'I FALL upon the spines of books! I read!' -- Autumn 2014: What Are You Reading?

Awesome description

I didn't realise Penguin was reissuing all of the Maigret novels. May have to collect em all.

I saw that they're putting out a non-Maigret Simenon in January, too, not sure if they have any more planned beyond that but between them and NYRB it's exciting to have all this stuff in print.

Just read Alberto Moravia's terrific Two Women. This book should be better known I think.

just read John Fowles' 'notes on an unfinished novel' (1969). Striking in a way how he, in Existentialist vein, seems far from us - alien and different in a way eg Tom McCarthy would like to be? (A tentative thought.)

On my hazy recollection of The Magus, The Collector, and The French Lieutenant's Woman he does seem of his time (though not derivative) in a way that I don't think is true of, say, Ann Quin--but I think that's a different kind of distance than you suggest.

james please remind me of an interesting thing you've ever said about anything

Let me get back to you on that

*crickets*

*wind through the trees*

*lonesome whistle whine*

plowing through every Penelope Fitzgerald novel.

*paint dries*

*grass grows*

I'm afraid I can't think of anything, thomp. I guess you win.

Please place your next aperçu here:_______________________________________________________

Ah, forget it.

Alfred, which have you read so far?

Also, do you know about her book The Knox Brothers, about her father and uncles?

Picked up the Archipelago translation of Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu on the recommendation of friend recently. Up there with the best things I've read this year.

Archipelago is one of the small presses I'm most inclined to trust; I still need to read Blinding.

thinking also, if A GIRL etc was written straightforwardly it would seem banal
but written as it is, it seems literary and impressive

trying to figure that out, I mean is it that the style lifts the banal subject matter?
is the style really enough?
is the style that good anyway? It's derivative, of Joyce, but not identical to him and more relentless than anything in Ulysses because longer as a whole than any episode of Ulysses.
It is as much like Finnegans Wake at times, in its rhythm and flavour, though more evidently referential I suppose.

Picked up the Archipelago translation of Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu on the recommendation of friend recently. Up there with the best things I've read this year.

― finn_the_scot, Monday, 1 December 2014 21:30 (26 minutes ago) Permalink

Archipelago is one of the small presses I'm most inclined to trust; I still need to read Blinding.

― one way street, Monday, 1 December 2014 21:34 (23 minutes ago) Permalink

I am just about to start on the Von Kleist volume on that same press! I was looking through a list of what's on it and googling some authors, gotta say its a solid collection of German authors and did notice they have people from countries that are poorly represented in other presses (like Romania) although I don't know, reviews of Blinding didn't make it sound too appealing. The one thing I felt like hunting down was Diaries of Exile and the Duras novel.

The Bookshop, Human Voices, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower. I don't get the fuss about the last; I preferred the first two titles.

Appealing take on Fitzgerald's life & works, as he reads new bio, maybe re-reads her books:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/late-bloom

Hollinghurst wrote a nice review in the NYROB too.

I am just about to start on the Von Kleist volume on that same press! I was looking through a list of what's on it and googling some authors, gotta say its a solid collection of German authors and did notice they have people from countries that are poorly represented in other presses (like Romania) although I don't know, reviews of Blinding didn't make it sound too appealing. The one thing I felt like hunting down was Diaries of Exile and the Duras novel.

I love their edition of Büchner's Lenz (a bilingual edition including source materials by Goethe and Pastor Oberlin) and enjoyed their recent collection of Tsevetaena's poetry; they also have some solid Mahmoud Darwish translations, and I like Knausgaard's My Struggle more than most of the ILB regulars (at least judging from the dedicated Knausgaard thread).

The Kleist volume also has a judicious selection of texts, from what I recall--you may be more sensitive to the nuances of that particular set of translations.

Damn yes I forgot that ed. of Tsvetaeva's poetry. Got to read her prose and love it. w/Mandelstam (both of them) they come across so expressively in English.

Not too sold on Knausgaard, but I'll read it when the whole thing is translated (after all its v easy and won't take long).

I love Lenz as well (different translation, sure Sieburth is superior). iirc Rilke's essay on Rodin was wonderful too.

I'll look out for Darwish.

Anyone read Matthew Josephson? I finished his magisterial account of the Gilded Age. Minus: he doesn't discuss the plight of the freedmen much.

Amazing, will have to check. Also, think I'll re-read Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow.

great book, that1

Fizzles, I have just finished THE GIFT OF STONES. It's only a short novel - you'd knock it off in a day. I think it is quite good. It is about the TWILIGHT OF THE STONE AGE.

― the pinefox, Friday, November 28, 2014 7:31 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks pinefox. i looked it up in the library the other day and nearly got it out. instead got The Golden Strangers by Henry Treece (was that mentioned in the FAP?). More neolithic imaginary - a good and strong depiction of the realism of magic. of its time - the invader model of barrow > henge and stone circle culture is currently not a popular one. also in this vein:

The Image of Antiquity - Sam Smiles. A survey of Romantic interpretations and constructions of ancient britain.
The Beaker Folk : copper age archaeology in Western Europe - Richard Harrison. Authoritative and fairly up-to-date - gets regularly cited in other works, terrific amount of detail about patterns on pottery. i stare and nod and do not remember an hour beyond closing the book any detail whatsoever. interesting generally watching archaeologists construct a world, an entire cosmos, from the most attenuated sets of evidence.
The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland - Richard Bradley. A modern and clear survey of the period.

will do THE GIFT OF STONES next, tho could do with a bit of a break from this world fairly soon.

in addition:

Nobodaddy's Children - Arno Schmidt. getting v into Arno Schmidt. Finishing volume 2 of the Dalkey Archive collection – Scenes from the Life of a Faun, Brand's Heath and Dark Mirrors – and starting on volume 1, the novellas. Thick prose, landscapes and learning, germanic-romantic-fabular patchworks, some misanthropy, nazis, jokes, apocalypse, misanthropy, surviving. I love him.

― woof, Tuesday, November 25, 2014 4:01 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This, and also the variety in tone - balancing on either side of the congested misanthropy and fractured observations, there are extended visions, dreams and literary excerpts, and on the other side, a laconic mordancy that is often very amusing. there's also something of a gentle kindness that separates him from Céline, tho the style is often close. one of the best things I've read in a very long time, and like woof, I'm loving and lingering over it. (reading in composition order rather than trilogy order - so Brand's Heath, Dark Mirrors and Scenes from the Life of a Faun)

Cogs and Hieroglyphs - David Thomas. The lyrics work surprisingly well on the page. His theorising... I'm not sure. In a way it's too performative to take seriously as if he's nervous that his profundities aren't profound. I think he's right, but this intellectual doggerel is useful and interesting with regard to Pere Ubu, and also often quite entertaining.

The Big Midweek - Steve Hanley - ex Fall bassist. A giant among men in all sorts of ways, and one of my favourite musicians, and i found this book curiously irritating. It reminded me in some ways of Tom D's description of the John French book at the recent FAP - it's a narrative moan about the day-to-day mundanities of being in The Fall, with very little exploration about what might have made them good (apart from when the musicians are left alone by Smith). But then he'll say as an aside that individual musicians often had one-on-one songwriting sessions with Smith round at his house and those often produced the best work. He seems like a nice man, but a congenital shyness seems to make him unwilling to essay aesthetic or intellectual opinions about anything he ever worked on.

Enjoyed the Rivka Galchen review of the multi-volume Kakfa biography in the LRB. Some good kafka lolz in there.

"When he goes to the countryside to write, he finds it ‘extraordinarily beautiful’ at first, but by the second day he can’t work because he’s troubled by a child practising the French horn"

"‘Often I doubt that I am a human being,’ Kafka writes in a note to his first fiancée, Felice Bauer, as he is trying to get out of the engagement but doesn’t want to break it off himself and instead wants her to take the action. ‘You can marry if you put on sufficient weight,’ a doctor later tells a tuberculous Kafka, who doesn’t want to marry anyhow, or even really to eat."

"Kafka sends his sister a spoof article about how Einstein’s theory of relativity is pointing the way to a cure for TB; his whole family celebrates the good news, of which he then has to disabuse them."

Finished the last of Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann last night. If I had read this at the beginning of the year it would've been more surprising. As it is I've read Bachmann's marvelous Malina earlier this year (couldn't Peter Wortsmann translated one of her actual short stories instead of an excerpt of that novel, as powerful as that extract is, and now that I know a lot more about her affair with Paul Celan this takes on a somewhat different reading). Its one thing reading writers, but another reading them as short stories, and the ones I could connect with the most are the ones by writers I've already spent a long time thinking and reading (this year in partic): Kafka (In the Penal Colony is such as punch to the gut), Musil, Rilke's sketch is powerful if you know his writings (letters in partic). The prose piece by Celan is totally unclassifiable and an inspired inclusion (it is no short story). The exception was Heine's sketch, although in his documentary type piece (a few remarks on the origins of the German fairy tale) you get a sorta backbone to the whole vol. It sorta passed me by. I am ok with what I've seen of Heym's poetry but his story seemed Buchner by numbers.

Von Kleist (as I say above) was my major discovery. I may read something by ETA Hofmann but as good as The Sandman was I'm in no hurry.

Didn't really care for Chamisso’s Peter Schlemiel (once you get over the novelty), Grimm (just a bunch of effects). The other Romantics I had a skim, sorta bored by the forest scenes etc. The other bit that came out was how good Robert Walser really is at the Feuilleton-tale. The Kiss was easily the best of those but similar pieces by writers who write-as-entertainment (Tucholsky, Klabund, Lichtenstein, Kaiser, Mynona, Altenberg, Zuhn) in 3-5 pages just...didn't make enough of an impression.

Probably just me. I don't want to waste my time w/laughter and Romance as I clearly hate life, give me blocky paragraphs of prose, pitch black humour, intensity to the point of madness yadda yadda.

I'll investigate Ulrica Zurm (Fassbinder was working on an adaptation of her last book when she died). Tucholsky's Castle Gripsholm is a short novel my library happens to have a copy of (wtf?) so I'll look.

xp

Sorry when Fassbiner died I should say, and I totally misspelled Unica's name - wiki is here.

Fizzles do you like Golding's THE INHERITORS? Surely a truly pre-historic narrative?

I managed to misspell Fassbinder too.

Apart from Kleist the other surprise was how good the story by Kurt Schwitters was! Thinking about this now it would be the best reason to have my own copy of this (rather excellent) collection. I doubt he has that many published about but I don't really know.

Got a used copy of Kleist's The Marquise of O and Other Stories recently, haven't read yet---is it good? Contents etc here: http://www.amazon.com/Marquise-Other-Stories-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140443592#reader_0140443592

Has anyone read Chaplin's autobiography? Is it worth checking out? I have vague memories of seeing the biopic when I was a kid and in love with Chaplin.

Read it long ago, liked it very much.
I've come across HVK in several anthologies, where he's always at least one of the best. Also several amazing satirical fantasies by ETA Hoffman.

that von kleist is the edition i read a few years ago after discovering him via kafka. some were totally amazing: earthquake in chile, st. cecilia, kohlhaas (didn't fassbinder or someone make an adaptation of this? or maybe i'm just imagining it) and others i have absolutely no recollection of. also discovered a sort of contemporary of von kleist's through kafka at the same time who is worth a read: hebel author of the treasure chest. total opposite to von kleist in his artful artlessness.

currently reading some thomas hardy short stories for the first time: drunken farmers entertaining hangmen and prison escapees, blasted heaths, witching and withered arms. enjoying so far.

"Kafka sends his sister a spoof article about how Einstein’s theory of relativity is pointing the way to a cure for TB; his whole family celebrates the good news, of which he then has to disabuse them."

couldn't help loling at that when i read the article. also kind of curious to read the metamorphosis sequel that was mentioned somewhere in there.

got The Golden Strangers by Henry Treece (was that mentioned in the FAP?). More neolithic imaginary - a good and strong depiction of the realism of magic. of its time - the invader model of barrow > henge and stone circle culture is currently not a popular one.

Love it when ILBers make synchronous purchases - picked up a copy of this just the other day, a Savoy books reissue with an introduction by Michael Moorcock.

Got a used copy of Kleist's The Marquise of O and Other Stories recently, haven't read yet---is it good? Contents etc here: http://www.amazon.com/Marquise-Other-Stories-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140443592#reader_0140443592

― dow, Wednesday, 3 December 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He wrote a few stories (less than ten) and about 2/3 plays (not performed) in his short life. The translation I have is by Peter Wortsman (who also translated The Tales...), and this was the volume I thought I was going to find before I saw a cheap copy of the ed. on Archipelago.

kohlhaas (didn't fassbinder or someone make an adaptation of this? or maybe i'm just imagining it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_on_Horseback

finished A GIRL IS A HALF FORMED THING.
I think to me it became less boring and more compelling.
It actually does become moving, to me, in the last quarter or third.
I quite like the ending.

dipping in to Terry Eagleton THE TASK OF THE CRITIC for sheer joy of it.

buying that Kleist volume on reputation alone & diving into "Kohlhaas" unprepared one evening was among my favorite reading experiences of recent years

got The Golden Strangers by Henry Treece (was that mentioned in the FAP?). More neolithic imaginary - a good and strong depiction of the realism of magic. of its time - the invader model of barrow > henge and stone circle culture is currently not a popular one.

Love it when ILBers make synchronous purchases - picked up a copy of this just the other day, a Savoy books reissue with an introduction by Michael Moorcock.

― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Wednesday, 3 December 2014 08:54 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was a sort of ILB hivemind choice: woof thought I'd mentioned it in the FAP (and possibly someone had. but I don't think it was me), I looked it up and thought I liked the look of it, and picked it up.

trying Sarah Waters, TIPPING THE VELVET
not very convinced. feels modish and sophomoric, if that is the word.

it reads like it was written to be a TV series.

Avoid! Avoid! I loved Fun Home too, but the follow-up is a ludicrous thing.

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Friday, November 28, 2014 2:21 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is interesting to hear.
can you say more about why it is bad?

― the pinefox, Saturday, November 29, 2014 5:28 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry for slow response.

It's staggeringly self-indulgent and very silly. Full of Bechdel talking to her psychotherapist and drawing the most ludicrous of long bows in order to drag in enough associated ideas/thoughts/memories to desperately pad out the thing to book length. It's a fundamentally misconceived book on almost every level, starting with the lack of any strong material to write the damn book about in the first place.

Thank you JM!

I think the inclusion of a lot of the material in FH is already a stretch!

it was a sort of ILB hivemind choice: woof thought I'd mentioned it in the FAP (and possibly someone had. but I don't think it was me), I looked it up and thought I liked the look of it, and picked it up.

historical recontruction of hivemind action: I think you mentioned someone else and I couldn't remember treece's name so i thought it might be him. I've never read him myself – came across him while reading about Savoy Books.