The BURIED Book Club discussion
exHUME to ConSUMe
>
ARChive of unBURIED reViEws
For the first time I've written a review (of sorts) of an "author" (actually editor) who previously had zero reviews. I'm not actually giving a high recommendation for the book, unless you have a special interest in early English language Ballads, but anyway the book is free and largely buried, and here's a review for Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance.
I am pleased to announce the unearthing of a Grade D Flawless literary Diamond, in Wittenwiler's Ring.Anyone who prepares a literary Canon which doesn't include this text is a whore's son. Unless he is a woman. Then he's no one's son at all.
Rand's review of What Waiting Really Means by June Akers Seese https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Since late August.Essential Buried Pantheon:
Christine Brooke-Rose, Between (from obscurity straight into my top 50-ever)
Buried gems:
Wendy Walker, The Secret Service
Christine Brooke-Rose, Such
Alan Burns, Babel
In need of further archeological investigation:
Christine Brooke-Rose, The Sycamore Tree
Jean Ferry, The Conductor and Other Tales
Alan Burns, Revolutions of the Night
New, but excellent and should never be allowed to be buried:
Jeff Jackson, Mira Corpora
My review of The Story of Harold by Terry Andrews (George Selden).I came to it through mark monday's great review.
I have recently (today... forty seconds ago...) posted a review on Antonio Beccadelli's The Hermaphrodite.
Here's a premature burial from 2002 in dire need of attention lest the an extremely auspicious debut remain stranded without follow-up or any attention whatsoever: Mustafa Mutabaruka's Seed.
Other buried highlights of the year so far.Buried essentials of the Austrian 60s/70s avant-garde:
The Will To Sickness (especially this one, it's fantastic, thread to follow)
The Head of Vitus Bering
The Sixth Sense
The Skewed Tales
Other buried gems:
My Horse and Other Stories
The Leg of Lamb: Its Life and Works
Genre burials (decent number of ratings, but largely from sci-fi readers, despite being incisive experimental works):
The Black Corridor
The Female Man
I have been reading another fairly obscure Welsh author - or at least an author with a Welsh name. Dai Vaughan was a documentary film editor, celebrated in his profession, who wrote several books and essays on film and film-makers. Later in life, he started writing fiction, publishing some five or so novels - literary, mildly experimental (at least in structure), and apparently well-received, but I suspect little-read. They are too recent to be buried, but are unerringly heading that way...Totes Meer takes its name from a surrealist painting by war artist Paul Nash of wrecked enemy bombers dumped in an Oxfordshire field (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/n...). The novel consists of four discrete stories and left me puzzled since much of it appeared to be rambling musings and not a great deal else. Too subtle for me, perhaps. Or possibly they are all linked by classical myths of which I am happily ignorant - probably from The Mabinogion in this case. Anyway, review at: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Buried gems:Dra–
Celebrations
Insel
The Autobiography of Albert Einstein
Winterreise
Gisele Prassinos --Surrealist Texts
Anecdoted Topography of Chance
The Adventures of Telemachus
Entering Fire
(A few of these -- Entering Fire, Telemachus, Insel -- have more around 50 ratings, so not buried enough to earn threads, but still wildly under-read.)
Genre burial (key experimental works published as pulp, and largely passed over):
Beyond Apollo
Discovered another Calder & Boyars paperback that has been sitting on my shelves since time immemorial. This one is Charles Newman's first novel New Axis, a slim volume originally published in 1966. He used to edit TriQuarterly, to which I once subscribed, so perhaps that's why I originally bought the book. His novels are distinctly neglected, though Dalkey (of course) have published his unfinished, posthumous In Partial Disgrace . New Axis is probably less adventurous than his later works - but I still quite liked it. Review athttps://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Never reviewed or rated, yet totally great:Communion, Graeme Gibson
(And read his debut Five Legs too -- no one else has ever reviewed either of these first two great modernist works)
Previously unreviewed:
the telephone pole, Russell Marois
Providings, Elspeth Davie
Buried gems:
Inner Tube, Hob Broun
Liberty or Love!, Robert Desnos
Musrum, Eric Thacker and Anthony Earnshaw
Still buried, but in need of better readers than I, perhaps:
Picture Theory, Nicole Brossard
Penny Lane, Fielding Dawson
Thankfully unburied though still under-read:
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
A Night of Serious Drinking
From the Observatory
Genre burial (notable books of interest beyond their genre fiction placement):
Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home, James Tiptree Jr.
Revelations, Barry Malzberg
Galaxies, Barry Malzberg
Guernica Night, Barry Malzberg
(Malzberg desperately wanted to write the great experimental novel, and in fact Guernica Night includes a meta-conversation between him and Gil Orlovitz's ghost), but his insane one-book-a-month production rate (in order to make ends meet, presumably) had good and bad effects on these aspirations. ie: he was able to publish very unorthodox experimental and postmodern novels monthly without a lot of editorial oversight since they had a guaranteed sci-fi market in the early 70s HOWEVER the absurd rate of composition leaves them all somewhat rushed and uneven, despite their ambition and interest. Do with this information what you will. I read a bunch of his work and can point to Beyond Apollo and Revelations as the most genuinely successful, but am now going on hiatus from his cramped and anxious storytelling voice for a bit.)
(On the other hand, James Tiptree Jr. is just an excellent stylist and a highly imaginative storyteller. Her stuff is very much sci-fi, but she (JTJr was a pseudanym of ex-CIA psychologist Alice Sheldon) totally managed to break out of the commercial confines of sci-fi in a way that Malzberg seems to have struggled with).
As of this writing er typing er screen-pecking there is ONE actual review of William Demby's Beetlecreek, and it is HERE.
With 18 reviews and 134 ratings, Ann Quin's Berg is becoming quite popular, though I'm not sure why. I have done my bit to exhume it (review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but perhaps it was best left undisturbed.I did discover that it had been made into a film called "Killing Dad", with Richard E. Grant as Berg and Denholm Elliott as the Father. A farce, I assume - but not many BURIED books are translated into the cinema. Curious.
Peter wrote: "I did discover that it had been made into a film called "Killing Dad""Found it! I'll link to it in her thread. Thanks!
Since November:Liliane Giraudon, Pallaksch, Pallaksch
Here's a really odd and essential one. Amorphously salient and irreducible "stories", each gleaming darkly in its own alien-but-familiar world. Sun & Moon, of course.
Buried gems:
Mary Butts, Armed With Madness
Tom Mallin, Knut
Rachel Wyatt, The Rosedale Hoax
Read now so that it can't get buried:
Cassandra Troyan, Kill Manual
Robert Pinget's early Baga is very buried, but also drove me somewhat up the wall.
Nate D wrote: "Robert Pinget's early Baga is very buried, but also drove me somewhat up the wall. "I could see that. The Inquisitory almost had me hallucinating.
See, I loved the Inquisitory, by comparison. Despite being the much more grueling reading experience, it felt far more purposeful to me.
Nate D wrote: "See, I loved the Inquisitory, by comparison. Despite being the much more grueling reading experience, it felt far more purposeful to me."Hey, I gave it four stars. I thought it was great, but it was at times a very unpleasant experience for me.
I seem to have been digging off-piste recently, but the following are buried if not BURIED:Maggie Ross is an unhurried English novelist whose first book The Gasteropod won the venerable James Tait Black Prize (an interesting mix of the celeberated and the buried - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_T...) back in 1968. Her second novel Milena appeared in 1983 and her latest comes out this year. No rush, then. Not crazy about The Gasteropod (2 ratings, 0 reviews), but for what it's worth my review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rosalind Belben is another English author who has won the Tait Black and is included in Amongst Those Left: The British Experimental Novel 1940-1980. Her Choosing Spectacles (3 ratings, 0 reviews) may not have been the best place to start, but review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Dedalus have published translations of several books by Herbert Rosendorfer . I came across an earlier translation of his 1972 novel German Suite (8 ratings, 1 German review) which again was probably not the best of his works to have chosen for starters. Heigh ho. Review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show......
Back on piste with the officially BURIED Irish-Indian Aubrey Menen. I picked up a copy of The Abode Of Love (2 ratings, 0 reviews) and liked it enough (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) to follow it up with Fonthill: A Comedy (5 ratings, 0 reviews)- a novel about William Beckford (I even read Vathek by way of preparation - but that's certainly NOT buried). Review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Peter wrote: "I seem to have been digging off-piste recently, but the following are buried if not BURIED:"
Many thanks! Lots of stuff here.
I've read Rosendorfer's The Architect of Ruins. A very odd, often fascinating narrative hall of mirrors in a Manuscript Found in Saragosa mode. It annoyed me a bit towards the end, but I think it's quite unique and worth reading. A shame that German Suite was disappointing.
I have Rosendorfer's Grand Solo for Anton on the shelf, which may also be a better bet, but is unlikely to be read anytime soon. Too many other authors soliciting my attention...
Ack, haven't updated since March!Buried classic:
School of the Sun (Ana María Matute -- thanks Wendy!)
Previously unreviewed and great!
Four of Fools (Evelin Sullivan, 2 ratings)
Crash: Nostalgia For The Absence Of Cyberspace (weird exhibition catalogue / essays / stories / ?! about the early internet)
Buried gems:
The Trumpets of Jericho (Unica Zurn -- just translated!)
Nelly's Version (Eva Figes)
House on Moon Lake (Francesca Durranti)
Baal Babylon (Fernando Arrabal)
Buried meh:
Alfred Jarry Man with the Axe (Nigey Lennon)
Women (Philippe Sollers)
A Stranger Still (Anna Kavan, who I love otherwise, but this is from her early realist period)
New, but headed for burial if you don't intervene (and you should!)
Love Hotel (Jane Unrue)
The Garden: Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulation (Ed Steck)
Headless (K.D.)
After You, Dearest Language (Marisol Limon Martinez, previously unreviewed)
We Are Not Here to Disappear
Also some great borderline cases around the 30 to 60 ratings zone:
La Medusa
Prehistoric Times
The Juggler
Sphinx
Nate D wrote: "Ack, haven't updated since March!"
Most happy for another update. Thanks!
If you're looking for a cozy place to sit, try The Sofa. Just don't get too cozy, or it might grope you.It's quite a good book deserving of revival, and I've linked to the review. Cheers.
Three buried Americans - coincidentally linked, as I now discover, by Ronald Sukenick recommending them. (Not my guru - never read anything by him.)Norman Rosten was the official Poet Laureate of Brooklyn, apparently. He also wrote a few novels. I found his first, Under the Boardwalk (2 ratings, 0 reviews) on one of my dustier shelves where it had been sitting patiently since the dawn of man. Ok, but reads like memories of childhood. Review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
More memories of childhood - but decidedly less conventional - in Watching The Body Burn (10 ratings, 2 reviews) by Thomas Glynn. Glynn published three novels plus a book that's not really a novel and not really a manual of carpentry. His magnum opus, The Cathedral of Time, remains unpublished. Now that's what I call Buried. Review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Certified BURIED, Douglas Woolf must once have been more popular than he is now, since I picked up a Penguin paperback of Fade Out (7 ratings, 0 reviews). Liked it, as well. Review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Hoping to stoke the initial flames of interest lit by Nate D under the Austrian writer Gerhard Roth (also see his BBC thread started by Nate) by sharing reviews of the seven Roth novels I've read over the past year and a half. My favorites were The Will to Sickness, Winterreise, and The Lake.The Autobiography of Albert Einstein (brief annotation)
The Will to Sickness
Winterreise
The Calm Ocean
On the Brink
The Lake
The Plan
Excellent! The world, and BBC, needs more G. Roth readers. I really need to track down a copy of The Lake, especially.
Pretty sure I've got The Autobiography of Albert Einstein sitting at home - I need to get to it.Eh, nevermind, I went ahead and bought like 4 others.
Y'all got me all excited for Gerhard Roth, so I went home and read The Autobiography of Albert Einstein. Review is HEREGlad I bought a bunch more of his stuff yesterday, as this was excellent.
Nice! Glad to hear it. That one is probably his most 'experimental' followed by The Will to Sickness. After that he begins migrating toward more straightforward prose.
It feels a bit weird to see Gerhard Roth treated as a buried author here - and I don't think I'm ever going to get used to perfectly well-known authors being considered as buried just because nobody in the US happens to have heard of them. :PBuried or not, he is well worth reading, links to my reviews if anyone is still on the fence about that:
Der See
Der Berg
Der Strom
It's his earliest work that is really considered buried. The BBC also serves to call attention to buried works by writers who have come to be better known for other works. From what I can tell, though, Roth has also not been widely translated, even his works that are more well known to German readers. Of those that have been translated, they've most commonly been translated into English, and most of these by small presses (in both the UK and US) with limited readership.Your reviews are a pleasure to read--thanks for posting them. Most of the Orkus series remains unavailable in English, so it's interesting to see where else Roth has gone with it.
Larou wrote: "perfectly well-known authors being considered as buried just because nobody in the US happens to have heard of them"Yep. Totally have to recognize our finitude on this question. But our faux=numbers criteria here on gr makes it quite clear just how BURIED (in the USofA) Herr Roth really is. Now if only we could get a larger quotient of German Readers signed up in gr=Land!
btw, may I suggest that some of this G=Roth discussion get copied into his thread too ; especially the links, for reference' sake.
My review of The Bloodworth Orphans is now up. Veil will be read later in the month, and Days is planned for March time...then hope to complete him by summer. An extraordinary writer, well worth spending time with.
I've probably pushed my review of Inish in front of enough pairs of eyes already, but since this thread is my invitation to be redundant, I'm here!
Apparently I last updated this thread a full 1.5 years ago. Blame the GR re-design for hiding the groups.Some of these, like Inish, seem like they're widely known already, which is to your collective credit for being so up on it. Other books seem hopelessly obscure, until I log into here and see that thousands already know of them.
Previously unreviewed:
The Hippodrome
Winter Journey
Psychodalek
Buried gems:
A Talisman in the Darkness: Selected Stories of Olga Orozco
Life of a Star
Stories Out of Omarie
Ready to Burst
I Am the Beautiful Stranger
The Death of the Novel and Other Stories
Stolen Stories
Technoculture
Inish
Waiting: Stories
Roman Nights And Other Stories
Go When You See the Green Man Walking
Barely unburied:
Passages
The Automatic Muse: Surrealist Novels
Murder Most Serene
The Park
Not To Mention Camels
Buried, but somewhat dubious:
* * *
Circuit: These Are The Sacred Places, Visions Before Midnight, Death By Toilet
Amour Amour
Nate D wrote: "Apparently I last updated this thread a full 1.5 years ago. Blame the GR re-design for hiding the groups.."That's some skillful Spadin' there! Thanks for the update.
The BURIED Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Raki (other topics)The Ocean of Mirth: Reading Hāsyārṇava-Prahasanaṁ of Jagadēśvara Bhaṭṭāchārya, A Political Satire for All Times (other topics)
Décadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse (other topics)
Cheops: Novel (other topics)
Information Report (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Christine Brooke-Rose (other topics)Arno Schmidt (other topics)
Jeff Nuttall (other topics)
Paul Ableman (other topics)
Gil Orlovitz (other topics)
More...
An important piece of history for the BURIED Book Club ;; there were professionals busy at work assuring us that we'd never need to hear the name "Gaddis." They fail'd, as they always will.