RussellinVT’s Comments (group member since Apr 11, 2024)

RussellinVT’s comments from the Ersatz TLS group.

Tam wrote: "Just thought I'd mention to Logger that all your past e-mails have vanished from my e-mail. I think it was when the glitch happened where you had to change your ID to the current Logger24...."

It never occurred to me that that would happen when I cancelled my old account. I see now that it carried away everything, including yours to me. I’ll send you a test email under my new name. It might require a bit of set-up.

Berkley wrote: "Thanks for starting the new thread, Gpfr."

Thanks from me too, GP.

I meant to respond to Logger24's post about Herodotus in the last thread...

For me, Herodotus's history represents a tremendous leap forward in human thought: ..."

You do a much better job than I did of describing Herodotus’ achievement. I was hoping to say just enough to encourage Tam not to abandon him without another try. The biggest surprise for me was how, in addition of course to all the stories, he considered matters from the point of view of the enemy, in a fair-minded way.

Tam wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "Tam wrote: "I started reading 'Herodotus - The Histories' acquired from the church book exchange. I have given up after 6 pages or so. So many names!..."

Sorry you found it heavy ..."

I was trying the Robin Waterfield one, it did feel quite archaic in tone. What is interesting to me is examining what I don't like about it, and why. I think that it is too much a melding of history, myth and story telling, as if they were all the same thing, and no indications as to which is which.

I think you’re experiencing the essence of Herodotus. He absorbs every kind of information that comes to hand, reliable or questionable, and fashions out of it what looks like a smorgasbord but is actually a pre-planned feast of many courses, some more digestible than others, starting with the early expansion of the Persian empire and culminating in their utter defeat by the Greeks. Quite a performance when you consider that he did not himself divide it into books or chapters or even sentences, and let it all stream out as a single long exposition.

Prompted by the discussion of Edmund Wilson I picked up my old copy of To the Finland Station. First read fifty-plus years ago, the opening chapters reminded me what a vigorous and readable intellectual history this is. He will go on to review and assess a succession of disparate European thinkers. I could bask for an age in this kind of stimulating brilliance. There will never be enough time to read all the wonderful books out there.

Gpfr wrote: "... Then, interestingly, I saw another Top 10 by Sutherland in a Guardian article ..."

Looking down that Sutherland list, I found that, apart from about half of the Sontag, it was a case of knowing all the names and none of the books. But Sutherland himself wrote a lot of lighter stuff, which I quite enjoyed - Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Who is Tom Jones’ Father? How Vulgar is Mrs Elton? Is Betsy Trotwood a Spinster? Etc.

Robert wrote: "Moose Malloy arrives in Farewell, My Lovely."

Should have been top of my list!

Berkley wrote: "...I'm curious, has anyone else here read the Northrop Frye book I mentioned a little earlier, Anatomy of Criticism?..."

I think I’ve read excerpts, and now I’m interested to dip in further. I’ll ask the library to get it for me.

Tam wrote: "I started reading 'Herodotus - The Histories' acquired from the church book exchange. I have given up after 6 pages or so. So many names!..."

Sorry you found it heavy going. It does all come together in the later books. I started with the Everyman version translated by George Rawlinson, which has a rather stiff Victorian style. Then I switched to the recent Tom Holland translation, which is excellent - flowing and natural, and not too many modernisms. It also has first-class maps and glossaries. If that is not the one you were reading it might be worth a try some time.

Bill wrote: "Logger24 wrote: "I think Christopher Booker should also have found room for one other plot category: a stranger comes to town."

Is Darcy the stranger coming to town?"

Absolutely. Smoked me out. The full title of the category is: a mysterious stranger comes to town, stirs everyone up, and then (generally) leaves. Some other examples:

Great Expectations
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Dr Faustus
The Idiot
Silas Marner
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Shane

One might also say:
The Gospels

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "It lists the nine plots as follows, via the work of Christopher Booker..."

"Tragedy" and "Comedy" seem rather broad terms for inclusion in this group. I'm not sure where the plots of most generic Romance novels would fit in here."

I rather agree. Where, for example, does Pride and Prejudice fit? Comedy might cover it, but that does seem bit inadequate.

I think Christopher Booker should also have found room for one other plot category: a stranger comes to town.

Gpfr wrote: "Everyone, I think it's time to call a halt to the US / Europe polemics and get back to books where we can disagree without bad feeling..."

In themselves, they’re all interesting comments, but you’re right, GP, we should get back on track.

While in the UK I picked up a copy of Ma’am Darling, the biog of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown in 99 short chapters. Already it’s cracking me up, but whether I want to subject myself to an entire book of her unhappy, snappish, entitled mentality I’m not sure.

AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "Bill wrote: "Speaking from closer to the action, most bets for Harris' VP pick are on a "red state" governor, Cooper (NC) or Beshear (KY)...."

i'm torn over Harris...."

At least she gives the Democrats a chance. With Biden, after the shock of the debate, there was no chance. She certainly has vulnerabilities (not least that she, along with the rest of the inner circle, kept quiet about Biden’s condition), but I’m not convinced that any of her potential running mates would have been better choices for the top of the ticket. However able, none of them has her name recognition or her appeal to black and women voters.

Tam wrote: "... Is this Stendhal the same as the progenitor of the Stendhal syndrome?....

I remember standing in a room in a palace in Florence which I was told was the place that it happened to him!"

I had never heard of Stendhal syndrome and am rather charmed to learn of it.

Been away on a trip to the UK and was pleasantly surprised to find that in the entrance-hall/booking office of the small local train station there were three sizeable bookcases full of books free for the taking, ranging from crime mysteries and fantasy through lots of modern fiction to classics and interesting non-fiction (e,g, the Shell Guide to Britain’s inland waterways). Is this usual now in smaller stations? I didn’t see a free library in stations that were large enough to support a WH Smith.

I helped myself to a copy of Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong. I had read a couple of his that were moderately all right, and I thought it was time I read the one that made his name. I found it a strong read whose power was in the story rather than the style. The extended description of the first day of the Somme was vivid and believable. My grandfather was one of those who went over the top that morning. He was in the trenches from then until the end of the war. We have a few details from his letters and a family memoir. This book, better than most war histories, showed me what he endured.

Berkley wrote: "I've read only the two famous novels, but I'm thinking of trying Lucien Leuwen, though I'm a bit ambivalent about reading something left in an unfinished state..."

I must confess to finding Lucien Leuwen a struggle. You wonder if it was left unfinished because he knew it wasn’t working. Much more to my taste – beyond the two great novels – was his Vie de Henri Brulard (which is where we find a lot of the material for Vertigo), the colourful histories in Chroniques italiennes, the wonderful musings of De l’amour (where he describes his theory of “cristallisation”), the charming and digressive travelogue Rome, Naples et Florence, and the lighter but entertainingly romantic novella Mina de Vanghel. I’ve read Armance and Lamiel but so long ago I now don't remember either of them very well.

Berkley wrote: "I've been impressed by the two Sebald books I've read, The Emigrants and Vertigo, ..."

I’m another who likes WG Sebald. Vertigo is actually the one of his I like best, and also the one I read first. It seems to be disregarded in favour of Austerlitz. His allusive, drifting, semi-factual way of creating a coherent whole out of his mental flotsam made an immediate impact, perhaps because I loved the way he used it to explore the sensibility of Stendhal, another of my literary heroes.

I’ve never read any Marilynne Robinson.

Berkley wrote: "There was a pretty good movie last year based on her life: Simone Veil, A Woman of the Century."

Thanks, didn't know that.

Une Vie – Simone Veil (2012)

I came across this absorbing autobiography in a used book store and am about half way through. I never knew much about her personal history. I was just aware of this political figure across the Channel, the minister responsible for modernising the laws on contraception and abortion, who impressed one with her seriousness.

Her parents were non-practising Jews. She had a normal childhood centred on family, school, and the Guides. In stages from May 1940 their lives became tragic. She says that in Nice as much as in Paris the atmosphere was exactly as described by Irène Némirovsky in Suite Française. Eventually they all went into hiding, sheltered by different families. Apparently some three quarters of French Jews survived the War in this way – many more than in other occupied countries.

The day after managing to complete her Bac in March 1944 she was arrested in the street for having a false identity card. She survived nine horrific months in Auschwitz and other camps. Her mother died in Belsen. Her father and brother were transported to Lithuania and killed there. Two sisters survived the camps. Returning to France she found that no one wanted to hear what had happened to a deportee. For her though, these experiences were as indelible in her life as the number tattooed on her left arm.

I’m not sure I will read the sections on her later public life (minister in several governments, president of the European Parliament). The interest for me lies in what made her the figure she later became. From an early age she showed a strong spirit of independence., and a photo shows a four year old girl already with an assessing look. Observing her parents, she was determined that she would have her own career, unlike her mother, who relinquished a passion for chemistry in order to bring up a family while her father pursued his practice as an architect. After the War she married and had three boys while studying for her law exams and working full time as a judge in the prison service. She says that everything she accomplished in life was due to her mother’s character and influence.

It was Chirac who in 1974 plucked her from the obscurity and made her his minister of health. The annexes give the text of several of her speeches. Reading these it is no wonder she commanded attention.
…

A hundred pages into the Journal of Anaïs Nin I am tiring of the endless, pointless roundabout of moody self-absorption in her three-way affair with the Henry Millers, not to mention the monotony of the style. It cannot stand comparison with the humanity, compassion and commitment of Simone Veil.

Thanks for the new thread, GP.

On The G’s list, I'm another who has read 21. Some were dreadful (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a page turner, no more), some were disappointing (Atonement, completely flat, apart from the clever turn, another example of the movie being better than the book), and several were excellent (glad to see The hare with the Amber Eyes). Of the ones I hadn’t read, quite a few were in the category “I’m know all Guardian readers are supposed to have read them but they just weren’t enticing enough for me” (of which Piketty is the prime exhibit).

I too enjoyed giveus’s photos from Stratford. Some of those colours – that blue! - would have been way beyond the means of stage companies in Elizabethan times, but this doesn’t mean that actors did not have such costumes. I read somewhere that the lords and ladies of the court would sometimes donate their cast-offs.

Thanks for this SF list, Bill. I couldn’t resist taking a look either. I think of SF as mainly involving spaceships and aliens, so not really for me. I was surprised to find I had read eight of them:

A Clockwork Orange
The Time Machine
The City and The City
Brave New World
1984
Station Eleven
Dune
Frankenstein

Unless I missed it, they didn’t have one other I’ve read and quite enjoyed that does fit my idea of SF, The Martian. Generally speaking, I prefer time travel in the opposite direction, historical fiction, with the no doubt naïve belief that it doesn’t involve that much speculation.