Ersatz TLS discussion

Reaching the end of the cold, tense brilliant In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes

I am spotting little elements now which i suspect signal the game may be up, i'm hugely impressed by how Hughes writes and the world she creates. A believable male protagonist but with the female attention to things that a male author might miss

Crime novels can really suck you in when they are this well written and its so much better than the heaps of modern crime writing fluff that leave bookstore shelves groaning with titles.

Yes. There would have to be a shelf of poetry books and some of my tattered maths, some natural history, some history and some modern authors and classic - have to read pride and Prejudice every so often…..think I had better stop filling shelves.

Robert wrote: "...Have you read Kipling's Mary Glouster? Rather a novelette in verse."

Novelette is just the word for it - sentiments that might be mawkish become sincere and direct from Sir Anthony.

Harrer an' Trinity College! I ought to ha' sent you to sea........

We dropped her - I think I told you - and I pricked it off where she sank.

Great stuff.

CCCubbon wrote: "I have started to read Death under a little sky by Stig Abell
and find this is the room for me;

There are some pleasant surprises. He soon finds the main power supply, and is able to get light in..."

Sounds like a pretty good selection - I've read and enjoyed most of those.

CCCubbon wrote: "But at the bottom of the foot of the L is a huge library, primarily of detective fiction, the sort of books that had been given to him throughout his childhood. All of the great English authors from the mid part of the twentieth century: Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey. And long shelves of Americans, their gaudy covers gleaming: Chandler and Hammett and Spillane (he and Arthur had always argued about his questionable status in the canon), then the sprawling modern series by Michael Connelly, Kathy Reichs, Donald Hamilton, Donna Leon, John D. MacDonald, Lee Child, Elmore Leonard, and so on. A Scandi Noir corner. A Tartan Noir shelf. Historical detective series, like the Cadfael books or CJ Sansom’s Shardlake novels. It is the most wonderful room Jake has ever seen, and he knows instantly it will be the place he spends his winter days and evenings."

In his review of James in the NY Times, Dwight Garner wrote:

My idea of hell would be to live with a library that contained only reimaginings of famous novels. It’s a wet-brained and dutiful genre, by and large. Or the results are brittle spoofs — to use a word that, according to John Barth, sounds like imperfectly suppressed flatulence — that read as if there are giant scare quotes surrounding the action. Two writers in a hundred walk away unscathed.

(He quickly notes that he considers Everett’s novel an exception to this generalization.)

The library described above is pretty close to my idea of hell, though perhaps genre Romance would be even worse than detective fiction. In detective fiction, I’d swap every book listed there for The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and would forgo that as well if allowed The Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works.

Bill wrote: "The library described above is pretty close to my idea of hell..."

That you should despise detective fiction - I have no problem with that. I tend to enjoy it, usually - if it is well written, has a recognisable and atmospheric setting, believable characters and effective dialogue... and/or is simply thrilling. But as I always say - we're all different, and one man's meat... etc. (I'm a veggie...)

'Reimaginings of famous novels' (I rarely read those - "Wide Sargasso Sea" is the only one I can think of. It's excellent - and I never read the original.) That seems to be a completely separate discussion.

I have yet to read Percival Everett's 'James', though I have much enjoyed the three novels by Everett I've read this year. These weren't reimaginings, except if you include the playful 'Dr.No'... not that anyone could see that as a cod Ian Fleming piece. Everett deserves a separate space, IMO. (I have 'The Trees', but have yet to read it.)

scarletnoir wrote: "I have yet to read Percival Everett's 'James', though I have much enjoyed the three novels by Everett I've read this year."

Since you read Wide Sargasso Sea without having read Jane Eyre (which is a great novel), I suppose you would pick up James without undertaking The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn first (which, for some reason, is a novel I feel fairly sure you haven't read).

I don't feel the same way. If a novel is consciously modeled on some previous work, it seems to me a proper assessment of the later author's achievement (or failure) is recognizing the extent to which the earlier work is re-imagined.

In regard to Huckleberry Finn, I've had a copy of Huck Out West for a few years, but feel I should re-read the original, but find that my memory of that long ago (relatively) youthful first reading is not pleasant enough to encourage me. If I do bite the bullet and re-read Twain in order to read Coover, I'd almost certainly tack on the latest Everett in addition.

scarletnoir wrote: "That you should despise detective fiction - I have no problem with that"

I wouldn't say that I despise detective fiction. How could I and still love Sherlock Holmes?

But my feeling is that Conan Doyle pretty much exhausted the genre's possibilities and the subsequent authors' works in the genre are, at best, to use Pierre Boulez' analogy*, second or third pressings of Holmes.

*Shostakovich plays with clichés most of the time, I find. It’s like olive oil, when you have a second and even third pressing, and I think of Shostakovich as the second, or even third, pressing of Mahler.

Berkley wrote: "Earlier tonight I finished Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe, a book I started last month: it's divided into journal or diary entries, so it's a good one to dip into between other books."

I bought the recent Penguin edition last year, and read the first two volumes, which take the reader from Eckermann's meeting Goethe up through Goethe's death. Then I just stopped and never went on to the third volume, which presumably fills in "conversations" not recorded in the previous volumes.

I guess I didn't find the conversations more than mildly interesting and wasn't inspired to read more them. I picked the book up because of the widespread praise it's received over the years, though I think an artist's work is far more important than his or her life and / or passing thoughts on matters. My reaction may also be due to my ongoing reading "slump", in which I'm finding that books generally lack the savor I once found in reading.

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "That you should despise detective fiction - I have no problem with that"

I wouldn't say that I despise detective fiction. How could I and still love Sherlock Holmes?

But my fe..."

i'm no crime fiction fan Bill...i do read one or two a year but i dislike the genre and loathe the way it blankets shelves in bookstores and has become so dominant in the fiction market. So i'm with you that a bookshelf full of crime fiction would be my version of hell.

AB76 wrote: ''I'm no crime fiction fan ... i dislike the genre and loathe the way it blankets shelves in bookstores and has become so dominant in the fiction market...."

You are a one for hyperbole, AB!
(I haven't forgotten "all the dross" in Henry James 😉)

Yes, crime fiction is very popular and there are shelves of it in bookshops, but in the bookshops I go to, even the most generalist ones, I wouldn't say there's more than of other types of books.

Bill wrote: ".I bought the recent Penguin edition last year, and read the first two volumes, which take the reader from Eckermann's meeting Goethe up through Goethe's death. Then I just stopped and never went on to the third volume, which presumably fills in "conversations" not recorded in the previous volumes.

I guess I didn't find the conversations more than mildly interesting and wasn't inspired to read more them. I picked the book up because of the widespread praise it's received over the years, though I think an artist's work is far more important than his or her life and / or passing thoughts on matters. My reaction may also be due to my ongoing reading "slump", in which I'm finding that books generally lack the savor I once found in reading."

Did you read it straight through, like a novel? I don't think it would be a good one to read that way. It's a better one for dip ping into now and then, reading an entry here and there between other books.

Also, I had a single-volume edition of around 400 pages that must have cut out some of the dead wood. The only parts I found boring and soon learned to skip through, barely skimming them, were the discussions about Goethe's so-called "theory of colour": I would have cut all those, if I'd been the editor.

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: ''I'm no crime fiction fan ... i dislike the genre and loathe the way it blankets shelves in bookstores and has become so dominant in the fiction market...."

You are a one for hyperbol..."

did i say that about Henry James? I'm not a fan but i must have been in fighting form when i used the word "dross"

i can see the appeal of crime fiction, in a chaotic, uncertain world it offers some order and certainty and being formulaic, it can be comforting but i'm so bored with its dominance and i wouldnt choose to read more than a few crime novels a year

In my bookshops its been taking up more space every year....and dont get me started on crime porn aka true crime...

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: ''I'm no crime fiction fan ... i dislike the genre and loathe the way it blankets shelves in bookstores and has become so dominant in the fiction market...."

You are a one..."

Is this a 'Bookmarks at dawn!... kind of thing?... between you both? I love a good literary spat... it livens things up a bit... But on other matters I can now celebrate a new oven that has been on for 40 minutes, and hasn't blown up! Success!... Be thankful for small mercies is all I can say.... Oh! and be kind... mostly... unless you have good cause...

I think I will have a read of James, now a lot of you have commented on it, It sounds like my cup of tea. It sounds interesting, coming from someone who often rewrites other peoples poems, and occasionally riffs on other peoples stories as well... I am shameless perhaps... But it does have to be done well, and to actually say something new, to me.

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: ''I'm no crime fiction fan ... i dislike the genre and loathe the way it blankets shelves in bookstores and has become so dominant in the fiction market...."

You are a one for hyperbol..."

It's the weather getting to him G!

Berkley wrote: "Did you read it straight through, like a novel? I don't think it would be a good one to read that way. It's a better one for dip ping into now and then, reading an entry here and there between other books."

I was reading (or trying to read) other books at the same time; as I recall I was also reading a lot of pieces in periodicals and only picking up Eckermann in the morning.

Yes, the theory of color discussions were pretty tedious, though I found it interesting how extremely thin-skinned Goethe seemed when criticized on that particular topic.

giveusaclue wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: ''I'm no crime fiction fan ... i dislike the genre and loathe the way it blankets shelves in bookstores and has become so dominant in the fiction market...."

You are a one..."

i've been cave dwelling today, avoiding even a hint of the sun. though it should cool down from tommorow. i was happy on tues, warmest day since Sept 2023 but then the same smells, the same creeping heat and i'm bored of it. I dont mind fresh summery days but loathe hot weather in the UK and its occurring much more often and for longer now

AB76 wrote: "i can see the appeal of crime fiction, in a chaotic, uncertain world it offers some order and certainty and being formulaic, it can be comforting but i'm so bored with its dominance and i wouldnt choose to read more than a few crime novels a year"

I tend to distinguish between crime fiction as a whole and detective fiction in particular. In the case of the latter, I really do feel that Doyle pretty much wrote all that, if not more than, was necessary.

Outside of detective or police procedural genres, crime fiction can allow for a wider range of approaches and in my experience, much of it, such as the excellent Hughes novel you recently read, tends to emphasize chaos and uncertainty rather than offering an antidote to it.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i can see the appeal of crime fiction, in a chaotic, uncertain world it offers some order and certainty and being formulaic, it can be comforting but i'm so bored with its dominance an..."

I think Maigret and Simenon is another example of classic detective fiction, on a similar level to Conan Doyle but i cant think of anyone who can do it better than ACD.

Bill wrote: "...Yes, the theory of color discussions were pretty tedious, though I found it interesting how extremely thin-skinned Goethe seemed when criticized on that particular topic."

Armstrong describes how the much younger and far less famous Schiller, wanting to introduce himself to the great man, wondered how to do it. He decided to apply himself to a diligent study of Goethe’s theory of colour and then wrote a lengthy and sympathetic appreciation of it with tentative ideas of his own which he submitted for Goethe’s consideration. This subtle flattery worked like a charm. He received an invitation to visit, which was all he needed to begin a long and close connection.

Yes, it's an interesting point of psychology, Goethe's hyper-sensitivity on the subject. He admired scientists and wanted to see himself as one, at least in this one area, and seems to have lost any ability to thnk about it objectively. His one serious disagreement with the usually submissive Eckermann occurred when the latter dared to question some particular point of the precious theory he prided himself on so much.

I found Mary Glouster in Eliot's anthology-- "A Choice of Kipling's Verse, made by T. S. Eliot, with an essay on Rudyard Kipling".
George Orwell's essay on Kipling is good enough that it's a surprise to recall that it began as a review of Eliot's anthology. I've read the two together; that Orwell was focused on Kipling's verse, rather than his prose, may explain Orwell's emphasis on the poet's populist and emotional side.
I should add that my favorite of his prose stories is The Man Who Would Be King-- a short novelette, or perhaps what Solzhenitsyn called a "Tale," because of the number of strong scenes and individual destinies touched on in a few pages!

Berkley wrote: "Yes, it's an interesting point of psychology, Goethe's hyper-sensitivity on the subject. He admired scientists and wanted to see himself as one, at least in this one area, and seems to have lost an..."

Ahh, he held onto his model for dear life and rejected any observation that didn't fit? Yes, he sounds like roughly 50% of working scientists

Bill wrote: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn first (which, for some reason, is a novel I feel fairly sure you haven't read)..."

Wrong.. I read it after Tom Sawyer, but probably nearer 60 than 50 years ago. I enjoyed both very much*. Not sure I have the time or stamina to revisit it before 'James', but in any case Everett has written so many novels and I've only read three so far. 'James' is one that can wait a bit longer.

*I much more recently enjoyed reading Twain's takedown of Fenimore Cooper in his essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences". (I think many of the points on battle could have been applied to Joseph Roth's ludicrous 'Radetzky March' too... I can suspend disbelief, but only up to a point!)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/...

Bill wrote: "But my feeling is that Conan Doyle pretty much exhausted the genre's possibilities..."

Only up to a point, Lord Copper...

Doyle's Holmes stories are puzzles. It's entirely possible to argue that in that rather niche area of crime fiction, he may not have been surpassed, though readers of Agatha Christie or others of that type of story may disagree.

I tend to find puzzle mysteries rather boring nowadays, and never read them (I confess to having read a huge amount as a pre-teen/early teen, including most Christies.) I accidentally bought one a few years ago, and had to quit before the end of the first chapter.

No - the 'crime stories' I like have far more to them than "whodunit" - indeed, that is usually the least interesting thing about the books. In Simenon, you have an unmatched ability to describe/create atmosphere in a very few words.

Authors such as Philip Kerr write in effect historical fiction with a crime element - we discover tales of Nazi atrocities in his case. "Why not read a history book?" They'd be depressing, and also likely boring. If I need to know more about a subject, I can easily research it myself - and often do.

Some of the California based writers, say Chandler and Macdonald, are good at atmosphere and descriptions which nail a specific place and time. There are also good jokes, often.

And so on. It's a vast field, and can vary from the truly dreadful to something genuinely skilful in literary terms. They are not comparable to Holmes, because they are not attempting the same thing. It's like saying you prefer Bach to Beethoven... different styles.

Bill wrote: "I tend to distinguish between crime fiction as a whole and detective fiction in particular. In the case of the latter, I really do feel that Doyle pretty much wrote all that, if not more than, was necessary."

It looks as if we are not so far apart after all, from this comment - which appears to make a similar point to my own about different styles of crime fiction. I read this after responding to the earlier post.

I'd describe the Holmes stories as "puzzles" rather than detective fiction, though, of the sort designed to intrigue crossword fanatics such as Inspector Morse!

Paul wrote: "Ahh, he held onto his model for dear life and rejected any observation that didn't fit? Yes, he sounds like roughly 50% of working scientists..."

Indeed - your average scientist spends a lot of time on a theory, and is not best pleased when someone comes up with alternatives - or even less so when data which don't fit turn up. The poor ole classical physicists were not at all happy with Einstein's theories or with the advent of quantum mechanics...

Of course, now we have a situation where the two theories have yet to be reconciled... something is wrong somewhere... and we also have an absurd situation where "most of the universe" (apparently) consists of something which can't be detected, so they call it "dark matter/energy" - essentially, a fiddle to make the numbers add up.

IMHO, we are due for another revolution in scientific theory/modelling, unless some new data turn up to explain this huge anomaly. Anyway...

I think 90% of politicians now adhere to the 'alternative truth' method of interpreting events... why bother with facts at all if they don't fit the narrative.

I'll settle for the 50% of scientists who actually engage with the data rather than ignore it, any day!

Next up for me is a slightly dog eared second hand collection of Israeli Stories from the 1940-60 period Israeli Stories from Shocken Books

I have read a good half dozen Israeli novels, starting with the Toby Press and then some better known ones, as well as some early Hebrew stories from the 1900-1920 period. Nothing can describe Hebrew writing of that era, it was a minority tongue in the jewish shetls of the east (where Yiddish was the popular language among Jews) and not spoken widely in Israel as yet. The stories came without context or footnotes and were tricky to navigate unless you knew the world of eastern Jewish life in minute detail

This collection covers a period where Hebrew was now a national language and focuses on the promised land, less so on the East, as obviously WW2 had changed Jewish geography for ever, now Palestine or the USA was the centre of Jewish life, post 1945

Stories are by Yizhar, Hazaz, Agnon and others, nothing by Oz or Yeshoshua but then in 1960-65, they were just starting out.

Paul wrote: "Ahh, he held onto his model for dear life and rejected any observation that didn't fit? Yes, he sounds like roughly 50% of working scientists."

Surely not Paul!!!

For the past month (unusual for me) I have been reading



But am having to take a break. It is a very good book, as advised by Frustratedartist, but the stories of how terrible a life the peasants in France led has left me needing something lighter for a while. Not enough of the stop start effects of the 100 years war had, with the slash and burn policies of the English, when the kings weren't fighting one another their armies got bored and carried out pillaging, stealing, raping, torturing and killing those poor people while the wealthy just ignored the problem in their ivory towers.

So I have switched to a rather romantised version of the Plantagenet era, one I know well having read about over the years, both faction and fictionalised.

It is the first in a series of hers and is seen from the point of view of the hero William Marshall. Definitely not for learning serious history but entertaining and easy reading.

scarletnoir wrote: "I'd describe the Holmes stories as "puzzles" rather than detective fiction, though, of the sort designed to intrigue crossword fanatics such as Inspector Morse!"

I don’t think of Holmes as “puzzle” stories, because I don’t think Doyle was really challenging the reader to beat the detective to the solution of the crime while reading the story: I think that’s a feature that came with the “Golden Age” of mystery (a period I would rechristen “The Era of Conan Doyle Epigones”). I always thought that the solutions Holmes came up with were meant to surprise and delight the reader.

I find the whole “crime investigation” model pretty tedious when stretched to novel length. The protagonist, who serves as a sleuth of some stripe uncovers a series of clues and leads, many of which are mere page-filling irrelevancies, and finally comes to some solution to the crime which generally leads to a climactic confrontation. If the book is part of a series, the same protagonist is destined to go through the same tedious sequence in some undetermined number of future volumes (“Vico Sisyphus, PI”). On this template, legions of authors have hung various elements of character, setting, and history, in what passes as “originality” in the realm of detective stories.

I take it that “reading for the plot” (to use the title of a Peter Brooks book) is not a high priority for you, and that you read detective fiction to experience the author’s handling of character, setting, and history.

For me, history and fiction are oil and water. I never trust any historical information an author puts into a work of fiction: very few novelists would prioritize veracity and accuracy over the working out of the story they want to tell and the way they want to tell it. I prefer getting history from historians, which is the source, after all, for historical novelists as well.

Personally, I do read for the plot; my primal impulse for picking up any book is the demand: “Tell me a story”. I think that ideally character and plot should interconnect: what happens in a novel can be a result of an individual character’s actions or failure to act or a force majeure event may reveal the nature of a character; these interactions in turn lead to further events driving the plot. Slotting story elements into a crime investigation plot seems a Procrustean bed for what should come across as a more organic interaction of character and plot. For an example of this kind of mutual support between plot and character, I’m thinking of the novels of Robertson Davies.

Bill wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "I'd describe the Holmes stories as "puzzles" rather than detective fiction, though, of the sort designed to intrigue crossword fanatics such as Inspector Morse!"

I don’t think ..."

as i get older i am more and more interested in plotless novels, though with most fiction i'm looking for a blend of fact and fiction, historical settings and a moral-philosophical questioning of the world we live in.

some themes i enjoy more as i age are quests to find a character who has gone missing, preferably where this character is written about but doesnt emerge for so long he becomes a ghost character almost. The title character in Richardsons Wacousta is one, or in Sick Heart River by Buchan.

with modern novels, of which i have very little time for, i tend to look for "faction", where a real event is fitted around a story or "autofiction" where the novelist is telling stories about his/her own life through a veil. (Sadly Knausgard really did not impress me at all in this genre. I have Outline by Rachel Cusk lined up)

the biggest problem i have with crime novels is that i find them limited and straitjacketed, although the cream, the 1% at the top can break out of the formulaic, tired stuff that sells millions every week

AB76 wrote: ""autofiction" where the novelist is telling stories about his/her own life through a veil"

"Autofiction" is, as far as I know, a term that has been coined sometime in the 21st century and, like "magic realism", its critical application to a novel has tended to make me avoid it.

Although I enjoyed The Bell Jar, I generally don't like thinly disguised authorial self-portrayals. I was disappointed and, in some ways, disgusted to learn how much of Saul Bellow's actual life was dumped into Ravelstein. On the other hand, I do tend to accept books like The Naked and the Dead, where any self-portrait is a small part of a bigger picture drawn from the author's life experience.

For the most part with authors of fiction my reaction is: Quit talking about yourself; you're being paid to look at things and use your imagination in reporting on them.

Bill wrote: "For an example of this kind of mutual support between plot and character, I’m thinking of the novels of Robertson Davies. ..."

Here's an author we can agree on :)
I re-read The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost / Leaven of Malice / A Mixture of Frailties not so long ago and will go back to the others, too.
On checking, I see it was 2021 (longer ago than I thought) and Anne and Robert like him too. He came up again about a year later and AB76 expressed an intention of reading him — did you ever do so, AB?

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: ""autofiction" where the novelist is telling stories about his/her own life through a veil"

"Autofiction" is, as far as I know, a term that has been coined sometime in the 21st century..."

i deffo avoid magic realism!

while our tv debates in the GE have been largely a desperate series of shrieks from Sunak, very concerning to see Biden stumble in the first US debate. I like him but wow, that was bad, obviously huge pressure but i think the chance of a Trump re-election is basically a done deal now

Trump quote the Manchurian Candidate, i wonder if he read the book, more likely he saw the film, or a meme on social media...

I’m about half way through Death under Little Sky by Stig Abell. It’s interesting and well written with some nice poetic touches.
The story echoes Tana French’s book The Hunter - ex cop moves to isolated cottage near small village with eccentric characters and has mystery to solve.
I liked that he moved to somewhere without technology and
reminded myself of life without it which I remember - no tv, phone, internet and so on. As a young woman I thought anyone who had a fridge was very well off!

CCCubbon wrote: "I’m about half way through Death under Little Sky by Stig Abell. It’s interesting and well written with some nice poetic touches.
The story echoes Tana French’s book The Hunter - ex cop moves to is..."

he was the editor of the TLS...sounds interesting...

Mantel Pieces is a collection of Hilary Mantel's writing for the London Review of Books. I'm not very far in yet, but enjoying it greatly.

In the introduction, she explains how as, starting her career as a writer, she couldn't just depend on her books for a living and started reviewing. I found it interesting.

"The reviewing scene was very different in those days. There were more daily papers and they made space for books. For a time, in the autumn of 1989 and the spring of 1990, there were five Sunday broadsheets, all of them eating up copy. ...
... I was in awe of my paymasters, and at the same time I was uneasy. I recall having a batch of potential Booker winners ... and a scant 200 words for each. i was offering opinions with no visible means of support, and with little scope for nuance. it is simple, if you have only a paragraph to spare, to swat a book like a fly. Even if you have more space, it is easier to write a bad review than a good one, or to locate the flaw in a book and fixate on it. ...
When I began to write for the LRB everything changed."

She could write longer pieces; send a book back if she didn't want to review it, although "the paper is skilled at matching contributors to a book"; "all editorial changes were by negotiation"; "there were no particular space constraints" and she could ask for more time if she wanted it.

Midnight Atlanta by Thomas Mullen

The third in the 'Darktown' trilogy (or maybe there will be more?)... this excellent series tells the fictional tale of the first black cops to be employed in Atlanta, with a load of historical detail about both political and social changes and crises of the period. This latest is set in 1956... ex-cop turned journalist Tommy Smith finds his boss, the publisher of a prominent daily paper written by and for black residents murdered at his desk. He investigates, as does his former partner Lucius Boggs and their (white) sergeant McInnes.

The book works on several levels - as a police procedural, but also as a historical novel, a convincing psychological study of the main protagonists and as a thrilling tale. Highly recommended.

Bill wrote: "

1.I find the whole “crime investigation” model pretty tedious when stretched to novel length. The protagonist, who serves as a sleuth of some stripe uncovers a series of clues and leads, many of which are mere page-filling irrelevancies, and finally comes to some solution to the crime ..."

2. For me, history and fiction are oil and water. I never trust any historical information an author puts into a work of fiction: very few novelists would prioritize veracity and accuracy over the working out of the story they want to tell and the way they want to tell it. I prefer getting history from historians, which is the source, after all, for historical novelists as well.

3. I take it that “reading for the plot” (to use the title of a Peter Brooks book) is not a high priority for you, and that you read detective fiction to experience the author’s handling of character, setting, and history... ideally character and plot should interconnect: what happens in a novel can be a result of an individual character’s actions or failure to act or a force majeure event may reveal the nature of a character; these interactions in turn lead to further events driving the plot.

1. Sure, I agree - which is why I don't read 'puzzle mysteries'.

2, As a scientist, I go much farther than yourself in my scepticism. From what I can see, many - probably most - historians come to the table with an agenda, be it left- or right-wing, pro-or anti-monarchy etc. They may be able to set out the elements of what happened up to a point - no-one knows everything about that, though - but there is always a selection to be made about which acts to include, which to leave out, and the spin to be put on what is reported. I can't believe that any historian starts with a 'tabula rasa'; the best in terms of honesty that one might hope for is that they may reject their initial view, attitude or hypothesis on researching the evidence. But the selection problems and the lack of 100% hindsight - because it is impossible - remain.
In that context, it seems fair enough for novelists to inform or educate their readers with regard to political or social trends; they are selecting, too - and also adjusting timelines etc. to suit a dramatic purpose in some cases - but they are open about it. (Mullen, in the book I have just reviewed, makes that point in an afterword, as well as including a comprehensive bibliography of his sources for those who wish to delve further into his sources.)

3. I think we are using the term 'plot' differently - I was referring to crime novels where the author can't be bothered to provide convincing context or characters, and where the only driver is the puzzle of 'whodunit'. I very much expect the author to provide convincing reasons for why the protagonists act as they do... in other words, what happens arises out of the needs of the characters, and so the novel is 'character driven', not 'plot driven'. I think we are on the same page here, but just use terms in a different way.

the first short story in the Israeli collection i am reading was a really promising start. i dont usually review one short story but i will here:

Next of Kin by Moshe Shamir, written in 1960s but set maybe a decade before is a tale of a prisoner exchange with a grim parallel to events in 2024.

The bodies of a young Israeli couple are to be returned by the UN and Arab legion to Israel, in exchange for a Palestinian terrorist. The location is a wet wintry spot on the West Bank border, which until 1967 was Jordanian territory. The next of kin travel with the narrator and the army to recieve the bodies and speculation over who the two family members are related to, which body, is discussed

There is a sharp clarity to the prose, with no real trace of the muscular Israeli literature of that time(which the book introduction disdains). Shamir delivers a commentary on regular events in that dangerous world of 1950s Israel, without judgement, just focus on loss and sadness and sadly, in 2024, the pattern continues.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: ""autofiction" where the novelist is telling stories about his/her own life through a veil"

"Autofiction" is, as far as I know, a term that has been coined sometime in the 21st century..."

As often with these terms, I've heard them but am not 100% sure how to interpret or understand the ideas... so I checked out Wikipedia. These are authors I've read who apparently write autofiction:
Charles Bukowski; Françoise Sagan; Henry Miller; Jack Kerouac; James Joyce... and some short works by a few others (e.g. Proust).

I must say that I enjoyed most of what I read by all of those authors, though most produced duds (IMO) as well.

More recently, I've enjoyed hugely some works which contain elements of autofiction as well as historical and biographical elements by French authors such as François-Henri Désérable and Laurent Binet. These only contain a little about the authors, though. I was amused by one Amazon critic who wrote about Désérable's book on Romain Gary that "there's too much Désérable and not enough Gary!" In fact, there isn't that much, and where there is produces the book's funniest and most light-hearted moments - a useful balance.

So - I'm still not quite sure if this is a term which can be interpreted narrowly, or if it's really wide. Obviously, though, I do - or have in the past - enjoy some of its practitioners.

Bill wrote: ".For me, history and fiction are oil and water. I never trust any historical information an author puts into a work of fiction: very few novelists would prioritize veracity and accuracy over the working out of the story they want to tell and the way they want to tell it. I prefer getting history from historians, which is the source, after all, for historical novelists as well."

You put that very well Bill. I have read quite a lot of particularly medieval history from which I learn the facts as far as we ever can from a distance of centuries. Therefore, when I come to read a novel as I described above, I can see how the author had picked and chosen facts, and even timelines to suit her narrative. Some of the novels are quite well written and faithful but the one above certainly plays fast and loose with those facts. Doubt I will be reading any more of hers!

scarletnoir wrote: "(Mullen, in the book I have just reviewed, makes that point in an afterword, as well as including a comprehensive bibliography of his sources for those who wish to delve further into his sources.)"

If all authors of historical fiction did this, I would be a lot more sympathetic to the genre, but in my experience, it almost never happens. My understanding is that Škvorecký's publisher flatly refused to include an explanatory afterword by the author in Dvořák in Love. The only novel I've read that had what I considered a fair and complete explanation of the book's fiction vs. the historic events on which it is based is The Great Prince Died: A Novel about the Assassination of Trotsky.

giveusaclue wrote: "Some of the novels are quite well written and faithful but the one above certainly plays fast and loose with those facts. Doubt I will be reading any more of hers!."

I could not care less if a novel is 'faithful' to history (whatever that means - see my comment on scepticism wrt historians) so long as it is interesting and well written. If it fires a curiosity about a certain period or event - where so many sources nowadays allow us to check stuff for ourselves - then all the better. A novel's job, though, is to entertain the reader first and foremost.

scarletnoir wrote: "As often with these terms, I've heard them but am not 100% sure how to interpret or understand the ideas... so I checked out Wikipedia. These are authors I've read who apparently write autofiction:
Charles Bukowski; Françoise Sagan; Henry Miller; Jack Kerouac; James Joyce... and some short works by a few others (e.g. Proust)."

I've read a few on that list (it would help if it were arranged alphabetically), but the only ones that overlap with your list are Kerouac and Joyce. No argument about the former, but Joyce (I assume the work in question is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) seems more of a stretch. Sure, it's based on the author's personal experience as is so much fiction, but the early draft, published as Stephen Hero, shows that Joyce put the material through a refiner's fire in order to create something independent of the author's own biography.

Bill wrote: "Quit talking about yourself; you're being paid to look at things and use your imagination in reporting on them."

I was interested by your favourable comments about Robertson Davies - a name so ordinary I was unsure if I'd never heard it, or had heard it and forgotten... But 'Davies' is a Welsh name (my mother's maiden name, as it happens) and so I looked him up.

It seems that:

Davies's early life provided him with themes and material to which he would often return in his later work... he became editor of the Peterborough Examiner in the small city of Peterborough, Ontario, northeast of Toronto. Again he was able to mine his experiences here for many of the characters and situations which later appeared in his plays and novels....The Salterton Trilogy... These novels explored the difficulty of sustaining a cultural life in Canada, and life on a small-town newspaper, subjects of which Davies had first-hand knowledge.

Does this mean, then, that Robertson Davies was an author of... autofiction?

AB76 wrote: "Trump quote the Manchurian Candidate, i wonder if he read the book."

C'mon @AB76, be fair. Nobody's read the book (well, I have, but I'm a total nerd who's also read Laura and Psycho). Candidate is one of those films that have totally supplanted the book on which it is based (in this case justifiably).

scarletnoir wrote: "Does this mean, then, that Robertson Davies was an author of... autofiction?"

As my comments on Joyce indicate, I don't quite agree with Wikipedia on the subject. I think that implications of the term "autofiction" indicate an explicit element of presenting the artist him- or herself in propria persona as a subject within the work.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Trump quote the Manchurian Candidate, i wonder if he read the book."

C'mon @AB76, be fair. Nobody's read the book (well, I have, but I'm a total nerd who's also read [book:Laura|16922..."

lol.....