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[ghost of miles]

Late-period Fitzgerald, including the Pat Hobby stories, which I’m always happy to re-read:

[kinuta]

[ghost of miles]

On 3/3/2011 at 9:52 PM, paul secor said:

 

Henry Roth: Mercy of a Rude Stream - Volume One - A Star Shines Over Mt. Morris Park

Paul—what did you think of this? I just picked up the omnibus edition that includes all four novels and have An American Type (which was assembled after Roth’s death) on order. But I shamefully have to confess that I still haven’t gotten around to Call It Sleep after all these years and feel I should read it first before diving into HR’s “comeback” period.

[Brad]

46 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Paul—what did you think of this? I just picked up the omnibus edition that includes all four novels and have An American Type (which was assembled after Roth’s death) on order. But I shamefully have to confess that I still haven’t gotten around to Call It Sleep after all these years and feel I should read it first before diving into HR’s “comeback” period.

Unfortunately, Paul is no longer with us

[ejp626]

41 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Paul—what did you think of this? I just picked up the omnibus edition that includes all four novels and have An American Type (which was assembled after Roth’s death) on order. But I shamefully have to confess that I still haven’t gotten around to Call It Sleep after all these years and feel I should read it first before diving into HR’s “comeback” period.

Call It Sleep is quite an achievement.  Don't know if I would still like it quite as much these days, but probably so.  I would start there for sure.

I made it through two volumes of Mercy of a Rude Stream and felt that was more than enough.  The whole incest thing was a bit too much, particularly when his sister made it clear she wasn't happy with him publishing the details.  (I'm sure it plays a much smaller role in the later books, if it comes up at all, but the whole enterprise felt pretty tainted by that point.)

[ghost of miles]

16 hours ago, Brad said:

Unfortunately, Paul is no longer with us

Yeah, I forgot about that. 

16 hours ago, ejp626 said:

Call It Sleep is quite an achievement.  Don't know if I would still like it quite as much these days, but probably so.  I would start there for sure.

I made it through two volumes of Mercy of a Rude Stream and felt that was more than enough.  The whole incest thing was a bit too much, particularly when his sister made it clear she wasn't happy with him publishing the details.  (I'm sure it plays a much smaller role in the later books, if it comes up at all, but the whole enterprise felt pretty tainted by that point.)

Thanks for the feedback—it will probably be awhile before I’m able to delve into the Mercy books, but I’ll definitely start with Call It Sleep. I also have Shifting Landscape, which gathers a number of Roth’s essays and short stories together, including what remains of his aborted second novel.

[kinuta]

[kinuta]

[Brad]

I just finished this and it's a terrific book and it's in part a history about the Jews of Zakho in Kurdistan, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, and how they were exiled to Israel, a memoir (written by his son) of Yona Sabar, one of those Jews of Zakho, who progressed from boyhood in Zakho to exile in Jerusalem to a very respected Professor of Near Eastern Studies at UCLA and a rapprochement between Yona and his son, who never tried to understand him and wanted to ignore his Kurdish roots. 

[ejp626]

Wrapping up Krzhizhanovsky's The Return of Munchausen (NYRB).

It's pretty droll, though this is a case where the allusions run deep, and it pays to read the notes at the end. 

It probably isn't a bad idea to have read Baron Munchausen previously.  There are a bunch of versions on-line.  This one, with illustrations by Gustave Dore, is pretty good - https://archive.org/details/adventuresBaron00Dore/page/v

[Brad]

46 minutes ago, ejp626 said:

Wrapping up Krzhizhanovsky's The Return of Munchausen (NYRB).

It's pretty droll, though this is a case where the allusions run deep, and it pays to read the notes at the end. 

It probably isn't a bad idea to have read Baron Munchausen previously.  There are a bunch of versions on-line.  This one, with illustrations by Gustave Dore, is pretty good - https://archive.org/details/adventuresBaron00Dore/page/v

I tried but couldn’t get into it. I may take your suggestion though. 

[ejp626]

3 hours ago, Brad said:

I tried but couldn’t get into it. I may take your suggestion though. 

It does start off pretty slow, and the first part is just explaining why the Baron has come back from the pages of his book.  Chapter 5 is probably the strongest where the Baron is doing a field report on conditions in the USSR.  The payoff is basically that the fantastical tales that the Baron spins are not actually any further removed from the truth than what was reported in Pravda on a daily basis.  That said, this is more of a clever tale and not a fully-fleshed out novel, but even in this it mirrors the original.

[kinuta]

This has been sitting on my tablet for ages so finally got round to it.

Uber underwhelming.

On 02/09/2019 at 10:53 PM, Brad said:

I just finished this and it's a terrific book and it's in part a history about the Jews of Zakho in Kurdistan, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, and how they were exiled to Israel, a memoir (written by his son) of Yona Sabar, one of those Jews of Zakho, who progressed from boyhood in Zakho to exile in Jerusalem to a very respected Professor of Near Eastern Studies at UCLA and a rapprochement between Yona and his son, who never tried to understand him and wanted to ignore his Kurdish roots. 

Looks interesting. Will read.

[kinuta]

This is a surprise. Who would have imagined that Jessica Jones is a proper writer.

Worthwhile.

Edited September 4, 2019 by kinuta

[Matthew]

Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining by Shelly Rambo (what a name!). A very interesting book on trauma and ways to help people see both the death and life aspects of trauma in their lives, especially helpful if someone is counseling a person with a religious background. Heavy influence of Cathy Caruth throughout the book.

 

 

Edited September 4, 2019 by Matthew

[kinuta]

[T.D.]

[ejp626]

Decided to go ahead and reread Morrison's Sula after all...  (As mentioned above, my personal favorite is Song of Solomon, followed by Tar Baby.)

Starting in on Dawn Powell's major novels.  A Time to Be Born first, then the ones in the LOA volume Novels 1944-1962.  Really looking forward to The Locusts Have No King, which I'll probably get to by late Sept.  (Though now I see that I probably should read Turn, Magic Wheel prior to A Time to Be Born, since there are recurring characters.  Hmmm.)

Speaking of late Sept., Salman Rushie is on another reading tour (for Quichotte this time).  He's giving a reading in Toronto at the AGO on Sept. 30, and probably other major North American cities around that time.  I've generally heard good things about his last three novels, including Quichotte, so I'm looking forward to this reading.

Edited September 8, 2019 by ejp626

[kinuta]

[jlhoots]

Daniel Silva: The New Girl

[kinuta]

 

[Brad]

35 minutes ago, kinuta said:

 

Terrific book. 

[porcy62]

Joseph Conrad.

One of the nice surprise of getting older is that I can read again classic stuff I read in my youth with new eyes. And yes Conrad Dostoyevsky Stendhal Kafka Simenon   and friends are still far far away better than most of the contemporary novels I read in the last years. Not to mention Shakespeare and Homer. It’s really a pure joy.

Edited September 11, 2019 by porcy62

[ghost of miles]

Finished Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, which is filled with brilliant writing that evokes the early 20th-century world of Jewish immigrants on New York City’s Lower East Side. The most dramatically compelling character to me is the young protagonist’s domineering, thwarted and abusive father, who throws a charge through any scene that features him. Roth was clearly under the spell of Ulysses when he wrote the book, and his exclamation-point-driven rendering of the protagonist’s thoughts can come to seem like a Joycean tic as the book progresses. Very glad I read it, but I’ll probably take a long pause before plunging into Mercy Of A Rude Stream. Turning now to another Depression-era NYC writer, Daniel Fuchs. I’ve had his Brooklyn trilogy for quite some time, but I’m starting with a posthumous collection of his essays and stories that draws on his experiences after moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s:

Edited September 12, 2019 by ghost of miles

[Larry Kart]

3 hours ago, porcy62 said:

Joseph Conrad.

One of the nice surprise of getting older is that I can read again classic stuff I read in my youth with new eyes. And yes Conrad Dostoyevsky Stendhal Kafka Simenon   and friends are still far far away better than most of the contemporary novels I read in the last years. Not to mention Shakespeare and Homer. It’s really a pure joy.

 Hey, I'm now reading Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Among many other things, Gibbon's often merciless wit still comes through loud and clear.