i voted Kafka without much thought becuase i dunno it's the "importantest" or the most singular or something
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 December 2020 18:35 (three years ago) link
I voted for The Trial, but ftr, since no one explicitly mentioned it yet: Gatsby is a good book
― loose Orwellian mobs (rob), Monday, December 14, 2020 9:26 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
basically my thoughts
― k3vin k., Monday, 14 December 2020 18:42 (three years ago) link
I don't think I could re-read the Trial, knowing that I didn't have the wallop of the punchline (such as it is) to save me. I only saw the German title relatively recently - Der Prozess - which somehow makes the whole thing even more brutally amusing.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Monday, 14 December 2020 18:50 (three years ago) link
This is where you start to see "killed by anti-semite extremists" or "killed in Stalin's purges" a lot on the less well known author's bios.
Also the second "____ without Jews" book in the last three years. Bettauer, who wrote "The City Without Jews," was murdered by an antisemite in 1925. Landsberger, ("Berlin without Jews," on this year's list) killed himself in 1933 after Hitler took power.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 14 December 2020 18:57 (three years ago) link
xp I agree, Daniel_Rf -- the few krimi I've seen have been boring sub-giallo affairs ... less boring, however, than trying to read Edgar Wallace
― Brad C., Monday, 14 December 2020 19:18 (three years ago) link
I'm voting Blondes, in hopes of status inflation karma.
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Monday, 14 December 2020 19:31 (three years ago) link
xp What a life:
Wallace was such a prolific writer that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him.[1] As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screen plays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace's work. In addition to the creation of King Kong, he is remembered as a writer of 'the colonial imagination', for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and for The Green Archer serial. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions, and The Economist describes him as "one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century", although the great majority of his books are out of print in the UK, but are still read in Germany.[2][3]Ancestry and Birth...Wallace's parents had a "broom cupboard" style sexual encounter during an after-show party. Discovering she was pregnant, his mother invented a fictitious obligation in Greenwich that would last at least half a year and obtained a room in a boarding house where she lived until her son's birth, on 1 April 1875.[9] During her confinement she had asked her midwife to find a couple to foster the child. The midwife introduced Wallace's mother to her close friend, Mrs Freeman, a mother of ten children, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fishmonger. On 9 April 1875, his mother took Wallace to the semi-literate Freeman family, and made arrangements to visit often.[citation needed]....Wallace registered in the British Army under the name Edgar Wallace, after the author of Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace.[5][6][9] At the time the medical records register him as having a 33-inch chest and being stunted from his childhood spent in the slums.[9] He was posted to South Africa with the West Kent Regiment, in 1896.[6] He disliked army life but managed to arrange a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was less arduous but more unpleasant, and so transferred again to the Press Corps, which he found suited him better.[9]
...Wallace began publishing songs and poetry, much inspired by Rudyard Kipling, whom he met in Cape Town in 1898. Wallace's first book of ballads, The Mission that Failed!, was published that same year. In 1899, he bought his way out of the forces and turned to writing full-time.[5] Remaining in Africa, he became a war correspondent, first for Reuters and then the Daily Mail (1900) and other periodicals during the Boer War.
FirstsWallace was the first British crime novelist to use policemen as his protagonists, rather than amateur sleuths as most other writers of the time did. Most of his novels are independent stand-alone stories; he seldom used series heroes, and when he did he avoided a strict story order, so that continuity was not required from book to book.
On 6 June 1923, Edgar Wallace became the first British radio sports reporter, when he made a report on The Derby for the British Broadcasting Company, the newly founded predecessor of the BBC. I thought the BBC was is The British Broadcasting Company?
"The Canker In Our Midst"Wallace wrote a controversial article in the Daily Mail in 1926 entitled "The Canker In Our Midst" about paedophilia and the show business world.[19] Describing how some show business people unwittingly leave their children vulnerable to predators, it linked paedophilia with homosexuality and outraged many of his colleagues, publishing associates, and business friends including theatre mogul Gerald du Maurier. Biographer Margaret Lane describes it as an "intolerant, blustering, kick-the-blighters-down-the-stairs" type of essay, even by the standards of the day.[20]
Politics, emigration to the U.S., and screenwritingWallace became active in the Liberal Party and contested Blackpool in the 1931 general election as one of a handful of Independent Liberals, who rejected the National Government, and the official Liberal support for it, and strongly supported free trade.[5] He also bought the Sunday News, edited it for six months, and wrote a theatre column, before it closed.[21] In the event, he lost the election by over 33,000 votes. He went to America, burdened by debt, in November 1931. Around the same time, he wrote the screenplay for the first sound film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1932), produced by Gainsborough Pictures.
He moved to Hollywood and began working as a "script doctor" for RKO.[5] His later play, The Green Pack, opened to excellent reviews, boosting his status even further. Wallace wanted to get his own work on Hollywood celluloid, and so he adapted books such as The Four Just Men and Mr J G Reeder. In Hollywood, Wallace met Stanley Holloway's scriptwriter, Wallace's own half-brother Marriott Edgar. Wallace's play On the Spot, written about gangster Al Capone, would prove to be the writer's greatest theatrical success. It is described as "arguably, in construction, dialogue, action, plot and resolution, still one of the finest and purest of 20th-century melodramas".[22] It launched the career of Charles Laughton, who played the lead Capone character Tony Perelli.[22]
Death and aftermathDeathIn December 1931, Wallace was assigned work on the RKO "gorilla picture" (King Kong, 1933) for producer Merian C. Cooper. By late January, however, he was beginning to suffer sudden, severe headaches and was diagnosed with diabetes. His condition deteriorated within days. Much more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_WallaceRead something somewhere about a housemaster reading his (11-12 year old?) charges to sleep with a chapter of Wallace each night.
― dow, Monday, 14 December 2020 19:49 (three years ago) link
Quite like to read Gide's Diaries someday too..
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 14 December 2020 22:00 (three years ago) link
I voted The Trial over The Great Gatsby as being the greater work of imagination, whereas Gatsby is more a work of deft construction.
― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Monday, 14 December 2020 22:10 (three years ago) link
I don't know! Fitzgerald invented or stumbled on an essential American prototype: the man of modest intelligence from nowhere who invents himself by sheer force of will. Think Charles Foster Kane and Ronald Reagan. The novel critiques and celebrates this prototype when it seemed fresh.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 December 2020 22:16 (three years ago) link
Kane may not be the best exemplar of what you have in mind. But Jack London would fit that mold.
― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Monday, 14 December 2020 22:29 (three years ago) link
Because he's fictional? He's a kid adopted by a bank who becomes the world's most famous man and is in the end nothing more than an empty box. Classic American.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 December 2020 22:30 (three years ago) link
Being adopted by a bank is not exactly an act of will, and gives one a considerable head start out of nowhere.
― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Monday, 14 December 2020 22:35 (three years ago) link
That's fair, but he's hardly Trump (who, I agree, does not qualify).
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 December 2020 22:35 (three years ago) link
Voting Kafka, but it hearts my heart to ignore the Cather and the Fitzgerald, both of which are masterpieces.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Monday, 14 December 2020 23:37 (three years ago) link
The Cather is so fucking good, especially Tom Outland's story.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 December 2020 23:38 (three years ago) link
Been saying a while: creative writing programs would be better if Cather replaced Hemingway as a Model of Economy.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 14 December 2020 23:39 (three years ago) link
I don't think I could re-read the Trial, knowing that I didn't have the wallop of the punchline
Kafka is all punchline imo
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, 14 December 2020 23:39 (three years ago) link
You're not wrong, it's just funny seeing as most of his works are unfinished.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:36 (three years ago) link
i'm still kind of on the side of "Brod was a traitor" but those books are good in ways that feel irrelevant and embarrassing to argue for, luckily they're good in other ways too
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:39 (three years ago) link
The Trial in particular wants me to say hyperbolic stuff that i wdn't use as a yardstick for books but ffs the century bent itself into his vision
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:41 (three years ago) link
The interpretive groundwork he subsequently laid, turning Kafka into an essentially religious author, was the real betrayal imo.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:42 (three years ago) link
Y'all should watch Orson Welles' hilarious adaptation.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:42 (three years ago) link
also the elite cadre, with Kafka at the top and Orwell quite possibly second, of writers who've stamped themselves into the imaginaire of people who've never read them
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:43 (three years ago) link
The OG Surrealists also up there.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:45 (three years ago) link
i feel like with the surrealists that's more just misuse of the word altho i guess Avida left his mark
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:46 (three years ago) link
sorry, more than just misuse of the word and i'm rambling, but there's precious little Breton or Bunuel in mainstream unconsciousness and i'm pedant enough to centre surrealism with them
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:48 (three years ago) link
to be fair drawing a core "Surrealist" cadre without including any of the lads that got kicked out/fell out/lost interest is a pretty sisyphean job
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:50 (three years ago) link
the biggest hitters would be Magritte and Dali? neither of them really ideologically central to the ideas even if i'm being kind
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:51 (three years ago) link
excuse my ramble, just need to think this out loud, but the biggest stupidest misconception of "surrealism" was when it became a substitute word for wacky/random
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:52 (three years ago) link
The term's strength lies in its suggestive, even, uh, dream-like nebulousness.
Plus, misuse is the norm (see also: 'deconstruction').
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:54 (three years ago) link
Besides, Breton's own 'definition' wouldn't exactly pass an analytic philosopher's litmus test – a good thing, too.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:55 (three years ago) link
oh yeah sorry i wasn't having a pop at you
and i'm not claiming a definitive definition
but i've not much interest in the surreal as a disconnect from the material, it's a revelation of the material imo
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:55 (three years ago) link
Nadja is one of my essential novels, but most of those Surrealists idealized or hated women or, to quote Whit Stillman, were a bunch of social climbers.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:56 (three years ago) link
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, December 14, 2020 7:43 PM (one minute ago)
yeah seriously nothing grinds my gears like a conservative who quotes orwell
― k3vin k., Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:57 (three years ago) link
all those insects, all those buildings, all that bric a brac
the commonplace usage now is a long way from the heart of the dream
obviously words only mean what the people who use them mean but
Nadja yeah, Persistence of Memory nah
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:57 (three years ago) link
Bunuel movies are chock full of stuff, not ideas
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:58 (three years ago) link
Surrealism is more reality, not less.
xps they were terrible about women, yes, although the subsequent generation of post-surrealist female writers and artists issued some fascinating correctives to the original group's misogyny.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 00:59 (three years ago) link
Breton, the Pope of Surrealism, put Dali "on trial" lol -- these dudes had no humor at all
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:00 (three years ago) link
This year has the most heavy-hitting line up so far. No one's even mentioned Gertrude Stein, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Ford Maddox Ford, Dos Passos, or Dreiser.
― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:00 (three years ago) link
Bunuel is one of my top ten filmmakers, and I don't consider him a Breton-ian Surrealist.
and to swing back to vaguely what the point was, lol
Kafka isn't writing allegories, he's mapping the world AS IS
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:01 (three years ago) link
otm
Blanchot has some good bits about this, but I digress.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:01 (three years ago) link
i think Bunuel was closest to Breton in terms of adherence to Marxism, belief in chance and materiality and not trying to create a meta-dream
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:02 (three years ago) link
there was obviously a lot of rancour and dickishness but there's at least one level where calling out Dali was funny and Dali kept his shaman face a lot straighter, for money
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:08 (three years ago) link
Mark Polizzotti's Breton bio shows Dali, at his insouciant best, having his way with these fools.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:09 (three years ago) link
The most worthwhile among them all got excommunicated.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:10 (three years ago) link
i can't objectively call a score so fair enough, the outcome was as it was. i care about Breton's work, especially the absence of work, way more than i care about Dali, who seems quainter and way more assimilable to me
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:14 (three years ago) link
Breton's poetry is about the only "spontaneous" kind I can take.
― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:15 (three years ago) link
a lot of the game play surrealist stuff isn't very interesting or good?
Nadja is amazing, i agree. i feel like Breton argued the best for not just making more stuff to shove into the art markets
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:18 (three years ago) link
ts reification as filing Yeah, he worked in an insurance office, didn't he? His father's?
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:48 (three years ago) link
oh yeah, this sounds about right: Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Work
At the end of 1907 Kafka started working in a huge Italian insurance company, where he stayed for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period witnesses that he was unhappy with his working time schedule - from 8 p.m (20:00) until 6 a.m (06:00) - as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing. On July 15, 1908, he resigned, and few weeks later found more suitable employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He worked there until July 1922 when he retired for reasons of ill health.
He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee. In parallel, Kafka was also committed to his literary work.8 p.m. to 6 a.m.!https://www.kafka-online.info/franz-kafka-biography.htm
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 01:53 (three years ago) link
Strange to say, there's only one thread on ilx solely dedicated to kafka
But there are two for Max Brod, vis a vis Kafka: Thread of Max Brod Hatewhere would we be without Max Brod?
None of them are on I Love Books.
― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 02:32 (three years ago) link
I agree that Kafka is making a map of the territory, albeit at half a step removed. Even something as ostensibly allegorical as the Penal Colony has a realist weight to it. I'm sure he'd have pissed himself laughing at the notion of being a prophet or whatever but he's like Ballard in that regard: his worlds are always on the edge of becoming our own. Or vice versa.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Tuesday, 15 December 2020 08:28 (three years ago) link
speaking of kafka, anyone read that newly translated story in the new yorker this year? it must have sucked because it seems no one’s discussed it
― k3vin k., Tuesday, 15 December 2020 13:03 (three years ago) link
There were four stories and you could read all of them in ten minutes, which may explain the lack of discussion - not to criticise them for brevity, my favourite thing I read this year of Kafka's is this aphorism:
The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens. This is certainly true, but it proves nothing against the heavens, because heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.
The longest of the New Yorker stories starts with a simple proposition which rapidly descends into typical absurdity, it reads almost like a shaggy dog story with a groan-worthy punchline.
― ledge, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 13:50 (three years ago) link
― pomenitul
Blanchot has some good bits about a lot of things. I should really go back and reread some of his shit, it's so good.
― emil.y, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 17:51 (three years ago) link
The New Yorker pieces are excerpts from The Lost Writings, which I posted about on What Are You Reading?:"It is not a barren wall, it's living sweetness pressed into a wall, bunches of grapes pressed together."---"I don't believe it."---"Taste it."---"I'm too incredulous to lift a hand."---"I'll put a grape to your mouth, then."---"I won't be able to taste it from incredulity."---"Then drop!---"Didn't I tell you that the barrenness of this wall is enough to lay a man out?"That's from Kafka's The Lost Writings, recently published by New Directions, translated by Michael Hofmann, and selected by Reiner Stach, who also wrote the afterword.More uses of humor than expected, to a range of effects, incl. at least one that turns out like a sketch from Yiddish theater, if not a Mel Brooks movie. Also one that involves a power figure's much younger wife, uh-oh: more about sex and gender than expected as well---been a long time since I've read him, though. (Those last two are almost as long as it gets in here, like a couple pages each.)Don't worry, it's also Kafkaesque:A delicate matter, this tiptoeing across a crumbling board set down as a bridge, nothing underfoot, having to scrape together with your feet the ground you are treading on, walking on nothing but your reflection down in the water below, holding the world together with your feet, your hands cramping at the air to survive this ordeal.Those are among my favorites so far, but some don't seem to work as well, though even here, he sets the bar fairly high.
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:20 (three years ago) link
Some of the ones I didn't get at first I do now (I think): the mind has to adjust to the shifts, the climbing of trees and word-walls and bridges and so on.
― dow, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:25 (three years ago) link
Kafka is evading this tendancy these days, I think. "Read some effin Orwell", is how it mostly is.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:51 (three years ago) link
Also don't think Brod's interpretation has stuck -- all of this speaks to the greatness of the work.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:52 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Wednesday, 16 December 2020 00:01 (three years ago) link
Want to vote for "Frau Sixta by Ernst Zahn", but I'm thinking of a Sixta by another mister.
― the body of a spider... (scampering alpaca), Wednesday, 16 December 2020 20:33 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Thursday, 17 December 2020 00:01 (three years ago) link
Was semi expecting a Silent Majority for Fitzgerald here but I guess it's no surprise Kafka would triumph on ILX
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1926
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 17 December 2020 16:21 (three years ago) link
Would've voted Woolf had I known it would be a landslide. Only 3 votes is criminal imo.
― pomenitul, Thursday, 17 December 2020 16:22 (three years ago) link
Shout-out to whoever voted for the Dreiser, can't honestly say I think it deserves to win this field but it packs a punch and I'm glad it wasn't shut out
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 17 December 2020 16:26 (three years ago) link
ranked voting would be handy in polls with multiple worthy books, but I think Kafka still would've won.
― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Thursday, 17 December 2020 17:42 (three years ago) link
I really want more Stein and Dreiser, also need to try Gide, but right now what an unfuckwithable 1925 lifeboat quartet: The Trial by Franz Kafka The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Mrs Dalloway by Virgina Woolf The Professor's House by Willa Cather
― dow, Thursday, 17 December 2020 18:49 (three years ago) link
The only Dreiser I've read is the Library of America volume comprised of Sister Carrie, Jennie Gerhardt, and Twelve Men: exxxcellent.
― dow, Thursday, 17 December 2020 18:52 (three years ago) link
also the elite cadre, with Kafka at the top and Orwell quite possibly second, of writers who've stamped themselves into the imaginaire of people who've never read them― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Monday, December 14, 2020 7:43 PM (one minute ago)Kafka is evading this tendancy these days, I think. "Read some effin Orwell", is how it mostly is.― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:51 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 18:51 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
Just seen the following joke in The Simpsons. Lisa is outraged about something.
Lisa: This is Kafkaesque! Kafkaesque! Judge: I've got my eye on you tooLisa: Now it's Orwellian!
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Friday, 18 December 2020 18:38 (three years ago) link
Lol fair enough though if it's a season 10+ joke then I'm not sure it counts
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 18 December 2020 18:43 (three years ago) link
It was more recent than that. Of course it means nothing, but the timing made me smile
― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Friday, 18 December 2020 18:58 (three years ago) link