ejp626

The Dinesen tales go beyond short story, they almost reach the novella. The first one in the book, "The Deluge at Norderney," is the long and most challenging I think, or maybe just its position as first tale forces the reader to acclimate to the word of the tales. It might be worth starting with the last, "The Poet". There is some interconnectedness but it is not crucial or requiring a particular order. ... I like the pairing of Martin and Kingsley, probably done for reasons of profit and to give both books' sales a nudge, but it makes good literary sense too. I'll keep that in mind and perhaps go back to front... Anyway, I suspect a more apt pairing would have been Lucky Jim and Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man, but yes, I'm sure this had more commercial possibilities (not that this kept it in print...).

I have to admit I've had a couple of Dinesen's Tales books practically forever, and I keep meaning to read them... Given that I am reading other short story collections periodically, I can perhaps read one at a time (as you suggest) and mix them up with the rest of my reading. Anyway, I finished Molly Keane's Loving Without Tears and didn't care much for it, for all kinds of reasons. I somehow came across Michal Ajvaz's The Other City and The Golden Age (probably recommended by Amazon) and deeply disliked them. There are no internal rules in The Other City. Literally anything can happen (even more surreal than Alice in Wonderland but without the underlying logic that Carroll developed) and thus there is no real interest on my part. But I am enjoying Under the Net so far. The main character's voice reminds me just a bit of Donleavy's The Ginger Man, but without being such a complete shitheel. (I'm pretty sure a year or so back I said that I gave up on The Ginger Man after some appalling scenes of the main character berating and even beating his wife.) I've also enjoyed the opening sections of Martin Amis' Other People so far. On the topic of literary Amises, I seem to recall there was a two-fer published pairing Lucky Jim with something else. (My Google-fu was on the blink, but I seem to have found it -- Lucky Jim and The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis.) Has anyone seen this? It's no longer in print, but there seem to be at least a few copies floating about.

Douglas Coupland has a solo exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The second half is heavily inspired by Pop Art, particularly Warhol and Lichtenstein. It was definitely better than I thought it would be, i.e. it wasn't just a smart-alecky takedown of the art world. I plan to make a second trip towards the end of June, ideally taking the kids. I'll probably write a full-blown blog post on it this weekend, and if there is interest, I can provide the link.

I haven't seen a post on the upcoming Vancouver Jazz Fest. Full details here: http://www.coastaljazz.ca/ There are some big names coming through, like MMW & Scofield, Charles Lloyd and Cassandra Wilson. Generally, the prices are a bit too high or the times don't work for me. (I also have to finish packing up my house by the end of June, so late evenings are a challenge!) There's a small chance that I will see Cassandra Wilson on June 29. But this does look like a particularly good year for the festival, so I encourage anyone in the Pacific Northwest to come out. I will make a major efforts to see is Rudresh Mahanthappa on June 22. Note that And Alexander Hawkins is all over this festival with 3 or 4 performances and workhops. Awesome! I am aiming to see him on Canada Day at Granville Island.

I'm putting my money on a hologram of Graham Chapman... I don't begrudge them this tour -- I actually saw Eric Idle doing the best of his bits in a solo show -- but it does feel very much like they have actually dozed off in their laurels.

Lot of fluky stuff going on in that game, with Chicago getting two more bad bounces than the Kings. Definitely a disappointing outcome, but really both teams deserved to move on. I guess Game 2 is the one that Chicago really did give away, and had they won that one, we would have been looking at a totally different story. On paper, I would say either the Blackhawks or the Kings should be able to handle the Rangers fairly easily, but both teams looked completely drained by the third period, and I don't know how fast the Kings can bounce back.

I know we are all trying to declutter our lives , but I bought a cheap DVD player that could be made multi-region (well, you also have to make sure it will play PAL). It was a good investment, in addition to any "good" DVD player I had. For that matter, you can pick up a cheap laptop and change the settings to R2 (can only be changed a few times, but if you just leave it R2, there's no problem) and watch DVDs on that. There have been some amazing deals on box sets from Amazon.co.uk over the years, and I wasn't going to let them get away...

I found a few solid Region 2 bargains (well, to me pretty decent bargains if VAT is removed) 10 DVD 18 film set of Werner Herzog -- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Werner-Herzog-Collecton-10-Disc-DVD/dp/B00I7SZZZW/ref=sr_1_4?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1401520994&sr=1-4&keywords=herzog (Blu-ray set is more but probably worth it for you BR fans: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Werner-Herzog-Collection-8-Disc-Blu-ray/dp/B00I7TXG7U/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1401520994&sr=1-1&keywords=herzog ) This covers all 5 of the feature films from the Herzog Kinski box set (which incidentally is basically OOP in region 1 but still available in region 2) but not the documentary My Best Fiend. Luis Bunuel box: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00DYWIBSY/ref=s9_simh_co_p74_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=left-1&pf_rd_r=1Y9CV4046AMQ4Y10BE1M&pf_rd_t=3201&pf_rd_p=486082727&pf_rd_i=typ01 (This is tempting, but I'll hold off for now.) For the kids, I thought this was a good deal -- 6 Muppets films including the fairly recent one with Jason Segal for 14 pounds: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Muppets-Film-Collection-DVD/dp/B0081NA5H6/ref=sr_1_2?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1401521236&sr=1-2&keywords=muppets What it does not have is Muppets Take Manhattan, but that can be found in another box set for the absurd price of 3 pounds: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Film-Box-Set-Muppets-Manhattan/dp/B006GELMQA/ref=pd_bxgy_d_h__img_y So I know what I'll be watching for the next few weekends...

Hi, I'm Barfarkel, a new member. I was unable to post the links to these five tracks myself cause I hadn't been authorized yet, so Rooster_Ties kindly posted them here for me yesterday. I got the authorization this morning, so I'll start a new thread and post the direct links so people here won't have to link thru the Steve Hoffman site, but can go directly from here to the five unidentified tracks. Glad to be here! Cheers, Barfarkel I think you can post the links here, but it would be better to keep it inside the existing thread. (I won't be any help identifying the tracks though. I am terrible at this sort of thing.)

I suspect this is a case where the film version is an acceptable substitute for the book, though some people struggled with Time Regained, a 1999 film directed by Raoul Ruiz. John Malkovitch was cast as Baron de Palmus, in what strikes me as a bit of ludicrous miscasting. I can understand some people really going for Proust, but most people will not, and I really do find the people who praise him (by no means everyone in the literary establishment but a large number) to go far over the top.

Wanted to followup on the Proust. Have you made your way through all 7 volumes? Or "only" Volume 1, "Swann's Way"? I still have a self-commitment to read Proust (have only gotten to "Swann's Way") but haven't buckled down to it. It may be one of those works that defeats my attempts. Sounds like it wasn't much fun for you. Maybe you could give us a better idea of the difficulties in reading Proust, or at least what to avoid. Bravo for getting through. PS: I think you'll like the Murdoch. Yes, this will be all 7 volumes. Had I stopped with Swann's Way, I don't think I would have bothered posting on it. Not to belabor this too much, but I have been blogging about Proust, and here are a few representative posts: http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2014/04/proustian-disappointments.html and http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2014/04/proustian-contradictions.html You can actually do a keyword search to find out everything that I have said about the man and the work. (Perhaps of more interest is a challenge where I am giving away a copy of Robert Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man. -- http://erics-hangout.blogspot.ca/2014/05/the-studhorse-man-challenge-closes-june.html ) I think if this had been boiled down to its essence -- 400 to 500 pages on memory, the shifting sands of people's status in social circles and some thoughts on "art" it would have been brilliant. I find it totally overstays its welcome at 3000+ pages. But mostly I find the length completely wasted on a group of parasites who are quite loathsome -- it seems almost 1/3 of the book is the Narrator frittering away his time at parties where one person is snubbing another. I found them all interchangeable and thus couldn't tell you much of anything about these party scenes. (While I tend to feel the same way about the nobles in Tolstoy -- a useless parasitical class -- they still tended to be better drawn portraits.) And the Narrator goes from spoiled brat to a fairly monstrous young adult who keeps his mistress virtually locked up for an entire volume (The Captive). And why does he do this -- because he has decided to save her from herself and not let her indulge in her bisexual tendencies. That's right -- close to a third of Proust is completely driven by discussions about homosexuality (which he almost always called inversion) and how terrible it is, particularly in men (and how widespread in high society). There is just so much self-loathing going on here (Proust was gay). I have come to think about this as the epic literary monument to "the closet." So if a lot of high-minded self-loathing bothers you, you probably are not going to like Proust and you should skip the last 3 volumes. Had I known going in what this would have been like, I would never have started it, but it was a book that I thought (as a former English lit. major) I really ought to read... It is one I will never return to.

Must be nice. My facial hair is thick and grows like crazy. Ideally I should shave in the afternoon, but I don't. I can just make each cartridge last a week, but it is totally shot if I do have to shave over the weekend...

I've been at a few concerts that they claimed were being recorded but then I've never seen the output. One was at the Montreal Jazz Fest in 1994 with Milton Nascimento, Paco de Lucia and John McLaughlin. I'm sure there are boots of this, but I've never seen a legit edition. And a few other NYC concerts that never saw the light of day.

And the Good Housekeeping Stamp of Approval no less... I am within striking distance of wrapping up Proust (300 more pages). It has been a dreary slog that I should have pulled the plug on months ago. But I was determined to finish it. Next up in rough order: Molly Keane's Laughter without Tears, Martin Amis's Other People, Iris Murdoch's Under the Net, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes.

I definitely wish we didn't always run to lawyers to resolve our problems, for sure. But then having legislatures keep inventing more and more "rights" will inevitably come to clash -- my right to practice my religion will clash with your right not to be discriminated against. There are a large number of people who basically insist that this is not a zero-sum game, but I see it as one. The more rights that are created, the more inevitable conflicts. In any case, somehow they managed not to seal the coffee lid properly, and it spilled on this poor woman. And even taking small sips wouldn't have helped at McDonalds. The execs admitted that they served it at a temperature that would have given 2nd degree burns to the tongue. (I do wonder about places that sell scalding hot drinks. I experienced this will hot chocolate sold at Stanley Park at a ridiculously hot temperature. It really did ruin the moment having to wait nearly 10 minutes before it was cool enough to drink.)

Some knob from Quebec managed to successfully sue Air Canada for getting a Sprite instead of 7-Up. http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/07/14/air-canada-ordered-to-pay-12k-to-man-who-couldnt-order-7up-in-french/ Anyway, while the coffee thing always sounds like a joke, it really was scaling hot, much hotter than coffee should ever be served to someone about to drink it. (Indeed 40 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than other restaurants serve it. McDonalds started dropping its temperature across its franchises after this lawsuit to something that could be more safely consumed immediately.) She had third-degree burns over part of her body and it is strongly suggested that she died prematurely because of the burns. So really not all that frivolous. http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm And if you are really interested, an entire documentary about the whole affair: http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/Default.asp

I'm not enjoying Falling, but I have only about 100 pages left, so I think I'll plow through. It is curious that the author thought this her best book. I suspect she means it was the one that she was the most emotionally involved with and that felt the most urgent or "true" or something. (Though sometimes authors are not the best judge of their own work...) Anyway, I will say it makes me a lot less interested the Cazalet books, though maybe I will give the first one a chance down the line. A similar thing happened to me with Hillary Mantel's Beyond Black, which I really didn't like. It has kept me from reading Wolf Hall, though it is written in a different style and set in a completely different period.

Mercy, I'm getting the vapors just contemplating perusing this book...

I've just started Elizabeth Jane Howard's Falling, which is inspired by the true story of how a con man worked his way into her affections and nearly married her (apparently just to get his hands on her house/money). The book alternates chapters between Henry (the con man, told in first person perspective) and Daisy (his victim, told in third person perspective). While it is interesting and fairly dark, my feeling about 20% in is that it is just too long. It would have been better served by cutting a lot of the flashbacks and making it a leaner book.

So I've been working through this set. For the most part, it is quite nice. I'm not crazy about the mastering on the Bernstein Symphony #2, however. I actually had the chance to see this live yesterday, so wanted to listen to a recording. I find the CD from the Entremont box to be mixed really low, and the version on the Bernstein Symphony box to better on my system.

If you really want to swim against the tide, try Molly Keane or better yet Barbara Comyns. The latter has one of the most unique literary voices I've ever come across. I wouldn't want to befriend any of her feckless characters, but the writing is generally quite compelling, and as I think I mentioned before both Keane and Comyns get to the point. Very few of their novels crack the 250 page mark. That said, I like Barbara Pym quite a bit, when I am in the right mood. I read all her novels in my 20s and recently picked up a box set of them to give them another go, ideally starting next year. I do, perversely, like An Academic Question the best, which most aficionados consider her worst! I am nearly done with Proust's The Fugitive, then will read Elizabeth Jane Howard's Falling, then Keane's Treasure Hunt and finally Comyns' The House of Dolls (I believe this is her final novel). Didn't see BillF's comment when it was first posted, so I'll respond to that first. I haven't read any Pym, but my wife has read quite a bit of her and has plenty of titles on her bookshelf, so I should be able to dip into her work. Bayley and A.N Wilson were big fans of Pym. Wilson tells some amusing tales about Pym, and Pym-Iris-Bayley. RE: the linked article, I'm not surprised that Iris' stock has fallen. Bayley's books have done her reputation a lot of harm by turning her image from a serious writer into a crazy old lady in a diaper. Plus she probably wrote too much, but there is a core of work that I think will stay the course. EJP626, I've not come across Keane or Comyns, really new to me, so I will have to take note of them. Feckless characters sound good to me. Iris has quite a bunch in her work as well. I think what sets Iris apart is the philosophical dimension in her work; for better or worse, sometimes more or less successfully, Iris strives to work serious philosophical concepts or issues into her work. A Platonic novelist ,or maybe sometimes just Plato-Lite. Her formula: plenty of sex and higher thoughts. Maybe based on her own life. Seemed to work in life and art. Scottish, not Irish, but I like Muriel Spark quite a bit too. Just wanted to get a mention in of her. We had a bit of a discussion about Bellow repeating himself. Essentially all of Comyns' books have economic insecurity at their heart, and many have a strong autobiographical component of a feckless young woman who marries an artist and then falls even deeper into poverty when the artist leaves her or dies. This is mixed up at times, so it isn't like reading exactly the same novel over again. In The Skin Chairs the wife is unprepared for life on her own after her husband dies, but not really feckless (that is farmed out to a neighbour). The three most along these lines are: Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (1950); A Touch of Mistletoe (1967) and The Skin Chairs (1962). Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead (1955) is a different sort of novel with a terrible Grandmother Willoweed (imagine an even darker version of Aunt Ada Doom from Cold Comfort Farm, who is never cured) but the main plot is that some kind of poison got mixed into the flour in the town bakery and half the town is dying. Apparently this was sort of based on a true story from the Netherlands or Belgium. It's quite gothic, but worth a look. Finally, I have not read The Juniper Tree, but it is supposedly quite good and a sophisticated update of a Grimms' Fairy Tale. I should be able to tackle this in August, since it is held in the Toronto library system. I'd say these are probably the best 5 of her 11 books, but if I really love The House of Dolls, I'll come back and make a note. Molly Keane, who also wrote as M.J. Farrell, is an Anglo-Irish writer. Her family had one of the big estates in Ireland and mostly did hunting and riding and were not that integrated into the community. They were eventually chased off their estate and the big house burned, though it appears she did stay in Ireland her whole life. While the early novels offer a lot of insight into a way of life that is totally vanished, I think it is the later novels (starting with Good Behaviour) that have the most literary merit. One thing that she is quite good at (maybe even a bit better than Austen) is getting at how relationships between women can be both positive and conflicted. I'm sure there is quite a good essay in how the women in the early Keane novels do not sustain "community" in the same way that women sustain it in a Pym novel because the English in Ireland were outsiders and held themselves apart, so would never be accepted as the backbone of the church or what have you. I don't have the time to write on that now, however.

If you really want to swim against the tide, try Molly Keane or better yet Barbara Comyns. The latter has one of the most unique literary voices I've ever come across. I wouldn't want to befriend any of her feckless characters, but the writing is generally quite compelling, and as I think I mentioned before both Keane and Comyns get to the point. Very few of their novels crack the 250 page mark. That said, I like Barbara Pym quite a bit, when I am in the right mood. I read all her novels in my 20s and recently picked up a box set of them to give them another go, ideally starting next year. I do, perversely, like An Academic Question the best, which most aficionados consider her worst! I am nearly done with Proust's The Fugitive, then will read Elizabeth Jane Howard's Falling, then Keane's Treasure Hunt and finally Comyns' The House of Dolls (I believe this is her final novel).

The only Bowen I own is The House in Paris (love the Matisse cover on my edition). I expect to get to this in the later part of the year. If I like it, I'll explore more of her work (even if HiP isn't that representative of her oeuvre).

It's actually liberating once you decide you are allowed to abandon books. Too many teachers (or nosy internet commentators) claim that you should finish reading everything you start.

It gets very ridiculous at the end of the set where several opera are split over 3 (or even 4!) CDs when two would do (and be just as reasonable in terms of breaks). Same thing with the Bach Mass in B Minor (3 CDs) and Verdi's Requiem which is 2 but would have fit on 1 CD. I do feel the buyer got stiffed out of about 7-8 CDs worth of music, particularly those where they had put the material out on a Living Stereo CD and now the bonus material is essentially withdrawn.