What are we reading? 19th January 2022

[Georg]

I'd also like it if we could keep eTLS going.

I really enjoyed the rare books discussion (althogh I am in @storms camp when it comes to collecting).
And atm the pronounciation thingy. Both probably not to be had anywhere else.
To name but a few things we have, and had, here.

@Paul: my Italian is, at best, rudimentary. But I think that the rules re pronounciation are usually very clear (?) Acciughe vs gnocchi, Garibaldi vs Geronimo...

@Yoshi: welcome! Narayan has been lurking somewhere on my want-to-read list for ages. Now I've taken a fluorescent marker...

@gpfr: thanks for putting Pritchett on that list.

[Paul]

Georg wrote: "I'd my Italian is, at best, rudimentary. But I think that the rules re pronounciation are usually very clear (?) Acciughe vs gnocchi, Garibaldi vs Geronimo...probab..."

Absolutely. Italian has few pronunciation rules, and zero exceptions. If you can read it, you can pronounce it. English is the unwieldy beast with many rhymes but little reason

[Gpfr]

Thanks for all your efforts, Hushpuppy.

[giveusaclue]

Machenbach wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Epitome is another on."

'Epitome' must be Greek though, surely. But it does remind me that I have been embarrassed in the past by both 'Antigone' and 'synecdoche'. But the one ..."

Well that made me laugh, never seen a flying corpse, fortunately.
Epitome:

"An epitome (/ɪˈpɪtəmiː/; Greek: ἐπιτομή, from ἐπιτέμνειν epitemnein meaning "to cut short") is a summary or miniature form, or an instance that represents a larger reality, also used as a synonym for embodiment. Epitomacy represents "to the degree of."

Re Italian pronunciation; we were told for gn think of the first n in onion. And to remember that ch is hard I think of chiesa (church) starts like kirk - a Scottish church. Well us oldies need all the help we can get.

[Gpfr]

Machenbach wrote: "'fish' could be spelled 'ghoti'..."

This reminds me of back in the heady days of the 70s when the Silent Way was all the rage for teaching languages - at a demo of the method, we were looking at their charts linking spelling with sound. Each sound had a colour and the chart showed all the spellings which could make that sound. It took us a while to figure out when 'ieu' is 'f'... Maybe you'll all be quicker!
(view spoiler)[lieutenant (British pronunciation of course) (hide spoiler)]

[Slawkenbergius]

Machenbach wrote: "'Royal Flying Corps"

Laughter's what you get for borrowing Frenchy words without permission! :D

[AB76]

i wonder if dandyhistimaine is still posting on the guardian? The bloke was crackers but good fun

does anyone remember cudgelthestupid?

[Slawkenbergius]

Paul wrote: "English is the unwieldy beast with many rhymes but little reason"

French is far from perfect, and that's why most Frogs don't know how to pronounce Bruxelles correctly.

And let's not even talk about Rheims...

[[deleted user]]

Hushpuppy wrote: "*Elated announcement*"

Great news, Hush, and a just reward for your heroic advocacy.

I’m with those who think we should keep going here, at least for the time being, if Anne and LL are up for it. Maybe match up the cycles, leaving the thread here open for a month?

I also like the idea of re-posting reviews – starting, I hope, with Yoshi re-posting that marvellous piece on The Idiot. What a brilliant discussion it has generated, and what a splendid way of confirming to The G the rightness of their decision.

[AB76]

Russell wrote: "Hushpuppy wrote: "*Elated announcement*"

Great news, Hush, and a just reward for your heroic advocacy.

I’m with those who think we should keep going here, at least for the time being, if Anne an..."

the guardian interface will seem like something smooth after 18 months of GR. i love Ersatz TLS but GR layout and interface is a total mess, on the Guardian i could list 5 or 6 books in seconds, here its all about the html...back and forth etc

so the interface will make up about 25% for the thought trolls at the Guardian aka moderators

[FrancesBurgundy]

AB76 wrote: "
does anyone remember cudgelthestupid?"

I'm really hoping Cugel will be there. I think he still 'comments' on Poem of the Week. It takes all sorts and I grew very fond of him (hope you're lurking Cugel, I know you are!). A bientot.

[AB76]

FrancesBurgundy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "
does anyone remember cudgelthestupid?"

I'm really hoping Cugel will be there. I think he still 'comments' on Poem of the Week. It takes all sorts and I grew very fond of him (hope yo..."

there are so many i havent seen for a while, the names will come back to me.

its great news , its a shame the Guardian made the decision in the first place considering Viner was trumpeting all the money raised from the "subscriber" system, only then to start a cull(if covid hadnt happened, would the cull? i wonder)

what it did do was drive me away from anything to do with the world of literature published on the Guardian. i didnt cancel by sub as my daily digest of the political,sport and other sections meant i wouldnt feel that was the right thing to do but i was pretty fed up, like most of us, to see such a silly decision made.

does anyone know how Sam is and GalleyBeggarPress?

[Hushpuppy]

Andy wrote: "Any news of when it starts?"

Probably by the end of next week (see also post #146)!

[Reen]

Hushpuppy wrote: "
*Elated announcement*


I've now heard back from Sian's replacement. Yes, it's a monthly rendez-vous, but it's happening good people of (e)TLS!

"The new series is going to be called "What we're..."

Good woman gladhush. You should consider politics!

[Hushpuppy]

Reen wrote: "Good woman gladhush. You should consider politics!"

😂

[scarletnoir]

Machenbach wrote: "As for the 'Holy Fool', I now also recall that the type was used in another fairly recent Russian novel, Vodolazkin's Laurus, 'though Vodolazkin's take was pretty sincere and unironic. I wouldn't recommend that to you either."

The 'holy fool' does in some ways feel 'typically Russian' (going well OTT), though I'm sure they also exist - perhaps in lesser numbers - in other cultures! (Not that I am in any sense a Russian scholar... so maybe a Russian would disagree.)

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "does anyone remember cudgelthestupid?"

Yes, indeed - I have exchanged pleasantries with cudgel a few times BTL on the Guardian site, perhaps when discussing movies. He is still in fine form, I'm glad to say.

Another I've swapped comments with, again probably about movies, is AuroreB... I would like to 'find' him again, to ask him to withdraw a misplaced 'thanks' he offered me for recommending a French book... he mistook me for someone else, as although I had mentioned the author I never recommended the book in question, as I haven't read it!

[scarletnoir]

Hushpuppy wrote: "...if you have a sound system these days, it's even easier to find out: dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronuncia....

Thanks a lot for that - added to my 'words, quotes and dictionaries' folder, along with other more dubious pleasures such as 'the Urban Dictionary', and multilingual dictionaries such as Reverso Context.

Our daughter no. 2 gave us my favourite mis-pronunciation - when faced with 'gherkin', she perfectly logically said "guh-herkin".

Now, whenever daughter no. 1 gets out her jar (she loves them), or there is discussion of 'that building' in London - it's "guh-herkin" for all of us!

[CCCubbon]

Some may not be aware that there is a MUTE button on Guardian posts which you may activate for the particularly unpleasant. It stops you having to see the posts of someone who proves themselves to be offensive.
It does make life easier.

[scarletnoir]

Gpfr wrote: "Andy wrote: " The Portico Prize - I was looking for an archive of past winners, but couldn’t find it. ..."

Here are the winners 1985 - 2015:
https://www.theportico.org.uk/portico......"

I don't think this has been posted yet (?) - this year's winner is Sally J. Morgan, who wrote a novel based on her own 'near miss' with the Wests, and the effect that had on her life:

Toto Among the Murderers

(The chair of judges was the excellent Gary Younge, late of the Guardian - so it may well be worth a read.)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

As for what qualifies as 'North of England':

Morgan’s Toto Among the Murderers, set in Leeds and Sheffield in the 1970s, follows the lives of Jude – known to her friends as Toto – and other women as violence moves closer, and the Wests stalk the country.

although

Morgan grew up in Yorkshire and now lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand. The north of England, she said after winning the Portico prize, holds “a big place” in her heart.

Clearly, there is a degree of flexibility in the interpretation, as the author is no longer based in the North, and the Wests were based in Gloucestershire, which is hardly 'North', though it sounds as if they have been 'moved' in the book - or is it simply the atmosphere of fear which has reached Leeds? It's a bit odd, in a way, that the 'Yorkshire Ripper' wasn't used instead, except for the personal experience, I suppose...

[scarletnoir]

CCCubbon wrote: "Some may not be aware that there is a MUTE button on Guardian posts which you may activate for the particularly unpleasant. It stops you having to see the posts of someone who proves themselves to ..."

Thanks - that could prove to be useful! I recently had a 'problem' with someone who took offence at a totally inoffensive post of mine - because he had misinterpreted it - and refused to understand what I was trying to say despite a number of attempts by me to explain where he had got the wrong end of the stick.

He seemed to think that he knew better than me what I meant!

[Andy]

scarletnoir wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Andy wrote: " The Portico Prize - I was looking for an archive of past winners, but couldn’t find it. ..."

Here are the winners 1985 - 2015:
https://www.theportico.org.uk/portico......"

Thanks SN.
I enjoyed the ceremony also.
I will read Toto at some stage.

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Some may not be aware that there is a MUTE button on Guardian posts which you may activate for the particularly unpleasant. It stops you having to see the posts of someone who prov..."

sadly the guardian moderation system can leave some things hanging,arguments just terminated by deleting some posts and not others if they had a method in their madness, i might understand!

[AB76]

For any Catalan literature fans, i found a new 2020 translation of a novel by 19thc Catalan writer Narcis Oller by Fum D'Estampa press nd have now pushed it back up my pile, maybe to be read in next few months

[CCCubbon]

AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Some may not be aware that there is a MUTE button on Guardian posts which you may activate for the particularly unpleasant. It stops you having to see the posts..."
Yes, I have used it once when some posts became intolerable to me. It does make me very wary about going back, sorry to say.

[Andy]

From the BBC site a quote from Stephen Fry.. “ I hope paradise is as you remember it from the dashboard light.”. And his tribute, that Meatloaf was at once both frightening and cuddly.

Back in the 80s, being similarly large in size, I performed a skit of Bat Out Of Hell at a Christmas fundraising show, dressed as him, with the Head of Design as Cher, she did look rather like her. We had a trampet rigged up, so I could leap onto the bar, as in the video, but the bar was designed to collapse with my weight. To the mirth of the audience.

Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night..

[giveusaclue]

CCCubbon wrote: "AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Some may not be aware that there is a MUTE button on Guardian posts which you may activate for the particularly unpleasant. It stops you having to ..."


You have to be very careful which political threads you "attend."

[Andy]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "does anyone remember cudgelthestupid?"

Yes, indeed - I have exchanged pleasantries with cudgel a few times BTL on the Guardian site, perhaps when discussing movies. He is still in fin..."

I often exchange pleasantries with Cugs.
Hijacking a thread on some other book related topic to twist it our own way. There’s a few of us who do, and always point out how we miss TLS…
Those mods must be sick of us..

Aside SN… I haven’t seen many movie related chat threads. Must keep an eye. Usually after I’ve seen a film I really want to discuss it. Always enjoy Kermode on a Friday afternoon, though don’t always agree with him. He is a big ‘horror’ fan though, as am I.

Last movies were Boiling Point, or how the other one hundred thousandth live.. which I found strangely compelling yet extremely stressful.
And Dear Comrades which I would certainly recommend. As in Quo Vadis Aida based around a strong woman, this time doubting the idea of communism, Stalin v Khrushchev.

I’m really enjoying a Turkish drama called Ethos. I’m 4 episodes in and I’ve just got it..
It’s about a clash of cultures within a culture I guess, religious tolerance. It’s quite different than anything I’ve seen. Such a simple storyline that becomes so complex.

Something lighter, Reservation Dogs set in an Indigenous American community in Oklahoma.

Keen to hear anyone else’s plugs..

[Yoshi]

scarletnoir wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "The narrator of Before and During is clearly related to the Dostoyevskyan 'type' - his sudden blackouts and memory loss an echo (ironic?) of their fits and revelations. He is nam..."

"Alyosha, now - there's a case... by some distance the least interesting character in 'Karamazov'

Ha, scarletnoir, you wound me with this assertion :). Just joking, that's alright. I mean, that's one of Dostoevsky's strengths: There is a plethora of characters to like/hate/care about. Generally, I don't think you have to necessarily "like" any characters to enjoy a novel, but you do need to care about what is happening to them. Liking a certain character, identifying with her_him helps in this regard, of course.

Still I would contend that figures like Myshkin and Alyosha - in their "yurodyvyyness" are also doubters or renegades, but in a different way from Ivan or Raskolnikov, for instance. They also don't conform to society, only partly because they choose to but also because they don't understand the norms and thus are unable to conform. This is what makes them interesting to me. So Alyosha's trajectory is only surprising on the surface.
I do confess, for my liking Myshkin has become a fraction too docile over the summer months in Pavlovsk. We shall see :)

@Georg Elser, Re: Reading Narayan: Please do. I mean, I am quite happy at the thought that there's still lots and lots of stories about Malgudi for me to discover. I am usually not a big fan of short stories, but I think that Malgudi Days was a perfect introduction to the locality. You get to know many different inhabitants of Malgudi, from all ways of life, so in the end there is a somewhat kaleidoscopic effect, a sense of depth and of Malgudi being a breathing, living thing. The stories are deceptively simple, I think. In all their particularity, there is always something that harks back to the universal. And also: There is a beautiful map! :) I may be a simpleton, but it gives me disproportionate pleasure to identify the individual places..."The bus stops at the Market Gate...Where is the Market Gate? There is the Market Gate!" Makes me really happy, for some reason.

And again, @all, thanks for the exceedingly warm welcome I have gotten. Let me join in by saying that the return of some kind of TLS at the Guardian is excellent news, and congratulate each and everyone (@hushpuppy, first and foremost?) for their efforts and tenacity.

[CCCubbon]

Andy wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "does anyone remember cudgelthestupid?"

Yes, indeed - I have exchanged pleasantries with cudgel a few times BTL on the Guardian site, perhaps when discussing movies..."

We could set up a special film topic here on gr, keep it with the poem, photos - use gr for those particular passions.

[scarletnoir]

Andy wrote: "I haven’t seen many movie related chat threads. Must keep an eye."

I was a huge movie fan from the year dot until, probably, the birth of our children, which coincided with a move from film-lovers' paradise Paris to ... Portsmouth. After that, it became much harder to see good stuff (except if it was on TV), and gradually the whole business seemed to become overwhelmed by 'superhero' films, in which I have zero interest.

I'm still willing to take up the cudgels (!) to argue that Fellini (in his prime) was far superior to Bergman, or whatever... you can have a bit of fun with that discussion.

[scarletnoir]

Yoshi wrote: "Still I would contend that figures like Myshkin and Alyosha - in their "yurodyvyyness" are also doubters or renegades, but in a different way from Ivan or Raskolnikov, for instance. They also don't conform to society, only partly because they choose to but also because they don't understand the norms and thus are unable to conform. This is what makes them interesting to me. So Alyosha's trajectory is only surprising on the surface."

Yes, fair enough - and it's probably 40 years or more since I read those novels, though I must have read Karamazov three times... Dostoyevsky's greatness lies in part in the fact that no character is 'fixed', or is there to represent a 'type' or a 'point of view': they are all capable of development and change, their experiences influence their ideas, and vice versa... They live and breathe on the page.

Let's just say that I identified far more with Ivan than Alyosha, but the idea that the latter was to plot an assassination attempt on the tsar in the unwritten second novel makes him - in retrospect - far more interesting, and worthy of comparison with the characters in Camus' 'Les Justes':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jus...

[Hushpuppy]

Andy wrote: "Hijacking a thread on some other book related topic to twist it our own way. There’s a few of us who do, and always point out how we miss TLS…
Those mods must be sick of us.. "

Indeed Andy! How many times a long thread (every time?) has veered into different territories - cinema, food, travels, knitting, trees, pets, music... Only the more zealous (newbies?) of the mods would take these down, but of course we only remember what is salient, that is to say, the 2% of threads taken down, rather than the hundreds who are still up, and yet technically off topic. Memory, eh 🤷‍♀️?

I've had Reservation Dogs on my TBW list for a while now - how was it??

Nothing new-ish on my end to recommend, I've spent the past month or so catching up with classics I'd somehow never watched. An Affair to Remember, brilliant, Dr Zhivago (one of my mum's favourite), syrupy and dated, The Barefoot Contessa, excellent, The Last Picture Show, a gem and one of a kind... I was thinking all way through that I had seen that Sonny, looking just the same, before, and it's only after I imdbed him that I realised that, the very same year as the Bogdanovich's film, he was also Joe/Johnny, who got his gun (Jesus, that film...).

[Yoshi]

Machenbach wrote: "It's both exhilarating and exhausting, but one begins to see how an author like Sharov - from a post-Soviet perspective - might be able to look back and say "Yeah, there was no way this was ever gonna end up in anything other than a car crash. ""

Well said. I might have to read the Sharov after all. I think voices like this and what you have eloquently sketched out in your reply are good to keep in mind while reading the old text. Because as you said: Exhilarating it is, all these great ideas, the fervour with which they are being discussed. Feverish characters in feverish times. As a reader it is easy to romanticise this past, a time where change is on the horizon and everything seems up for grabs. Especially from the vantage point of our "There is no alternative" corpocratic, kleptocratic oligarchy that is late capitalism. I know I am guilty of it, from time to time.

[scarletnoir]

CCCubbon wrote: "We could set up a special film topic here on gr, keep it with the poem, photos - use gr for those particular passions."

Indeed - why not, if enough people are interested?

[scarletnoir]

Machenbach wrote: "What strikes anyone reading Russian literature of the second half of the C19th is the sheer investment in 'ideas' (whether social, political or religious) on the part of authors and characters, the cacophony of competing philosophies, plans, projects, notions. It's... exhilarating...

That sums up very well why I prefer Russian literature from the 19th C. to all others from the same period - if you care about ideas (as well as stories) there is no comparison with that of any other nation, as far as I know.

[scarletnoir]

Hushpuppy wrote: "How many times a long thread (every time?) has veered into different territories - cinema, food, travels, knitting, trees, pets, music..."

it's surely in the nature of human interaction to digress in this way... I had a laugh with my wife yesterday, trying to disentangle how our discussion had gone from there to here... Pretty much all discussions with good friends and family veer off in the craziest directions, and can no more easily be 'herded' than cats...

[Georg]

Yoshi wrote (#190): "scarletnoir wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "The narrator of Before and During is clearly related to the Dostoyevskyan 'type' - his sudden blackouts and memory loss an echo (ironic?) of their fits and re..."

I am always happy when a book comes with a map and wish there were more that do. Occasionally the lack of one even constitutes a flaw imo.

I am also no big fan of short stories. Although there are many I have enjoyed (the latest was Bobok, recommended by @scarlet to convince me that Dostoyevsky did have a sense of humour ;-))

[Andy]

Hushpuppy wrote: "Andy wrote: "Hijacking a thread on some other book related topic to twist it our own way. There’s a few of us who do, and always point out how we miss TLS…
Those mods must be sick of us.. "

Indeed..."

Cheers for those HP..
Go for Dogs… it’s only short, and the first one is very good, see what you think after that.

[Andy]

Machenbach wrote: "Andy wrote: Back in the 80s, being similarly large in size, I performed a skit of Bat Out Of Hell at a Christmas fundraising show, dressed as him, with the Head of Design as Cher, she did look rath..."

You took the words right out of my mouth..
(As the great man once said)

[Andy]

scarletnoir wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "We could set up a special film topic here on gr, keep it with the poem, photos - use gr for those particular passions."

Indeed - why not, if enough people are interested?"

Keen certainly.

[Slawkenbergius]

(1/2)

Asa Leventhal, an editor working in trade business, leads a reasonably regular life in a sweltering New York late Summer. His wife is away attending family affairs, his brother's younger son is very sick ... ; Leventhal feels a bit lonely and despondent, until one afternoon he crosses an old acquaintance in a park, a boozy, shabby-looking man he barely knows but that accuses him of having ruined his life. He then spends the next few days harassing Leventhal, whose muscular claims of innocence gradually subside.

Allbee, the harasser, is not afraid of throwing at Leventhal's face antisemite remarks that only contribute to enrage the latter. But the thing is, Leventhal has been vanquished by the unfair treatment his gentile fellow Americans inflict on him on a quasi-daily basis. At the outset of the novel, he can't help hearing the disparaging comments of his boss behind his back when he asks permission to leave the office earlier. He has fully interiorised the insidious observations of quotidian antisemitism and he already starts to respond in line with an antisemite logic. In a heated discussion with friends, Leventhal lessens the merits of former Victorian prime-minister Disraeli to the astonishment of his interlocutors.

'Why do you have it in for Disraeli?' demanded Harkavy.
'I don't have it in for him. But he wanted to lead England. In spite of the fact that he was a Jew, not because he cared about empires so much. People laughed at his nose, so he took up boxing; they laughed at his poetic silk clothes, so he put on black; and they laughed at his books, so he showed them. He got into politics and became the prime minister. He did it all on nerve.'
'Oh, come on,' Harkavy said.
'On nerve,' Leventhal insisted. 'That's great, I'll give you that. But I don't admire it. It's all right to overcome a weakness, but it depends how and it depends what you call a weakness... Julius Caesar was sick with epilepsy. He learned to ride with his hands behind his back and slept on the bare ground like a common soldier. What was the reason? His disease. Why should we admire people like that? Things that are life and death to others are only a test to them. What's the good of such greatness?'
'Why, you're succombing yourself to all the things that are said against us,' Harkavy began in an upbraiding tone.

A hard man to satisfy, or just someone who won't fit anywhere. In fact, he's overly suspicious and senses antisemitism everywhere. If his brother's mother-in-law, an old Sicilian lady, doesn't behave kindly towards him, it must be because she is a Catholic and he a Jew, needless to say! Whatever. Yet there's no doubt that Allbee embodies the quintessential jew-bater (Bible quotes and all), not wasting a chance to address Leventhal in terms of 'you people' or 'your kind' which naturaly enfuriates him.

[Slawkenbergius]

(2/2)

But the situation changes when Leventhal is forced to adopt the other man's point of view. He continually condemns Allbee's drinking habits but never occcurs to him to understand why Allbee was driven to them. Just as Leventhal is the product of his milieu and upbringing so Allbee's persona derives from his New England conservative education (or so he claims). Furthermore, by a strange twist of compassion, Leventhal can't help identifying emotionally with his harasser's inner angst. Some people succeed in life and some don't; some people survive in a dog-eat-dog urban setting, while others somber into alcohol dependence. He too has been guilty of hasty regretful responses; he too thinks something's wrong with his mind; he too has been in the past close to the abyss: Leventhal could have become an Allbee had his fate been slightly different.
Allbe is Leventhal's double, at once symbolising what he hates most and personifying his own self-loathing in terms of Jewishness.

So, The Victim is a thought-provoking novel concealing different layers of meaning, ingenuously reversing the mirror of its two protagonists, and proceeding to the conclusion that every man must live through life the best he can and fulfill his inner-self to the maximum. Proscribe hypocrisy, assume your acts and your opinions, try and help others notwithstanding their differences. Even though he is perfectly aware Allbee is a despicable character, Leventhal goes against his own instinct and judgement to give him a hand (albeit grudgingly). If in his mind Jews are the all-suffering victims of persecution and injustice, he cannot avoid thinking that in a way his harasser is a victim of a society that failed to help him when he was in need, and instilled prejudice and racism instead of courage and good-will. And if Leventhal chose to help him, he did it not to unburden his conscience but because he was compelled to do it. There was no pleasure or laurels intended (in a way he just wanted to get rid of the guy), not unlike in Kant's moral imperative. And until the last moment, the interaction between the two men is one that can only be characterised as a relationship of love and hate.

Just to finish, there's in this novel an array of the themes dear to Bellow and that he would continue to develop in his later masterpieces, and particularly in Herzog: the difficulties an educated man experiences to cope with the practical challenges of modern society, the inability to comprehend your fellow man's feelings and hopes, the portrait of a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, the hardships inherent to famility ties, the constant need for self-assertion in a world of guilt and regret, the impression reality escapes you the moment you mingle with the crowd, the need to belong.

Great stuff!

[Andy]

Not Bat Out of Hell.
My memory creaks.
Dead Ringer For Love.
How great is this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSTIs...
(Let me sleep on it, I’ll give you an answer in the morning..)

It is such a piss take that I can’t imagine our skit being funny enough to wipe its nose.

[Andy]

Earlier this week I read Louise Erdrich's The Sentence

This was my third Erdrich. I really enjoyed The Round House but was disappointed by LaRose. This is somewhere in between the two.
I was drawn in by the first half as it was something quite different with an appealing set of characters.
The death through overdose of a friend's partner is just the start of (narrator) Tookie's legal problems. She agreed to help by burying the body. But the federal law, rather than tribal, see it as body-snatching, and across state lines. After several years in prison she is released and works in a book store, which unsurprisingly resembles Erdrich’s own store. An elderly white lady is a regular visitor, and annoys Tookie by ‘stalking, all things Indigenous’. Flora dies, but her ghost keeps the same hours, browsing the shelves in the store.
I think that premise is plenty to carry the story, around a set of colourful and credible characters.
But instead of pursuing what she has created, Erdrich is more concerned with chronicling the troubles of our last few years; notably the pandemic, and the deadly assault on George Floyd. It is a dramatic change of track for what had been a light and playful ghost story.
At its heart though, is a love of books. So much so, that the novel’s last pages are given over to various lists of Tookie’s book recommendations (Erdrich's own one would guess..).

[Andy]

And I've just finished Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated from Korean by Anton Hur.

This is an impressive debut. Though largely a stew of twisted fairy tales, there are other moments when Chung demonstrates an eerie imagination and a pleasantly distorted sense of humour.
The latter perhaps best demonstrated in the first story (The Head) that concerns a perversely upsetting tale of a woman who is plagued by a head made out of shit, piss and blood that has collected in her toilet. It is down to Chung's straight bat that this fascinates; totally deadpan. How otherwise might we be taken in by such deranged surrealism.
After the first few stories Chung slacks off on the humour and escalates the horror, with the title story, Cursed Bunny. In a small town a family create cursed fetish objects as a profession. This is a ghost story of sorts, taking to task the ignorant brutality of corporate greed.
But the pick of the bunch, the shortest and last story, is Reunion, a lyrical ghost story that considers the trauma suffered by survivors of war and their children, recipients of pent up anxiety, caused by the suffering, fear and horror; a sort of PTSD passed through the generations. A really good example of how powerful the horror genre can be.

[AB76]

While A Man of the The People by Chinua Achebe(1966) is witty and cutting in its satire on african corruption, its lavicious tone is starting to get rather tedious. Not sure if its my lack of tolerance for oat sowing male characters with a lack of morals or the treatment of the female characters involved.

I was much more interested in the appalling corruption that has gripped african society since independence and its causes and the idea of solutions, rather than bed hopping. I expected more of Achebe but in some ways there is a dated feel to the philandering male ego depicted here.

i'm three quarters through now.

[Georg]

AB76 wrote (#214): "While A Man of the The People by Chinua Achebe(1966) is witty and cutting in its satire on african corruption, its lavicious tone is starting to get rather tedious. Not sure if its my lack of tole..."

Playing devil's advocate: in what way does his "treatment" of women make him stand out? What about the "treatment" of women by highly respected white European/American writers, give or take a few decades or, at most, centuries?

It is contentious to say it for various reasons, but I have always been with Yoko Ono's statement "Woman is the nigger of the world".

[AB76]

Georg wrote: "AB76 wrote (#214): "While A Man of the The People by Chinua Achebe(1966) is witty and cutting in its satire on african corruption, its lavicious tone is starting to get rather tedious. Not sure if ..."

i think exactly the same about Phillip Roth and John Updike and a few other white authors where morals seemed to be lacking, Achebe is no different to these authors.

[Hushpuppy]

Andy wrote: "And I've just finished Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung"

I remember Alwynne reviewed it too not too long ago (you can find it on the book's GR page), and while she might have had a few more reserves than you, she said the stories that stayed a bit more with her were the "Cursed Bunny", "Reunion" and "Snare".