Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1947

i certainly read Bend Sinister from the university library (so 30+ years ago)

Voting for Kavan, despite failing to get her in the "author x compared to author y" thread, bah.

I love Oulipo, but Exercises In Style is just a fun little set of, well, exercises in style. I didn't find any heart there - Perec will always be my exemplar of the potential of Oulipo realised because he does manage to reach the heights of formalism *and* provide a heart at the same time.

Not sure why this particular pairing struck me more than any other, but browsing the list I found it really notable that Steinbeck and Calvino were publishing at the same time. They seem like such totally different generations to me.

Exercises in Style is incredibly useful as a teaching tool, but I wouldn't exactly call it a 'favourite'.

I voted Vian having expressed my dislike of another of his in last year’s poll. Lots of strong competition here though.

Emil.y OTM (naturally) about this Queneau and Perec.

Genet has always been a bit of a blind spot for me, I'm afraid.

And I agree that frothing Vian > spitting Vian, but I couldn't not vote for Camus here.

Somehow I overlooked The Plague before casting my vote for Doctor Faustus. Camus will win easily so I'm glad to hype Mann at his most ILM-friendly.

I, The Jury is trashy and nasty but fun as a contrast to the seriousness of the Chandler/Macdonald school of righteous, sensitive private detectives.

In a Lonely Place is really good, completely different from the film, an early example of a serial killer story told from the killer's point of view. Hughes' 1946 Ride the Pink Horse is also a strong noir, and her biography of Erle Stanley Gardner is the best we're likely to get.

The Mountain Lion, even though it's a bummer.

Haven't read that, or most--though do have favorably vague aftermemories of The Victin and The Loved One--will also go w tenacious impressions of The Mountain Lion, feat. hick antiheroine who marches toward the sympathy she would spit on the grave of if you proferred it on her side of the page: repressed and outward-nowhere bound, thinking of her body as a box: she is punk "before" punk, and not cool.

By "that," I meant xpost The Plague.

haha yes, Molly in The Mountain Lion is a great, terrifying character.

I think this is the most I've read from one of these polls so far. Tough call between The Plague, In A Lonely Place, The Slaves of Solitude, and Under the Volcano (not counting Dr. Faustus which I abandoned at the halfway mark). Several others that I would like to read, starting with the Fallada. I would probably go with In A Lonely Place, which is gripping, genuinely creepy and has great LA midcentury atmosphere.

Slaves of Solitude

Many fine books on this year's list. I recently read The Mountain Lion and it strikes me as the most perfectly realized and deeply human of the six of these I remember reading, so I voted for it. This could easily be an instance of accessibility bias at work, since most of the others I read much longer ago, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Without Seeing The Dawn by Stevan Javanella

Takes me on a trip down memory lane.

Genet.

Close between that and Lowry. Moravia and Dazai good. Reve is just about the only Dutch author that's made into English that I'm really keen on.

Like to read Hamilton.

The Fabulous Clipjoint by Frederic Brown -- lots of daft fun

I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane -- misogynistic balls

The Path To The Nest Of Spiders by Italo Calvino -- unusually realist early novel from Calvino, but still written with his customary grace

Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov -- enjoyably creepy doppelganger totalitarian goings-on

In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes -- one of the best noir novels ever

The Victim by Saul Bellow -- I liked this; again, shorter Bellow is better Bellow

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck -- another of his fun books, very charming

Eustace And Hilda by L.P. Hartley -- haven't read the other 2 in the trilogy, but this was actually very good

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh -- brilliant and nasty

The Slaves Of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton -- maybe Hamilton's best? One of my favourite books ever. Voting for this.

A View Of The Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor -- God I love her

Whiskey Galore by Compton Mackenzie -- entertaining trifle

The Plague by Albert Camus -- masterpiece

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada -- understandably depressed minor masterpiece

Act Of Passion by Georges Simenon -- one of the great non-Maigrets

The Evenings: A Winter's Tale by Gerard Reve -- dark as fuck, very good

Exercises In Style by Raymond Queneau -- extremely entertaining

Whiskey Galore by Compton Mackenzie -- entertaining trifle

Entertaining Tipsy Laird, surely.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1948