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Weekly TLS
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What are we reading? 3/06/2024
Gpfr wrote: "There was a group of Japanese? / Chinese? who were galloped round the show."I wish group tours of exhibitions weren't allowed... if you get a gang in front of a work you want to see, it can be very frustrating. I strongly suspect that many people in these groups are not that interested. Let the ones who are go around on their own - the others can go for a coffee somewhere.
Tam wrote: "Monet suffered badly from cataracts, which changed the way he painted towards the end of his life, (i.e. the water lilies), surely?"I have posted about this before, but maybe not here (?)... anyway, Monet eventually had cataract surgery (high risk, then) and had his eye lenses 'replaced' with glasses made by Zeiss with aphakia lenses:
https://www.zeiss.com/corporate/en/c/...
A Kidnapped West
by Milan Kundera, is a short collection of one speech and an essay published last yearThe main essay, was mentioned by Garton-Ash in a TLS article last month and i just finished reading it. As expected Kundera is eloquent and interesting as he looks the Central Europe of 1983, a region subsumed by the communist tide of the USSR. He remarks that the entire region always looked west, how Czechs have no link to Russia save their origins, his loathing of being referred to as having a "slavic soul", as did Joseph Conrad.
He says of the 1968 Soviet crackdown Try to imagine! All of the literary and cultural reviews were liquidated, every one, without exception, that had never happebed before in Czech history, not even under the Nazi's
My reading of Musil and Kundera overlapped as Kundera mentioned a speech that Musil gave in paris to a popular front event where he was careful about the significant communist influence on the occasion. He could see in the fervent pro-soviet atmosphere and worship of the USSR, the same things he was seeing in Austria with Schusniggs Austro-Fascism. The political was overwhelming the cultural
I love central europe, especially the Czech lands, Kundera also mentions Ukraine, saying in that essay, 41 years ago that 40 million Ukrainians , the Ukrainian nation was slowly dissappearing .....
Great to see 4 hostages rescued from Gaza, including "the girl on the motorbike". Rescued from the hell of captivity...I had a lot of Israeli literature to read for autumn 2023 but then Oct 7th happened,, i must return to the collection of books i found in Oxfam and a 1960s novel by Amos Oz
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I've just finished Joanna Rakoff's memoir My Salinger Year, one of the lovely Slightly Foxed editions. It's most enjoyable.
A young English graduate who wants to write but needs to earn some money and wants to be in New York, gets a job in a literary agency, with no idea what a literary agent really does. She is the assistant of the 'boss' of the 'Agency' (names are not given). The decor and the working methods of the agency are more those of the 1940s or 50s than the 1990s.
They have or have had some very famous authors, and as you may guess from the title, one of them is J.D. Salinger or Jerry as her boss calls him, mystifying Joanna for a while.
There's an enjoyable interview with the writer on the Slightly Foxed YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX2uP...
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The other book I finished today: The Drowning Pool, following the Ross Macdonald praise here :)This is an early book, the second in the Lew Archer series, a well-written, hard-boiled American noir. I read somewhere that it's the most "formally accomplished" of the series. Obviously I can't comment on the accuracy of that as it's my first.
I'll read some more I think.
scarletnoir wrote: "I thought it was part of the job description."Chatting to the plumber (ongoing shower problem) the other day, he told me had had started to watch the first election debate between Starmer and Sunak. When I asked what it was like he said he lasted half and hour because it was like watching two kids in the playground.
AB76 wrote: "Great to see 4 hostages rescued from Gaza, including "the girl on the motorbike". Rescued from the hell of captivity...I had a lot of Israeli literature to read for autumn 2023 but then Oct 7th h..."
Shame one of the rescuers was killed. I can't see an end to this problem in my lifetime.
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Great to see 4 hostages rescued from Gaza, including "the girl on the motorbike". Rescued from the hell of captivity...I had a lot of Israeli literature to read for autumn 2023 but t..."
was he killed? i saw a report he was badly wounded, thats very sad
Gpfr wrote: " The other book I finished today: The Drowning Pool, following the Ross Macdonald praise here :)This is an early book, the second in the Lew A..."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072912/
Paul Newman. 😍
I'm reading the story of this country's first big political prosecution, Thomas Jefferson's attempt to convict his former Vice President, Aaron Burr, of treason. The case was tried before Chief Justice John Marshall, sitting as a circuit judge. Marshall was determined to give Burr a fair trial, despite political pressure. It's instructive to watch Marshall's scrupulous approach to issues like executive privilege, and a prosecution's effort to convict an alleged conspirator for decisions made at a meeting he didn't attend. Jean Edward Smith's Marshall biography is a welcome contrast to our current days.
AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "Berkley wrote: "Bill wrote: "Tam wrote: "Are biographies more truthful that auto-biographies, as maybe we all all a bit prone to self-deception? Any thoughts on this out there?"I ..."
Dad was a Lt. Col. himself-- a straight-leg infantryman. He thought that Slim's plan for fighting in the central Burmese Plain-- preparing his tank-infantry crews for a battle that wouldn't be fought until the dry season, months away-- was fine generalship.
AB76 wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "Tam wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I went to the musée d'Orsay yesterday to see Paris 1874. Inventer l'impressionisme." I would love to have gone to..."
A young lawyer told me that his mother went on one of these tours. They simply hustle the tourists from site to site, giving them as little contact with the locals as possible-- time is all!
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Paul Newman"
Yes, I saw that when looking at reviews of the book and thought I must seek it out!
Robert wrote: "I'm reading the story of this country's first big political prosecution, Thomas Jefferson's attempt to convict his former Vice President, Aaron Burr, of treason. The case was tried before Chief Jus..."whats the name of the book Robert? I must read Gore Vidal's novel about Burr too
Mod
A Dark Anatomy by Robin Blake. I started this yesterday, the first in a series about an 18th century coroner. It's 1740 and the wife of a local landowner has been killed ...
Gpfr wrote: "This is an early book, the second in the Lew Archer series, a well-written, hard-boiled American noir..."By now, I have read all (?) - or nearly all - the Lew Archer series. The standard is usually very good indeed; there are a few weaker ones, including the first - 'The Moving Target' (1949).
I have just finished Macdonald's The Three Roads, published in 1948 and filmed as 'The Deadly Companion'. This is, I think, the first Macdonald to really disappoint me. He hadn't fully developed his style - or perhaps understood what he was good at, and what was best left alone. It's a tale centering on Navy Lieutenant Bret Taylor, who is suffering from amnesia following the sinking of his ship and the murder of his wife of a few days. In the first half, very little happens - and there is a lot of cod psychology and psychobabble. Macdonald is also trying too hard in this book - he aims for 'fine writing', but it comes across as forced and pretentious - and there's too much of it. Things improve a bit in the second half, but this isn't seat of the pants stuff.
Later, Macdonald wrote a lot of brilliant short descriptions to set the scenes for his dramas - and the scenes change a lot as Archer moves around the state and the country. This is too static, with too little action; there are also plot holes.
I'd avoid this one and stick to the later stuff; I much enjoyed another non-Archer tale,
, so the lack of the 'usual' gumshoe isn't the problem here.
Kazantzakis in Zorba makes quite a few references to the Greek diaspora, the novel is set in the 1920s, when all Eastern Greeks faced existential conditions in the collapsing Ottoman Empire regions.I already knew a lot about the Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea region, as when the Ukraine war broke out, i found a community of Greeks dotted all over the Russian census of 1897(in what is now South Ukraine) as i explored the language question in Tsarist times. Most were concentrated in the Mariopol area(the name is a clue), though i'm not sure how many remain or havent been displaced by the war
My discovery of an 1880 male only Ottoman census of Anatolia has led me into the discovery of other minority populations of Ottoman lands, which i wouldnt have spotted without this census. I was aware of the Chaldean and Syriac christians in the area but was amazed to find 29,000 Nestorians (an Assyrian sect) living close to Lake Van, in Van region which was 43% Christian.
Sadly, this community was devastated by the Ottoman genocides in WW1, fleeing into NW Iran, where there was an Assyrian minority but then the Turks caught them up and massacres began. Many are now displaced all over the world, though some remain in the border region with Northern Iraq
The cruelty of the Ottoman collapse on their minoirty peoples needs more covering, Werfel wrote of the Armenian genocide but the other Eastern Christians and the Greeks suffered too. Smyrna, now Izmir saw a massacre of Greeks and what had been a somewhat tolerant empire became a bloodbath from 1916 to roughly 1924
Has anyone here ever subscribed to the Times Literary Supplement, i'm really enjoying it after two months and it has already led me to three books i would not have discovred otherwiseThis week has a look at A Passage to India on its 100th anniversary, i loved reading it a few years ago, after avoiding it like the plague in my 20s
AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm reading the story of this country's first big political prosecution, Thomas Jefferson's attempt to convict his former Vice President, Aaron Burr, of treason. The case was tried b..."John Marshall by Jean Edward Smith. Good read so far. When I'm done with the trial, I'm going back to Marshall's diplomatic mission to France, when he negotiated with Talleyrand.
Robert wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm reading the story of this country's first big political prosecution, Thomas Jefferson's attempt to convict his former Vice President, Aaron Burr, of treason. The cas..."ah the famous Talleyrand, the great survivor!
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The only thing I subscribe to is Slightly Foxed which is quarterly. It's a joy — in terms of content, of course, and also as a beautiful publication — and it too leads me to books I didn't know.
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Gpfr wrote: " A Dark Anatomy by Robin Blake. I started this yesterday, the first in a series about an 18th century coroner. It's 1740 and the wife of a local lan..."I have mentioned before the Crowner Series by Bernard Knight, set in the time John was trying to be king. Quite simplistic, if that is the right word, but enjoyable enough.
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Has anyone here ever subscribed to the Times Literary Supplement, i'm really enjoying it after two months and it has already led me to three books i would not have discovred otherwise...."i subbed to that for a while but cant remember why i stopped
Gpfr wrote: "Political turmoil ahead here with Macron's surprise snap election. A gamble, and a risky one."huge risk, i wouldnt have done it! this could give Le Pen a lot of power, unlike with the euro elections
Gpfr wrote: "Political turmoil ahead here with Macron's surprise snap election. A gamble, and a risky one."Madame was shocked and depressed by the results and Macron's gamble, and slept badly...
Scarlet: re your comments over on the G,in reply to me i totally agree, i'm wary about being censored if i say too much thoughI feel the demise of the original excellent Sam led TLS pre-covid has damaghed the content and depth of what the G provides with the WWR section. Which is why it suprised me that a few great contributors here abandoned GR so fast.
Due to the censorship and the lack of posts, i only look at the WWR occasionally now. Composing a post that may vanish is so fustrating
Re the elections, the old saying "it doesn't matter who you vote for, the government gets in" springs to mind more than usual.
Sadly Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said underwhelmed me and i think i will not be returning to PKD in a hurryInitially as ever with the great man, the plot and the situation had me on tenterhooks, a life erased and how to come to terms with it and why it has been erased ae pillars of sci-fi and this area was positive. Likewise, the ability of PKD to tell a story of our world via a fantasy was his strongest point.
Sadly though, it felt trippy, messy and a bit of a dirge at times, long dialogue with another random hook up seemed to be irrelevant or padding, the plot reveal was weaker than other novels of his i have read, as i sort of guessed it and without much angst from the main character it all felt a little staid.
AB76 wrote: "Sadly Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said underwhelmed me and i think i will not be returning to PKD in a hurryInitially as ever with the great man, the plot and the situation had me on tenterhook..."
I've read a number of PKD novels, but, despite some really wild and memorable concepts in them, I've been generally disappointed with them on the whole. During the 1950s while he was making a living from SF, he was trying unsuccessfully to break into "mainstream" fiction; I have a few of the mainstream novels and if I read him again it'll be one of those. The two novels of his I thought most successful are both SF, but gain a lot from their (sort of) reality-grounded settings: Time Out of Joint and The Man in the High Castle.
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Sadly Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said underwhelmed me and i think i will not be returning to PKD in a hurryInitially as ever with the great man, the plot and the situation had me o..."
my first five PKDS were right on the button, spot on, made me think, made me question and drew me into his world. the well crafted prose and the situations. some say that "Flow My Tears" is actually more about love than plot, which probably explains the long dialogue sections that didnt really work...
both those you mentioned are great novels, he is a real talent but i saw another review today where somebody remarked that by the 1970s he was starting break less new ground with his ideas, which i could sense in Flow My Tears
in terms of cinema, his worlds have become ours with a good 3/4 of sci-fi films in last 40 years, along with the central ideas. Star Wars and Star Trek are maybe not so influenced but so much has been. Bladerunner being a homage to his world...
on the subject of Iran , scarlet, i tried to reply to your warning about regime change but it seems the G didnt like me mentioning Iran, so i will simplify my postOne Iranian modern author you should deffo read is Mahmoud Dowlatbadi. His novel The Colonel remains the most striking non-western modern fiction i have read. Austere, haunting and brilliant...
I'm probably looking for different things when reading PKD - for example, plot isn't usually too important to me in his books. I like his thought-provoking scenarios and the way their implications are explored in unexpected ways and the deadpan manner in which his often uncanny situations worlds are described and experienced by his characters. I do like his early, mainstream novels as well, or the two or three I've read. Confessions of a Crap Artist, though it was published in the 1970s in the same format as his SF books, is a good one that I would group with his non-SF or mainstream novels. I also liked Puttering About in a Small Land.
I recently re-read one of his earlier SF books, Eye in the Sky and probably appreciated it more this time than when I read it as a teenager. It's perhaps a little unsubtle in some of the shots taken at its its satirical targets but I accept this sort of this unevenness as an inevitable consequence of the circumstances under which PKD was writing at the time, having to churn out stories and novels almost continuously, and even then just barely keeping his head above water.
VALIS (capitalised as its an acronym) remains his masterpiece, for me, even though it may well be, from one perspective, an account of a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. I think shouldn't be read until one has a feel for his work, his style, authorial voice, recurring themes, etc. PKD himself somewhere left a list of his novels he considered (retrospectively) as comprising one larger "meta-novel". Whether or not one agrees with this assessment, I think it's a pretty good starting point for anyone who wants to give his fiction a try:
Eye in the Sky
Martian Time-Slip
Time Out of Joint
The Man in the High Castle
The Game Players of Titan
The Three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Ubik
A Maze of Death
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Frozen Journey (aka I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon: short story)
VALIS
AB76 wrote: "on the subject of Iran , scarlet, i tried to reply to your warning about regime change but it seems the G didnt like me mentioning Iran, so i will simplify my postOne Iranian modern author you should deffo read is Mahmoud Dowlatbadi. His novel The Colonel remains the most striking non-western modern fiction i have read. Austere, haunting and brilliant."
I have that one on my list but haven't come across a copy yet. Have you seen the French tv series The Bureau? I found the Iranian sub-plot that went on for one or two of the earlier seasons very well done.
The last book I finished was the 8th Maigret, Un crime en Hollande, which also finished the first volume of the collected Maigrets that I started way back in 2015, I am informed by goodreads. At that time I read only the first one, Pietr le Letton, then for one reason or another decided to jump ahead and read a few from the 1950s. But I returned to this first volume late last year and having read about one per month since then, I can see that I'm probably going to carry on with volume 2 and keep going, as I show no signs of getting tired of them so far.Un crime en Hollande was one of the best so far - but then, I feel like that after almost every one, especially in this first collection. As usual, it
I'd like to read about the impact these books made at the time - I think their popularity took off pretty quickly, is that correct? There's a statue of Maigret in Delfzijl, the small city in which Un Crime is set, and a hotel in Concarneau changed its name to the fictional one it was given in Chien Jaune. There were also a couple of movies in the 1930s, so they must have been made not many years after the books they were based on came out (anyone seen these, BTW?).
AB76 wrote: "Mahmoud Dowlatbadi.."Thanks for the tip - I've added the book to the virtual TBR pile... having glanced at the reviews, some suggest this has a more difficult style than his others, so maybe I'll start elsewhere - though I don't usually mind books that jump about in time and space. Some people hate it, and find it confusing. I can cope if it's well done!
Berkley wrote: "...a hotel in Concarneau changed its name to the fictional one it was given in Chien Jaune....There were also a couple of movies in the 1930s"
I re-read The Yellow Dog not that long ago - it's a good tale, and I was moved to use Google Maps street view to visit the area... the hotel is still there, though I think it operates only as a restaurant nowadays. Simenon is excellent at describing the atmosphere and intrigues in a small town in that story.
As for film versions - you are right to say that the tales were rapidly adapted - from Wikipedia:
The cinematic potential of Maigret was realized quickly: the first screen Maigret was Pierre Renoir in 1932's Night at the Crossroads, directed by his brother Jean Renoir;[1] the same year brought The Yellow Dog with Abel Tarride,[1] and Harry Baur played him in 1933's A Man's Neck, directed by Julien Duvivier.
I don't remember seeing any of the very early films... I have seen Maigret played by Jean Gabin, who released three films in the role, the first in 1958. The BBC Rupert Davies series started in 1960.
scarletnoir wrote: "I re-read The Yellow Dog not that long ago - it's a good tale, and I was moved to use Google Maps street view to visit the area... the hotel is still there, though I think it operates only as a restaurant nowadays. Simenon is excellent at describing the atmosphere and intrigues in a small town in that story.18774..."
Yes, I accidentally deleted a paragraph from my original comment, but what I tried to say in it was that as usual, it's the atmosphere, scene-setting, and characters that stand out more than the whodunnit aspect, though that's there too.
Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "on the subject of Iran , scarlet, i tried to reply to your warning about regime change but it seems the G didnt like me mentioning Iran, so i will simplify my postOne Iranian modern..."
i loved the bureau, brilliantly done
annoyed that the woke-lords at the G binned my very balanced appraisal of iranian culture and society before 1979, if they are censoring that we are all lost!
AB76 wrote: "my very balanced appraisal of iranian culture and society before 1979,...."On the subject of Iran on the eve of the 1979 Revolution , have you seen this documentary? It was a real eye-opener for me:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nFukaEk...
FrustratedArtist wrote: "AB76 wrote: "my very balanced appraisal of iranian culture and society before 1979,...."On the subject of Iran on the eve of the 1979 Revolution , have you seen this documentary? It was a real ey..."
there is a book about the folly of Persepolis too, it was a very odd event indeed!
Oddly for me, the Shah did the one thing in the late 70s that he had never done before, he was lenient on the large Islamic movements who were usurping the secular movements that opposed the Shah. He had made significant gains in modernising the state but culturally very little had changed outside the elites and unlike in Sunni Islam, the Shia have always had a well established clerical system, which provides leadership and guidance to the people
In the 1960s, the clerical top brass (so to speak) were of the slightly austere, intellectual bent that didnt bother the Shah and his modernising drive but among them was Khomieni, well qualified as them but far more radical and intolerant, it was his voice from exile that kept up the theocratic drumbeats. When the Shah declined to repress the religious elements of the opposition, they gained ground in spectacular way
and when the shah fled in 1979, after a brief 12 months of consensus, it was Khomeini and his theocracy that wrestled control from the secular movements and then began the dark years of murder and repression.
Not to escalate the political discussion but the US and its client regimes have a long history of suppressing progressive, secular, nationalist movements and overlooking or even encouraging religious opposition as a counterweight, much as Netanyahou was doing in the Israel/Palestine conflict until it blew up in his face. So we in the west largely have ourselves to blame for the rise of intolerant, theocratic regimes and terrorist groups in the near and middle east over the last 40-50 years or so. Because we were more afraid of socialism than of theocracy.
Berkley wrote: "Not to escalate the political discussion but the US and its client regimes have a long history of suppressing progressive, secular, nationalist movements and overlooking or even encouraging religio..."totally agree, the US funded much of the middle eastern opposition to communism, via religious groups, not the secular progressive middle ground. Though Saudi Arabia has played a very pernicious role in spreading the Wahabi teachings through the Arab world since the 1960s. Serious state directed money has landed in the coffers of terror groups, madrasas and mosques in that period. Now the Gulf states have started doing similar things since around 2005, especially in the Syrian civil war and equally as destructive
FrustratedArtist wrote: "AB76 wrote: "my very balanced appraisal of iranian culture and society before 1979,...."On the subject of Iran on the eve of the 1979 Revolution , have you seen this documentary? It was a real eye-opener ..."
Looks interesting, making a note to watch this later.
AB76 wrote: "totally agree, the US funded much of the middle eastern opposition to communism, via religious groups, not the secular progressive middle ground. Though Saudi Arabia has played a very pernicious role in spreading the Wahabi teachings through the Arab world since the 1960s. Serious state directed money has landed in the coffers of terror groups, madrasas and mosques in that period. Now the Gulf states have started doing similar things since around 2005, especially in the Syrian civil war and equally as destructive."
Yes, it's maddening and depressing to think of and certainly shows us the real priorities of our decision-makers, behind all the false rhetoric about "democratic values" and the like.
Anyway, to get this back to the subject of books, I haven't read much in the way of political writing the last few years but here's a recent one I'm considering, about the current situation in Haiti:
Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.
Berkley wrote: "we were more afraid of socialism than of theocracy..."Indeed... the US and the western countries generally have a shameful history of supporting repressive regimes - the "at least, he's our bastard" school of foreign policy. As AB says, the West is not alone in this - he mentions Saudi Arabia (nearly all the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis - not Iraqis); the Russians and Chinese play similar games.
Berkley wrote: "AB76 wrote: "totally agree, the US funded much of the middle eastern opposition to communism, via religious groups, not the secular progressive middle ground. Though Saudi Arabia has played a very..."
poor Haiti, a victim of its temerity(in western colonial terms) to revolt in the late 18thc and since then it has been neglected and exploited
AB76 wrote: "FrustratedArtist wrote: "AB76 wrote: "my very balanced appraisal of iranian culture and society before 1979,...."On the subject of Iran on the eve of the 1979 Revolution , have you seen this docu..."
If I ran into novelist Satrapi at a party, (an unlikely idea) I'd suggest to her that in 1979 the Ayatollah proved himself a better Leninist than her Communist family. Seizing the US embassy gave the clerical forces a lever to push out Bani Sadr, the Kerensky of the Iranian revolution, and to command internal debate.
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I like Klee very much (and Marc, too)... if indeed these are classified as 'Modernist' artists, then I like the visual arts part but not the writing (usually). I could say the same about Surrealism.
Werner Herzog who I thought I was a bit of a fan of. But the more I read, the more uncertain I become as to what actually drives him. he seems more 'show-man' than anything else. And I found myself distrusting some of his accounts somehow.
I think you are making a mistake if you read Herzog and expect to find 'the truth'... he makes a point of telling stories, which even when they start off with factual material usually spin off in unexpected directions which correspond to his interests and instinct for invention. In other words, he likes to make things up! What we expect of an artist; I wish politicians wouldn't flat-out lie, though.