Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1929

big field this, first instinct is Faulkner but

Pretty amazing year, this - had to fight quite hard to keep some more obscure/genre based stuff in there with the amount of Big Beasts about.

Can't imagine Magnificent Obsession or Grand Hotel are better than their films.

Had just read about Takiji Kobayashi in the liner notes to an Ishiro Honda blu ray, as an example of a leftist writer who got fucked when Japanese imperialism really got going.

Some Prefer Nettles is my go-to when recommending ppl Japanese literature - it's a short, funny book about negotiating the duality of being a westernized Japanese person. It's a toss up between that and Passing by Nella Larsen, which is similairly twisted in its eroticism, but the main character from Passing, a woman entirely unapologetic about her light skin giving her access to white spaces, has stuck with me more, so I'm voting Larsen. Not that I expect either of those to win.

i like Tanezaki a lot but haven't read a lot of his work including this

just notice Pather Panchali in there, god the number of great films made from this lot alone is an eyebrow raiser

Ironically the film version of Les Enfants Terribles didn't really work (largely due to Cocteau insisting Melville cast his strapping young partner as the consumptive co-lead character).

Easily the most I've read of any of these polls so far. I would say that Tanizaki is a good starting point.

Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanezaki
The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin
Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau
Living by Henry Green
A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes
The Sound & The Fury by William Faulkner

Going for Henry Green.

Same. I prefer other Faulkner. Almost chose A High Wind In Jamaica.

I finished The Last September two weeks ago, the only disappointing Bowen I've read.

Hovered over A High Wind in Jamaica but ultimately went for The Sound and The Fury. What a list, though!

Yikes what a list! Has to be Remarque for me, though I feel like I'm cheating Henry Green.

this list is loaded

I haven't read the Hemingway, Faulkner, or Wolfe books in decades, but I remember them well ... I'm going to ensure that Wolfe gets at least one vote

Red Harvest is an great hardboiled crime novel, better than its many quasi-adaptations (Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, etc.).

There are some strong Golden Age mysteries in the list, but Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case stands out, with six narrators offering six different solutions ... I believe Borges translated it at least once

Ha, despite all the heavy-hitters, I haven't read any of these! I thought maybe I would've been made to read the Remarque at school, but I'm going through my memory banks and I'm pretty sure I haven't read it. I think I might have the film of Pather Panchali somewhere but I haven't even watched it iirc. A list of failure on my part.

Also:The Escaped Cock by D.H. Lawrence, weyyyyy lad

I've read eight of these, including two in the past few months. After a bit of thought, I'm voting for Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, because it made a deep enough impression to stick with me after nearly 50 years. I can't say the same for A Farewell to Arms, which I also read around that time.

Voted Berlin Alexanderplatz, which I read in school as preparation for watching the series, which I ended up thinking didn't live up to the book. On another thread they were talking about a new translation, but the one I read was contemporary

Also read Cocteau, who (just like his films) I found enigmatic at best, and Faulkner. The conceit that The Sound and the Fury is being narrated by a non-verbal person is, sorry, really silly and leads to all kinds of illogical twists to try and tell the story, like having other characters react to the narrator's physical outbursts, which he doesn't report because he can't speak, although somehow he is describing everything else that is going on?? I am perhaps also prejudiced by a professor dismissing Faulkner's oeuvre: "he takes everyone in a Mississippi county and turns them into Jesus".

My favorite part of The Sound and the Fury is the middle part that's narrated by Quentin, but the Benjy parts worked for me as well. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that Benjy understands more than he can say, and I don't think of his narration as him describing things, exactly, since there's no conceit that he's writing this or telling it to someone. It's just a regular old first-person POV, but limited to the things he understands and leaving out the things he doesn't.

I am perhaps prejudiced by having taken an entire class on Faulkner from a wonderful professor who had made Faulkner his life's work and looked just like him. (Also he had a twin brother who was also a Faulkner scholar.)

Passing is a great, spare novel. Sound and the Fury is...extra...will probs vote for Light in August when it comes up.

Would like to read the Tanezaki; great title!

Passing is a great, spare novel. Sound and the Fury is...extra...will probs vote for Light in August when it comes up.

Would like to read the Tanezaki; great title!

Sorry to post twice!

second post by Pierre Menard

Author of The Fury

I read most of these during the Depression---there wasn't much else to do---but the one that elbows its way to the front of the memory bread line is Red Harvest. Right or wrong, that's just the way it is.

Had the same experience as 'Halfway', reading Berlin Alexanderplatz before seeing the series - I did enjoy the series just as much though. Voting for this. Ashamed to say I once started this Faulkner but never finished it.

The limited budget of the series was a problem - I remember about half of it being set in the same bar, like Cheers gone Nazi. Also the last episode is more like Fassbinder's exegesis on the themes and subtexts of the novel than an actual wrap-up, a bold move that only half-works.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

It's gotta be the Macbeth riff.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I really need to read the de Sainte Exupery cos I've been meaning to for a while I think I half read one of the mail pilot books a while back.
Saw a film about him too.

I really love Night Flight but haven't read this one. I think I bought it in French once but then was too lazy to actually read it.

escaped cock stan reveal thyself

I missed this one, but probably would have voted for The Good Companions. It’s really interesting view into a vanishing world, vanishing even in 1929.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1930