And The Snow Fell Softly On ILB: What Are You Reading Now Winter 2017/18

Hey, take it over to Michael Hofmann: poet, translator, critic

Yeah, i love Zweig and am glad he's getting so much attention in English.

Lol, I'm reading The World of Yesterday for a book project I'm working on, and it really is incredibly kitchy and old fashioned. Quite good, still.

Of Grammatology - ol' jackie Derrida.

Tl;dr: stop being mean to writing

I took out a bunch of books on Jean Renoir and I'm picking out chapters based on the films I've seen. The highlight so far is Alexander Sesonske's chapter on The Rules of the Game (in Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924-1939). It's beautifully written and gives a deep analysis of all the major characters, as well as the film's influences in French theatre. I have a copy of Marivaux's The Game of Love and Chance, one of Renoir's models for the film - that might be then next thing I read.

Taschen's Renoir coffee table book is cool too.

I liked Buddenbrooks (trade edition tie-in w ancient, handsome international Public TV miniseries), so I might like Zweig, right?

I went through a big phase of those German-speaking authors from the Weimar era (for lack of a better definition): Mann, Remarque, Zweig, Erich Kastner's Fabian, Tucholsky. None of them as experimental as Siegfried Lenz (or, say, Kafka) and all a bit soppy to some degree, but I dunno, you live through two world wars and economic chaos, writing with open-hearted sentimentality is admirable imo. Tucholsky has a lot of awesome sharp satire to balance it out, though I don't know if it translates well. Mann a bit more prone to going philosophical (also posher), but feels of a kind with a lot of big 19th century novelists to me.

I'm also reading Joseph Roth's Radetzky March for the same reason, and I prefer that as a sorta sentimental but also clear eyed look back.

Re Daniel_Rf, I've been on a bit of a Tucholsky binge recently: Castle Gripsholm was amazingly good.

I read a lot of Roth in 2015 -- "cold-eyed look backward" is closer to his approach than nostalgia.

Yeah, Castle Gripsholm is lovely. As I said, there's a component to his poetry - satirical, angry young man stuff, deeply informed by his hatred of authority and experiences in WWI - that doesn't really show up in his other work. Mind you it's also usually written in Berlin dialect, dunno how a translator would tackle it (has anyone? I should check up on that).

I bought a super cheap ebook of his,poetry which I haven't started yet: looks promising.

Just adding my 2p to say how disappointing Weimar-era fiction is. Berlin Alexanderplatz, reissued in a new translation just a couple of weeks ago, is not a thing I am that keen on - found the novel quite hard-going when I read it ten years ago (though that was probably my still small ability to read modernist fiction). I had a look at a couple of (positive) reviews that basically quote some of the slang Hoffmann used and I wasn't rushing to get it. Great TV series so can't complain.

Castle Gripsholm is really great, kinda minor though. I wouldn't count the really great writers like Kafka or Joseph Roth as they were part of Austro-Hungary. Plenty of great great writers from that region.

Ultimately my very favourite Weimar-era Lit was some of the poetry: Brecht and Benn.

I quite like to pick up some Kastner and Jakob Wasserman someday.

Since discussion began with Zweig I think it's okay to include Austro-Hungarian writers ;)

The discussion has now moved on :)

I'm now reading a book that I gave my wife as a gift last summer, at her instigation: The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, a German forester. Its great interest is in presenting relatively recent research findings about forest ecology and the surprising degree of communication, coordination and cooperation among trees, and their high degree of sophistication in fighting against parasites and insects.

The writing style of the book is odd and a bit off-putting. I strongly suspect the author has spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours speaking to elementary school students and this book is modeled on those talks. This gives the book the tone of an adult telling stories to children, but the information he imparts is genuinely fascinating and makes the childish tone worth tolerating.

read a lot of crime novels that i got from my dad this winter. PAUL DOIRON - KNIFE CREEK. pretty cool. Maine's answer to CJ BOX. 8 novels in 7 years! would read more. i dig game wardens. DON WINSLOW - THE FORCE. epic dirty cop novel. the only problem with dirty cop novels is i rarely care if the cops die or get caught. JOHN SANDFORD - DEEP FREEZE. i love that fuckin' flowers but john sandford is 73 years old and his best crime-writing days are kinda past him. not the best flowers book by a long shot. REED FARREL COLEMAN - WHAT YOU BREAK & WHERE YOU HURT. two by this guy. he certainly knows his way around Long Island - every road and town is accounted for - but it must be said: Long Island is fucking boring. WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER - SULFUR SPRINGS. would read more in this series! very entertaining. did not read the DICK WOLF novel i got from dad though. and didn't read the 4 LISA SCOTTOLINE books he gave me either. a later series of hers about a law firm. maybe if i get laid up with rubella or something i'll get to them. for now i'm back to the sci-fi.

Found a trashy 1991 copy of RED DRAGON. Surprised by how wooden it is, but it's enjoyable enough. Sadly none of the writing beats this plot blurb on the first page:

https://i.imgur.com/peYAS4A.jpg

Berlin Alexanderplatz, reissued in a new translation just a couple of weeks ago, is not a thing I am that keen on - found the novel quite hard-going when I read it ten years ago (though that was probably my still small ability to read modernist fiction).

I would've thought it'd be right up your alley! Experimental, angry, bleak. I'll admit I only got one third in myself.

There's obvious differences between Weimar and Austro-Hungary but in the end I think that, say, Zweig and Thomas Mann have enough in common that it makes sense to group 'em together.

I've changed man! :-) (joking not joking - I am not really into very experimental styles anymore - modernism, roman etc. just want to read 'voices' now.) Much less keener on the city novel as a thing than I used to be, too.

(One other good Weimar type novel is Koeppen's A sad Affair which I finished a couple of weeks ago)

I finished By the Open Sea, an early novel by Strindberg - it has some beautiful descriptions of nature (he is good on ice, enjoy it before it all melts), the story had the hints at the madness and paranoia you encounter on the later ones I've read like Madmen's Defence, but its not in full flow so it relies on a skeletal plot instead. Now ambling along with some stories by Antonio Di Benedetto, as collected in Nest in the Bones, issued last year by Archipelago and to much less aclaim than Zama, but it has many of the themes and his rapid-fire writing. Very journalistic: sets the mood fast and rolls on and on till its over.

The Scots Kitchen - F. Marian McNeill

gillian rose’s love’s work. a book about love and and death, specifically the approach of death through illness and decay, used to explore each other. philosophy as unsparing emotional rigour, thought not at all abstracted from power, love and pain.

it is odd and exhilarating to read love's proliferating language, the language of desire and loss, confined by a good writer, and used as the elements of thought.

Cancer, and the grammar and language of medicine,and iatrogenic power struggles are set alongside the specifics of painful love. it makes this a strange book with strange thoughts, powerful enough to give a sense of hidden truths. This is welcome as both Death and Love are overwhelming concepts and can brush off well-meaning attempts at exploration or description, turning them into bland truisms.

The only other passage i've read that similarly manages to meet and match their force, is the devastating opening passage to *Voices from Chernobyl* by Svetlana Alexeivich. i remember reading the opening words “i don’t know what i should talk about - about death or about love? or are they the same?” and raising a sceptical eyebrow about this observation, one that is a cliche but difficult to fully and fairly reason through. by the end of the short section i was in tears (on public transport ffs) following a horrific demonstration of the interrelation of love and death.

love’s work is v good and this nyrb edition includes an In Memoriam poem by Geoffrey Hill, which i read, and an introduction by michael wood, which i didn’t.

Anyone deprecating 1930s German writing needs to read Irmgard Keun.

Good call. Child of all Nations and After Midnight are great (the former especially so).

I thought "The Fountain In the Forest" was excellent - I don't read many procedurals so a procedurals fan might find it sub-par (maybe? I have no idea) but I romped through it. The fact it referenced a couple of record shops I used to frequent in Exeter, both of which closed more than two decades ago, helped. Briefly met the author last night, seemed like a decent fellow.

Now I'm reading "The Unmapped Country", a recently-issued selection of short stories and fragments by Ann Quin.

Log of the SS The Mrs Unguentine: Stanley Crawford -- enjoying this a lot, but it's very wise to have made it only 100p: suspect it would wear out its welcome at any greater length.

Getting a lot further into thr Terry Hraham memoir Punk Like Me.
He's been involved in the L.A. punk scene for a while hsnging out at the Masque and sharing an apt. With the woman who books the Whisky a gogo.
He's seeing Jane who has just joined the gogos on rhythm guitar. He's just taken up drums witu the Bags. Joining at the same time as Rob Ritter though Patricia Morrison is still playing bass. maybe Ritter only swapped to bass when he joined the Gun Club since Brian Tristan was already on guitar.
Tristan has already appeared a couple of times as someone who is around on the punk scene as has Jeffrey Lee Pierce. I don't think they have a band together yet. & Tristan doesn't become Kid Congo Powers until he joins The Cramps.
Grahams also trekked down to Texas to see the Sex Pistols.
Interesting book nglad it finally arrived after me paying for a kick starter campaign copy 5 years or so ago and being left in limbo for most of that.

Last night I picked up A Time of Gifts, Patrick Leigh Fermor. I first read it decades ago, so this is another re-read of a book that's faded from memory that seems worthy of getting reacquainted with. It may prove to be a tad too youthful and highly wrought for my immediate desires, but I'm going to take a run at it and should know soon enough how its flavor sits in my mouth.

I tried his novel, The Violins of St Jacques, recently, but it was too arch and 'ha, people who don't speak perfect French are such peasants' for me to continue with

I like the idea of a police procedural set in now closed Exeter record shops.

With the Duke of Harringay as a key witness to the theft of a racing bicycle.

love’s work is v good and this nyrb edition includes an In Memoriam poem by Geoffrey Hill, which i read, and an introduction by michael wood, which i didn’t.
― Fizzles, Monday, February 19, 2018

I think this counts as 'trolling the pinefox'.

A Time of Gifts is proving to be uneven for me, but I'm sticking to it. When he is describing interactions with people he met, it is interesting. Unfortunately he has a penchant for lengthy and ornate descriptions of scenery and architecture, and while he succeeds in communicating these enthusiasms, he fails to transfer them. For me, no description of landscapes or buildings should continue past 500 words in a single dose.

lol pf - i assume that's the michael wood slight? the geoffrey hill poem wasn't all that, but i wasn't really interested in hearing what michael wood had to say on a book about which i was feeling quite emotional. or do you not like gillian rose?

really f'ing struggled with the doomed city by the strugatskys. it's p heavy going, though i don't think its bad. there's a sort of brutal and absurdist cynicism behind it, which is enjoyable, and boisterous, almost comic characters, striking poses and shouting around the central not particularly bright character (Andrei Voronin iirc). each chapter involves him in a different social context, with some grotesque and nightmarish upheaval thrown against The Experiment. He is seen to be extremely malleable. Totalitarian absurdity bureaucracy and violence is given free reign. Not really a surprise they put it back on the shelf after completing it.

It's sitting at home unfinished, but i'll pick it up when i get back from my travels.

Tried a John Grisham book – Carmino Island on the flight, but the initial heist section was so fucking awful that i don't think i can carry on. Dying for some George V Higgins. That said it warmed up a bit with some book industry talk in the second section. I guess i might finish it on the flight back if i'm in the mood. The masochistic mood.

Now reading Liu Cixin's The Three Body Problem, which is really excellent. Densely packed with *stuff*, in the way that Philip K Dick novels are – history, mysticism, physics, dreams. I also really like its style, of which this abbreviated imagery, with an appropriate sense of immanence, is one part:

Through her wet clothes, the chill of the Inner Mongolian winter seized Ye like a giant’s fist.

She stared at the antenna and thought it looked like an enormous hand stretched open toward the sky,

The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days. Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood.

it's compelling, and great fun to read, and it really moves. it doesn't dick about.

Reminds me, fairly recently over on The New, Improved Rolling Fantasy, Science Fiction, etc:

Been researching Chinese fantasy genres like Wuxia (real historical settings with unreal skills and sometimes supernatural elements), Xianxia (unbelievably huge scale fantasy with immortals in heavenly realms with powers that makes Dragonball look like Ken Loach), Xuanhuan (western influenced fantasy).

There's a few causes for concern.
There's incredibly few translation in print (especially considering these are some of the bestselling books in the world), most of this is read on regular webpages across hundreds of chapters. These books used to be serialized in newspapers but now it seems mostly online. Finding good books and translations will probably be tough. Doesn't help that a lot of the art and fan community has an unpleasantly slick videogame/anime look.

There was a few Oxford books of Jin Yong/Louis Cha but they're mostly too expensive now. Luckily this year just seen the release of Jin Yong's Legend Of Condor Heroes (which has caused controversy with the character name translations but I can deal) and Gu Long's Eleventh Son.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, February 18, 2018 12:59 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Big Book of Science Fiction has two very different Chinese stories: Han Song's “Two Small Birds” 1988 in its first English translation by John Chu, is a brave, pained, 1988 allegory; Cixin Liu's “The Poetry Cloud” (translation by Chi-yin Ip and Cheuk Wong) is a majestic confection, from 1997. The only Chinese SF I've read (should check The Three Body Problem, come to think of it).

― dow, Sunday, February 18, 2018 11:26 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.sfintranslation.com usefully and regularly posts links to translated SF from all over the web, and a lot of it is Chinese: some good stuff.

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Monday, February 19, 2018 12:36 AM

thanks dow. i need to get over there don't i.

but yes you really should check The Three Body Problem. It's really good. 'Majestic confection' is a good phrase appropriate to that as well. Delighted there's two more in the series.

just saw those books getting raved about in the LRB. Need to read them too.

Dunno about "raved about" - reviewer seemed less than sympathetic towards the emphasis on technological innovation, the view of human rights as a luxury and (this was the most unfair bit I thought) suggests Liu "hates communism" because the book portrays the Cultural Revolution as a terrifying era (WHICH IT WAS). Did make me want to check it out tho!

But they did say they were gripping and very well written!

I am reading "Clash" by Ellen Wilkinson, late 20s domestic-political literature set during a general strike. Halfway through and I'm loving it, despite (because of) occasional stiltedness.

Finishing the annexes to Forster's The Longest Journey. I watched a BBC doc on the guy when I was a teen and it talked about it as his most difficult and unsuccessful novel, but also the one he appreciated the most, so of course pretentious youngster that I was I had to pick it up. What strikes me about it and Where Angels Fear To Tread now is Forster's hatred for a sort of buttoned up middle class Englishness - he was doing screeds against the suburbs fifty years before that became fashionable. In Where Angels... this is contrasted with Italy and in Longest Journey with a working class character - there's a bit of fetishism involved in both but I'm hardly the best authority to comment. Many years ago I started a thread on Forster on here where I complained about his sexism, and that's still there too - there's likeable female characters but they're few and far in between and don't have the presence of his female villains. Part of it I guess has to have to do with his sexuality and the compulsive heterosexuality of his time - settling down with a wife seen as the burgeois opposite of discussing philosophy with your (all male) friend group and seeking something more. But it's still a bummer. Anyway I dunno if I still think Longest Journey is a masterpiece, or even my fav Forster, but there's some achingly beautiful writing in there and I fully suscribe to dude's "school is terrible, uni is great" worldview.

Taking a break from Forster now to read Jeff VanderMeer's Anhiliation, years after all the cool people have gotten 'round to it and just in time to finish it before I catch the movie.

Finished book 6 of Proust, Albertine disparue, and I feel like the novel is beginning to resolve in a satisfying way. I wasn't sure if Proust was going to be able to tie things together or if it would just keep going until it stopped. I like the symmetry of reintroducing Gilberte and Norpois at just the right point to counterbalance their initial appearances in books 1 and 2, and the other symmetry of the two 'côtés' which are now collapsing together. The Venice excursion is nice after the long and complex psychological sections which preceded it.

oh he keeps (periodically) tying things together (sometimes too reliant on small world etc., although that's life, that's his alibi) right to the end.
In The Captive and The Fugitive, I stuck around for every dusty moment of the narrator's tedious torture of self and other---unlike Albertine, and good for her, but meanwhile I got the point already, of how numbing this sort of obsession can be, got the point early enough that I wasn't surprised to read that he hadn't originally meant to go on at nearly such length about this apartment interlude(but again, that's life...)

Many years ago I started a thread on Forster on here where I complained about his sexism, and that's still there too - there's likeable female characters but they're few and far in between and don't have the presence of his female villains.

so how do you explain Margaret Schlegel?

Finished We Have Always Lived In the Castle. As close to a perfect thing as I have ever read, I think.

Ooh yeah. Jackson is superb. For a very different, funny side of her (but still wonderfully written) try her autobiographical 'Living with Savages', or for a very funny but increasingly super-dark novel, 'The Way Through the Wall'.

so how do you explain Margaret Schlegel?

By pointing out she's not in Where Angels Fear To Tread or The Longest Journey :) I'll ket you know once I get to Howard's End.

just finished bolano's the savage detectives and thoroughly enjoyed every single minute of it. next i picked up javier cercas' soldiers of salamis in which bolano makes an appearance. i had no clue about it, kind of a funny coincidence

Finished Master of the Senate, third volume of Robert Caro's LBJ biography. Probably the best yet, yeah. Also finished reading the Torah, as I work my way through religious texts. I should read the rest of the old testament, but I have a prose retelling of the Ramayana, which does seem a bit more fun right now. And I read Robert Rosenstones 'Visions of the Past' which is a collection of articles about the way History is depicted in movies, which would probably be better if he didn't return to the same five films in every article...