The Nobel Prize in Literature discussion

Just finished Rudolph Eucken's "Life and Travels." Perhaps this is a boring book. Yes, likely. Literary equivalent of one's kindly old grandfather telling his life story, his studies, his successes, etc. It is a book entirely lacking flair, almost entirely without event. Eucken, one of the forgotten Nobel literature laureates (as most of the early ones are forgotten) seemed to have led a fairly orderly, undisturbed existence. No tremendous difficulties surmounted, no sickness or bouts of madness, no potentially fatal romantic obsessions, no revolutionary tendencies whatsoever. And yet I enjoyed this book in a way I'd have trouble adequately explaining. I suppose it was an appealing antidote to the other book I was reading at the same time - Witold Gombrowicz's "Diary." Witold definitely has obsessions, difficulties, desires to shake up the status quo - which I can appreciate, but which also exhausts me after awhile. So when I got tired of Witold's obsessions etc, I turned with a bit of gratitude to the Olympian calm of Eucken, precisely the sort of writer Gombrowicz would have scorned: the cultured European intellectual, snug in his bourgeois values (patriotic, traditional, religious), and it had a soothing effect. Eucken makes a key point somewhere in the book, saying "I can always rely on my health." He wasn't syphilitic, insane, destitute, or exiled in a strange distant land (as Gombrowicz was). He was a stuffy, probably well-liked and respected university professor for nearly fifty years, whose philosophy, from what I can glean of it, is of a fairly ordinary "We Germans need to return to our core spiritual values" sort. At one time however, he was quite well-known worldwide, even prior to the Nobel win - he even had translations in Japanese and Chinese, and almost journeyed to those countries before the war broke out. Several of his works were translated into English, including this one, and can be found online.

Soyinka and Kertész are new favorites of mine, while Hamsun I didn't enjoy nearly as much as I thought I would.

Which Hamsun?

Kris wrote: "Just finished Rudolph Eucken's "Life and Travels." Perhaps this is a boring book. Yes, likely. Literary equivalent of one's kindly old grandfather telling his life story, his studies, his successes..."

Thanks for this. Most helpful. I'm currently part way through Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain - interesting but not gripping.

UPDATE : Finished it. Much better than I thought. However, the last few chapters are a bit of a let-down. Almost as if TM wasn't sure how to bring it to an end.

Kris wrote: "Which Hamsun?"

Growth of the Soil

Try the HUNGER-PAN-MYSTERIES cycle from the 1890s. GROWTH OF THE SOIL I did rather like, but it's a completely different sort of book from these thin, oddball little masterpieces written 30 years earlier. There are also several bad translations with Hamsun: a bunch of antiquated ones from the 1920s, and Robert Bly's HUNGER is supposedly full of faults. The three most reliable translators are Stallybrass, MacFarlane, and Lyngstad (the last has recently translated a number of Hamsun's works). Try again! He's one of my favorite writers.

I recently finished The Appointment by Herta Müller, and am now reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset.

The Acacia by Claude Simon. Really dense - sentences that go on for pages, parentheses within parentheses - but quite the tour de force.

Kris wrote: "The Acacia by Claude Simon. Really dense - sentences that go on for pages, parentheses within parentheses - but quite the tour de force."

So a bit like Proust then ?

Just finished Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternark. Such a masterpiece, loved the plot and development of characters. Anyone can recommend similar books?

Short Plays of Harold Pinter, Nobel 2005