'mother night' is his masterpiece, imo. reread it a couple years ago and it holds up really well.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 23 February 2012 06:26 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah J.D., I see how you could say that. It just didn't do it for me as much. I suppose I look to Vonnegut for humor, that voice of his, bizarre plot contrivances / sci-fi play, and the later metafictional stuff and incorporation of autobiography (Vonnegut as a character). I shouldn't fault Mother Night for lacking those things ... but ...
― Romeo Jones, Thursday, 23 February 2012 06:37 (twelve years ago) link
Will start Victor Serge today.
I circled Mailer's Harlot's Ghost yesterday but...
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 February 2012 10:56 (twelve years ago) link
Memoirs of a REvolutionary could be the book to get me over the block I have at the mo'!
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 23 February 2012 11:51 (twelve years ago) link
re-reading Updike's "Rabbit, Run" atm. i also got a lend of a couple of books by a writer called maurice walsh. hes the guy that wrote 'the quiet man'. they look quite pulpy, tales of derring-do and so on but apparently he was one of hemingway's favourite writers! will definitely read them soon, im intrigued
― Michael B Higgins (Michael B), Thursday, 23 February 2012 16:58 (twelve years ago) link
Gave up on "Tau Zero" by Poul Anderson, too much description of space ships and late '60's boring people.
Reading, "Venus Plus X" by Theodore Sturgeon, liking it.
Also, found an old book at work called "English madness: ideas on insanity 1580-1890", it's interesting.
― jel --, Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:04 (twelve years ago) link
hai guys I'm going to read my first Ballard short story this afternoon.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:20 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, I used to collect appropriately moldy books about ideas on insanity,from about 1945-1960 (incl much later debunked, like Three Faces of Eve, and others that should have been). Speaking of writers' influences, you remind me of reading that Edmund Wilson supposedly got his college colleague Scott Fitzgerald past an attachment to the works of Booth Tarkington, whom I only know from his kid books, Penrod, Penrod and Sam etc, but he also wrote The Magnificent Ambersons. Can see from the movie how Fitzgerald might've been encouraged to focus on rich people struggling to adapt,which became the arc for all his main characters. Anybody read TMA?
― dow, Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:22 (twelve years ago) link
Tarkington is much better than Wilson suggests. The Basil sequence – some of Fitz's best short fiction – bore heavy traces of Penrod.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:44 (twelve years ago) link
It's been a while since I've read the Wilson-Fitzgerald letters but he doesn't dismiss Tarkington so much as want to steer "Scott" towards Adult Books.
Adult Books?! Wanted Scott to get his F. on/off?
― dow, Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:47 (twelve years ago) link
he didn't understandThomas Mann
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:49 (twelve years ago) link
Hey Jude, why so Obscure? Alao thinking of Graham Greene writing that he wanted to try thrillers, but after WWI couldn't take the Imperial patriotism of Richard Buchan etc seriously. Then he discovered Michael Innes's absurdist holiday fiction. Holiday from being academic and mainstream novelist J.I.M. Stewart, as MI writing "entertainments", also of course GG's term and arrangement, though I don't know Innes/Stewart's books compare? (Pynchon mentioned Helen MacInnes as an influence, haven't read her either--can see how he was influenced by Oakley Hall's Warlock though)
― dow, Thursday, 23 February 2012 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
( Hardy har har--I'd think he might've dug Buddenbrooks, if he did like The Magnificent Ambersons, but I guess Mann didn't have a Penrod)
― dow, Thursday, 23 February 2012 20:01 (twelve years ago) link
Alex Preston, THE REVELATIONS
― the pinefox, Thursday, 23 February 2012 22:05 (twelve years ago) link
struggling through both the flame alphabet and daniel deronda now, the former because it's too dry and icky, the latter just because it's loooooong
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 23 February 2012 22:09 (twelve years ago) link
Tarkington's Penrod and Penrod & Sam are great (and so is Seventeen, in some ways the ultimate book about being a nerdy teenaged boy with a hopeless crush on a beautiful but empty-headed girl), and must surely have been a huge influence on the William books I grew up on (they both even feature the disgusting "licorice water")
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Thursday, 23 February 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
Oh yeah...now that you mention it, I remember at least seeing Seventeen, have to look into Tarkington again--who wrote the William books??
― dow, Friday, 24 February 2012 02:03 (twelve years ago) link
Daniel Deronda bogs down when Deronda searches for his heritage.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 February 2012 02:03 (twelve years ago) link
(also wonder about Edna Ferber, having long been hooked on the big screen version of Giant)
― dow, Friday, 24 February 2012 02:04 (twelve years ago) link
William books were by Richmal Crompton
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Friday, 24 February 2012 02:34 (twelve years ago) link
in the middle of piero gleijeses's Shattered Hope about the guatemalan revolution. sought it out b/c i read this author for a class once & really liked his writing. this one is also very good.
― rayuela, Friday, 24 February 2012 17:07 (twelve years ago) link
Åsne Seierstad - With Their Backs To The World. A portrait of Serbia in the first half of the last decade via interviews with various folk, some famous, others not. The level of paranoia is kind of shock, how everything is explained by the US seeking to colonise the place, steal its resources, monopolise control of this important trade route, etc. Do people still think this? Not much evidence for it latterly, to my knowledge.
The book's good. I don't know a great deal about the country, but I'm always interested.
― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, February 14, 2012 12:38 PM (1 week ago)
I was interested by your description, so I tracked down a copy and finished it earlier today. I've never been to the former Yugoslavia (I want to go), so it's hard for me to judge the quality of the reporting. Sitting here in Canada, I get the sense that some of the attitudes in the book have changed whereas others haven't. Serbia's EU candidacy indicates much less paranoia towards the West. But I was reading earlier about reactions in Belgrade to Angelina Jolie's movie about Bosnia, from which it appears that many Serbs still feel that Serbia has been unjustly singled out for international condemnation. I'd be interested to know what Serb readers thought.
My favourite detail was that of the old farmer insisting that The Last Supper actually depicts Tsar Lazar.
― Träumerei, Friday, 24 February 2012 22:32 (twelve years ago) link
That was very strange. But then it is just a picture of a dozen guys, whatever Leonardo titled it, so why not?! It is a fascinating hint at the layers of meaning in play there though.
I've been reading about the EU candidacy this week too. They don't seem to be very far on, though it is progress of sorts. I really want Serbia in, rather than staying the sore thumb of Europe. The madness has been festering too long.
(I sent you a mail btw, don't know if you picked it up. It's superseded now anyway. Not sure I'd've shipped to Canada anyway tbh)
― Ismael Klata, Friday, 24 February 2012 22:48 (twelve years ago) link
I got your email but deleted it by accident. ;) I tried messaging you back via ILX-mail, but that may not have worked. It was a generous idea, though! Thank you!
― Träumerei, Saturday, 25 February 2012 02:15 (twelve years ago) link
I'm reading something similar now, Robert Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. Much of it is basically a highlight reel of the bloodiest moments in Eastern European history, but I'm impressed by the chapters dealing with Romania. Kaplan seems to have been one of the first Americans to visit the Danube delta after the 1989 revolution. He's also adding exorbitantly to my reading list: next is going to have to be John Reed's The War in Eastern Europe.
Still, it feels kind of like a diminished sequel to Rebecca West's book. She responded with a much fuller set of sensibilities.
― Träumerei, Monday, 27 February 2012 17:36 (twelve years ago) link
I finished Frankenstein, harboring a secret conviction that on some level Mary Shelley was trying to talk about the French Revolution.
Now I have begun to read Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the Penguin edition translated by Hatto.
― Aimless, Monday, 27 February 2012 18:52 (twelve years ago) link
Ismael K sent me Englischer Fussball by Raphael Honigstein! Apart from it being nice to get a book through the post from an ILB-er, this was also very good. Honigstein plays up a sexualised understanding of English football via muscular Christianity, and although he over-eggs the pudding sometimes, milking relatively innocuous phrases for all they're worth, generally it's quite a well-held approach. He's excellent on the territorial nature of English football (corners being cheered for example)
As IK says, much of the book's appeal comes from it being a foreigner's view of the English. Sometimes he seems uncertain about whether the traits he's describing are good ones or bad ones (there's a glib bit where he says 'yes, it's good they're getting rid of racist & homophobic chanting, but if we overdo this then what about the atmosphere?'), and I could wish for a bit more pushing through with arguments sometimes.
A chapter Music, Fashion, Football is the worst in the book, I think, with some very trite cliches, and to my mind he's just wrong on Beckham, who always seemed to work incredibly hard for his teams (but yes, couldn't carry the expectations of a nation, obviously really). But chapters on the press, on bung culture, Jimmy Hill, German v England are all excellent ( of different understanding of the war and fans singing 'Ten German Bombers' - 'our visitors had still not grasped the true nature of post-war Germany: we are grateful that we lost the war').
You were asking, Ismael, whether there are any similar 'through a foreigner's eyes' using football as their lens? I don't know! There's probably a few cricket ones (or at least chapters of biographies maybe). But not sure would about football. Wd also be interested to hear of any.
So, thanks! Let me know how I can get it back to you.
Have started Capital by John Lanchester. I'm finding it quite annoying in lots of little mainly stylistic ways, which is making it hard to get into (there's a bit in the prologue where he repeats a bit about basement conversions and builders as if he hadn't said exactly the same thing just two pages earlier - really weird).
― Fizzles, Monday, 27 February 2012 22:00 (twelve years ago) link
Glad you liked it. No need to send it back to me - you can pass it on to another ILBer if anyone expresses an interest, that'd be nice.
The Jimmy Hill chapter was amazing! I always thought of him as a kind of hateful buffoon, rather than this incredibly progressive (if now rather old-fashioned) character we learn about here.
I've read a few things recently about hooliganism & fashion, which I find fascinating and have even been considering for its own thread, because I still dress like that, basically. I quite appreciated the chapter for delving back a bit farther than the Tacchini-and-samba look, but agree it wasn't particularly convincing. The problem is, the sources themselves invite a bit of ridicule when you're quoting Robert Elms as gospel; and taking it back to the source, the original 1983 Face piece by Kevin Sampson is itself trite as anything. Though the companion London piece is better - just check out the '83 prices, I reckon you could kit yourself out in the same gear cheaper today, amazing.
― Ismael Klata, Monday, 27 February 2012 22:25 (twelve years ago) link
how could anyone think Jimmy Hill was a hateful buffoon?
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 11:06 (twelve years ago) link
I never found him hateful, but he did start getting a little odd on Jimmy Hill's Sunday Supplement, although I found his oddness more appealing than some of the rather knowing hungover-looking hacks (Paul McCarthy!) that appear on there.
I knew about his minimum wage stuff, but not about some of the things that must have looked rather more eccentric at the time - like all-seater stadiums.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 28 February 2012 11:20 (twelve years ago) link
Just finished Huysmans' Against Nature (the Oxford Classics edition, trans. Margaret Mauldon), the first novel(la...) I've seen through to the end in I-can't-remember-how-long. Great stuff! Don't have anything to compare it against, but Mauldon's prose is lively and frequently hilarious—the opening of chapter 5 ("As his urge to sequester himself from a loathsome age of shameful duplicity intensified...") has become a permanent fixture of my internal monologue.
― Despite all my cheek, I am still just a freak on a leash (bernard snowy), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 13:51 (twelve years ago) link
gave up on the flame alphabet (probably for good) and daniel deronda (might go back to it), now reading the john sayles novel moment in the sun, which is good so far.
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 21:23 (twelve years ago) link
jules renard's journal. it is great.
― j., Tuesday, 28 February 2012 21:27 (twelve years ago) link
now reading the john sayles novel moment in the sun, which is good so far.
oh hey, this sounds good. hadn't heard of it until now.
i'm a quarter of the way through midnight's children and it's just starting to get rolling with the main plot, but i've been enjoying the unhurried setup (and it's funny how he's got the narrator's wife as the audience proxy, always requiring justifications for why the story is moving so slowly).
― 40oz of tears (Jordan), Tuesday, 28 February 2012 21:33 (twelve years ago) link
The Sayles is good. Not sure it needs to be as long as it is--it seems to start and later stop at reasonably arbitrary points, and could probably have ended just as easily 400 pages earlier or later than it does--but it's consistently entertaining along the way.
n/a, have you seen the massive online annotations McSweeney's have put up--millions of fascinating photos following the book's plot: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/books/amomentinthesun/bonus
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Wednesday, 29 February 2012 00:01 (twelve years ago) link
Sleeping Beauty - Elizabeth Taylor. One of her more poetic, less naturalistic ones. On the whole I tend to like these less but this is still very fine.
― waldolydecker, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 12:59 (twelve years ago) link
This new John Lanchester really isn't very good. It's fairly consistently off.
Of the contents of a newsagent:
the fridge full of soft drinks and the adjacent fridge of alcohol, and the bottles of Ribena and orange squash, and the credit card machine and the Transport for London card-charging device and the Lottery terminal
Yeah I'll just top up my Transport for London card on the Transport for London card-charging device? And it's an accumulation of minor things like, which constantly undermine my faith in his sense of the material furniture of his book. He handles this sort of thing quite well in his essays, but it's a bit of a bodge here.
It's also really really boring. Following characters with rather wobbly voices around the street they live on, all delivered in a lumpen and laborious prose. The info he wants to impart is getting through, but the tone, and the matter, is just... well, as I say, it's boring.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 13:28 (twelve years ago) link
...of minor things like that
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 13:30 (twelve years ago) link
Finished West's The Return of the Soldier in record time. The definition of a good minor novel.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 29 February 2012 14:58 (twelve years ago) link
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Tuesday, February 28, 2012 6:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
woah, i had not seen this! it's insane - thanks
― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, 29 February 2012 15:14 (twelve years ago) link
Another new character! Another one! Laboriously hoving into view with the onset of another tediously quotidian chapter. Good Lord.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 17:45 (twelve years ago) link
If pressed, on the basis of appearances, Petunia (ffs) would have put his age at about seventeen, though she supposed he must be thirty or so.
No. "17" is the frivolous response, "thirty or so" the that would be ellicited by pressing.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 17:53 (twelve years ago) link
can someone explain 'a moment in the sun' to me
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Wednesday, 29 February 2012 18:12 (twelve years ago) link
And wd it hurt to put the ł in for Polish words like kiełbasa & Michał? Maybe, don't know. Looks slightly odd without it. Problem verging on the lunatic edge of pickiness I realise, but something about this book makes me want to pick pick pick away. post.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 18:21 (twelve years ago) link
It is the same urge that I get when I see a sweater covered with pills and bits of lint.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 18:44 (twelve years ago) link
That's it! And when you spot one bit, well that's it. Every single speck needs attending to.
Don't know what that 'post' is doing there, oh right, xpost. Thought I'd expressed what was only supposed to be a mental command.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 18:48 (twelve years ago) link
As in what it's about? In a nutshell, it's about the era when the US first decided to mess around on the international stage (war with Spain in Cuba, the Phillipines) at the same time as massive internal changes were going on (aftermath of abolition of slavery, gold rushes, technological developments) told through a whole bunch of different characters over 1000 pages
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Wednesday, 29 February 2012 23:02 (twelve years ago) link
Reading some great Angela Carter short stories. I particularly like the stories of 4-year-old Lizzie Borden and the rewriting of Jacobean playwright John Ford's "'Tis Pity She's a Whore" as a western by film director John Ford
― Not only dermatologists hate her (James Morrison), Wednesday, 29 February 2012 23:03 (twelve years ago) link
tbh fizzles I noticed you were reading it & wasn't quite sure why – don't think of solid middle-aged male british contemporary novelists (lanchester • hollinghurst • hensher) as up your alley. Was it Whoops! that turned your head? I really liked it, but was still sus of him as fiction writer, I guess.
The 'Transport for London card' thing is very strange. He *can't* have written that in the first place, so maybe an editor or early reader suggested that people outside London won't know what an Oyster Card is? But then 'travel card' if you have to give in on that. Want to know now, might try to get his email, pester him about it.
I think I agree on dark l… we're close to naturalising kielbasa maybe, but yeah with names, make the effort.
Reading the Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin. Really liked the first part (Bro), finding the second book (Ice) to be a lot less engaging. Got Babylon by Victor Pelevin lined up for afterwards.
― woof, Thursday, 1 March 2012 09:23 (twelve years ago) link