Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1928

Youse can all read it in 3 days then vote for it fuiud

The Well Of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

I didn't end up getting to this before the poll, damn it. I suspect that it will be the sort of book where I can admire it and appreciate its role in queer literary history but it maybe wouldn't have blown me away on its writing alone, if you get me? Or maybe I'm assuming too much, I don't know.

Objective chance ftw.

Gay Neck, The Story of a Pigeon is a good enough title to win any poll. Also wondering why Lawrence got in so much trouble when there's a book called Irene's Cunt around.

Irene's Cunt by Louis Aragon

Wait ... what?

emil.y, I think you're right about The Well of Loneliness; it's interesting and worth reading but it's also overwrought and overwritten imo. But its flaws are fascinating in themselves, I think; it's full of raw emotion and you get a sense of how painful and scary and cathartic it must have been to write.

Tbf it sounds a bit less vulgar in French.

xp

Is "con" a pun on "conte" in the French title?

I love Woolf and Nabokov but Orlando is kind of a mess and I find King, Queen, Knave dreary. I have no memory of even hearing of that Sassoon book, which is a bit of a surprise.

Probably going with Lady Chatterley here.

Yeah I think that book is almost as well known as his poetry, tho obviously overshadowed

Is "con" a pun on "conte" in the French title?

Hmm, I don't think so. If so, it's exceedingly subtle.

Tbc 'con' in the anatomical sense was a bit dated by 1928 and hence less coarse than it sounds in English. If anything, it harks back to the 18th century libertine novels (those of Sade included) that the Surrealists and other modernist French writers were reviving/self-consciously imitating at the time. Beyond that, a 'con' can also refer to a dumb person (almost always masculine, sometimes neutral) and it's somewhat closer yet not reducible to the UK/Irish/Australian usage of 'cunt', e.g. you can say 'j'suis con' in the sense of 'I'm an idiot' after you've done something stupid. As far as the explicitly gendered, NA version of 'cunt' goes, a semi-equivalent would be 'conne' (the feminine of 'con'), except it's still not quite as aggressive, if only because modern French has fewer hangups about vulgar language than NA English, likely for historical reasons, many of which have to do with the place of religion in the US vs. France. Lastly, it's worth pointing out that, much like 'vagin', 'con' is masculine even when it refers to an ostensibly female bodily part (take that, Cratylus; see also: 'la bite'). So while Irene's Cunt is a perfectly fine translation, it's way more strident than the original.

Anyway, if we're including Le con d'Irène, a récit, surely Bataille's Histoire de l'œil should have been a contender as well.

Quicksand vs. Quicksand

I haven't read Quicksand but Passing is an amazing book.

Having spent a lot of time writing his name in these polls, I only recently clocked that Compton Mackenzie wrote "Whiskey Galore"!

Gay Neck, The Story of a Pigeon is a good enough title to win any poll.

The first notable Indian-American author it seems!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Could have a culture war or two with those three winners.

Gonna maintain a discreet silence about the Lawrence ffs

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1929

Decline and Fall is a novel I might have gone for (instead of Quartet, say). Haven't read the Tanizaki or Schnitzler, or at least I don't think so. Must remedy.

Decline and Fall, like Scoop, is one of those never-fail recommendation novels.