Ersatz TLS discussion

Gpfr wrote: "Quiet round here!

I realise that I didn't write any more about Harlem Shuffle after finishing it.
I suppose that overall I was rather underwhelmed. I won't say that I got no pleasu..."

its getting very quiet indeed!

Gpfr wrote: "Quiet round here!."

Olympics (slowing my reading) and avoiding politics? 😀

I have finished the epic and brilliant Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales (1971) that has suprised me with its complexity and consistency. Complexity in that it asks a lot of very difficult questions, consistency in that having three narrators, in three different time periods didnt weaken the novel at all

Next up is one of Foresters three 1930s crime novels The Pursued , following on from the excellent Payment Deferred, a few years ago. I am also reading a slim Argentinian modern novel called Glaxo by Hernan Ronsino

Am also reading a collection of Stegner essays on the American West and the Berlin journals of Max Frisch from 1973-74

I'm re-reading at the moment:

Continuing the chronicles of Barsetshire with the 3rd in the series Doctor Thorne, who shocks his fellow practitioners by his low practice of dispensing medecines as well as prescribing them. He has brought up his niece, illegitimate daughter of his dead brother, and now that she's growing up, she's starting to ask questions, not knowing her origins and thinking about who she could marry.

I'm also continuing with re-reading Nicolas Freeling's Henri Castang crime novels, now on The Back of the North Wind.

AB76 wrote: "I have finished the epic and brilliant Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales...

Next up is one of Foresters three 1930s crime novels The Pursued , following on from the excellent Payment Deferred ..."

I'll check this out.

I enjoyed Payment deferred, too, I think we talked about it before.
I hadn't really taken on board that he had written others.

Gpfr wrote: "I'm re-reading at the moment:

Continuing the chronicles of Barsetshire with the 3rd in the series Doctor Thorne, who shocks his fellow practitioners ..."

Will have to check out those Freeling books.

Having enjoyed The Salterton Trilogy last month, I'm now reading another Canadian trilogy: The Fionavar Tapestry, an epic fantasy whose world building is highly derivative of Tolkien, but the page-turning plotting and ability to deftly manipulate a large cast (like my copy of War and Peace, it opens with a list of characters) has hooked me.

I started the second volume, The Wandering Fire today and was somewhat surprised that the author decided to fold in elements of Arthurian legend, but this does help justify the idea, established from the beginning of the story, that characters from "the fields we know" (Toronto, Canada in this case) have become involved in the doings of an alternate world.

Gpfr wrote: "Quiet round here!..."

I’m still on the same three books I’ve been on for a couple of weeks ago, so have nothing much to report. As well as the Olympics absorbing a lot of time (you think you’ll only watch a bit and then you can’t tear yourself away) there’s a load of vegetables and fruit coming out of the garden that have to be harvested, cleaned and stored.

The book of essays by Joseph Epstein mentioned by Bill a while back also continues to entertain. One on Auden sent me off to look at several of his poems. At the moment I’m some way into his 30-page Letter to Lord Byron, which is written in the style of Don Juan – jocular in tone, wacky rhymes, and lots of contemporary references, except he has stanzas of seven lines rhyming ABABBCC, instead of eight rhyming ABABABCC, claiming implausibly that while ottava rima would be proper he himself would come a cropper. Early on he says he couldn’t decide whether to write to Lord B or Jane A:

But I decided I’d give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I’d no right to

And goes on

Then she’s a novelist. I don’t know whether
You will agree, but novel writing is
A higher art than poetry altogether
In my opinion, and success implies
Both finer character and faculties.
Perhaps that’s why real novels are as rare
As winter thunder or a polar bear.

Which shows that light verse can be thought-provoking even when not meant very seriously.

Wonder how Robert is getting on with his new knee. Very well I hope.

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I have finished the epic and brilliant Uncertain Glory by Joan Sales...

Next up is one of Foresters three 1930s crime novels The Pursued , following on from the excellent Payment Defe..."

apparently the one i am about to start was a "lost novel", only found and re-published after it was purchased at a rare book sale in 1999.

Re: Edmund Wilson

I loved a collection of his 1920s and 1930s essays i found about 7-8 years ago, so was interested in his collected journals from 1940-50. A rather slender volume with potential

Sadly while the WW2 section(1940-45) was good in places, i gave up on the 1945-50 pieces which involved some very intimate descriptions of his new wife's body and meandering social visits, a real shocker, a mess, should never have been published

AB76 wrote: " i gave up on the 1945-50 pieces which involved some very intimate descriptions of his new wife's body"

In 2015 I read Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County, which was banned for a number of years in NY state and, effectively, for much of that time in the US generally. On reading it, I assumed that the explicit anatomical and sexual descriptions Wilson included in the story "The Princess with Golden Hair" were the reason for this. I quoted from this section extensively in my review, if you'd be interested in comparing his published descriptions with what he wrote in his journals about his wife. (Was this Mary McCarthy or a later spouse?)

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: " i gave up on the 1945-50 pieces which involved some very intimate descriptions of his new wife's body"

In 2015 I read Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County, which was banne..."

it was Elena Mumm Thornton Wilson who he describes in far too much detail, he had split with McCarthy. I have a lasting memory of Wilson now as a dirty middle aged man really, his comments and behaviour towards women did not impress me. Prostitutes in London and possible other dalliances with much younger women.

would you recommend Memoirs of Hecate County? If its an endless riff on describing the bodies of his beloved in fiction, then no thanks

and yes, the quote in your review matches the ones in the journal with even more unncessary detail in the short stories

I finished Ma’am Darling by Craig Brown, at last. As a biography it’s actually quite accomplished, culling stories from far and wide on Princess Margaret and her raffish friends. But don’t believe the quotes from critics (e.g. Julian Barnes) calling it extremely funny and hilarious. Who could laugh at such a sad, unsatisfied life?

Turning now to a reliable source of complete satisfaction, the masterly Turgenev and Sketches from a Hunter’s Album.

Logger24 wrote: "I finished Ma’am Darling by Craig Brown, at last. As a biography it’s actually quite accomplished, culling stories from far and wide on Princess Margaret and her raffish friends. But don’t believe ..."

Out of interest did you get my message. Just checking that it is working OK, as I have put it in a separate file, in the hopes that they wont get deleted in future, which is what happened to the old ones. But that might have interfered with whether it got sent or not?

AB76 wrote: "would you recommend Memoirs of Hecate County? If its an endless riff on describing the bodies of his beloved in fiction, then no thanks"

As I note in my review, Wilson hits a variety of literary modes in Hecate: the uncanny, satire, realism, so the book is far from being a one-note performance. I can't really recommend it unreservedly; there's probably something in there to appeal to most readers, but the book is so protean, there's probably also something most readers will find off-putting. On the whole, I'm glad to have read it, but still prefer Wilson as a New Yorker reviewer. If you have a decent mastery of French, you may get more from the final story than I did (probably, for me, the off-putting section).

Tam wrote: "Out of interest did you get my message...."

Thanks, Tam, sure did. I’ll get back to you v soon.

The Pursued by CS Forester(1935) is a great rescued "lost" classic of noir-ish 1930s suburban crime

Its immediately familiar in setting and tone as many novels of that era, as suburban living expanded out of the major cities in the nation and a lower middle class character began to emerge in these in-between lands.

So far, in about 40 pages, Forester hasnt set a foot wrong, it all fits and works, the suspect seems obvious but there is more to the novel than that

AB76 wrote: "Sadly while the WW2 section(1940-45) was good in places, i gave up on the 1945-50 pieces which involved some very intimate descriptions of his new wife's body and meandering social visits, a real shocker, a mess, should never have been published"

I take it, though, that these journals were written by Wilson for his own purposes and published posthumously, so it was the editor's and publisher's decision to make them public.

I tend to judge a writer or artist by what he chooses to bring before the public. Any look at unpublished work or private writings such as letters or diaries can be interesting for those who want to pursue the biography of the person behind the art, but such a pursuit always holds the danger of the discovery of distasteful characteristics.

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Sadly while the WW2 section(1940-45) was good in places, i gave up on the 1945-50 pieces which involved some very intimate descriptions of his new wife's body and meandering social vis..."

good point and yes, these were editors selections from his scattered 1940s notebooks and journals

From The Berlin Journals by Max Frisch has been a superb find and a brilliant insight into the world of early 1970s German authors in West and East Germany

Frisch, the swiss writer, kept a journal as he lived in Freidenau in West Berlin, from 1972-74. The selections in this volume by Seagull Books are superb and are exactly what i am looking for with diaries/journals. Making me think, observation of a time and place etc

a few hot days now — OK, Paul, I know I don't know real weather! 🥵🌞❄, but 38° is hot for me 😅. That's for tomorrow, today's high is 33°. The real problem is it doesn't cool down much at night, it'll drop to 23° between 5.00 and 8.00 tomorrow a.m.

Anyway, enough whining.
It might be a good moment to read Journal d'Arizona et du Mexique:. From the BnF site:

Born in Lyon in 1954, Chantal Thomas is a philosopher, essayist, playwright and novelist. A specialist in eighteenth-century literature, she has taught at a number of universities in the United States and France and is director of research at the CNRS.

She was elected to the Académie Française in 2020.

In the early 1980s, while living in New York, she was invited to teach French literature at the University of Arizona. They asked her to stay on, "un choix trop décisif". Before going back to France, she made a trip to Mexico.

It seems a while since we've seen scarletnoir — I hope all is well.

Speaking of New Yorker critics, are there any James Wood readers here?

I have a book by him I picked up a while ago, The Nearest Thing to Life, but haven't yet read. I usually read his reviews in the magazine, though he often chooses books I in which I have little interest.

I'm aware, in a vague sort of way, that in his youth he was involved in a version fundamentalist Christianity which he abandoned / escaped from, and this informs dome of his reviews. He was perhaps the only critic to review Reading Genesis who wasn't intimidated by Robinson's Calvinist piety.

His latest is a review of Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, which Michael Dirda gave a somewhat lukewarm (for Dirda) review. Wood's is more postive, though his summary of Goethe's Faust makes me wonder whether he actually read it:

In Goethe’s fairly incoherent verse play “Faust,” written in two parts between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the protagonist is an elderly scholar, and Mephistopheles appears in the guise of a wandering student. In the second part of the play, published in 1832, Goethe jettisons the orthodox punishments of the canonical accounts and has Faust sweetly ascend to Heaven: in the nineteenth century, the old theology is becoming romantically weightless.

Gpfr wrote: "It seems a while since we've seen scarletnoir — I hope all is well."

me too, always a regular and interesting contributor

could be enjoying the weather ofc? or on a trip somewhere?

Bill wrote: "Speaking of New Yorker critics, are there any James Wood readers here?..."

I’ve read a few of his though not the ones you mention – The Broken Estate, The Fun Stuff and, the best imo, How Fiction Works, really intriguing. I went off him when there was a whole essay of Wood critiquing Orwell critiquing Tolstoy critiquing Shakespeare. Come on, there’s got to be something better to do in life!

Logger24 wrote: "I went off him when there was a whole essay of Wood critiquing Orwell critiquing Tolstoy critiquing Shakespeare. Come on, there’s got to be something better to do in life!"

The only possible response to that is to write a critique of Wood's critique of the nested critiques.

I started looking back through the New Yorker archives at Wood's pieces and found that he reviewed The Finkler Question, which I just finished with rather mixed feelings. I plan to read that later today.

I think I also found the Orwell piece you mention, if you're referring specifically to this paragraph:

His nicely pugilistic essay on Tolstoy’s hatred of “King Lear,” from 1947, is skeptical about Tolstoy’s late, monkish religiosity, and sets up a binarism that is repeated two years later, in his essay on Gandhi. For Orwell, the humanist is committed to this world and its difficulties, and knows that “life is suffering.” But the religious believer wagers everything on the next life, and though the two sides, secular and religious, may occasionally overlap, there can be no ultimate reconciliation between them. (Orwell was on the humanist side, of course—basically an unmetaphysical, English version of Camus’s philosophy of perpetual godless struggle.) Orwell suspects that when the bullying Russian novelist became a bullying religious writer, he merely exchanged one form of egoism for another. “The distinction that really matters is not between violence and non-violence, but between having and not having the appetite for power.” The example he appends is an interesting one: when a father threatens his son with “You’ll get a thick ear if you do that again,” coercion is palpable. But, Orwell writes, what of the mother who lovingly murmurs, “Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?” The mother wants to contaminate her son’s brain. Tolstoy did not propose that “King Lear” be banned or censored, Orwell says; instead, when he wrote his polemic against Shakespeare, he tried to contaminate our pleasure in the play. For Orwell, “Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind.”

a letter in the TLS bemoaned the cost of OUP and CUP titles and its something i am suprised is still a problem with our two top university presses, affordable editions are almost non-existent

I dont let the price get to me if a new academic/uni press work is £25 but i still think thats a lot to pay, when the paperback could be £14

AB76 wrote: "a letter in the TLS bemoaned the cost of OUP and CUP titles..."

You also learn, if you’re running a small bookshop that, unlike the 40% or 50% discount from the retail price that you get on most trade books when buying wholesale, the discount you get on those OUP and CUP titles is usually 0%. I’m not sure how, with zero profit, any bookshop could be expected to stock them. I assume the university presses are not really interested in the retail trade, and look instead to the libraries and the institutional market who, I imagine, buy direct. The US presses are not a lot better. Yale, Princeton and Harvard (Belknap) typically give 5%, though sometimes you can be surprised and get 25%. Even so, we like to stock some of these books, the ones we like the look of, in addition to the Oxford World Classics and OUP Very Short Introductions. To our mind, they do give an aura of quality – even if you don’t succeed in selling them. Eventually I can buy them for myself.

Bill wrote: "......"

Try again.

Bill wrote: "...I think I also found the Orwell piece you mention..."

That’s certainly it. My memory says it went on much longer.

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "It seems a while since we've seen scarletnoir — I hope all is well."

me too, always a regular and interesting contributor

could be enjoying the weather ofc? or on a trip somewhere?"

To the best of my knowledge scarlet and partner usually do a tour to their property in Brittany around this time of year. Hopefully they are just off on a, probably, well earned break. I'm also wondering as to what has happened to MK, who we have not heard from for quite a while. Fingers crossed, and hoping for the best....

Tam wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "It seems a while since we've seen scarletnoir — I hope all is well."

I'm also wondering as to what has happened to MK..."

Yes, I posted that a while ago. She had health problems ...

@AB76
Seeing your exchange with Andy on WWR, don't forget we can follow his travels on his blog, with his jealousy-inducing photos.

https://safe-return-doubtful.com/

Now he's got his own site, there are no longer the problems that we had when he was on tumblr.

Logger24 wrote: "That’s certainly it. My memory says it went on much longer."

Well, that's from the magazine. If you read it reprinted in a collection, he might have expanded it, or had a more indulgent editor.

Gpfr wrote: "Robert wrote: "I'm off to the hospital to get a new knee. "

I hope all goes well, Robert!"

thanks/

Logger24 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "a letter in the TLS bemoaned the cost of OUP and CUP titles..."

You also learn, if you’re running a small bookshop that, unlike the 40% or 50% discount from the retail price that you ..."

thanks for that logger, that does explain the motivation of the Oxbridge presses, no discount on the OUP classics either?

Gpfr wrote: "@AB76
Seeing your exchange with Andy on WWR, don't forget we can follow his travels on his blog, with his jealousy-inducing photos.

https://safe-return-doubtful.com/

Now he's got his own site, th..."

aha, thanks GP!

Gpfr wrote: "@AB76
Seeing your exchange with Andy on WWR, don't forget we can follow his travels on his blog, with his jealousy-inducing photos.

https://safe-return-doubtful.com/

Now he's got his own site, th..."

amazing heat in North Norway, a real worry./...to think it was 28c in some locations he visited and with the endless summer sun and lack of shade that would feel very uncomfortable
i never saw anything above 13c on the arctic circle in summer during my visits, fog/low cloud and lots of drizzle.
our planet is suffering...and its warmest day of 2024 in uk today, forecast maybe 35c

I'll close this thread this evening, in about 10 hours from now.

Interesting how small themes emerge in unrelated reads linked to certain stages of history

In Kiplings short auto-biog, he mentions with irritation how the Sussex coast near Rottingdean he knew in the 1900-1910 era was being swamped by new housing, bungalows and holiday cottages by the early 1930s

In Forester's novel, there is a reference to their favourite Sussex holiday home where slowly bungalows and new buidings were swallowing up the land and cluttering the coast

Reading a Manchester Uni press book on the English Seaside a few years back, repeated reference was made to the south coast and its slow move between WW1 and WW2 towards holiday bungalows and cottages, some erected in a choatic manner, most without much planning

Bill wrote: "Well, that's from the magazine...."

I see the full article is included in The Fun Stuff under the title George Orwell’s Very English Revolution. It covers Orwell’s entire writing life. I guess I reacted sharply to one paragraph.

The same book contains a 25-page essay on Edmund Wilson (and much else besides). I expect I read it at the time but no longer remember anything. One to look at when I’m done with To The Finland Station.

AB76 wrote: "... no discount on the OUP classics either?"

They give a decent 40% on the Classics and on the VSIs. It's the more academic works, esp. hardbacks, where they give zero.

"AB76 wrote: "... no discount on the OUP classics either?"

P.S. A professor friend actually got in touch with OUP some years ago to urge them to make various of their academic texts available in cheaper editions, because he used them as set texts, and they would sell hundreds to his students alone. He got the brush off.

Logger24 wrote: " "AB76 wrote: "... no discount on the OUP classics either?"

P.S. A professor friend actually got in touch with OUP some years ago to urge them to make various of their academic texts available in ..."

sad to hear, they publish a lot of great books but the price is always dear