressed here, particularly the ways she examines the question ‘How can a detail be urgent and at the same time concealed?’ or her statement that ‘For me, fiction is a space of plainness and excess.’ Brimming with insights and adding multiple books to my to-read list, A Horse at Night is a sublime investigation into the visual qualities and details of language and simply a beautiful book on writing.
‘A novel can and should hold different registers of feeling and experience at once, and from that something new can emerge.’
Dorothy Project never lets me down and this was another big hit for me. When I first opened this book, inspired by zeynep’s amazing review, my eyes were drawn to this passage: ‘Again and again in novel after novel, plot gets in the way of detail. It destroys the dream.’ As someone who prefers small, quiet novels that really allow the details to shine brightest and amalgamate into something greater than the sum of their parts, I knew this was an authorial mind I needed to investigate and launched into a serene few days reading this as well as [b:Indelicacy|46008430|Indelicacy|Amina Cain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568485873l/46008430._SY75_.jpg|70730157] (read my review here). Along with Cain’s own insights on her writing, she imbues her examinations with those of other writers as well as critical analysis of their works. [a:Elena Ferrante|44085|Elena Ferrante|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1635020942p2/44085.jpg]’s The Lost Daughter or [b:The Ravishing of Lol Stein|19194169|The Ravishing of Lol Stein|Marguerite Duras|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386209767l/19194169._SY75_.jpg|378707] by [a:Marguerite Duras|163|Marguerite Duras|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1559929920p2/163.jpg] are examined most at length, but I enjoyed seeing her takes on authors like [a:Annie Ernaux|56176|Annie Ernaux|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1680716028p2/56176.jpg]—who she writes ‘does obsession and jealous very well’ and her ‘sentences are a series of hits or punches’, something I strongly agree with. I really appreciated seeing lesser known works I was excited to discover we both have read and enjoyed like the atmospheric The Weak Spot by [a:Lucie Elven|20346411|Lucie Elven|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or the works of [a:Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi|6445362|Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1573823564p2/6445362.jpg]. Basically, this book will make you excited about reading and make you want to read everything she mentions (I’ve already read Self-Portrait in Green based on this book).
‘Perhaps solitude is a practice as much as an instinct, its pleasures very much contextual. Sometimes being alone is terrible.’
Cain’s discussions on solitude really soothed my weary soul, and are key to the narrative in Indelicacy. As someone who has two jobs that involve being interrupted constantly and a busy life outside work where there are always multiple parties vying for my attention, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of yourself in it all. Which is something Cain really speaks on, though she also discusses how we need others in our lives and to be around other ideas, minds, and that connection is a big part of what makes life worth living. I think she says it best here:
On the flip side, she also writes:
Speaking of the novel Indelicacy, I found her ideas on the way she embeds visual images into the sparseness of her sentences to be very interesting to consider when reading her novel. She has excellent passages on how reading is very much a visual experience, which is why open spaces like reading facing a field or a beach is so rewarding because we can project our ideas out onto them. She also discusses authors like [a:Renee Gladman|202688|Renee Gladman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1420259169p2/202688.jpg] who she says ‘enters the space of [language], taking the reader with her,’ and there are some excellent insights into writers who pull us through ‘to the other side’ where both the work and we, the reader, are transformed by it. Ekphrasis is another element Cain really enjoys, which appears in her novels as well, and I quite liked her section on [a:A.S. Byatt|1169504|A.S. Byatt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388376297p2/1169504.jpg] discussing [a:Honoré de Balzac|228089|Honoré de Balzac|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206567834p2/228089.jpg]’s use of ekphrasis that ‘he makes the whole thing ghostly by making it live,’ which Cain continues with her look at ‘letting the portrait walk.’ Cain looks at writing very much like putting paint onto a canvas and her execution of these ideas was quite lovely to see.
For Cain, details are the most interesting. ‘I’ve mostly been paying attention to things we could say are “acessories” to [novels], not to what we would say is crucial,’ she says, but demonstrates how ‘an impression can be just as important as meaning.’ How true. When we think of a novel we love, often it is a small scene or tiny detail that really wedges into our hearts and minds and its these tiny impressions we turn back to again and again. Its like when you are drunk and trying to explain why you like something and some seemingly minute and absurd detail suddenly takes on a universe of meaning in your heart. Cain understands this and expresses it so eloquently that her words here have become one of those tiny details that will stick with me.
Cain tells us that she is ‘attached to fiction,’ and as someone else who would admit that about myself, I found this to be such a rewarding little read. I love her thoughts on writing, and animals (which comes up a lot, tying back into a discussion on [a:Sigrid Nunez|6633|Sigrid Nunez|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1529285691p2/6633.jpg]’s [b:The Friend|40164365|The Friend|Sigrid Nunez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544364669l/40164365._SY75_.jpg|56847766]), and this definitely made me think about why I appreciate quiet, interior novels. Keep a pen close at hand when reading too, I was constantly underlining amazing sentences. Amina Cain can WRITE. This is certainly a book I will be thinking about for a long time because, as Cain writes, ‘when one closes a book it doesn’t mean the feeling of the book closes too.’
5/5
‘A novel can and should hold different registers of feeling and experience at once, and from that something new can emerge.’
Dorothy Project never lets me down and this was another big hit for me. When I first opened this book, inspired by zeynep’s amazing review, my eyes were drawn to this passage: ‘Again and again in novel after novel, plot gets in the way of detail. It destroys the dream.’ As someone who prefers small, quiet novels that really allow the details to shine brightest and amalgamate into something greater than the sum of their parts, I knew this was an authorial mind I needed to investigate and launched into a serene few days reading this as well as [b:Indelicacy|46008430|Indelicacy|Amina Cain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568485873l/46008430._SY75_.jpg|70730157] (read my review here). Along with Cain’s own insights on her writing, she imbues her examinations with those of other writers as well as critical analysis of their works. [a:Elena Ferrante|44085|Elena Ferrante|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1635020942p2/44085.jpg]’s The Lost Daughter or [b:The Ravishing of Lol Stein|19194169|The Ravishing of Lol Stein|Marguerite Duras|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386209767l/19194169._SY75_.jpg|378707] by [a:Marguerite Duras|163|Marguerite Duras|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1559929920p2/163.jpg] are examined most at length, but I enjoyed seeing her takes on authors like [a:Annie Ernaux|56176|Annie Ernaux|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1680716028p2/56176.jpg]—who she writes ‘does obsession and jealous very well’ and her ‘sentences are a series of hits or punches’, something I strongly agree with. I really appreciated seeing lesser known works I was excited to discover we both have read and enjoyed like the atmospheric The Weak Spot by [a:Lucie Elven|20346411|Lucie Elven|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] or the works of [a:Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi|6445362|Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1573823564p2/6445362.jpg]. Basically, this book will make you excited about reading and make you want to read everything she mentions (I’ve already read Self-Portrait in Green based on this book).
‘Perhaps solitude is a practice as much as an instinct, its pleasures very much contextual. Sometimes being alone is terrible.’
Cain’s discussions on solitude really soothed my weary soul, and are key to the narrative in Indelicacy. As someone who has two jobs that involve being interrupted constantly and a busy life outside work where there are always multiple parties vying for my attention, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of yourself in it all. Which is something Cain really speaks on, though she also discusses how we need others in our lives and to be around other ideas, minds, and that connection is a big part of what makes life worth living. I think she says it best here:
‘To be in favor of solitude is not to be against community or friendship or love. It’s not that being alone is better, just that without the experience of it we block ourselves from discovering something enormously beneficial, perhaps even vital, to selfhood. Who are you when you are not a friend, a partner, a lover, a sibling, a parent, a child? When no one is with you, what do you do, and do you do it differently than if someone was there? It’s hard to see someone fully when another person is always attached to them. More importantly, it’s hard for us to see our own selves if we’re not ever alone.’
On the flip side, she also writes:
‘Too much time alone is just as risky as not enough, for it allows us to sink into our cyclical patterns of thought and narrative. We need someone to hold up a mirror so we can see who we are when we are taken outside of our heads. We need to hear others’ thoughts too.’
Speaking of the novel Indelicacy, I found her ideas on the way she embeds visual images into the sparseness of her sentences to be very interesting to consider when reading her novel. She has excellent passages on how reading is very much a visual experience, which is why open spaces like reading facing a field or a beach is so rewarding because we can project our ideas out onto them. She also discusses authors like [a:Renee Gladman|202688|Renee Gladman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1420259169p2/202688.jpg] who she says ‘enters the space of [language], taking the reader with her,’ and there are some excellent insights into writers who pull us through ‘to the other side’ where both the work and we, the reader, are transformed by it. Ekphrasis is another element Cain really enjoys, which appears in her novels as well, and I quite liked her section on [a:A.S. Byatt|1169504|A.S. Byatt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1388376297p2/1169504.jpg] discussing [a:Honoré de Balzac|228089|Honoré de Balzac|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206567834p2/228089.jpg]’s use of ekphrasis that ‘he makes the whole thing ghostly by making it live,’ which Cain continues with her look at ‘letting the portrait walk.’ Cain looks at writing very much like putting paint onto a canvas and her execution of these ideas was quite lovely to see.
For Cain, details are the most interesting. ‘I’ve mostly been paying attention to things we could say are “acessories” to [novels], not to what we would say is crucial,’ she says, but demonstrates how ‘an impression can be just as important as meaning.’ How true. When we think of a novel we love, often it is a small scene or tiny detail that really wedges into our hearts and minds and its these tiny impressions we turn back to again and again. Its like when you are drunk and trying to explain why you like something and some seemingly minute and absurd detail suddenly takes on a universe of meaning in your heart. Cain understands this and expresses it so eloquently that her words here have become one of those tiny details that will stick with me.
Cain tells us that she is ‘attached to fiction,’ and as someone else who would admit that about myself, I found this to be such a rewarding little read. I love her thoughts on writing, and animals (which comes up a lot, tying back into a discussion on [a:Sigrid Nunez|6633|Sigrid Nunez|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1529285691p2/6633.jpg]’s [b:The Friend|40164365|The Friend|Sigrid Nunez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544364669l/40164365._SY75_.jpg|56847766]), and this definitely made me think about why I appreciate quiet, interior novels. Keep a pen close at hand when reading too, I was constantly underlining amazing sentences. Amina Cain can WRITE. This is certainly a book I will be thinking about for a long time because, as Cain writes, ‘when one closes a book it doesn’t mean the feeling of the book closes too.’
5/5
ausma23's review against another edition
2.0
"A Horse at Night" feels like the kind of book I would've liked in my earlier 20s: a meandering collection of meditative thoughts and quiet reflections on books, films, little everyday experiences; the kind of book from which you can draw up a reading list, which analyzes things only so deeply and is less instructive than merely suggestive. (When I noticed the other writers who blurbed the book — Claire Louise-Bennett, Jenny Offill — it all added up). But reading Amina Cain’s book, I got the sense that I've since outgrown works like these.
I guess I feel that if you're going to [sub]title a piece with that uppercase, authoritative "On" followed by the subject you’re undertaking, there's a reasonable expectation that there will be a little more insight than just meditations, that some deeper wisdom will be gleaned; and ultimately I didn’t get anything like that. The "slim" book — as Cain seems to defensively remind us throughout, she is a writer of “slim” works — didn't offer me anything new in the way of thinking about writing, the writing process, what we write for ourselves and what we write for the world, what it means to “be writing” versus “not writing,” etc. Her dissection of narrative and form are not terribly incisive or insightful; at times, she comes across as hyperanalytical for hyper analysis' sake. She pulls and tugs at snippets and lines from her other favorite books, but all these little pieces never form a cohesive idea; they’re more like clouds that just drift on by, names dropped and scattered. It indeed feels like this amorphous form was the intention, and Cain herself admits to not being so sure of the direction she wants the book to take throughout. Even the structure, with each piece distinct from one other, yet not titled as individual essays with specific theses, seems to support this. I’m not against that kind of abstract, floaty kind of writing per se, but the examples and comparisons she tries to draw, the images she tries to paint with said examples and comparisons, feel flimsy and, at times, utterly boring. She ponders uninteresting, tired concepts as though just throwing them out there with little conviction — maybe you’re interested in contemplating them with her, but no worries if not. Among these are: Is the pursuit of perfection in art worthwhile or even achievable? (Gee!) Is the literary world’s interest in toxic female friendships a sign of internalized patriarchy/misogyny? (Groundbreaking!) With all of her little questions and analyses, I just kept asking: Yes, and? Yes, so?
For finding many of her ideas facile, I can’t say I altogether disliked this book, nor can I flippantly say it’s the kind of thing that’s just “not for me”. At moments I did feel engaged in her thought wanderings, like when she talks about the emotional impact of mere “impressions” versus concrete ideas (as in Fleur Jaeggy’s writing), and her reflection on her expectation, in her youth, that joy would infinitely expand in her life, and the sober realization that it wouldn’t, and couldn’t. Such experiences and concepts are more often vaguely, inexplicably felt rather than spoken or written, and I found it genuinely interesting to encounter these ideas articulated in Cain’s poetic prose — I only wish I felt more of these such moments throughout this little book.
I guess I feel that if you're going to [sub]title a piece with that uppercase, authoritative "On" followed by the subject you’re undertaking, there's a reasonable expectation that there will be a little more insight than just meditations, that some deeper wisdom will be gleaned; and ultimately I didn’t get anything like that. The "slim" book — as Cain seems to defensively remind us throughout, she is a writer of “slim” works — didn't offer me anything new in the way of thinking about writing, the writing process, what we write for ourselves and what we write for the world, what it means to “be writing” versus “not writing,” etc. Her dissection of narrative and form are not terribly incisive or insightful; at times, she comes across as hyperanalytical for hyper analysis' sake. She pulls and tugs at snippets and lines from her other favorite books, but all these little pieces never form a cohesive idea; they’re more like clouds that just drift on by, names dropped and scattered. It indeed feels like this amorphous form was the intention, and Cain herself admits to not being so sure of the direction she wants the book to take throughout. Even the structure, with each piece distinct from one other, yet not titled as individual essays with specific theses, seems to support this. I’m not against that kind of abstract, floaty kind of writing per se, but the examples and comparisons she tries to draw, the images she tries to paint with said examples and comparisons, feel flimsy and, at times, utterly boring. She ponders uninteresting, tired concepts as though just throwing them out there with little conviction — maybe you’re interested in contemplating them with her, but no worries if not. Among these are: Is the pursuit of perfection in art worthwhile or even achievable? (Gee!) Is the literary world’s interest in toxic female friendships a sign of internalized patriarchy/misogyny? (Groundbreaking!) With all of her little questions and analyses, I just kept asking: Yes, and? Yes, so?
For finding many of her ideas facile, I can’t say I altogether disliked this book, nor can I flippantly say it’s the kind of thing that’s just “not for me”. At moments I did feel engaged in her thought wanderings, like when she talks about the emotional impact of mere “impressions” versus concrete ideas (as in Fleur Jaeggy’s writing), and her reflection on her expectation, in her youth, that joy would infinitely expand in her life, and the sober realization that it wouldn’t, and couldn’t. Such experiences and concepts are more often vaguely, inexplicably felt rather than spoken or written, and I found it genuinely interesting to encounter these ideas articulated in Cain’s poetic prose — I only wish I felt more of these such moments throughout this little book.
mindthebook's review against another edition
4.0
Fann den här av en händelse när jag kollade efter öppettiderna på konstmuseet i Birmingham, för där hänger originalmålningen av Herr Egg; den med de två läsande/slumrande flickorna ombord på ett tåg någonstans i Europa. Så som jag föreställde mig att mitt liv skulle bli.
Andras läsliv, det blir ofta finfina böcker. Tänk t.ex. Kate Zambreno. Men den där hästen i titeln är nog en extra tröskel för eventuella läsare. Bara man kommer så långt som till översikten av kapitelrubrikerna blir man fast, jag lovar. Se instagram @mindthebook under 'Lit'.
Så här inleds ett:
"When I was a teenager in Ohio, I dreamed regularly of leaving, and my daydreams were almost entirely made up of me walking around a city by myself."
Sänder kärlek till den teenager in Halland jag en gång var och tackar littgudarna för allt.
Andras läsliv, det blir ofta finfina böcker. Tänk t.ex. Kate Zambreno. Men den där hästen i titeln är nog en extra tröskel för eventuella läsare. Bara man kommer så långt som till översikten av kapitelrubrikerna blir man fast, jag lovar. Se instagram @mindthebook under 'Lit'.
Så här inleds ett:
"When I was a teenager in Ohio, I dreamed regularly of leaving, and my daydreams were almost entirely made up of me walking around a city by myself."
Sänder kärlek till den teenager in Halland jag en gång var och tackar littgudarna för allt.
khopeisz's review against another edition
4.0
if the entries on an annotated bibliography were surrounded by uncluttered and insightful prose. somewhat entry level thoughts on writing and life, pointing readers in directions of deeper and profound works.