Words! Words! Words!: Autumn 2012 'What do you read, my lord?' thread

dance appeals to the part of me that likes grand noble botches, spark appeals to the part of me that likes sonnets. -- was her work in other media any good, come to think?

Not very helpful, but I remember reading and liking her verse. Nothing more precise than that.

I have moments where I can get into the ambition of Dance, & its recording talent but I don't really care about any of it. I felt like I was reading a long, long magazine article about some pointless people. plus the part of my head that immediately dismisses anyone who expresses enthusiasm for the diaries of James Lees-Milne kicks against it - I mean 'snob' always needs unpacking, and that strain in Eng writing is built on national class fault lines and picks up a charge from that at its best (Waugh), but fuck the remainder, novel as polished gossip is its utter horizon.

The novel was never once dull but the examination of Widmerpool came down to how well the English are up the sort of illumination of a shallow man in which Proust excelled -- and the answer is not well.

I retract the statement: the two WWI volumes are boring as hell.

I stopped somewhere in Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, and no, I never thought it dull exactly – it was readable, it flowed along, slid down etc, but I wasn't engaged or enthused and couldn't really see why people whose opinions I had lots of time for made such a fuss. But I've said all this before. Mysteries of taste. Abed.

Hitchens wrote the best case for it.

That's in Unacknowledged Legislation right? I'll pull it out, read it before bed. It's one of those subjects I don't trust him on tho' - he was virtually an archivist of the British higher gossip - the 'well, as Driberg said to Connolly of Ken Tynan' sort - which basically means he will instinctively stan for Powell. But I'll look at it now again.

yep!

he was virtually an archivist of the British higher gossip

wait wait -- can you explain? He was alert to snobbery: Waugh's, Powell's, even Orwell's.

bout to start Nicole Krauss' The History of Love - am I in for a treat with this one?

no

xps

right - I see that was a bit telegraphed - I absolutely don't think Hitchens was a snob (def not of the Powell family + titles kind), but he did seem to have titanic supply of info and anecdote about world of mid-century British intellectuals, dons, journalists, authors & I think he had special attraction to inside/outside figures, ppl of the Establishment who would cut outside it (Jessica Mitford!), but still could speak its language - those people a large part of London's traditional fitzrovia/haute bohemia life, which is shared milieu with Powell, later parts of A Dance, as I understand it. The habits + patterns of that world's… gossip?… dialect? are common to both.

Tired! That felt more confusing. Maybe I'll have another go after sleep.

re greene and spark (i love them both)--he kept her supplied with crates of quality red wine when she was starting out as he thought her writing was great but knew she wasn't earning enough to buy good booze

"was her work in other media any good, come to think?"

i love her poems! and her short stories. and her autobio is great. never read any of her crit work though. the book on mary shelley or any of the others.

there is a complete poems volume that i want to get. i only have the selected poems, i think.

"I can't think of anyone c20th British with a run of ten novels to match that"

Blindness (1926)
Living (1929)
Party Going (1939)
Pack My Bag (1940)
Caught (1943)
Loving (1945)
Back (1946)
Concluding (1948)
Nothing (1950)
Doting (1952)

i wouldn't take her over spark but i got mad mad love for this string too:

Pastors and Masters (1925)
Brothers and Sisters (1929)
Men and Wives (1931)
More Women Than Men (1933)
A House and Its Head (1935)
Daughters and Sons (1937)
A Family and a Fortune (1939)
Parents and Children (1941)
Elders and Betters (1944)
Manservant and Maidservant

I love Green but there's a few things on that list as amorphous as weak Spark.

I'm eccentric about Green: Concluding is my favorite but Loving usually gets the edge.

i got lots of lady love though. let's here it for my other sweetheart:

Some Tame Gazelle (1950)
Excellent Women (1952)
Jane and Prudence (1953)
Less than Angels (1955)
A Glass of Blessings (1958)
No Fond Return of Love (1961)
Quartet in Autumn (1977)
The Sweet Dove Died (1978)
A Few Green Leaves (1980)
Crampton Hodnet

i just thought i'd throw green in there. there's a case to be made. but i'm a spark lover 4ever. i haven't actually read all of them. read two of the fat paperbacks that collected 3 novels each.

but if you guys aren't on the ivy compton-burnett train please do get on. i have such a crush on those books.

Wodehouse gets a pass because he basically wrote a multivolume novel.

forster didn't write ten but if you include his short fiction...

Just bought a copy of A Glass of Blessings last month, will get to reading it soon I hope. My first Pym.

Other 20th Century Brits w/ a 'good run' - A. Huxley, E. Waugh, K. Amis, J.G. Ballard (and other Brit SF authors - B. Aldiss v consistent, for example), Murdoch (who, according to A N Wilson, v much disliked M Spark), B.S. Johnson, E. Taylor, and yeah, def H. Green.

As for A. Powell, I find Simon Raven's 'Alms for Oblivion' sequence funnier, snobbier, nastier, and altogether much more good gossipy fun.

Yeah, I'd probably read more Raven before reading more Powell, he seemed good fun from the one I read… Places Where They Sing I think.

Waugh's probably my favourite c20th British novelist, but I don't think he's especially consistent - I think there's high contrast even in the 30s novels, like yes there's good stuff in Black Mischief, but it's far weaker than A Handful of Dust. But Ballard! Yes!

Alms for Oblivion sounds good! 'Nastier' is something I look for.

Do need to read more Brit writing...so down on the current lot and I shouldn't use that as an excuse.

Powell's Dance nicely points up the distinction between what I enjoy and what I think is in some sort of quasi-objective sense "good". I love reading his stuff, but almost on the guilty pleasure level. I'd have no interest in trying to make a case for him as a great or even very good writer and I'm always mildly surprised when I come across evidence that people whose opinions I respect think of him as one.

Biggest surprise for me was finding out that Donald Westlake was a massive Powell fan - he even includes a reference to DTTMOT in one of his hardboiled novels, Plunder Squad:

"Sternberg stripped to his boxer shorts, turned down the bed, settled himself comfortably with the pillows behind his back, and opened the Anthony Powell novel he’d started on the plane. It was Magnus Donners he wanted to identify with, but he kept finding his sympathies going to Widmerpool."

Found it funny that Tariq Ali is a huge fan (but it sort of makes sense, again, as with Hitchens, it's that counter- or mirror-establishment, radical dissent via Presidency of the Oxford Union)

I'm surprised to find myself in the opposite camp to many of you - I tend to think ADTTMOT is utterly magnificent - though not flawless - and I'm always amazed when I find people whose opinions I respect (like you lot obv) who think otherwise.

as far as current BritLit goes i feel like i need to read those edward st. aubyn books since everybody and their mother keeps raving about them. i want to see what the hubbub is about.

i think i must have a problem with great wars cuz i never finished parade's end, the powell books, or the sword of honour trilogy. i'd like to give the powell series another go someday. i don't think i actually owned all 12 books and for some psychological reason i didn't feel like i had an obligation to keep going. i'm also curious about his 30's novels. i'll bet i'd like some of those.

just finished High Wind in Jamaica—charming, hilarious, big-hearted & mordantly ironic all at once. a keeper, for sure.

should I bother with the movie?

High Wind was my big discovery this summer.

xp hmm iirc a bit too much in the way of thinly veiled child abuse & general savagery for me to agree with at least the first three of your descriptives there.

yeah that book was just ok i thought

xpost he kind of fell over himself with the whole 'describe unpleasantness from the children's uncomprehending perspective' thing (I think this was what I meant by "mordantly ironic" but who knows) but I loved it all the same... I think I fell in love with the carefully-observed zaniness of the children tbrr—took me back to teenage summers as a camp counselor

*fell all over himself—as in, he used that device a lot,

zaniness! one died and the rest showed no concern, one of them killed someone, and one went mad! nah but i get what you mean, it started off with a good sense of rambunctiousness, it just went a bit o_O after that for me.

there was—for me anyway—a weird plausibility to the children's reactions/emotions... undeniable savagery but it's not exactly Lord of the Flies

also, the animals! I think I want a pig now

"there were some good descriptions of cool stuff and it delivered a strong emotional charge via a beautiful myth about (loss of) childhood innocence. A+ novel, would read again."

I finished the first term of the Jefferson administration. I took a break and re-read Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis and am now halfway through Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, which is a workmanlike effort for a debut, but nothing great. Very reflective of the 1950s though.

how you liking Adams?

His analysis of the politics is quite crisp and persuasive. His writing is generally clear and easy to follow. These are formidable virtues in narrative history. He does not have the force or the wit of Gibbon, but who does?

robertson davies!

High Wind is swell. In Hazard is spectacular as well.

AS FOR ME:

The Dog Of The South by Charles Portis - Ha.
The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermout - 'Bout 60 pages in. Haven't decided what I think but I know I'm reading on, so implicit approval.

Having found my unread Derek Robinsons in moving boxed stuff around the house, I'm reading 'Piece of Cake'. Very blackly comic novel of WW2 pilots. All the Alan Furst fans on ILB need to try Derek Robinson.

noted

Finished Ubik last night: sheer awesomeness. Now onto Galactic Pot Healer, which already seems way different than the previous two.