Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novel Of The 1910's

lol how the fuck did Lawrence get on here?

One vote more than the other contenders from that year - Maddox Ford, Maugham, Wodehouse.

I have a certain fondness for A Princess Of Mars but there's no way it should be here either.

ugh Ethan Frome -- we should poll novels that aren't representative of a writer's work.

lol how the fuck did Lawrence get on here?

― Tyler Perry's Cystitis (Noodle Vague),

It's one of the great ones.

Proust, Joyce, My Antonia, Hamsun, or Wharton's Summer for me.

Swann's Way was the finest book of the century, nevermind the decade.

I like the Rilke more than a lot of his poetry.

I'm the opposite -- I've given Malte Laurids Brigge a couple tries.

maybe this is the decade i'll read proust.

my class all loathed the rainbow when we studied it for a-level, i don't care to see if i should revise my opinion. haven't read enough of the others (ethan frome, the secret garden, apotaaaym).

It has laugh-out-loud barmy parts, like all Lawrence, but I found the psychosexual family history cumulatively impressive at the time.

Prefer Women in Love though.

Don't know if I'd like Lawrence. His stories are fine, I kinda get it. Not sure I need anymore.

Locus Solus is the one book I am curious about. But idk I was far more enthusiastic about constraints when younger. Think I'm done with that.

Lawrence - a fat, jittery fraud of a novelist

Frieda agreed tbh

fat, SHIT, jittery fraud, please

Other than the short stories his travel writing's the way to go (Etruscan Places, Sea and Sardinia).

It's amazing how many themes in the Recherche are announced or hinted at just in the overture section of Swann's Way. The goodnight kiss and the madeleine - thousands of pages later he's still essentially preoccupied with these.

fat, SHIT, jittery fraud, please

Tim, nooooo, you are none of those. (Hope you’re doing ok, nice to see you!)

really strong choices here! i went with my antonia. i should look into locus solus.

Was Lawrence fat?!

What makes him a fraud? I just get the sense that his work is sorta dated.

I think he means 'bad' and 'pretentious'. I've only seen the movie of women in love (bad) and Lawrence seems embarrassing to like

Ah ok. Always wanted to see it, did look like a naff little curio

it = the film

Pauline Kael said of Ken Russell's film of Women in Love, "to see this particular movie before reading the book is desecration...it's mad to jeopardize one's vision of it by reading it in terms of the actors and images of the film."

I'm voting for The Rainbow for the reasons I outlined in the 1915 poll; Proust is probably "better" but feels more like an immersive environment than a discreet (set of) books. Also read Joyce and don't really connect.

I remember Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson well-cast...and the nude wrestling scene (in discreet, embarrassed long shot) b/w Bates and Oliver Reed.

It's just a movie about the 60s Edwardian revival fashion. I feel like it's mainly for babysitters with fake accents who wear silk kimonos. I'm sure it's unfair to judge the book based on it but life is unfair.

It's no Eastern Promises, that's for sure (the nude wrestling). Fwiw, I've not read anything beyond Sons & Lovers and didn't find that embarrassing so much as a bit dull. I'm in the pro-Sea & Sardinia camp though. Amazing book.

I found Portrait hard work and, shamefully, haven't read Proust. I'm going to have to sit this one out.

Was Lawrence fat?!

it was a call-back to a classic Darragh football post, obviously fat-shaming is bad

works as a loose metaphor of contempt for Lawrence's hokey purple prose tho

I feel like I remember that he does 'accents' have I made this up?

no he definitely enjoys doing working class ventriloquy

Eef that be to yor loiking ma'am. That sort of thing.

So does M.R. James, tbf.

lol yeah i guess but the w.c. characters aren't exactly central in James

"it was a call-back to a classic Darragh football post, obviously fat-shaming is bad"

Lol

Lawrence was actually working class, though.

Anyway, I'm voting for Locus Solus, despite Joyce being on the list.

I'm fascinated by Roussel, but to be honest I think he's more interesting to read about rather than to actually read. There's a great biography of him by Mark Ford.

I would go so far as to claim Locus Solus as "a fun read". It's all quite intricately expounded upon and plot is mostly irrelevant, but within those bounds it honestly gets sparklingly and frothily fun.

Impressions of Africa is good but I haven't read anything else. I don't know if I would ever re read it though. It's like a fun magic trick.

reflexively voted Cather, one of the best stylists America ever produced

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I really can't vote against Proust.

Uniform praise of an artist is always suspicious, so I will mention my strongly negative, almost physical reaction to Swann's Way this summer. I don't suppose it's possible to be more obsessively full of oneself than Marcel and to offer a less appealing regurgitation to the reader.

I know the contenders were chosen in a flawless democratic process and we're not supposed to do write-ins, but since I have barely read anything in the list (except Joyce), I will mention Petersburg (Bely), Kokoro (Soseki) and Demian (Hesse) as books I've enjoyed from the decade.

reflexively voted Cather, one of the best stylists America ever produced

― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi),

Been saying for years that creative writing classes should teach her instead of Hemingway.

Queen of Plainstyle. Very nearly a modernist stroke. Scrupulously documents the facts and foibles of farming. A trick of fate I had to share. A+

just borrowed the ebook from the library.

The Professor's House, A Lost Lady, Death Comes for the Archbishop, all essential.

Although I love Cather and My Antonia is her most widely read novel (thanks to its inclusion in school curricula) I don't think it's her best novel or even her third best novel. I voted for Joyce's 'Portrait'.

I don't suppose it's possible to be more obsessively full of oneself than Marcel and to offer a less appealing regurgitation to the reader.

Henry Miller to thread.

Was surprised that The Good Soldier wasn’t among the contenders but I guess it went up against Proust.

Embarrassed to have only read one of these, gotta start reading Locus Solus, I bought a copy at the Museum of Jurassic Technology last year.

proust is constantly scoring points off “marcel” imo. book may be more enjoyable if you take a shot every time you’re compelled to say WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU MARCEL. (except during the prisoner when this would be fatal.)

The book is hardly a celebration of "Marcel".

can never remember if ethan frome is the book john cusack bitches about to his former teacher in the film where he plays an assassin going to his high school reunion or if it's the book pacey is supposedly getting help with while hooking up with his high school english teacher in dawsons creek. either way it sounds unpromising.

basically its entire narrative engine insofar as one exists is “so are you going to get it together marcel or what” xp

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

I don't think it's a celebration of Marcel either, but the narrator obviously takes great pleasure in outlining the minutiae of his sentimental and moral wrangling, and other fugitive impressions, seeming to place a lot of value or significance to what he feels and how he feels. And yes, in particular the delectation over dissecting his own failures, or the vapidity of his social circle, all that self-indulgence. I obviously don't get on with the project so my criticism is moot. But I'm still surprised at the universal praise - I struggle to imagine how anybody could be interested in the love story of Swann and Odette, or in the pathos of Marcel's inner life.

I don't suppose it's possible to be more obsessively full of oneself than Marcel and to offer a less appealing regurgitation to the reader.
Henry Miller to thread.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, November 29, 2023 8:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Sustained.

I obviously don't get on with the project so my criticism is moot. But I'm still surprised at the universal praise - I struggle to imagine how anybody could be interested in the love story of Swann and Odette, or in the pathos of Marcel's inner life.

― Nabozo, Thursday, 30 November 2023 bookmarkflaglink

What's fiction if not an expansion of imaginative possibilities.

Embrace it.

You are hardly the first person who says Proust is self-indulgent. Don't worry about it.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novel Of The 1920's

Really not feeling My Antonia. Is there another novel where the title character appears even less than in this one? It should be called MYSELF (with occasional Antonia). Ok, that is not a substantive criticism. I also felt last night it was rather surface level, we don't get deep into any characters thoughts or feelings - fair enough, it's a) a first person novel which makes examining other characters thoughts tricky and ii) so what, not every novel has to be one of great psychological complexity. But it's just not speaking to me.

Cather’s heroines generally don’t spend a lot of time ruminating. They are people of action.

Proust's narrator ("...my name, if it were the same as the author of this book, would be Marcel") is certainly a character in every sense of the word: wotta guy, and yeah we're cordially invited to enjoy his foibles as such, on yet another stroll, for as long as we can take it (he'll continue past that, making the rounds with an increasing load of notebooks in his luggage, long after his peers have settled down to a degree, with jobs and shit).
But at any time over the years, his self-observation can pay off via magic lantern projections through the outer world: for instance, when very young, he finally gets to see a performance by an actress who's all the rage among his pals---and is taken aback by her drab appearance and demeanor. Giving her another chance, he not only gets it, but gets why he didn't get it the first time.
Also, he likes to read about science, and sees, at an appropriate distance, two men having sex as insects mating, the ballet of nature's way.
Also, we get the gang of girls, and the emblematic piano phrase, and antisemitism (French: the Dreyfuss Affair keeps coming back; German: the Germans keep coming back), and way too much about what one of his translators refers to as "the desert of society," although actual deserts are more sustaining.
Also, for a straight character, he sure has a lot to say about teh gay. The best (or most entertaining) of it being that, in or out of high society and other places, Charlus is always worth waiting for, wearing the years as he does.
Although Swann is based on someone the author knew, he's also a self-projection, a could-have-been of author and narrator, if they had no great artistic project, just moseying through society with that private income and equally reliable charm---but then, for a while, he's In Love, and things get pretty amazing, I think: just the freshness, as envisioned, of senses working overtime/at all---he has a calling.
But yall know all that, whether you care or not; I just had to type it.

making the rounds with an increasing load of notebooks in his luggage

until he trips over the sidewalk and achieves enlightenment he barely writes a thing tho-- running joke about the little piece about riding in "dr. percepied's carriage" he wrote when a literal child and is always rediscovering or rereading or punching up and trying to get into le figaro, instead of moving on. (the piece is about watching the steeples of three different churches align in parallax: a metaphor for metaphor.)

he's also a self-projection, a could-have-been of author and narrator

otm he is like entangled with the narrator in a marvelous psychedelic way, confused with him at the level of dreams-within-dreams ("like certain novelists, he had divided his personality between two characters"), foreshadowing his whole life and then separating from it, the steeple of another church. (a synagogue!) part of a very gradually dawning suspicion that the self is the other and the other the self, turning the book's whole solipsistic project inside-out (like gossip, which "offers us an unsuspected corner of the reverse side of the fabric", or lying, which "opens windows")

speaking of lying

for a straight character

honestly as the novel goes along you get the feeling there are things he's not telling you. for a while in the grimmest section he develops a habit of asking toothsomely pubescent messenger girls up to his boudoir. really? messenger girls?

Yeah, and I think it was Gide and another of MP's gay colleagues who said that the gang of girls and other girls in there couldn't have run around so freely, that daughters of respectable French families of that era were kept on a shorter leash, that these must have been boys---dunno about that (the gang was out and about for long summer afternoons in a respectable resort town, not partying non-stop in Paree etc). Also one of the translators said that the narrator's respectable parents wouldn't have let him move Albertine into their respectable apartment (were Mom and Dad living there too? Paying the rent either way.)
But in any case, I gather from quotes that the quthor thought, plausibly enough it seems, that the narrator couldn't be with Albert(ine) and Gilbert(ine) and get published---at least, not by a respectable, reviewable publisher.

But I think Proust and the narrator rise to the imaginative challenge of this displacement. They do understand and feel the appeal of girls, to certain rich, lifetime-adolescent, questing collector-types anyway (and Colette said that, in their first encounter, she found herself being followed from room to room in a house party, by a boy with remarkable eyelashes, while she was dressed as a boy, in uniform--reminding me of that portrait of Odette.)

oh man the passage about the portrait of odette as a boy is one of the most unmooredly beautiful in the entire book, partly because its subject isn't revealed until the end of the scene and elstir's strange embarrassed don't-tell-my-wife reaction to the narrator's unearthing it always has me wrongly guessing at first that it's a self-portrait, a feminine elstir rather than a masculine odette

book is def full of authentic het feeling and his silly raptures over his fantasy gang of meangirls whose perceived personalities he keeps discovering he's projected on them have often have me feeling pretty seen tbh; i was just quibbling w straight

any kind of displacement is obv only fuel for this book yeah

*have often had

watching the steeples of three different churches align in parallax: a metaphor for metaphor.

Nice, I love this

"Dr. Percepied's Carriage" is my fave track on nuggets

i was just quibbling w straight

As a gay man reading the novel for the last 30 years (I reread The Fugitive or whatever the latest translation calls it a few months ago) I noted how my experiences affect how Proust shades and obscures the sexuality. I used to laugh at what I thought was the way too reductive reading of Odette-as-boy or Albertine-as-young-male-trick, but given what you read in, say, a period Gide novel the freedoms allowed to Albertine and her posse the way Marcel obsesses over banal details of her liberties -- the liberties only a man could've taken in pre-Great War France -- they only make sense with the gender reversal.

I should note, the Swann-Odette affair makes more "straight" sense than the Marcel-Albertine one.

The narrator-Albertine-in-apartment thing drove me up a wall--such a claustrophobic, musty reduction and rehash of Swann In Love, and according to Penguin Modern translators' notes, *not* part of the original plan for Recherche---what the hell, Marcel? And after all that, the narrator's like, "eh, so what. Next concern."

*not* part of the original plan for Recherche

The tale grew in the telling

I recommend Malcolm Bowie's piece "Proust, jealousy, knowledge" for a really good discussion on The Prisoner. He thinks that the theme of jealousy operates as a kind of shadow or opposite to the theme of involuntary memory. You can see the book as growing out of these opposing notions of knowledge; again, back to the goodnight kiss and the madeleine. I don't quite see the narrator's jealousy of Albertine as a rehash of the Swann/Odette narrative. To me there's a strange sense of inevitability about it - the earlier story is almost like a curse that the narrator can't escape. The same patterns keep repeating. (You can also ask retrospectively, how much of the Swann/Odette narrative is the narrator's reconstruction following his experience in the Albertine saga?)

It is conspicuous how little thought he seems to give Albertine in the final volume, though she does have a lingering presence in the closing pages; a loose thread that seems to slip out of his grand theorizing.