The girls are out flaunting their Summer plumage but you're stuck inside, reading. What?

Richard Stark's The Hunter

Started Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden, this morning. Follow-up to Three Day Road which I liked a couple of years ago.

finished the deceivers. fun, but bester's attitudes viz. sex and race are a bit harder to take when the novel was nominally a product of the 80s rather than the 50s. i just looked at my copy of golem100, that one seems the most out there in terms of diversions from 'prose' of all of them. (starting to wonder about the dismissal of his post-50s work generally, i think.)

finished george orwell's down and out in paris and london. i really want someone to make a film of it.

started celebrated cases of judge dee. what an odd little book it is.

Chester Himes: The Big Gold Dream - my first Himes, well written and atmospheric, but a plot too convoluted for me to entirely follow
Mohan Senapati: Six Acres and a Third - Indian satirical novel
Justin Evans: A Good and Happy Child - ace novel about a lonely boy who becomes demonically possessed. Creepy and well-written.
Percival Everett: I Am Not Sidney Poitier - I love Everett, and this is one of his odder books - a young boy named Not Sidney Poitier by a mad mother is semi-adopted by Ted Turner, goes on Candide-style adventures through USA

hey, tell me more about everett! i read erasure as grist for my undergrad dissertation and it left me curious about what he might have written in a less pissed off mood. also love the idea of 'a history of the african-american people, by strom thrumond, as told to percival everett and james kincaid'; haven't read it yet

I love his stuff (except for 'Glyph', which is about a hyper-intelligent baby and is a satire of postmodernism, a topic I know not enough about to enjoy the jokes).

His non-pissed-off, realist books are probably my favourites: 'Wounded', about a black horse breeder/dealer; 'Watershed', a sort of detective/environmentalist/Native American literary thriller; 'Cutting Lisa', a novel about reasonable, kindly people which ends up with one character performing an illegal and not-agreed-to abortion on another without this seeming at all unrealistic. 'A History...' is very funny, and I suspect I'd have found it even more so if I was American and got all the jokes, but it was still great. His books are much more wide-ranging than anyone else I can think off off-hand, and I've really enjoyed them all, 'Glyph' aside.

thx james. for some reason i thought you were american, don't know why.

my internet connection has been down for two days and i have read a half dozen more mediocre SF novels.

i also found a copy of frank norris's 'mcteague' on the way back from the dentist. i always thought david foster wallace had invented this book. anyway, it's amazingly bad.

ha, finding mcteague on the way back from the dentist is pretty funny!

Post to Aimless:

I 'do' audiobooks a lot, while I'm driving. I have a subscription to download one a month. I think they're great, but your basic point is correct: they are much harder work than real books. As a result, I have worked out a few rules to enhance the experience:
- I need to concentrate, so it only really works on motorways or roads I know well. I didn't realise how much more difficult city driving is until I tried it while appreciating the subtexts of White Noise.
- stick to fiction. Understanding how a narrative works does a lot of the work for you. Non-fiction can be very bitty and, like you say, you only have to zone out for a moment and the thread is lost.
- avoid experimental fiction for the same reason.
- simplicity is good. A few characters are better than a host. I tried a biography of Oppenheimer, with a cast of hundreds, and without the facility of skipping back a few pages to refresh who someone is it just doesn't work.
- narrators are important. A comfortable voice really helps. A skilled actor giving different voices to each character is a useful signpost, but more importantly turns the experience into an intimate, real pleasure. Revolutionary Road was outstanding. Beloved, read by Toni Morrison herself, was turgid.
- a straight first-person narration probably works best of all. Netherland enhanced the voice to I felt quite a remarkable level.

Perhaps the best use of all is to get a new perspective on a book you've read before. I finished American Pastoral yesterday, which ticks most of the boxes above, and the experience was every bit as intense and dreadful as reading the original.

Thanks for the tips.

I am leaving tomorrow for two weeks of backcountry trekking. The books I am taking are Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions to read on a five day hike, and Henry James's Spoils of Poynton to read on a seven day hike. The first book is 5 1/2 oz., while the second is 4 oz. - an important consideration for this kind of reading.

I started listening to audiobooks via genre fiction (figuring, perhaps a bit snobbishly, that books in this area would be more centered on plot than style, and as such less prone to sounding "wrong" when read out loud by someone else); have had very good experiences in fantasy and (to a lesser degree) sci-fi. The Audible books of the A Song Of Ice & Fire series are superb - nothing beats a few hours of playing Civ while listening to Lannister exploits. Crime fiction works less well - very hard for voice actors not to fall into total 40's noir caricatures.

I have a friend who enjoyed the Obama autobio, read by same.

I actually really like 'McTeague'! The situation in which the title character finds himself at the end of the final page is the perfection of hopelessness.

The first few chapters of The Spoils of Poynton are howlingly funny!

Just finished White Noise, grudgingly. Starting the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation of Notes from Underground, although I'm not a big fan of P & V in general. Searching for books from my shelf which I'll have no trouble finishing before I head off again in two weeks.

i also found a copy of frank norris's 'mcteague' on the way back from the dentist. i always thought david foster wallace had invented this book. anyway, it's amazingly bad.

― thomp, Saturday, July 25, 2009 10:18 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Thomp, you should be ashamed! McTeague is incredible. Especially the last page. Frank Norris rules.

I actually really like 'McTeague'! The situation in which the title character finds himself at the end of the final page is the perfection of hopelessness.

― When two tribes go to war, he always gets picked last (James Morrison), Saturday, July 25, 2009 7:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^^ This.

I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with Pevear and Volokhonsky, but their Notes From Underground (which was the first of their translations I read) remains excellent.

bernard, why are you disillusioned with them?

guys it is possible the cumulative effect of mcteague will add up to something greater than what it creates page-by-page, but the parade of caricature working-class 'types' / ethnic minority 'types' is deeply uncomfortable (although fairly often funny, as with the female lead's dad, who is ehtnically german or dutch or transylvanian or something in a way the rest of his family aren't) ("dyew vill der gvatest whipping off dyour live reseef!", etc) - i mean not funny for the reasons it's meant to be funny so much. i mean, it's very effective on a level of total melodrama: i think the introduction that tries to sell it earnestly as an underrated realist classic was going a bit too far

i just got to the one scene that got suppressed from the first edition. it's the one where nazi dad's kid wets himself

recent reading: 'space lords' cordwainer smith, 'star smashers of the galaxy rangers' hary harrison, 'the two-timers' bob shaw, 'timepiece' brian boll, 'the unteleported man' pkd ... think i'm forgetting some.

picked up james baldwin's 'notes of a native son' again today. his approach as an essayist is surprisingly like to orwell's: anyway, it's great

xpost: I don't know if 'disillusioned' was exactly the right term... it's just, while I'm sure they really are faithful to the idiosyncracies of the original language and all that, I'm starting to realize that fidelity is not the conditio sine qua non for my enjoyment of a translated work. Several times recently, I've picked up a P&V Dostoevsky translation and found that, on a sentence-by-sentence level, it's just unpleasant to read. Then I go to the library and check out some older translations, which I guess might be more 'compromised', but not in ways that I feel obscure or alter the meaning.

Maybe not the best example, but grabbing the nearby copy of Great Short Works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and flipping to George Bird's 1958 translation of "The Double", I read:

It was a little before eight when Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a minor civil servant, came to, yawned, stretched, and finally opened his eyes wide after a long night's rest. For two minutes or so he lay motionless in bed, like a man as yet uncertain whether all at present going on about him is reality or a continuation of his disordered dreams. But in a short while Mr. Golyadkin's senses began recording their usual everyday impressions more clearly. Everything looked back at him familiarly: the messy green walls of his little room, begrimed with soot and dust, his mahogany chest of drawers, his imitation mahogany chairs, the red painted table, the reddish oilcloth-covered ottoman patterned with sickly green flowers, and lastly the clothing he had hastily discarded the night before and thrown in a heap onto the ottoman. And then the foul, murky, grey autumnal day peered in at him through the dirty panes in such a sour, ill-humoured way, that Mr. Golyadkin had no longer any possible ground for doubting that he lay, not in some distant fairy realm, but in his own rooms on the fourth floor of a large tenement house in Shestilavochnaya Street, in the capital city of St. Petersburg. Having made a discovery of such importance, Mr. Golyadkin twitched his eyes shut again, as though regretting his recently-ended slumbers and wishing to recall them for a moment. But an instant later, having in all likelihood at last stumbled upon the one idea about which his scattered and inconsequent thoughts had been revolving, he bounded out of bed, and ran to a small round mirror standing on the chest of drawers. Although the sleepy, weak-sighted and rather bald image reflected was of so insignificant a character as to be certain of commanding no great attention at a first glance, its possessor remained well pleased with all that he beheld in the mirror.

Then I hit up Google books and find P&V's:

It was nearly eight o'clock in the morning when the titular councillor Yakov Petrovich Goliadkin came to after a long sleep, yawned, stretched, and finally opened his eyes all the way. For some two minutes, however, he lay motionless on his bed, like a man who is not fully certain whether he is awake or still asleep, whether what is happening around him now is a reality or a continuation of the disordered reveries of his sleep. Soon, though, Mr. Goliadkin's senses began to receive their usual everyday impressions more clearly and distinctly. The dirtyish green, sooty, and dusty walls of his little room, his mahogany chest of drawers, the imitation mahogany chairs, the red-painted table, the oilcloth Turkish sofa of a reddish color with little green flowers, and finally his clothes, hastily taken off the night before and thrown in a heap on the sofa, all gazed at him familiarly. Finally, the gray autumn day, dull and dirty, peeked into his room so crossly and with such a sour grimace that Mr. Goliadkin could in no way doubt any longer that he was not in some far-off kingdom but in the city of Petersburg, in the capital, on Shestilavochnaya Street, on the fourth floor of a quite large tenement house, in his own apartment. Having made this important discovery, Mr. Goliadkin convulsively closed his eyes, as if regretting his recent dream and wishing to bring it back for a brief moment. But after a moment he leaped out of bed at a single bound, probably hitting finally upon the idea about which his scattered, not yet properly ordered thoughts had been turning. Having leaped out of bed, he ran at once to the small round mirror that stood on the chest of drawers. Though the sleepy, myopic, and rather bald-pated figure reflected in the mirror was precisely of such insignificant quality as to arrest decidedly no one's exclusive attention at first sight, its owner evidently remained perfectly pleased with all he saw in the mirror.

Regardless of fidelity, I just don't think the second reads as well. Take, for example, "the messy green walls of his little room, begrimed with soot and dust" vs. "The dirtyish green, sooty, and dusty walls of his little room". Basically the exact same image, except that one makes you wait until after all the modifiers to discover that what is being modified is, in fact, the walls. Without being able to see or understand the original Russian, I can only speculate, but my guess is that P&V's reproduces its structure more closely... but when the end result is both clunky-sounding and harder to parse, what exactly is the point? Why use "bald-pated" instead of "bald"? Is there really anything lost by rejiggering two sentences that begin "But after a moment he leaped out of bed" and "Having leaped out of bed" to make them flow more smoothly together? Again, I'm sure that what they're doing is quite valuable in some respects; but for me, the cons of having to read a phrase like "precisely of such insignificant quality as to arrest decidedly no one's exclusive attention at first sight" would seem to outweigh the pros.

(of course, I hasten to add that I've yet to read an entire novel in two different translations, so it is of course possible that the cumulative effect would be significantly different; but then again, when the individual sentences are well-written, it's a bit easier to get through the whole novel...)

Nice post, interesting to see the two lined up like that. Agree with all you say.

Slightly off-topic, I've seen a couple of times recently people who claim to have learned another language so as to be able to read Proust or Tolstoy in the original. It sounds like the most pretentious, and implausible, thing in all the world.

Any reason to read a language is a good reason! I mean yeah it sounds insufferable but hey. I know I'm glad that I've brushed up on my high school french, and practiced spanish, enough to read Camus and Borges in the original language. Since I also speak german (born there), portuguese (grew up there) and english (like everyone else), I'm sort of spoiled enough to avoid translations alltogether, which accounts for my serious gaps of knowledge in russian literature. That being said, I've read enough translated japanese lit this year to be able to overcome that, hopefully.

Yeah, as a lover of books, literature, and language in general, I can sympathize with their motives. But I agree with Ismael Klata on the "implausible" part, and I think a lot of these people probably didn't really think their decisions through.

When a native French speaker tells you that reading Proust in English can't compare with reading him in the original French, it's like... well, duh, English isn't your first language! It seems unlikely that anything you reads in English will affect you as strongly as Proust in French, simply because you have a longer and richer personal history with the French language. And so yeah, "native French speaker reading Proust in French" may beat "native English speaker reading Proust in English translation", but does "native English speaker reading Proust in French"?

I'm sure that, if I studied French very seriously, for a long time, not only reading books but writing, talking, going to the store, having love affairs, reading newspapers, all in French -- yeah, at some point, I'd have a strong enough connection with the language to really appreciate Proust. But that's gonna take, what... 5 years? 7? 10? No book is worth that much of my life. If I learn French, it'll be because I want to learn French, because I'm interested in the French language, its discourse, its tradition -- not just because I want a Rosetta stone for Proust.

'anything you reads in English' -- urgh, sorry, I think I've made it clear that I'm not actually fluent in any language whatsoever

agree with what bernard snowy said -- I'll just add that Pevear's predilection for poetic turns of phrases, for le mot juste, seems too pat. I do admit that maybe part of my preference of older translations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy may lie in the desire for something that reads a little closer to a nineteenth century Victorian novel! I think it's for the same reasons that I preferred the Fitzgerald translation of The Odyssey to Fagles'. I feel that when I read a P&V translation I can see Pevear's hand hovering over the work, and it's distracting.

I support polyglotism in the pursuit of literature, but really only take someone seriously in this regard when they also have a deep and thorough experience with the culture that produced the language in question. Not that that guarantees fidelity (what does?), but it gets closer to the aim of learning another language in the first place.

There is some magic in reading a language that you're just mastering too, though - your brain takes a bit longer to assimiliate what's being said so if it's expressed in a particuarly creative way you're more likely to savour it. But yeah, obviously it won't give you the decades of cultural context etc.

I do admit that maybe part of my preference of older translations of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy may lie in the desire for something that reads a little closer to a nineteenth century Victorian novel!

(the 'this' I'm referring to, since I didn't make it totally clear, being a desire to read old translations of old books, so that I can better place them in some sort of historical continuum)

That side-by-side translation post is great, bernard. It's actually kind of astonishing how--despite their obvious differences--the two translations are so similar.

is 'mcteague' as good as von stroheim's 'greed'?

finally about to finish 'sophie's world.' it's ok, i guess, but i wish i'd spent my time reading something like bertrand russell.

Is 'Greed' the 8-hour film? I'd loved to see McTeague: the Movie, but I'm not sure I have the stamina.

finished 'PopCo', reading 'The Song is You' by Arthur Philips and Bill Bruford's autobio.

Kusamakura by Natsume Soseki

most of 'greed' was cut by the studio -- the version that survives is only about 2 hours. still great and worth seeing, particularly the (terrifying) ending.

Recently finished Roger's Version, my first full-length Updike. I liked it more than I thought I would - an odd mix of theological argument and frank depictions of sex, with occasional flashes of a wicked sense of humor.

I'm now reading Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, which is what good 19th century pop history should be - long on colorful anecdotes of dubious provenance.

You guys should also know that there is a novel which features, among other things, a Greed-like film shoot, Leslie Epstein's Pandaemonium. Narrated in part by one Laszlo Loewenstein, aka Peter Lorre.

Kusamakura by Natsume Soseki - I loved this!

Hey, I have Pandaemonium somewhere--bought it at a remainder shop, and forgot about it until just now. Had no idea it was "told" by Lorre. I have to dig that out.

Just finished "The Lost Steps" by Carpentier. It was wordy, but wonderful.

Started "Disgrace" by Coetzee.

Denton Welch's Journals edited by Jocelyn Brooke.

Edward Sackville-West sums up one of the curiously pleasing features of Welch's writing -

'That is why is so disarming about your book [Maiden Voyage I think], the fact that you don't in the least mind making yourself out to be unpleasant or ridiculous.'

just finished "Tree of Smoke' by Denis Johnson. good but not great vietnam/conspiracy/paranoia epic. slightly overlong/over-written in my humble but mostly worth the effort.

Another Self - James Lees-Milne. Didn't really like this. Earlier chapters okay - okay memoir of misfit child in country house life, good portraits of Mother and Father - but starts to stink with snobbery, boring aestheticism, old-school politics, bit of racism as it goes along. Don't think it has the qualities that make up for that in his right-leaning contemporaries (Waugh, Powell, etc). I find the diaries more bearable - actively funny in places - for some reason. Possibly because he's unapologetic about being a neurotic, snobby shit there and can get on with observation/cutting remarks.

Had Denton Welch recommended to me before, so Gamaliel tipped me over. Read about half of Voice Through a Cloud. The style and eye are great, and I like his character sketches *a lot*, but I'm not feeling compelled to finish for some reason. Possibly a lack of hospital time?

Have started reading things on an iPhone. Surprisingly enjoyable. Using Eucalyptus and downloading stuff from Gutenberg in the Victorian-Edwardian line (which PG is quite strong on). Beerbohm, Pater, Ruskin. Enoch Soames still fun on the small screen.

Kusamakura by Natsume Soseki - I loved this!

It's very dense and lyrical. I only read I Am A Cat before, which is funny but does get a bit repetitive.

Agree with you on both. I think I only read vol 1 of 'Cat' for that reason.

Had Denton Welch recommended to me before, so Gamaliel tipped me over. Read about half of Voice Through a Cloud. The style and eye are great, and I like his character sketches *a lot*, but I'm not feeling compelled to finish for some reason. Possibly a lack of hospital time?

I think that's pretty much what I found as well really. There was a sense of inertia while reading it, maybe to do with it's loose-ish episodic structure and possibly to do with the fact it isn't finished, not sure. I didn't mind particularly because it seemed to fit in with the whole medical malaise, the feeble sense of futility about what happens.

I like the way the pathological, highly sensitised, 'ill' if you like, approach to the world immediately after his accident, rather than gradually disappearing with his slow recovery, undergoes a process of diffusion, so that it encompasses the whole of his existence. One of the best descriptions of a 'morbid' personality I think I've come across.

And yeah, he's spot on with the psychology of the insitutionalised patient as well. In fact I've been thinking for a while about collecting literary examples of morphine hallucination - there's a good one in The Strings are False by MacNiece, and um, tum-ti-tum, a couple of others as well, can't remember for the moment. (Although an honorary mention would have to go to the 'Pinfold to hooligans, Pinfold to hooligans' section in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.)

As for my experience, I thought the nurses were trying to poison me, that I had to steal a bus to get a takeaway in order to be allowed to go to the toilet, and that my entire extended family had come to visit me one day, but that they weren't allowed to see me.

Back to the Denton Welch - there's something very appealing about the quality of his prose as well (for me anyway), that's difficult to put my finger on. Possibly it's the slightly naive sentence structure with the ornate detail that does it.

The bit with the zombies is good as well. (or is it vampires, I can't remember).

Agree with you on both. I think I only read vol 1 of 'Cat' for that reason.

I need to stop being so obsessive-cumpulsive with this shit: ended up reading the entire thing, and got the straps of my messenger bag ripped from carrying it around. Really downbeat ending, too. :(

I've been thinking for a while about collecting literary examples of morphine hallucination

The words from the opera Dust by Robert Ashley.

Really downbeat ending, too. :( - yeah, I did skip ahead and read that. A bummer.

Finished Notes from Underground - wow. Glad I chose this time of my life to read it - it's kinda like Catcher in the Rye in that I don't think its impact would have been so great had I read it earlier in my life.

Gonna try and finish Jesus' Son now without getting immensely bored

"Shadow in the Wind" by Ruiz Zafon. Derivative, populist tosh with a wafer-thin sprinkling of of postmodernist pretension? I think so, but do I have a tiny - and I do mean tiny - suspicion that I'm being unfair and there's a better book in there than I was able to identify. But the only way to know is to reread it, and I'm no interested enough to do that.

"No Fond Return of Love" Barbara Pym. The sixth of hers I've read and easily the weakest. For diehard fans only.

Still making my way through 2666. Almost made up my mind to abandon it after The Part about Amalfitano, when I was finding the relentless bleakness and overwhelming sense of dread very hard to take. What's kept me reading is the sense that a writer as original and talented as this must have something less banal to say than life's (pointless) shit and then you die, with maybe a few inconsequential scraps of poetry along the way if you're lucky. But I still need convincing.

Started re-reading "The Line of Beauty" and also started "The Little Stanger" by Sarah Waters. The Waters has been abandoned meantime 'cause I'm reading too much simultaneously but it starts very well.