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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 29th March 2022
@Anne, so sorry to hear things are not going too well for you at the moment, hope things pick up soon, and that you are getting support, and some time for yourself. I see you’re reading Margaret Forster’s Keeping the World Away. One of my favourite Forsters. I believe @Mach has read it, too. It sparked my interest in Gwen John. As you may know I have enjoyed so many of M F’s novels, her biographies, too, including those of Daphne du Maurier, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her novel about E B B, Lady’s Maid, is one that will remain on my shelves, and the hardback of her E Barrett B was a lovely surprise when ‘Iim indoors arrived for our meeting yonks ago at a favourite old boozer ( make of that what you will) with the out of print hardback he’d sourced for me.
Yep, probably repeating m’self, but nowt new there, eh?
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AB76 wrote: "i cant stand Kundera or Klima"Whereas I like both... there you go, you can't please everyone.
(FYI, I think I read somewhere that Kundera and Klima couldn't stand each other!)
AB76 wrote: "...not overblown at allCan I ask whether the passages I quoted from the beginning of the Razedsky March are in your opinion:
1. realistic, or
2. a deliberate parody to make the reader laugh, or
3. very good writing and 'not overblown at all'?
I note that even Mach and Georg - who love the book - refrained from defending those passages wholeheartedly.
Edit: I am prepared to take on trust that the book gets better, but the opening? Well... no.
Georg wrote: "I hope I haven't come over as somebody trying to persuade you to give the Radetzky March another go.No problem - I think we both are capable of accepting without suffering a heart attack that others will not necessarily share our enthusiasms, or our dislikes.
It always surprises me that some commentators feel the need to 'prove that their view is the right one'... I could not care less if someone disrespects a book I love. I'll disagree, but not to the point of attempting some arm-twisting exercise. If they don't like it, fine by me. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion IMO.
Although: when it comes to Dickens I am still tempted..... ;-)
Don't misunderstand me WRT Dickens - I have enjoyed many of his books adapted as TV series, which is where they are shown at their best, IMO. He was a very good storyteller. I tend to no longer read 19th C books... when I did, the Russians appealed to me far more than the British, as they were dealing not only with tales but with philosophies of life - and that mattered a great deal to me - and still does.
(It didn't help that the Dickens I had to study at school was Oliver Twist...)
Machenbach wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "The Good Soldier Švejk"Really?"
Oh, I haven't read it, sorry."
In which case, I would be absolutely fascinated to hear your view. It has so often been listed as a classic - I was truly shocked and disappointed when I read it - or 100 pages or so...
AB76 wrote: "....the cheeky, boozy larrikan image was only one part of his characterWarne (great player, BTW) was not the only cricketer who enjoyed a pint. Many years ago, the retired English batsman and former captain Ted Dexter was asked his views at the end of the day's play... he was standing in front of a low fence, and as he started to express his thoughts leaned on it, and fell over backwards! Dexter was, shall we say, 'well lubricated' at that point.
(I have tried and failed to find a recording of this incident... perhaps it wasn't recorded, or it was wiped as many things were back then. It remains, along with Blue Peter's pissing elephant, one of my favourite memories of live TV.)
Mod
As usual, my involvement was negligible this year; I only read a few pages here or there of a few of the books. Added a bunch to my TBR list, though, including Devil House, Sea of Tranquility, The Candy House...
Fire Season by Leyna Krow caught my eye because of a blurb from someone named Sharma Shields: "Karen Russell meets Patrick deWitt meets Katherine Dunn".
AB76 wrote: "i havent heard of this Gogol, must look it up....i loved "dead souls", maybe the best unfinished novel in history?"Besides the other titles quoted, Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston is notoriously unfinished. Haven't got round to reading it yet, so I can't be sure of it fitting 'the best unifinished novel in history' tag, but it is generally very highly regarded among Vic Lit experts.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "...not overblown at allCan I ask whether the passages I quoted from the beginning of the Razedsky March are in your opinion:
1. realistic, or
2. a deliberate parody to make the read..."
i'm quite soft and indulgent on what i see as central European irony and humour, i always read this section as a parody of the honour system of a decaying structure, like i would of many english families enobled by Charles 2nd centuries ago, who then magicaly achieve some kind of "presence".
Roth always wrote with a sense of humour and i think he is saying here "dear reader, this preposterous notion of becoming Von Trotta and a part of a parlour game of titles is tosh"
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "....the cheeky, boozy larrikan image was only one part of his characterWarne (great player, BTW) was not the only cricketer who enjoyed a pint. Many years ago, the retired English ba..."
only in the last decade we had england all rounder Andy Flintoff taking a nightime pedalo ride after a few drinks and falling in the water...cricket and booze are firm friends lol
Slawkenbergius wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i havent heard of this Gogol, must look it up....i loved "dead souls", maybe the best unfinished novel in history?"Besides the other titles quoted, Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston is n..."
this lay in a cupboard in my bedroom in the family.home when i moved out 20 years ago i am not sure what came of it....i always seemed to think, i will read that this week...and i never did
Really enjoying the Colin MacInnes novel Mr Love and Justice(1960), the last of his London triology.Its style divides chapters between Mr Love (a demobbed merchant seaman drifting into crime) and Mr Justice (a new recruit to the CID), weaving in their lives, thoughts and deeds with the shabby side of late 1950s London.
Brisk and never wordy, its been a pleasure so far, i even found an interview with MacInnes on the Studs Terkel radio site, where Terkel interviews MacInnes in the early 1960s.
With Angela Thirkell as a mother Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling for cousins ,Burne-Jones as a grandfather, he had a lot of creative talent in his family
Talk about The Radetzky March (a title taken from a piece by Johann Strauss Sr.) has got me thinking about books and stories that take their titles from pieces of music:Spring Sonata
The Kreutzer Sonata
The Farewell Symphony
The White Album
Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
The Planets
Cantata-140
The Soldiers' Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War
Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements (not quite Beethoven's title, but an unmistakable allusion to the Eroica)
Bill wrote: "Talk about The Radetzky March (a title taken from a piece by Johann Strauss Sr.) has got me thinking about books and stories that take their titles from pieces of music"Forgot one which I suspect a number of eTLS'ers have read (though I haven't):
A German Requiem
Yet another music-inspired title (this one I have read, a long time ago):Tintagel (explicitly named after the composition by Bax)
I didn’t rate The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras and gave it a poor review, but I see from The Week that Alison Richard, former Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, says she was enchanted from start to finish, calling it strange and wondrous.
Russell wrote: "I didn’t rate The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras and gave it a poor review, but I see from The Week that Alison Richard, former Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, says she was enchanted from ..."i'm due to read this in the summer, will be interesting to see how i find that Duras novel. her debut novel is now in english translation, if you are interested
Talk about The Radetzky March (a title taken from a piece by Johann Strauss Sr.) has got me thinking about books and stories that take their titles from pieces of music
This is great, Swelter, thanks.
Hans-Ulrich Treichel's tristan chord comes to mind: https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/h... As you can see from that page, Pantheon has bought the English-language rights, but the book has not been published with them so far.
Here's an English-language interview with Treichel on writing libretti and opera - and, prospectively, drama:
https://meineoper.de/en_EN/die-oekono...
And here's a (German-language) summary, which I know you are able to read: https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/hans-ulr...
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Many thanks, Anne. Hope all connections running smoothly again, and thank you two for keeping up this place.
@ Lisa: Ha, I had the cat person on the phone again the other day (the one who sent me the cat cartoon video link) and the cat had their say, very loudly, again. I supposed it's lucky we do not have a cat, what with all the removal cartoons about to take up the place, but also, it might be more fun!
@ give: Many thanks for the good wishes! I hope you are as well recovered as possible just now.
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Love the unfinished novel question, too, though "brain says no" when I try coming up with any more. BUT we have this anthology of unfinished works: https://www.buchfreund.de/produkt-bil...
Pretty good selection, all in all.
Started another excellent Charco Press novel the Rooftop by fernanda trias, though i didnt realise she wrote this 21 years ago and its only just been translated into englishFirst impressions are that this is a very strange novel for father-daughter relationships but i'm invested in the tale, certainly there is not enough Uruguayan literature around in english, so am fascinated by that small nation. (i have read some Onetti, from the 1950s and a short 1970s novel by an argentinian who set the novel in exile inUruguay
thanks to andy for recommending this
Machenbach wrote: "Slawkenbergius wrote: "Besides the other titles quoted, Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston is notoriously unfinished."Good one, yep. No takers here for [book:Gaston de Latour: An Unfinished Romance|58..."
First I've heard of it but after reading the brief mention of it in wikipedia's Walter Pater article, I am interested, if only to see how Pater makes historical figures such as Montaigne and Ronsard work as fictional characters.
Book titles taken from musical works: SF writer William Gibson called one of his novels All Tomorrow's Parties, presumably from th Velvet Underground song. I haven't read it, though.
Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: " certainly there is not enough Uruguayan literature around in english"I reviewed Who Among Us? a few years back if you’re looking for other Uruguayan writers…."
ah yes, i tried another novel by that author and didnt like it...will make a note of that book thanks
Machenbach wrote: "Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (tr. Donald Keene)
I’m still pondering this one because the novel’s epilogue, in which an unknown third party brie..."
i read this years ago and aim to re-read it soon. i was suprised to find that japanese writer Yuko Tsushima is his daughter, i have one of her novels on my pile too
Berkley wrote: "Book titles taken from musical works: SF writer William Gibson called one of his novels All Tomorrow's Parties, presumably from th Velvet Underground song. I haven't read it, though."That one I wouldn't have recognized.
After my last post I also thought of Norwegian Wood.
Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "Hans-Ulrich Treichel's tristan chord comes to mind:"Needless to say, I was unaware of that one.
The Czech version of Josef Škvorecký's novel about Dvořák has the the wonderful title Scherzo capriccioso, but the English version was called Dvořák in Love, which so irritated me that I was unable to read the book.
A snowy morning here in Nevene, not far from Ghent. On my way south today, heading for the breweries of the Aisch Valley.. A chance to catch up on a review, of Let's Kill Uncle by Rohan O'Grady
This apparently innocent and cosy mystery is masquerading as something much darker, and much more humorous, a real oddball, and hence something that grabbed my attention.
To entice you falsely, there is a remarkably simple premise. Two 10-year-old children, Barnaby and Christie, independently turn up on a remote island off Canada's Vancouver coast at the beginning of summer. She is a "self-contained, dour child" being sent off to stay with a Mrs. Nielsen ("the goat-lady") by her mother, who needs some time to herself. Barnaby, an orphan, is the heir to a fortune, and is going to stay with his uncle, who harbours a secret plan to kill the boy for his inheritance.
One conjures up images of Enid Blyton, but it has more in common with the Jennifer Saunders / Ade Edmondson makeover, ‘Five Go Mad’ series from the Comic Strip. The latter of course, even includes an Uncle, but this time a kidnapped one, Quentin.
Barnaby and Christie spend their days tending the graveyard… The island’s adult population is waning, “Two world wars had bled the island white,” those who remain treat the children with a good-natured inattention, no one believes Barnaby when he raises the alarm about his uncle.
For a while you may be mistaken into thinking this is a children’s book, but it is revealed that Uncle’s favourite author is de Sade, and any morality is dubious to say the least. It’s not as overt as ‘Five Go Mad..’, and it’s attack on dated homosexuality prejudices, but it was published in 1963.
It is in fact that rare beast; a delightful, and yet seriously twisted, adventure.
Rohan O’Grady is the pen name of June Margaret O’Grady, a Canadian author who wrote 4 novels during her lifetime, of which this is the most well-known, as it was made into a horror film in 1966. I have not seen the film, but doubt it can do justice to the shovel-fulls of quirk there are in the book.
If you don't mind giving money to Amazon, Bookdepository has gone crazy on discounts across the board.
Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: " certainly there is not enough Uruguayan literature around in english"I reviewed Who Among Us? a few years back if you’re looking for ..."
ah, deffo not my kind of book then, while i admire the fiction of writers like say Peter Stamm, who are Swiss but whose novels are almost placeless, when it comes to countries i barely know culturally, i like to feel a sense of place
SydneyH wrote: "If you don't mind giving money to Amazon, Bookdepository has gone crazy on discounts across the board."blackwells are doing some discounts too, i ordered two novels yesterday, a NZ sci-fi novel "The Quiet Earth" and Sjon's "red milk" that andy recommended
I feel for Breyten Breytenbachs dilemma as a writer in solitary confinement in Pollsmoor Prison, Pretoria, 1976, described in The True Confessions of an Albino TerroristHe outlines that fact he he must write, for his sanity but conditions early on are not good for that. Scraps of paper are his notepads, he writes at night, barely able to see what he is scribbling, mostly poetry in Afrikaans.
Later on he starts to write letters for fellow inmates and to review various lurid attempts at literature by them, some hackneyed and rather stale, others seem to be written by five different people or copied out of books
The Afrikaner system deprives him of a lot of intellectual activity, his request to paint is denied and he is reduced to celebrating a gift of a dictionary. What suprised me greatly was the interest the guards and secret police took in his writings and other Afrikaner literature. There is no ignorance in terms of reading here, they all read Afrikaner books and usually the copies the censors are reviewing before publishing.
Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin
(Thanks to Mach and others for the recommendation.)
First of all - this is quite unlike any other novel I can recall reading… I’ll do my best to explain why. Essentially, it tells the story of two journeys - the author’s, by train, from Moscow to Leningrad (St. Petersburg), intermingled with the journey to Baden-Baden and around Europe by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his wife, Anna Grigor’yevna. However, this is anything but a straightforward telling of the journeys - who did what, and when. The point of view frequently shifts from the author’s journey to descriptions of incidents from the Dostoyevskys’ travels and stays in various cities… and even, at times, to characters and incidents from FD’s novels. The style often feels expressionistic rather than realistic; there are no chapters, few breaks, and very long sentences which often act as paragraphs as well, in a stream of consciousness… here is a sample (Tsypkin is approaching his journey’s end):
Outside the window which was covered by a dirty greyish crust of snow, the neon sign ‘Izhory Works’ twisted by like a tiny glowing red snake - Izhory - practically Leningrad already, its outskirts, its dachas, its suburbs, inhabited by fairhaired Finns with their pale, passive faces - or at least that is what I preferred to think - ‘As I was driving up to Izhory…’ - I could not help remembering the line from Pushkin which for some reason always comes into my mind as I pass this spot, a tribute to conditioned thinking, as it is quite involuntary - and after this I always think of Pushkin eating Pozharsky cutlets, perhaps because of the similarity of sound between the words ‘Izhory’ and ‘Pozharsky’ or perhaps he really did use to eat Pozharsky cutlets there, as he awaited the team of post-horses, casually flirting with the postmaster’s daughter - and along the highway leading to Petersburg, a blizzard would be raging, and the troika would be dashing away, sleigh-bells ringing, with the driver in his seat urging on the sprightly horses and the snow crunching beneath the runners - and sitting in the sleigh, wrapped up in a fur rug, would be Alexandr Sergeyevich himself, hurtling towards Petersburg, pleasantly exhilarated by the wine he had consumed, by the beauty of the postmaster’s daughter, by the anticipation of the balls he would attend in Petersburg and his imminent assignation with the next society beauty with whom he had begun a little affair on the eve of his departure - and forming by themselves in his mind were the verses which would later be reprinted from one edition of his works to another, and dozens of Pushkin scholars would analyse the rhythm and metre of these few lines and, arguing with each other to the point of anger and exhaustion at literary-critical seminars, attempt to establish the exact date on which they were composed, the motives which gave rise to them and the person to whom they were dedicated - Pushkin! - what a firm place he has found for himself in our hearts and minds - that swarthy, crinkle-headed little half-caste with slightly protruding, light-blue eyes (disputes amongst experts about the colour of Pushkin’s hair have not abated to this very day), then the mature Pushkin with his curly hair and not over-luxuriant side-whiskers covering the long, thin face, the whole effect being of slightly scrubby and none too tidy an appearance, and finally the Pushkin whose portrait hangs in the house on the Moika, with those pale, emaciated features and strands of hair sticking to his damp forehead, making him look like a hunted animal - and this is probably what he was like in the last months of his life and, perhaps, in the final days before the duel - that Pushkin who perished because of his cold, calculating wife who felt no shame at lacing up her corset in the presence of servants or even of the book-shop owner she had summoned to her boudoir in order to get another fifty gold roubles out of him for her husband’s poems! - Pushkin! - a Don Juan, fervent and derisive, almost looking for a fight, who shot a pistol while naked in a hotel room in Kishyniov and then went strolling about the city dressed in a red nightcap…
This sentence continues for another two pages! I found this passage, and many others, full of verve and was carried along by the sheer pace of the writing - but I suspect it won’t work for everyone. So, who is it for? Admirers of Dostoyevsky, such as myself, will probably find it rewarding in the way it provides a picture of his European adventure, his gambling obsession, and his married life with the long-suffering Anna, whose forbearance in the face of repeated begging for money, losses, and cries for forgiveness form a central part of the narrative… but there is so much more here, impossible to summarise. A rich and rewarding experience - for some of us.
It also gives a picture of Dostoyevsky’s mental health issues: in addition to his epilepsy (some fits are described) he would appear to have suffered from other conditions which we now recognise: PTSD - at times, he ‘sees’ the face of his sadistic jailer from his time in the prison camp; paranoia - he often feels, or imagines, that many people are pointing at him, and laughing; and perhaps bipolar disorder - he certainly suffered from fairly extreme mood swings. This is shown by the numerous passages in which Dostoyevsky is seen ‘climbing’, but with at times almost an attraction to falling into the abyss.
Any hesitations? Well, the gambling obsession leads to a degree of repetition, which no doubt mirrors the real-life experience of gamblers. I found some of the metaphors rather odd - swimming for sex, for example (funny-peculiar) and Anna’s difficulty in clinging to the slippery mast (funny-ha-ha!). The edition I got included, for the first time, photographs which Tsypkin wished to include with the book - but they seem to have been selected and included at random. The photographs - murky and uninspiring - rarely have anything to do with the text, though they do confirm - rather surprisingly for me - that many (all?) of the locations in FD’s novels are real places: p136 - The building where the moneylender in Crime and Punishment lived; p208 - The police station where Raskolnikov was interrogated; p233 - the courtyard where Raskolnikov hid the stolen goods; p254 - the building where General Yepanchin lived in The Idiot… etc.
But these are minor quibbles - I enjoyed the book enormously. The book closes with an astonishing re-imagining of Dostoyevsky’s final days, and death - a brilliant feat of writing.
An additional difficulty for some people, though, will be the antisemitism which FD and Anna display from early on in the novel - and this is historically correct. Tsypkin himself was Jewish, as was the author of the introduction (Susan Sontag)… they both point out that many of FD’s admirers and supporters as a novelist were Jews. It says a great deal for these critics that they were able to see beyond this very serious matter to the heart of Dostoevsky’s genius, which deals with entirely different issues. (Perhaps I should point out that the couple also distrusted the Germans, and considered them as swindlers and thieves - so it seems a more general xenophobia was at play here, though perhaps the Jews copped it worse than the others - as so often.) I do hope that won’t discourage potential readers, but it’s only fair to point it out…
AB76 wrote: "Roth always wrote with a sense of humour and i think he is saying here "dear reader, this preposterous notion of becoming Von Trotta and a part of a parlour game of titles is tosh"OK, thanks. It was so bad that my chin hit the floor, and I could not
believe that anyone could take the opening seriously... when I asked a while back if it was a parody, no-one bothered to answer... it makes the old 'Battle comics' I read as a 9-year-old look like 'fine writing' by comparison!
Pleased to hear that Roth was just taking the pipi.
AB76 wrote: "...only in the last decade we had england all rounder Andy Flintoff taking a nightime pedalo ride after a few drinks and falling in the water...cricket and booze are firm friends lol"In 2010, after playing in an international in Cardiff, Wales rugby player Andy Powell took a 2 mile drive along the M4 in a golf buggy!
Wow! In his inaugural Twitter post, Jonathan Franzen announces a new novel, written in collaboration with Jennifer Weiner.
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Another musical title - La Symphonie pastorale"I haven't encountered that novel before.
Musical titles of books I've read keep popping into my mind: Gerontius, a novel about Elgar in the 1920s by James Hamilton-Paterson.
W E Dubois is a fascinating writer, for his sociological studies as much as his fictionI have just ordered a collection of his pioneerting "infographics" entitled: W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America and i also have his study of Philadelphia black life in my pile
Bill wrote: "After my last post I also thought of Norwegian Wood."I read that and rather enjoyed it... I'm sort of an agnostic when it comes to Murakami.
Just out now is another Murakami/Beatles inspired film - "Drive My Car"... though the director unfortunately could not afford the rights to the song, so it's not included in the soundtrack!
It's actually on at our Arts Centre ATM, and I would have gone but for the length (3h) and the fact that masks need no longer be worn... I can't risk it.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Roth always wrote with a sense of humour and i think he is saying here "dear reader, this preposterous notion of becoming Von Trotta and a part of a parlour game of titles is tosh"OK..."
i hadnt realised nobody has answered, i call it an example of the highest cultural irony, where a citizen of a nation or ex-nation defines sacred tenets of that nation in humorous terms...
Machenbach wrote: "I hadn't noticed this previously, but it seems that Penguin Classics have joined forces with Marvel to produce editions of Spider-Man, Black Panther and Captain America with scholarly introductions."Noted here by me last year. Alas, Stan Lee is no longer eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, as I anticipated after a certain controversial recipient was announced.
Bill wrote: "Talk about The Radetzky March (a title taken from a piece by Johann Strauss Sr.) has got me thinking about books and stories that take their titles from pieces of music:"I can also add to this 'The Mephisto Waltz' - Liszt's piano piece gave its title to a film of the 1970s, which I saw at the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mep...
scarletnoir wrote: Perhaps I should point out that the couple also distrusted the Germans, and considered them as swindlers and thieves - so it seems a more general xenophobia was at play here Indeed. In the arte documentary I linked some weeks ago,
Roulette russe: Dostoïevski et les tentations de l'Occident, his general xenophobic views were quoted quite extensively. He also disliked the French and the English. Not as much as the Germans, but that was probably only because he spent much more time in Germany on account of his gambling addiction.
Personally that wouldn't deter me from reading him.
Knut Hamsun is, imo, one of the most despicable writers I can think of for his views. I still had a go at his famed Hunger recently.
I gave up after about 30+ pages. But only because the desperately poor hero (Hamsun) behaved like a shit towards somebody who was even poorer than he was.
Machenbach wrote: "As for the photos, I read the first English translation, which didn't have any, but this post has a few things to say about them, including a clarification about their dumbass placement in the text:https://sebald.wordpress.com/2009/09/..."
Thanks for that - no surprise that I am not the only person to have 'doubts' about the placement of the photographs! It is said somewhere in the book - or introduction? - that Tsypkin had some sort of book made of the photographs - perhaps with some sort of narrative attached - that wasn't clear, I don't think. Unfortunately, his skills as a photographer are way below his skills as a writer - they are dull and shot from an unimaginative and straightforward perspective... much more could have been achieved by a talented camera-wielder.
As for the cover - also commented on in your link - I had every intention of returning to that... it shows two well-dressed people, a young woman and a thin-moustachioed lounge lizard, who has persuaded his companion to sample his absinthe (her own drink looks like a comparatively innocuous sherry or suchlike)... one does not need much imagination to deduce that his intentions are not honourable!
Does this have anything at all to do with the book? No, it does not!
scarletnoir wrote: "I can also add to this 'The Mephisto Waltz' - Liszt's piano piece gave its title to a film of the 1970s, which I saw at the time:"That's another title that's occurred to me, but that I never managed to recall while posting here. I actually have a copy of the book - unread, naturally - which preceded the film by a year or so. Evidently the author was trained as a concert pianist.
Machenbach wrote: "Bill wrote: "Wow! In his inaugural Twitter post, Jonathan Franzen announces a new novel, written in collaboration with Jennifer Weiner."I didn't know who Jennifer Wein..."
Hahaha! never heard of her either, but Weiner wrote in her blog, apropos Franzen:
Great American Novelist Jonathan Franzen – the best writer of our time, y’all -- did a Q and A with a Butler University MFA candidate – perhaps you’ve seen it? – where he dismisses my quest for respect and reviews for genre women’s fiction by saying, that I “rub him the wrong way,” that I’m “freeloading on the legitimate problem of gender bias,” and I’m an “unfortunate” person to be a spokesperson for fairness and equity in the World of Letters…and, oh yeah, he’s never read my books, because his friends don’t think they’re any good.
He thinks I’m hijacking a legitimate debate and making it All About Me (because, you know, God forbid a lady EVER make it even remotely about her, when there’s a man nearby she could be making it about). Except it’s not even a legitimate debate, because I’ve never written an essay about it!
“She has no case, so she just tweets.”
Well. (Continues...)
So, Mach, I think we can take it that your instinct re. the relevance of the date was not misplaced!
The supposed Franzen/Weiner collaboration reminded me of the continuing word factory that is James Patterson.I once read a book by Patterson, a while ago - at least, I assume it was by him, as there were no other names on the title page. It wasn't very good, and I never read another.
I now understand that, perhaps thanks to the skills he learnt as an ad-man, he became not only a best-selling author, but some sort of cottage industry, whereby he now simply storyboards plots and hires hacks to write the damn books. As Private Eye comments in its review of his latest, a collaboration with Dolly Parton (Run Rose Run), '(he) hands over the tedious words bit to a subordinate... P. then reads it, okays it and then it goes off to the printers to obliterate a few more trees and take up room other better books could use in bookshops and libraries.'
As for this latest effort: ...the whole project's terrible blandness means you don't really care about any of the characters or what they do.
Somehow, don't think I'll be reading that one.
Machenbach wrote: "Bill wrote: "Wow! In his inaugural Twitter post, Jonathan Franzen announces a new novel, written in collaboration with Jennifer Weiner."I didn't know who Jennifer Wein..."
Thank you, Mach, for reminding me. That writing combo was blowing my mind. Some might say that Jennifer Weiner writes 'chick lit.' Her first book was - Good in Bed
Georg wrote: "Knut Hamsun is, imo, one of the most despicable writers I can think of for his views. I still had a go at his famed Hunger recently."WRT Dostoyevsky, first... it's a long time since I read the novels, and what I retained didn't include the anti-semitic remarks or unfairly portrayed characters... I am neither Jewish nor anti-semitic, so those parts neither upset me personally (as opposed to in a general way) or made me think 'Go for those Jews, FD!' In truth, those poorly judged views are not what anyone reads Dostoyevsky for... fortunately. As I say, it is to the credit of those Jewish critics and readers that they saw beyond those passages to the core messages which were not connected to his unpleasant views on Jews or other nations.
I read a lot of Hamsun back then, too, and don't remember the passage you mention... I am not sure if there is any 'excuse' for Hamsun (probably not), but he did come from a desperately poor background and had been very badly treated as a youth - including being starved, more or less- so at least he knew what he was writing about. It seemed to me that the earlier books were a lot better, and the later ones - perhaps when he became more political - were not up to much. Long time ago, though. I have a feeling - no more than that - that certain books are more 'effective' if we read them in youth rather than in middle or old age...
(I don't know enough about why he became an extreme right-winger, but I think his brother and maybe his uncle were that way inclined.)
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Elizabeth Finch (other topics)A Contrary Journey with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard (other topics)
Last Waltz in Vienna (other topics)
Snow, Dog, Foot (other topics)
Snow, Dog, Foot (other topics)
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Yōko Tawada (other topics)R.C. Ashby (other topics)
Tom Steel (other topics)
Elisabeth Gifford (other topics)
Nicolas Mathieu (other topics)
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Yeah, I think I would have to go for Edwin Drood. Fl..."
Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "wasnt Amerika unfinished?"
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