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What are we reading? 10/03/2024
AB76 wrote: "i must visit the Courtuald, my aim for this spring is to visit the Munch exhibition at the National Gallery.."If you do that, you absolutely must find time for the Oskar Reinhart exhibition at the Courtauld, as well as its permanent collection (impressionists are on the same floor).
AB76 wrote: "Today i finished The Mint by TE Lawrence...he had masochistic tendencies.."Such was hinted at (or maybe shown) in the film 'Lawrence of Arabia' IIRC, though I have no idea about the historical accuracy of that scene. He was clearly a 'strange bird' though!
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Coward began one letter to him: 'Dear 338171, (May I call you 338?)'.."Haha!
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i must visit the Courtuald, my aim for this spring is to visit the Munch exhibition at the National Gallery.."If you do that, you absolutely must find time for the Oskar Reinhart exh..."
thanks for the tip.i remember an excellent exhibition of french impressionist paintings of london,linked to the Franco Prussian War,where they became exiles, but cant remember which gallery it was at
I think GP mentioned interest in my review of the De Cespedes novel i read in Feb, so here it isThe Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes was written in the early 1950s and serialised in newspapers in Rome. It forms the first of three unlinked novels that Pushkin press have recently released in new translations
De Cespedes, in my opinion, can be read in the same way as her impressive male contemparies in 1950s Italy. There is a marked seriousness of style and form, mixed with rigour that i have only found in Italian literature of the 1940-1960 period.It offers hyper-realistic storytelling, mixed with psychological depth, while not intended to be depressing, the overall impression is of "life as it is", not as somebody might expect it to be.
Unlike her male peers, De Cespedes locates her novel in the domestic sphere, the main character is a married middle aged Roman woman,with 2 kids, struggling to deal with the everyday and the changes in her life since marraige and becoming "the mother figure". Her husband and children influence her anxieties, fears and hopes amid 4-5months in the Italian capital from autumn to spring in one year
It is not a novel of place,Rome is there but the novel is about the home, the apartment, shared space and the fustrations of home, the apartment and shared space. The novel follows small disintegrations in the family unit, many based around 1950s conventions and morality,alongside comparisons with the war and pre-war and generations of family too.
I havent read a novel as serious or as highly strung for a long time but it bears comparison with the best female novels i have read. Maybe "domestic" drama could be sneered at by a male audience but i lived the life of a 40 something mother of two and it was just as meaningful and dark as a spy thriller that many men like to digest.
I recommend this as a worthwhile read, i am sure the members of the fairer sex among the ersatz crowd will identify with much of this novel, about the sometimes impossible demands of being the centre of three peoples lives(kids-husband) and having almost no time for themselves and their own lives
AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i must visit the Courtuald, my aim for this spring is to visit the Munch exhibition at the National Gallery.."If you do that, you absolutely must find time for th..."
https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/sp...
This one AB?
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That's a very good joke.
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i must visit the Courtuald, my aim for this spring is to visit the Munch exhibition at the National Gallery.."If you do that, you absolutely must fin..."
yes!
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The Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Cespedes was written in the early 1950s and serialised in newspa..."
Yes, I did, thank you! I'll look out for it.
Insomnia has few compensations, but on occasion I do catch something interesting on TV as a result. This morning between 02:28 and 02:58 UK time (approximately) I caught a very interesting interview with a writer I admire - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on BBC1. It is therefore available on BBC iPlayer. Recommended.
scarletnoir wrote: "Insomnia has few compensations, but on occasion I do catch something interesting on TV as a result. This morning between 02:28 and 02:58 UK time (approximately) I caught a very interesting intervie..."thanks scarlet
The BBC gets hammered as not catering for the "yoof" but forced into making lowbrow reality dance competitions and other pap, while behind this is the user friendly and brilliant iplayer, where one can find so much good things to watch
Taking a chance on my next read, its not a massive victorian classic or magic-realist fandango but its the first Booker Prize winner in 1969, P H Newbys Something to Answer for, set in Port Said,Egypt,during the Suez crisis
the official reviews i have briefly browsed confused me and are unhelpful, i am generally a sceptic about reviews as i rarely find myself in agreement but its possibly a novel i may dislike but here we go...
AB76 wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "Insomnia has few compensations, but on occasion I do catch something interesting on TV as a result. This morning between 02:28 and 02:58 UK time (approximately) I caught a very ..."Since posting this, I see that the interview is no longer available as part of that news broadcast - but it IS available for 11 months on iPlayer here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...
("Celebrities"? You have got to be joking...)
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Also, the intro to one article, on how to breathe joy into work and life, said: “What if Spinoza was right?” Only in a Parisian newspaper! I suppose some familiarity with Spinoza can be assumed when philosophy is compulsory in high school.
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The Le Monde site also has a choice between French and English.
RussellinVT wrote: "I look occasionally at the websites of Le Figaro and Le Monde. Today I was scouting through Le Figaro to see if I could find out more about today’s referendum in Paris on whether to pedestrianize a..."I'm a fan of Spinoza, so I would back it, as a philosophical take on the world https://i.postimg.cc/fbG7YJJ6/IMG-149... This is a memorial to him which I came across, with a friend, on a trip to Amsterdam, in 2017. He is a big fan of parrots, I think, as well as the native sparrows. It has a message that we can all get along somehow, if we are minded to!...
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The Le Monde site also has a choice between French and English."
So it does, and on a quick look the English again looks faultless - though somehow they both have a French air about them.
And the Parisians voted yes.
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That's something I never saw before. How clever and characteristic to add those birds.
I don't know about parrots, but there are a lot of parakeets flying around Amsterdam these days! (We have definitely seen the statue, though I have forgotten its location.)
By chance rather than design, I have ended up reading in tandem two books dealing with exile - Petit pays by Gaël Faye and My Friends by Hisham Matar. I haven't read Faye before, and paused this book a couple of months ago as I was then too tired or lazy to read in French. Anyway... people sometimes wonder why refugees undergo the difficult and often dangerous journeys to end up in a strange country. A passage from Petit Pays describes what these Rwandans are escaping (my rough translation) - these Rwandans are already exiles in neighbouring Burundi:... our neighbours were mainly Rwandans who had left their country to escape from the killings, massacres, wars, pogroms, ethnic cleansings, destructions, arsons, tsetse flies, pillages, apartheids, rapes, murders, vendettas and whatever else you can think of. Like Mum and her family, they fled these problems to encounter other new ones in Burundi - poverty, exclusion, quotas, xenophobia, rejection, scapegoating, depression, homesickness, nostalgia. Refugee problems.
Fight or flight? In the next pages, the narrator explains how one uncle - a brilliant engineer - has already returned to fight and has been killed, and another is on the verge of leaving. Not much of a choice.
Matar's protagonist leaves Libya to study in Edinburgh, but is aware that all is not well in his homeland under Qaddafi, where people disappear into the prisons to be tortured and often murdered. What is more, assassins are active in Europe, ready and willing to gun down dissidents in London and elsewhere.
Reading stuff like this makes me feel very lucky.
Both books are very well written. More later.
In completely 'other' news. I have a friend who wants to go to a close friends memorial service in New York, but she doesn't want to go to the US right now but does want to attend her old friends service. Anyway she tells me that she is going to have to delete her social media accounts before she goes, and has to set up 'new' ones. As she has so much anti-Israeli government and pro-Palestinian stuff on it that she thinks that she would be sent back at the border, as apparently border control are now searching peoples phones and laptops for content when they land in the US. So much for 'the land of free speech'!... I should perhaps add that she is half Lithuanian Jewish and by no means anti-semite. She is just reacting to Israeli government policy...
Tam wrote: "In completely 'other' news. I have a friend who wants to go to a close friends memorial service in New York, but she doesn't want to go to the US right now but does want to attend her old friends s..."yes, trump is making life very difficult for anyone who isnt full MAGA, its happened and there is nothing we can do about it, with help from the US Supreme Court, he is ripping up the vague and watery US system of checks and balances.....
i certainly wont be visiting the USA in the near future, i have no social media presence but i wouldnt want to contribute a penny to the economy under Trump
Reading the NYRB just now,i remembered we have barely heard from Bill in 2025, hope he is ok?the nyrb article i was reading was around screen time and the way people are losing the art of concentration or living in the moment. I am glad i barely use a smartphone and can avoid the endless swiping and checking of phones that so many people seem to be addicted to
my phone use is maybe twice a day, i switch it on to check whatsapp messages (family + friends), then switch it off.
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He hasn't posted here since October, but is adding books on goodreads.
You are "friends" with him, AB. You could send him a message.
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Reading the NYRB just now,i remembered we have barely heard from Bill in 2025, hope he is ok?..."He hasn't posted here since October, but is adding books on goodreads.
You are "frien..."
good point....i never check the friends thing, i'm such a luddite with GR....i just post messages and load books onto the "shelves"
AB76 wrote: "Reading the NYRB just now,i remembered we have barely heard from Bill in 2025, hope he is ok?the nyrb article i was reading was around screen time and the way people are losing the art of concent..."
I often take myself out to a café for a coffee and read the paper on my phone. I don't do facebook or twitter. I do whatsapp, which is very useful.
Yesterday I finished reading, another, crime novel
It is the third and best so far in the series. Ally is the widow of a local policeman living on the coast of Cornwall. After the first book in the series she and a younger friend started their dectective agency. He was a former policeman in Leeds who left after his colleague dies in his arms after being stabbed on duty.
In this book, an aging rock star, who had just published his rather nasty biography, invites old friends, and rather dysfunctional family to Rockpool House to celebrate his 70th birthday. Having been declared fit recently by his doctor, he is found floating in his swimming pool. Murder, misadventure or natural causes? I did enjoy and think G might too.
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As so many are! I was listening to a literary quiz once and one of the questions was along the lines of: which of the following is the odd one out? All were novels in which a dead body was found floating in a swimming pool. Was it the one where the body was floating face up? No. Or face down? No. The answer, iirc, was The Great Gatsby – because the body was found floating not in the water but on a blow-up mattress.
RussellinVT wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "... he is found floating in his swimming pool...."As so many are! I was listening to a literary quiz once and one of the questions was along the lines of: which of the followi..."
Haha, definitely face down in this case!
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Reading the NYRB just now,i remembered we have barely heard from Bill in 2025, hope he is ok?the nyrb article i was reading was around screen time and the way people are losing the a..."
i have never read any newspapers or magazines on a phone.....yet
RussellinVT wrote: "a dead body was found floating in a swimming pool..."A classic trope, given a brilliant new twist by Billy Wilder and his team in Sunset Boulevard, where the body found floating (face down) in a pool turns into the narrator of the story...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HduXG...
AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Reading the NYRB just now,i remembered we have barely heard from Bill in 2025, hope he is ok?the nyrb article i was reading was around screen time and the way peo..."
When the paper I mostly read put its subscription up yet again and I realised that meant I would be paying £1k a year, I stopped getting the print version and read it either on my phone or laptop for, at the moment, £99 a year.
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Reading the NYRB just now,i remembered we have barely heard from Bill in 2025, hope he is ok?the nyrb article i was reading was around screen time an..."
ah, that makes sense! big savings
I watched Casablanca last night for the first time and was amazed this is considered one of the best films everIt felt rushed and rather ludicrous in places, Claude Rains seemed to be channelling his inner Leslie Phillips and while Bogart was good, most of it made me wonder how anyone could take it seriously
It felt like a Noel Coward play with some war references, i love Coward plays but i expected the film to be very different,darker,slower paced and more accurate
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It felt rushed and rather ludicrous in places, Claude Rains seemed to be channelling..."
I'm not going to argue about Casablanca right now, but don't forget the Film & Series thread in Special Topics!!
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A classic trope, given a brilliant new twist by Billy Wilder and his team in Sunset Boulevard..."
Great clip! In light of giveus’ review I’ve ordered The Rockpool Murder from the library.
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Maybe it depends on the circumstances, and it also probably helps to have no expectations. I have a very special memory of going with a girl to see it at The Everyman in Hampstead, part of a Bogey season, and getting the last two seats, right in the middle. The audience were cheering en masse during the Marseillaise, and collectively gripped by the Dooley Wilson and Bogey/Bergman moments. The biggest roar was for Claude Rains himself at the end when he pauses and pauses and finally says, “Round up the usual suspects!”. But I think you’re right in the sense that all the cast apparently regarded it as a piece of hokum, and were as surprised as anyone at its success. I don’t think anyone could say it is one of the greatest in purely cinematic terms, but as a piece of war-time melodrama pulling at your heart strings, it’s up there.
RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I watched Casablanca last night for the first time and was amazed this is considered one of the best films ever..."Maybe it depends on the circumstances, and it also probably helps t..."
i think i was expecting a totally different film really,a gritty thriller, with real depths. I am dissapointed but glad i finally watched it,
RussellinVT wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "a dead body was found floating in a swimming pool..."A classic trope, given a brilliant new twist by Billy Wilder and his team in Sunset Boulevard..."
Gre..."
Oooh, I shall feel guilty if you don't like it!
RussellinVT wrote: "but as a piece of war-time melodrama pulling at your heart strings, it’s up there..."Oh, absolutely. The USA only joined WW2 in December 1941, and this was released in November 1942 - so it's a wartime film which naturally enough is anti-Nazi. For all that, it manages to be quite subtle about the position of people like Captain Renault, who is responsible to Vichy France whether they like it or not. (The character seems to blow with the wind, and isn't an 'idealist' - indeed, he makes fun of Rick at one point for displaying this unexpected characteristic.)
In other words, wartime films can't be judged by the same criteria as ones produced in peacetime (I think, anyway). Whereas having a French good-time girl leading an anti-German rendering of la Marseillaise would seem ludicrously OTT in peacetime, in the context it is anything but - and moving.
Since both Bogart and Bergman are brilliant actors, the romance between them also plays out beautifully - never more so than at the end with those descending notes as Ilsa makes her choice and leaves Rick, sacrificing her happiness (perhaps) for the greater good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G62tk...
Indeed, the music - and the use made of snatches from la Marseillaise - in the score by Max Steiner adds hugely to its effectiveness, which is a romance as much as a thriller or war film.
If AB (or anyone) wants to see an anti-romance from the same period, they should watch the also brilliant but very tonally different The Third Man directed by Carol Reed from a script by Graham Greene - possibly the best ever 'British' movie. (OK, it has American stars...). But that was filmed in... 1949.
scarletnoir wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "but as a piece of war-time melodrama pulling at your heart strings, it’s up there..."Oh, absolutely. The USA only joined WW2 in December 1941, and this was released in Novembe..."
i love The Third Man,a better film in 100 ways and (mostly)filmed on location not in a hollywood studio
i agree that Bogart and Bergmann are excellent in Casablanca mind you, they raised the bar every time they shared the screen
Reading about Port Said and the Canal Zone in Something To Answer For, its mix of Greeks, Brits, French and Maltese mostly employed by the canal company or servicing and supplying the ex-pat community,i am reminded of the utter folly of the Suez Crisis.
It remains probably the lowest post-war experience of the UK until Brexit and showed the limited understanding that the UK and France had of their standing in the 1950s post-war world. Israel was another matter, it was their unruly backyard and Nasser was a threat in their eyes but for the canny Israelis, i'm amazed they didnt play it cooler
I have read a lot of novels set around the Egyptian delta from1900-1960, from Alexandria to Cairo and its a fascinating and cosmopolitan world now long forgotten. Alexandria was a city with a significant european minority till WW2 and Cairo too was influenced by the same currents. The excellent CAPMAS site(Egyptian),lets you explore map data of the religious composition of Egypt and the canal zone cities in the 1927-1947 period all had significant Christian minorities(native Coptic Christians and Europeans)
Sadly from 1956, the diversity leached out of Egypt and the Copts became the only Christian minority, though sizeable by Middle Eastern/ N Africa standards
Good LRB article on Italian PrimeMinister Meloni and the rise of Italian parties linked to the fascism of the 1930s. The article makes the sound point that this rise goes back to the 1990s and the Berlusconi daysI didnt realise she was the only european leader to attend the second inaugaration of President Trump,who will most likely now be President until he decides to stand down, which will probably be never.
Wednesday has again been a dead day for the Ersatz TLS, but i bet when i get back home tommorow, there will be a lot of posts. Its always the quietest day of my week but must be the busiest of all yours!
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It’s no revelation to say that Stavrogin is an enigma – a regular and imperturbable duellist, a figure of cold malice in the eyes of some, prideful to others, a noble character to his mother, a person who is courteous in company and who looks tenderly on semi-deranged Mary Lubyatkin, even if he took her on only for a bet, a man who imparts little of his own thoughts, until the end. I rather liked him.
What I had forgotten was how far the insinuating, manipulating, dissembling younger Verkhovensky is the absolute villain. He is near mad with the intensity of his passion to command and enslave and destroy. Nothing that is done for The Cause – reducing society to rubble, so as to build it anew - can be wrong, or even questionable. It’s a convincing demonstration of the revolutionary mindset. (I remember from the Memoir of Anna Dostoyevsky that he gained his understanding of revolutionary sentiment among students from long talks with her brother.)
The story itself is a slow burn, and yet it’s impressive that Dostoyevsky’s relation of the whole monstrous chain of events somehow never loses direction or momentum.
AB76 wrote: "It remains probably the lowest post-war experience of the UK until Brexit and showed the limited understanding that the UK and France had of their standing in the 1950s post-war world..."Definitely up there - I'm too young (!) to remember the details but was aware that there was something called the 'Suez crisis' at the time. What I do remember is my parents switching off the car engine and cruising down hills to conserve petrol.
As for low points - Suez is definitely up there, but involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan 'adventures' can hardly be counted as highlights, especially since our 'friends' in the USA in the person of Vance has completely deleted the sacrifices made by British personnel in those conflicts from his memory bank (brain cells?).
RussellinVT wrote: "The Devils - Finished this after reading it slowly over many weeks.It’s no revelation to say that Stavrogin is an enigma – a regular and imperturbable duellist, a figure of cold malice in the eye..."
Unlike Ivan (Karamazov) and Raskolnikov, I never felt that I completely got inside Stavrogin's head. Monster, or not? I'm not sure... I read 'The Devils/Possessed' at least twice, but more than 40 years ago. Much more recently (though I'm vague on the details) I read that Stavrogin had committed a rape in the full version, which would certainly push him into the 'monster' category. Do you know if that is correct?
The version I read hinted at a tasteless seduction, but it didn't seem to be rape IIRC.
(I remember from the Memoir of Anna Dostoyevsky that he gained his understanding of revolutionary sentiment among students from long talks with her brother.)
'He' being Dostoyevsky, I take it?
I have the Memoir but haven't read it yet.
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This is the first book I've read by Jean Mattern — I don't remember hearing of him before though he's written 7 previous novels — and I liked it a lot.
It's a short book: the story, narrated in the first person, of Clémént Bontemps. He says of himself in the first sentence, "J'ai passé ma vie à éviter les sensations fortes". When they married, Clément and his wife, Madeleine, moved to Sète where he bought his chemist's shop. They have one son, Matias, who shares his mother's love of music.
It's the summer holidays, Madeleine and Matias are visiting her family in Lyon. The homme sans passions will join them later. Left alone at home, a meeting requested by his son's philosophy teacher begins to stir up a lot of things ...
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I think I need to read this again — I remember it less well than others of Dostoyevsky's books.
scarletnoir wrote: "AB76 wrote: "It remains probably the lowest post-war experience of the UK until Brexit and showed the limited understanding that the UK and France had of their standing in the 1950s post-war world...."Tony Blair has something to answer for and his mate Alastair Campbell.
This film gives pause for thought:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5431890/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWtIu...
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Ersatz TLS
Books mentioned in this topic
Something to Answer For: The First Man Booker Prize Winner (other topics)Salt Creek (other topics)
Dostoevsky (other topics)
The Politics of Thatcherism (other topics)
Les eaux du Danube (other topics)
More...
Possibly not... they have some stand-out pieces. I don't know who arranged it, but the Courtauld was an absolutely natural 'fit' for the Oskar Reinhart collection - he also loved the impressionists, and indeed the two men knew each other. There is a virtual tour available here - better than nothing!
https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-...
Like yourself, the only thing we really miss about living far away from the big city is the comparative lack of cultural opportunities, though we do still get some, thankfully.