today i bought the other two kj parker books and stephen king's new pb. i don't even belong on this thread right now.
― thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:42 (thirteen years ago) link
haha u ended up buying the other parkers? im still keeping an eye out for them
on topic: i really liked the imperfections by tom rachman.
― Lamp, Friday, 9 July 2010 22:55 (thirteen years ago) link
d'you want my copies when i'm done? they're only going to go in a box somewhere, otherwise
i am sure i will have THOUGHTS to share about them on the rolling contemporary nerd fiction thread. i will note in passing that one of the characters is now thinking about 'insurgents'
― thomp, Friday, 9 July 2010 23:24 (thirteen years ago) link
yah def - i can send you some stuff in return, if youd like. either from the nerd fic thread or this one. i have a whole bunch of nyrb publishing things i can send as well.
also i will be in LDN for a little bit this fall (like l8 sept.)
― Lamp, Friday, 9 July 2010 23:30 (thirteen years ago) link
Current library pile = authors from the New Yorker Top 20 Under 40 list, bits and pieces from that Dalkey ArchiveBest European Fiction 2010, Ann Carson's Autobiography Of Red, and a few recommendations from the other thread (Tom McCarthy's Remainder, Mo Yan's Life & Death...). Had been caught up playing catchup with teen fiction for some freelance pieces - writers like Libba Bray & M.T. Anderson seem to be doing what Shakey wants from fiction, heh. Nothing local's caught my eye lately (I think Eleanor Catton's had some press in the UK?), but I've picked up a few journals.
Anyone read Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad yet?
― etc, Monday, 12 July 2010 03:29 (thirteen years ago) link
i think there was talk abt it in some other thread?? cant remember where tho
― just sayin, Monday, 12 July 2010 07:48 (thirteen years ago) link
Bit of chat about a UK one here.
― GamalielRatsey, Monday, 12 July 2010 09:15 (thirteen years ago) link
(ayo lamp send me your address. tom dot west at gmail dot com)
― thomp, Monday, 12 July 2010 10:28 (thirteen years ago) link
hey dudes, it's ksh
I need to get back into the habit of reading fiction regularly again, so I've decided to start off by rereading Coetzee's Disgrace. haven't read any Coetzee since high school, I think, but I'm looking forward to revisiting this one
― markers, Sunday, 18 July 2010 04:28 (thirteen years ago) link
C by Tom McCarthy, anyone?
Also I see from the ILB FAP discussion that Steven Hall comes up in that list, and that was reviewed by Tom McCarthy.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 25 July 2010 19:01 (thirteen years ago) link
Absolutely. The one book I'm excited by this year. I'm in the crowd that thinks Remainder was a bit special, & this is the proper follow-up, so I've been waiting for it for a bit. Should maybe try to shake a copy from the publishing tree this week.
Never had an impulse to read Steven Hall - he was recommended to me by a couple of people, but I think they were maybe assuming I'd like something a bit meta because I read curious things.
At the mo, enjoying the bloodsport reviews of Craig Raine's novel. Sounds awful, but I might read it in a bookshop. Intrigued by the bile it's generated.
― tetrahedron of space (woof), Monday, 26 July 2010 10:09 (thirteen years ago) link
Almost finished and I can confirm that Tinkers is wonderful.
― franny glass, Monday, 26 July 2010 17:59 (thirteen years ago) link
tempted to go pick up the Gary Shteyngart tomorrow in store, which I pretty much never do
― markers, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 06:43 (thirteen years ago) link
^i have it on hold at my library
recently finished 'atmospheric disturbances' which i liked a lot
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 11:58 (thirteen years ago) link
Just chatted about C to a decently connected publishing person - acc to him, a few ppl are saying it's a masterpiece, easy best novel of the year, etc. But I don't really trust the insider perspective (especially as McC's properly represented and with a big house this time), so I'm ready to be disappointed.
Think I want to read Atmospheric Disturbances.
― tetrahedron of space (woof), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 14:11 (thirteen years ago) link
If man's autocracy, his genius, his powers of generation, have all passed to the machine, and if the pulpy, material base for the refined and abstract thoughts and emotions that we read in books has been revealed to us, then how can we understand poetry or prose as the sublime self-expression of autonomous and elevated individuals? Melville's answer is as implicit as his question: we can't, not any more.
wut
― no, you're dead right, it's a macaroon (ledge), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 14:15 (thirteen years ago) link
also am generally suspicious of anyone who writes about marinetti with breathy enthusiasm.
― no, you're dead right, it's a macaroon (ledge), Tuesday, 27 July 2010 14:26 (thirteen years ago) link
Booker longlist 2010:
Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)Emma Donoghue: Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)Helen Dunmore: The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)Damon Galgut: In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)Andrea Levy: The Long Song(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review) Tom McCarthy: C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet(Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)Lisa Moore: February (Random House - Chatto & Windus) Paul Murray: Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)Rose Tremain: Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)Alan Warner: The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
Thoughts? I've only read one of these (The Slap, fucking brilliant) so I feel unqualified to really comment.
― franny glass, Tuesday, 27 July 2010 19:50 (thirteen years ago) link
Shit--have read none, though I've bought but not yet opened the Paul Murray.
― The great big red thing, for those who like a surprise (James Morrison), Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:00 (thirteen years ago) link
I've read the Paul Murray. It's enjoyable but it didn't exactly wow me and i'm not sure it really justifies it's length. Kind of surprised to see it on here tbh. Quite refreshing not to see Ian McEwan on there though.
― Number None, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:09 (thirteen years ago) link
still need to buy & read Solar. so out of the loop u_u
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:16 (thirteen years ago) link
you really dont
― max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:18 (thirteen years ago) link
is it bad? i've read a bunch of McEwan and the only thing I really wasn't a fan of was Amsterdam
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:18 (thirteen years ago) link
by a bunch I mean, like, four of five
he kinda sucks, i think
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:19 (thirteen years ago) link
Yup
― Number None, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:20 (thirteen years ago) link
i don't think he sucks at all, but that's not the point. curious to hear max's opinion
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:25 (thirteen years ago) link
oh i was just being flippant. i didnt read it. i dont like him, or what he 'stands for.' he comes across like an asshole in interviews. but i met him once and he was vaguely nice.
― max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:28 (thirteen years ago) link
oh cool. I think I've seen like one interview with him or something, but that was a long time ago so I don't really remember it. my opinion of him is more or less based on just reading his stuff. we were assigned Atonement in 11th grade or whatever and I read Amsterdam, Cement Garden, and Saturday after that -- all in high school and right after I graduated -- and then I picked up On Chesil Beach when it was released back in 2007. i liked Saturday the best
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:30 (thirteen years ago) link
actually not sure if I even read all of Atonement
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:31 (thirteen years ago) link
you missed a pretty crucial ending, dumbass
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:32 (thirteen years ago) link
a "twist" ending
yeah
― max, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:32 (thirteen years ago) link
youll never know if 'atonement' 'occurs'
hey Que, can you shut the fuck up and leave me alone?
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:33 (thirteen years ago) link
you follow me into every fucking thread, and at this point it's more or less harassment
hey, just saying. Atonement has a twist ending and if you didn't read the whole thing, you missed something crucial.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:35 (thirteen years ago) link
i'm not fucking kidding about the harassment, dude. i never did anything to you as far as I remember, but you make it a point to make my posting experience here way less enjoyable everyday. i understand you don't like me, and i don't care about that or if you actually still think i'm a sock, but you need to just leave me alone
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:36 (thirteen years ago) link
**SPOILER ALERT**
Part four
The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.
It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality. Robbie Turner died of septicemia caused by his injury on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station. The truth is that Cecilia and Robbie never saw each other again after their half-hour meeting. Although the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, Briony never visited Cecilia to make amends.
Briony explains why she decided to change real events and unite Cecilia and Robbie in her novel, although it was not her intention in her many previous drafts. She did not see what purpose it would serve if she told the readers the pitiless truth. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it. But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:36 (thirteen years ago) link
sorry i called you a dumbass dude. i hardly post anymore, so i don't know what you mean about following you into threads. but i will leave this one, ok?
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:41 (thirteen years ago) link
it's ok. there are a million times where you've showed up and attacked me for what I thought was pretty innocuous stuff -- all I'm asking you to do is to back off it
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:44 (thirteen years ago) link
anyway, is anyone else planning on reading Super Sad True Love Story? I actually dropped by Barnes and Noble earlier to pick up a copy, which I haven't done in a while for new fiction, and I just started reading the very, very beginning earlier
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 00:50 (thirteen years ago) link
everybody's stoked about the upcoming translation of Zettels Traum right?
― gross rainbow of haerosmith (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, 28 July 2010 03:01 (thirteen years ago) link
Markers, in an attempt to be helpful, I think if you liked 'Saturday' or 'The Innocent' of McEwan's, you'll like 'Solar'.
I'll quote myself from one of the 2010 reading threads:
I really enjoyed Solar, though everyone else round here seems to hate McEwan. It's pretty amusing, though it involves at least 2 unlikely coincidences. Really it's like a C21 version of Victorian lit: "big issue' theme, lots of coincidences, larger than life characters, and some lovely prose
― The great big red thing, for those who like a surprise (James Morrison), Wednesday, 28 July 2010 04:17 (thirteen years ago) link
thanks, James! much appreciated. I do still think I'd like to read it sometime
― markers, Wednesday, 28 July 2010 05:36 (thirteen years ago) link
anyway, is anyone else planning on reading Super Sad True Love Story?
i have it but havent started it yet. i also got 'goon squad' & the new david mitchell novel. however its p hot so i really only want to read abt sorcerers atm
also i think atonement is really good or least 'interesting' despite my many problems w/ mcewan
also also thomp sent you an emailllll
― TEEN LESBIAN (Lamp), Wednesday, 28 July 2010 15:15 (thirteen years ago) link
Josipovici has a book to sell.
Never really like the 'not as good as it was before' narratives, even if
"prep school boys showing off"
and
"The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world"
have me giving a hesitant nod of acquiescence.
Also the analysis of 'hollowness' v 'genuine exploration' is too vague and the implied idea that the best books have some sort of spiritual centre makes me suspicious. And anyway I really didn't get on with his Goldberg: Variations (tho didn't mind Everything Passes), so am not automatically predisposed to his viewpoint. I guess if I want to find out more I'll have to read the book. Still seems like a pretty boring thing to go on about, so I think I'll end up standing this one out, thanks.
― Hide the prickforks (GamalielRatsey), Wednesday, 28 July 2010 20:32 (thirteen years ago) link
Tree-shakedown success! C just turned at work. Hmmmm. Appears to have present-tense narration, don't usually approve of that (exception: The Driver's Seat).
Josipovici... yeah, I've also noticed that Julian Barnes isn't as good as Kafka. Fair point, would not disagree. But for the rest of it.. it's all a bit muddled, especially what he has to say about newspaper opinion and awards etc. And I feel like we've been here before in various threads, but the heyday of Modernism he looks back to... it's never quite been like that in England, especially. I mean that's the era of Maugham and Priestley and AJ Cronin and Rogue Herries - it's always a bit disheartening to survey the body of literary production - just had a browse of the Short Title Catalogue for the 1st year of Tristram Shandy (1759) & there's a lot of tedious-sounding tosh there (ok, plus Johnson & Sarah Fielding. And I am very tempted to call up a copy of The uncommon adventures oF Miss Kitty F****r.)
But I'm sure knows this & just wants a bit of fuss.
― tetrahedron of space (woof), Thursday, 29 July 2010 09:37 (thirteen years ago) link
Guess Josipovici feels he has to do this because especially McEwan is a big deal over here, btu one out of 10 people probably feel like he does. That article is taken from comments quoted from books and an interview, and the book itself I'm sure will sound a bit more together. But yeah it sounds quite tired.
The problem is his version of Modernism that he is playing off against this stuff. Or that I distrust the narrative, sure Joyce and Beckett were friends and collaborated; and Joyce helped Svevo and Broch but besides that it always assumed that, I dunno Joyce and Proust were looking at what each other were writing, or that there were common goals between the authors instead of those two pursuing their own goals.
Also has that flippant English have no art or music here, unlike the continent, and while my reading probably reflects some of this there are always notable exceptions you discover, and then you discover enough of them to think they are not exceptions anymore.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 29 July 2010 09:59 (thirteen years ago) link
Funnily enough I suspect McCarthy of harbouring a lot of those corny old Euro-mod attitudes himself, which is one of the reasons I haven't got round to reading him yet.
Did manage to finish Lipsyte's The Ask on holiday last week - like everything I've read by him it starts off crackling and sparking, and then just seems to fizzle out. Also finished Catherine O'Flynn's The News Where You Are which I really wanted to like but again just meandered to dullness. I think she might be better off writing kids' novels?
― Stevie T, Thursday, 29 July 2010 10:12 (thirteen years ago) link
joe rogan podcast and memories of amis will suffice
― imago, Monday, 24 April 2023 06:45 (eleven months ago) link
the government should subsidize horny male writers to increase male literacy rates
― flopson, Monday, 24 April 2023 06:56 (eleven months ago) link
philip roth, henry miller etc were psyops created by the cia to get american boys to read
― flopson, Monday, 24 April 2023 07:03 (eleven months ago) link
Yeah I was going to mention class as an er identity spectrum where the classically-advantaged are very much not in a different position than before. In any case I’d have to think the economics play much more of a role than the idea that these days you get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying you’re a man
― michel goindry (wins), Monday, 24 April 2023 06:36 (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
this seems fair. the fact i am able to have 5h working days means i have time for writing, although the catch is that i treat it like an amateur pursuit, a side-gig, when i'm able to wrench free from internet obsession. then again, having writing as a side-gig probably means you're not able to accumulate the volume of work or the intensity of purpose to really get stuff published. idk. anyone trying to be a full-time writer, especially living in the uk let alone london rn has my...wonderment
re: flopson's prating, i find it notable that my first attempt at getting published was full of (very weird) sex, but my recent second, having read a bunch of books by women in the meantime, expressly had none. bowdlerised by maturity the spirit of the age eh! i feel it's for the best - if it works for Magnus Mills etc
whatever happened to the ILX writing exchanges btw
― imago, Monday, 24 April 2023 07:16 (eleven months ago) link
― flopson, Monday, 24 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink
Please no but also this points to another reason (mentioned in the piece I linked) that funding for the arts has been gutted so writers aren't able to get a space free from distractions, such as rent increases.
---
that in the past few decades, the readership for fiction has become a lot more female, and women are more likely to read female authors (just as men are more likely to read male authors). So the publishers are just following the money.
― Zelda Zonk, Monday, 24 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink
Is that really true? I'd like to see some research that backs that up.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 24 April 2023 08:29 (eleven months ago) link
women were always reading more fiction than men, weren't they? seem to recall novels were seen as dangerous in the 19th century because women spent so much time on them...
this is a Danish survey showing that the last book male readers read was in 80% of the cases written by a male author (19% female, 1% non-binary) whereas last book read by female readers was in 54% of the cases written by a female author, 44% male, 3% non-binaryhttps://kum.dk/fileadmin/_kum/1_Nyheder_og_presse/2023/Rapport_Laesning-i-forandring_FEB_TG.pdf
― corrs unplugged, Monday, 24 April 2023 08:59 (eleven months ago) link
I don't think we need rockstar male authors, but I think it's true that public literary reception has become increasingly moralistic and that sometimes that makes for less interesting work, I don't think Knausgaard would have published those books in the current atmosphere
but that goes for authors of any gender/ethnicity/sexuality, this article makes some good points imo:
Many authors write with just enough racial awareness to flatter their readers into thinking they’ve read something bold and insightful, all the while avoiding any exploration of truths that would make both author and reader uncomfortable. It’s literature as lifestyle affirmation art.
― corrs unplugged, Monday, 24 April 2023 09:03 (eleven months ago) link
― corrs unplugged, Monday, 24 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink
This is what I suspect as the case.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 24 April 2023 09:49 (eleven months ago) link
Just now through twitter and seeing a couple of tweets I have been reminded of four men who: talked about a short story published recently, a book they published in the past, a book they are to publish in future and one person who is getting a book published but are way overdue because reasons. None are names, all randoms.
Obviously this is all through book twitter but publishing your own writing is a bit of a niche activity anyway(?), so wonder if it's an actual issue.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 24 April 2023 13:25 (eleven months ago) link
Most women I know who read a lot do say they tend to prefer female writers but hegemony being what it is they prob still end up reading more men than most men read women.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 24 April 2023 14:39 (eleven months ago) link
There certainly are already a lot of books
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Monday, 24 April 2023 23:37 (eleven months ago) link
Perhaps still more books than shows, as unlikely as that sounds.
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 24 April 2023 23:51 (eleven months ago) link
I don't mean to view the days of literary rock stars through rose-tinted glasses. In lots of ways that world sucked. That world of big-time book critics, literary publishers and authors seemed very clubby. Lots of mediocre work was championed and there was more than a hint of sexism in some of the attitudes. But on the other hand, maybe having that clubby world controlling book review sections in major periodicals and newspapers at least allowed some critical mass to coalesce around certain authors and books, enough to cross them over to a wider mainstream audience and get people interested in literature who otherwise might not have given it the time of day. Those hyper-masculine literary lions were caricatures in some respects, but at least they had an appeal that extended beyond ivory-tower eggheads and hoity-toity rich folks. We can indulge some nostalgia for those dinosaurs even while admitting their kind will probably not walk the earth again.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 02:20 (eleven months ago) link
So…it was like the recording industry?
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 02:25 (eleven months ago) link
To me at least it seemed like a smaller world than the recording industry was.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 02:28 (eleven months ago) link
― dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 03:50 (eleven months ago) link
(Back to Mr Palomar.)
― dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 03:51 (eleven months ago) link
the narrator is specifically talking about Asian-American writing, and gives several extremely specific and detailed examples xp
― imago, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 06:47 (eleven months ago) link
I don't think you can call something that starts with "many authors" a sweeping generalization, it's saying from the off that it's not everyone.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 09:20 (eleven months ago) link
Many authors are saying…
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 10:12 (eleven months ago) link
Out of context, v. off-putting (incl. "Many"): made me cynical about that author's cynicism, re clickbait. Good to know there is more to it.
― dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 18:19 (eleven months ago) link
But would have to read all the authors cited, each in context, to see if the judgement seems fair.
― dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 18:21 (eleven months ago) link
(& think I'm gonna try to finish Mr. Palomar today, because it deserves more than my declining-toward-bedtime mind.)
― dow, Tuesday, 25 April 2023 19:20 (eleven months ago) link
I don't think we need rockstar male authors, but I think it's true that public literary reception has become increasingly moralistic and that sometimes that makes for less interesting work, I don't think Knausgaard would have published those books in the current atmospherebut that goes for authors of any gender/ethnicity/sexuality, this article makes some good points imo:_Many authors write with just enough racial awareness to flatter their readers into thinking they’ve read something bold and insightful, all the while avoiding any exploration of truths that would make both author and reader uncomfortable. It’s literature as lifestyle affirmation art._https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/06/asian-american-psycho🕸
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Tuesday, 25 April 2023 19:42 (eleven months ago) link
All the big rockstar male authors are still in print, you can still read them if you want.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 27 April 2023 00:28 (eleven months ago) link
Yeah, they never seem to go out of print.
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 27 April 2023 01:28 (eleven months ago) link
True, but on the other hand, I feel it would be difficult for a Philip Roth or John Updike to rise to the top these days. The "selfish misogynistic asshole describes his sexual/romantic life" genre does seem fairly done and dusted.
― Zelda Zonk, Thursday, 27 April 2023 01:33 (eleven months ago) link
Growing up in the 80s, the whole phenomenon of quality paperbacks (Vintage Contemporaries, Vintage International, Penguin American, and so on) really gave a sense of quality and excitement to new books, the "rock star" energy mentioned above. And for sure there was Richard Ford and Barry Hannah, but there was Lorrie Moore and Ellen Gilchrist and so on as well.
― underwater as a compliment (Eazy), Thursday, 27 April 2023 04:06 (eleven months ago) link
Who else among us remembers the promotional blitzkrieg that launched The World According to Garp?
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 27 April 2023 05:12 (eleven months ago) link
Sounds relevant.
MY BOOK IS OUT TODAYY ✨✨I loved writing this book and I hope you can feel that - it’s a project from my heart + hope it’s a valuable contribution to the conversation around housing, how it impacts every part of how we live and how we must make home a right for everyone ✨✨✨ pic.twitter.com/y21hBa8MdH— kieranyates (@kieran_yates) April 27, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 27 April 2023 12:25 (eleven months ago) link
Did you belong to QPB, Eazy? Quality Paperback Bookclub, for those of yall who missed it: trade pbs, quite a good variety, like omnibus editions of olde American authors coming back around (Dawn Powell!), also ones from other countries, fiction and nonfiction. A fair amount of erotica, believe it or not.So I finished (read straight through, then back through some of)Mr. Palomar. I should read back through some more of the smooth, friendly, inexorable, guided tours, sunny lectures, really, of the perceptions and thought processes of Mr. P., a seemingly afternoon, middle-aged gentleman, trained to think in terms of prototypes and models, the rightness of principles, however much he actually knows or knows that he knows or believes about them---but now he wants to see things as they are, because that's what increasingly seems right.He's a seeker of the everyday (cue" "At home he's a tourist"), getting down to basics in a spaced out way that can disappear into tiny details---my own mind blinks and misses some, I admit, but in short chapters that bump into invisible walls of the much valued world: "the surface of things," into and from which he means to peer, balancing on the window sill, but being seen, as also embraced, can be tricky: he walks past a topless sunbather several times, determined to thereby express just the right, rightest, most enlightened state of mind, until finally (you can guess the rest).At the zoo, he gets too wrapped up in the implications of the apes---until his little daughter (he seems to be a late-life Dad), tired of the damn apes, pulls him toward the penguins, aieee-it's okay though, he needed some kind of change.Which can be agreeable, like when he and his wife choose, or at least he does, to watch a gecko on the terrace window over TV: they or he can see the translucent gecko belly welcoming another bug, and even a butterfly.The ugly nasty usual pigeon clouds over Rome get bumrushed by sparrows in late autumn---Mr. P. can find no adequate account for their behavior---forming, at one point, a wheeling word balloon of sparrows, the vessel of a vast fast message, comment of sparrows, so complex, but perhaps it can be read by someone or something (sparrows?)But there's also an accruing sense, eventually spelled out in passing, of the limits, limited value and rightness of conjecture, of what he once took to be "supreme intellectual exercise," of words themselves yadda yadda I notice that the original Italian edition of this is copyright 1983, two years before the author died, and seems like he had some sense of that, falling further into place, in the comedy of thought, under the sun and moon and stars.
― dow, Thursday, 27 April 2023 19:44 (eleven months ago) link
Sorry! Starlings, not sparrows!
― dow, Thursday, 27 April 2023 20:09 (eleven months ago) link
Better late than never, I guess: 20 years after winning the Nobel and 29 years after its publication, the translation of Elfriede Jelinek's magnum opus Die Kinder der Toten is forthcoming at @YaleBooks ! pic.twitter.com/wQRogDXR5x— Karl (@underreadgerman) September 12, 2023
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 10:40 (six months ago) link
I have been emailing YUP about this book since 2005-ish and developed rapport with people as they came & went from the job. I read an extract of this in a US publication, a scene with a bus crash; it was kind of classic Jelinek, hopeless and violent....I'm a fan, I"m excited for this
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 12:20 (six months ago) link
Is that extract online?
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 13:26 (six months ago) link
no, it was in a paper journal, a very small affair. I have it around here someplace but I am pretty disorganized, books in stacks all over the house & also at the office which is half an hour away (I suspect it's out there) -- the journal is/was called Dimension 2 and the editor was a good correspondent and I see from our correspondence that I promised to send him some stuff and I probably didn't, I'll remedy that today (six years late). It's in vol. 5 no. 3 -- I believe it's the prologue, I had originally heard it was the prologue & the epilogue but I don't recall the latter.
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:32 (six months ago) link
oh wait I did find a part of it online: here. still if you have space on your shelves it's so cool to get some obscure journal that just happens to have an excerpt from a book that won the Nobel but that most English readers can't be bothered about, fun book adventures imo
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:34 (six months ago) link
Excellent, hope it's not too tough to source in the UK.
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 14:35 (six months ago) link
Thank you, J Crawford, for the link. Shall read that soon.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 13 September 2023 21:10 (six months ago) link
Two more for the year:
- Jose Donoso. There is an incomplete version available in English:https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-obscene-bird-of-night/
- Maria Gabriella Llansol in June: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/175403640-a-thousand-thoughts-in-flight
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 2 January 2024 16:44 (two months ago) link
Cool!
― The Glittering Worldbuilders (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 2 January 2024 22:47 (two months ago) link