Now reading...

[Brad]

I think you're missing a lot if you don't read some Zweig.  The one book I'd really recommend (although I like them all) is Beware of Pity.  That is an excellent book.

Currently reading A Tale of Two Cities.  Believe it or not, this is my first foray into Dickens.

[Larry Kart]

If you're looking for an all-out (and arguably rather batty) assault on Zweig, here is a diatribe from poet-critic-translator Michael Hoffmann:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n02/michael-hofmann/vermicular-dither

I don't know enough Zweig to have an opinion, though I have been enjoying his biography of Balzac.

[ejp626]

7 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

If you're looking for an all-out (and arguably rather batty) assault on Zweig, here is a diatribe from poet-critic-translator Michael Hoffmann:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n02/michael-hofmann/vermicular-dither

I don't know enough Zweig to have an opinion, though I have been enjoying his biography of Balzac.

This is so over-the-top that now I am a bit sorry I mentioned Roth (since Hofmann is the major promoter of Roth and seems to mostly take this opportunity to run down Zweig and elevate Roth). 

[A Lark Ascending]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

I think you're missing a lot if you don't read some Zweig.  The one book I'd really recommend (although I like them all) is Beware of Pity.  That is an excellent book.

Thanks - might try it. Maybe he's like one of those luvvy actors. Brilliant when on stage, insufferable when talking about himself to the media. 

 

1 hour ago, ejp626 said:

You might like Joseph Roth a bit better, particularly his Berlin reportage, mostly in What I Saw.  Roth was more of a man of the people, though he didn't fit in with society that well either, and drank himself to death to Paris in 1939 (despite having opportunities to move to the US). 

Thanks. Might try him. 

I'm not necessarily hung up on a 'man of the people' approach (after all, Orwell was very middle-middle class). I just don't care for the whole 'art/aesthetic' thing....always seems like a creation of the elite in order to differentiate themselves from 'the masses'. 'The World of Yesterday' was definitely the wrong book for me to read!  

[BillF]

[crisp]

[paul secor]

On ‎12‎/‎17‎/‎2015 at 9:54 AM, crisp said:

Looks like something that would make for a good read this time of year. How was it?

[ejp626]

I thought I would have gotten further this weekend, but I only got through Book 3 (of 8) in Eliot's Middlemarch.  I find I just don't have a lot of patience for her particular omniscient narrative voice.  Is it really that different from Dickens or Trollope?  Probably not, but I do grow weary of her explaining everything to me all the time.  I don't think the book really knows whether it is a novel or a sociological tract...

[A Lark Ascending]

1 hour ago, ejp626 said:

I thought I would have gotten further this weekend, but I only got through Book 3 (of 8) in Eliot's Middlemarch.  I find I just don't have a lot of patience for her particular omniscient narrative voice.  Is it really that different from Dickens or Trollope?  Probably not, but I do grow weary of her explaining everything to me all the time.  I don't think the book really knows whether it is a novel or a sociological tract...

I had to read Middlemarch at school and didn't get on with it. Fortunately I moved schools and didn't have to finish it. However, I tried again ten years later and found it a really rewarding read. Worth persevering or parking it for a time. 

[BillF]

2 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I thought I would have gotten further this weekend, but I only got through Book 3 (of 8) in Eliot's Middlemarch.  I find I just don't have a lot of patience for her particular omniscient narrative voice.  Is it really that different from Dickens or Trollope?  Probably not, but I do grow weary of her explaining everything to me all the time.  I don't think the book really knows whether it is a novel or a sociological tract...

Middlemarch was one of two set books that defeated me on my English degree course with a reading list of hundreds of books. The other was Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian.

I subsequently managed shorter novels by George Eliot.

[niels]

Just finished Kamel Daoud's - The Meursault Investigation. A brilliant novel, in which Moussa (the killed Arab in Camus' masterpiece The Stanger) finally gets a name and an existence through the words of his brother Haroen.

[Leeway]

EMMA - Jane Austen.  1816

[paul secor]

Robertson Davies: What's Bred in the Bone

I'm actually in the homestretch of The Cornish Trilogy now, finishing The Lyre of Orpheus.

[medjuck]

57 minutes ago, paul secor said:

Robertson Davies: What's Bred in the Bone

I'm actually in the homestretch of The Cornish Trilogy now, finishing The Lyre of Orpheus.

Davies was my thesis supervisor  for many years.  Glad people are still reading him. 

[paul secor]

12 minutes ago, medjuck said:

Davies was my thesis supervisor  for many years.  Glad people are still reading him. 

Reading The Cornish Trilogy has been a great experience.

[Larry Kart]

Enjoyed "The Deptford Trilogy" and "The Lyre of Orpheus."

[A Lark Ascending]

59 minutes ago, rdavenport said:

My English A level was scuppered by Mansfield Park and metaphysical poetry.

The people who design exam syllabi and, above all, the government ministers who tell them what to do always seem to be driven by what they think should be good for kids and their place in the future of the country (i.e. embedding a very particular, British sense of identity, a reverence for The Canon). Rather than thinking about what might get kids interested in reading and then lead them on to Austen etc later on if they so choose.  

Why they've never worked out that most kids dutifully do what is needed with the books they are made to read to pass the exams whilst doing their own exploration elsewhere is beyond me. Michel Rosen is very good on this.

[Larry Kart]

13 hours ago, ejp626 said:

I thought I would have gotten further this weekend, but I only got through Book 3 (of 8) in Eliot's Middlemarch.  I find I just don't have a lot of patience for her particular omniscient narrative voice.  Is it really that different from Dickens or Trollope?  Probably not, but I do grow weary of her explaining everything to me all the time.  I don't think the book really knows whether it is a novel or a sociological tract...

Granting the presence of the omniscient narrative voice, IMO Dickens, Trollope, and George Eliot are about as different as three authors writing in the same language in the same century could be. "Middlemarch" was tough going for me for a while but finally very rewarding. The one of hers I couldn't stand was "Romola." I love virtually all of Trollope (have read a lot of the huge lot there is), finally got into Dickens a few years ago after decades of resistance. One has to put up with a good deal with Dickens, I think, but if you can make the right adjustments, the rewards are abundant -- the sheer vitality of the writing at its best. My favorite so far is "Our Mutual Friend." Enjoyed "The Pickwick Papers," too. As Anthony Powell, my favorite novelist of the 20th Century has remarked, there is a deep sadistic streak in Dickens, and the sheer elaborative zest with which he visits various horrors and torments upon his characters (this arguably somewhat independent of what the novels per se seem to call for) has to be reckoned with by the reader, unless he/she happens to be similarly inclined.

[BillF]

2 hours ago, rdavenport said:

My English A level was scuppered by Mansfield Park and metaphysical poetry.

Jane Austen isn't my cup of tea, either. If you must read novels from that era, go a bit earlier and try Fielding's Joseph Andrews or even his gargantuan Tom Jones, if you have a few weeks to spare

[ejp626]

6 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Granting the presence of the omniscient narrative voice, IMO Dickens, Trollope, and George Eliot are about as different as three authors writing in the same language in the same century could be. "Middlemarch" was tough going for me for a while but finally very rewarding. The one of hers I couldn't stand was "Romola." I love virtually all of Trollope (have read a lot of the huge lot there is), finally got into Dickens a few years ago after decades of resistance. One has to put up with a good deal with Dickens, I think, but if you can make the right adjustments, the rewards are abundant -- the sheer vitality of the writing at its best. My favorite so far is "Our Mutual Friend." Enjoyed "The Pickwick Papers," too. As Anthony Powell, my favorite novelist of the 20th Century has remarked, there is a deep sadistic streak in Dickens, and the sheer elaborative zest with which he visits various horrors and torments upon his characters (this arguably somewhat independent of what the novels per se seem to call for) has to be reckoned with by the reader, unless he/she happens to be similarly inclined.

I know that Eliot is making all kinds of various cutting remarks about society in general and certain characters in particular, but I just don't think she has any subtlety compared to Austen, for instance who is much slyer and more rewarding (to me).  I wouldn't say Dickens is subtle either.  I've enjoyed the Trollope I have read (and will start going through his novels again in a few years) and he might be a shade subtler.  I realize that's not the only characteristic that matters,* but I so prefer novelists who don't hit me over the head with what I should be paying attention to in a scene or, worse, what I should be feeling.  I thought Mill on the Floss much worse in that regard, however.  Eliot is worth reading once, but I am sometimes glad to find out that I haven't been missing much by getting around to an author relatively late in life.

* For instance, many here find Muriel Spark kind of sly and I can't warm up to her either.

[A Lark Ascending]

9 hours ago, rdavenport said:

Lark - it's a source of some embarrassment that I failed my English Lit A level. I remember thinking much of the syllabus was either dull (Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare) or utterly incomprehensible (John Donne, Chaucer). Out teacher tried to pass on her obvious interest and enthusiasm, but to paraphrase Morrissey, "it said nothing to me about my life".  I look forward to seeing what my son will be lumbered with when he reaches the English Literature stage of his schooling - year 7 now, so I presume it will be another year or so.  

Bill - my literary tastes, like my musical tastes, are firmly rooted in the 20th century, so I'm unlikely to try Fielding. In fact, much of my choice of reading material is based on what I find at charity shops. 

Believe me, most English teachers are as frustrated by what they get to choose from on exam syllabi as the poor students who have to study those choices. Obviously you can't just have books that give instant identification/gratification; there needs to be challenge there. But the impact of imposing 'worthy' texts - and that has got worse in the last couple of years - will at best lead to indifference, at worst turn kids off all sorts of things for life. I've not touched Dickens since being made to read him between the ages of 11-14.

20thC books (like 20thC music) was where I first connected for the reason you give....it speaks about life as I knew it. And it's still what I mainly read. I actually did enjoyed Austen, Elliot, Hardy etc but it was in my early 20s (there's a lovely line somewhere about how a 14 year old boy is supposed to make sense of the bizarre rituals of late-18thC courtship). By that time I had the historical context of the 18th/19thC to make sense of them.   

**********************

A good short cut to 'Middlemarch' is the BBC series of 15 or so years back. Excellent production though much reduced. They've got War and Peace down to 6 episodes for a series starting in the New Year.  

[BillF]

10 hours ago, rdavenport said:

 

 

Lark - it's a source of some embarrassment that I failed my English Lit A level. I remember thinking much of the syllabus was either dull (Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare) or utterly incomprehensible (John Donne, Chaucer). Out teacher tried to pass on her obvious interest and enthusiasm, but to paraphrase Morrissey, "it said nothing to me about my life".  I look forward to seeing what my son will be lumbered with when he reaches the English Literature stage of his schooling - year 7 now, so I presume it will be another year or so.  

Bill - my literary tastes, like my musical tastes, are firmly rooted in the 20th century, so I'm unlikely to try Fielding. In fact, much of my choice of reading material is based on what I find at charity shops. 

Richard - Well, I did say "if you must read novels from that era". I have a Ph.D in 18th century English literature, but find anything earlier than 20th century unreadable nowadays. Currently reading Patricia Highsmith. Marvellous!

[crisp]

On 20 December 2015 at 11:11 PM, paul secor said:

Looks like something that would make for a good read this time of year. How was it?

Well, it's started very well. Shaping up to be more of an old dark house mystery than a marooned train one. I tentatively recommend it.

[Larry Kart]

I certainly have read and still read a lot of contemporary fiction, but as far as reading the fiction of the past -- and the fiction of the past doesn't go back that far; it essentially begins with Cervantes and, in English, with Richardson and Fielding -- what of the curiosity about/appetite for what might be called "otherness," a sense of how people other than those of one's own time behaved and felt and how writers of those other times chose to depict what they chose to depict? To me, that sort of curiosity among the most important and useful traits a person could possess. The analogy might not be perfect, but a jazz fan who has no knowledge of the music of, say, Jelly Roll Morton or King Oliver would be much deprived.

Further, as a late friend of mine who was himself a brilliant novelist liked to say, there is such a thing as the "fictional way of knowing," by which he meant IIRC that what is enacted on the "stage" (so to speak) of a good novel can tell us important things about the warp and woof of life that can be conveyed in no other way -- this in part because, to the degree that the characters in the novel come alive to us, our feelings about/identifications with them allow us to semi-literally experience (or if you prefer "experience") things that we  might not have been able to experience otherwise. Finally, of course, we the readers are also aware to some degree, depending on the strategies of the novelist involved, of the novelist's perspective on the beings and the world that he or she has created (think Flaubert, for one), which in turn can give us a kind of stereo-optican perspective on ourselves and the fictional beings that we've found to be enough like life that our own deep feelings and would-be self-understandings have been stirred by them.

P.S. Now that I think of it, my friend's phrase was "a novelistic way of knowing."

[ejp626]

There is a lot to be said for that, but it also means our window onto the past is skewed in very specific ways.  If history is primarily written by the victors, novels are primarily written by a very narrow group of middle-class strivers (perhaps more in the past than today when there are more voices to be heard, even if the financial rewards are lower).

If one was going to write a cultural history of 2016 -- and all blogs and twitter feeds and Facebook postings were erased in the Great Magnetic Solar Flare of 2025 -- and we had to rely on Jonathan Franzen or more likely still J.K. Rowling and George Martin, would we really feel they captured the essence of the age?