Novelists No One Reads Anymore

A Glastonbury Romance *is* magnificent, fwiw.

Believe Skot was a big Powys enthusiast as well.

I might have to give Phillpots a go. Dartmoor + Borges is a mix too good to ignore.

Found a bookshop, and a book that looked at all of Phillpotts's cycle, and had a great quote from The Mother that covered much of the route I'd taken the day before:

AFTER Walla has fallen from her fountains near the
cradle of her greater sister, Tavy, in midmost Moor,
she winds south-west and passes downward under Mis
Tor into the wooded glens beneath the Vixen. But,
before she leaves the waste, a bridge of grey stone spans
her growing stream, and road and river meet at right
angles. Down the great slope eastward this highway falls,
then upward climbs again under the triple crown of the
Staple Tors ; and just beyond the bridge, extended strag-
gling by the path, like a row of tired folk tramping home
after a revel, shall be seen the few cottages of Merivale.
Northward, separated from the village by moorland, and
its own surrounding fields, the farm of Stone Park
stands naked, treeless and solitary ; southward, where
Walla flows from the upland austerities into a gentler
domain of forest and arable land, there extend regions of
cultivation with their dwellings in the midst.

All round about upon this day, the stone monarchs of
the land thrust sombre heads upward into a stormy sky.
Beyond Great Mis Tor something of the central desolation
might be seen

Isn't this every Tom Robbins book though? I made it through Another Roadside Attraction but punched out early from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 11 December 2022 16:40 (yesterday) link

I once read an interview with him. Apparently your namesake Elvis Presley had one of those books in the bathroom where he, Presley, was found dead. Robbins took great pride in that, something like "The critics hate me, but I've got Elvis!"

B-b-but what about Willie?

I greatly enjoyed Still Life with Woodpecker when I was 13.

A lot of my friends and peers report that there is a very narrow window in which Robbins appeals. Very much a late-high-school/early college idea of profundity. There are some fun bits, and some cringy bits, and some things that are pretty unforgivable - whether it is a retrograde sexual politics or a corny-ass Rusted Root-style hippie vibe.

Robbins went to my college and wrote for its newspaper; I don't think I ever met or interviewed him but I did edit and publish a rather puffy profile that someone else wrote. Adolescent me thought parts of Jitterbug Perfume were enjoyable, and parts of Woodpecker, but I haven't the stomach to revisit those books.

I can dig that kind of landscape mysticism, Fizzles. Great photos, too.

Ominous, powerful, just another day at the office for Misty Tor (but not for me)

Thanks also to YMP for Robbins context: I prob should have tried him in the early 70s, not the late. Vonnegut was pretty good for late, though. Still curious about Altman's version of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.

There was an Altman attempt to film it?? Not that it would have mattered...

Does anyone read anything by John Masefield other than The Box of Delights? Yesterday I learned that was the second book to feature Kay Harker, Abner Brown, and other characters, the first being The Midnight Folk. And he wrote at least twenty adult novels, some plays, and he was the poet laureate for nearly 40 years.

Have read The Midnight Folk though don’t remember much about it. A sort of Midsummer Nights Dream collection of characters and animals involved in a fight between good and evil? Something like that.

This is very Fizzles.

Borges likes any old anglo crap tbf.

brutal and fair

https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/anthony-burgess-jorge-luis-borges-and-shakespeare/

I’m reading the Midnight Folk to my kid now. It’s part of NYRB Children’s Classics series

There was a movie of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, but it was Gus Van Sant with Uma Thurman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_Cowgirls_Get_the_Blues_(film)

I may have tried to watch it - I honestly don't remember. With some exceptions, I generally don't enjoy movies based on books I like. Because films mostly don't film what I like about books (which is mostly sentences, by which I mean narrative prose).

This isn't (I hope) a stereotypical "OMG THEY CHANGED IT" objection. Just that movies tend have characters and dialog and stuff happening, so when a filmmaker goes to adapt a book, they gravitate toward the filmable elements. Like, characters saying and doing stuff. Stuff happening. Which can be fine, and an artwork in its own right. When I like a book, I sometimes like the movie of it - but usually for different reasons than I liked the book.

Usually when I like a book I like the sentences in it (the stuff that is not as filmable) rather than the stuff that happens in it (the stuff that is more filmable). Anthony Minghella made a decently successful movie called "The English Patient," for example. I saw it and thought it was okay. But literally nothing that I liked about Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient - one of my very favorite novels - appeared in the movie.

Robbins at his peak had a decently rich and ecstatic gonzo prose style. It does not translate to film. You can make a movie of the plot, sure, go ahead. But for me the action is in the prose.

I’m reading the Midnight Folk to my kid now. It’s part of NYRB Children’s Classics series

― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 13:22 bookmarkflaglink

how correct was my iirc post, PK? I read it when I was staying at an airbnb near Denbigh while walking Offa's Dyke, in a bedroom full of children's books, with a view out across the Welsh landscape. In other words I remember the context quite vividly, but not the book itself.

Very Fizzles.

xxxpost Sounds good, YMP, thanks. Will give him another chance if I come across any more books.
Somewhere I acquired the mental image of Shelly Duvall in all-white rodeo/parade float gear, slso sporting giant thumbs, apparently congenital, perfect for hitchhiking---wiki:

...it was reported that she was to star as the lead in the film adaptation of Tom Robbins’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was to star Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Cindy Hall and Sissy Spacek'

Are Tom McGuane's novels good? The New Yorker recently published a short story that I thought could work better as a streaming etc. adaptation.

well, so far Kay is sneaking out at night with the toys his governess hid away from him and encountering beings who are searching for hidden gold.

So you're basically otm

Borges likes any old anglo crap tbf.
brutal and fair
- J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 12:34 bookmarkflaglink

I also like any old anglo crap, I should say. And I need to soften slightly, as his list contains a lot of wider ranging European and American literature. But he does have a love of an anglo form I'II hazily describe as 'romance, mystical-adjacent mystery, and the pastoral' all of which obviously blur into each other. The Three Impostors is an execrable book in many ways, Machen as the epigone of RLS, and TTI to The New Arabian Nights its poncif. but it does have something and that something is an ineluctable progress to the centre of a labyrinth of mystery - supernal or infernal - through pure randomness or standing entirely still. Absolutely no detection as such whatsoever. That is to say in London the mystery discovers you, in fact it must do, eventually, because it is an infinite city. None of this is exactly surprising with Borges, but like the other books in his list it does indicate one facet of his writing in a slightly different light.

Yeah, he took what he needed from pulp and so on---bringing me back to movies for a second: Sergio Leone talked about how this could work better than trying to adapt high-brow/more respectable/commercially and/or critically successful material, pointing out that Dr. Strangelove was built from Peter George's Red Alert, UK knock-off the US bestseller Fail-Safe, which was an extreme example of the Cold War "See, the System can work" subgenre.

Bringing it back to Borges, I mentioned his poking through true crime etc. re: A Universal History of Infamy on Borges translation?

An obvious point, but another excuse to plug that book.

he took what he needed from pulp and so on

he took what he needed

I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK, MYSELF, I AM A WRITER, I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK AND IT’S CALLED— “‘HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT HE LOST WHAT HE HAD’! THAT’S IT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

Borges also greatly admired Shaw, who wasn't a Romantic. (And Chesterton who might have a better claim to be in some degree mystical or mysterious.)

I also like any old anglo crap, I should say.

oh yeah I'm continually threatening to get back into Trollope don't get me wrong

i read half asleep in frog pajamas by tom robbins but i don't remember anything about it other than coming away with the idea that the dude was a real fucking goofball

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to thread!

It's about time I read another long Trollope.

Are Tom McGuane's novels good?

I've read three of McGuane's books and saw the film he directed of one of them, 92 in the Shade. I found The Bushwhacked Piano very funny in an absurdist way, but Something To Be Desired from 1984 was a lot more sentimental and conventional.
I haven't read his debut novel The Sporting Club, but the film adaptation is my pick for worst movie ever made.

Kathy Lette

John Gardner. Has anyone read him?

imo the midnight folk >>> the box of delights

i loooooved the former as a kid and ripped off some of the names of kay's stuffed animals for my own (viz i had a stuffed donkey called robin pointnose). the idea that they have always been kay's guardians and soldiery is a nice idea, like he'd kind of grown out of this and they had become disheartened and sloppy then a peril fully arose and everyone teams up and tools up and rises to the occasion

as i recall i found the narrative confusing bcz there's a massive (treasure-related) flashback for the story that a very old bedridden lady tells abt a sequence of father-son-grandson ne'er'do'wells who all have the same name (abner brown), which in tone feels like a different book tbh (which fair enough in context but it threw me as a very skippy kid reader)

i particularly liked the section where he hides in a witch's cupboard -- it has a good LIST of magical items, inc. both seven-league boots and also 49-league boots (which are twitching and have to be nailed down they're so powerful)

also in the house we always stayed in on our summer holidays someone had carefully written out by hand masefield's sea fever and put it up on the wall with presed wild flower and a v ancient b/w photo of some retired old sailor looking out to sea with a telescope (i believe named captain kettle):

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

i also very much liked these lines as a child (not a novel tho). somewhere packed up among my books is his actual adult adventure novel ODTAA (stands for one damn thing after another, good title imo) but i haven't read it

this is a scene from the flashback section (which is fairly treasure island-y i guess) as found in my puffin books edn; illustrator is rowland hilder

https://thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/hilder4-768x582.jpg

John Gardner. Has anyone read him?

Even when everybody I knew was reading Gardner's instructional books on writing (which are great!) nobody read the novels, and people commented on how weird it was that his writing advice was so spot-on when his books themselves were not so great.

them wot can't do, etc etc

https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/john-gardner-pugilist-at-rest/

^read the comments too!

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
I left my pants and socks there, I wonder if they're dry?

lol spike, he was exactly the age -- and temperament -- to get aggressively bored b yit, by the time i encountered it it was a fragile fragment of a lost world

Good memories Mark S - sounds like I should try to read this Masefield book also.

Very interesting comments on Gardner. In the PARIS REVIEW interview he seems full of himself and certainly sure that his opinions count for a lot.