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What are we reading? 6/05/2024
Robert wrote: "Neave escaped from Colditz.."Thanks for your comments on Neave... I remember his assassination well, but didn't know much about him.
Robert wrote: "Eisenhower insisted that Jodl sign a surrender document drafted by Ike's legal staff..."Thanks for that - you clearly know a lot about this process (as I rather suspected). It's interesting how petty these leaders can be about matters of protocol - or does it make a real difference? Perhaps in the way a nation sees itself...
scarletnoir wrote: "to wonder at the way in which some (not all) of these individuals react by embracing right-wing politics."I'll quote from my review of the book on this matter:
The last chapter is devoted to Podhoretz reveling in his success and, as he refers to it “fame”; he distinguishes this from “celebrity” and admits it’s limited in its reach, but still seems overly smug about it. He feels that this success entitles him to live large and he disdains the advice of John Thompson to “think poor” as a way for those earning a living in the arts in Manhattan to avoid falling into overspending in emulating the lifestyle of fashionable wealthy with whom they often associate. Podhoretz’ conversion in this matter seems to have occurred as a result of a five day expense paid stay at a luxury Caribbean resort on privately owned Paradise Island as part of a symposium hosted by Show magazine, funded by millionaire Huntington Hartford. This tendency to self-identify with the behavior of the very wealthy no doubt foreshadows Podhoretz’ turn away from the generally leftist politics he espouses in Making It into the extreme conservatism for which he is now best known.Re-reading my review reminds me that the book also dealt with, and in some aspects avoided, ideas of the formation of taste in art, with Podhoretz expressing the belief that taste is inextricably linked with social position.
Gpfr wrote: "The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown is a very lively and interesting read...I'm reading about the development of newspapers, how they were produced, how they were distributed and of course their content..."Interesting for many reasons... your "Mercurius Politicus, edited by Marchamont Nedham" sounds like a precursor for Private Eye, which although it includes cartoons and a lot of jokes, also exposes some of the most egregious examples of hypocrisy and downright dishonesty in the UK. They were at the forefront of the campaign for justice for people accused as a result of the Toshiba/Horizon debacle; they have also campaigned for many years for justice and compensation following the 'tainted blood' scandal.
The latest Eye mentions that the Telegraph titles - for many years owned by the Barclay brothers (tax dodgers who lurked on their very own tax haven Brecqhou in the Channel Islands) - may now possibly be bought by Lord Rothermere (another tax exile who has benefited from so-called 'non-dom' status). If that is allowed, Rothermere will apparently own more than 50% of the British newspaper industry, from whence he will presumably continue to militate for - tax cuts! I'm not sure if that will prove an improvement on the now abandoned deal which would have allowed the Saudis to buy the Telegraph - after all, the (London) Evening Standard is owned by Lord Lebedev* whose father was KGB agent Alexander.
I have a feeling that it would be better for all concerned if newspapers and media outlets involved in political commentary were owned by people who:
1. lived in the countries where the papers are read, and
2. pay their taxes there.
Otherwise, why should they either care or have any say?
*'Lord' Lebedev was appointed to the House of Lords by Boris Johnson in 2020.
CCCubbon wrote: "Apart from the worthy Femina which I shall come back to i have gobbled up a few books while trying to be patient. Towards the end I gave up on Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead when yet another ‘..."
Indridason and Lackberg are pretty entertaining.
If you feel like a change for warmer climes, you might like Ross Macdonald's 'Lew Archer' series set in California - I got hooked on those last year, and have nearly read them all.
Gpfr wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Tam wrote: "I'm not much of a fan of Madonna, but I do appreciate where she she was coming from, to some extent. I think that it is worthwhile to have a loo..."well they all held surprises, at least to me. I didn't expect Jim Carrey, to appear in a little 'surreal play' a sort. of romantic anti-romance film. Charlotte, well I expected a very stylish french 'mannered' and serious sort of film, well, again surreal playfulness. They confounded expectations. I'm not a big reader of film reviews so I don't go to the cinema, heavy with expectations though. I replied here cos Bill was talking about Madonna...
Berkley wrote: "while I do remember several of Madonna's hits from that decade nothing I heard ever made me a fan of music. I do think she deserves a lot of respect for how she took charge of her own career and made herself such a success. But her star power, whether as a singer or an actress, never worked on me personally.I will add Desperately Seeking Susan to my films-to-watch list though, just because I've never seen it and it's such an iconic pop culture artefact of its era.
Madonna broke through a long time after I'd had much interest in pop music - and certainly none of her songs especially held my attention.
I will say that she was good in 'Desperately Seeking Susan' - an entertaining film maybe in a similar vein to Scorsese's 'After Hours', or from an earlier and more innocent era, 'The Out-of-towners' - iirc!
Bill wrote: "I'll quote from my review of the book on this matter."Haha!
Thanks for that, Bill - your review confirms that Podhoretz is a rather extreme example of the type of person I thought he might represent. Not someone for whom I hold much respect, despite the 'rags to riches' aspect.
Mod
After mentioning Limonov, I was amused, on continuing to read, to find him turning up as a character.
Mod
Oh, yes, that's normal, I just meant if your last post led to a thread about 'surprisingly entertaining' films. I don't quite know why I asked the question now, it seems obvious — but it's nice to have the explanations :)
scarletnoir wrote: "Not someone for whom I hold much respect, despite the 'rags to riches' aspect."Pamela Paul was the editor of the NY Times Book Review for a number of years - I got to know about her because she hosted the podcast, to which I was a regular listener.
About a year ago or so, she moved to the Opinion columns of the paper. She's become somewhat notorious among liberals on social media as a "conservative columnist". I'm not sure that I would describe her that way, though most of her columns take on liberal shibboleths. She generally backs up the ideas she expresses with interviews, and I think her columns are generally well thought out.
I have the feeling that her subjects are often a reaction against certain values she saw going unquestioned in the publishing world, such as ideas about the nature of gender.
Anyway, I was just reading her latest piece this morning, a profile of Black American conservative Glenn Loury in advance of the publication of his memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. At the end of the article he says:
He also worries about the publication of “Late Admissions,” which comes out on Tuesday. He knows some people will be “gunning” for him because they find his politics despicable; that’s not what bothers him.Which made me wonder if it's possible to read any memoir by a conservative and end up "liking that guy".
What he does fear is that students and friends will form negative opinions of him. His two adult daughters by his first wife have read the book. “And they are not happy campers,” he said slowly. A close friend read it and said to Loury, “I don’t know if I like that guy,” to which Loury responded, “I don’t know if I like him either.”
Berkley wrote: "Tam wrote: "I'm not much of a fan of Madonna, but I do appreciate where she she was coming from, to some extent. I think that it is worthwhile to have a look at the film that set her up for an ear..."
i had a big crush on madonna in late 80s, loved her music from that era, my first slowdance at a party was to La Isla Bonita with a girl called Giselle in 1988, wonder where she is now?
Into The Groove is rare song which sounds uplfifting but in a minor key, one of my favourite tunes and Papa Dont Preach...another classic
Just picked up the latest Vuillard novel from Waterstones....looking this time at the business interests of the french in the Indochina War, a similar theme to his novel about the Nazi's and their business contacts
In A Guardian Angel Recalls(1971), the superb Dutch novelist WF Hermans employs all his skills as a writer.The Germans are invading Holland and Bert, a Public Prosecutor has a myriad of problems to deal with, probably not helped by German paratroops descending from the azure skies and his brother being on a Gestapo list for "liquidiation". He also saw his lover off into exile and ran over a small child and tossed her body into the bushes at the roadside
All these events happen in a kind of trance, a guardian angel supplies some commentary, the devil has his own little cameo and the invasion unfolds minute by minute. It is a well paced novel of the interior and exterior impacts of guilt, fear and human nature. The Germans are coming but are still not in sight, explosions are heard, wild rumours abound and Bert is trying to escape the country...if only it was that simple....
scarletnoir wrote: "I will say that she [Madonna] was good in 'Desperately Seeking Susan' - an entertaining film maybe in a similar vein to Scorsese's 'After Hours', ."I just recently saw After Hours again, for the first time since the 1980s and also on the big screen. An under-rated entry in Scorcese's filmography. The Out-of Towners I've yet to see but I like Peter Falk so it's been on my list for a long time.
Speaking of movies here in the What Are We Reading thread, one of my recent reading highlights was my first book by Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up! (or, The Winshaw Legacy), in which the 1961 Sid James movie of the same title plays an important part. I highly recommend watching or re-watching the film before starting the novel, as I think it will enhance any reader's appreciation of the latter.
A more general question, what are some other good novels in which movies are important, whether as part of the action and setting (e.g. William Boyd's The New Confessions, parts of Dos Passos's USA Trilogy, Angela Carter's Wise Children) or as references to actual "real-life" movies as in What a Carve-Up! ?
scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "The Guardian ran several photos of the Kremlin's May 9 march. Putin will never let go of the Second World War.Once my Russian friend and I were talking about the choice of dates. T..."
Orwell saw Stalin's inaction during the Warsaw Rebellion as the first sign that Stalin wanted any pro-Western movement in Poland crushed.
Berkley wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I will say that she [Madonna] was good in 'Desperately Seeking Susan' - an entertaining film maybe in a similar vein to Scorsese's 'After Hours', ."I just recently saw After H..."
After Hours is a very memorable, very dark comedy.
scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Eisenhower insisted that Jodl sign a surrender document drafted by Ike's legal staff..."Thanks for that - you clearly know a lot about this process (as I rather suspected). It's in..."
Thanks. At Casablanca, Roosevelt and Churchill had settled on unconditional surrender as an Allied policy. If Eisenhower had met Jodl face to face, it would have been taken as a negotiation. (Doenitz and his generals wanted to avoid surrender on the Eastern Front.) Delegating the job to Bedell Smith reinforced the "take it or leave it" message.
Berkley wrote: "what are some other good novels in which movies are important.."Good to hear that you liked Coe's What a Carve Up!... I have read nearly all Coe's books - he is a little uneven but I like even the weaker ones. As it happens, I received his latest - Bournville - in the post yesterday, having just returned to the UK on Sunday (still a bit shattered from the journey). Among Coe's best are The Rotters' Club and its sequel The Closed Circle.
But - back to your question: Coe himself has written at least one other novel in which cinema is an important feature: Mr Wilder & Me, which I may have reviewed nearer the publication date (2020) - it's very entertaining.
Apart from that, I decided to google the question and came across a list of 100 books which relate to cinema in some way, put online by the BFI (British Film Institute):
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-soun...
I was surprised (as I love reading AND cinema) that I'd never heard of most of the books (or many authors) in the first 40... the first one (no. 33 on the list) which I might read soon is Hollywood by Bukowski, Charles (2002) Paperback - I usually find Bukowski interesting. Next up - at 40 - is James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential - brilliant - before Ellroy's writing descended into pretentious self-parody. At 47 is Chandler's The Little Sister, which I've read more than once. (I only re-read books I enjoyed first time, obviously). At 50 - Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One which amused me a great deal some 50 years ago. I can't say for certain that I'd feel the same now, as I doubt that Waugh is or could be 'politically correct' - but I suspect his targets here would still be deserving of his satire.
Me Cheeta: The Autobiography at 52 is supposedly the autobiography of Tarzan's chimpanzee - it was much praised on release. I found it over-praised and left feeling rather disappointed.
At 83 - Short Letter, Long Farewell by Peter Handke - at one time I quite enjoyed Handke's books, but felt after a while that they provided diminishing returns. Some of the movies by Wim Wenders on which he collaborated are classics, though.
There are some others I may well read, including Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys... I thought at one time that I'd read all three (or four?) of her books - as they were the only ones in print - but I now see that there were others - this is one - and I'm not sure if I read it 'back then', but I think not. Suspects by David Thomson is tempting and intriguing - I have several editions of his Biographical Dictionary of Film - always interesting to dip into. Stick by Elmore Leonard sounds like fun, and I haven't read it.
Another book, not on this list, is You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again by Julia Phillips - an unexpurgated description of drug taking and debauchery, along with film-making, from a producer of 'The Sting' and 'Taxi Driver'. An eye-opener.
I expect others will offer further recommendations.
scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "Neave escaped from Colditz.."Thanks for your comments on Neave... I remember his assassination well, but didn't know much about him."
You're welcome. I'd read about Neave in Telford Taylor's book on Nuremberg; a few weeks ago, I read about Colditz prison camp.
scarletnoir wrote: "Berkley wrote: "what are some other good novels in which movies are important.."Good to hear that you liked Coe's What a Carve Up!... I have read nearly all Coe's books - he is a li..."
The BFI series has some excellent titles. There is one particularly good one on The Children of Paradise, and another on Chinatown, but the whole series is full of plums!
Mod
Without thinking too much:
The Last Tycoon F Scott Fitzgerald
The Day of the Locust - Nathaneal West
Less well-known, Faulty Ground - Gabrielle Donnelly
Robert wrote: "The BFI series has some excellent titles...There is one particularly good one on The Children of Paradise, and another on Chinatown...I have the monograph on 'The Big Sleep' by... David Thomson! I may have one or two more - not sure.
As for Les enfants du Paradis - I have a particular memory of this one. In either the very late 60s or early 70s, I went to see this at the Curzon cinema in London with a friend from uni and his wife to be (he is my best living friend, and still married...) The film is over 3h long... we much enjoyed the first part up to the intermission (I'm almost sure there was one) but it was a boiling hot summer's day and there was no air-con. We were so uncomfortable in the heat that we reluctantly left - and I've still never seen the second half.
As for Chinatown - seen it in the cinema, and on TV - many times. Great film.
Robert wrote: "a few weeks ago, I read about Colditz prison camp.."There was an excellent TV series - 'Colditz' - shown in the UK (probably BBC) from 1972-74. A number of well known actors appeared, including David McCallum (The man from UNCLE, NCIS, The Great Escape), Bernard Hepton and Robert Wagner. Neave's name does not appear on the list of most frequent appearances, but may be in there somewhere.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068059/...
Mod
I haven’t checked, but doesn’t part of the chase in Brighton Rock take place in a cinema?
Also, the Lumière brothers feature prominently in a not bad graphic novel called The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.
My Week with Marilyn by Colin Clark about the making of The Prince and The Showgirl is delightful, and qualifies as a novel rather than a memoir if, as many think, it’s a bit of a fairy tale.
Mod
I saw Les Enfants du Paradis at a university cine-club. We watched the first reel. Then came the second — things began to seem a bit strange ... Why was it suddenly rather hard to follow? After quite a long time, the projectionist realised he'd mixed up the reels, took out the third, replaced it with the second.
A tribute to the film, I think, that nobody left, we all stayed until the considerably delayed end.
Mod
I'm sure Giselle, wherever she is, is still thinking about you too, AB!!
For the 'die hard' aficionado's there is always Christian Marclay's 24 hr film 'The Clock'. I meant to go and see at least some of it when it was on show at The Tate Modern in 1918, but you couldn't actually book a time slot and it was a long way to go from here with the possibility of not getting in. The premise is the 24 hrs are actually made up of pieces from films that are set synchronistically, at the actual time on show. Personally, I wanted to see if he did 'High Noon' at the actual Noon of the 24 hrs. I see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clo... from reading it, that there was an actual copyright problem, as he didn't seek permission for using the scenes, and so the places that it was shown in couldn't charge for tickets because of this problem... Still I would like to have seen some of it, as it has some resonance to my 'Book of Hours', at least to me...
Robert wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Robert wrote: "The Guardian ran several photos of the Kremlin's May 9 march. Putin will never let go of the Second World War.Once my Russian friend and I were talking about th..."
that was one of Stalins many crimes..letting his troops .watch the Germans raze Warsaw and destroy the uprisings,
Logger24 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "...my first slowdance at a party was to La Isla Bonita with a girl called Giselle in 1988, wonder where she is now?..."I'm sure Giselle, wherever she is, is still thinking about you ..."
maybe? lol
Berkley wrote: "Speaking of movies here in the What Are We Reading thread, one of my recent reading highlights was my first book by Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up! (or, The Winshaw Legacy), in which the 1961 Sid James movie of the same title plays an important part. I highly recommend watching or re-watching the film before starting the novel, as I think it will enhance any reader's appreciation of the latter."I bought the Coe novel some time ago because of generally positive reviews - if I had known it was somehow tied into a movie I've never seen and am not likely to see, I'm sure I wouldn't have bought it.
Novels involving film:Flicker - I found this pretty absorbing while I was reading it, but ultimately disappointing. Readers here may be interested because Les enfants du Paradis is featured fairly prominently at one point.
Two much shorter and more satisfying novels:
Prater Violet is the account of an exiled Austrian (as I recall his nationality) filmmaker in Britain making a film of the same title in the late 1930s.
Dirty Eddie is one of the funniest novels I've read and has been scandalously out-of-print for my entire lifetime. The title character doesn't appear until the second half of the novel; he's a young pig who displays the kind of on-camera charisma that defines a movie star. But there are plenty of laughs before Eddie shows up. Bemelmans enlivens passages of description and exposition with witty asides and clever similes that give his prose a sparkle like bubbles in champagne.
I also recall that Agents and Patients at one point has the protagonist in Germany visiting what is obviously the UFA studio. But I don't recall the novel well enough to say whether it deals with filmmaking at any length.
Mod
For what it's worth, I enjoyed What a Carve Up! without having seen or known anything about the film.
Gpfr wrote: "For what it's worth, I enjoyed What a Carve Up! without having seen or known anything about the film."Thanks, good to know. I've read a few descriptions of the book (not many, since I decided early on I'd probably like to read it) and I'm pretty sure that this thread is the first I'd heard of any movie connection.
Bill wrote: "Novels involving film:Flicker - I found this pretty absorbing while I was reading it, but ultimately disappointing. Readers here may be interested because Les enfants du Paradis is featured fairly prominently at one point.
Two much shorter and more satisfying novels:
Prater Violet is the account of an exiled Austrian (as I recall his nationality) filmmaker in Britain making a film of the same title in the late 1930s.
Dirty Eddie is one of the funniest novels I've read and has been scandalously out-of-print for my entire lifetime. The title character doesn't appear until the second half of the novel; he's a young pig who displays the kind of on-camera charisma that defines a movie star. But there are plenty of laughs before Eddie shows up. Bemelmans enlivens passages of description and exposition with witty asides and clever similes that give his prose a sparkle like bubbles in champagne.
I also recall that Agents and Patients at one point has the protagonist in Germany visiting what is obviously the UFA studio. But I don't recall the novel well enough to say whether it deals with filmmaking at any length..."
All of those sound interesting. I've read a few of Anthony Powell's earlier novels and they were all good.
I see that Bemelmans wrote the Madeleine childrens' books: I remember liking one of those very much as a young kid, probably around the age of 5 to 7, if I'm right about which grade of school I was in at the time.
Berkley wrote: "Bill wrote: "Novels involving film:Flicker - I found this pretty absorbing while I was reading it, but ultimately disappointing. Readers here may be interested because Les enfants du Paradis is ..."
i must have a look at some of Powells early novels. I read one of his novels set in WW2(part of Dance to the Music of Time), which i thought was very good at capturing the 1939-40 period The Valley of Bones
AB76 wrote: "i must have a look at some of Powells early novels. I read one of his novels set in WW2(part of Dance to the Music of Time), which i thought was very good at capturing the 1939-40 period The Valley of Bones.."Dance to the Music of Time was fantastic, of course - one of my favourites from my last ten years or so of reading. The early books have a different feeling to me - snappier, funnier, more satirical. Agents and Patients must be one of the few from that period that I haven't read, as I went through I think four or five of them before starting on the 12-volume Dance sequence.
Bill wrote: "I bought the Coe novel some time ago because of generally positive reviews - if I had known it was somehow tied into a movie I've never seen and am not likely to see, I'm sure I wouldn't have bought it."That one is, I think, far more likely to appeal to British readers. You might have more luck with Mr Wilder & Me, in which a young Greek woman is taken on as translator during the filming of Fedora (the Greek sections). Billy Wilder and long-time collaborator IAL Diamond appear prominently. It is both funny and touching, and I think a lot of the factual background is accurate AFAIK.
Bill wrote: "I also recall that Agents and Patients at one point has the protagonist in Germany visiting what is obviously the UFA studio. But I don't recall the novel well enough to say whether it deals with filmmaking at any length..."That reminds me of David Downing's 'John Russell' series, as his German girlfriend Effi Koenen is a film actress, and in at least one of the books we get to visit the UFA studios... there is iirc a description of how Jews were 'removed' from the film-making industry, and in one book Effi uses her glamour to charm a high-up Nazi for some purpose...
I have forgotten which book that was, and brief synopses (?) and reviews fail to mention those events - so, best guess, it would have been in either the second or third part of the series: Silesian Station or Stettin Station.
Two books finished shortly before we left France - no time then to write reviews:
by François-Henri Désérable describes the short life and tragic (but also absurd) death of genius mathematician Évariste Galois (1811-1832).Évariste was brought up in a small town not far from Paris. Aged 12, he was admitted to the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where his exceptional ability in mathematics was recognised. Despite this, his lack of interest in other subjects led to his failure (twice) to be admitted to the École Polytechnique, so he had to settle for the (then) lower rated École Normale. He devoured mathematical works and developed his own theories - but through carelessness, lack of comprehension and sheer bad luck his papers were either lost or rejected by the academics asked to referee them with a view to publication. At the same time, Évariste moved in Republican circles and was jailed briefly for his activities. He then fell in love with a young girl who rejected him.
We can imagine his turmoil at this point (the author certainly does) and so Évariste ends up getting himself killed in an absurd duel. The exact reason for this fatal ending is not clear (political, or personal?) and even the identity of the shooter is not 100% certain. So, Évariste's brief and tragic life comes to a close. His good friend ensures publication of his theories after his death; their importance - leading to the breakthrough mathematical field of group theory - is not recognised until some 30-40 years later, and the field is not fully developed until the second half of the 20th. C.
As before with Désérable's books, we get some extraordinarily skilful writing in which vocabulary and terminology both of the period and modern speech - and slang - are mingled seamlessly into the narrative. We also are given many invitations to disappear down rabbit holes, to research prominent French people (politicians, kings, mathematicians) and cultural references. Naturally, I did just that. It took me a year to read this short book! I never felt able to tackle it when tired, and I needed a laptop to hand to check so many things.
I enjoyed it - but less than his other books that I've read:
which is brilliantly entertaining, about the life of Romain Gary; and
in which key people and events from the Terror are described in short chapters. I suppose one reason - as a friend suggested - is that, unlike those other books, very little is known for certain about Galois, and so Désérable has of necessity to fall back on quite a lot of speculation. In any case, it's not recommended for anyone without a decent grasp of French - I had to check many words as I went along. I also think that, as I knew the bare bones of Évariste's life before reading the book, it felt less propulsive than the others - there wasn't the same urge to find out 'what happens next'. It's still a lot better than most of what's 'out there' though - certainly in terms of writing brilliance.
The other book I (re-) read, having run out during our stay (and Kindle turned up its toes) was another in the Easy Rawlins series - Cinnamon Kiss. This is mid-period Easy - no longer dirt poor, he is working as a school supervisor when his 'daughter' (unofficially adopted) becomes seriously ill and he desperately needs a lot of money for medical treatment. It's a well-told tale, as usual, though there seemed to be an inordinate number of dreams recounted in this one. I tend not to like dreams to form too big a part of a narrative - we're already dealing with fiction!Still, very entertaining if you like Californian PI tales.
Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i must have a look at some of Powells early novels. I read one of his novels set in WW2(part of Dance to the Music of Time), which i thought was very good at capturing the 1939-40 peri..."i am suprised i had overlooked his 1930s novels
scarletnoir wrote: "Good to hear that you liked Coe's What a Carve Up!... I have read nearly all Coe's books - he is a li..." Many intriguing suggestions there, thanks. The BFI list alone will take me some time to go through.
Asa Briggs in Victorian Cities has now moved on to Leeds and Birmingham, following his interesting chapter on ManchesterThe Leeds chapter i found rather dull, he establishes the strong Methodist influence on the city, as opposed to the Catholic-Anglican and lesser Methodist influence in Manchester but spends far too long describing the Town Hall in Leeds, which i found rather dissapointing when googling.
I know Birmingham well, and the chapter on this city was immiediatly more interesting and wide ranging. Brigggs studies the influence of the great Joe Chamberlain on the city and his idea of a civic responsbility.A city that was far less Methodist than Leeds or Manchester,majority Anglican with strong Unitarian, Quaker, Congregationalist and Baptist minorities, seems like a city of the future in its concerns for the welfare of all its people.
Birmingham was a city of small family businesses and larger business concerns developed in the 1860s and 1870s. It had a strong non-conformist tradition and was non-evangelical in much of its preaching. Elements of non-denominational preaching were started by George Dawson, a preacher of the "civic gospel"
Unitarian influence in the city came directly from the Chamberlain family and a few others, Birmingham could seen as a village in some ways with its Unitarian and Quaker established families (Cadburys where the Quaker giants of the city).
I always find the now small but impressive buildings in Birmingham around Colmore Row area as impressive, equal to anything in London. Back then much of the city looked similar, not the dreadful mess it is now.
Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Berkley wrote: "what are some other good novels in which movies are important.."Without thinking too much:
The Last Tycoon F Scott Fitzgerald
The Day of the Locust - Nathaneal West
Less well-known, Faulty Ground - Gabrielle Donnelly."
I've had the first two on my to-read list for some time but hadn't heard of Donnelly until now, looks interesting.
I recently said that Stevenson's New Arabian Nights was the only place I'd encountered the word "transpontine". Much to my surprise I saw it again today in the Ange Mlinko's review of The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov and The Collected Poems of Anne Stevenson in the latest NYRB. But the word is misused in the review. Commenting on Levertov's move from England to the US and Stevenson's in the reverse direction, Mlinko picks up on a comment by the author who wrote the introduction for the Levertov tome:
Eavan Boland makes the point that America’s first poet was a woman who crossed the Atlantic from Dublin: Anne Bradstreet, in 1630. Boland’s own transpontine arc brought her to Stanford, but aside from Thom Gunn (born in 1929), who moved to San Francisco in the 1950s, no English or Irish poet transplant—not even Auden, who after all didn’t stay—has remade herself personally and prosodically as Levertov did. When the transplantation goes in the other direction, what happens?What is meant here is obviously "transoceanic" or "transatlantic", not "transpontine" which means "across the bridge".
I thought it was "across the Pope", thanks for clearing that up!
Mod
A long and interesting book, balancing human stories of awful suffering (and the occasional heartening success) against centuries of scientific research, which left me more knowledgeable on novel retroviruses and mutated oncogenes and molecular pathways. One theme was the successive failure of possible cures that were strongly favoured for a time by the medical profession - radical surgery, extreme chemotherapy, intense radiation, all of them macabrely distant from concern for the individual patient. Another theme was the disconnect between the laboratory work on causes and the hospital work on cures. As SM leaves the story in 2010 the biology appears, finally, to be to a fair degree understood, and there are signs of collaboration on cures. I shall be interested to find a text that brings the story completely up to date. For example, the whole book is pre-CRISPR. Fourteen years seems to be an eternity in this world.
Mod
I'm intrigued - were these shelves sagging under the weight, or are 'bending bookshelves' a cunning design to fit more books into a give area?"
Sagging, to an alarming degree! No central supports.
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Lincoln in the Bardo (other topics)Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain (other topics)
Dr. No (other topics)
The Instant Enemy (other topics)
Frankenstein (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Stephen Breyer (other topics)Stephen Breyer (other topics)
Norman Podhoretz (other topics)
I'm intrigued - were these shelves sagging under the weight, or are 'bending bookshelves' a cunning design to fit more books into a give area?