Ersatz TLS discussion
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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 1 August 2022
Robert wrote: "It isn't just the erosion of the center; it's the cast of mediocre politicians on both sides that depresses me. I, too, have tuned them out."Perhaps you are the type of voter the new
Gpfr wrote: "I've just read the 2nd Shona Oliver book, Dead Man Deep by Lynne McEwan and enjoyed it as I did the first in the series. The detective and lifeboat volunteer has to investigate the ..."Thanks, I think, that's another lot to add to the TBR pile!
MK wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Lass wrote: "Glorious sunshine, so am sitting in the garden, having hauled on ancient shorts and T shirt. Would rather be in France, but garden sheltered and Martin Walker’s Dor..."And thanks to you too I think, Will check out Melvin Starr too.
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature – Erich Auerbach (1946)
I expect the literature graduates here know all about this work. Ignorant me had never heard of it until I was told about it recently. Apparently it is famous for the first chapter, comparing The Odyssey and The Bible. But when I found that chapter 18 was on Julien Sorel and the Hôtel de la Mole, that is where I started. I am enjoying it thoroughly – intelligible lit crit which, for its range of reference, feels like an expanded version of George Steiner.
I expect the literature graduates here know all about this work. Ignorant me had never heard of it until I was told about it recently. Apparently it is famous for the first chapter, comparing The Odyssey and The Bible. But when I found that chapter 18 was on Julien Sorel and the Hôtel de la Mole, that is where I started. I am enjoying it thoroughly – intelligible lit crit which, for its range of reference, feels like an expanded version of George Steiner.
Reference to the Fifth Monarchy sect of Cromwell's time reminds me that the Lord Protector's government, and its allied sects, encouraged Jews to emigrate to England. This was tied to the millennial prophecies common during the Civil War period.
giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I've just read the 2nd Shona Oliver book, Dead Man Deep by Lynne McEwan and enjoyed it as I did the first in the series. The detective and lifeboat volunteer has to inv..."Darn, I had to go to a meeting this evening else I would have been reading this mystery. It's quite good.
Just catching up on the week’s reading.. a morning scribbling some reviews..The Dark Blue Winter Overcoat & Other Stories from the North by Sjón and Ted Hodgkinson
This is an interesting collection of stories from the Nordics which includes works from the Faroes and Greenland, as well as Scandinavia and Iceland as would be expected. Though they may share a ‘dark’ theme, and even ‘blue’ in that many characters are mentally on the edge, the contrasting style of writing could not be more marked. In that way, Sjón as editor, holds the reader’s attention, though not always due to the content.
By some way the stand-out story for me was The Man in the Boat by Per Olov Enquist translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner.
During their summer holidays, living with their grandfather in Västerbotten in the north of Sweden two young boys make a simple raft from felled timber and sail out to the middle of their lake. But don’t forget that it’s going to be dark, and blue..
It's hard to praise this highly enough. I may have a degree of bias, as I am currently amongst those wild forests and lakes of Västerbotten in northern Sweden in which it is set, but it is one of the best short stories I have read.
Worthy of mentions also, are
1974 by Frode Grytten, (Norwegian) in which a teenage boy witnesses the violent complexities of his parents’ relationship and experiences his own sexual awakening.
and from the Greenlandic author Niviaq Korneliussen, San Francisco which is a devastating account of a single sex relationship that ends tragically,
and the Faroese author Carl Johan Jensen’s May Your Union Be Blessed with the sense of location that one was hoping for when embarking on such a book.
Robert wrote: "Reference to the Fifth Monarchy sect of Cromwell's time reminds me that the Lord Protector's government, and its allied sects, encouraged Jews to emigrate to England. This was tied to the millennia..."yes, it had been a few centuries since the last significant jewish immigration to UK, this in turn started the jewish emigration into the burgeoning empire, with small populations in west indies and the 13 colonies
and The Nightclub by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Jean Stewart.
This is an early Simenon ‘stand-alone’ crime novel that tells a familiar and yet human story of a 19 year old youth’s rebellion against parental values. Jean Cholet, an apprentice reporter for the Catholic newspaper in Nantes is still living with his parents, a hysterical mother and an alcoholic father, and expresses his independence with late drunken nights, and starting a relationship with Lulu, a glamorous singer at a nightclub with a dodgy reputation, though for Jean at least, it’s akin to the Moulin Rouge.
When Lulu heads off on tour, Jean tags along, having sold some counterfeit blank birth certificates to finance it.
Though there are elements of crime, there isn’t really any mystery to the novel. Rather, it is one of those stark, slice-of-life, short Simenon novels that is very much character driven.
It is a sublime scrutiny of a relatively ordinary young man not long out of adolescence seeking to discover sex, while managing problems at home, but above all, trying at assert himself.
It’s another book of Simenon’s awaiting rediscovery. Only 4 users on Goodreads admit to having read it, and two of those are Bill and myself..
and You Will Love What You Have Killed by Kevin Lambert translated from the French (Quebec) by Donald Winkler. This is a darkly humorous novel about revenge from beyond the grave. It’s themes, as the title suggests, are love and death, and it is anything but your usual horror story. The genre, more than any other I think, is at its best when it’s boundaries are pushed wider, and this is a good example.
Narrator Faldistoire, recounts his childhood and adolescence as an oddity in the small industrial town of Chicoutimi in Quebec, where fitting in, if not a prerequisite, certainly makes life easier; go along with the norm and don’t dare to be different, but Faldistoire, gay and defiant, refuses to yield.
The premise of the book is the series of deaths of local children, in a set of horrific and gruesome accidents. A young girl playing in the snow is shredded by a snowblower, a boy falls on a pencil which becomes embedded in his skull, a father nudges his son into the cougar den at the zoo and is devoured, the list goes on..
But the children, victims of rape and senseless murder, return from their graves to live out their lives, watching the adults relentlessly. They become accepted and unquestioned, and bide their time, until they are ready to exact a sensational and cathartic revenge.
In places controversial, this is a fine example of the power of good horror writing. This is his first English translation and was published at the end of 2020. It was a finalist for the prestigious Prix Médicis and won the Marquis de Sade Prize.
I want more please..
Dissapointed in Waterstones where an IT problem has meant online click and collect ordering has collapsed for last 6 weeksJust as i moved towards Wstones and Bwells as anti-amazon sources of books, one avenue has effectively slammed shut, with no end in sight
Andy wrote: "and The Nightclub by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Jean Stewart. This is an early Simenon ‘stand-alone’ crime novel th..."
is it a new publication or an old find Andy, or of course an E-find?
The heavy heat has stilled my reading slightly, hard to find the energy to read for more than 30 mins at a time However The Olive Trees of Justice by Jean Pelegri(1959) is a wistful study of parental death and unrest in 1950s French Algeria. Algiers lies under the sirrocco heat(heat is a literal and literary theme of my reading and living this summer!!), the narrator wonders if the violence of the regions will reach the capital, as his father lies dying. Novels about Algeria by pied noirs are quite rare, only Camus and Pelegri are available in translation, though Larteguy did cover the conflict in his novelsNB. Pied-noirs is the term for the one million or so french settlers in Algeria by 1962, within 7 yrs only80,000 remained as Algeria became independent and they fled to France. Pied Noirs were a mix of italian, spanish, maltese, jewish and french ancestry. Estimates in the 1880s suggest about 50% were french ancestry
Mod
I think I mentioned here some time ago the historian Benjamin Stora, a leading expert on Algeria, who was born in Algeria in 1950. I read "Une mémoire Algérienne", a collection of his writings including 3 autobiograhical works, which was really interesting, particularly about his childhood. I'm sure you would find his books interesting, AB, but the only one I can see translated into English is Algeria, 1830-2000: A Short History. I don't know anything about this.
Andy wrote: "and The Nightclub by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Jean Stewart. ... It’s another book of Simenon’s awaiting rediscovery. Only 4 users on Goodreads admit to having read it, and two of those are Bill and myself."I like Simenon a lot - and so does my wife (indeed, I can take credit for introducing her to Simenon - he wasn't considered 'serious' enough for her literature course at uni.) She thinks that the original version, 'L'Âne Rouge', is lurking on her bookshelves somewhere. I'll read it if we can track it down!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nig...
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: " The Olive Trees of Justice...1950s French Algeria..."I think I mentioned here some time ago the historian Benjamin Stora, a leading expert on Algeria, who was born in Algeria in 195..."
thanks GPFR and if i was a french speaker, it would be fascinating to explore these memoirs. the english portrayal of the pieds-noirs is bracketed with the colonial populations of Rhodesia, as a white settler population no longer fashionable to write about, i find the same with the Portugese "retornado's" from Mozambique and Angola. These people have slowly melted back into their mother country, with very little serious studies outside their own languages
i have found various memoirs and novels of all three groups but not the same volume of historical studies. Am glad i found the 1948 and 1954 censuses of French Algeria, these sources can be interesting to read(in the original french), my french is average but not good enough to read anything like history or novels. the census texts follow the norms of so many others, so aids translation. From the records, between 1936-48(ie WW2), the algerian settlers lost about 70,000 people, no data on how many returned but it was mostly the 20-40 yr age bracket which i suspect was the 1940 french conscription coming into effect, a huge number of men were called up, some say as many as 3,000,000 and 40,000 or so males aged 20-40 were no longer in Algeria in 1948, compared to 1936
Andy wrote: " a father nudges his son into the cougar den at the zoo and is devoured.."I suppose this is an inappropriate response to a serious novel, but this incident could not help but remind me of a staple on the 'wireless' of long ago, where Stanley Holloway reads Marriott Edgar's poem 'The Lion and Albert':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaw-s...
(I assume that the choice of 'Albert' as a name references in some way the tale 'Androcles and the Lion', but don't know that for a fact.)
Mod
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
If you want something light (and a Seattle techie send-up), I suggest - Where Did You Go Bernadette
.I was reminded of it this morning because of a post on our local NextDoor (if you don't have it, don't wish for it) which was asking about trimming a back yard neighbors hillside. Note that our hills here tend to be unstable and sometimes slide taking lots with them. However, that is usually a winter time thing.
I chuckle just thinking about that book.
scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: " a father nudges his son into the cougar den at the zoo and is devoured.."I suppose this is an inappropriate response to a serious novel, but this incident could not help but remind ..."
The lion ate our Albert..... I remember it well.
AB76 wrote: "Dissapointed in Waterstones where an IT problem has meant online click and collect ordering has collapsed for last 6 weeksJust as i moved towards Wstones and Bwells as anti-amazon sources of book..."
Is delivery still free from Blackwells? It is at W'stones but only over £50
AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "and The Nightclub by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Jean Stewart. This is an early Simenon ‘stand-alone’ cr..."
It’s an old internet archive scanned copy AB. Just about readable.
We can live in hope of a new translation and a reissue..
scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: "and The Nightclub by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Jean Stewart. ... It’s another book of Simenon’s awaiting..."It would be great to know what you, or your wife, thought.
A new translation would give it some life, I’m sure. This was 1979.
scarletnoir wrote: "Andy wrote: " a father nudges his son into the cougar den at the zoo and is devoured.."I suppose this is an inappropriate response to a serious novel, but this incident could not help but remind ..."
I do know that poem. From my youth.. thanks for the reminder.
Your intervention is quite appropriate..
The book is a bit tongue in cheek anyway, so I’m sure the author would be amused.
It could be read as a satire on what we’re doing to future generations.
CCCubbon wrote: "As well as the higglers in The Pudding Lane Plot we meet some Fifth Monarchists.This sect which dates from c1651 believed that the execution of Charles l was the stating point leading to the Secon..."
You can't go wrong with Christopher hill CC.
Bill wrote: "Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York Statehttps://apnews.com/article/salman-rus..."
Read the news in the Guardian. Terrible thing to have happened.
AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: " The Olive Trees of Justice...1950s French Algeria..."I think I mentioned here some time ago the historian Benjamin Stora, a leading expert on Algeria, who was born in A..."
Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace is a good study in English of the years of colonial war in Algeria. In later editions, Horne interviewed people involved in the struggle, including a judge who, as a young girl, carried bombs in the terrorist Battle of Algiers.
Bill wrote: "Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York Statehttps://apnews.com/article/salman-rus..."
Grim. He was the victim of a savage knife attack, as destructive as the knife attack on William Seward after the Civil War. The police have a suspect in custody, but no statement as to motive.
Andy wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "and The Nightclub by Georges Simenon translated from the French by Jean Stewart. This is an early Simenon ‘st..."
Here's a used copy - https://www.betterworldbooks.com/prod...
Bill wrote: "Robert wrote: "It isn't just the erosion of the center; it's the cast of mediocre politicians on both sides that depresses me. I, too, have tuned them out."Perhaps you are the type of voter the n..."
Perhaps I've watched King Stork followed by Mr. Magoo, and grown tired.
Robert wrote: "Bill wrote: "Robert wrote: "It isn't just the erosion of the center; it's the cast of mediocre politicians on both sides that depresses me. I, too, have tuned them out."Perhaps you are the type o..."
As H.L. Mencken remarked in the 1920s "These are the leaders. Below them are men painful even to think about. Yet somehow the country survives. Either the United States is under the special protection of God, or the much-reviled bureaucracy is much more competent than it looks."
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Dissapointed in Waterstones where an IT problem has meant online click and collect ordering has collapsed for last 6 weeksJust as i moved towards Wstones and Bwells as anti-amazon so..."
yes but very slow delivery, which means if i see a book and want to start it in nxt 48 hrs, its impossible, quickest delivery was 5 days, which is very poor
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: " The Olive Trees of Justice...1950s French Algeria..."I think I mentioned here some time ago the historian Benjamin Stora, a leading expert on Algeria, who ..."
yes i read this and disliked it a decade ago but its in my pile somewhere, currently dogsitting at my parents oast house, so my book choice is less varied, though i do have my parents bookshelves to turn to if i find a dud in the small pile i brought back with me
i think whats unique about my interest in French Algeria, is i'm more curious about white settler society and a lot of modern narratives try and broaden that out until the settlers become the least "fashionable" element in the mix. As they were numerically considerable(1 million by 1962), this suprises me. However i find a lot of the politics and attitudes of the pieds noirs distasteful
one minor but interesting detail of the 1954 census i found was that white bi-lingualism (French-arabic) was very low in most departments (20%) but in the Territoires Du Sud, the least populated desert regions, it was 43%. I can only imagine as this was an oil region with small oasis towns that the whites here were mainly supervisors and engineers who needed to speak arabic in locations where the locals did not speak any french
Berkley wrote: "Bill wrote: "Salman Rushdie attacked on lecture stage in New York Statehttps://apnews.com/article/salman-rus..."
Read the news in the Guardian. Terribl..."
indeed, the injuries seem pretty bad....i hope he survives
AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Dissapointed in Waterstones where an IT problem has meant online click and collect ordering has collapsed for last 6 weeksJust as i moved towards Wstones and Bwel..."
I chuckle because we are all so different. If it saves me money, I am more than willing to wait. If it's new book, I'll always hope that the library has it on order so I can put it on hold. Of course I know that when hankering after a used book it can be a crap shoot, and if I do not act right away, I may lose out. I try to be philosophical about that.
In general, if the US depended on me to be the consumer of the money men's dreams, we would never be out of a recession.
As if I didn't have overflowing shelves everywhere, I subscribe to TOO MANY bookish newsletters. This means I also have scads of paper notes - some with titles and authors and some to which I later say 'what is this?'But I do want to recommend subscribing to Daunt Books weekly '5 Books' newsletter. It can be found in the small print on their main website or here - https://dauntbooks.us6.list-manage.co...
This week the book that caught my eye was - Black Earth: A Journey through Ukraine
. It is now on one of my wishlists at BookDepository. Oh that I still had the sweatshirt that says "So many books, so little time", especially since today is a weeding day.
MK wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Dissapointed in Waterstones where an IT problem has meant online click and collect ordering has collapsed for last 6 weeksJust as i moved towards Wst..."
i guess with the speed thing, if i am reading a dud, see a book i want on blackwells and could get it the next day, i would order it. the problem is i do that and it takes a week, i blame amazon prime of course, for delivery speed addiction but am truly mystified how blackwells is so slow...nothing i order in 2022 takes five days minimum, except for Blackwells!
MK wrote: "As if I didn't have overflowing shelves everywhere, I subscribe to TOO MANY bookish newsletters. This means I also have scads of paper notes - some with titles and authors and some to which I later..."I have this on my tbr list. I have read another of Mühling’s, A Journey into Russia, which was good.
Thanks for the Daunt books link..
Gpfr wrote: "The French cartoonist Sempé has just died — his drawings have given me much pleasure over the years. I'm posting one in Photos."
Mod
A pic for you in Photos.
Aside from dogsitting duties, i have been reading the latest LRB, NYRB, reading some Pelegri and DidionAlgeria remains a fascinating study of colonial rule in a location on Europe's doorstep, the last of the North African med facing nations to gain its independence from France. I can see why the white settlers felt part of the "metropole", when Algiers was just accross the Med.
Found an interesting article about Alicante whichg has a large pied-noirs population, of spanish origin,who settled in the Oran area in the 19thc and then returned in the 1960s to Aliicante. Camus, a son of Oran, was half-spanish. (Spanish people formed 30% of settlers in Algeria in 1896)
Gpfr wrote: "MK wrote: "Oh that I still had the sweatshirt that says "So many books, so little time"...A pic for you in Photos."
That would make an excellent T-shirt or sweatshirt. I would (even though I am not a true consumer) buy at least one of each.
Gpfr wrote: "MK wrote: "Oh that I still had the sweatshirt that says "So many books, so little time"...A pic for you in Photos."
I posted a Ronald Searle. He could make an ordinary day more surreal.
AB76 wrote: "Aside from dogsitting duties, i have been reading the latest LRB, NYRB, reading some Pelegri and DidionAlgeria remains a fascinating study of colonial rule in a location on Europe's doorstep, the..."
Pre-independence Algeria was one of the true "Mediterranean" societies, wasn't it? Emigres from southern France, Italy, and Spain, most of them small farmers, and a beach culture in Algiers.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Aside from dogsitting duties, i have been reading the latest LRB, NYRB, reading some Pelegri and DidionAlgeria remains a fascinating study of colonial rule in a location on Europe's ..."
yes, exactly, almost the direct opposite of anglo-settler societies, though i find metropolitan french attitudes to the settlers in the pre-WW1 period was similar to the south african approach to the early Rhodesian settlers, snobbish and derogotary.
I recommend the Pelegri novel Robert, its a slow and moving study of a death and a the life that preceded it, framed as a settler-arab relationship. Pelegri was seen as a writer very in touch with both communities in Algeria and the novel sees arab and settler as equals, rare in 1959
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
A Journey through Russia: Encounters with People and Places (other topics)Black Earth: A Journey through Ukraine (other topics)
The Nightclub (other topics)
The Nightclub (other topics)
The Nightclub (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Jens Mühling (other topics)Georges Simenon (other topics)
Georges Simenon (other topics)
Georges Simenon (other topics)
Georges Simenon (other topics)
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i am so sick of this heat now,dogsitting at my parents and keeping temps down with every curtain pulled, outside that sun sits boiling the sky. Air conditioning would be a blessing...to nullify the heat.