This might sound strange, James, but I was involved in a one-man show about a man going through a personal crisis who rediscovered his sense of self partly through finding and reading the diaries of Denton Welsh. (link redacted)
I really do love the diaries. In Youth is Pleasure is enjoyably weird.
― Cocteau Twinks (jed_), Thursday, 25 February 2021 23:00 (three years ago) link
The guy that wrote the show, who was an ex of mine, made it in order to come to terms with ideas around campness and femininity which he had always railed against but those books helped him to come to terms with them and embrace them. Funnily enough, a year after the show played at the Edinburgh festival he became a born again Christian and renounced homosexuality!
― Cocteau Twinks (jed_), Thursday, 25 February 2021 23:05 (three years ago) link
became a born again Christian and renounced homosexuality!
renounce is probably le mot juste here, just as monks may renounce their sexuality as part of their renunciation of worldliness. doesn't mean it isn't there, because renunciation of your nature can only be a ceaseless process.
― Judge Roi Behan (Aimless), Thursday, 25 February 2021 23:13 (three years ago) link
The Death Of Virgil by Hermann Broch
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 25 February 2021 23:40 (three years ago) link
Green and Welch are good (but yes, his Diaries are probably his greatest work).
Really like to give that Vesaas a go, an author I've not explored as much as I'd like.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 25 February 2021 23:46 (three years ago) link
Is Cannery Row the one with the beer milkshake?
― badg, Thursday, 25 February 2021 23:51 (three years ago) link
jed_, that sounds fascinating! I always remember that bit from one of the memoirs where he's in China during an anti-Westerner uprising and he decides this would be the ideal time to dress up in drag and wander the streets at night. how he survived is beyond me.
― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Friday, 26 February 2021 01:58 (three years ago) link
haha! yes!
― Cocteau Twinks (jed_), Friday, 26 February 2021 11:58 (three years ago) link
Age of Reason didn't leave as big an impression on me as Nausea but I def read it in my teen existentialist days and obviously loved it (14 yr old Sartre stans unite). I just feel like it's another case where fuzzy memory might rule a vote out unless I can pick it up again.
Otherwise I have to pick between horror, kidlit and Orwell (which you could argue is both, ha).
Has anyone here read the novel of Valerie? I'd be interested to see how it compares to such a highly stylised film.
― emil.y, Friday, 26 February 2021 16:08 (three years ago) link
Nausea is the only Sartre work (regardless of genre) I’m willing to stan for. Everything else features at least one prominent element that bugs the hell out of me.
― pomenitul, Friday, 26 February 2021 16:11 (three years ago) link
I remember liking the Valerie novel! Even if I don't remember much.
― Bidh boladh a' mhairbh de 'n láimh fhalaimh (dowd), Friday, 26 February 2021 18:34 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Sunday, 28 February 2021 00:01 (three years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Monday, 1 March 2021 00:01 (three years ago) link
I've been intending to read the Valerie novel - iirc she's much closer to being an adult in the novel.
― JoeStork, Monday, 1 March 2021 01:59 (three years ago) link
I thought "By Grand Central Station..." was cringey af. Stopped halfway through.
― Cocteau Twinks (jed_), Monday, 1 March 2021 02:14 (three years ago) link
ha! I'm glad to see that the Tsar did the same.
― Cocteau Twinks (jed_), Monday, 1 March 2021 02:15 (three years ago) link
Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1946
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 1 March 2021 13:48 (three years ago) link