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[medjuck]

7 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises And Other Writings 1918-1926  

What I meant was why are they just getting to Hemingway now?  No wonder they're calling it long awaited.  (Though personally I'm happy they did Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald before him.) 

[ejp626]

7 hours ago, medjuck said:

What I meant was why are they just getting to Hemingway now?  No wonder they're calling it long awaited.  (Though personally I'm happy they did Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald before him.) 

I imagine the estate wouldn't come to terms, and they have had to wait so long for these pieces to go into the public domain.  I believe it is the same with the Fitzgerald but they had a bit more to work with so published the first LOA volume a while back.  Due to the various extensions of copyright, it takes quite a while for these volumes to come out in the States.

What is interesting is that Harper, apparently realizing that quite a few work will go into the public domain have come up with an e-book bundle that gathers up 9 of his novels, ending with The Garden of Eden.  https://www.amazon.ca/Collected-Works-Ernest-Hemingway-Nine-Book-ebook/dp/B00IRDG7L8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YPNVHA5GE2TM&keywords=collected+works+of+ernest+hemingway&qid=1590754578&sprefix=collected+ernest%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1

That said, this seems to be only available in Canada, as the copyright laws are different (looser) here, though they are being brought in closer alignment with the States due to the NAFTA re-negotiations.

 

[ghost of miles]

10 hours ago, medjuck said:

What I meant was why are they just getting to Hemingway now?  No wonder they're calling it long awaited.  (Though personally I'm happy they did Hammett, Chandler and MacDonald before him.) 

ejp626's response is on-target, I'd say--I know in the case of Fitzgerald it's been an estate issue.  With copyright going back 95 years on works published before 1978, a lot of mid-to-late 1920s material will be coming into the public domain in the next few years.  Here's a rundown on copyright from a Stanford.edu site:

For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years... All works published in the United States before 1924 are in the public domain (as of Dec 2019, when this article was posted). Works published after 1923, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  Copyright basics

So I'd say there's a good chance we'll see a second Fitzgerald volume in the not-too-distant future that would include Gatsby, The Vegetable (FSF's flop play which I still have yet to read) and All The Sad Young Men, plus other short stories from the 1923-late 20s period.  Or maybe they can reach a deal with the estate and publish all of the remaining novels (Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, and The Last Tycoon) plus The Vegetable in one volume, and all of the 1923-1940 short stories in another.  It'll be interesting to see how they compile his writings; there's quite a lot of excellent non-fiction for them to draw on as well.  LOA definitely wants to do more Fitzgerald; I had some correspondence several years back with the guy who edited the first volume, and he indicated that it was a matter of estate/public domain issues holding them back.  

Re Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises is due to fall into the public domain next year, so the EH estate probably figured they might as well sign off on an LOA volume that includes pretty much everything leading up to it.

[Brad]

I can’t say the LOA volume holds any significant interest for me as their MO seems to try to bring an author’s entire work for a selected period under one cover. That approach has never appealed to me. I’m sure Penguin Classics will bring out The Sun Also Rises when it falls into the PD; I tend to like their approach because they reprint a book with an introductory essay by an expert on the author. Although I read the book many years ago and still have the original Scribners version, I may be tempted by a Penguin Classics version. 

[medjuck]

39 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

ejp626's response is on-target, I'd say--I know in the case of Fitzgerald it's been an estate issue.  With copyright going back 95 years on works published before 1978, a lot of mid-to-late 1920s material will be coming into the public domain in the next few years.  Here's a rundown on copyright from a Stanford.edu site:

For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years... All works published in the United States before 1924 are in the public domain (as of Dec 2019, when this article was posted). Works published after 1923, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  Copyright basics

So I'd say there's a good chance we'll see a second Fitzgerald volume in the not-too-distant future that would include Gatsby, The Vegetable (FSF's flop play which I still have yet to read) and All The Sad Young Men, plus other short stories from the 1923-late 20s period.  Or maybe they can reach a deal with the estate and publish all of the remaining novels (Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, and The Last Tycoon) plus The Vegetable in one volume, and all of the 1923-1940 short stories in another.  It'll be interesting to see how they compile his writings; there's quite a lot of excellent non-fiction for them to draw on as well.  LOA definitely wants to do more Fitzgerald; I had some correspondence several years back with the guy who edited the first volume, and he indicated that it was a matter of estate/public domain issues holding them back.  

Re Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises is due to fall into the public domain next year, so the EH estate probably figured they might as well sign off on an LOA volume that includes pretty much everything leading up to it.

I think (don't really know) that it's not the estates but the original publishers who still have the rights if the works never went out of print.  IIRC The Great Gatsby becomes  pd in the next year or so. 

[ejp626]

8 minutes ago, Brad said:

I can’t say the LOA volume holds any significant interest for me as their MO seems to try to bring an author’s entire work for a selected period under one cover. That approach has never appealed to me. I’m sure Penguin Classics will bring out The Sun Also Rises when it falls into the PD; I tend to like their approach because they reprint a book with an introductory essay by an expert on the author. Although I read the book many years ago and still have the original Scribners version, I may be tempted by a Penguin Classics version. 

I think it is an interesting approach for lesser-known writers, like Dawn Powell, Robert Maxwell, perhaps John Dos Passos and others where this is likely the only way this material will stay in print.  It's probably not necessary for the Twains, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways of the literary world.  It often is the only way that the short stories stay in print, though, maddeningly, some of the time they do selected stories and sometime they do the complete stories for that period.  One might argue that this is not too dissimilar from the Mosaic treatment...

2 minutes ago, medjuck said:

I think (don't really know) that it's not the estates but the original publishers who still have the rights if the works never went out of print.  IIRC The Great Gatsby becomes  pd in the next year or so. 

I'm not sure, but I don't think that is accurate.  Rights revert back to the authors and estates in many cases.  I do know that many of these are held up by the estates, and I would imagine the major publishers would find it in their interest to cut a deal if they were the rights holders.

[Brad]

45 minutes ago, ejp626 said:

I think it is an interesting approach for lesser-known writers, like Dawn Powell, Robert Maxwell, perhaps John Dos Passos and others where this is likely the only way this material will stay in print.  It's probably not necessary for the Twains, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways of the literary world.  It often is the only way that the short stories stay in print, though, maddeningly, some of the time they do selected stories and sometime they do the complete stories for that period.  One might argue that this is not too dissimilar from the Mosaic treatment...

Perhaps. I’m just not a big fan of the approach. The only LOA volumes I have are Lincoln’s speeches and Douglasses writings. The approach also suffers from the same problem that some have complained about with Mosaic: you never listen to all the music and some prefer the individual dates.

I just looked at my copy of The Sun Also Rises and it’s falling apart (1970 printing) so I will probably upgrade if Penguin comes out with their version  

 

[ghost of miles]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Perhaps. I’m just not a big fan of the approach. The only LOA volumes I have are Lincoln’s speeches and Douglasses writings. The approach also suffers from the same problem that some have complained about with Mosaic: you never listen to all the music and some prefer the individual dates.

I just looked at my copy of The Sun Also Rises and it’s falling apart (1970 printing) so I will probably upgrade if Penguin comes out with their version  

 

I don't think they've done The Sun Also Rises, but for single works (as well as story collections) I'm a big fan of the modern-day Everyman series, which often includes an in-depth introductory essay.  Sewn bindings, too, which I much prefer to glue (see the contemporary Modern Library series--I *love* the original Modern Library series and have about 200 volumes from it, but not a fan of the relaunched version).  Everyman does some author omnibus editions as well, but they're generally not as geared towards the more completist approach that LOA often employs.  

[medjuck]

18 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

I don't think they've done The Sun Also Rises, but for single works (as well as story collections) I'm a big fan of the modern-day Everyman series, which often includes an in-depth introductory essay.  Sewn bindings, too, which I much prefer to glue (see the contemporary Modern Library series--I *love* the original Modern Library series and have about 200 volumes from it, but not a fan of the relaunched version).  Everyman does some author omnibus editions as well, but they're generally not as geared towards the more completist approach that LOA often employs.  

Are there hard covers now that just use glue?  I guess I haven't noticed.  And are there softcovers that are sewn?   I should go look at my library.

[jlhoots]

Timothy Hallinan: Street Music

[ghost of miles]

51 minutes ago, medjuck said:

Are there hard covers now that just use glue?  I guess I haven't noticed.  And are there softcovers that are sewn?   I should go look at my library.

Not sure about hardcovers in general, but the relaunched Modern Library series uses glue bindings for its hardbacks.  Also not a fan of the olive-green jackets they adopted for the contemporary volumes.  

[Brad]

On 5/28/2020 at 10:39 PM, ghost of miles said:

Brad, would love to hear your thoughts on To Have And Have Not after you finish it. It’s always seemed to have a bit of a footnote status in Hemingway’s oeuvre as his purported entry in the annals of leftist 1930s literature and remembered primarily as the springboard for the much-more-famous movie, but I’ve always been curious to read it.

As Joe mentioned the book has nothing in common with the Bogart movie. However, I can’t think of Harry Morgan without thinking of Bogie. Without ruining the plot in case you want to read it, Hemingway tries to paint a picture of people in the Depression trying to get by. His style of writing tries to reflect that hard scrabble life. Towards the last third of the book he introduces the “haves” and his writing writing reflects characters you see in those 1930s or 1940s high society movies. He also throws in a few Cubans attempting to revolt against Baptista. It’s a bit of a hodge pudge and I’m not sure it all completely works. Not my favorite Hemingway but worth a read. 

Edited May 30, 2020 by Brad

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

However, I can’t think of Harry Morgan without thinking of Bogie.

I can't help but think of Jack Webb. Or Cara Williams.

[Brad]

[Matthew]

The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone.

 

[jazzbo]

[felser]

[ghost of miles]

Damn, this is a good book.  Really seems to capture the vibe of 1969, at least from the vantage point of being on the road with the Stones--a road that's leading to Altamont:

[Simon8]

Ben Marcus' Notes From The Fog

Edited June 9, 2020 by Simon8

[HutchFan]

Accompaniment to my recent explorations of Prokofiev's music:

Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography by Harlow Robinson (Robert Hale, London, 1987)

 

[ghost of miles]

Just starting:

[jazzbo]

Finished re-reading:

 

 

Started to re-read:

[ejp626]

Aristophanes The Clouds & The Birds (trans. Arrowsmith & Parker)

I know it is a truism that comedy translates rather less well than tragedy, but I was still astounded at how hard it was to get through these two pieces.  Just did not enjoy either of them at all, aside from a few moments here and there.  (The amount of physical violence played for laughs in The Birds was pretty close to the Three Stooges, and I've never been one that liked that sort of thing at all, though it is true I can be a bit more forgiving if combined with clever wordplay a la Shakespeare.)  For me at least, I think I would have been better off with translations that were looser translations or even adaptations than these quite faithful translations.  Going to put this aside for quite a while before getting around to Lysistrata.

As the libraries are now taking book returns, I need to prioritize getting through these books anyway, so that means finally sitting down and getting through the second half of Camus's Plague and Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being.

[ejp626]

On 2020-02-24 at 10:31 AM, ejp626 said:

 also have a fairly recent (well, new in English) short story collection by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, The Word of the Speechless (NYRB) on hold at the library.

 

It appears The Word of the Speechless is a pretty good sampler, 19 or so stories across Ribeyro's whole career, but is only a very small taste.  Perhaps this will inspire a translation of the rest of the stories and possibly his remaining 2 novels (Chronicle of San Gabriel has been translated into English).

I read about half the stories right away but it took a surprisingly long time to get through the rest of them.  "The Insignia" is fairly clever though quite short.  I liked "Nuit Caprense Cirius Illuminata" where it is just a bit unclear whether the narrator runs into an old flame in Capri or does he run into a phantom of a different sort from the past.  I'm still mulling over "Silvio in El Rosedal" which has some Borgesian touches (a code hidden in a rose garden) but ends in a much more melancholy key.  This might actually be the strongest story in the collection, but I'll give it some time and reread it and see if I still feel the same. 

One story I did not care for was "For Smokers Only," which I hope for Ribeyro's sake was fictional and not auto-biographical when he discusses becoming deeply addicted to cigarettes and, at one point, selling off his entire book collection to allow him to buy more cigarettes.  And then talks about sneaking cigarettes, even when under medical treatment.  Though it seems this was largely true to life, and he did ultimately die of lung cancer at the age of 65.  Sad...

[medjuck]

 The first has too much sociology but is worth buying just for the chapter on the Blue Devils.  The second is lurid but fascinating. Both have many footnotes that are easy to access because the page numbers they refer to are listed at the top of the pages in the footnotes chapter.  Is this a new practice or just something I haven't noticed before (or don't remember). 

Edited June 17, 2020 by medjuck