Maki's Miscellany: Or, the Inconstant Reader's Thread

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Maki's Miscellany: Or, the Inconstant Reader's Thread

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1Makifat
Mar 25, 2011, 1:41 am

Inasmuch as Lola has been so kind as to invite my ramblings, I shall herein post my random thoughts and ephemeral wisdom on items read.

As a reader, I am a browser. For the most part, I read late at night, when the rest of the house is asleep. I used to need only 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night, but these days I try to be in bed by 12:30 for a 6:00am wakeup call. I am a night person. I usually have two or three books going, but I also tend to fritter away my time with random peeks into books, a few short stories, episodes of decadence and history, snuffling here and there like a wild pig after a truffle. It is my intention that it is these snufflings that will take up the bulk of this thread. Comments are welcome.

I recently reviewed, to embarrassing acclaim, Cynthia Ozick's The Messiah of Stockholm, which dealt with the late Polish author Bruno Schulz.

Last night, continuing my Schulz kick, I happened to pick up Shop Talk: A Writer and His Colleagues and Their Work by Philip Roth. Back in, I believe, the 80's, Roth introduced a series of works under the Penguin imprint entitled "Writers from the Other Europe", in which he introduced to the English-speaking world the works of Eastern European authors such as Danilo Kis, Tadeusz Borowski, and of course Bruno Shulz.

The piece I read last night was an interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer on Shulz. Singer was, with the exception of Kafka, my first introduction to the Jewish culture and society of pre-war Eastern Europe, although Singer emigrated to the United States in the mid-30’s, thus escaping the horrors of the Holocaust. Roth interrogates Singer on his associations with Schulz and, amazingly, Singer reveals that he had not even heard Schulz’s name until the first English publication of his works in the early 1960’s. He clearly had an admiration for Schulz, who was, astonishing as it is to consider, Singer’s contemporary. Singer draws some comparisons between Schulz and Kafka:

There is great mockery in the writing of both Schulz and of Kafka, although in Kafka the mockery is more hidden. I think that Schulz had enough power to right real serious novels but instead wrote a kind of parody. And I think basically he developed this style because he was not really at home, among the Poles nor at home among the Jews. It’s a style that’s somewhat characteristic also of Kafka, because Kafka also felt he had no roots. He was a Jew who wrote in German and lived in Czechoslovakia, where the language was actually Czech.

Singer goes on to suggest that if Schulz had written in Yiddish, he wouldn’t have come across as so “negative and mocking”. Roth notes, that, as an art teacher in a small Polish town, perhaps Schulz wasn’t so much negative as bored and claustrophobic. Both note that Schulz was, as a provincial figure, likely uncomfortable among the more established writers of Warsaw. Roth speculates that, based on his illustrations of them, Schulz’s relationships with women were colored by fantasies or fears of female dominance, and notes an “eerie, almost tawdry erotic suggestiveness” to the illustrations. It is noted that Schulz maintained correspondences with women, and that his first stories were largely drawn from reminiscences he had written in letters to one particular woman.

This evening, I’ve been reading through Modern Russian Poetry, a study and anthology prepared by Olga Carlisle and Rose Styron in 1972. I’m particularly enjoying pieces by Mandelstam and Blok. I’m not up to transcribing lenghy poems at this hour, so I’ll close with some short pieces by Mandelstam. The first is piece of bittersweet remembrance, the latter two, from 1931 and 1935, respectively, reflect the toll that Stalinist repression took on the poet.

To Cassandra

I did not look for, in moments of blossoming,
Your lips, Cassandra,
Cassandra, your eyes.

But now a somber
December watches
And in remembrance torture lies…

Lord, This Night

Lord, this night help me survive.
I’m frightened for my life, your slave.
To be in St. Petersburg alive
Is to sleep in a long grave.

Depriving Me of Sea…

Depriving me of sea, of a place to run and a space to fly.
And giving my footsteps the brace of a forced land,
What have you gained? The calculation dazzles,
But you cannot seize the movement of my lips,
Their silent sound

2tomcatMurr
Mar 25, 2011, 6:12 am

Terrific, all of it.

3Makifat
Mar 25, 2011, 12:01 pm

Thanks, TC, although it's quite foolhardy of me to prate on about Russian and Eastern European literature in a group that includes you and Lola in its membership.

4LolaWalser
Mar 25, 2011, 4:35 pm

#3 Crazy moon talk, I don't know where people get this idea that I know something about literature.

But you cannot seize the movement of my lips,

Their silent sound


HA! Nope, Osip! THAT no one can suspend!

I wonder if Schulz knew Yiddish.

Terrific that you're doing this, Maki, and terrifically done.

5Makifat
Mar 25, 2011, 6:12 pm

Singer suggests that Schulz grew up in a somewhat assimilated family and that Polish was likely the language at home. It's not clear from this whether he knew Yiddish or not.

In discussing this, Singer makes that statement that "a real writer will not write in a learned language but in the language he knows from his childhood."

Apparently, Conrad and Nabokov slipped his mind, but then again, I'm not certain just when Nabokov learned English. I assume he had some knowledge of it before emigrating to England and the U.S.

6Makifat
Mar 26, 2011, 3:12 am

Not much reading time this Friday evening, except for bedtime reading for my sons (the second Harry Potter book for my 10 year old and Excuse Me: A Little Book of Manners for my 6 year old - I read the latter upside down and backwards to my son's immense amusement, and I may have to try the same technique for the Harry Potter).

For myself, I read a Peter Carey short story entitled "Concerning the Greek Tyrant", which imagines Homer's creations as living beings dimly conscious of the fact that they are the creative products of a blind man's imagination. There is almost a Borgesian quality to this, and in fact I believe that there is a Borges story wherein a living being realizes, as he is being consumed by fire, that he has been dreamt by another. There is also a Borges story ("The Immortals"?) in which the narrator encounters an ageless hairy troglodyte who turns out to be the poet Homer.

I'll also mention that yesterday I picked up a couple of science fiction books by Chad Oliver - The Shores of Another Sea and Shadows in the Sun. I'm not really a science fiction fan - often when I attempt to read sci fi, I lose interest fairly quickly. Just not my taste, although I do appreciate the weirdness of Philip K. Dick and a handful of other authors. Most sci fi just isnt to my taste, not that I hold anything against it.

I actually picked up the Oliver books because way back when I was an Anthropology undergrad, Oliver was a professor in my department. I had occasion to meet him a few times, a very nice and genial man. The consensus I heard, back then, was that he was quite a talented writer, but I don't believe I've ever gotten around to reading his work. If anyone (Bob?) has an opinion on him, I'd be interested in hearing it.

7AsYouKnow_Bob
Mar 26, 2011, 1:27 pm

(Gee, I got up this morning and my ears were burning. Took me a while to find out why....)

Well, I won't hear ill spoken of Chad Oliver. His output is sometimes talked about as the founding works of a sub-sub-genre of "anthropological SF". Low-key, nicely observed stuff, worth reading. (Wow, you met him? Small world.)

In his later days, Oliver was a fishing buddy of the national treasure Howard Waldrop. The mind boggles at the idea of their campfire talk.

8LolaWalser
Mar 26, 2011, 1:49 pm

#6,7

I'm just looking at Walden Two by B. F. Skinner (speaking of SF from academic places). Any impressions?

9AsYouKnow_Bob
Mar 26, 2011, 5:36 pm

(...Uh, it seems like people are always asking me about stuff I've spent two hours with fully FORTY YEARS AGO...)

It's an interesting book, but I'm certain I wouldn't pick it up solely for its virtues as fiction; and I think I've forgotten whether it stands up today for its take on human society. What's the current intellectual standing of 'behaviorism' in general?

(I guess what I'm saying is that I don't have anything cogent to say about it? Maybe that's a critique in itself.)

10urania1
Mar 26, 2011, 6:03 pm

>8 LolaWalser: Lola,

Stop! Don't read it! Take a vacation. Read a trashy vampire novel. Anythingnelse. Agghhh.

11RickHarsch
Mar 26, 2011, 6:06 pm

seconding #10

12Makifat
Mar 26, 2011, 6:50 pm

I read Skinner some years ago. I hate to admit it, but I picked up Walden Two back when my wife and I were watching the "Lost" series. Before the plot of the show went completely to Hell in a handbasket, there were some oblique references to radical behaviorism. (The fun of the show, for me, was picking out the obscure literary, mythological, and sociological references.)

I suppose Skinner's novel has a leg up on Ayn Rand, at least by virtue of its comparative brevity. But that's faint praise.

I had to look up Howard Waldrop. Another sci fi luminary from Austin was (is?) Bruce Sterling. I have a signed copy of his Schismatrix, from Armadillocon, but I haven't read it.

13tomcatMurr
Mar 27, 2011, 7:12 am

Maki, the only thing I know about Russian lit is that I don't know enough.

14LolaWalser
Mar 27, 2011, 8:37 am

Our cat = Socrates

#9, 10

Oh, I'm not expecting a literary high, it's just a curiosum. As for behaviourism, it was discredited long before I got to uni, Skinner rated a historical paragraph in our Natural Philosophy course.

15Makifat
Mar 27, 2011, 11:40 am

it's just a curiosum

Exactly. Strangely enough, a dated 1970's novel built around discredited social engineering concepts sounds strangely appealing. Plus, you never know - in these strange days of upheaval - when some anarcho-libertarian-socialist will "rediscover" this relic and pull it back blinking into the light of day. I'd like to be ahead of the curve for once.

16Makifat
Modificato: Mar 28, 2011, 1:24 am

Sunday Evening

Light reading over the weekend. Spent some time last night reading the Arthur Machen chapter in George Schoolfield's A Baedeker of Decadence. The chapter highlights Machen's supernatural/decadent novel The Hill of Dreams.

Machen was a native of the Welsh town of Caerleon-on-Usk (now Gwent), which has strong Arthurian associations and a history going back to the Roman occupation. Machen, a prolific author who died at a ripe old age in 1947, retains a reputation as a master of supernatural fiction, although he wrote in several different genres. In circumstances of poverty such as described in The Hill of Dreams, he translated Casanova and prepared an extended essay on The Anatomy of Tobacco. He also subsequently authored several volumes of autobiography. His pagan and occultic preoccupations make him a fascinating writer to encounter, as does the richness of his prose in describing (as Huysmans does so well in Against the Grain and, for me, Walter Pater does less successfully in Marius the Epicurean) the world of sensation.

This strange novel is one of the handful of things by Machen that I've read. It involves a sensitive youth, Lucian Taylor, who has a strange mystico-sexual experience in the ruins of a Roman fort, and who has a brief affair with a local girl. When Lucian later moves to London to pursue, as did Machen himself, a writing career, he falls into a life of poverty, squalor, and opium addiction. His mystical fantasies (if they are indeed fantasies) of the Celtic-Roman past occupy his mind during his opium dreams. In his increasingly rare lucid moments, he rails against the barbarous, dehumanizing metropolis (Schoolfield notes the resemblances between Machen's London and that portrayed in Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night). Poor Lucian spirals further and further into a madness driven by deprivation, opium, and his search for "new and exquisite experiences". He is as much a decadent touchstone as Huysman's Des Essientes and Wilde's Dorian Grey.

The Hill of Dreams is a rather different work than, for instance, The Great God Pan, a creepy tale of sexual and demonic atavism induced by modern science. I won't bore you by reiterating the details of Schoolfield's excellent critique, which places Machen's novel in context alongside other works of late Victorian decadence (including those over-rich paintings of Roman excesses so popular among the Victorians), but I will recommend the novel to anyone interested in the history of decadent literature.

ADDED: Startled to see just now that Hill of Dreams has not yet been reviewed on LT. I'll probably repost the above in some slightly amended form as a review.

17RickHarsch
Mar 28, 2011, 5:35 am

The books sounds fascinating.Did he have any connection with the surrealists? Did they recognize him or he them?

18LolaWalser
Mar 28, 2011, 8:23 am

#15

a dated 1970's novel

A! It's more interesting than that! Copyright 1948!

19Makifat
Mar 28, 2011, 10:58 am

17
I'm not aware of any strong connection between Machen and the surrealists. I associate him more with the Golden Dawn occultists: Crowley, Yeats, Blackwood and that lot. I wonder if the surrealists might have been too "modernist" for Machen, who seems to have more of a fixation on the mystic, mythical past.

18

My bad! I was associating the book with the hippy-dippy Peter Max-ish cover of my edition. Apparently at least one community modeled on the book was established in the 60's:

http://www.loshorcones.org/start/waldentwo.html

20Makifat
Modificato: Mar 29, 2011, 11:31 am

So, last night I read "The Destruction of Galicia: Excerpts from a Diary, 1914-17" from an anthology of S. Ansky's works entitled The Dybbuk and Other Writings. The episodes presented here detail a heartbreaking pogrom against the Jews of Galicia. I know little about this area, which seems to have comprised a portion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and which now constitutes portions of Poland and the Ukraine. In 1914, Russian Cossacks swept through Galicia, raping, murdering, and generally ravaging the area. In what appears to have been a specific targeting of the Jewish population, whole shtetls were destroyed by fire, synagogues desecrated (Ansky describes one synagogue used as a hospital for typhus victims, the Holy Ark having been blatantly replaced by an ikon), and cemeteries destroyed. There were also whisper campaigns against the Jews, using rumor and innuendo that the Jews were communicating troop positions and other information to the Austrians.

It is interesting that when one looks at the "Galicia" article in Wikepedia, there is no mention of this tragedy. There is mention of a great emigration from Galicia in the years 1880-1914, leading me to wonder if there have been suggestions that the shtetls had been abandoned prior to the Russian invasion. Regardless, Ansky's testimony, taken from a much larger work, is quite moving, and a sad prelude to the even worse terrors which would later descend upon the Jews of Eastern Europe.

I also managed to read a couple of stories from a nice anthology entitled The Lifted Veil: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Women. Olive Schreiner's tale "In a Far-Off World" is a bittersweet one of love and devotion. Christina Stead's "The English Gentleman's Tale - The Gold Bride" is a tale of the obsession of two men for a beautiful Moorish girl, who dies under mysterious circumstances, but whose image remains in the form of a gold statue commissioned by her husband, and which becomes a further object of obsession.

21Makifat
Mar 29, 2011, 11:35 am

I ought to mention that Bruno Schulz, mentioned in the first post, was a Galician Jew from Drohobycz.

22LolaWalser
Modificato: Mar 29, 2011, 7:26 pm

I have some Machen, haven't read him yet, but listening to you and Ben, I kept meaning to ask, have you read Javier Marias' All souls? It reads like a checklist of Macheniana, that's why I think you might be interested. The story is autobiographical, a Spanish professor spends some time at Oxford (All Souls), has an affair, but--much more important from everybody's POV--indulges in frequent and persistent bookhunting after the rare and obscure mystical Anglos, including Gawsworth, Machen etc. One of those books where you go 'oh god, spare me the love interest tedium, on to bookshop porn!'

23Makifat
Mar 29, 2011, 6:00 pm

Haven't read it, but it's now at the top of the wishlist!

24Makifat
Mar 29, 2011, 6:07 pm

By the way, someone attempted to post a comment to my blog. In response to my review of Perutz's The Marquis of Bolibar was one word: "shitbook".

Now that may be so, but, on the chance that this comment was provided by an LT user, I'd like a little bit more explanation.

25LolaWalser
Mar 29, 2011, 6:20 pm

It's a fantastic book! Love every word in it, including the Ders, the Dies, the Dases.

Must go now, but I'll remember to look at your review, Mak.

26Makifat
Mar 29, 2011, 7:14 pm

Reminds me of this classic review:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ruDdcd8G-g

27LolaWalser
Modificato: Mar 29, 2011, 8:08 pm

Only LT members can leave comments, btw. Anyway. I absolutely loved everything I've read by Perutz. Beautiful writer.

ETA: Ooops, totally missed you said "blog".

28tomcatMurr
Mar 29, 2011, 8:06 pm

that's on my wishlist now. sounds great.

29Makifat
Modificato: Mar 29, 2011, 8:16 pm

The Master of the Day of Judgement was good too, although it's been years. Glad to see someone has uploaded the nice Charles Boni cover.

30LolaWalser
Mar 29, 2011, 8:21 pm

#29

YES! Wonderful, wonderful book! And so are The Swedish cavalier and By night under the stone bridge--I hope English translations flow well, Perutz is simply one of the most elegant writers of German prose ever.

31tros
Modificato: Mar 29, 2011, 9:32 pm

The Swedish Cavalier is an old favorite of mine as well as Master of the Day of Judgement. From Nine to Nine is interesting.

32Makifat
Modificato: Mar 31, 2011, 11:21 am

Started, but did not yet finish, George Eliot's story "The Lifted Veil" last night. This is included in the eponymous anthology mentioned in post 20.

I also started watching the film version of Jean Ray's Malpertuis. A weird, gaudy, and overacted version (particularly Orson Welles' godawful cameo, which requires him to rest his massive carcass, bad makeup and all, in a massive bed and growl - fortunately he dies early on). I'll withhold final judgement until I've watched the whole thing.

Also dipped into Green's A Guide to the Zohar, published by Stanford University Press and intended to complement the Pritzker Editon of the Zohar. A pretty general overview, but seems to be useful with regard to the state of Kabbalah studies post-Scholem.

33Makifat
Modificato: Mar 31, 2011, 11:17 am

Malpertuis

Malpertuis

Malpertuis

I really don't get what's going on with the touchstones on this site. Maybe if I say it three times, it will magically appear.

34LolaWalser
Mar 31, 2011, 11:22 am

Try putting single brackets around Jean Ray.

I can't remember whether I read Malpertuis, but Ray was a staple of teenage yellow print, lots of horror, crime, adventure stories. A natural for movies, I guess. Who made the film and what is it called?

35Makifat
Mar 31, 2011, 11:26 am

Oh, great, now the original citation is working. I chose an edition by a name other than Jean Ray (Ray is likely a pseudonym), and it comes up, under Jean Ray. Whatever.

Here's the scoop on the flick (aka "The Legend of Doom House", yuk!), a Belgian production, I think:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067386/combined

I tell ya, the camera (or the director) loves the blond dude. He wanders through the film as if he's looking for a board and a wave.

36LolaWalser
Mar 31, 2011, 11:36 am

Whoa, that's some rockin' cast! Carriere and Cassel and Bouquet and--gasp!--Sylvie Vartan?--and of course, the great walrus. Thank you for bringing it up.

37Makifat
Mar 31, 2011, 11:41 am

Whoa, that's some rockin' cast!

Save for the wine salesman, I have no idea who these people are, though some look familiar.

Imdb, by the way, is a useful site for cataloging dvds. Doesn't charge you the way Take11 does, and I don't know if you can view other people's catalogs, but it's really good in that you have all the film info at your fingertips.

38tomcatMurr
Mar 31, 2011, 10:40 pm

Maki what did you think of the Lifted Veil? to my mind it's the most Dostoevskyan of Eliot's works. But then, to my mind, everything is Dostoevskyan, so that's not saying much.

39LolaWalser
Apr 1, 2011, 10:36 am



Poisson d'avril!

40Makifat
Apr 1, 2011, 10:43 am

Well, I finally got my message from the Don.

Looks like poor Maki's gonna be sleeping with the gummis.

41Makifat
Modificato: Apr 1, 2011, 11:08 am

38

For those who don't know, "The Lifted Veil" is a story of clairvoyance. The narrator, a sensitive lad, discovers that he can see future events in his life, and he can apparently read the thoughts and emotions of those around him. Except - and here's the twist - for the lovely girl who is engaged to his brother, and who carries on a flirtation with him.

To your specific question, I haven't read enough of Eliot to know. But I can see something Dostoyevskian in the circumstances of this story. In the middle of the narrative, the protagonist waxes philosophically on the necessity of uncertainty:

So absolute is our soul's need of something hidden and uncertain for the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the breath of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond today, the interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours that lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the Exchange of our last possibility of speculation of success, of disappointment: we should have a glut of political prophets foretelling a crisis or a no-crisis within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. Conceive the condition of the human mind of all propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer's day,but in the meantime might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition which had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future nullity, than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles.

I've not read any of Eliot's novels. Are there any in particular that you think I might enjoy?

By the way, Lola, I finished the "Malpertuis" film last night, and enjoyed it. I think you'd get a kick out of it. It has some obvious divergences from the book, particulary in the frame story. It is offbeat and melodramatic, but of course that's entirely appropriate - necessary even - for this story.

I also want to give acknowledgement to our occulted friend ben for bringing the book to my attention. I hope he finds his way to the Hellfire Club soon.

42LolaWalser
Apr 1, 2011, 12:12 pm

Perhaps we should let him know about our Emma Peel lookalikes who dispense whiskey with hot butter and candied scorpions?



Naah, let him stumble onto us and have a wonderful surprise.

(The image is from the episode A TOUCH OF BRIMSTONE, UK Premiere (London, Season 4): 18 February 1966, US Premiere: Originally banned. Tags: Steed Joins the Hellfire Club, Emma Becomes the Queen of Sin)

43theaelizabet
Apr 1, 2011, 12:13 pm

Loved that show!

44Makifat
Apr 1, 2011, 12:14 pm

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......nice!

45Makifat
Apr 1, 2011, 12:18 pm

And by the way, Lola, I want to thank you for putting the BESTEST PICTURE EVER on MY reading thread!! I just love scrolling UP to it.

46LolaWalser
Apr 1, 2011, 12:27 pm

Ha, I'm taking great liberties with your thread, let me know if you want me to edit it out or miniaturise.

Thea, this is a great Avengers site: http://theavengers.tv/forever/peel1-21.htm

47theaelizabet
Apr 1, 2011, 12:30 pm

Fabulous! I had so hoped to grow up to become Mrs. Peel. Alas.

48RickHarsch
Apr 1, 2011, 1:45 pm

Lies. That lady above, and i do mean above, taught me mathematics in primary school.

and a few other things

49Makifat
Modificato: Apr 2, 2011, 2:27 am

Sitting here this evening in my leather chair, a glass of Bushmills at my side, enjoying The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends by Katherine Briggs. A really entertaining book of folklore on those elusive transdimensional creatures. Not a "tinkerbell" in sight.

Gives me an good idea for a blog post.

50tomcatMurr
Apr 3, 2011, 9:59 am

51Makifat
Apr 6, 2011, 2:09 am

Thanks, TC. The first title particularly seems right up my alley. I will have my eye open for it.

Really just popped in to mention that I'm continuing with the book of fairy lore (a fine book, but a little fairy lore goes a long way), and also reading a piece on "Blake and the Kabbalah" by Asloob Ahmad Ansari in William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon which draws some interesting connections between the kabbalah tradition and Blake's personal mythology as exemplified in such poems as "Milton: A Poem in 2 Books to Justify the Ways of God to Men". Blake can be brilliant, but he can also be an inscrutably hard slog.

I'm also mining an old paperback of Vicious Circles and Infinity for a little discussion group for gifted children I do at my sons' school. Our current topic is paradoxes and visual illusions. We are really having a lot of fun with these.

52Makifat
Modificato: Apr 8, 2011, 4:04 pm

Finished the Blake/Kabbalah thing, and doing more digging with the dwarves in the fairy book.

Quite thrilled to have received my copy of On Elegance While Sleeping* this week. I started it last night, and, because it is so rich and yet goes so quickly, I am trying to read it s-l-o-w-l-y.

I also got a nice new shelf for my Quartet Encounter and NYRB editions. If I get the energy and motivation, I'll post a photo.

*Hat tip to existanai for adding this book and thus making me aware of it.

53urania1
Apr 8, 2011, 4:13 pm

>52 Makifat: Mak,

On Elegance While Sleeping is one of the finalists for Rochester University's Best Translated Book Award. I think the winner will be announced on the 29th of this month. Here are the contenders in alphabetical order:

he finalists for this year (alphabetical order) -

- The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive)
- A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer)
- The Jokers by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis (New York Review Books)
- Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)
- Hocus Bogus by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar), translated from the French by David Bellos (Yale University Press)
- The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books)
- On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive)
- Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)
- Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (Archipelago)

A group is trying to form to read all the finalists. Thus far it seems to lack momentum. Here's the LT address: http://www.librarything.com/topic/113529

54Makifat
Apr 8, 2011, 4:29 pm


53
Thanks. I'm sure at least some of these belong on my wishlist, so I may have some research to do.

55urania1
Apr 8, 2011, 4:45 pm

Hey,

If you like we can read On Elegance While Sleeping together. It might make for interesting discussion. I have a copy.

56tros
Modificato: Apr 8, 2011, 4:53 pm

Albert Cossery is worth reading; House of Certain Death and Men That God Forgot are old favs, so I have The Jokers in my tbr pile.

57Makifat
Modificato: Apr 8, 2011, 4:54 pm

55
That'd be fine, but bear in mind that I am (as the title of this thread will tell you) an inconstant reader.* But I think between your thread and my thread (or on the group read thread), we ought to find something in it to talk about. Maybe even existanai will want to join in as well?

I am now on page 40, but not imagining I'll get much reading done this weekend.

*...like a courtesan, I'll take my sweet time, and begin by kicking off my shoe.

58urania1
Apr 8, 2011, 4:59 pm

59Makifat
Apr 8, 2011, 5:09 pm

The proportions of Fragonard's damsel seem a bit off - almost awkwardly Etruscan - but there is some about that shoe, frozen in time and space, that make this a remarkable painting...

60LolaWalser
Apr 8, 2011, 5:15 pm

Ooh, that is one of the paintings Robert Walser talks about in Vor Bildern.

61Makifat
Apr 8, 2011, 5:58 pm

Any particular insights that you can recall?

62LolaWalser
Apr 8, 2011, 6:37 pm

Oh, it's Walser--he riffs off it Walseresquely. He was very sensitive to the visual arts and apparently carried a great stock of images in his head. (His dear brother Karl was a painter.) The Fragonard fragment wasn't composed standing in front of the picture... First he recalls a poem, then this "deathless painting of a little slipper" (unsterbliches Pantöffelchenbild), which brings him to the Walserian exclamation: "To be transported by the happiness of a woman is for a man who understands how to live a great joy." (I keep the German phrase sequence, clumsy in English, for the buildup...)

Next follows a longer musing about Fragonard's Le baiser. Beautiful little piece.

63Makifat
Apr 8, 2011, 7:20 pm

"To be transported by the happiness of a woman is for a man who understands how to live a great joy."

Nothing clumsy about that at all. Well said.

64Existanai
Apr 10, 2011, 12:08 am

On Elegance While Sleeping was added to my wishlist, so I don't actually have it. The "Recently Added" feature is a bit deceptive since I go on a binge now and then and add scores of titles to my catalogue that I intend, at some distant point, to acquire and - one can hope - even finish reading. I gratefully accept the hat tip, however, and return one of my own: I recently received the very attractive Atlas edition of Malpertuis in the mail, thanks to Maki and Waugh's enthusiastic mention in an Abyss-Chapel thread.

65Makifat
Modificato: Apr 11, 2011, 2:14 am

To add to the confusion, I have taken urania's invitation to heart and am making comments on the Teguia book here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/113785&newpost=1#top

I don't know if I really belong in this group, as I have no plans at the moment to read any of the other works on the list.

64
I hope you enjoy Malpertuis. I actually found the Atlas edition to be rather awkward, as it's pretty much a square. Also not too keen on the cover design: I like the vintage paperback look (and cool typography) of one of the other editions, which emphasizes the creepiness of the house:



Or this cover, which puts me in mind of a label from an old bottle of absinthe:


66Makifat
Apr 11, 2011, 2:49 am

Note to self:

The Petty Demon

67tomcatMurr
Apr 11, 2011, 6:52 am

gorgeous illustrations. so Gothic.

68Randy_Hierodule
Modificato: Apr 12, 2011, 2:27 pm

Re way back 22 (apologies if anyone in the intervenings mentioned what follows...): Javier Marias' All Souls is one of my favorite contemporary novels (also its caboose: The Dark Back of Time). The novel does involve Machen (particularly via the secret society of antquarian bookdealers and collectors and the curious figure of Juan I, second king of Redonda and Fitzrovian peer, AKA John Gawsworth, born Terrence Fyttom Armstrong. The Marias character meets a member of The Arthur Machen Society (now the Friends of Arthur Machen, of which the author is a member, as well as a financier of the FOAM's Tartarus Press).

Marias (current, if contested, monarch of guano-rich Redonda) recently completed a trilogy which I am hoping to read before the earth swallows me.

69Randy_Hierodule
Apr 12, 2011, 2:29 pm

65: I am noodling with my own midrash on the House of Malpertuis. It fascinates me and draws me in more than seems appropriate.

70Makifat
Modificato: Apr 13, 2011, 2:49 am

Still enjoying my evening bits of Tegui. Somewhat distracted this evening by a new acquisition of Foundations of Modern Art by Ozenfant. This is a strange and idiosyncratic work, and not at all what one would expect from the rather bland title. Ozenfant was a Cubist painter, and a pioneer of the "Purist" school. This book was written published in French in 1928, and reissued (in an expanded edition) by Dover in 1952. It is an odd conglomeration of art, philosophy, mysticism, and modernism, illustrated by alternating pictures of naked Hottentots (straight out of The Secret Museum of Mankind), men in top hats, ancient art, schematic diagrams, modernist architecture, and unlikely juxtapositions (Seti I and Gabriel D'Annunzio, for example). There are chapters on painting, the "arts of faith" and the "art of living", the engineer's aesthetic and an appendix of "meditations" on the creative process. It is, in short, a fantastic grab-bag, a wonder-book compiled by a true believer of the transcendence of art in life, at once obsolete and compelling.

Oh, and the Ozenfant also led me back to The Autobiography of Surrealism, which is an easy book to get lost in...

71Makifat
Modificato: Apr 15, 2011, 3:13 am

Given a merciful respite from a dull 2 day headache this evening, I've slapped together a review of On Elegance While Sleeping. Comments welcome.

72Existanai
Apr 15, 2011, 3:25 am

(... It's hard to get to the bottom of this thread without getting stuck around Emma Peel's thighs ...) Ah, the review.

This scavenging of the human effluence issuing forth from the great metropolis is only the beginning of a catalogue of transgressions against bourgeois conventions that will include pederasty, homosexuality, voyeurism, transvestism, bestiality, rape and murder. There is, in the narrator, a random bipolarity between the extremes of ironic dispassion (speaking of a North African café and a local brothel – “We felt entirely at home in both places: we took off our jackets in one and our pants in the other”) and a sickly sentimentality (“There’s nothing more in life than to love someone. To be loved. Such is the happy monotony of my life.”).

Oh all right, all right. I guess I have to get this one too. I'm going to list you as a cause when I'm in court...

73Makifat
Apr 15, 2011, 3:28 am

Well, I bought the damned thing because it showed up on YOUR profile!

I guess I owe you a beverage of choice with that chip-dust.

74Existanai
Apr 15, 2011, 7:20 am

>I bought the damned thing because it showed up on YOUR profile!

Sure, but you didn't have to make it sound so unmissable!

Shelling out the shiny shekels...

75tomcatMurr
Apr 15, 2011, 11:39 am

fabulous review Maki. This one goes right to the top of my to be acquired list. I am woefully under-read in latin American lit, and only the bog standard stuff is available here.

76Makifat
Apr 18, 2011, 11:41 am

Thank you, E and TC.

Sparse weekend reading has included A Romantic in Spain by Gautier and A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.

Gautier, much admired by Baudelaire, who dedicated his signal work to him, was, among other things, an inveterate travel journalist. This is one of the few reissues of his travel writings I've found in print, although I have cataloged a number of etexts from Internet Archive relating to his travels to Russian, Constantinople, etc.

The Strange Manuscript is a late 19th century "lost world" yarn, entertaining, and requiring no intellectual heavy lifting at all.

77LolaWalser
Apr 19, 2011, 10:56 am

Love those 19th century travelogues. Have you read Flaubert on Egypt? The famous meetup with Kuchuk-hanem, the dancing girl who gave him fleas? He used to hang out with Gautier chez Goncourts, and they also corresponded. Oh to have been a flea, I mean a fly, on those walls...

78Makifat
Modificato: Apr 19, 2011, 11:03 am

Have you read Flaubert on Egypt?

Oh yes! Steegmuller's Flaubert In Egypt was, I believe, compiled from letters, notes, etc. Still, it forms a terrifically entertaining narrative.

79Makifat
Modificato: Apr 23, 2011, 3:08 am

Friday Evening

I've continued reading, among other diversions (including The Letters of William Blake), the Strange Manuscript book mentioned above, and this evening I read a few chapters from The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies (1972) in the series "The Columbus Centre Series Studies in the Dynamics of Persecution and Extermination". After some brief introductory chapters, this book deals primarily with the mass murder of half a million Gypsies under the Nazis.

For a lighter read, I've spent time this evening enjoying Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses, which I look forward to sharing with my children.

Also, after a brief respite from Harry Potter while my son read Roald Dahl's Boy, we are back for the third volume of Ms. Rowling's magnum opus at bedtime...

80LolaWalser
Apr 25, 2011, 11:42 am

The third book was the best. I do not envy you the doorstoppers that follow...

81Makifat
Apr 28, 2011, 3:08 am

Wednesday Evening

Revisiting an old favorite, Metaphors We Live By, for discussions with a group of gifted kids I work with at my son's school.

I'm not much of a list maker, but I'm thinking of putting together a list of the top ten non-fiction (non-historical) books that I think every reasonably intelligent person ought to be acquainted with. This would certainly make the list.

(As a side note, it's interesting to me to skim this thread and note how many things I read on a regular basis that I either share with my kids either through reading or discussion. In fact, there are quite a few over the last several weeks that I haven't even bothered to note. It brings home to me that my reading life isn't quite as isolated as I tend to believe it is.)

82Makifat
Modificato: Apr 28, 2011, 3:13 am

80
Sad to think I'm at the apex of the Harry Potter experience. I've never read them before, but my 10 year old has read most of them already. I have to note that he has absolutely no interest in seeing any of the films. He's explained to me that he prefers to experience them as he imagines them, not as they have been gussied up by Hollywood.

83SilentInAWay
Apr 28, 2011, 4:34 am

Sad to think I'm at the apex of the Harry Potter experience

Fear not, the series ends well; although getting from III to VII is a long haul indeed.

84LolaWalser
Apr 28, 2011, 9:50 am

Mak, that's one extraordinary 10 year old you have there.

#83

But does it? I must link you some fanfic I found the other day--MUCH better numero siete than Rowling's, in every way, while respecting her general idea.

Anyway, good reminder--please remember to give us your take on the Potteriad one of these days, eh?

85LolaWalser
Mag 1, 2011, 3:31 pm

Maki, hombre, ¿qué pasó? Hope all is well down yon mesa-way. Throw us a brick occasionally--we krazy kats love that. ;)

86Makifat
Mag 3, 2011, 10:49 am

Thank you for asking. Things could be better. I'll keep adding books and making reading notes here, but I don't imagine my participation will be too high for a while. I hope my dear friends will continue to drop by this thread occasionally.

On a happier note, I'm reading and enjoying Thomas Bernard's grotesque hymn to the sad futility of life, Gargoyles.

87Existanai
Mag 3, 2011, 12:29 pm

The sudden clam-up chilled our diabolical fervor, Maki, so it's good to hear from you. I hope things get better soon.

88LolaWalser
Mag 3, 2011, 12:41 pm

Me too!!! By the way, Mak, should you in any glad or dire event want to, you can always write me at lolavictrola@yahoo.com

Gargoyles! Sounds fun.

89Existanai
Mag 3, 2011, 12:56 pm

PS I am, coincidentally, also reading Bernhard, so if you want to share notes, it's this very same name at Gmail.

90Makifat
Mag 3, 2011, 3:55 pm

Thank you both. Just the sort of offer that you may come to regret. ;) But for now, I will keep my own counsel and keep the drama to a minimum.

E, I have had Bernard's Concrete on the shelves for years in the Quartet Encounters edition, but can't for the life of me recall reading it. What exactly are you reading?

I noticed a few weeks ago that you had added some Arno Schmidt. I've placed some of his works on my wishlist, but I'd be happy if anyone had any specific recommendations.

91Randy_Hierodule
Mag 3, 2011, 4:02 pm

I love the passion with which Bernhard bore contempt - extended rants in Old Masters and elsewhere against his countrymen (pathologically poor hygiene, etc.).

92Existanai
Mag 3, 2011, 5:11 pm

Maki - Old Masters - just as Ben has remarked, it's a perfect complement to all my anti-national raving today.

It's been a while since I looked at Schmidt, and I don't own any of his books - I simply added those to my wishlist, since Dalkey Archive is reissuing his work. My first impression of Nobodaddy's Children from way back was that the unique features of his prose were lost in translation, making the book a bit of a struggle, but I didn't (/don't) have enough German to essay his works in the original; the stories are more readable, however, so I'm planning to start there.

93Randy_Hierodule
Mag 3, 2011, 5:19 pm

Another strange and interesting German author (like Junger, a conservative) - Botho Strauss. I mean to reread Tumult (which is to say, sorry, I can't recall enough about it to give it any sort of review. I read it whilst procrastinating in graduate school a life ago), a slight novella published by Carcanet some while back.

94LolaWalser
Mag 3, 2011, 5:22 pm

Strauss' Devotion is my all-time favourite love story. He's better known as a playwright, so I always feel it's a little secret...

96dcozy
Mag 3, 2011, 10:18 pm

This may be apocryphal, and if its not apocryphal it's probably not entirely enforceable, but I've heard that Bernhard stipulated in his will that none of his prose could be published, and none of his plays performed, in Austria. That's how much he loathed the place.

97tomcatMurr
Mag 4, 2011, 12:16 am

Maki, I don't know what's going on there: others seem to know more than I do, but whatever it is, keep your chin up, old boy! Gargoyles looks great.

98Existanai
Mag 12, 2011, 5:55 pm

Maki, will you have time to post a review of Gargoyles?

I recently received my copy of Tegui, by the way.

99Makifat
Mag 13, 2011, 12:08 am

98
I'll probably get around to it next week. In the meantime, I ought to mention that the German title, Verstorung is more properly, and appropriately, translated as Bewilderment. Where the silly "Gargoyles" title came from is anybody's guess.

You ought to love Tegui.

97

Just life, TC. A temporary inconvenience, if you know what I mean. Thanks for your note.

100Makifat
Mag 16, 2011, 5:15 pm

After a pause to oogle the dominatrix upstream, I'm pleased to inform Tomcat that a copy of the Eliot he recommended in post 50 has serendipitously fallen into my lap for the cost of a measly thin dime. Found some other wonderful tomes as well in a short morning of book hunting.

Thanks again for the recommendation, Tomcat.

101LolaWalser
Mag 16, 2011, 5:57 pm

A peck on the cheek from Lady Luck! Huzzah!

102tomcatMurr
Mag 16, 2011, 11:08 pm

yeah I noticed you added some good new stuff. I hope you enjoy Theophrastus.

103Makifat
Modificato: Mag 19, 2011, 8:19 pm

Sidetracked by a busy end-of-school schedule for the kids, and fucking around with stuff like Architecture 2000: Predictions and Methods (see review), Madison Smartt Bell's Doctor Sleep, Bushmill's whiskey, etc. I plan to begin a review of Gargoyles this evening, if I am not felled by exhaustion.

104tomcatMurr
Mag 19, 2011, 8:49 pm

stacked! ha!

105Makifat
Mag 21, 2011, 3:32 am

For my friend Existanai, I have managed to finish a review of Gargoyles, a book which might be a useful corrective for anyone suffering under a current state of unwarranted cheerfulness.

106Makifat
Modificato: Mag 21, 2011, 3:35 am

104
Stacked, indeed!

If I wake up tomorrow, having survived a night of Thomas Bernhard and a couple of stiff tumblers of Bushmills (bottle's almost empty), I'll try to scan and post the evidence.

107tomcatMurr
Mag 22, 2011, 5:35 am

Maki, you have disallowed comments on your profile, so I can't reply there to the comment you posted on mine.

and I wanted to say how much I enjoyed your Gargoyles review and also the brilliant review of Insatiability, which sounds incredibly good: I must read it, it's on my list of books to get in Europe.

108Existanai
Modificato: Mag 22, 2011, 1:00 pm

Murr, Maki disallowed comments to prevent my verbose greetings overpopulating his profile. ;)

109Existanai
Modificato: Mag 22, 2011, 1:02 pm

Maki,

If you can toss out such an excellent review while sodden with Bushmills, look to Faulkner as inspiration and start on your own books! I'm serious (about the books, not the whiskey.)

Among the madness and degeneration of these subjects, we detect a theme relating to the inversion of creativity – futile attempts to come to grips with human reality through the artifices of philosophy, art, and music. A certain control, an ordering of reality, is sought, but slips away.

From a scant acquaintance with Bernhard, I get the impression this is one of the central themes in his work. I have not yet read Gargoyles, but going by your description, it seems to have more scenic variety and a structure closer to a traditional plot than his later books, which are stripped down, essentially, to competing monologues, with plot points only serving to extend or nominally justify the screeds. And - again, only as far as my meager knowledge of his novels is concerned - I detect quite a lot more humour. An acidulous sense of humour consistent with his merciless satire, to be sure, but amusing nonetheless. This despite (or on occasion, because of) his unrelenting assault on all one's favourite idols. He seems to turn on what he loves most, namely artists and the arts, and wants to show readers with a similar inclination why all such fondness - the only thing that makes life tolerable - is mere infatuation and as puerile as all other efforts to sustain oneself. Wonderful reading, and like almost all literature that overturns the pious nonsense of the majority, mandatory for those least likely to bother with it. I'll also throw in the perhaps gratuitous generalization that 20th century Central European writers have excelled at cynical satire - Kafka, Musil, Hašek, Čapek, Frisch, etc.

110Makifat
Mag 31, 2011, 2:43 am

E, thanks for your insights regarding Bernhard. Yes, there are detectable signs of a grim humor. One episode in the novel, the details of which escape me at the moment, brought to mind the episode in one of Beckett's novels in which a character spends quite a bit of time shifting small stones among his pockets. I'd have to say that I find much more humor in Beckett than in this particular novel (Bernhard's that is), but then we can see in Beckett the clear influence of silent comedies on his work. (By the way, my youngest son quite enjoyed watching Buster Keaton's "Battling Butlers" with me yesterday. Keaton was a particular favorite of Beckett's, who wrote "Film" for him.)

I posted a review of Doctor Sleep last night, a book which I enjoyed more than my review would seem to suggest.

111Existanai
Giu 2, 2011, 11:34 pm

Thanks Maki - it's always interesting how one piece or motif leads to unexpected and apparently unrelated associations, and connects into an ever denser, larger web, further fueling curiosity and related manias like collecting (an experience that is rarely understood by people who don't miss bookstores or libraries.)

Madison Smart Bell was never on my radar, by the way, so that's another little discovery for me.

112Makifat
Giu 5, 2011, 3:38 am

Abandoning fiction for the moment, and getting around to Cheetham's Mediaeval Greece, which combines my (long dormant) interests in Byzantium and the Crusades.

113Makifat
Modificato: Giu 7, 2011, 11:07 am

I found the beginnings of a review of Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura on my hard drive from many months ago. Despite its high pessimism - probably overrepresented in my reviews of late - I've posted it as is. It's really a most interesting book.

Found another (thesis) translation by Elmar Theissen this morning:

https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/33416?show=full

114LolaWalser
Giu 7, 2011, 2:53 pm

What a coinkidink! I ordered that some weeks ago (still waiting).

115Makifat
Giu 9, 2011, 2:19 am

So, a couple of milestones to report. I happened to notice that my next review, should I live to write it, will be my 400th.

And speaking of the cold breath of mortality upon one's neck, I shall (God willing) turn 50 on Saturday. Anyone wishing to use this thread to offer condolences is encouraged to do so.

116tomcatMurr
Giu 9, 2011, 9:03 am

Congratulations on both accounts, makifat. I hope you have a great birthday, and may herring rain on you always!

117LolaWalser
Giu 9, 2011, 3:09 pm

Fifty! Chin up-- you're not even halfway there! There, over the rainbow.

Hey, hey, kittycat!

118Randy_Hierodule
Giu 9, 2011, 5:32 pm

AARPA time! Happy birthday and welcome to the club!

119Existanai
Giu 9, 2011, 11:50 pm

Maki, Ois Guade zum Geburdsdog! ... As they say in Vienna.

(Where Tomcat was, not too long ago?)

120Makifat
Giu 12, 2011, 1:01 am

Thank you, good friends, for all your kind words. Wonderful birthday with loved ones, and a big haul of books from a night prowling the shops Friday evening. All now duly entered into my catalog. Only question now is where to begin?

121tomcatMurr
Giu 12, 2011, 6:04 am

What a magnificent haul, Maki! I used to have the very same Quartet edition of Sansovero I and II. I never read them, and they disappeared from my library at some point in my travels around the world. I would love to know what you think of it. I was somewhat loosely associated with Quartet Books in my distant past. Are they still a going concern? They had a fabulously obscure catalogue back in the day.

122Makifat
Modificato: Giu 12, 2011, 12:52 pm

They came, published some brilliant books, and, as far as I know, disappeared. Sad to think that in this digital age, they might have developed a more devoted following, a la NYRB. A too-small shelf of Quartets occupies pride of place in my library. (see my "quartet" tag for a sampling of their titles.)

Another fine small press that appears to have bitten the dust is the LA-based Sun & Moon Press. Like Quartet, they published some nice, durable paperbacks (I picked up Elias by Maurice Gilliams in their edition as part of my haul).

I believe that Pushkin Pressis still alive. I found their The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a disturbing enough looking work, the other night as well. Here's a link to their 2011 catalog:

http://www.pushkinpress.com/engine/shop/index.html

123marietherese
Giu 13, 2011, 4:12 am

Belated happy birthday, Makifat!

While Quartet shut down for good in 2009, I believe Sun & Moon more or less morphed into Green Integer sometime around 2004. Both Sun & Moon and Green Integer were founded and run by the American poet and editor, Douglas Messerli. Green Integer is still a going concern, although I don't think the press has released that many books of late. Messerli has an interesting blog under the Green Integer name: http://greeninteger.blogspot.com/

124Makifat
Giu 13, 2011, 4:40 am

Wow! Thank you! I was just about to call it a night when I saw your post: a few minutes browsing Green Integer Books. A very tantalizing selection!

http://www.greeninteger.com/

Thanks again.

125Randy_Hierodule
Giu 13, 2011, 4:09 pm

" I found their The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a disturbing enough looking work"

It is! And a wonderful read. If you liked Malpertuis, this is just the thing.

126Makifat
Giu 13, 2011, 4:39 pm

125
I was pleased to bring it home and find your review. Seems I'm always swimming in your backwash (if you'll pardon that disturbing imagery!)

127Randy_Hierodule
Giu 13, 2011, 10:08 pm

I don't leave any backwash ;). It's just that if you happen to pick up something gamy or of questionable taste and/or merit, chances are I've read it!

128Existanai
Giu 16, 2011, 10:32 pm

Yes, yes, yes to all the posts regarding small presses - I used to go looking for Quartets in the used bookstores around Bloomsbury in London (Ulysses at Museum used to have a separate "clearing" for them on a dusty shelf in a back room), quite aware they were all vanishing, and that was just over ten years ago - nearly my entire stock of QEs comes from around then. I regret not having found or bought even more, but then the choice for a penurious student was usually between a meal and a book, and I have no regrets about having picked the books; Harvill was still barely surviving, before they were bought over by Vintage, and Pushkins were relatively new to the scene (here's a very brief interview with its founder.) As for Sansevero, glad to see it in your library Maki (and sorry that the set left yours, Murr) - and I second the motion for you to start there.

129Makifat
Giu 24, 2011, 11:23 am

Note: I have finally hit upon the perfect LT strategy. I shall peruse the threads I'm interested in each morning with my coffee, write my little commentary, then delete it before posting and move on. I tried it this morning and it worked wonders.

It's a win/win.

130tomcatMurr
Giu 24, 2011, 11:35 am

lol
it's what Pushkin used to do.

But why you, Maki why delete? What prompted this outburst of deletions?

131Makifat
Giu 24, 2011, 12:35 pm

Well, I do like being compared to Pushkin. Not that you did make a comparison, but I'm happy to put my own spin on it.

Here's an old favorite by Cavafy:

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.


132Existanai
Modificato: Giu 25, 2011, 5:20 pm

In Cavafy there is a balm for every misery.

I haven't read much Pamuk, and many of his novels don't seem to pique my curiosity, but I came across Other Colors in a bookstore a few days ago and, opening it to a random page, found a brief but insightful essay on Thomas Bernhard, so I had to have it. In fact, there are two, and the first one is called "Reading Thomas Bernhard in a Time of Unhappiness." Quite poignant. Thankfully someone industrious has typed out most of it out here, though with a few errors, and I will paste a large excerpt because it's worth reading, as is the other one I chanced on, "The World of Thomas Bernhard's Novels" (most of which is available in the Amazon preview.)

"To open a book, to read a page, to enter someone else's dreams - these were all excuses for dwelling on my own wretchedness, reminders that everyone else in the world had managed to avoid the well of misery into which I had fallen. Everywhere were people who flattered themselves about their successes and tiny refinements, their interests, their culture, and their families. It seemed that all books had been written in such people's voices. No matter what they described - a nineteenth-century Parisian ball, an anthropological tour of Jamaica, the impoverished environs of a great city, or the determination of a man who had dedicated his life to the study of art - the books concerned lives whose experience bore no relation to my own, so I wanted to forget them all. Because I could find nothing in these books that remotely resembled my mounting misery, I felt anger both at the books and at myself: at the books because they ignored the pain I was suffering, at myself because I had been so stupid as to throw myself into this senseless pain. I wanted nothing other than to escape my mindless misery. But books had prepared me for life, books were mostly what kept me going, so I kept telling myself that if I wished to pull myself out of my black cloud, I would have to keep reading. Yet whenever I opened a book to hear the voice of an author who accepted the world as it was, or who, even if he wished to change it, still identified with it, I would feel myself alone. Books were remote from my pain. What's more, it was books that had brought me to the idea that the misery into which I had fallen was unique, that I was an idiotic wretch like no other. This was why I kept telling myself, "Books are not for reading, but for buying and selling.” After the earthquakes, whenever books annoyed me, I found a reason for throwing them out. And so I was bringing my forty-year war with books to an end in a spirit of loathing and disillusionment.

... I began to read Bernhard again, and for the first time since the dark had descended, I heard a voice saying that the wretchedness I called my unhappiness was not as great or as bad as I thought. There was no particular sentence or paragraph that made this particular point; they about other things - a passion for the piano, solitude, publishers, or Glenn Gould - but I still felt that these were merely pretexts; they were speaking to my misery, and this perception lifted my spirits. The problem was not the misery itself but the way I perceived it. The problem was that I was unhappy but that I felt so in particular ways. To read Bernhard in this time of unhappiness was like a tonic, though I knew that the pages I read had not been written to serve as such, or even as a consolation for readers grappling with depression.

How to explain all this? What made reading Bernhard at a time of unhappiness seem like taking an elixir? Perhaps it was the air of renunciation. Maybe I was soothed by a moral vision, wisely suggesting that it is not to expect too much of life ... But it might have had nothing to do with morality, for a dose of Bernhard makes clear that the only hope lies in remaining oneself, in clinging to one's habits, to one's anger. There is in Bernhard's writing the suggestion that the greatest stupidity is to give up one's passions and habits in the hope of a better life, or the joy of attacking others' idiocies and stupidities, or of knowing that life can be more than what our passions and perversions make of it.

But I know that all attempts at formulation will be fruitless. This is not just because it is hard to find in Bernhard's words confirmation of what I've said. It is also because every time I return to Bernhard's books I see that they defy reduction. But before I begin again to doubt myself, let me say this, at least: what I enjoy most in Bernhard's books is not their settings or their moral vision. I enjoy just being there, inside those pages, to embrace his unstoppable anger and share it with him. That is how literature consoles, by inviting us to fulminate with the same intensity as the writers we love."

133Makifat
Giu 25, 2011, 2:03 am

I've enjoyed most of Pamuk's earlier novels. The later ones have not grabbed me so much. I have Other Colors, and have read much of it, but it didn't click for me that it contained an essay on Bernhard. Thanks for the tip. Off to read it...

134LolaWalser
Giu 25, 2011, 1:25 pm

Books were remote from my pain. What's more, it was books that had brought me to the idea that the misery into which I had fallen was unique, that I was an idiotic wretch like no other.

Pamuk was obviously reading the wrong books. I have (and I think many, many do) a set of books that have seen me through Great Suffering twice. Not healed--some worked by deepening and salting the wounds--but consoled (must remember every consolation is piecemeal, not final), and helped to realign with the world.

The trick is encountering such books. Mine happened to be in my library. In one case the grief reminded me of a book I had first read much earlier, in another I picked up something studied in school and never fully understood, in yet another it was pure chance, that that particular book turned out to have a consoling and sustaining effect in the situation etc.

135tros
Giu 25, 2011, 2:02 pm

Rilke? Duino Elegies? Very "consoling and sustaining".

136LolaWalser
Giu 25, 2011, 3:22 pm

Depends on the patient and the ailment...

137Existanai
Modificato: Giu 25, 2011, 5:27 pm

#134 I guess synchronicity always plays a role in any kind of reading or interpretation, though, on the one hand, it is rather trivializing to think of it this way when we're in the midst of a gradual revelation, and on the other, the reasons hardly matter once we've made a connection that is unique to ourselves. An interesting perspective, anyway, to filter literature through grief, instead of the usual who-is-cited-the-most type of evaluation that fills newspapers and theses.

138LolaWalser
Giu 27, 2011, 11:41 am

#137

Not following any of that.

139Existanai
Giu 27, 2011, 10:42 pm

#135 A rather prolific translator has put up his own version of the entire cycle for free here. Browsing the site makes one balk a little; Mr. Kline translates copious amounts of verse by major authors from "Latin, Ancient Greek, Classical Chinese and the European languages."

140Existanai
Giu 27, 2011, 10:50 pm

#138

Sorry, I was too terse; when a book seems to "speak" to you, address your grief, etc., it's an (indirect or weak) instance of synchronicity; the same book at another time may not have had the same effect, but on account of the coincidence, one has a 'new', or personal, interpretation or perspective that is unique to oneself. I was saying that synchronicity probably always plays a role in appreciation of literature, but a) one can't reduce one's appreciation to 'coincidence' and b) once this original or personal perspective is forged, the path one took to get there often fades in importance.

141LolaWalser
Giu 28, 2011, 12:32 pm

#140

I don't disagree. I don't see the connexion between your post and mine, though. And, "synchronicity", the term you introduced, means something different to me. a) I don't understand where saying an encounter with a book was a coincident (happened by chance) means a "reduction of appreciation" either. b) sure

#139

Rilke wasn't among the books I alluded to, btw.

142Existanai
Modificato: Giu 28, 2011, 6:14 pm

1) I was making a connection not simply to your post but to the subject of the conversation - finding consolation in an author;

2) which, to me, is a kind of synchronicity, though admittedly not the best illustration of the term. It simply means a meaningful coincidence without a causal connection (I'm not aware of any other meanings of the word) and for which a better example would be, say, finding an extremely rare volume in a bookstore just an hour after someone else had been talking about it and mentioned the odds against finding it were staggering.

3) I said that though synchronicity might often play a role in our appreciation of literature (finding parallels between our own lives and what the author is talking about) it is trivializing or reductive to think of our appreciation as an instance of synchronicity. I didn't state or imply anything you paraphrased above ("saying an encounter with a book was a coincident (happened by chance) means a "reduction of appreciation".")

4) I know you didn't allude to Rilke, but I was replying to Tros.

143LolaWalser
Giu 29, 2011, 2:11 pm

it is trivializing or reductive to think of our appreciation as an instance of synchronicity.

Which is something no one, I think, and certainly not I, never said nor implied. Just making things clear, as you referenced my post, making it seem that that pronouncement addressed something I meant.

144Existanai
Modificato: Giu 29, 2011, 10:07 pm

#143 Which is something no one, I think, and certainly not I, never said nor implied.

I know you didn't say it, because I said it, as part of a longer sentence in a larger context; I referenced your post because I was following up what you wrote with my own thoughts!

I'm amazed at the lengths to which one has to go to unravel a slight misunderstanding.

145Makifat
Giu 29, 2011, 6:34 pm

God knows I have nothing to add to this.

Will one of you please extinguish the lights and feed the cat when you leave?

146Existanai
Giu 29, 2011, 6:37 pm

Aye aye cap'n. We now return to our regular programming. Over to you. :)

147Makifat
Giu 29, 2011, 6:39 pm

No! Don't go! I seriously have nothing to say. You can keep this up as long as you like. Without you, there'd just be a test pattern on this thread.

148tomcatMurr
Giu 29, 2011, 10:10 pm

miaow

149Makifat
Giu 29, 2011, 10:36 pm

Oh, and don't forget the litter box....

150LolaWalser
Modificato: Giu 30, 2011, 3:22 pm

#144

I hate to see expressions like "trivialising" and "reducing appreciation" wrapped in some vague generalisation following (and referencing) a post where I mention life-transforming specific events, is all. Makes me nervous, justifiably, I think.

151Makifat
Modificato: Lug 18, 2011, 10:57 am

After a week (with a short break) of camp life on the lovely Mogollon Rim*, I've scratched out a review of Elias, or The Struggle with the Nightingales** by the Flemish poet Maurice Gilliams. I also hope to get around to making some notes on The Romance of Reynard the Fox at some point this week.

*returning to find the litter box full, and I'm not speaking metaphorically.

** http://www.librarything.com/work/11384241/reviews/74420510

(touchstone problems again, or maybe it's just a Makifat problem)

152LolaWalser
Lug 18, 2011, 2:47 pm

Sounds really interesting. I like the "struggle with nightingales".

Does the litter box imply cats? Somehow I didn't see you as a cat owner (I realise there's others in the Maki-household...)

It would be fun to track Reynard's literary peregrinations. I suspect he's a time-and-space traveller to rival Doctor Who.

153Makifat
Lug 18, 2011, 3:42 pm

Yes, a cat owner. I've had some really wonderful cats, the latest being a grey tabby who tends to get lost in the shuffle. We also have a guinea pig, bought a year ago at the insistence of my youngest (a birthday present). He was disappointed to discover that real guinea pigs don't typically wear astronaut suits or drive cars (not voluntarily, anyway), and now pays scant attention to it. I, of course, get to clean the cage and caress the little beast (which I've named Hobo, because he sleeps in newspaper and drinks from a bottle) out of guilt despite discovering that I'm allergic to guinea pigs. Despite my ferocious image, I'm just an old softie, although I'm counting down the little buggers life expectancy with eager anticipation.

One can't help think of everything from trickster myths to Looney Tunes while reading Reynard's excellent adventures. He's quite an attractive rogue, even if the stories do tend to repeat themselves...

154Mr.Durick
Modificato: Lug 18, 2011, 11:21 pm

An important point about material implication was made plain to me by a professor's uttering, "If you hang a guinea pig by its tale tail, its eyes will fall out." And then asserting that the proposition is true. There's no way you can test it though.

Robert

155tomcatMurr
Lug 18, 2011, 8:52 pm

tail or tale? and why can't you test it?

oh , I see.

Macumbreira wrote an excellent piece on Renard here:

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/search?q=reynard

I love the sound of struggle with the nightingales. Great review.

156Mr.Durick
Lug 18, 2011, 11:20 pm

'tail'

Robert

157Makifat
Lug 19, 2011, 12:05 pm

Off topic (thank God), but we took in a Dylan show last night, a belated birthday present. Of interest to LT users is that I was in the Half Price Books on Camelback Road on Monday morning, and happened to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone with Dylan on the cover. The cashier mentioned that The Man himself had actually been in the store the day before. He apparently rode up on a bicycle with a big straw hat (and hats off to him - a 70 year old man riding a bike in 109 degree heat!) and browsed for a while, eventually laying $300 worth of merchandise on the counter for someone to come pick up for him.

I would have loved to have seen those selections.

158Makifat
Set 2, 2011, 11:37 am

Just stopping by this ill-begotten thread to note that I paid a visit to my local rare book dealer yesterday, who informed me, without malice, that my library was essentially worthless. He advised me to sell it for pulp so that I could start a real collection.

:)

159LolaWalser
Set 2, 2011, 3:11 pm

Ah, yes, but the question is do you care?

Beanie babies may come into vogue again...

160AsYouKnow_Bob
Set 5, 2011, 1:34 am

Just stopping by this ill-begotten thread to note that I paid a visit to my local rare book dealer yesterday, who informed me, without malice, that my library was essentially worthless. He advised me to sell it for pulp so that I could start a real collection.

Yeah, I view this whole "books" thing as a vice more-or-less like "smoking" or something like that: there are minor, ephemeral pleasures as you go along - but basically, one is simply setting fire to money.

161tomcatMurr
Set 5, 2011, 6:59 am

158> Did you give your book dealer a slap? I would've.

162LolaWalser
Set 6, 2011, 4:59 pm

In a lifetime of buying used books and, especially, volunteering at the library book sales, I have accumulated a measure of wisdom. I shall now dispense it. There are few hard and fast rules in evaluating books. All is relative. You can take the horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink. And, if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad better haul ass to the mountain.

Fundamental advice to any non-millionaire non-expert who wants to buy books as investments: don't.

163AsYouKnow_Bob
Set 6, 2011, 8:35 pm

All that is true, but my wife has learned the corollary to Lola's wisdom:
"Anything can be anywhere."

In a lifetime of library sales, we've been repeatedly astonished at what turns up. E.g., Just this spring I narrowly missed this (the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World) at my local library sale.

(I'm still mourning it as The One That Got Away....)

164Makifat
Modificato: Set 7, 2011, 2:43 am

161
If I had had a paperback copy of Jaws handy, I would have rolled it up and whacked him on the snout with it. He was actually a pretty nice guy. I think he has just been in the business too long to appreciate that fact that some people have books simply because they enjoy having them around and enjoy reading them.

162

For me, the appeal of books is intellectual and/or emotional, or even aesthetic. Regardless, my books are for enjoyment, not investment, and I've chatted with enough rare book dealers over the years to know that they tend to see books as commodities, pure and simple, and that's a completely different perspective from mine.

I have a good number of out-of-print items, and a few true rarities, but the idea of marketing/selling any just seems more trouble than it is worth. I've toyed with the idea of popping a few onto the internet for sale, but by just observing the dynamics of the market over the past few years, I doubt I'd get much of a return on most of them, and even then it would probably take a while even to find an interested buyer. And the fact remains that most anything anyone would be particularly interested in buying is probably something I wouldn't want to turn loose of.

I have a tag called "removed", which includes thing that I have culled because they are either duplicates or things that I wonder why I bought them in the first place (most likely because they evoked some passing interest and/or they were cheap). The fact remains that I need to cull the collection more aggressively, but I just don't have any enthusiasm for it.

163

Nothing worse than seeing someone pick up a coveted volume just seconds before you register just exactly what it is. I have at least gotten to the point where I can say "Good for you, hope you enjoy it" without muttering "you bastard!" under my breath.

165LolaWalser
Set 7, 2011, 12:39 pm

Oh, god, the books that got away... it's too early in the day for tears!

"Anything can be anywhere."

Testify! I love rummaging through the library's sale stock for the surprises almost more than for the deals. Especially when I can't afford the deals. (Last weekend I priced a bunch of three-digit "bargains"... Even that adds up quickly.)

166Randy_Hierodule
Set 7, 2011, 1:52 pm

The quick add-on. 64: Amen - Collecting: most of what I have is (the fruit of ungovernable impulse) worthless. I never set out to amass a collection, I wanted a library. A library inclusive of everything that interests me. Once upon a time it was a working library; now it's a slacking library. It was never an investment, but always the company I prefer to keep (and the only company that can steadfastly work with mine).

I wish I had a talent or even an inclination for investment - I might be able to afford more books, etc.

#re 164 to 163: I once consulted my modest collection of curse tablets (all on paperback) to passively inflict every suffering upon an interloper who grabbed a first edition of Marie Corelli's Sorrows of Satan the instant my hand moved toward it and then looked at me and said - "don't worry, if it's not interesting it will be back up at the next sale".

My idea of culling the Havoc is to send the duplicates to other homes. Until a suitable home is found, they sit in stacks on the floor.

167LolaWalser
Set 7, 2011, 2:53 pm

All books are worthless. Also, all books are worth at least something. Furthermore, the "something" may or may not be quantifiable in money.

'Tis most confusing.

168AsYouKnow_Bob
Set 7, 2011, 9:25 pm

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

- (attributed to/associated with) Einstein.

169Makifat
Modificato: Set 16, 2011, 2:12 am

Some notes to myself:

Works recently read but unreviewed:

Notes from Underground by Dostoyevsky

Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Crosby

The Deadly Percheron, in The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus, a quirky noir classic deserving of a review that I am too lazy to attempt.

Also mourning, in its passing, the source of weird and/or wonderful tomes present in my "cheap thrills" collection. All purchased for the price of one thin dime, but which have given, and continue to give, countless hours of amusement and edification. I will pray for the resurrection of the dead.

170tomcatMurr
Set 16, 2011, 2:19 am

interested in your thoughts on Notes from Underground, Makif, if you can pour yourself away from the Jameson's for a wee moment....

171Makifat
Modificato: Set 16, 2011, 11:33 am

I could hardly do it justice, TC, next to your remarkable musings on Dostoyevsky. It was a reread, in fact, due to the fact that most of the Dostoyevsky I've read I read in my tender youth, and I flinch to think of all I may have missed.

My response to Notes probably has to do with my interest in pessimism, and pessimism certainly abounds in this work. I like to look at a work in context, and the post-Enlightenment context really informs this work. The cynicism and contempt the narrator has for the idea of progress, most likely as a result of his own failures and self-loathing, really reveals Dostoyevsky as a truly psychological novelist, a fact that did not slip by Nietzsche. Dostoyevsky's psychological insights on the contradictions in the human personality are absolutely raw and unvarnished, and I have to suspect that this was a remarkable innovation in literature, revealing the complexities of the personality that precious few in literature up to the mid-19th century (and later) were really able to express.

It is a raw novel, hard to read without flinching. Again, so much is revealed regarding the psychological makeup - and motivations - of the fractured personality. The scenes with the estranged friends, the awkwardness and hostility, and the impulse to fawn despite it all are so well done, and the interactions with the prostitute that form the end of the novel are by turns tender (in an odd sort of way) and, to a degree, sadistic. There is damn little sentimentality in it, and that's what really, I suspect, separates it from the other literature of its time.

I noted in a previous thread on "influences" that Dostoyevsky was certainly the great touchpoint of all decent literature to follow, and reading even this early novel really underscores this. It would be hard to imagine what literature might look like now without this primal influence. He is certainly a strong influence on the kind of literature that the denizens of the Chapel of the Abyss enjoy.

(...and here's why I decided not to review this piece - it's hard to write about Dostoyevsky without looking like a Cliffs Notes. You're one of the fortunate few who can do it, TC.)

Thanks for asking.

172LolaWalser
Set 17, 2011, 3:33 pm

#169

What was the source?

I should reread the Underground man too. Pure existentialism avant la lettre.

173Makifat
Set 19, 2011, 1:30 am

The discontinued "dime room" of the Scottsdale Public Library. Lots of mud, made tantalizing by the occasional presence of a few pearls.

174tomcatMurr
Set 19, 2011, 2:06 am

well, thanks for your kind words. I think NFU remains my favourite of his works, for the reasons that you mention. I reread it periodically, and it never fails to move me: it's so modern.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it.

175Makifat
Nov 10, 2011, 10:12 am

Whoa, the dust has really piled up in here!

I've spent the last couple of months off my usual fare, turning instead to some science fiction and fantasy, out of a desire for some escapist reading. I've never been a particular fan of either genre (but I suppose that depends on how you define the genres: is Borges fantasy?), and it doesn't take long for me to become sated. Some of the stuff I've reviewed in a half-assed manner, others not so much worth the effort. I do have one additional fantasy/sci fi tome on my reading list, generously sent by the author, for which I feel an obligation to review. Still, I ought to cleanse my palate first, lest my weariness with the genre taint my reading.

But wait! The local outlet of my beloved Half Price Books has received a cache of the wonderful Wordsworth "Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural" series*, so perhaps I'll pass the November chill with a pipe, a glass of Jameson's, and more escapist tales...

*No doubt worthless, per the judgement of the dealer in post #158, who would no doubt have chastised me for passing on his $200 Arkham House edition of The House on the Borderland in favor of the paperback Gollanz import.

176Makifat
Nov 10, 2011, 10:16 am

Not that I see Sci Fi and/or Fantasy as purely escapist, or second rate, by any means. It simply isn't my cup of tea. I do love the Wordsworth stuff, but you can't really see most of that as anything but escapist either.

177Makifat
Nov 10, 2011, 10:17 am

Hell, maybe it's all escapist.

178tros
Nov 10, 2011, 11:38 am


I'm still kicking myself for not buying an old Hodgson anthology (not arkham).
I think it was $125. Probably worth 10x now.
I really like the John Carter of Mars by Burroughs. Of recent sci-fi/fantasy
Dan Simmons stands out. His hyperion is wild.

179LolaWalser
Modificato: Nov 10, 2011, 11:39 am

#177

That's how I feel.

It's odd about genre writing. So much of it seems to have some in-built corniness, just by virtue of consciously going with conventions. How to explain it... there's Byron in his flowing ruffled white shirt, then there's the byronic epigone in the same shirt, which is now drag. One is just plain fantastic, the other is Fantasy, genre.

Have you seen the Wesleyan University series called "Early classics of science fiction"? I think I praised one somewhere here--oh, yes, Robida. Well, I'm reading the German anthology (from cca 1877 to now), and it's great, but with so many tantalising, because absolutely unfindable references.

I had no idea how rich was the utopian tradition, for instance. Let's see if I get a touchstone: Bilbiotheca utopistica, Ludwig Hevesi--anyway, it's a list of 1850 titles of fantastic novels with utopian focus--mostly or all German, from what I can make out.

180tomcatMurr
Nov 10, 2011, 11:49 am

there's Byron in his flowing ruffled white shirt, then there's the byronic epigone in the same shirt, which is now drag. One is just plain fantastic, the other is Fantasy, genre.

Lola, you are more than brilliant tonight, dear.

Makifat, prob'ly stupid question here, but have you seen Italo Calvino's selection weird and wonderful tales?

181Makifat
Nov 10, 2011, 12:35 pm

179
Have you seen the Wesleyan University series called "Early classics of science fiction"?

Oh, God. More for the wishlist! Please stop!!

I have a couple of nice collections from the late 60's/early 70's edited by a fellow named Sam Moskowitz: Science Fiction by Gaslight and Under the Moons of Mars.

180
...have you seen Italo Calvino's selection weird and wonderful tales?

Yes, I assume you are speaking of Fantastic Tales? A nice solid collection edited by a fellow who has some obvious credentials for judgement of the fantastic. His focus in this anthology is on the nineteenth century.

And, by the way, Lola is always more than brilliant. I'd subscribe to her newsletter, if she had one.

182LolaWalser
Nov 10, 2011, 12:50 pm

Gentlemen, gentlemen...! Remember to prefer blondes!

Does the escapist angle demand a time-not-our-own? A while ago I read through one of the annual anthologies of... I think Best fantasy and horror--yes, looks like the right series, editor Ellen Datlow--volume three it was--anyway, I was surprised by how good most of the stories were, or do I mean efficacious--considering that all were set in the more or less "now". I'm especially remembering the zombie story (and I hate damn zombies with a passion). Recommended.

183AsYouKnow_Bob
Modificato: Nov 11, 2011, 1:30 pm

Makifat at #176: Not that I see Sci Fi and/or Fantasy as purely escapist, or second rate, by any means.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of using literature as escape from life, there’s a lot to be said for using one kind of literature as escape from others.
- Kingsley Amis


#177: Hell, maybe it's all escapist.

Amis again, on the idea of "serious" literature:

...“one of the qualities that took us to it in the first place is its implicit assurance that life is coherent and meaningful, and I can think of no more escapist notion than that.”

184Makifat
Nov 11, 2011, 4:21 pm

185AsYouKnow_Bob
Modificato: Nov 11, 2011, 4:38 pm

Could be; but I'm pretty sure the first quote is from his essays about Ian Fleming's "James Bond" stories, which Amis was also a big fan of.

Someplace he makes the case that one thing missing from SERIOUS Literature is "thrills", which the "lower" forms of lit provide.

186Makifat
Nov 11, 2011, 4:49 pm

Puts me in mind of Graham Greene, who alternated, for a time at least, between his more literary novels and what he termed "entertainments".

187LolaWalser
Nov 11, 2011, 8:01 pm

Someplace he makes the case that one thing missing from SERIOUS Literature is "thrills", which the "lower" forms of lit provide.

I'll have to disagree with Amis, based on nothing better than personal example... at the danger of sounding a right dork, unfit for general human society, I've been seriously thrilled by tons of "serious" lit, thrilled in ways that make one reminisce about the event in the pub. (If you want to see me hopping with rage, just suggest that it is impossible to read, say, Dostoevsky "for pleasure".) Contrarywise, I've been bored out of my skull by more "lower" lit than I care to remember. Needless to say, the opposite happens too--bored by serious, thrilled by not-serious, moved by trash, not moved by quality etc. I think it's idle to generalise off those categories.

188Makifat
Modificato: Nov 11, 2011, 11:28 pm

Any dichotomies regarding literature I try to come up with I immediately delete, because, like most generalizations (except perhaps this one), they fall apart under scrutiny. But I might put forth that there is a difference between "stimulating" (Dostoyevsky) and "thrilling". Stimulating enriches us and stays with us. Thrilling evaporates, but there is nothing wrong with transient pleasures, except when overindulgence leaves us queasy.

(Speaking of queasy, despite the horrible writing, I read The Da Vinci Code turning the pages because I wanted to know what happened next. I got through it, but would not say that I enjoyed the experience, and I can say for certainty that I will never buy or read anything by Dan Brown again. There must have been some level of thrill there, but one I'd never want to repeat.)

And now I'm off to read The White Hotel because I started it last night and have been looking forward to reading it all day.

189Makifat
Nov 11, 2011, 11:22 pm

at the danger of sounding a right dork, unfit for general human society...

You've come to the right place.

190LolaWalser
Nov 12, 2011, 12:03 am

I see your Da Vinci thing and raise you "Twilight". You know that cliché of being "so bad it's funny"? Well, it's so bad it's funny, BUT, in addition, or before everything else really, it's so damn boring it may have anesthetic properties. And I absolutely refuse the possibility that I was too old and crusty a reader for it, I would have hated it at fourteen, which is when I first read and was THRILLED by Dostoevsky.

"Stimulating" is to me part and parcel of "thrilling". Although I can see it existing for itself, on a more subdued level, sure. But speaking of the most sublime reading experiences, I know I'm not alone in being thrilled by "serious" stuff--just now for instance I read in G. K. Chesterton's autobiography how he "exulted" in "Marmion", heroically scanning the verses to himself while running. (When he was a schoolboy.)

Leaving aside childhood memories (because too many, and they do become rarer with age--there's less and less truly NEW stuff I encounter), there's the first time I read the "Snow" chapter in The magic mountain, or Platonov, or Proust, or any amount of poetry--the thrilling genre par excellence, I think...

When something is so good or so right you feel like crying and perhaps even do cry--that's the thrill, man!

Getting carried away here. Must go read.

191tomcatMurr
Nov 12, 2011, 1:03 am

my last experience of this kind was Rene Leys. Thrilling, scary, tearing up, Everything Lola mentioned.

192Makifat
Dic 9, 2011, 10:25 am

Just a note to my friends that I intend to go underground for a while. No drama, just a need to avoid distractions. The blog, as well, is likely to remain in its current state of stasis (or stagnation, if you want to get nasty about it).

Season's greetings to all.

193LolaWalser
Dic 9, 2011, 3:42 pm

Vive la Résistance!

Come back soon.

194AsYouKnow_Bob
Dic 9, 2011, 4:49 pm

Just a note to my friends that I intend to go underground for a while.

Got it. If anybody asks: no, we haven't seen you, and have no idea where you are.
No problem.

195Crypto-Willobie
Dic 12, 2011, 7:49 pm

He'll be hanging with BarkingMatt, whom I haven't seem lately...

196tomcatMurr
Dic 12, 2011, 8:53 pm

sigh, all the most interesting people are underground...

197LolaWalser
Dic 13, 2011, 1:29 pm

Right, Where Art Thou, Matt?!

sigh, all the most interesting people are underground...

Pffft! Humph! Pah!

198LolaWalser
Dic 13, 2011, 2:35 pm

I just sighted "Agent-X" beating the dust out of some supremacist kook. Damage control, paging damage control!

199Makifat
Dic 13, 2011, 2:39 pm

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

Looks like I chose a bad week to give up heroin...

200LolaWalser
Dic 13, 2011, 2:41 pm

Um--Jacques! Come in, mon semblable, mon frère!

The midget is in the toaster. I repeat, the midget. Is. In the. Toaster.

201Makifat
Dic 13, 2011, 2:57 pm

Really, I'm just trolling for flags. Perhaps with some luck my little vacation can turn permanent.

202Makifat
Dic 13, 2011, 3:05 pm

The midget is in the toaster. I repeat, the midget. Is. In the. Toaster.

Um, that's terrific. Where do you keep the whiskey?

203LolaWalser
Dic 13, 2011, 3:07 pm

Right next to the heroin...!

I can't believe you need mind-altering drugs when you got us.

204Makifat
Dic 13, 2011, 3:09 pm

Lola-lola, you folks are the reason I need the mind-altering drugs!

205LolaWalser
Dic 13, 2011, 3:10 pm

No use trying to guilt-trip ME, I'm circumambulating the Earth in penitence for the third time.

Better let on on whatcha been reading...

206tomcatMurr
Dic 13, 2011, 8:04 pm

>197 LolaWalser:, Lola, I meant that we are all underground, we are all in the gutter looking at the toaster.

207Makifat
Modificato: Dic 13, 2011, 8:14 pm

Not me. I'm looking for my fucking whiskey.

208tros
Modificato: Giu 5, 2012, 9:54 pm

Questo messaggio è stato cancellato dall'autore.

209Makifat
Dic 14, 2011, 1:27 am

It has been lovely to hear from you all, both in this thread, and in private notes.

Mellow me out?

As Woody Allen said, if I get too mellow, I ripen and rot.

The whiskey inspires me to stand on the table and declaim. It also scares the cat, which can be amusing.

Anyway, inasmuch as I'm done with soiling my boots on the racist shitwit, I will try to gracefully go back into hibernation.

Yes, I said gracefully.

210LolaWalser
Modificato: Dic 15, 2011, 3:39 pm

The Tiger Lilies, Old gracefully

(I couldn't help it!!!)

211Makifat
Giu 5, 2012, 8:34 pm

Fair bit of reading, hardly any writing as of late. Started a review of The Prague Cemetery, but attention fizzled out. My attitude towards reviews, lately, has been "why bother?" Probably ought to be making reading notes here, but, again, laziness wins out.

Still, I did want to stop by and tell my friend about Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner. Wonderful and engaging summer reading, which inspired me to order the 3 volume Penguin edition of the Arabian Nights, a remarkable compendium translated by Malcolm C. Lyons with introductions by the always enlightening Robert Irwin.

212Randy_Hierodule
Modificato: Giu 5, 2012, 9:02 pm

Speaking of this, I have been thinking of picking up The Devil Drives - a life of Burton (the most flamboyant of the translators of The Thousand Nights and a Night). Has anyone read it?

213tomcatMurr
Giu 5, 2012, 9:04 pm

nice touchstone!

214Randy_Hierodule
Giu 5, 2012, 9:08 pm

I proffer them for you: I have two. The other took awhile to appear.

215LolaWalser
Giu 5, 2012, 9:23 pm

Oh, that one's a killer! Let it be, let it be... let me try get the other one: The Devil Drives... by Fawn McKay Brodie.

I haven't read it. I did read one bio of Burton, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton by Edward Rice. Very interesting, although I don't know what one would have to do to make Burton un-interesting.

#211

My attitude towards reviews, lately, has been "why bother?"

Well, I could mention all the people who cherish your reviews, but that would be guilt-tripping. As to the practical angles of the "why", I wish I could discipline myself to write down at least as much as necessary to remember something about what I've read. I've become recently aware that--shockingly!--I won't be able to count on memory forever.

216tomcatMurr
Giu 5, 2012, 9:27 pm

I've become recently aware that--shockingly!--I won't be able to count on memory forever.

join the club, and what she said about cherishing your reviews also applies here, but, again, no guilt, ok?