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What are we reading? 13th April 2022
The Carribean is very much in my mind reading non-fiction by Naipaul(trinidad) and Guevara(Cuba)Naipaul's tales of the city and the country, his indian relatives and their passage to the Indies is fascinating and it made me reflect on how the British West Indian Islands were formed by the empire and its movement of enslaved(africans) or indentured(indians) from other continents. Not forgetting the very small but later influx of Chinese into jamaica and cuba from 1900 or so.
I found a racial breakdown of the West Indies, according to the 1946 census. In that year there were 2,778,400 people living in the British West Indies, of which 65% were black,18% dual heritage,14% East Indian,2% WHite and 1% Other(which includes Amerinidan, Chinese and Syrians)
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On to The Candy House by the brilliant, magical Jennifer Egan. Just 30 pages in, I find myself holding my breath, wondering "where is she going to go with this?" She's just so good, Egan.
For those of you who enjoy women’s writing from roughly the first half of the 20th century, I can recommend the latest Slightly Foxed podcast edition. It focuses on Barbara Pym: Paula Byrne (Pym’s biographer) and Lucy Scholes are the guests. Other writers are also discussed, including Elizabeth Taylor and Barbara Comyns. It’s a delight!
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I agree - I listened to it on Friday. I always like them, but this one was particularly enjoyable.
Penguin Famous Trials 6 was an oxfam find covering four famous murder trials.Each trial account is written by different authors but well composed and clearly explained. The two most interesting were the IRA Coventry bombings of 1939 and the incredible case of Haigh and the "acid murders"
The IRA case was part of the S-Plan campaign to disrupt the british in the years leading up to WW2. The coventry bombing was an outrage and the killers were convicted and executed
Haigh was a smooth talking, avuncular killer who shot an elderly woman and then dissolved her body in acid (the identification of the body was rather grotesque, all that remained in the large tub was human body fat, gallstones and false teeth). Haigh's trial was remarkable in that the Attorney-General of the UK govt, Sir Hartley Shawcross was the prosecuting lawyer and Maxwell Fyfe of Nuremburg fame as the defence lawyer. Haigh was convicted and executed, all through the trail seemingly cool as ice, doing crosswords in the dock and sometimes laughing and sniggering. He claimed to have murdered around nine other people and used the same acid technique for the bodies
Happy Easter, all. Hope you are spending the time as you wish. Cold, but sunny here. Have completed Louise Erdrich’s Future Homev of the Living God. Echoes of Handmaid and similar, a satisfying read.. Now moving on to Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. I see that Her Maj’s Jubilee Booklist has been published. Wide ranging, but sorry to say II’ve read v few of them. Need to get my backside in gear!
Lass wrote: "Happy Easter, all. Hope you are spending the time as you wish. Cold, but sunny here. Have completed Louise Erdrich’s Future Homev of the Living God. Echoes of Handmaid and similar, a satisfying rea..."cooler but still sunny here...about 16c, had a good easter, spent sunday with family, hope everyone else had a good easter, the forum has been dead for most of the weekend!
That’s good @AB. Sunday in the garden with family, and it didn’t rain!. Think I’ll take advantage of the dry weather now. Cold, but sunny. I’ll take that. Sod the tidying up, books await!
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21 out of 70 for me. I'll see what I think about the selection later, there I just counted.
Gpfr wrote: "Lass wrote: "Her Maj’s Jubilee Booklist has been published. Wide ranging, but sorry to say II’ve read v few of them...."21 out of 70 for me. I'll see what I think about the selection later, there..."
Where can this be found?
After a couple of lesser reads, James Carlos Blake’s In the Rogue Blood and Cees Nooteboom’s Rituals, I was rewarded with an author new to me, Carlos Fuentes’s Vlad, translated by Ethan Shaskan Bumas.
I came across Carlos Fuentes in César Aira’s wonderful novel, The Literary Conference. It seems he is a contemporary, and I suppose rival, of Aira’s; they both appear at the literary conference in question, vying for the same award. It’s very entertaining. As a huge Aira fan, I was at once keen to read his work.
And duly rewarded here. Though on the face of it, a contemporary story of a vampire in Mexico City, this is far more than just that. Works of horror, when done well, tell us as much about life and society as they do about death.
The opening may seem formulaic, Yves Navarro is a middle aged lawyer with a sound career, happily married on the surface of it, with a young daughter, when he is tasked by his elderly boss to find a house for a client, an old friend of the boss from eastern Europe who wishes to emigrate..
Though we know the skeletal structure of this short book; the mystery set, the sudden realisation and catastrophe that we expected, the concluding showdown; it is what is unsaid that appeals the most, it’s fable-like composition.
Ruthless capitalist bloodsucking is intertwined with the more literal kind, showing the gruesome cost to all involved.
Media reviews are mixed, claiming generally its not Fuentes best; I’m keen to read more.
Here’s a clip..
I had never before been so tortured by the slowness of the Mexico City traffic; the irritability of the drivers; the savagery of the dilapidated trucks that ought to have been banned ages ago; the sadness of the begging mothers carrying children in their shawls and extending their calloused hands; the awfulness of the crippled and the blind asking for alms; the melancholy of the children in clown costumes trying to entertain with their painted faces and the little balls they juggled; the insolence and obscene bungling of the pot-bellied police officers leaning against their motorcycles at strategic highway entrances and exits to collect their bite-size bribes; the insolent pathways cleared for the powerful people in their bulletproof limousines; the desperate, self-absorbed, and absent gaze of old people unsteadily crossing side streets without looking where they were going, those white-haired, but-faced men and women resigned to die the same way as they lived; the giant billboards advertising an imaginary world of bras and underpants covering small swaths of perfect bodies with white skin and blonde hair, high-priced shops selling luxury and enchanted vacations in promised paradises.
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Here you go.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
@Bill. List in the Culture section of The Guardian. Online just now. Headline ” The God of Small things to Shuggie Bain”.
and, a quick report on a short story I enjoyed, Snow by Dale Bailey. In the midst of a Colorado unseasonal storm, two ‘well to do’ young couples have journeyed up into the mountains from Boulder to camp, with the very best equipment, and or course, a gun. Their satellite radio starts to warn of a virus, the Red Death, that’s devastating the local population in rapid time. After 3 days, the radio falls silent, and they decide to head down into town.
Bailey is a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and the International Horror Guild Award, and this specific story, has received much acclaim.
It’s easy to see why. Just a half hour or so to read, it would be ideal read out loud around a campfire.
It’s available for free on the Nightmare Magazine website, or as audio on YouTube.
It led me to discovering an interesting podcast site also, a half hour discussion on various pieces of writing, entitled Why Is This Good?
It’s number 73… link at https://www.whyisthisgood.com/
Andy wrote: "Carlos Fuentes’s Vlad, translated by Ethan Shaskan Bumas. Vlad by Carlos Fuentes .."I like the sound of this one. I just read my first Fuentes a few months back, The Campaign, and was duly impressed. I have one of his earlier books, Where the Air is Clear, near the top of my stack.
Not sure if anyone here is knowledgable about the dissolution of the monastic libraries, attached to the monastaries?My interest has been piqued by the fact although a lot of the monastic library collections were broken up or lost during the dissolution, the character of John Leland fascinates me.
Leland worked to record the library collections as the dissolution went on about him in the 1530s and styled himself as the first "kings antiquary" in the British Isles.
Sadly true to form in these modern days his works are only available in dreadful POD monstrosities or digital form, so i have downloaded his 1538 collection of travels to read in bits
Though long out of print, Dorothy Sayers' anthology "The Omnibus of Crime" has a remarkable variety of stories. It includes two intelligent women's nightmares, "Where Their Fire is Not Quenched" and "Her Last Adventure," as well as "The Absent-Minded Coterie," a mischievous battle of wits, a gem among formula bound 1920s detective fiction, the supernatural story "Green Tea," and others that became favorites. How she loved to read, and shared!
Robert wrote: "Though long out of print, Dorothy Sayers' anthology "The Omnibus of Crime" has a remarkable variety of stories. It includes two intelligent women's nightmares, "Where Their Fire is Not Quenched" an..."Sayers wrote interesting mysteries, and my mother (99, soon to be 100 with any luck) still enjoys them as audiobooks - her sight is now very poor.
I believe that I read all her main Wimsey novels in my youth... probably.
I hope everyone had a good Easter, I am relaxing with Jeeves and Wooster. I have just finished The Man who Died Twice, by Richard Osman, the sequel to The Thursday Murder Club, the old gang are back together, but I found this follow up a little over long, it gets a bit convoluted too but that is due to one of the characters complicating things unduly. Romance is in the air as well but it didn't seem as fresh as the first book.Can anyone recommend good books about The Easter Rising please?
Fiction or non- fiction, thanks.
@GreenfairyI found the first one irritating after a while and so have avoided this sequel. You may wonder why irritating - thought it filled with preconceptions about old age. Not sure if that should be misconceptions or preconceptions, whatever, a youngish man writing about the elderly.
Greenfairy wrote: "Can anyone recommend good books about The Easter Rising please?Fiction or non- fiction, thanks."
Not sure how narrow your interest is here - if a bit broader, then Frank O'Connor's
is very good, though it covers a slightly different period.
Good point, it did seem patronising in places, on the other hand, I know someone very much like Ron, but he wouldn't be found hanged in a community such as theirs....
scarletnoir wrote: "Greenfairy wrote: "Can anyone recommend good books about The Easter Rising please?Fiction or non- fiction, thanks."
Not sure how narrow your interest is here - if a bit broader, then Frank O'Conn..."
Thanks. It occured to me that although I know songs about the event, I have never read anything about it.
Greenfairy wrote: "I hope everyone had a good Easter, I am relaxing with Jeeves and Wooster. I have just finished The Man who Died Twice, by Richard Osman, the sequel to The Thursday Murder Club, the old gang are bac..."Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion by Charles Townshend
James Stephens memoir Insurrection in Dublin
french author Raymond Queneau#s We Always Treat Women Too Well set in the siege of the GPO
There was also a series of biographies of the Rising leaders published in Ireland in 2016, on the 100th anniversary, i recommend the biog of Connolly
https://www.amazon.co.uk/James-Connol...
Wassermann and McGahern are being read in a slow manner, savouring the words and the style, i almost dont want to finish either work of fiction, i am sort of suspended in the two worlds of 1980s Ireland and 1900s ViennaA chance find in Waterstones made my week, last week, when i found Nietzsche in Turin
, as i browsed. I like non-fiction studies of philosophers thjat study their work and character, the focus of one year in the life of the great man sounds perfect. Will report back when i start it
A trip to the local library. Three books. Natasha Walter’s A Quiet Life, possibly read it but some time ago and happy to read again, subject matter, Cold War, and family caught up, of interest. Sarah Perry’s Melmoth, and Fay Weldon’s Before the War. Thought I’d read all of her Fay W’s novels, but this may have passed me by. Anyway, plenty to keep me put of mischief.
Don't know about you Lass but after the last couple of years, I am more than ready for a little mischief ...along with good books as well, of course 🙂
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I see I've read A Quiet Life but don't remember much about it off-hand. I'll have to look it out again. I liked Melmoth.
@Greenfary, True, a spot of mischief wouldn’t go amiss. @Gpfr, I’ll let you know what I think to A Quiet Life, but all must wait as have finally commenced Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. Books due back on 10th May, but can always renew.
I decided, since Russian troops spent time in Chernobyl, to download from the library Serhii Plokhy's Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe. I hadn't realized how many books he has written. His The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine has been updated and is now On Order at one (of my two) local libraries.To have balance in my reading, I have begun Ah, Treachery!
by Ross Thomas who died too young.
Twilight at Mac's Place is another favorite.
Berkley wrote: "Andy wrote: "Carlos Fuentes’s Vlad, translated by Ethan Shaskan Bumas. Vlad by Carlos Fuentes .."I like the sound of this one. I just read my first Fuentes a few months back, [book:The Campaign|7..."
I’ll get on to that Berkeley. Thanks for the recommendation.
I made quite a big leap forward with episode 4 of Slow Horses. Gripping, and now has me wanting to know what happens next.
A catch up from me on the banks of the Soča river not far from Bovec. Splendidly quiet here. Hardly any other visitors. The Bachelors by Adalbert Stifter translated by David Bryer, and recommended here, by MB I think?
I had been warned to expect great things here. This was recommended by several fellow contributors to the Guardian’s TLS after I read and reviewed Rock Crystal. I am grateful.
Again apparent here is how wonderfully Stifter uses the majesty of the towering Austrian mountains as an indication of permanence to contrast the relatively short lives we have.
Victor has been raised in the loving home of his foster mother and now that he is 16, he will travel far from home to take a post as a civil servant. His simple life up until now is fittingly described in simple language by Stifter.
Victor makes a stop on his journey at an island where his uncle, his deceased father’s brother, has lived in solitude for many years. The uncle’s life is the very opposite of Victor’s, not trusting anyone, even Victor’s dog, and keeps his house and his island secured like a fortress. But as the days and weeks pass the two bachelors strike up a relationship, though this chiefly comes from Victor’s efforts.
To read this is a very pleasant diversion. Stifter’s descriptions of swimming in alpine pools and climbing mountains often in adverse winter conditions has a timeless quality to it.
Rather fittingly, originally published in 1845, as the mountains themselves do, it ages well. After all, the novel is about time.
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
The potential reader should be aware that opium plays a significant part in this novel, in that much of it seems hallucinogenic, as the narrator seeks to escape his torment. It’s Kafkaesque in its nightmarish aspects also, and in that it lacks a clear plot, though the brilliant vision of a great beauty offering an old man a morning glory, that the narrator sees while peering through a small hole in the wall, is the spine that the book is based around.
It’s structure is a confession by the narrator in five parts, though it is the second and fourth parts that occupy most pages. The first is more plot driven, a false start if you like, with a more recognisable tale of gruesome horror. This, combined with hallucinogenic drugs send the narrator into a fever dream.
It’s rarely an easy read, but still a rewarding one. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to translate, so much so, that it has been attempted three times into English. The version I read by Naveed Noori.
A classic of twentieth century Iranian literature, the book was written during the latter years of the oppressive reign of Reza Shah and first published in 1936 in Bombay where the author was studying.
and, With the Animals by Noëlle Revaz translated from the French Swiss by Donald W. Wilson
On a rural farm the narrator, Paul, rules his isolated post as a tyrant. He treats his wife and children worse than he treats his animals, abusing them mentally and physically. This is a harrowing tale. He barely considers his wife as worthy of his attention. The children are an indeterminate lump, referred to as ‘the young ones’ and never by name.
Paul does welcome a Portuguese farmhand, George, to the farm. Though paranoiac of George disturbing his domain, Paul steadily warms to his companionship.
Revaz has crafted a fascinating and unique character in Paul, whose terse narration is a melange of malformed words and coarse slang, giving him an almost inhuman quality. There is more than an element of the southern gothic to it, Woodrell’s Red Atkins comes to mind, from The Death of Sweet Mister.
She is unrelenting in what she reveals about this man and his ‘marriage’, and the prose takes on an overwhelming, almost suffocating, quality that mirrors what is being communicated. Yet skilfully Revaz still makes some empathy for Paul possible. His cows, unlike his children, have names and get his attention.
This is an unreliable narrator, but so darkly warped that it is impossible to know what is real and what is just a figment of his sordid imagination.
His wife falls ill, is hospitalised, and returns to recuperate weeks later. At the novel’s conclusion Paul sits with his wife, puts an arm around her shoulder. A tender moment perhaps? No way. This isn’t about a man becoming a better person. Rather a clever ploy by Revaz to see if we will take the bait.
How then can this brutal piece of writing possibly work? Because, there are those fragile, transient moments when, despite all we know, we hold on to the hope a man can become more than an animal.
A cleverly written and daring first novel.
MK wrote: "I decided, since Russian troops spent time in Chernobyl, to download from the library Serhii Plokhy's Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe. I hadn't real..."i was mentioning Plokhiy a lot just before the war started in here, his books on Ukraine can now be seen as history with the borders of Ukraine now being permanently changed with virtually no coastline
i hope Ukraine can retain some territorial security and that a peace settlement can be arranged but dealing with Putin is always like some dive bar macho arm wrestle and reeks of toxic masculinity
A WP reporter on Twitter has informed me that the Washington Post is offering free access to everything on their website until Friday midnight. This is the chance for non-subscribers to overindulge in the bookish musings of Michael Dirda:https://www.washingtonpost.com/people...
Bill wrote: "A WP reporter on Twitter has informed me that the Washington Post is offering free access to everything on their website until Friday midnight. This is the chance for non-subscribers to overindulge..."
Thanks for this, Bill. I've just spent some time with Michael Dirda. A question now: do Americans read Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan (which I'd never heard of)?
And hoping to spend more time with Dirda by the end of the 22nd.
Thanks for this, Bill. I've just spent some time with Michael Dirda. A question now: do Americans read Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan (which I'd never heard of)?
And hoping to spend more time with Dirda by the end of the 22nd.
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Thanks, Bill. I dropped WP subscription a while back, so I'll revisit while it's free.
Remember that video(s) of Dirda touring bookstores - shared in the old days on TLS? DId you save the link? Might be fun to share that again, especially to those just getting to know Dirda.
Anne wrote: "A question now: do Americans read Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan (which I'd never heard of)?"That’s one of the books Dirda mentions pretty often as being formative during his youth as a literary autodidact. I have a copy here – the dust jacket describes it as
A stimulating and irresistible guide to one hundred books and authors – from Homer to Hemingway – which will help you, over the whole of your lifetime, to understand what the greatest writers of Western civiliazation have thought and felt.No doubt a number of Americans read it during its day (copyright 1960), though that day, along with Dirda’s youth, is surely past; but its many successors, such as The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages and 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List, continue to find audiences.
Fadiman is mentioned at the end of Joan Shelley Rubin’s The Making of Middlebrow Culture as typical of the “middlebrow” outlook
Calling himself a “middleman” of “thought and opinion,” Fadiman remarked, “I have been a kind of pitchman-professor, selling ideas, often other men’s, at marked-down figures, which are easier to pay than the full price of complete intellectual concentration.” His “mental brokerage business,” unabashedly tied to consumption in both metaphor and reality, was a strategy, Fadiman thought, for preserving literacy and respect for intellect among the “intermediate class” that was “in danger of becoming the Forgotten Public.”
Lljones wrote: "Remember that video(s) of Dirda touring bookstores - shared in the old days on TLS? DId you save the link? Might be fun to share that again, especially to those just getting to know Dirda."I have a link to Dirda discussing Housekeeping, which I saved as part of my review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i8hd...
And a quick YouTube search comes up with "An American Bookman in England", which is, I think, the video you're recalling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39NCv...
Still greatly enjoying My Marriage by Jakob Wasserman(1934)Part of my interest was the Viennese setting but the physical city plays virtually no part in the novel, though the social and societal city is present in Wassermans narrative. A sometimes waspish, sometimes world weary critique of fin-de-siecle Viennese middle class life and the attitude of friends and family.
The advent of WW1 offers some brief but interesting remarks on the situation that German speaking Europe faced in 1914. On a summer break, the narrator describes hearing the "southern guns", which must have been in the Alpine regions of the war. The narrator laments a half-brother lost on the Somme and men who left Vienna full of life, to fight, returning as haunted shells of their previous selves.
The centre of the novel though is the character of "Ganna" based on Wassermans first wife, who is a whirlwind of energy and emotion, slowly falling apart as the narrator enjoys the pleasures of other women and begins to look towards divorce.
Here's Dirda's review of the book I'm currently reading, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, which includes one of his frequent references to The Lifetime Reading Plan, though Fadiman is not mentioned in Menand's book.https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
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https://foxedquarterly.com/barbara-py...
With Marioupol almost destroyed, i wonder what has happened to the small Pontic-Greek minority in the city, Serhi Plokhiy had written about these Black Sea greek immigrantsDoes anyone know of good books about the Pontic-Greeks?
Amazing to see the brave Ukraine resistance in the city but it looks Putin has decided to starve them out of the gigantic Azovstal steelworks with a blockade, so "not even a fly can escape"
It has become very quiet on here in last 7 days, has there been a mass migration to the Guardian forum?
Literary Occasions by VS Naipaul, a collection of essays from the 1960s-80s was an interesting read.The descriptions of multi-cultural Trinidad in his youth, his days in England as a young man and reflections on India were the best sections.
Knowing him as an irascible and difficult character from interviews and other books, he comes accross as modest, somewhat humble and without a trace of identity politics or fascination for his ancestral lands, which is refreshing and unusual, it makes his writing on his birthplace and of his ancestral motherland far more objective and sensible. He looks at India, through a glass slightly grubby...
Next up in the diaries/memoirs/essaysa category is Wilde's De Profundis and Other Writings, triggered by discovering a rather delicate hardback edition from the 1930s in my parents bookshelves
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McGahern's famous novels of the 1960s were mixed up in the strait-jacketed clerical backwardness of a nation(Eire) that didnt seem to want to progress and was losing its people to another wave of emigration.
In these stories you have glimpses of the emergence of modern Eire, the confident, more liberal and affluent european nation where religion was lessening its grip and a people were finally settling and not leaving.
In "Old Fashioned", the third short-story, written in 1984, McGahern observes a small comunity over maybe 50 years, as it changes into the modern Eire of the early 80s, from a different past. The story ends with a summary of the Eire it was written in and like so many of the stories, there is no flab, no flustered prose, its cool, clear and majestic.