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I still have some wrapping to do, but generally things are under control. Merry Christmas to all.

Compared to the whole of humanity, artists and novelists occupy an extremely narrow and precocious position. I don't see that as particularly controversial. Most film-makers are really in a dialog with other film-makers, and I see the same thing happening with most literary novelists.

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?

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.

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...

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).

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).

I will finally wrap up Nabokov's The Gift today. I found Chapter 4 really dragged, and Chapter 5, while shorter, isn't much better. Well, I'm not really that surprised, Nabokov is just not a writer I enjoy reading, so I think I'll postpone reading any further novels by him indefinitely. I will be rereading Kafka's The Trial after that and hope to wrap it up by Friday. If all goes as planned, I will be tackling Middlemarch by the weekend. I should also mention that there is a new collection/translation of Joseph Roth's non-fiction pieces called The Hotel Years. I managed to check it out from the library. So far, pretty interesting.

PM on the Ormandy.

I enjoyed Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which is sort of a mystery novel and also a bit of alternative history fiction (along the same lines as PKD's The Man in the High Castle).

Working my way through Nabokov's The Gift. It seems a bit uncharacteristic of most of his novels, but that's a positive for me, as I generally don't care for them. But I am enjoying The Gift so far.

It doesn't look like it, sorry. And the National Gallery is in DC, so it is an East Coast only show. I suspect there will be a catalog attached to the show, but it definitely isn't the same as being there.

I actually did that on a visit to Vienna. Very nice. Anyway, I just saw the Turner exhibit at the AGO (in Toronto), but I'll need to go back. It was still far too crowded to really get to see the pieces. The crowds should die down in another month. As it happens, I probably have seen all or virtually all of these pieces, since they are almost entirely drawn from the Tate Britain's Turner Wing, but it is still nice to see them again. Just as a head's up, there will be a Stuart Davis exhibit at the Whitney this summer, and it goes to the National Gallery in the late fall/early winter. http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/StuartDavis I've basically decided I will travel to see it (Davis is in my top 10 and I don't think I've ever seen an exhibit solely decided to him), so I just need to work out some details a bit closer to the time.

Thanks! I'm going to have to be honest that I was at a performance of King Lear on Sun. and I didn't even check the score until I got home. But I hear it was quite a game!

Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I have been meaning to read this for the longest time, but at my current pace, it will probably be late 2016. This December I am going to tackle Middlemarch for the first time. Before I get there, however, I need to get through Molly Keane's Time After Time (which I am enjoying so far) and Nabokov's The Gift.

I really do not like this novel, which serves up a mushy magic realist setting to basically recount story after story of women who were mistreated by men (their fathers, husbands, pimps or johns) with one woman also abused by her alcoholic mother, just to provide a bit of variety. It's pure Oprah-bait, and I think at this point I will just skim the rest to get to that one "uplifting" story that is supposed to help redeem the book (sort of like the Precious movie).

How exciting! Thanks for running the contest each year!

I got a bit distracted by other matters, but I recently finished Narayan's Mr. Sampath. It was one of those books that I went back and forth on whether I had read it before, but eventually decided I had read it before. I don't reread a lot of books, but I will be going back to Mahfouz's Midaq Alley soon, as well as Kafka's The Trial. Currently starting into Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe. The beginning section about the Negro leagues is very boring. I hear that it goes wide and incorporates a whole bunch of characters, most of them with terrible, tragic lives. I wouldn't say I am really looking forward to this, but it's a fairly short novel.

Hmmm. Definitely too bad. I didn't realize that I did have so much of the contents in U.S. releases, though I suspected I had the Lester Young. It's a shame, since the package is pretty nice with cool covers and all. Anyway, I guess it is time that this site helped me save money for once...

This does look like it is focusing on earlier Vogue material, but I don't think I have all that much of it, aside from the Getz, Mulligan, Baker and the Lester Young. I had no idea that Brubeck or Ellington/Strayhorn had cut Vogue albums. For me, this is actually an easier choice than the original box, which I eventually broke down and bought. Anyway, from a different site (http://www.francemusique.fr/agenda/sortie-cd-jazz-america-disques-vogue-40-chefs-d-oeuvre-du-jazz-en-20-edition-limitee ), here are the album names: LE PROGRAMME : 1.Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn / New Stars - New Sounds Vol. 2 (+ Serge Chaloff) 2.Stan Getz Quartet / The Stan Getz Quintette - Jazz At Storyville 3.Art Tatum From Gene Norman's Just Jazz / Gene Norman's Just Jazz Vol. 3 / Frank Bull And Gene Norman's Blues Jubilee 4.Charlie Christian At Minton's / Charlie Christian - Dizzy Gillespie At Minton's 5.Dixieland Jubilee Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 (Lu Watters - Kid Ory / Albert Nicholas) 6.Charlie Parker Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 7.Originators Of Modern Jazz / A Date With… Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 (Dizzy Gillespie - Charlie Parker - Fats Navarro - Red Norvo - Hank Jones - Howard McGhee - James Moody - Buck Clayton - Hot Lips Page) 8.Erroll Garner Trio Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 9.Kings of Boogie Woogie (Albert Ammons - Meade Lux Lewis - Blind John Davis) 10.Mahalia Jackson Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 11.The Spirit Of Memphis Quartet (+ John Lee Hooker) 12.Wynonie Mr Blues Harris / Earl Bostic His Alto Sax And His Orchestra 13.Jelly Roll Morton - Piano Solos 14.Dave Brubeck Quartet Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 15.Miles Davis - Young Man With a Horn Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 16.Red Norvo - Men at Work Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 / George Shearing Quintet 17.Gerry Mulligan Quartet Vol. 2 / Vol. 3 / Vol. 4 18.Chet Baker Quartet Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 19.Sidney Bechet And His Blue Note Jazzmen Vol. 3 / Vol. 4 20.Lester Young Les Chefs-d'œuvre de Lester Young Vol. 1 / Vol. 2

Edmonton - 45

I have sold books, including academic books, on Amazon.com, but they move very slowly, like 2 or 3 sold per year. I can't sell books on Amazon.ca since the postal reimbursement is so low it isn't worth it. You probably are best off donating them to a university department where the grad students will scoop them up. Alternatively you could list a whole book lot on Kijiji or craigslist. You might get something faster that way.

I just saw Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, which I had never seen before. I rank it slightly below Earnest, but only slightly. I was quite surprised at how many famous lines are from that play. I'll probably see King Lear next Sunday. On a slightly related note, I entered the Toronto Fringe lottery and will find out tomorrow if I am one of the lucky winners, which will be exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Not me, but I heard of an English professor (at U Toronto?) who was saving Jane Austen's Emma -- for his deathbed perhaps. I generally don't think in those terms, though I certainly do have a moderate pile of CDs and a huge pile of DVDs I haven't gotten around to yet...

Just back from Ottawa. We saw a small, focused exhibit featuring 12 paintings by Monet, each including a bridge. There is also a small exhibit by Mary Pratt that is worth seeing if you are in the area.