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Weekly TLS
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What Are We Reading? 9 Nov 2020
A Single Man is book I've been meaning to read for decades, while High Rising is a book club choice. (And thanks to your advice, I now know how to put in the link! That will be useful on Monday.)
PaleFires wrote: "Regarding the technical concerns about this website, here's my dirty penny's worth. Personally, as a dedicated Luddite, I believe that these inconveniences are FAR surpassed by the mental and intel..."With you all the way, Possum! Boy, did they (whoever they were) have it in for the occasionally overemphatic Wilson, and yet they couldn't recognise calculated malice when it was shoved up their nostrils. Drunk on the palm wine of power...
There's no going back, and speaking as another Luddite I'm settling in nicely. Gotta write a few more reviews, but!
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Alwynne andAB76 replied re Ford Madox Ford and H Williamson ......."I've read the FMF several times and my constant comment is that 'this is what it really must have been like to be a soldier in ..."
If you are interested in WW1 memoirs, then you have probably already read Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That - but if not, I recommend it.
As for reading books by less than admirable authors - I think we have to separate the works from the individuals. If we only read books by 'nice' people, our bookshelves would be seriously depleted; and if we only read books about nice people, there wouldn't be much left!
A couple of natural wonders this morning, no, not crocodiles this time. I am reading MONARCHS OF THE SEA by Danna Staaf and very interesting it is too.
First I must mention her speculation that all life on Earth was ‘seeded’ from Mars originally. Of course, way back, Mars was a much more habitable place than Earth before it rolled too close to the Sun and Earth was no more than a ball of heaving rock flying through space so maybe that is true.
The first living things were simply molecules, cells that gradually developed into worms that developed into many different kinds. My favourite that I had not heard of before is the Christmas Tree worm - it does look just like a miniature tree;
https://oceana.org/marine-life/corals...
As I was sitting looking out of the window eating my toast, hundreds and hundreds, a murmuration of starlings flew overhead. They roost less than a mile away in the reed beds and they had obviously decided that it was time to get up. This sparked some conversation between MrC and myself. Where
Do they all go?
Often one will see small groups of starlings sitting on the overhead wires watching what is going on, squabbling near the bird feeder, grumbling in trees but never in the quantities that are apparent in a murmuration. What tells them all to come together at dusk to roost? There must be some form of communication. Or is it instinct?
Anyway here is a video of a murmuration to delight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dedVs...
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I really liked A Single Man: I bought it after seeing the film with Colin Firth which I also enjoyed.
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In the comments under the Guardian article on fonts/typefaces, there was a reference to Eighty Years of Book Cover Design by Faber and Faber. I thought it looked interesting and when I googled it, found this with examples of some of the covers:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/gal...
Someone else recommended Penguin by Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005.
scarletnoir wrote: "FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Alwynne andAB76 replied re Ford Madox Ford and H Williamson ......."I've read the FMF several times and my constant comment is that 'this is what it really must have been ..."
i have read Graves but thanks for the tip and yes i do agree that unsavoury authors works would be lost to the world if they were deleted from print. I am a fan of Curzio Malapartes work linked to WW2 but he was no angel, though unlike say Celine, he managed to maintain an ambigious relationship with fascism.
I must read "Castle to Castle" by Celine, describing that period where the collaborationary Vichy goons were escaping their fate, hiding away in ever shrinking nazi germany , including Celine
In defence of the Guardian book pages - and I don't know what causes what article to show up, and I'm also not wild about articles trying to reduce everything to American culture wars - when I checked yesterday and this morning I got reviews of a new fantasy novel, an article about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie winning a prize, an article about a Sylvia Pankhurst biography, a review of a new comic (...ugh fine "graphic novel") and some other articles about some interesting books I've not heard of. I also miss TLS a lot but there are some good articles reviewing interesting books and it's not all bogged down in weird online culture war stuff.
Miri wrote: "In defence of the Guardian book pages - and I don't know what causes what article to show up, and I'm also not wild about articles trying to reduce everything to American culture wars - when I chec..."The Sylvia Pankhurst biography is on my Christmas list. If I can wait that long......
Certainly is, Mach. We are going around to watch them settle for the night later.Being rural our electricity is carried in overhead wires which the swallows use as a gathering point prior to taking off for warmer lands. They fill up all the spaces twittering, preening, must look smart for the flight, catching up with the latest gossip, for some time until some unseen by me signal tells them ‘right, let’s go’ and whoosh they’re gone.
CCCubbon wrote: "Certainly is, Mach. We are going around to watch them settle for the night later.Being rural our electricity is carried in overhead wires which the swallows use as a gathering point prior to takin..."
Swallows? What we get every night as we're settling down to sleep is the chirruping of the fruit bats hanging off the overhead wires across the road - we're in the inner city, they didn't do underground power a hundred years ago!
I always imagined fruit bats were silent creatures.....
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That is a remarkable video, mb, not just the murmuration but the mini-ponies too. Thanks for sharing.
scarletnoir wrote: ".... you have probably already read Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That - but if not, I recommend it...."I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Goodbye To All That, though it is on the shelf. Also unread on the shelf are Death of a Hero (Richard Aldington) and a recent book Into the Silence – The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis. But I have read Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War, Frederic Manning’s The Middle Parts of Fortune (aka Her Privates We), Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu and many years ago Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
I've managed to link all these books as 'instructed' so hope it works.
Goodbye to All That
Death of a Hero
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest
Undertones of War
The Middle Parts of Fortune
Le Feu : journal d'une escouade
All Quiet on the Western Front
180 members of this TLS, good to see, i remain focused on just this section or i get cross-eyed, this is a very "busy" website with the hand of amazon lurking......Updates on two novels:
The Refuge by Kenneth Mackenzie has reached its final third without any change in its smooth, patient progress towards something final. The prose matches anything in english literature in stages, as i have mentioned before, the fated female found in Sydney Harbour at the beginning, barely features so far except via the memory of the narrator. It has maybe lost the brilliant poise of the first 200 pages but i remains a pleasure. Its a very literary novel of the mind, though focused on the pysche of an individual rather than great wordl knowledge
The Tunnel by AB Yeshoshua is also a slow mover but the prose is lighter than Mackenzie. This is a modern novel, published in 2018, concerning old age and suprisingly the network of israelis who help bus palestinians to operations and welfare that they cannot recieve within the Israeli state. This forms a part of the plot i wont spoil here but which swings the novel from a very readable tale of Israel, into a fascinating study of both Israel and the Palestinian lands. (For anyone following my travails with modern novels, this gets a thumbs up.....maybe as it hasnt been hyped all over the inkies like so much modern writing does)
CCCubbon wrote: As I was sitting looking out of the window eating my toast, hundreds and hundreds, a murmuration of starlings flew overhead. We get those too - indeed, bird watchers come to see them roost beneath the pier. There is even a recently opened pub called the 'Starling Cloud'. If this link works, it contains some superb still photographs:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Abery...
Machenbach wrote: "Imre Kertész, Liquidation (tr. Tim Wilkinson).I’ve been putting off reviewing this book, not only because I feel more than usually lazy and disinclined to review anything at the mom..."
That's an interesting review - thanks.
I sort of understand the point that writing about the Holocaust can become kitsch... and wasn't over-impressed with the book Schindler's Ark - a worthy if only averagely well written fictionalisation of a historical event. Sometimes, it feels as if prize givers are rewarding authors for taking some sort of moral stance, as opposed to the quality of the writing.
It's also true - I think - that once you have read (and seen) a certain amount about the horrors of the Holocaust, it becomes increasingly difficult to go down that route again. For example, if you have visited the Anne Frank museum, or seen Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, anything else begins to feel superfluous, and a form of self-punishment. I am sure that there are other sites, books, films and documents which could carry the same weight... everyone will have their own experiences - but there comes a point where, like a punch-drunk boxer, it just feels as if you can't take any more. So, a little while ago, I said to myself: no more Holocaust films or books... it's just too upsetting.
What happens then? Well, you get ambushed. One fine day, you start a book which is very funny - Deserable's Piekielny - only to find quite some way into the novel that it has as a crucial element the fate of the Jews of Vilnius... and it's not kitsch. Oh, no.
In the end, it comes down to the skill of the writer... and for the reader, it all depends how much punishment you can take.
(I feel like a stiff drink after that!)
FrancesBurgundy wrote: I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Goodbye To All That, though it is on the shelf. Also unread on the shelf are Death of a Hero (Richard Aldington) and a recent book Into the Silence – The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis. But I have read Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War, Frederic Manning’s The Middle Parts of Fortune (aka Her Privates We), Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu and many years ago Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front.No-one can read every book - no shame in that! I haven't read most of the ones you list...
All Quiet on the Western Front is beautifully written, and the original film version directed by Lewis Milestone is outstanding.
I read Her Privates We a very long time ago, but it impressed me (I only remember titles that I especially like - or abhor). It's interesting to see that this was an expurgated version of a slightly earlier publication: The Middle Parts of Fortune.
I wonder what they left out - the swear words?
Here I am again with something to shout about...two in a week even...my luck seems to be in. LGBTQ fiction has become increasingly prevalent in the last few years, and I have read a fair bit of it, but found far more misses than hits. In my memory, Elif Shafak's 10 minutes and 38 Seconds In This Strange World stands out, but now there's another..
Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated by Frances Riddle.
Enviromental awareness has come to the slums of Buenos Aires, its inhabitants creat a system of canals filled with carp, grow their own vegetables, and are largely self-sufficient. The turn about coming due to messages received from a statue of the Virgin Mary (the 'Slum Virgin') through a medium, a transvestite prostitute called Cleopatra. Unsurprisingly this attracts the attention of the press, and ambitious journalist Quity arrives to chronicle procedings, unwittingly falling in love with Cleo.
Its no spoiler to reveal that the slum is heading for disaster and devastation, as Cámara drops hints from the outset; the narration from Cleo and Quity is from Cuba and Miami, looking back.
The story is told with humour and a frenetic pace weaving together the language of the shantytown with a set of colourful and memorable characters, with references to reggaeton, the classics and popular culture.
The regular tragedies, and the ultimate one, have a comedic tone to them which makes it so readable, and yet never deters from the barbarism and corruption of the authorities. It is an authentic insight into the realities of the destitute and downtrodden of a Third World slum.
Charco Press, from Edinburgh, are publishing some really good stuff. Last year Selva Almada's The Wind That Lays Waste was one of my best books of the year, and I expect this will be on my shortlist for this year also. I've enjoyed everything I have read from them so far, with the interesting exception of Cámara's later book, which I read first, The Adventures Of China Iron; this is so much better.
A couple of clips..
(Cleopatra)I know I’m famous because I can talk to the virgin and not because of my tits, even thou they are pretty big. For someone who claims to be straight, I have to say you went pretty crazy for them, and when I got these huge nipples that you love so much and cost us a fortune to redo in Miami you made me feel like the wolf that nursed both Remus and Romulus.
and
(Quity about Cleopatra..) a transvestite who’d managed to organise the slum thanks to her communication with the Heavenly Mother, a dick-sucking daughter of Lourdes, a saintly whore with a cock to boot.
Does anyone know if @Dandy crossed over? He would be interested by this I am sure. I recall his dislike for China Iron, so he's unlikely to read this without a nudge..
In other matters..
The Life Ahead movie launches today on Netflix (starring Sophia Loren). Mark Kermode quietly praises it, but I doubt he read the book on which it is based, Romain Gary (Émile Ajar)'s The Life Before Us. Has anyone has seen it?
Andy wrote: In other matters..The Life Ahead movie launches today on Netflix. Mark Kermode quietly praises it, but I doubt he read the book on which it is based, Romain Gary (Émile Ajar)'s The Life Before Us. Has anyone has seen it?
Interesting - Romain Gary, eh? Not read any - yet - but we received a copy of Promise at Dawn/La Promesse de l'aube this week - because Deserable/Piekielny, obs. Have not yet asked my wife if she ordered the French original, or the translation. My guess - French.
scarletnoir wrote:" I read Her Privates We a very long time ago, but it impressed me ..... It's interesting to see that this was an expurgated version of a slightly earlier publication: The Middle Parts of Fortune.."It's a bit more complicated than that. The original was The Middle Parts of Fortune, then they left out the swear words and called it Her Privates We. That book became very popular I think so eventually they reprinted The Middle Parts of Fortune but called it Her Privates We. The recent HPWs have all the swear words reinstated (so I believe).
I made a special effort to get TMPOF because I thought HPW was the expurgated version. It was at one time, but no longer.
The two titles come from Hamlet:
Guil. ....On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.
Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe?
Ros. Neither, my lord.
Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
Guil. Faith, her privates we.
Does anyone else here sometimes marvel at our capacity to go on learning and rejoicing in that learning?Here’s me today rejoicing in something new learned, something that never entered my brain to wonder.
Earlier I said that I was reading, Monarchs of the Sea, thanks to Carmen, which is a book about cephalopods, octopuses, nautilus and the like.
I didn’t know before that these creatures once all had shells and rooted around in the mud on the sea bed. When predation started to occur some protection was necessary and it became safer to swim. Shells aren’t very practical if they are heavy and evolution solved the problem by a secretion which hardened and formed a kind of wall at the end of the shall so that a space was formed. The creature was able to siphon out the water from the space behind the wall, and fill it with gas and hey presto, lighter shell, swimming easier. Creature grows bigger because he can dive on those trilobites from above, shell gets too tight, right, grow another space, another wall. Marvellous. All the way up until we see this still in the nautilus shells with their fantastic spirals.
https://postimg.cc/LhX5F2nd.
All this eons before Fibonacci came up with his series to explain the pattern!
Maybe you knew all this before but I had marvelled at the pattern but never thought why it was so formed.
I love to learn new things, new words, feel ashamed of my ignorance, but rejoice in understanding.
Machenbach wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "Kertesz has a point."Oh, very much so, yes. I think any writing about the Holocaust - especially that which is 'fictional' in some way or other - has to take on board the fact tha..."
You raise the educational angle, and I think it's not only about schoolkids (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas has been used with 11-12-year-olds) but also the wider, less sophisticated public. Its so important, especially now that the survivors are disappearing, that the Holocaust not be allowed to simply blend into the general historical background of wars, massacres and persecution. But not many people are going to read Life and Fateor the realistic accounts left by those who endured and survived, while those who do will probably already know quite a bit about the issue. So maybe kitsch can play a positive role?
Women book collectors anyone?https://librarianofbabel.wordpress.co...
(Sent to me by a friend who is one.)
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We get those too - indeed, bird watchers come to see t..."
The link does work: lovely photos!
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: ".... you have probably already read Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That - but if not, I recommend it...."I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Goodbye To All That though it is o..."
And what about R C Sherriff's play Journey's End , The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon or Testament of Youth?
Justine wrote: "And what about R C Sherriff's play Journey's End , The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon or Testament of Youth? ..."You've reminded me that on the TBR shelf I have The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston by Siegfried Sassoon. This comprises Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston's Progress. None read as yet. And of the other books in your list I've only read Testament of Youth - but what a read.
This is a review of a book as such, from Aeon magasine, (https://aeon.co/videos/lean-into-lone...) I love it, as an imagination... It reminds me of the animated horses I saw running across a an opened book page in a London Art Gallery, many years ago... Books can also move on, into being something else... from what they were...
We're going on full lockdown during weekend so I've been desperately jumping from one unfinished book to another looking for some consolation and good ol' Friday fun. So I've settled on opening Popol Vuh, a sacred text of the Kʼiche'. The names are confusing and a lot of the basic things were initially hard for me to grasp (e.g. growing fruits from a severed head, turning half of your family into monkeys, attaching a "fake head" to a decapitated body, which is miraculously walking around on its own), I'm now about halfway through. The masters of Xibalba for sure knew how to have fun and how to torture their adversaries, so if the Mayan creation of the world in 3 goes doesn't quite impress, just give it a couple of more pages. Highly recommended for those who enjoyed Greek and Roman mythology and any type of folktale at any point in their life
Anastasia wrote: "So I've settled on opening Popol Vuh, a sacred text of the Kʼiche'. The names are confusing and a lot of the basic things were initially hard for me to grasp (...), I'm now about halfway through. "I was big on Greek mythology, and grew up on an animated series about the Incas, so tackled the Popol Vuh as a teen. This confusing aspect you describe made me give up not even halfway through iirc, so maybe I should give it a try again as an adult. Thanks for reminding me of it, I will try to find it (on my shelves, hopefully) when I finally get a chance to go home!
Gladarvor wrote: "Anastasia wrote: "So I've settled on opening Popol Vuh, a sacred text of the Kʼiche'. The names are confusing and a lot of the basic things were initially hard for me to grasp (...), I'm now about ..."It does help to let go and just stay there completely bewildered and silent for some time ...and accept the fact that it takes a bug, eaten by a frog, which in turn is eaten by a snake, which gets eaten by a bird to deliver a message :)
Justine wrote: "But not many people are going to read Life and Fate or the realistic accounts left by those who endured and survived, while those who do will probably already know quite a bit about the issue. So maybe kitsch can play a positive role?"I entirely agree with this. Of course, there is place for an academic discourse around the most ethically-sensitive and -sensible ways to present the Holocaust. But as you all have pointed out, when numbers of people fully aware of its horror are dwindling, sensitising future adults has become essential, and these scholastic issues should be almost secondary, and which medium this should be in also irrelevant to some extent. Of course French pupils will not watch Nuit et brouillard or Shoah (although I seem to recall that one teacher was brave enough to show us an hour of Shoah), but they will be crushed by Au Revoir Les Enfants, which does not show at all what happens in the camps.
Equally, a formidable documentary film-maker, Rithy Panh has made his life endeavour to represent the horror committed by the Khmer Rouge, but his real-life documentary S21 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-21:_T...) is possibly as powerful as the one he made in claymation, The Missing Picture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mis...), which would be, perhaps, suitable for kids.
The latter is more an expression of a 'nush' (@nosuchzone™: 'a hush created by something not being there')... But the something not being there is not always easy to grasp for kids or teens. If that was not for the dissecting and analysing work we had done on W ou le Souvenir d'enfance, by Perec, the raw emotional valence of it would have passed me by (ditto La Disparition I suspect, although I have not read it).
So yes, all a very meandering and messy way of saying: kitsch (for which I read 'sentimental and maybe not always entirely accurate') has a role to play to educate and move kids and young adults.
Anastasia wrote: "It does help to let go and just stay there completely bewildered and silent for some time ...and accept the fact that it takes a bug, eaten by a frog, which in turn is eaten by a snake, which gets eaten by a bird to deliver a message :)"Will do! I'm now excited to try it again when I return home. I remember distinctly that it was one of my very few hardbacks, all in white leather, gold embossed.
(...) Ah, found it online! https://www.amazon.fr/Livre-Indiens-M... (Tr: Valerie Faurie).
I've had a flick through the Booker shortlist. I think The New Wilderness by Diane Cook feels like the most promising, but all the blurbs are heralding it as an 'environmental novel', and I'm a little deterred by the whiff of activism there.
Machenbach wrote: "Exactly how much did you drink between "looking for some consolation and good ol' Friday fun" and the resultant "So I've settled on opening Popol Vuh, a sacred text of the Kʼiche'"?"It's a geek thing I suppose. I do get it 😉 (although it was a bit too much work for 15 y.o. me).
Other distractions and good ol' fun available of course. I have now started to alternate between A Brief History of Seven Killings and Winnie-the(r)-Pooh, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has read the former (and possibly also the latter). A bit of an emotional and stylistic whiplash, but it works out well.
Alwynne wrote: "I agree about the Louis Malle and Rithy Pan's claymation film though neither fall into the category of kitsch surely?"Not kitsch no, but as I redefine it as 'sentimental', which is also a word you used, it does have that simpler, rawer emotional aspect. (I have not read/seen The Boy etc.).
Is it enough to just have heard of something or to have been momentarily moved by an account that conjures up some aspect of an historical event?
No, but it's a bloody good start, a foot in the door of their consciousness if you want.
CCCubbon wrote: "Does anyone else here sometimes marvel at our capacity to go on learning and rejoicing in that learning?"Equally as much I marvel at how much "useless information" from earlier in my life I manage to recall (to the amusement/boredom of my friends) as in "did you know....." and how much of more recent things I forget, such as "what have you been up to this week," "errrr, let me think!"
Alwynne wrote":have you come across this novel Not So Quiet.."I've never heard of it Alwynne but it's reminded me of another amazing WW1 book The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold. She's best known for National Velvet (which I really liked) but The Happy Foreigner, about a woman ambulance driver in France, rings very true.
Will investigate Not So Quiet, thanks.
Equally as much I marvel at how much "useless information" ...But you never know when it might come in useful!
Gladarvor wrote: "(...) Ah, found it online!"Yumm... sounds tasty, never tried that kind of quiche before.
Alwynne wrote: "I have a copy of the Bagnold, .".."
Enid Bagnold wrote very different books. The Happy Foreigner was fictional autobiographical but really told you what it was like for women ambulance drivers in WW1. I read it maybe 25 years ago but still remember it.
National Velvet was almost a children's book but painted a great picture of life in the 1930s, even if the plot was a bit fantastic. I never saw the film.
The first one of hers I read was The Squire, mostly about childbirth I think! Not so gripping.
And I also have a copy of The Loved and Envied, which I remember nothing about, but someone stayed with me and took it away with her because she couldn't put it down.
Alwynne: Okay Schindler's List also has a factual basis but it's very much a Western individualist perspective, Schindler's like the hero who swoops in at the end of actual westernsVery true, but that's why so many people read it. They want a book or film that 'tells a good story' that captures their imagination, a main character with whom they can 'identify', a minimum of complexity and difficulty, and an ultimately upbeat message. When memory of the Holocaust competes, as it does today, with Holocaust denial or boredom, it's hard to know the best way to reach the average citizen who knows little history and isn't especially eager to learn more.
Justine wrote: "Very true, but that's why so many people read it. They want a book or film that 'tells a good story' that captures their imagination, a main character with whom they can 'identify', a minimum of complexity and difficulty (...)"Thanks inter, that saves me time at this late hour! I agree with Alwynne on the whole issue of the white saviour trope (and lowering of the discourse because of e.g. underfunded education), but there is something to be said about the positives of mass appeal in this instance when the alternative is probably dangerous ignorance (I personally have never heard of that Lowry book).
Slawkenbergius wrote: "Gladarvor wrote: "(...) Ah, found it online!"Yumm... sounds tasty, never tried that kind of quiche before."
Avec de vrais morceaux de mayas dedans!
Machenbach wrote to the Rascal: "Exactly how much did you drink between "looking for some consolation and good ol' Friday fun" and the resultant "So I've settled on opening Popol Vuh, a sacred text of the Kʼiche'"?"So your idea of a Friday light relief is Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom? Mais bien sûr 😂!
Gladarvor wrote: "Justine wrote: "But not many people are going to read Life and Fate or the realistic accounts left by those who endured and survived, while those who do will probably already know quite a bit about..."If it helps...? I got this anecdote out of a Christmas cracker...
and this was from a bog standard cheap Tesco's Xmas cracker selection, not a 'liberal' posh one!
"Jean Paul Sartre walked into a coffee shop and ordered a black coffee with no cream. The waitress replied with “I’m sorry but we don’t have any no- cream, can you make do with some no-milk instead?”
- An ‘homage’ to Sartre’s book ‘Being and Nothingness’ - an abstract
Alwynne wrote:Thanks for pointing that out, I struck out with the only Gary I've attempted The Kites found it a little too sentimental but I'm told that the Emile Ajar novel's are quite different in terms of style.Imre Kertesz seems to be following me around today, this turned up on one of my mailing lists
https://lithub.com/the-diaries-of-imr...
As you probably know, Gary - real name Roman Kakew - is the only person to have won the Prix Goncourt twice - which is not allowed. As I understand it, he became fed up by being considered old hat with his 'usual' style, so invented the 'new' author Ajar to write differently, and to be acclaimed - again. He got a cousin to impersonate the non-existent Ajar for the purpose of press interviews, but later published a book to uncover his ruse.
He is also, probably, the only author to have challenged Clint Eastwood to a duel, and for this alone he deserves our respect (Eastwood declined).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romain_...
It's clear that Gary did a lot of self-mythologising, and was a fascinating character. If he is of interest to you - and if you read French - you may like to try Un Certain M. Piekielny by Francois-Henri Deserable - a brilliant book which I always praise whenever there is an opening to do so!
I know not Kertesz, but will check out your link.
FrancesBurgundy wrote: It's a bit more complicated than that. The original was The Middle Parts of Fortune, then they left out the swear words and called it Her Privates We. That book became very popular I think so eventually they reprinted The Middle Parts of Fortune but called it Her Privates We. The recent HPWs have all the swear words reinstated (so I believe).I made a special effort to get TMPOF because I thought HPW was the expurgated version. It was at one time, but no longer.
The two titles come from Hamlet:
Guil. ....On Fortune's cap we are not the very button.
Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe?
Ros. Neither, my lord.
Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
Guil. Faith, her privates we.
Thanks for that more detailed publication history - it's quite complex!
As for the titles - I'm no Shakespeare scholar, and so didn't spot the quotations, though a bit of research on Wikipedia before my comment made me aware of them. On reading the book many years ago, I considered the title to be awkward and rather odd, not realising that it was a quotation as well as a somewhat bawdy joke.
You live and learn.
CCCubbon wrote: Does anyone else here sometimes marvel at our capacity to go on learning and rejoicing in that learning?... All the way up until we see this still in the nautilus shells with their fantastic spirals.https://postimg.cc/LhX5F2nd.
All this eons before Fibonacci came up with his series to explain the pattern!
Totally agree that it is always a delight to learn something new, be it a word or something scientific, artistic or historical... I'm currently reading Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor, which, within a charming story, deals with some maths concepts and methods of teaching... more on that later. (Perhaps it was you who reviewed and recommended it?)
As for Fibonacci numbers - I can still remember my delight at coming across this sequence and its link to the natural world. By now, there are numerous web pages explaining the sequence and the link, for example:
https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/na...
(suitable for teaching the idea), and
http://www.eniscuola.net/en/2016/06/2...).
which contains some historical background as well as examples.
You are probably familiar with both!
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Telephone (other topics)So Much Blue (other topics)
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (other topics)
The Enchantress of Florence (other topics)
World Without End (other topics)
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I’ve read Betty Boo and can recommend it. Read the follow up a couple of weeks ago.
I read one from that Noir series recently also - so keen to know how Tel Aviv goes. As a few of us agreed at the time, literary short stories
rather than Noir..