Nate D’s Comments (group member since Sep 17, 2012)

Nate D’s comments from the Completists' Club group.

I submit the motion to make Fat Man on a Beach, despite being a film, canon and completion criteria. Though it seems to have vanished from youtube, denying us a link for the moment.

I rather automatically do this as I always tend to be developing multiple areas of interest -- too many to just pow through any one author all in one go. I think it helps me savor, too, to break up a canon.

Watt is amazing. Read it aloud to friends to their delight and/or dismay! I had particularly good results with the bits about the dog-breeding family mathematics and the section on footwear options.

I have the trilogy somewhere, really must get on that at some point.

As far as film completists go, if I make author threads for Robbe-Grillet or Konwicki, I'm requiring all their films in my completion criteria, since both were equally writers and directors.

Sketchbook wrote: "Most GRs havent the curiosity or intensity to find NU authors, of any period, on their own."

How exactly do you recommend unearthing "new" authors, then? I lately tend to skim along a certain region of fairly unread surrealist and related writing, but even then, I'm relying on certain presses (Atlas, Daedalus) or curators (a few specific GR-ers, writersnoonereads) for guidence. Do you dig around library vaults for books that haven't been checked out since the mid-1880s? Grab leaflets from unpublished new writers on the street? Or what? I'm not being sarcastic, both of those methods completely appeal to me, they're just hard to apply effectively.

Lobstergirl wrote: "This is definitely a man-tilted group, so far."

I just added Anna Kavan! ...but still, true.

This is my one really rabid completist bid: I've read everything here but four of the Helen Ferguson-era novels, Change the Name, Stranger Still, Anna Kavan's New Zealand, and the newer biography. (19/28)

If anyone ever turns up a copy of A Bright Green Field (though I've read it), Goose Cross, Rich Get Rich, or Dark Sisters, let me know. These are the ones I still need to find.

I should probably also note that My Madness is kind of useless to the completist: it's all reprinted stories mixed with weird, chopped together versions of Sleep Has His House and Asylum Piece, plus the entire text of Ice. Though right now it's really the only place to read a brilliant story from A Bright Green Field, "The Birds Dancing".

Maybe at some point I'll hunt through the wikipedia and figure out where exactly all the uncollected stories are. (Besides the University of Tulsa, where there's an Anna Kavan archive complete with unpublished novels(?!))

As Helen Ferguson:
A Charmed Circle (1929, in print)
Let Me Alone (1930, O.O.P. but in double edition)
The Dark Sisters (1930, one edition, extremely O.O.P.)
A Stranger Still (1935, in print)
Goose Cross (1936, one edition, extremely O.O.P.)
Rich Get Rich (1937, one edition, extremely O.O.P.)

As Anna Kavan:
Asylum Piece (1940, in print)
Change The Name (1941, O.O.P.)
I Am Lazarus (1945, stories, re-printing November 1, 2012)
Sleep Has His House (a.k.a. The House of Sleep) (1948, in print)
The Horse's Tale (with K. T. Bluth) (1949, extremely O.O.P.)
A Scarcity of Love (1956, in print)
Eagle's Nest (1957, O.O.P.)
A Bright Green Field (1958, stories, O.O.P.)
Who Are You? (1963, in print)
Ice (1967, in print)

Posthumous:
Julia and the Bazooka (1970, stories, in print)
My Soul in China (1975, novella and stories, O.O.P.)
Mercury (1994, in print)
The Parson (1995, in print)
Guilty (2007, in print)
Five Months Further (1943, 18 stories, unpublished until inclusion in Anna Kavan's New Zealand (see under Biography, and in message 19 below))
Stranger Still: The Works of Anna Kavan (2012, criticism with 4 uncollected stories, ed. Francis Booth, in print on Lulu)

Still unpublished:
The Cactus Sign (31 stories, compiled sometime 1941 - 1958, see message 20 below)

Biographies:
The Case of Anna Kavan (D.A. Callard, 1994, O.O.P. but available)
A Stranger on Earth (Jeremy Reed, 2006, in print)
Anna Kavan’s New Zealand (2009, biography with previously uncollected stories, ed. Jennifer Sturm, O.O.P.)

Collected editions:
My Madness: Selected Writings (1990, O.O.P.)
Let Me Alone and A Scarcity of Love (O.O.P. but available)

What do you have left, MJ? It seems like you plowed through all the fiction already earlier this year. (except for that not yet in print).

I'm not generally in any hurry, but I suppose I'll to polish off all the remaining Zamyatin-in-translation, since that'll only be a novella and the essays now. Read more Kavan, Konwicki, and Robbe-Grillet though probably not yet to completion, for savoring.

And then continue reaching in all directions otherwise, as usual.

Are any of the non-genre entries as good as Confessions of a Crap Artist? I believe that was his only non-sci-fi to be published in his lifetime (and the only I've read).

I'll probably be chipping away at these pretty much forever.

That bibliography is certainly intimidating but might stand some editing. For instance, is Nova (1997) different from the 1968 version? And what's with all the Neveryon apocrypha marked [SF]?

Wait, wait, I found it. I had not realized that only 5 threads per folder show on the first page. Good to know.

Hmmm, so has my Zamyatin listing been weeded out inadvertently in the re--organization?

Childwold (1976) is an overlooked and under-read gem.

Oates may be too prolific and occasionally somewhat prosaic for me to consider attempting completion, but I'll be ever on the look-out for her high-points to grab at.

The Ice Palace is nearly perfect -- mysterious, precise, beautiful.

Yeah! We is great, but I really suspect you'd enjoy some of the stories and novellas especially. He has an excellent voice for scathing black humor and really pushed the prose and structural envelope. For instance, there's one in the Dragon where he plots all the action along three color and thematic axis that cut across the town, almost oulipan-like.

As of now, I've just read only the last 4 novels, but am going to keep working back through anything else I can lay hands on.

Honestly, I have some doubts as to whether Women Call Home or The Winds are actually about in English, but they show up on the (not even complete) English wikipedia page. Also, I imagine there's probably some overlap between the poems.

...

later: read The Bleaching Yard and House in the Dark (6/10 novels copmplete)

Criteria for now: works in English (14).

novels:
The Great Cycle, Det store spelet, 1934
Women Call Home, Kvinnor ropar heim, 1935
The Seed, Kimen, 1940
House in the Darkness, Huset i mørkret, 1945
The Bleaching Yard, Bleikeplassen, 1946
Spring Night, Vårnatt, 1954
The Birds, Fuglane, 1957
The Ice Palace, Is-slottet, 1963
The Bridges, Bruene, 1966
The Boat in the Evening, Båten om kvelden, 1968

stories:
The Winds, Vindane, 1952

poetry:
Land of Hidden Fires, Løynde eldars land, poetry 1953
Beyond the Moment: 101 Selected Poems, 1988, revised 2001
Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems, 2000

Bonus: works not in English (31).

Menneskebonn (1923, novel)
Sendemann Huskuld (1924, novel)
Guds bustader / God Dwellings (1925, plays)
Grindegard. Morgonen / Grindgard. Next Morning (1925, novel)
Grinde-kveld, eller Den gode engelen / Grinde's Evening, or the Good Angel (1926, novel)
Dei svarte hestane / The Black Horses (1928, novel)
Klokka i haugen / Time of the Mound (1929, stories)
Fars reise / Father's Journey (1930, novel)
Sigrid Stallbrokk (1931, novel)
Gjest ved Boknafjorden / Guest at Boknafjorden (1931, novel)
Dei ukjende mennene / The Unknown Men (1932, novel)
Sandeltreet / The Sandalwood (1933, novel)
Ultimatum (1934, plays)
Leiret og hjulet / Clay and Wheel (1936, stories)
Hjarta høyrer sine heimlandstonar / Heart Hears Their Homeland Song (1938, novel)
Kjeldene / The Springs (1946, poetry)
Leiken og lynet / Game and Lightning (1947, poems)
Morgonvinden / Morgan Wind (1947, plays)
Tårnet / Tower (1948, novel)
Lykka for ferdesmenn / Happily for Traveling Men (1949, poetry)
Signalet / Signal (1950, novel)
Vindane / Winds (1952, stories)
Bleikeplassen / Bleaching Yard (1953, plays)
21 år / 21 years (1953, plays)
Avskil med treet / Farewell to the Tree (1953, plays)
Vårnatt (1954, novel)
Ver ny, vår draum / New World, Our Dream (1956, stories)
Ein vakker dag / A Beautiful Day (1959, poetry)
Brannen / Fire (1961, novel)
Liv ved straumen / Life at the Stream (1970, poetry)
Huset og fuglen – tekster og bilete 1919-1969 / The House and the Bird - Texts and Images (1971)

Dance Dance Dance is also essentially a part of the Rat Trilogy. Maybe my favorite of his, actually. I doubt there are any untranslated novels left, honestly -- he's too hot a commodity for that. Maybe a few loose stories not scooped up by Blind Willow.