Earthly Powers Group Read: first 42 chapters

This thread is for the discussion of the first forty-two chapters *and nothing after.*

Anyone read anything by Jakob Strehler? Toomey devotes a couple of paragraphs to him in chapter 39. Unless this author pops up in some unexpected plot twist later on, this can only be a bit of a plug for him by Burgess. Sounds interesting, although I'm always a little wary of a German or Austrian writer who is presented as being funny.

I am also intrigued by his fascination with that author. I remember a LT discussion on the Nobel, last year sometime, and I think Strehler was actually recommended by someone.

Ok roll call. I am cruising along since breaking my ankle last thursday and am on ch44. Who is with us and where?

I have to say I had no idea I would enjoy this book anywhere near this much. The narrator is so interesting! And the priest just so completely compelling. He so effortlessly becomes the focus of every scene he is in.

I'm right behind you, Anna. Chapter 41. However, I've slowed down a lot due to pressure of work, and I draw the line at breaking my ankle to give myself more time.

I'm on chapter 26 but plan on trying to catch up this week.

Burgess seems to be a comma-minimalist. While I'm against excessive comma use, I think an additional comma here and there would clarify some of Burgess other-excellent passages. He also seems to be entirely against hyphens (I had to look twice to figure out words like "violetinked").

btw, I love this passage from chapter twelve: "I hold none that I could bring myself to compose th more intimate scenes only by imagining them as homosexual, though this was sometimes difficult with torresnts of scented hair and swinging breasts getting in the way."

I also like his metaphor in chapter eleven comparing heterosexuality and homosexuality to the preference between smoking tobacco or taking snuff.

I also like Toomey's take on Michelangelo in chapter 24. Toomey's sister has just referred to homosexuality as diseased:

" 'So Michelangelo's diseased, is he?' ...But, of course, there was something diseased about the extravagant musculature of the David and the Sistine Last Judgement."

2: I'm not sure Strehler's a real person. I couldn't find him on the list of Nobel Prize winners. Unfortunate, because that also means the book he's translating when he pops up later in the novel probably isn't real, either.

In the book, is Strehler given as the winner for 1935? Conveniently, there was no prize awarded for literature in that year.

Ha ha. *wipes egg from face* I knew I should have checked. I really thought though that I remembered someone saying they'd read a German Nobel winner with a similar name - boy am I getting senile at 44.

Just through 42 chapters and having a perfectly glorious time. I've realized that while I remembered the bare outline of the plot -- octogenarian homosexual writer, Malta, the Catholic church, a trip through the 20th century -- I remember exactly none of the detail. (Thirty years is a long time.)

I recall reading that the book is full of inaccuracies of several types including historical fact and that these are deliberate to make clear that Toomey is an unreliable narrator. I'm not picking them up and find enough to pay attention to without going looking for them.

But some phrases do burrow into my mind: "a poet with phthisis," "a novelettish locution"... I don't read with a dictionary at hand but I had to look up phthisis.

Finally got to chapter 44. This is an excellent book, but it's so smart and verbose it's taking me a while to get through.

Agreed about Carlo - he's one of my favorite characters from the book. The scene in India (?) where he performed the exorcism really made me wonder... and I think that's part of what Toomey is going for. Was Carlo a holy man? Or is he just a good-hearted, pragmatic person?

I also enjoy the way history's woven into it - not HEY HERE ARE THESE MAJOR 20TH CENTURY EVENTS, WATCH MY CHARACTERS DEAL WITH THEM, but sprinkled in, such as when Carlo gets upset he can't drink in America during the 20s.