Ersatz TLS discussion
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What Are We Reading? 30 Nov 2020
Machenbach wrote: "Andy wrote: "Beware, or be aware, MB, that Comyns has a dark side.."Oh, thanks Andy. That's probably what I'd lean towards (initially at least), so I'll bear that in mind."
In related, and exciting, Comyns-news, two of her lesser known books have just been reissued.. Mr. Fox and The House of Dolls.
Some of her work has been difficult to get hold of, and it does seem she is being appreciated more than ever.
The Rector’s Daughter – Thanks for the review, MB (110), telling me much I had long forgotten. I certainly wouldn’t be in the “bog standard” camp. My abiding recollection from reading it years ago (when Penguin Modern Classic gave it a certain aura) is that the writing itself is very fine, and the cool dissection of restrained emotions was then most unusual and rather painful. That of course was well before Hotel du Lac and Remains of the Day. I think that’s why it stood out for me.
Justine, Lisa.. do you plan on running a special thread for Year Bests?
I’d be in favour. This is a good way to pick up recommendations.
Though I’m not sure how to organise it.. Goodreads has this facility and I’ve used it in the last few years, but each time organised myself differently.
Here’s mine from last year
Machenbach (141) wrote: "Alwynne wrote [136]: "REVIEW 
A Touch of Mistletoe by Barbara Comyns."I can't help but notice the speed at which you're devouring these books, and hope that you're not doing so under duress - perhaps at the instigation of a deranged librarian or somesuch. Anyway, just to let you know that you can signal alarm via the insertion of an acrostic message in your reviews...."
The iron-framed and -floored stacks of the London Library have frequently been compared to Piranesi's Carceri, but the scariest stacks I've ever been in were in the sub-sub-sub-sub-basement of Widener Library at Harvard. One more than half expected to encounter, among the damp folio tomes of forgotten Scandinavian material, a mummified scholar worthy of an M R James tale. Alwynne! Let us know, and the Ersatz TL&S cavalry will be on its way!
Colum McCann's book Apeirogon. Well WOW!'Beyond right and wrong there is a field, I'll meet you there.'
Two men are brought together by the deaths of their daughters in the Palestine-Israel conflict.
This book shines a light on the human soul. One that condemns violence and retaliation and searches for a different solution, a peaceful solution instead.
'It will not be over until we talk.'
The fathers, Rami and Bassam, choose to tell their stories to the world.
One has grown up in Israel, under the comfort and protection of the Israeli flag. The other in Palestine, controlled by the Israeli flag. Both are connected by the deaths of their little girls, Smadar and Abir. Their stories are of life and death and also of hope despite their never ending grief.
'When you divide death by life you find a circle.'
They will talk in school auditauriums, hotel conference rooms, community centres. Anywhere. At home and abroad. Anywhere. To politicians and ordinary people. Anyone.
And they do. It is their mission.
'It is always the same story, heard differently in each place. Finite words on an infinite plane.'
This astonishing book is filled with hope, love, life, art, poetry, landscape, families, birds, history, politics, science and more. And it is also filled with lists. Many lists to show the many, many different names for the same; the many, many different words for the same; the many, many different views of the same; the many, many different explanations of the same.
'Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.'
The occupation is central to both Rami and Bassam. They want mutual repect and freedom.
We are all humans sharing this planet, this land. We all have the capacity for love, acceptance, hope. They have their message.
'Peace was a moral inevitability. Neither side could keep the other from it.'
This incredible book takes the reader on an informative and emotional journey. There is so much in this book that each reader will come away with a different experience. The heart of the story is to listen, understand and pass on their message of peace.
'do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.'
I listened to Merlin Sheldrake reading excerpts from 'Entangled Life' last week on radio 4 and it has inspired me to buy the book for my Christmas read.. He and his brother Cosmo are interesting musicians as well(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpQhV... also reminds me of Aldous Huxleys book 'Doors of Perception: Heaven and Hell' about his various mescaline experiments. I have seen some film of Huxley. He has the demeanour of a slightly bored bank manager, under the influence. Light-years away from Timothy Leary's 'Tune in, Turn on, Drop out'... Still I think that the effects of magic mushrooms on the mind is a possibly interesting cosmic example of 'wave and particle resonance' somehow... And very fascinating how current, only recently legal, research has found that psilocybin mushrooms can help with both depression and 'end of life' therapeutic care.
Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (142) wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "Inspired by the conversation here, I read James' "Number 13" last night. I thought it was rather slight compared to his best, but I enjoyed his sympathetic port..."that Morris book sounds fascinating. i was suprised to find James was so into the Nordic world, i had imagined before i started to read him that greek, roman or german myth might be a main feature
James certainly was a pioneer in using contempary settings for his stories, something he felt was important but his ghosts all seem a few centuries past....am waiting to see if i find a recent "victorian" ghost of the deceased in the other stories
Somewhere i remember reading he may have been homosexual but i cant remember where...maybe it was just rumour.
TamMagic mushrooms used to grow wild in a wooded area where I walked the dog, not here, this was in the outskirts of London. Autumn mornings would see young men scampering about after finds. I got talking to some once who explained all about the effects but I was never tempted although they are that beautiful vibrant colour.
Here they are rarely seen, lots of shaggy ink caps , fairy rings and edible mushrooms - not for me. I like to see them.
It is a most interesting book - Entangled Life - I had not thought about how extensive fungi were and there is much to think about. It is quite true that my mind leaped to thinking that there must be a link between quantum and fungi, maybe there will be more information later in the book. I don’t remember any reference in any of my physics/science books. I tumbled them to the floor and tried but just cannot see the print enough any more, most frustrating.
There is a very interesting short paragraph on how fungi ‘see’. Evidently they can see colours across the spectrum using receptors sensitive to blue and red light and have light sensitive pigments that are also found in animal’s eyes, it seems that they see with their whole bodies but I shall have to read around to find out more.
One other sentence deserves thought, roughly ‘ animals put food into their bodies but fungi put their bodies into food’.
Changing to a different book I have started Denise Mina’s The Less Dead
. This is my fiction book of the moment, long been a fan of her dark stories of Glasgow.
One last point, that is a fantastic picture of St Edward’s church with the trees by the old door. Makes me think of children’s fairy tale castles. Incidentally, Stow-on-the Wold is such an unusual name. I know wolds are hills because there are some near here but I wonder why Stow. There I go asking questions again ......
Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (171) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (142) wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "Inspired by the conversation here, I read James' "Number 13" last night. I thought it was rather slight compared to his best,..."sadly that story isnt in my collection!
AB76 (178) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (171) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (142) wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "Inspired by the conversation here, I read James' "Number 13" last night. I thought it was rather slight compa..."If you don't mind reading onscreen then
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/james-hea...
Two from the last couple of days from me..Ornamental by Juan Cárdenas, translated from Spanish (Colombian) by Lizzie Davis.
There's a good story in here somewhere, but its concealed with a real mixture of writing. After a promising premise, and beginning, it didn't turn the corners I was hoping it would, and rather ended up an alley, going nowhere.
It takes the form of a jounral from a doctor performing mysterious pharmaceutical trials on a group of underprivileged woman near an unnamed city. The drug is revealed to have addictive intoxicating blissful properties that due to its limited availability spur civil unrest.
But Cárdenas opts for subtlety and restraint, just as a moment of conflict arises, it is briefly considered and subdued. He has succeeded in creating an uneasy dystopia with an increasing tension to his writing, but ultimately it was unsatisfying.
And, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.
Set in the Dakotas in the early 1960s, Enger's debut novel is narrated by eleven-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy whose close-knit family is broken apart after the oldest son, Davy, commits a crime of passion and becomes a fugitive. Reuben, his father and younger sister become immersed in a series of mystical events as they follow Davy's trail across the northern United States.
Its a good story, and well told, even though it flirts with religion, which usually puts me off. But in this case its as skilfully blended with magic realism as I can recall in a novel. In this case its the perfectly timed miracle, which is most easily explained by God's presence, implausible to all but believers. If I had been pre-warned I doubt I would have started the book, but, despite these convenient mysticisms, Enger makes it work, to a degree.
Its an all-American boy's-own story that would be appreciated by young adults. Both Reuben, and his younger sister, Swede, are portrayed as being far more worldly and precocious than their years. It is far more believable in the case of Swede, a promising young poet, making me wonder if the novel would have worked better with her as narrator.
Another criticism if I may.. the timing of the early 1960s seems out of place, with the choice of characters, the frequent Bible quotes, and goose hunting; better suited to the turn of the centruy frontier days. As dad and his two youngest set off in search of the fugitive older brother, Davy, towing an Airstream caravan seems strangely out of place.
CCCubbon wrote: "TamMagic mushrooms used to grow wild in a wooded area where I walked the dog, not here, this was in the outskirts of London. Autumn mornings would see young men scampering about after finds. I got..."
It simply, in 'middle English' means place on the hill, Proto-Germanic *stōwō (place, spot, locality, site, as in 'stowage'. I have a door coming up from the 'stow' of the Grimms fairy tales, that should be fun... Repunzels tower is just down the road... shame I'm not doing towers!...
Machenbach wrote(#166):I'd say it doesn't have to be either/or and that the charact..."
Indeed. Only Tucholsky could tell us what he intended to say in the end...
Interpretation is, to a degree, speculation.
Maybe my interpretation is also influenced by the fact that the other main protagonists were based on real persons:
Undisguised: the first person narrator Kurt aka Peter (Peter Panter was one of KTs pen names)
Very thinly disguised: KTs then lover, Lisa Matthias, as Lydia; and KTs good friend, Erich Dehmand, as Karlchen.
Doris Tucholsky as Mrs Adriani would certainly fit in there.
(btw: in case there wasn't a footnote on the cryptic dedication, which read "For IA 47 407": that was the registration number of Lisa Matthias' car)
Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (178) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (171) wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 (142) wrote: "Veufveuve wrote: "Inspired by the conversation here, I read James' "Number 13" last night. I thought it was ..."i'm a bit of an e-reader-a-phobe, i think what i will do is make sure the next Mr James collection i read contains that story
AB76 wrote 143 : "i am astonished at the speed of which people read in here, kudos to them, i'm on my 67th book of the year (fiction-non-fiction etc) and thats pedestrian!Not much else to do in lockdown for many of us. 😃
Alwynne wrote 173: If I show signs of being caught up in excessive shopping or housework both of which I really loathe then you have my permission to charge in!Any amount of housework is excessive!
Alwynne wrote: "Andy (157) wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "Andy wrote: "Beware, or be aware, MB, that Comyns has a dark side.."Oh, thanks Andy. That's probably what I'd lean towards (initially at least), so I'll bear..."
Maybe there are plans for more to be reissued.
I’ve heard good things about The Skin Chairs.
I have finished reading Sara Paretsky's Dead Land
Here is my review:
How V.I. ever manages to do enough work for her paying clients to pay her bills escapes me. In this one she is helping out a god daughter who is arrested on suspicion of killing her relatively new boyfriend. The story revolves round the attempts by a corrupt city official and a Chilean corporation to redevelop part of the lakeside into a luxury development; add in a former famous singer who watched her husband gunned down in a massacre; corrupt law firms; tv channels and this is the basis of the story. V.I. seems to have a charmed life given the number of failed attempts.
Enjoyable, yes if you suspend disbelief, but not one of her best I am afraid.
Andy (159) wrote: "Justine, Lisa.. do you plan on running a special thread for Year Bests?
I’d be in favour. This is a good way to pick up recommendations.
Though I’m not sure how to organise it.. Goodreads has th..."
I'll start one - but remember you needn't wait for Lisa or me to do it; anyone can start a Special Topic if they believe it's a good idea.
Alwynne (166) wrote: "Justine (148) wrote: "Alwynne (140) wrote: "Justine (133) wrote: "Although most people know or remember Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) as a novel about ‘Fordism’ and the assembl..."Rousseau and Huxley. Undoubtedly you are correct, but anything I learned from reading Rousseau many years ago I've pretty much forgotten.
Mod
re reading fast/a lot "Not much else to do in lockdown for many of us ..."
and
"Any amount of housework is excessive!"
Hear, hear to both those!
Mod
I'm reading one of Jean-François Parot's Nicolas Le Floch series. I had never read them, but my son got me started and I'm reading through the series. I'm now on the 6th, Le sang des farines (The Baker's Blood
in English).The books are set in 18th century Paris, Nicolas Le Floch comes to Paris as a young man, joins the police, and his investigative talents soon lead him to becoming commissioner and being charged with special investigations. The first book is L'enigme des Blancs-Manteaux The Chatelet Apprentice
He subsequently is introduced at court, first Louis XV and then Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and continues to have exciting adventures, sometimes sent abroad - London, Vienna ...
I don't know if Gladarvor has read any of the books, but I'm sure you know the character. There was a well-known TV series, which I've never seen.
More late night MR James reading last night, what a joy, about half way through the OUP "Ghost Stories" nowI am not reading for the shock value, any resident of this horror-ridden century would find little to shock from the Edwardian mind.
James brilliantly conveys horror as a spiritual thing, for more religious generations the simple presence of God and Satan can create unsettling imagery and the horrors of Lucifer and eternal hellfire
So far, all his ghosts, bar one, are repulsive satanic figures that steal into rooms or pursue people. Matted hair, wet skin, red eyes or the same thing half glimpsed, there is almost something like the Orcs of Tolkien in this and i wonder if the great fantasy writer was a reader of James
In the notes to my edition its interesting to see that Thomas Hardy was an enthusiastic reader of the ghost stories, recommended to him by AE Houseman. Hardys favourite tale was "Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You My Lad" which so far, is mine too
One glaring omission from the tales is the presence of women with any important role or function. I didnt expect it but it can be remarkable how women are erased from life, only 100 or so years ago. There are serving girls and occasional wives and aunts but nothing representing a thinking 50% of the edwardian population...
Gpfr wrote #184 : "Historical mysteries: if you like this sort of book -I'm reading one of Jean-François Parot's Nicolas Le Floch series. I had never read them, but my son got me started and I'm reading through the ..."
I can see my digital tbr pile is going to get higher. Thanks your post.
Mod
Not quite the same edition: Stanfords Travel Classics 2015.
This was first published in 1920: Edith Wharton travelled round Morocco for a month towards the end of the first world war (she writes 1918 in the preface and September 1917 in the first chapter...). She travelled in military vehicles and praises warmly General Lyautey, the first French Resident-General - among other things for his efforts to preserve the old monuments of Morocco from injury.
She describes the places she visits precisely and vividly. In the conical white town of Moulay Idriss, the Sacred City of Morocco:
... the Street of the Weavers, a silent narrow way between low whitewashed niches like the cubicles in a convent. In each niche sat a grave white-robed youth, forming a great amphora-shaped grain-basket out of closely plaited straw. Vine-leaves and tendrils hung through the reed roofing overhead, and grape-clusters cast their classic shadow at our feet.
There are some discordant notes to our 21st century ears:
countless jolly pickaninnies in a village inhabited entirely by blacks, traders in a market struck with the mysterious Eastern apathy.
I want some maps and illustrations to go with my reading, so am waiting for the return of my lent-out guidebooks before continuing.
Morocco is too curious, too beautiful, too rich in landscape and architecture ... not to attract one of the main streams of spring travel ... Now that the war is over, only a few months' work on roads and railways divide it from the great torrent of "tourism"; and once that deluge is let loose, no eye will ever again see Moulay Idriss and Fez and Marrakech as I saw them.
Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "More late night MR James reading last night, what a joy, about half way through the OUP "Ghost Stories" now.." I finished A Thin Ghost and Others last night, and enjo..."
I think the distancing is the only slight flaw for me, it would be good to see a directly told tale at some point in the collection but i think thats unlikely
Not sure any of those are in my collection, i agree about Friday nights, a trip into the Boris-sponsored un-lockdown madness of a friday night in town would be a lot scarier
I didnt expect to like him as much as Machen but he is up there with the Welsh master, they were contemparies but James had a lot more fame earlier
I want to recommend At Night All Blood is Black: A Novel by David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis, which I've just finished.
There's so much been written about the Great War, but nothing quite like this. Its a short novel, like many of the best, about a young Senegalese, Alfa Ndiaye, who along with childhood friend enlists to fight for the French, and soon finds himself in the horror of the trenches. He is driven to madness by watching the gruesome and agonising death of his friend, and he in effect, becomes a sadisitic serial killer, which goes beyond even the boundaries of the war.
The idea of war turning men into monsters is not a new one, but the telling of such a story by an African is. Ndiaye says at one stage..
The captain’s France needs our savagery, and because we are obedient, myself and the others, we play the savage
Something of the pace and grip is lost in the latter part of the story when Ndaiye is sent to recover in a French psychiatric hospital, but there are more reflective passages as his manic cloud partly subsides.
Without any doubt though, the novel is at its best and most memorable in allowing us to witness the experience of African soldiers like Ndaiye, which has until now gone untold.
Barthe's The Sot-Weed Factor being such a lengthy read I decided to intersperse it with a collection of short stories, and, lo and behold, I fell upon an even lengthier endeavour! We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman. The principle of the volumes is quite simple: not unlike the old adventure game-books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone - Fighting Fantasy -, whenever you reach the end of a story you can choose the kind of tale you'll read next - sad, comic, romantic, epic, thriller, horror, etc. [there are always five options] -, and once your choice made you only have to progress to the number and page that corresponds to it. Shearman has written a number of fantasy short stories, although he's better known for having worked for Doctor Who, so you'll know more or less what to expect from his prose. I've already read a few of the stories and some have a nice mock-Borgesian twang to them, such as 'The Constantinople Archives' , which starts like this:
We can speculate, and we can speculate, but the probability is that few of the silent movies made during the siege of Constantinople in 1453 were very much good. And there are clear reasons for this, both political and cultural.
Gpfr wrote: "The other book I'm reading at the moment is Edith Wharton's In Morocco"Really interesting. Thanks.
Justine wrote: "Andy (159): it's done."Thanks. Personally I’ll wait until closer to the year end, in hope of reading something really great..
I finished A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet yesterday. As anyone interested probably knows, it’s a kind of mash-up of a comic novel about generational conflict and a novel of environmental apocalypse. For me, the more sensational conventions of the latter sometimes overwhelmed the quieter, more subtle pleasures of the former, but Millet managed to weld the two into a consistent narrative through the voice of her adolescent narrator, Evie.
The novel starts in a lakeside rural summer house in (probably) upstate New York, where a group of professionals are staging a summer-long “Big Chill”-type reunion, but the point of view, channeled through narrator Evie, is that of the dozen or so minor children these parents have dragged along with them to reluctantly share their intended idyll.
The Bible connection is evidently intended to be integral to the novel, but I found it kind of elusive. One of the adults in the group gives the titular book to the precocious Jack, Evie’s little brother and in many ways the novel’s most admirable character. Jack interprets the Bible stories to conform to his own ideas about ecology and science, but there are hints in the novel, a slowly introduced and never explicit strain of mysticism, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his rationalistic philosophy. There are allusions to Biblical figures and events scattered through the novel; a number of them seem superficial and none sustain either the narrative progress or symbolic weight of their Scriptural originals. The most sustained parallel is a Moses-like figure who leads the children from the parent’s wind ravaged and flooded vacation house to a farm where he serves as the groundskeeper for an absent owner.
Once the novel endures its apocalyptic hurricane and related societal breakdown, it never quite recovers its balance in dealing with the theme of generational conflict, though Millet tries to resolve this in the final chapters, reuniting parents and children on the estate of the wealthiest of the parents, which serves as a redoubt in the face of a crumbling society. One problem is that the exact state of the post-apocalyptic world is rather vague – the parents’ antediluvian investments, for instance, seem to serve them as a source of some security, but many basic conveniences, such as refrigerated transport, are apparently irrecoverable. Without understanding the nature of the “new normal”, it’s difficult for the reader to gauge the meaning of the shifting power relationship between the generations.
The mystical strain Millet injects into the novel is mostly confined to a few hints and implications, but for me it sat uncomfortably with the novel’s more worldly concerns of generational conflict and environmental disaster.
My Goodreads review differs in most details from the above comments and contains spoilers (flagged) and a New Yorker cartoon that seemed relevant.
Bill wrote: "I finished A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet yesterday. As anyone interested probably knows, it’s a kind of mash-up of a comic novel about ..."
Interesting to read both of your reviews Bill. I thought highly of this also, for similar reasons. I like, and agree, with your summary in the spoiler.
Georg wrote [#101]: "Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote(#88): "So glad to see Tucholsky mentioned here! I recommended his writings a couple of times ...""I love him. He has been with me for decades, I never get tired of him, he will be with me until I shuffle off this mortal coil."
Thanks for this and the biographical information, Georg. I understand your devotion. I like rereading Tucholsky's works, too. The complete works edition (Rowohlt publishing) has been with me for a long time, accompanying every move and shift in my life since my twenties.
I missed all this, too. And when people are not here for a while, I think about them, too. Thanks, Georg.
Also thinking back to our arts discussions, which I enjoyed so much, I was wondering whether a "visual arts" thread would make sense here? But in the first place, I hardly have the energy for posting in this main thread just now, and also it can get confusing with so many threads, as others have remarked. When I feel up to it, I might suggest it in the "Suggestions" thread.
Very happy about "The Sense of Place" and the new poetry thread CCC opened for us, though. Almost all the TL&S variety is still there, I like that.
Machenbach wrote [#122]: "Kurt Tucholsky, Castle Gripsholm (tr. Michael Hoffmann). I enjoyed this slim 1931 novel a lot."Sorry, I am gushing now, but, like Georg, I am a big fan of Tucholsky's work, and your review moves me. It's a beautiful piece of writing, and I feel you "get" it, also highlighting aspects I have not thought about for quite a while and making me see it anew.
"So on one level Castle Gripsholm is an apparently ‘slight – amusing, fantastical, evocative and escapist – novel about a couple’s summer holiday. But, at the same time, it also suggests, much more darkly, that the possibility of escape is itself merely fantastical, and that Et in Arcadia Hitlero, Trumpo &c."
This.
Erich Kästner (a contemporary worth reading) about Kurt Tucholsky: "He was a small, fat Berliner who tried to stop the catastrophe with a typewriter."
And he saw it coming very early (he was almost uncannily predictive in the 1920s).
Very moving (to me).
Thank you so much.
CCCubbon wrote [#150]: "Reading Entangled life in bed last night, I was intrigued..."Hello CCC, this sounds intriguing indeed. I think I might try and get hold of it soon.
I would also like to say that I was so sorry to read here that you did not like reading Hustvedt's The Summer Without Men, which I strongly recommended on TL&S some time ago (gpfr und lonelybloomer also liked it a lot). Sorry it did not work out for you.
I do feel kind of responsible, though I know that's silly, as I loved the book and recommended it in good faith. Anyway, I know the feeling of eager anticipation you can feel after a strong recommendation and how you can feel "let down" if you do not enjoy the read.
Anyway, glad you are enjoying your current read!
Any news what the Guardian are doing with TLS?Did they respond to our offers of increased payment, i keep getting Viner banging on about giving money and i keep thinking
"i want my, i want my, i want my T L S"..(to a familiar tune from the 80s
The Worlds of JRR Tolkien: The places that inspired middle-earth. John GarthThis book was released in 2020 and I am really glad I bought it! I was inspired to buy it after listening to the author discuss it in a zoom interview sponsored by Blackwells in Oxford early in the pandemic.
Very much for the Tolkien fan, it is a detailed discussion on how places JRRT knew during his lifetime are reflected, transformed, in his books. I am well read in the JRRT canon and I found much new information here. It is well researched and goes into considerable depth on the subject, pulling in mythology, linguistics, illustration, and fiction.
I miss the English countryside, the more so as I get older, and it was lovely to see old photographs, new paintings, old maps, and modern views. It is beautifully illustrated and a lovely thing to escape into in these times.
Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "More late night MR James reading last night, what a joy, about half way through the OUP "Ghost Stories" now.." I finished A Thin Ghost and Others last night, and enjo..."
When I dumped my last BF, I wrote him a long letter headed by a quote from The Residence at Whitminster, "A withered heart makes an ugly thin ghost". It described him perfectly. My Lord Viscount Saul is a doomed character indeed!
AB76 wrote (#201): "Any news what the Guardian are doing with TLS?Did they respond to our offers of increased payment, i keep getting Viner banging on about giving money and i keep thinking
"i want my, i want my, i want my T L S"..(to a familiar tune from the 80s"
We won't know before the beginning of next year at the earliest AB. But just today Sam asked me to pass on his regards to everybody here!
Btw, he's got this 'Creative reading, creative writing' course that will be going for the next 6 months (I've mentioned it here a few weeks ago). If anybody's interested, they've just opened a second 'tranche' because of the demands, and it's here: https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/school...
‘CRITICAL READING, CRITICAL WRITING’ is a six-month online course – hosted via Zoom – for both writers and readers. It is for everyone who wants to develop a deeper understanding of novels and how they work. It looks into the techniques of novel writing, the tricks of the author’s trade, and the decisions and craft that go into making a fantastic book.
We’ll be looking at six classic novels from an editorial perspective. We’ll talk about the choices writers have made in putting them together, look at structure, world-building, imagery – as well as all those other bits of glue that hold a book together. We’ll sometimes talk about the stories behind the books and the act of creation. Sometimes, too, we’ll just sit back and marvel at the talent of the people we’re discussing. You can learn a lot from Alice Walker, for instance. And Penelope Fitzgerald. And if you're as touched by genius as they are – well, we’ll be very glad to have you in our class.
Mod
I finished A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet yesterday. ..."
What drew you to this book, Bill? I don't know why, it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you usually go for.
It's generating lots of noise over at ToB, with most expecting it to get onto the 2021 shortlist. I didn't think I was interested, but you may have piqued that interest a bit.
Sandya - You come up with the best recommendations! That book on Middle Earth (202) sounds like the perfect Christmas present for a family member. I'll be ordering it at our local bookshop tomorrow. Thanks. I'll be looking at it too, because while here in VT the landscape is great I'm another who misses the English countryside. My present to myself this year is The Times Atlas of Great Britain, as I love looking at maps, especially proper OS maps with contours. Can't say if this book is as good as I'm hoping., because, of course, I haven't peeked.
Mod
I did it - went to a bookstore today (curbside pickup) and bought books instead of picking something from my brother's shelves. (Didn't last long with the Norman Mailer...)
Jess Walter's The Cold Millions gets first billing. I've enjoyed other books by Walter, he's a Northwest writer, it's a 'historical' but about a interesting subject - I.W.W. (affectionately known as the 'Wobblies'), there's a map, and there's an epigraph to Part 1 from Brian Doyle, a writer I don't think I've pushed on some of you yet. Take a look at Mink River and The Plover.
Lljones wrote: (205) "What drew you to this book, Bill? I don't know why, it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you usually go for."I’ve read and seen apocalyptic novels / films in the past - The Day of the Triffids (novel) and No Blade of Grass (film) come to mind – and this seemed like an unusual take /update on the genre. (I think a problem with the genre is that there seems to be a limited range of situations that can be spun from the basic situation. In both the cited cases – and in A Children's Bible as well – it usually comes down, at least in part, to a conflict between a communal mutually supportive collective having to face down an armed group of out-for-themselves marauders.)
Millet’s book seemed like it would provide a dramatization of the generational consciousness over climate change and human (i.e., adult) responsibility for it (see Greta Thunberg). I also just liked the tone of some excerpts I’d read – such as that cited in Andy’s review (which I think he posted on TL&S – at least somebody put up a similarly attractive passage). Plus, it was short (224 pages – Stephen King would have easily gotten upwards of 600 from the same material) and so represented a non-threatening time commitment: not to be underestimated for someone like me, grimly determined to finish whatever book he deems worthy of starting.
Though the parents’ generation isn’t characterized in pop cultural terms* and they’re likely of a later generation than “boomers”, reviewers’ references to The Big Chill made me think about it as a kind of “anti-boomer” novel, which also intrigued me. (If anybody can suggest any “anti-boomer” novels, please do so.)
*Other than the titles of some children’s book series young Jack reads (George and Martha was one), the only pop cultural reference I noted in the novel was Nicki Minaj (needless to say I had to Google that), a name the kids use to stump the adults in a kind of “20 questions” game. (The adults, many academics among them, beat the kids with Bella Abzug, Christine de Pizan, and Margery Kempe.)
Russell wrote: "Sandya - You come up with the best recommendations! That book on Middle Earth (202) sounds like the perfect Christmas present for a family member. I'll be ordering it at our local bookshop tomorrow..."Thank you for these kind words! It is a perfect choice as a Christmas gift! I am sure the recipient will love it. Growing up, we had a huge old Times (I think) Atlas of GB and I used to spend a lot of time poring over the OS maps. A number of them were linguistic maps-they showed the regional distribution of certain dialect words.
If you want a really impressive present, check this out! The Writer's Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands edited by Huw Lewis-Jones.
Russell (206) wrote: "Sandya - You come up with the best recommendations! That book on Middle Earth (202) sounds like the perfect Christmas present for a family member. I'll be ordering it at our local bookshop tomorrow..."
Are there any fans of J.G. Ballard here? I was wondering what you would consider a good starting point for his work.
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You wrote: "Readers both now and in 1931 could hardly fail to understand the wider political question that Tucholsky asks as he pits his fashionably world-weary urban sophisticates against this raving mini-Hitler."
This (political) interpretation stands to reason. I can see the reasoning behind it, but I believe it is wrong.
To come to a different conclusion, however, the readers would need to know something about KT's family background:
Mrs Adriani, the matron of the childrens home, is, by all accounts, a portrait of Tucholsky's mother Doris.
His (beloved) father died when he was 15, his brother was 9, his sister 8.
Doris had no love to spare for her children. She expected obedience. She was cold, controlling. In the words of (all!) her children: a 'demon', a 'tyrant'.
In 1935, 30 years after his father's death, Tucholsky wrote of his mother: "That (my emphasis) is growing old. My father died when he was 50".
Knowing that I do not believe he intended to make an abstract political point. I think this was, for once, personal, emotional.