Patrick’s Comments

Patrick’s comments from the Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) group.

Note: Patrick is not currently a member of this group.

On the subject of Larry McMurtry: All his non-fiction - essays and memoirs - is well worth checking out. He is one of the lovable guys of literarure, a real mensch. Like Stephen King and Louis L'Amour, he is supremely devoted to books and reading, and his enthusiasm is contagious. Popular writers don't get sufficient credit from the literati for this kind of enthusiasm, but it is so important.

Bat-Cat wrote: "My reading has been slow lately - work has been busy and I have had a few seminars and trips to deal with. Hopefully I will make more significant progress in the next week or so. :-)

On a differe..."

That is a great story. I would have been gobsmacked, too! And I am one man who would have recognized her instantly. 🙂

I have read the first two volumes of The Story of the Stone, hope to get to the third this year. Magnificent.

Lotte wrote: "))) wrote: "The language is amazing and I almost think that this alone in a recipe book would make it a masterpiece:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
—..."

I have indeed seen Throne of Blood. It is a fantastic film, albeit only very loosely related to Shakespeare.

The Roman Polanski film is a wonderful version of the actual play. The Orson Welles adaptation is....eccentric (but interesting).

I read all the Classics Illustrated comic books when I was a kid; also digested versions of classics, with excerpts from the texts, that were part of The Book of Knowledge encyclopedia. This was all simultaneous with my starting to read the actual books, which I did at a young age. All of these exposures stimulated my appetite for classics, along with film versions and Masterpiece Theater adaptations.

I read The Three Musketeers and the first sequel Twenty Years After in high school, but didn't get to the second sequel, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, which is as long as the first two hooks put together.

I just started the Richard Pevear translation of Musketeers. It reads very well.

The Murphys, that is correct.

FSF's life is as addictive as his fiction, and there are COUNTLESS biographical books about him and his circle.

Two versions of the novel are in print. The first version, published in 1934, uses flashbacks; the second, revised version, prepared by Fitzgerald's friend and noted critic Malcolm Cowley on the basis of notes for a revision left by Fitzgerald, is ordered chronologically and was first published posthumously in 1948. Critics have suggested that Cowley's revision was undertaken due to negative reviews of the temporal structure of the first version of the book.

The original version is what almost everyone reads; the revision did not catch on. I myself have no problems with the temporal structure of the original, and don't find it haphazard. I haven't read the revision, but I would probably find it unsatisfactory. In my view, a strictly chronological arrangement of the story would lose a lot of subtlety.

Rivalic wrote: "James wrote: "Last year, I read the David Luke translation. It's the Oxford World's Classics edition. Part 1 and Part 2 are two separate (e)books. I thought the translation was good. I chose this b..."

Part 1 is a complete story in itself. I'm not sure that the concept of "story" is even particulaly relevant to Part 2, which is a very strange beast.

The Scribd application offers the complete Parts 1 and 2 in a scholarly translation by Stuart Atkins. The work only reveals its full splendor and strangeness if you read the whole thing.

FSF's richest, deepest, most moving novel.

There was a 6-hour miniseries adaptation in 1985, with Peter Strauss and Mary Steenburgen as Dick and Nicole Diver. I have never had the opportunity to see this, but the casting sounds ideal.

Gary wrote: "I'm reading Ulysses right now, but I'm waiting to get in the mail a hard copy. The kindle version does not impress me and I'd like a hard copy. The problem is my Library system does n..."

I agree with everything you say, Gary.

When I read Ulysses a couple of years ago, I used the Oxford paperback of the first edition. I hear there is a new paperback from Alma Classics with extremrly extensive annotations.

Darren wrote: "O
M
G
just unwrapped:

1944 edition of 1942 noir crime thriller Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich (writing as William Irish)
so happy :oD"

Ahhh. Those old Pocket Books can be surprisingly sturdy.

Sara wrote: "I started reading before I started school. I was taught by an older sister. I always read at least three grades above my assigned level, because I would borrow her books and read them before she ha..."

Similar. My grandfather taught me to read at age 3 (at my insistence). I started reading adult novels by age 7 (the first was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). I mixed adult literature, children's literature, and comic books from that point on.

At age 59, I bring so much more to every book that I read, so it is a pleasure to re-read classics that I first encountered and enjoyed as a young person.

Terris wrote: "I am reading This Side of Paradise. I've only just started (about 30 pages in). Can't really tell anything yet."

Best college novel ever.

One of my current reads that I can strongly recommend is Xavier Herbert's classic novel of early 20th Century Australia, Capricornia.

Macbeth is very concentrated and unified in its effect. More like a poem than a novel in that respect.

I am almost finished with the first volume of an 1884 "triple-decker", The Chronicles Of Castle Cloyne by Margaret Brew. It is a grand Irish novel with a wide social scope, encompassing the lives of both tenants and landlords. I am enjoying the book greatly and think that anyone who responds to Victorian fiction would do so also. All three volumes are available at the Biblioboard app and at the Internet Archive (not at Project Gutenberg yet).

This is the sort of novel that has been lost to literary history, but which may be rediscovered now through modern technologies.

Roman Polanski's 1971 film version of Macbeth is dark, bloody, and excellent. Akira Kurosawa's loose 1957 adaptation, Throne of Blood, is amazing.

Verdi's opera is also outstanding.

Pink wrote: "This is our Old School Classic Group Read for February 2018.

Please use this thread for general, spoiler free discussion of Macbeth by William Shakespeare

If you wish to..."

The Folger Digital Texts online versions of Shakespeare are wonderful and have been edited to contemporary scholarly standards. Here is the Macbeth: http://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/htm...