This is the kind of reportage I like. Agree with pinefox's point tho
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 12:43 (two years ago) link
A Far Side cartoon of Wilbur Smith's Shelf, hewn from jungle vines with a machete, with animal skulls used as bookends.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 12:59 (two years ago) link
I feel like the kind of people who read Wilbur Smith still insist on calling Zimbabwe "Rhodesia"
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:10 (two years ago) link
Yes, the pinefox otm. Thread would have been pretty short if we had only stuck to Type I Obscurity though, so mentally opened the gates to those other barbarians pretty quickly.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:12 (two years ago) link
eBooks of works in the public domain are probably having an impact. I was pleased to discover that the Project Gutenberg website maintains lists of most frequently viewed/downloaded works (https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top) and books sorted by popularity (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=downloads).
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:12 (two years ago) link
Starting to come around on J. F. Powers after seeing this:https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-saint-with-a-bad-temper-j-f-powers-company/
Born in 1917, James Farl Powers in mid-life won the 1963 National Book Award for his first novel, Morte d’Urban, which Gore Vidal and his fellow judges found worthier than either of that year’s other leading contenders, Pale Fire or Ship of Fools. Nabokov’s masterpiece was “over-elaborate academic funning” compared to Lolita, as Vidal saw it, while Katherine Anne Porter’s best-seller had already been quite grandly, if not excessively, celebrated. Even Porter agreed with the verdict
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:14 (two years ago) link
We should start a thread on great short story writers whose novels suck, for Ship of Fools would land in the top five.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:16 (two years ago) link
Go ahead!
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:18 (two years ago) link
That bbc article CaAL linked to is quite good and contains this interesting pull quote:
Unlike musicians or filmmakers, authors can vanish completely – Christopher Fowler
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:20 (two years ago) link
people keep recommending that i read mervyn peake. as well as peter curren brown, whose sole novel "smallcreep's day" was the inspiration for mike rutherford's solo concept album...
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:28 (two years ago) link
I own Smallcreep's Day but never finished it, it's pretty heavy-handed allegory imo
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:33 (two years ago) link
At some point I am actually going to back and talk about Wilfrid Sheed if I can manage
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:59 (two years ago) link
wilbur smith sold his name to his publisher around 10 years ago so I expect he was still selling well then.https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdnwzb/wilbur-smith-gavin-haynes-sleepless-nights
― formerly abanana (dat), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:01 (two years ago) link
legit "wow"
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:10 (two years ago) link
I read a lot of Jack Higgins, Alastair McLean, Frederick Forsyth etc as a kid and even then I thought Wilbur Smith was terrible
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:11 (two years ago) link
Wonder if a good way to come up with lists of writers no one reads would be to dig up old sales figures from past decades (something that's equivalent to the pop charts).
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:20 (two years ago) link
Bernard DeVoto's granddaughter is a friend of mine. His wife was also an interesting person - Julia Child's best friend.
Approximately a century ago I went to Virginia Commonwealth University, where the library (and several other things) are named after James Branch Cabell. I tried to read him but fell asleep on or about page 4.
Fun fact: apparently his name is supposed to rhyme with "rabble," not "cab bell" or "cable."
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:26 (two years ago) link
My favorite fact from Mervyn Peake's Wikipedia entry:
Peake designed the logo for Pan Books. The publishers offered him either a flat fee of £10 or a royalty of one farthing per book. On the advice of Graham Greene, who told him that paperback books were a passing fad that would not last, Peake opted for the £10.
Trying to calculate what his eventual income would have been had he chosen the farthing.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:28 (two years ago) link
Thread delivers, thanks YMP!
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:31 (two years ago) link
Winston Churchill (not that one) definitely belongs in this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(novelist)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:32 (two years ago) link
Heh, just noticed that Wallace Stegner wrote a biography of Bernard DeVoto.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:47 (two years ago) link
Any relation to Howard Devoto?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:01 (two years ago) link
hi there
https://i.imgur.com/95GTVBZ.jpg
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:02 (two years ago) link
bernard is where howard d got the name from -- a book he read as a student i think
(his birth surname is trafford)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:03 (two years ago) link
I can confidently report that Bernard DeVoto is NOT related to Howard DeVoto of the Buzzcocks (which is, alas, a pseudonym).
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:03 (two years ago) link
lol xp
Any relation to Howard Devoto?― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, September 27, 2022 1:01 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:05 (two years ago) link
"I definitely don't remember this happening."
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:08 (two years ago) link
I can't find an confimation of mark's explanation, much as I want to believe.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:37 (two years ago) link
a or any
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:40 (two years ago) link
I wonder if Harry Styles has given Brautigan a slight bump in popularity.
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:42 (two years ago) link
Have read, and enjoyed, Snow's Strangers and Brothers series (under the influence of Burgess' 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939). Not great literature, but I intend to return and re-read a couple volumes at some point.
Ronald Firbank probably belongs here? (The Flower Beneath the Foot: Being a Record of the Early Life of St. Laura de Nazianzi was a good read for me last year)
― bulb after bulb, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:53 (two years ago) link
Disappointed by the new thread title*
*Please don't change it.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:07 (two years ago) link
Wrong thread!
https://wikimili.com/en/Buzzcocks#cite_note-14:↑ Some sources claim that the surname came from a "bus driver in Cambridge" mentioned by a philosophy tutor at Bolton (e.g. Dave Wilson, 2004, Rock Formations: Categorical Answers to how Band Names Were Formed, San Jose:, Cidermill Books, pp. 38–9). Other accounts link it to US novelist Bernard DeVoto. (See, for example, Adrian Room, 2010, Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed., Jefferson, North Carolina/London, McFarland & Company, pp. 38, 144.
i mean it's possible it's the "bus driver in cambridge" mentioned by the "philosophy tutor at bolton" (maybe it was a trolley not a bus)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:08 (two years ago) link
that's not where i read it btw (but my music books are all in boxes and anyway probably i remember it from being a clean teen slate reading the inkies in 1977)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:10 (two years ago) link
i will tentatively add Jocelyn Brooke here, even though i bang on about him a lot, and he didn’t sell *that* much even when he was around. now in the Faber Finds graveyard. But extremely good, especially The Image of a Drawn Sword, and well respected by his peers.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:13 (two years ago) link
And I think Ronald Firbank, while a reasonably well known *name* is v little read these days despite being moderately significant in his connection between fin de siecle aestheticism and subsequent 20th C comic novels.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:17 (two years ago) link
Ronald Firbank may go unread these days, but his offspring Butch Firbanks still looms large in his legend.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:24 (two years ago) link
Hi bulb after bulb that was the series I embarked on the first book of and tbf I could have continued, it just didn't hold me at the time. I'm definitely interested in Snow for historical reasons if nothing else
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:26 (two years ago) link
Does anyone read Ben-Hur or Shepherd of the Hills anymore? Huge in turn of the century US.
― sweating like Cathy *aaaack* (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:28 (two years ago) link
How about The Robe for that matter.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:30 (two years ago) link
Lloyd C. Douglas.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:32 (two years ago) link
What was the name of the guy who wrote Seven Who Fled again? He was in the comeback kid mode around here for a hot minute.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:33 (two years ago) link
The Flower Beneath the Footbulb after bulbThe Flower Beneath the Footbulb after bulb*please don't change itThe Flower Beneath the Footbulb after bulb
― dow, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:34 (two years ago) link
Zane Grey? Louis L'amour?
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:34 (two years ago) link
(not answering James's question; just wondering if anyone still reads 'em)
What Are You ReadingThe Flower Beneath The Footbulb after bulb
― dow, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:35 (two years ago) link
Grey L'AmourFall '22bulb after bulb
― dow, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:37 (two years ago) link
James Gould Cozzens.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:40 (two years ago) link