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[BillF]

Still with Fitzgerald, this one set in pre-revolutionary Russia.

[Leeway]

More on Fitzgerald, from a blog I happen to read occasionally. Meanwhile, I am firmly locked in Clarissa's embrace!

"The problem that I’m having with Penelope Fitzgerald’s late novels is that their excellence, their extraordinary agility, is almost ephemeral, because the books are so short. It took no time at all to read The Gate of Angels, which I loved while I was reading it but now have trouble remembering, only a few hours later. I have trouble remembering why I liked it. I still remember why I liked — loved — Innocence: I was captured by its insouciant but quite genuine Italian quality; the novel deserves an entry in that catalogue, Sprezzatura. The Beginning of Spring did not appeal to anything like the same extent. I felt, not without chuckling amusement, as though Ivy Compton-Burnett were taking over the translation of a Russian classic from Constance Garnett. If Innocence struck me as echt, The Beginning of Spring felt pastiche. This distinction is simply a reflection of my very different regard for things Italian and Russian. To me, Russia is a version of the Wild-West United States that hasn’t got the sense to use the Latin alphabet. My dislike of the prelates of Orthodoxy is unsurpassed, at least by other dislikes.

What did interest me about The Beginning of Spring was its strange echo of imperialism. The hero, Frank Reid, is British by background but Russian by birth. Frank was educated in Russia and speaks perfect Russian. Had the setting been India, this fluency would have been unlikely, as would have been the local education. The management of a printing works is an almost stereotypically imperial sort of business, but whatever its commercial activities might have been, Britain never subjected Russia to its yoke; on the contrary, Russia ran its own empire, and vied with Britain for mastery in Central Asia. All the clichés of empire — the alluring, the dangerous, the unintelligible, the backward — are present in The Beginning of Spring, but they are set in what in music would be called a remote key.

With its English setting — London and Cambridge, also in 1912 — The Gate of Angelsis extremely familiar, more familiar than it might be if I hadn’t read all the mystery novels of Charles Todd last year. The fictional enterprise of creating a fictional Oxbridge college for the purposes of satire is as comfortable as my favorite napping blanket — and that’s a problem. This is where I think the novel undercuts itself: there is no need in this love story for the extremity of St Angelicus College, and the gratuitousness of the creation is highlighted at the finale, when Daisy Saunders, ever the capable conscientious nurse, violates the college’s male-only hygeine, explicitly likened to that of Mount Athos, in order to relieve the “syncope” of the blind master, whom she finds prostrate at the foot of the tiny quad’s solitary tree. The dons who cluck at her presence are ineffectual hens, and it turns out that Fred Fairly, the junior fellow whose passionate devotion to Daisy powers the plot, is not even on the premises. St Angelicus gives Fitzgerald the pretext for a delightful retelling of the synopsis of La Favorita, the opera about antipope Benedict XIII, only (tellingly) without the Favorite. But that’s about all it’s good for. The solidly stimulating writing about the (quite real) Cavendish Laboratory makes the imaginary college even flufflier.

Now that I’ve dissed The Gate of Angels, I remember, and like, it better."

[BillF]

Thanks for that, Leeway. I shall be adding "echt" to What Word Did You Learn Today?

[uli]

I am periodically re-reading the Glauser novels on the German Gutenberg site but like the English cover and plan to read one of the translated novels just out of curiosity.

I am also reading

interesting for me not knowing much detail of the period of american history but got a bit stuck.

when I did not know what to read I picked this from our bookshelf I am reading that too

I am not big on reading poetry or plays and did not know anything by or of Lorca other than he was proably killed by Franco's thugs. I like a good biography and this is right on track. so far.I mean he hang out in college with Dali and Bunuel

Edited January 6, 2015 by uli

[Leeway]

Thanks for that, Leeway. I shall be adding "echt" to What Word Did You Learn Today?

Not to be confused with "ech"!

[BillF]

At 100+ pages, a Fitzgerald novel is quickly read. All the same, I found this one very satisfying. Set like The Beginning of Spring in about 1912, it shows a society on the edge of profound change, though this time it's not Russia, but England, where women's suffrage and atomic physics are about to arrive.

Once again, the handling of leading characters is unorthodox. The narrative structure was as surprising as in the film The Place Beyond the Pines. In both a violent event causes the narrative to apparently abandon the main character in favour of a newcomer, but in both a resolution of the two elements is finally achieved.

[ejp626]

I have to admit that I found Elizabeth Bowen's To the North a bit unfulfilling. I expect I will like The Hotel (her first) and The Heat of the Day more. Jury is definitely still out on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart.

I did enjoy Krzhizhanovsky's Autobiography of a Corpse (NYRB) quite a bit. He is sometimes compared to Kafka, and I think that is generally a fair comparison.

I'm just starting Platonov's Happy Moscow (NYRB) now. It looks promising, but it is an unfinished novel, so there is always some disappointment that he didn't see it through.

[Head Man]

Finished this in one sitting yesterday. An interesting period piece describing a year in the author's life at the beginning of WWI.

Thanks to whoever recommended this...

[Thomas Jackson]

K'wan - The Fix 2

word.

[BillF]

I have to admit that I found Elizabeth Bowen's To the North a bit unfulfilling. I expect I will like The Hotel (her first) and The Heat of the Day more. Jury is definitely still out on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart.

Some Bowen novels are more avant garde than others. My wife and I were both defeated by the complexity of The House in Paris, but very taken by The Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart.

[Simon8]

[Larry Kart]

A.B. Yehoshua's "Mr. Mani"

I have to admit that I found Elizabeth Bowen's To the North a bit unfulfilling. I expect I will like The Hotel (her first) and The Heat of the Day more. Jury is definitely still out on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart.

Some Bowen novels are more avant garde than others. My wife and I were both defeated by the complexity of The House in Paris, but very taken by The Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart.

Bowen's "The Little Girls" is terrific, IMO.

[A Lark Ascending]

After being enthralled by Richard Evans' book on Nazi Germany 1933-39, this took a bit of getting into. A rather plain telling of the tale - not difficult to read or follow, there's just something a bit donnish and tight-lipped about the style. But having got Wellington to India it's starting to engage me.

Might just be the problem I generally have with the start of biographies - I can't get too excited about ancestral background or the natures of siblings (although at least one of Wellington's had an import impact on his career and a sister had a bit of a harum-scarum experience in Revolutionary France).

Alongside, another volume in one of my favourite detective series:

I shouldn't really like these as most of the leading characters are aristocratic buggers (as was Wellington!) - but I do. Clearly part of some devious plot to brainwash us into thinking that the toffs are OK really.

Edited January 11, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[ejp626]

A.B. Yehoshua's "Mr. Mani"

I have to admit that I found Elizabeth Bowen's To the North a bit unfulfilling. I expect I will like The Hotel (her first) and The Heat of the Day more. Jury is definitely still out on The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart.

Some Bowen novels are more avant garde than others. My wife and I were both defeated by the complexity of The House in Paris, but very taken by The Heat of the Day and The Death of the Heart.

Bowen's "The Little Girls" is terrific, IMO.

I'll try to get to it, one of these days. The Toronto Public Library's copy doesn't circulate (the number of novels they have locked up is kind of mind-blowing) but I can get one out of Robarts.

I just finished Platonov's Happy Moscow. While parts of it are bleak and the plot itself is pretty thin, I liked it quite a bit. For me, it works better than Soul, which I found a bit tedious. I'll see how it measures up against The Foundation Pit in another week or so.

I'm following it with Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus to which it is tangentially related through the figure of a woman entertainer flying through the air. I've been planning to read this novel for years now, and it is time.

I'm also working through Walser's A Schoolboy's Diary, which is another interesting NYRB offering.

[erwbol]

350 pages into William Gibson's The Peripheral, I'm not convinced by the last 200+ pages, but I'll reserve judgement for now. I doubt this one ends up having a high re-readability factor.

Ordered this last week.

[Matthew]

George Whitefield: America's Spiritual Founding Father by Thomas Kidd. Fascinating account of Whitefield and his impact on the American colonies. Helped to usher in the "Great Awakening" of the 1740s.

Well, it started out good, but half-way through, wound up being one of those books you finish just because you feel a sense of obligation. Not too insightful, and most of all, gave no sense of the person. Meh.

[uli]

quote ejp626

"I'm also working through Walser's A Schoolboy's Diary, which is another interesting NYRB offering.

"

guessing this is "Fritz Kochers Aufsätze. Also laying around here together with other of Walsers short stories.()Sometimes I like to read one or two just before going to sleep.

Edited January 15, 2015 by uli

[ejp626]

quote ejp626

"I'm also working through Walser's A Schoolboy's Diary, which is another interesting NYRB offering

guessing this is "Fritz Kochers Aufsätze. Also laying around here together with other of Walsers short stories.()Sometimes I like to read one or two just before going to sleep.

It's combined in different ways from the original books. It starts with Fritz Kocher's Essays but there is a separate story called "A Schoolboy's Diary" and it ends with "Hans".

I enjoyed Hello Moscow, though I don't think it is for everyone, as it is pretty bleak.

I'm about 1/3 through Carter's Nights at the Circus. It's entertaining, and it is starting to get just a bit Felliniesque as this reporter goes undercover as a clown to join a touring circus and see if the main attraction (a winged woman) is a fraud or genuine.

Edited January 15, 2015 by ejp626

[erwbol]

350 pages into William Gibson's The Peripheral, I'm not convinced by the last 200+ pages, but I'll reserve judgement for now. I doubt this one ends up having a high re-readability factor.

Story picked up pace again in the next chapter. A successful novel in the end. Not much to say about the plot, which is basically very simple, though the world is quite fleshed out in the end. Most characters are kind of thin.

I do intend to reread this one later this year.

Edited January 16, 2015 by erwbol

[jlhoots]

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

[paul secor]

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

I may be in a minority, but I found that one poorly written.

[jlhoots]

Jonathan Lethem: Dissident Gardens

I may be in a minority, but I found that one poorly written.

O.K. - how about Motherless Brooklyn & Fortress Of Solitude??

If you don't like those you need to stay away from Lethem!!

[paul secor]

I did like Motherless Brooklyn. I felt that Dissident Gardens was overwritten with too much explaining.

[Jazzmoose]

Story picked up pace again in the next chapter. A successful novel in the end. Not much to say about the plot, which is basically very simple, though the world is quite fleshed out in the end. Most characters are kind of thin.

I do intend to reread this one later this year.

Excellent; I'll have to check it out.

[BillF]

Short stories by Fitzgerald. A bit of an anticlimax after the novels, I thought.