What are we reading? 2 June 2025

[AB76]

RussellinVT wrote: "Talking about literary mags, a friend gave me a half dozen copies of the LRB he had finished with. I just read a review by Michael Hofmann on one of NYRB’s latest publications, Monsieur Teste by Pa..."

actually, he wrote a scathing piece on Andriy Platanov in the last edition of the NYRB! Reviewing some NYRB editions of Platanov's prose, he finds nothing in the writing and its a brilliant piece. I want to read some Platanov but this has discouraged me

[RussellinVT]

AB76 wrote: "actually, he wrote a scathing piece on Andriy Platanov in the last edition of the NYRB! Reviewing some NYRB editions of Platanov's prose, he finds nothing in the writing..."

Well then I hand it to them, to print a piece that is scathing about their own publication.

Last night I picked up Martin Amis’s collection of reviews The Moronic Inferno and found there were four on novels of Iris Murdoch. They made me laugh out loud. He pays tribute to her “prodigious talent” but is mercilessly funny as he tracks how her work zigzags between “excellent” and “footling”, and amid the laughter you feel he puts his finger on exactly what is not quite right.

It also made me realize what is missing with Hoffman. He is humorless. He serves up straight vitriol. Somehow you think you wouldn't mind being eviscerated by Amis when he is so funny doing it.

I was also reminded how unmissable The Observer was back in the 1980s, when it had Amis doing the book reviews and Clive James the TV round-up.

[AB76]

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "actually, he wrote a scathing piece on Andriy Platanov in the last edition of the NYRB! Reviewing some NYRB editions of Platanov's prose, he finds nothing in the writing..."

Well then..."

i hadnt spotted any negative reviews by Hofmann until the one you mentioned and the Platanov novels. I guess he is a purist when it comes to translation but with both reviews he is not quibbling over transactions, its more the whole thing he dislikes.

I find reviews hit and miss, quite a few books i have read in last 18 months got negative reviews, some i loathed got positive reviews but reviewing is an art and i love reading reviews. the best for me dont tell much of the plot but look at greater themes, the authors life when writing the novel being reviewed and where it stands in their body of work

[AB76]

I just spotted all the "special topics" sections, was looking at who has been active and noticed GR seems to record any activity as a post, seems a bit strange

[Tam]

I set out this morning to go to my 'Figurative to Abstract Art' talk in Oxford this morning. I got as far as a 1 Hour, 2 mile, tailback on the M40 due to a shunting accident and ended up abandoning it, as there was no way I could get to the Ashmolean in under 10 minutes from the M40! Still on eventually driving past the three cars and a lorry that were involved, I had to concede that things could have been a lot worse,.

As, if I had left 15 or so minutes earlier, I could have been driving one of those very mangled cars. So my message to my self for the day is 'be thankful for small mercies' and I hope no-one was badly hurt in the crash...

[AB76]

The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman (1982)

I have finished this and what a read, i read it alongside the 250 odd pages Robert Fisk wrote about the Lebanon War, from the other side of the front, in Beirut

Timmerman made me think a lot, especially with events of the last 18 months and his hopes for the future of Lebanon never really happened. The Gulf States bankrolled and Syria controlled a state of sorts but the Syrians became a problem for another 20 odd years in Lebanon and of course the Palestinian issue is almost back at square one in 2025

Fisk brings the utter madness of the camp massacres into the stark light of day, Timmerman calls Menachim Begin "unbalanced" and remembers in the 1940s in Argentina, he was seen as a terrorist

Netanyahu is an heir to Begin, Sharon and Eitan, to a terrible past that remains, wrong turns that Israel made(settling the West Bank, invading Lebanon etc)

Timmerman writes also of the terrible summer heat of Tel Aviv but the fact he has water, unlike the palestinian kids in the terrible summer heat of Beirut.

I finished this in the terrible summer heat of the shires, a fourth hot, foul day, with one more to come....i loathe it

[RussellinVT]

Tam wrote: "I set out this morning to go to my 'Figurative to Abstract Art' talk in Oxford this morning...."

Sounds like a talk I would have enjoyed too. I hope the lorry didn’t plough into the back of the cars. You occasionally see appalling video clips of that happening.

I do like The Ashmolean – a small but choice selection - though the last time I was there they seemed to have put away all their Samuel Palmers.

[RussellinVT]

AB76 wrote: " The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman (1982)

I have finished this and what a read, i read it alongside the 250 odd pages Robert Fisk wrote about the Lebanon War..."

There are times when you feel lost for words on what is happening between Israel and its neighbours.

We are promised 35C heat, plus horrible humidity, for the start of next week.

[RussellinVT]

AB76 wrote: "i hadnt spotted any negative reviews by Hofmann until the one you mentioned and the Platanov novels...."

I’ve been trying to track down the previous Hofmann review that was so negative. It might have been on Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe but the small part available online, while dismissive of Eckermann himself, is not especially heavy with invective.

Martin Amis (The War Against Cliché, not The Moronic Inferno) continues to amuse, this time a longish piece from 1986 on Don Quixote, as translated by Smollett, which he calls an impregnable masterpiece with one fairly serious flaw – “outright unreadability.” Pity he didn’t have the superb John Rutherford 1990s version available to him.

[AB76]

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i hadnt spotted any negative reviews by Hofmann until the one you mentioned and the Platanov novels...."

I’ve been trying to track down the previous Hofmann review that was so negativ..."

i am going to order the Amis, Russ, sounds interesting
shame you are facing hot weather too, what happened to lovely weeks of 22c weather eh? It seems that no summer can exist without rising temps every other week, it goes from "ooh this nice at 23c, to sticky 30c 3 days later and a bad mood"

[AB76]

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: " The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman (1982)

I have finished this and what a read, i read it alongside the 250 odd pages Robert Fisk wrote about the Lebanon War..."

There are times wh..."

in the end my lebanon reading has left a foul taste, i guess thats what Sabra and Chatilla massacres always do

[AB76]

During my Italian Libya reading last November, i remembered an obscure travel classic by a danish man who travelled through north africa in 1929-30

So i'm excited to start reading Desert Encounter by Knud Holmboe, who observed the less savoury aspects of italian colonialism and died aged only 31 near Aqaba, in Jordan.

The book has been translated, contains some photos and is a very highly regarded account of the area between the wars

More about Holmboe here:
https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2016/...

[Tam]

RussellinVT wrote: "Tam wrote: "I set out this morning to go to my 'Figurative to Abstract Art' talk in Oxford this morning...."

Sounds like a talk I would have enjoyed too. I hope the lorry didn’t plough into the ba..."

Alas it was a lorry at the back, but they were lucky I think, that it wasn't a big lorry, still it was quite a concertina effect. I saw a Samuel Palmer on a visit to the Ashmolean, in their print library, when I was studying a (P/T) History of Art course there, many years ago, and I already had a postcard of it from years before. It was nice to see it in the flesh, so to speak. Though my postcard is brighter then the one here.https://i.postimg.cc/8CrggR0n/Samuel-.... I did see this pot, in a very dark corner of the Ashmolean, last week, for the first talk and liked it very much. 5,000 odd years old, based on water waves. https://i.postimg.cc/yNQqRfSd/IMG-210...

If I was still a potter I'd be very tempted to do a copy of this urn, 3.000 years BCE, Northwest China, Ingram gift.

[Tam]

AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: " The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman (1982)

I have finished this and what a read, i read it alongside the 250 odd pages Robert Fisk wrote about the Lebanon War..."..."

I remember reading the harrowing accounts of the Shatila and Sabra Camps at the time. They are a huge stain on the history of the evolution of Israel, to me. I'm not surprised you abandoned reading about the accounts of the history. (Sabra, is Hebrew, for all those Jews who happen to have been born in Israel!...)

[AB76]

Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: " The Longest War by Jacobo Timmerman (1982)

I have finished this and what a read, i read it alongside the 250 odd pages Robert Fisk wrote about the Le..."

i did some reading about the Kahan comission that looked into the massacres and its somewhat clearer in my mind what happened with the IDF. Fisk suspects Haddad and his SLA men were involved, which i had forgotten from when i first read Fisk. (apparently some Palestinians heard men using Shia phrases and the Shi;ites did serve in the Christian SLA aka South Lebanon Army)

[giveusaclue]

Tam wrote: "I set out this morning to go to my 'Figurative to Abstract Art' talk in Oxford this morning. I got as far as a 1 Hour, 2 mile, tailback on the M40 due to a shunting accident and ended up abandoning..."

That is bad luck Tam. I had the opposite type of luck driving north on the M40 a few years ago. I drove past a car with smoke coming out from under the bonnet and a man standing by on his phone. A few minutes later the announcement came over my radio that the M40 was closed due to a car fire!

My only visit to the Ashmolean was to an exhibition which I enjoyed very much. I stayed over a couple of nights at Eynsham which I hadn't heard of before, but then the name kept and has kept cropping up ever since!

[RussellinVT]

Tam wrote: "... I saw a Samuel Palmer on a visit to the Ashmolean, in their print library..."

Thanks for those lovely pictures, Tam. I had a postcard of that very Palmer on my mantlepiece for years! Amazing that a 5000 year old vase can survive.

[RussellinVT]

P.S. Could that vase represent a comet, rather than waves? (Attuned to comets, having just read all about Caroline Herschel.)

[Tam]

RussellinVT wrote: "P.S. Could that vase represent a comet, rather than waves? (Attuned to comets, having just read all about Caroline Herschel.)"

I don't think so, as for a person of 5,000 years ago, experiencing a comet would just be seeing a small spark of light moving across the sky. The pot has definite wave forms on it. https://i.postimg.cc/MKSpjK0p/IMG-210... Here is the description, No 8, which states that communities of those times lived close to sources of water. And of course, looking at what humans have represented, in art, and throughout history, is the strong tendencies of representing what was most important to them for their own survival.

[RussellinVT]

Tam wrote: "I don't think so, as for a person of 5,000 years ..."

That all makes sense.

[AB76]

The TLS and now the FT weekend have confounded me with "summer reads" pap this week, what a bore, both are excellent reads but now they have wasted pages all the hardback advertising

i loathe lists...lazy journalism

[RussellinVT]

AB76 wrote: "The TLS and now the FT weekend have confounded me with "summer reads" pap this week, what a boret..."

What puts me off about the “Best Summer Reads” is that they always seem to be new publications you’ve never heard of, which you feel are being pushed by the publishers, whereas the best bets are not those but the well-known ones from years gone by – crime, romcom, classic, it doesn’t matter - that you haven’t got to yet. I mean, if you haven’t read The Godfather or The Camomile Lawn or Vanity Fair yet, what a great choice for the beach or the villa or the back garden. It’s why I like the December round-up done by the WSJ. They get about 50 people from all kinds of occupations, only some of them writers, to say what they’ve enjoyed most in the year, which can be anything at all, and the enthusiasm is infectious.

[AB76]

RussellinVT wrote: "AB76 wrote: "The TLS and now the FT weekend have confounded me with "summer reads" pap this week, what a boret..."

What puts me off about the “Best Summer Reads” is that they always seem to be new..."

good point, a brief scan of the FT recommendations shows they are all new books, which will be hardback and expensive. i just wish they wouldnt do the summer reads crap, many people will have no summer breaks and arent part of the consumer culture we are dripping in where the holiday industry plunders the world chasing ££££

beach reading was always fun, especially in my teens into my 20s, i dont think i read anything heavy but i always had a book ready, usually as i moved myself into the shade of a rock, tree or parasol, to avoid the sun.

[Robert]

The recent discussions of Ernst Junger got me curious. I requested two of his books, which I picked up yesterday at the Auburn Library. I've started on Storm of Steel.

[AB76]

Robert wrote: "The recent discussions of Ernst Junger got me curious. I requested two of his books, which I picked up yesterday at the Auburn Library. I've started on Storm of Steel."

both are excellent Robert, you will enjoy reading Junger, his WW2 diaries are of course excellent too and his slim novel of 1939 On The Marble Cliffs is worth a read too

Storm of Steel lies with the best of German WW1 writing, of which a lot never really made our shores, except for Remarque.

[RussellinVT]

I'll start a new thread in an hour or so.