What are we reading? 22/04/2024

[AB76]

Dutch Post War Literature

The big three are Harry Mulisch(b27), Gerard Reve(b23) and WF Hermans(b21), roughly the same generation and all from the Amsterdam area.

Mulisch was half jewish, his father was a nazi collaborator during WW2 and his literature is almost fused to WW2 and the experiences of the Dutch in that time. His masterpiece, for me, is The Assault a short,wartime novel of superb poise and tone

Reve wrote in an existentialist, dark style with homosexual protoganists(he was gay) and is the hardest of the three to access in meaningful translations. His novel The Evenings was translated by Pushkin and i found it rather less interesting than i expected

Hermans for me is the best, with his mischevious personality and his outspoken views, his work spun over 30 years but he died before the other two. I loved The Darkroom of Damocles a sinister tale of wartime Holland and Beyond SLeep set in northern norway during the midnight sun , a haunting and strange tale of the wilderness and adventure. I have his other WW2 novel A Guardian Angel Recalls on the pile, ready to start, which i hope will be as good as the other novels

Of a slightly earlier generation , there is Louis Couperus Edgar Du Perron and Nescio. All are worth exploring

[AB76]

Fascinating long LRB piece on corruption in Montenegro, the small ex-Yugoslav state which was the last to break with Serbia

Endemic corruption and mafia linked crime has become an extension of the state that has moved towards the west in the last 20-25 years, with no change at all in the criminal influence on power. Its a very sad tale with the USA clearly turning a blind eye to criminal situation while pouring dollars into the state

I'm pretty well informed on ex-Yugoslavia and the situation with its states since 1900 but Montenegro has been a bit of blind spot, i do remember a book about the collapse of Yugoslavia including a remark from a Croat about what is the difference between Serbians and Montenegrins. The croat tells the author " Montenegrins are basically taller, fiercer versions of the serbs"

[Gpfr]

I can hear some sort of demonstration going on just down the road, anti-Macron chants (I'm presuming that they're anti!) and now there's singing.

[Gpfr]

Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life by Brigitta Olubas. I've written here before about my liking for Shirley Hazzard's books, comparing notes with Machenbach, whom we haven't seen for a long time, and others.
And I liked this biography very much. It's quite a long book with many passages quoted from Hazzard's writings. I didn't realise how long it often took her to complete her books, particularly her last novel, The Great Fire. Partly because she was writing other things and also because of prioritising her husband's writing towards the end of his life. She doesn't come across as completely likeable, but I've enjoyed spending time with her.
Now I want to read The Transit of Venus again.

[AB76]

Having finished the excellent short stories by Dino Buzzati, i will now be reading the WF Hermans novel A Guardian Angel Recalls(`1971)

Set in Holland as the German invades it has had a good write up and it is a new translation released by Pushkin Press in 2021. I have enjoyed reading Hermans in the past and i'm glad this novel has been translated

[Fuzzywuzz]

CCCubbon wrote: "Evening all.
Been stuck here in hospital several days now with a drip that beeps to keep me company.
Lincoln Castle is worth a visit if only to see the Magna Carta ( one of only four copies). The ..."

I hope you feel better soon :)

[AB76]

i havent read enough Percival Everett to know whether over a dozen or so books he maintains his distinctive style and voice but Erasure as i reach the last 30 pages is a really great modern novel, pitching comedy, pathos and realism into a kind of wry observational stew of a novel

I am glad i looked the novel up and am reading it, all via a TLS review of the film

[scarletnoir]

AB76 wrote: "i havent read enough Percival Everett to know whether over a dozen or so books he maintains his distinctive style and voice but Erasure as i reach the last 30 pages is a really great modern novel, ..."

I agree with all of that.

I've earmarked a couple of other books by Everett which no doubt I'll read this year (I know you like to read lots of different authors; I like to binge on the ones that excite me!) and also hope the very high standards of 'Erasure' are to be found in his other novels.

I have to say - I'm optimistic.

[AB76]

scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i havent read enough Percival Everett to know whether over a dozen or so books he maintains his distinctive style and voice but Erasure as i reach the last 30 pages is a really great m..."

its good we both read it same time and liked it i think, a sign of Everetts quality and nowt wrong with a binge session, i look foward to your views on other Everetts, i am interested in his latest book which is based on Tom Sawyer i think, or Huckleberry fin

what i liked about the style of the writing is its deceptiveness "lightness", like late period Conrad, there is so much going on without huge slabs of text...

[Tam]

I haven't commented much here as my reading has so slooowed... down over the last six month or so. I think I have read 3 or 4 books at the most, instead of my more usual 3-4 a month. However I did get one thought the other day, when I remembered that it was around the anniversary, a year since I officially became recognised as being registered as a cat. I was talking on-line to the sproglet, he entered his flat, and rather unceremoniously picked up the moggy from his office chair and dumped her on the floor. I heard this protesting loud Miaoww, but what I actually heard was "Oy mate! This aint fair". And I had to agree. Ol said "It's my chair, she's got her own", as if that explained everything, and it dawned on me, its true I had actually become more of a cat, at least in terms of sympathy, than of humans!.. Miaoww...

As to books I wasn't that much of a fan of 'They Divided The Sky' by Christa Wolfe. A novel based around life in the GDR in the 1960's. I found it hard to believe in the romantic love affair between the two main characters. I didn't get a feel for anything that would have attracted them to each other. And so I suppose it didn't seem to matter much what the final outcome was. I did get a feel however for the 'internal' work politics in a large nationalised train carriage factory!... I feel that I could actually apply for a job in one, and pass muster! Somehow...

I am currently reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's 'A Time of Gifts'. An account of his travels as a 'wet behind the ears' eighteen year old who decides to walk from London to Istanbul in 1933. He actually writes the book in 1977. So this is very much a recollection as seen from a much older and more educated man. Its a very mixed bag to me. He seems to be a champion fellow 'digressor', so a bit like me, which I should appreciate, but in many ways it comes across as annoying. I had to think here, am I possibly just as annoying as well. Maybe I've sat, too many times, in someone else's seat?

I liked his occasional rifting on art and landscape, such as his words on the similarity between Bruegel's paintings and the Dutch landscape that he was travelling through, in the depths of winter. Though I have to point out here the contradictions of chronology and linear travel, and reality. He was an avid museum, art gallery, monastery, church and castle visitor, but didn't get to Vienna, to see the actual Bruegel paintings, until a couple of months after his waxing lyrical digression on them...

I fared less well with his accounts of drinking himself into a bit of a stupor, and as he had purloined for himself, many visiting cards to stop off at many castles and manor houses on the way, its a tale of contrasts. He did also sleep rough in barns, had his belongings stolen etc. and so lived both a high-life and a low-life, during the journey. My most favourite character so far, is a chap he met in a hostel for the homeless in Vienna, who had taught him self English through only having access to Shakespearean plays! I loved the idea, of the travelling 'fool', waxing lyrical, in 16th century English, and commenting on living in an era of the rise of Nazism, in Germany. Forsooth!...

He is half Irish, so we have that in common as well. I am well acquainted with a tendency to embroider supposedly real life 'stories', having listened to how my Irish father would add extra details to old tales over the years. Anyway, 'I have a way to go', in the book, to get to Istanbul. I do very much like the house he built for himself and his wife, in Kardamyli, on the Mani, in Greece.

[CCCubbon]

I am being well behaved and resting thanks to the care of MrC who orders me back to my chair if I try to do much. We did manage to make some bread this morning. While I was in hospital MrC threw away my sourdough starter thinking to be helpful. I had kept it going for a few years but now have some more ( MrC under instruction !)
I never did manage to read muchin the eight days there but have read another chapter from Femina by Janina Ramirez - what a gem of a book it is.
Chapter two was about women from the Viking countries, all aspects of their lives, fascinating, dispelling many of the myths about Vikings. Did you know there is some evidence of accepted cross gender dressing ( men wearing skirts…) …women could command
Starting the next chapter to find it about the Bayeux Tapestry which isn’t a tapestry but an embroidery and the preparations made to clean the accumulated dirt of years. One suggestion was to float the tapestry in a large swimming pool so that it could be gently washed. Given the tapestry is 68.3m long (224 ft approx) and 70cm wide (20inches wide approx) this rather foolish suggestion discarded. I don’t think there is a big enough pool for a start.

To be contd….

[Bill]

Tam wrote: "I am currently reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's 'A Time of Gifts'. An account of his travels as a 'wet behind the ears' eighteen year old who decides to walk from London to Istanbul in 1933. He actually writes the book in 1977. "

I read the Fermor and its immediate sequel some years ago on the recommendation of Michael Dirda, but didn't get on with him as a traveling companion. I got too strong a sense of privilege from him, especially in the second book.

I'm wondering whether this sense of privilege might not be fairly common in travel writing. I haven't read many books of this type, but I recall getting a similar feeling from Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads.

[AB76]

Bill wrote: "Tam wrote: "I am currently reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's 'A Time of Gifts'. An account of his travels as a 'wet behind the ears' eighteen year old who decides to walk from London to Istanbul in 19..."

i never got into Fermor either, found him a bit of a bore, which is a shame as he seemed to be such a promising travel writer

[Tam]

Bill wrote: "Tam wrote: "I am currently reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's 'A Time of Gifts'. An account of his travels as a 'wet behind the ears' eighteen year old who decides to walk from London to Istanbul in 19..."

I do agree with you about the privilege. I don't think that it was until the 50's that substantial amounts of working class people could afford to do extensive foreign travel off their own backs. I don't find any particular liking for Fermor himself. But I do kind of respect his ability to give things 'a good go', and see what happens!... He was certainly a product, and subsidised, by an upper middle-class lifestyle, in the family.

My travels across Europe, in the 70's, (I was away for a year or so) were totally unsupported, in any way, including a total lack of communication, by my family. In fact I think they were quite surprised when I, briefly, turned up back home in England, a year or so later...