Now reading...

[ejp626]

On 4/17/2016 at 8:19 PM, ejp626 said:

Just starting Keane's Queen Lear.  The opening scene is this young girl running all around her parents' estate, checking up on what all the servants are doing.  It kind of reminds me a bit of Peake's Gormenghast actually.

I am not enjoying this at all.  In the opening section, Molly Keane managed to portray the mother as a monster, yet again.  She basically hated her own mother and takes it out on mothers again and again and again.

Then we shift to the young girl as a young woman, who is the most boring milquetoast character I've endured in a very long time.  I understand there is some dark comic twist at the end of the novel, but I can't see it making up for the middle section.  Well, I should wrap it up tonight.

I'm astounded that a few people (relatively few) consider this her best novel.  I much preferred the novels from the first part of her career, as I didn't like Good Behaviour that much either (which far more people consider her best).

[HutchFan]

On 4/17/2016 at 2:17 AM, Jazzmoose said:

After reading the Faulkner stuff earlier, I had to pull The Sound and the Fury off the shelf one more time, mainly to see if I could figure out the second section a bit better.  (First section I've read too much-it was too fun to ignore.  The third is pointless; I'd just put it down and grab The Hamlet instead.  The fourth section tells me that Faulkner had too much power in the writer-editor relationship.  It's like having a Disney ending tacked onto Citizen Kane.)

Hmm. I had a very different take on Dilsey's section. I wouldn't characterize it as Disney-like or Pollyannaish.  After the unremitting bleakness of all that comes before, there's finally a character who recognizes that other people exist. All of the preceding characters live in a solipsistic world. Dilsey doesn't. Even though she's on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy, she's the only one who's admirable. Her hope in something greater may be foolish, but at least she's fighting for meaning. I think that gives her far more dimension and humanity than the others, all of whom are already defeated.

Then again, one of my beefs with Faulkner is that all of his characters are close variations on the exact same character. They're all "Faulkner characters," rather than the myriad types of human beings that one recognizes in the world.

For what it's worth...

Edited April 21, 2016 by HutchFan

[Jazzmoose]

I get that this was his intent, but to me it just seems like bad execution after the first three sections.

[Leeway]

THE BAY OF NOON - 1970- Shirley Hazzard

My first exposure to Hazzard's work (I've been meaning to read "Transit of Venus" forever, but it's this early novel I ended up reading first), it left me with an interest in reading more of her. Set in post-WWII Italy, the portrait of the city of Naples is quite wonderfully evocative. 

[ejp626]

I've decided that I need to take a bit of a breather from fiction and even from urban studies, which is what I typically read when reading non-fiction, and I will focus on science and anthropology for a while.

I'm starting with this:

Or rather I'm actually rereading it, but then I will read Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle, which I started several times but never finished.  I will this time around.

[BillF]

The third early Bellow I've returned to recently and the best - an impressive work. Looking forward to re-reading Herzog soon.

[Leeway]

THE BACHELORS - 1960 - Muriel Spark

Came across this relatively very early Spark novel. Not among her best, but plenty to amuse and ponder. Her ostensible targets are bachelors and spiritualism, but her real concerns may be marriage, sin and the devil. 

[paul secor]

45 minutes ago, Leeway said:

THE BACHELORS - 1960 - Muriel Spark

Came across this relatively very early Spark novel. Not among her best, but plenty to amuse and ponder. Her ostensible targets are bachelors and spiritualism, but her real concerns may be marriage, sin and the devil. 

I've read two if Spark's novels and keep meaning to read more, but my "to read" list and piles are too large already. Someday ....

[jlhoots]

Dana Spiotta: innocents & Others

[BillF]

Perhaps not Highsmith's best, but she's always worth reading!

 

[ejp626]

Not as far as I thought/hoped with Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival.  The first section is incredibly dull, just about like reading about paint drying.  The next section is a bit better but still not nearly as good as the sea voyage sections of Ondaatje'e The Cat's Table, for example.  I guess I'll persist though.

On the other hand, I did finish the section on the special theory of relativity and am heading into the general theory.  It does help to read other books about the subject though, since Einstein is a bit too terse for a lay audience to grasp the implications of what he is writing about.  Martin Gardner's Relativity Simply Explained is one of the better primers. 

[A Lark Ascending]

Still leisurely working through 'Mahler' (about to hit the Vienna opera) and 'The Reformation' (Council of Trent about to kick off; I think I now understand Anabaptists!). 

Read this quickly over the weekend and very much enjoyed it:

 

A sort of follow-up to his 'What a Carve Up' of some years back; where that was a black satire on Thatcherism, this one focuses on the current 'Age of Austerity'. Not so much a novel as a series on interconnecting short stories; a mix of social/political satire, Gothic novel and B-Movie horror (his technique probably owes more to cinema than lit-er-a-tuh). Continues Coe's regular theme of nostalgia for the Welfare State era which at least attempted to place state duty to care for the entire community as paramount, contrasted with the stark dog-eat-dog world of free-marketism (ironic as one of the book's themes is a warning about the dangers of nostalgia). Reading it in the immediate wake of the Panama Papers and antics of the greedy buggers* who raided the BHS pension scheme, it seems less fiction than news reporting.

Might appeal to those who enjoyed John Lanchester's 'Capital' - though it's much more of a shaggy dog story.      

* Of course I really meant 'risk-taking wealth creators'. 

Edited May 3, 2016 by A Lark Ascending

[alankin]

7 hours ago, A Lark Ascending said:

  

A sort of follow-up to his 'What a Carve Up' of some years back; where that was a black satire on Thatcherism, this one focuses on the current 'Age of Austerity'. Not so much a novel as a series on interconnecting short stories; a mix of social/political satire, Gothic novel and B-Movie horror (his technique probably owes more to cinema than lit-er-a-tuh). Continues Coe's regular theme of nostalgia for the Welfare State era which at least attempted to place state duty to care for the entire community as paramount, contrasted with the stark dog-eat-dog world of free-marketism (ironic as one of the book's themes is a warning about the dangers of nostalgia). Reading it in the immediate wake of the Panama Papers and antics of the greedy buggers* who raided the BHS pension scheme, it seems less fiction than news reporting.

Might appeal to those who enjoyed John Lanchester's 'Capital' - though it's much more of a shaggy dog story.      

* Of course I really meant 'risk-taking wealth creators'. 

Some might say "wealth-taking risk creators".     

Edited May 3, 2016 by alankin

[jlhoots]

James Scarantino: The Drum Within

[paul secor]

Ross Macdonald: The Barbarous Coast

[ejp626]

Almost done with Einstein's relativity (the first book made me feel smarter -- the second one the reverse...  )

I'm also reading a short novel by Edna O'Brien -- Night.  Quite enjoyable if one likes High Modernism.  Definitely feels influenced by Molly Bloom in Ulysses, as well as Doctor O'Connor in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.  I think this was a bit of a departure for O'Brien, but I'm enjoying it.

Edited May 11, 2016 by ejp626

[alankin]

Richard Price - Lush Life

[Simon8]

[Matthew]

The Warden by Anthony Trollope.  A very enjoyable read.

[Shawn]

[Leeway]

The last of the six books that form Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire.  Trollope gathers up all the loose ends , and some new ones as well, and pulls them all together in this uneven but amusing narrative. Maybe the best of the series after The Warden.  Mrs. Proudie's death seemed a little anticlimactic, happening as it does offstage, which seems to be Trolllope's preference in such things. It was good to read the entire series. 

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, Leeway said:

The last of the six books that form Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire.  Trollope gathers up all the loose ends , and some new ones as well, and pulls them all together in this uneven but amusing narrative. Maybe the best of the series after The Warden.  Mrs. Proudie's death seemed a little anticlimactic, happening as it does offstage, which seems to be Trolllope's preference in such things. It was good to read the entire series. 

In his "Autobiography," Trollope says that while seated in his London club he overheard two clergyman complaining that Trollope's novels reintroduced the same characters too often and singled out Mrs. Proudie in particular. Then and there, says Trollope, I resolved to kill her off "before the week was over," and he did so. As for her death taking place offstage and therefore being anti-climactic, I'd have to reread to be sure, but I recall feeling that the way we're told what happens is just perfect, has a far greater impact for its being related at a certain objective distance and/or at one remove than it would have had if we experienced it close-up and in real time. In effect, the narration of her death more or less reproduces the transformation of this living fearsome human monster into the corpse of a fearsome human monster, which in effect is the issue -- that is, before her sudden death actually takes place, Mrs. Proudie has so much power in every respect within Trollope's fictional framework that even when opposed or oppressed she still seems indefatigable. In particular, at this late juncture, it's as though the force that drives her soul doesn't know and can never acknowledge the fact of her likely defeat. Thus, she must be STRUCK dead, as though by a blow from Heaven. And Trollope's omniscient narrator strategy there seems to me to have that effect.

[Matthew]

2 hours ago, Leeway said:

The last of the six books that form Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire.  Trollope gathers up all the loose ends , and some new ones as well, and pulls them all together in this uneven but amusing narrative. Maybe the best of the series after The Warden.  Mrs. Proudie's death seemed a little anticlimactic, happening as it does offstage, which seems to be Trolllope's preference in such things. It was good to read the entire series. 

Reading your reviews inspired me to start reading the Chronicles of Barsetshire -- enjoying The Warden very much. Thanks for the push to read something I always meant to.

[Leeway]

Matthew, I'm glad I've induced you to read the Barset novels. I hope you find them enjoyable. They have their longeurs and sentimental patches, but looking back on them, they seem worthy to me.

Larry, I hear what you are saying, and you make good points, though I can't quite agree. For such a forceful character as Mrs. Proudie to go so quietly and in an out of the way manner strikes me as Trollope rather pulling his punches.  I suspect an aversion to shocking his readers were she to go in the full fury of her righteousness. Trollope chooses a private death instead, which if anything is less interesting.  The whole subject of death and dying in Trollope could be an interesting one I think. 

[Larry Kart]

"Two minutes after that she [Mrs. Proudie's maid, Mrs. Draper] returned, running into the room with her arms extended, and exclaiming, 'Oh, heavens, sir; mistress is dead!' Mr. Thumble, hardly knowing what he was about, followed the woman into the bedroom, and there he found himself standing awestruck before the corpse of her who had so lately been the presiding spirit of the palace.

"The body was still resting on its legs, leaning against the end of the bed, while one of the arms was close clasped around the bed-post. The mouth was rigidly closed, but the eyes were open as though staring at him. Nevertheless there could  be no doubt from the first glance that the woman was dead. He went up close to it, but did not dare to touch it."

For me, the horror of the above, though in one sense the strokes are subtly made, is very intense. Trollope's point, or one of them here, is to palce the now utter final deadness of Mrs. Proudie against the fact that she "had so lately been the presiding spirit of the palace." Thus we get "the corpse of her" -- far more harsh  in its emphasis on the "thingness" of the dead Mrs. Proudie, I think, than "her corpse," let alone "the corpse" or "her body," would have been. Then there's the macabre "[t]he body was still resting on its legs" and what follows in that sentence -- a being, or rather a non-being, who betrays several of the signs of life (still standing, still grasping something, eyes open) but "there could  be no doubt from the first glance that the woman was dead." Then, finally and most awfully, the remaining two references to Mrs. Proudie in that paragraph are not even to "the corpse of her" but to "it."  

What more do you want? A coup de grace administered by Torquemada, Gilles de Retz, and the Marquis de Sade?