Some of these I've already read and will probably re-read them. Many others are unknown to me. I don't expect to read each and every book on the list, but I certainly plan to cover most of it!
Has anyone read any of these books? Any comments or recommendations?
Please feel free to start a new thread for a particular book, should you feel like discussing it.
It is such an appetizing list!
I have only read
Cup of Gold and
The Crime at Black Dudley, but there are many I will be happy to read.
Thank you for having thought of such an interesting group.
I've read the Graves, Hemingway, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Remarque, Shaw, Wolfe, Woolf but long enough ago that rereading them will almost be like reading something new. Very interesting list.
Yummy! Even more goodies!!!
Oh, I had forgotten
The Scarlet Pimpernel! So that makes three I read.
And, now that I look at kiwidoc's list, I must also add
Harriet Hume.
Message edited by its author, Dec 16, 2008, 12:12pm.
Thanks for those, kiwidoc! I knew there would be a few holes in my list... as amply demonstrated by
this Wikipedia listI thought The Maltese Falcon was published in 1930 but what the heck - it's in!
Message edited by its author, Dec 16, 2008, 12:43pm.
You are right, Carolyn - it was published in 1930 - so is duly tossed out. My source was incorrect!
Would it also make sense to remove the touchstone then? My orderly mind likes the idea of a nice, neat reading list on the right-hand side of the page. But I'm weird that way.
lindscal - start with Freud, please.
ROFLMAO.
Fascinating list. I've read
Dodsworth and
All Quiet on the Western Front, and have been meaning to read a number of other books on the list. I've wanted to read
A High Wind in Jamaica since I first heard of it in
Diary of a Provincial Lady as one of the books the narrator reads.
It's interesting that there are two novels on the list,
Plum Bun and
Passing, about light-skinned African-American women "passing" as white. I might start there in January, since race in America will be a good theme for the month of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and President Obama's inauguration.
Message edited by its author, Dec 16, 2008, 1:38pm.
That is a good idea, Rob, especially considering the fact that I have them both.
OK, so I am hooked!
Gooseberry Fool by Winifred Ashton
The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden
The Dark Mile by Dorothy Broster
Pastel by Georgette Heyer
Jean and Jeanette by Eliza Humphreys
The Lacquer Lady by F Tennyson Jesse
A Charmed Circle by Anna Kavan (Helen Emily Ferguson)
The Echoing Green by Doris Leslie
The Man in the Queue by Elizabeth Mackintosh (Gordon Daviot)
Speedy Death by Gladys Mitchell
Susan Goes East by (Beatrice) Irene Rathbone
Ultima Thule by Henry Handel Richardson (later republished together with other works as The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
The Unkissed Bride by Amy Roberta Ruck
Gold Coast Customs by Edith Sitwell
False Spring by Beatrice May Kean Seymour
Autumn Crocus by Dodie Smith
Portrait of a Rebel by Janet Syrett
The True Heart by Sylvia Townsend Warner
As per Lindsacl's a/r suggestion, have removed the offending Maltese Falcon - not touchstoned anymore.
If we include english translations of books, would you say it was published in 1929 if it was first translated into English in 1929? Or should it have been written in the original language in 1929?
>18: bless your little secretly a/r heart ... :-)
If any of you are playing the
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die game, here are the 1929 books from the original list (I don't have the updated list):
Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
Les Enfants Terribles, Jean Cocteau
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Harriet Hume, Rebecca West
The Last September, Elizabeth Bowen
Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Doblin
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
The Time of Indifference, Alberto Moravia
Living, Henry Green
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Passing, Nella Larsen
Hebdomeros, Giorgio de Chirico
#24 - probably the true reason why I think of Freud's ideas are so s----y - too much transference. Glad it is still a secret! Amen.
A few more:
Cimarron by
Edna FerberFlowering Judas by Katherine Anne Porter
In the Wilderness by Sigrid Undset
The Maracot Deep by Arthur Conan Doyle
#17 fabrile-heart - excellent list! Are they all Viragos?
#30 bleu, sadly not, but they are all women authors who are on my ever increasing tbr!
edt to say #21 pamelad. I would really like to read the Robert Graves memoir, so may have to start with that one, thanks for the recommendation
Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 3:18am.
#32 fleela - thank you for the link to the list. Very interesting and look at the 'childrens' books on the list as well!
Emil and The Detectives,
Tintin in The Land of The Soviets and
Rivals of The Chalet School! Now I realise why my, now 93 year old Mummy was always wanting me to read Emil and The Detectives.
Just off to check the Newbery Medal prize winner for 1929.
Edited to add the 1929 winner
The Trumpeter of Krakow by
Eric Kelly set in Poland. When I was reading all the Newbery winners I could not find a copy of this one.
Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 3:28am.
Emil and the Detectives....I have the first American edition (1930), and will definitely read it over the holidays.
Of the list on the Group Profile page I have only read:
The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
I have a number of others, but have been meaning to read Thomas Wolfe's Quartet for years, so think I will add
Look Homeward, Angel to my Winter reading list and my first 1929 Project read. I also had Virginia Woolfs book on the re-read pile.
ETA: I shall re-read those I have read before participating in the threads though, as most of them were read an age ago!
Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 8:00am.
#34 and #36
Emil and the DetectivesI have a very vivid memory of this book, read when I was perhaps seven. The great Emil KNOWS that the robber will steal the banknote out of his pocket on a train and figures out an ingenious way of proving the banknote is his. I spent much time in my childhood in trains on my own and was always terrified that crafty thieves would be robbing me. The terrors of childhood. A powerful book, obviously.
Have just completed some further research regarding the 1929 Newbery Medal Award and found that I have misinformed you.
The Trumpeter of Krakow was actually published in 1928 so, strictly speaking is not eligible.
In fact the 1930 Newbery Award winner,
Hitty Her First Hundred Years was published by MacMillan in 1929 and is therefore eligible!
#34 - Julie, I can't remember which one Rivals at the Chalet School is, but I was addicted to the Chalet School books when I was growing up. I've just realised they must be in a box at my parents' place...might have to find them and add them to my library!
Wait, there's more. Popular fiction continues:
The Galloping Broncos by Max Brand
Four Rounds of Bull-Dog Drummond by
SapperBlood Royal by Dornford Yates
Tanar of Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Emperor of America by Sax Rohmer
Altar of Honour by Ethel M Dell
Good Gestes: Stories of Beau Geste, His Brothers, And Certain of Their Comrades in the French Foreign Legion by P C Wren
Red Silence by Kathleen Norris
Mother and Son by Kathleen Norris (no touchstone)
ETA had never heard of Kathleen Norris, seems to have written religious fiction. A popular category in the twenties? I received
Magnificent Obsession as a Sunday school prize - it sold millions in the twenties.
Red Silence touchstone keeps reverting to Silence of the Lambs!
Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 6:14pm.
I read Kathleen Norris's
Mother (published 1911), because I was doing some research on Teddy Roosevelt a few years ago, and he praises Norris's novel in his
Autobiography. He says that it sums up his thoughts about women and motherhood. But I can't seem to remember a thing about it.
I was hoping Nancy Drew had appeared by 1929 -- but she didn't debut until 1930. However, I found among my mother's old books,
The Girls of Lighthouse Island by May Hollis Barton which was published in 1929. May Hollis Barton was one of the pseudonyms under which Harriet Stratemeyer Adams wrote -- Carolyn Keene, the author of the Nancy Drew books, was another one.
Message edited by its author, Dec 17, 2008, 7:01pm.
I'm overwhelmed by the number of books that everyone has come up with! I've counted roughly 135ish so far, and that's without following some of the links that you've posted!
Before I reached for the smelling salts, I decided to create some order out of the chaos (mainly for lindsacls' benefit), and have included everything mentioned up to post #45 in an Excel list - which I have posted on
this website (for information purposes only, not for discussion).
I've only listed titles and authors at the moment, but would like to include a short description of each, as well as the LT page and Wikipedia links, as soon as I get a chance.
(I'm doing this for myself, since I know I'll wander off absentmindedly without some sort of structure). Comments and suggestions for improvement are very welcome!
Oooh, that spreadsheet makes me feel warm inside. :-)
Seriously, with the suggestions coming in at a frenetic pace, I think it's a great idea to come up with a master list. Those of us who have come over from the VMC Group understand (note chorus of nodding heads ...)
*nods vigorously*
Very useful spreadsheet Carolyn. Should we post our comments here, for you to add? Clutching a copy of
Death of My Aunt.
ETA Can we add something numerical so lindsacl can make a bar chart?
Message edited by its author, Dec 18, 2008, 6:56am.
>49: Can we add something numerical so lindsacl can make a bar chart? * starts salivating *
>46 excellent plan, there's nothing we VMC readers like better than a list and all its attendant benefits. * going around mopping up after Laura in case the covers get damaged *
Hi:
in #28 I mentioned
No Enemy by Ford Madox Ford which did not make it on the spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet IS an excellent idea, of course. Thank you.
Apologies, polutropos, I've corrected it. And
Death of my Aunt is already on it :-)
Added!
On The Literary Encyclopedia (
http://ww.litencyc.com)
Fugitive's Return by Susan Glaspell is said to being published in 1929.
I've never heard of this novel/author, and I can't find it's mentioned here before. Or?
Well, what kind of novel is
Fugitive's Return, and did Susan Glaspell write more books?
Susan Glaspell was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a novelist. I don't know anything about this particular novel. Persephone Books reprints
two of her novels,
Fidelity and
Brook Evans (1928).
Message edited by its author, Dec 18, 2008, 11:06am.
Added!
#46 Yes, we are nodding! Joking apart, it was thanks to Lindsacl's inspiration that I began to 'excel' my 888 reading plans for the 888 challenge that has been happening this year.
>59 I agree. Lindsacl is an inspiration to us all! :) (I've started a spreadsheet for my 999 challenge. . . )
Lindsacl is an inspiration to us all! OMG, that's frightening.
>62 Added.
Laura's the best.
Some poetry from 1929 (touchstones mostly useless)
Conrad Aiken,
Selected Poems (1930 Pulitzer Prize winner)
Robert Bridges,
The Testament of Beauty (first volume)
Bliss Carman,
Wild Garden and
SanctuaryRobert Graves,
PoemsJohn Masefield,
Easter and
South and East (also a novel,
The Hawbucks)
Gertrude Stein,
An Acquaintance with DescriptionWilliam Butler Yeats, "The Winding Stair" (signed, limited edition)
T.S. Eliot, "Animula" (Faber
Ariel Poems series)
Helen Waddell,
Medieval Latin LyricsThis message has been deleted by its author.
*thud*
Zashchita Luzhina The Defense, the novel Nabokov later described as the "story of a chess player who was crushed by his genius," was was serialized in 1929-30 in
Sovremennye zapiski, the leading Parisian émigré journal, which would publish all of his subsequent Russian novels.
Boris Pilniak published
Mahogany in 1929. A novel that would enter the ranks of Russian classics decades later, but which could not be published in 1929, was Andrei Platoon's
Foundation Pit, which chronicles the digging of a never-completed pit for an unnamed socialist construction project.
And from China by Jiang Guangci a must read!
The Sorrows of Lisa, published in 1929, was hotly attacked by left-wing critics for its sympathetic portrayal of the old Russian aristocracy and the implied questioning of the correctness of Soviet policies. Lisa is a White Russian who has taken refuge in Shanghai; she works as a striptease dancer and a prostitute before meeting a pathetic and untimely end. Gosh, I hope I didn’t give away the ending.
And another Russian best-seller: Iurii Tynianov's
The Death of Vazir-MukhtarMessage edited by its author, Dec 18, 2008, 11:47pm.
EX-WIFE; By Ursula Parrott; New American Library; $7.95; 224 pages.
"An ex-wife is a woman with a crick in her neck from looking back over her shoulder at matrimony," says Lucia to Patricia. Lucia has been an ex-wife for several years. Patricia is becoming one.First published in 1929, Ursula Parrott's novel about the "glamorous" life of two single-again New York career women is both quaint and true. Mostly true.
Some of the conversations she set down 60 years ago could have taken place yesterday.
"No other man will ever hurt you like this Pat," says Lucia. "Because when you suspect he's ready to go, you'll pack his baggage and buy him a one-way ticket anywhere he likes. You'll never hold on again. It's the holding on that hurts. Difference between sudden and prolonged dying."
The women Parrott portrays are smooth, hard-drinking and cynical - as if they were struck from the typewriter of Dorothy Parker or Dashiell Hammett.
Ursula Parrott herself must have been very like the characters she wrote about.
She, too, was an ex-wife. Like Patricia, she worked as a fashion writer and journalist in New York. The publication of this, her first novel, turned her to writing formula fiction for women's magazines.
She actually got rich off her novels and stories - though she spent her fortune as fast as she made it. She married four times in all and died in a hospital charity ward, of cancer, at the age of 58.
Her novel is less lurid than today's romance novels. Yet in 1929, "Ex-Wife" was considered scandalous. It was reprinted several times before Ursula Parrott allowed her name to replace "Anonymous" on the title page.
Oh good Lord, the Russians are here. Excellent additions to the list - I just need to, em, add them to the list...
ETA list now amended, as far as I could make out the suggestions...
Message edited by its author, Dec 19, 2008, 6:47am.
This
Ursula Parrott sounds intriguing, as well as Jiang Guangci.
Thanks, Mary!
I have that
Ursula Parrott novel! It has been sitting on my shelf for years, so maybe this is the time to finally read it. Thanks, urania1!
Speaking of parrots once again, over in ClubRead2009 I posted a review of a new book on parrot intelligence, which sounds fascinating. No connection to 1929 that I can discern, however. Sorry about that.
I was looking through my books and found that Canadian author
Morley Callaghan wrote a book published in 1929,
A Native Argosy. He was in Paris in 1929, became friends with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He wrote a wonderful book about his experiences during that year -That Summer in Paris. It was published in 1963.
Naw, just short stories!
ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You have to watch that Urania, she is evil.
Found a copy of Ex-wife on Betterworld, so have ordered it. Couldn't go past the Dorothy Parker and Dashiell Hammett comparison, Urania.
More poetry courtesy of wikipedia:
Djuna Barnes, A Night Among the Horses a collection of prose and poetry expanded from her 1923 volume, A Book
Ursula Bethell, From a Garden in the Antipodes, "by Evelyn Hayes" (pseudonym), London: Sidgwick & Jackson, New Zealand poet published in Britain:
1Robert Bridges, The Testament of Beauty
Cecil Day-Lewis, Transitional Poem
Emily Dickinson, Little, Brown, & Company publishes 150 of her recently discovered poems
T. S. Eliot, "Som de l'escalina" (later to become part III of Ash-Wednesday, published in 1930) was published in the Autumn, 1929 issue of Commerce along with a French translation.
2Robin Hyde, The Desolate Star, New Zealand
Robinson Jeffers, Dear Judas and Other Poems
D. H. Lawrence, Pansies
I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism: A Study in Literary Judgement
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, influential compilation of 10 letters sent to Franz Kappus from 1903 to 1908 and published by Kappus this year; Germany
W. B. Yeats, The Winding Stair
Avaland, you beat me to it! I was just getting ready to post something on poetry.
Damn!
*scuttling away to do more research*
Oh,
I LOVED Richards's Practical Criticism when I did Critical theory, oh, a thousand years ago.
And Letters to a Young Poet was a frequent gift from me to graduating students with some literary promise.
I thought I would add a few more writers to the list.
Jewish NovelsReporter by
Meyer LevinThe Vengeance of the Fathers by Yitshaq Shami
Classics: Recognized or NotSartoris by
William Faulkner - another Faulkner
Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man by
Siegfried SassoonSteppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Celestial Seraglio “a wicked account of coming of age in a Belgian convent school” by
Olive Moore Dalkey Archive reprint
The Great Weaver from Kashmir by Haldor Laxness
Death Comes for the Archbishop by
Willa CatherGraphic NovelsGods' Man by Lynd Ward – “the first of six wordless woodcut novels. With 139 images engraved on wood and printed on one side of the page, Gods' Man tells the story of an artist who bargains with Death in return for success in the art world, which the artist discovers is corrupted by money and greed, personified by a prostitute. Gods' Man sold over 20,000 copies on its original publication despite having been released during the depression era - in the very week of the stock market crash - and was in its third printing by January of 1930. Ward went on to produce five further novels in woodcuts during the 1930's - Mad Man's Drum, Wild Pilgrimage, Prelude to a Million Years, Song Without Words, and Vertigo.”
La femme 100 têtes by
Max Ernst a collage novel. “The title itself is a collage of meanings: The woman a hundred heads as well as The headless woman - and there are more possibilities than '100 têtes', 'sans tête', 's'entête' or 'sang tête'. Nine chapters 'tell' the story of a woman who is believed by some to be Mary. Her name is Wirrwarr, Perturbation and Germinal ('my sister', camping out alone between phantoms and ants). As each page contains a single print with a brief subtitle (the legend), the reader mostly follows the trail of the illustrations. Although they are intentionally confusing, the subtitles are crucial in meaning. In the first chapter for instance, the consecutive collages as a whole appear to reject the dogma of the Virgin Birth.”
http://www.kb.nl/bc/koopman/1926-1930/c5...Science FictionThe Rebel Passion by Kay Burdekin – utopian science fiction
Harlem RenaissanceBanjo by Claude McKay
The Blacker the Berry by
Wallace Henry ThurmanCrimeGeorges Simenon's “Maigret first emerges in the figure of 'N.49', a bulky, pipe-smoking detective featured in
L'amant sans nom by 'Christian Brull', published by Fayard in 1929. Later that same year, 'Commissaire Maigret' made an appearance in
Train de nuit.”
Jane AustenitesMargaret Dashwood; or Interference by
Edith Brown – one of what have now become seeming endless sequels to Jane Austen’s novels
Reading GloballyWhite Narcissus by
Raymond Knister (Canadian) “The Ontario farmland described with arresting clarity in
White Narcissus is, despite its beauty and abundance, ‘a place of choked vistas’ where bitterness and rivalry have taken root. Against this backdrop Raymond Knister portrays the triumph of longing over despair, as his hero, Richard Milne, struggles to redeem his childhood sweetheart from the spiritual imprisonment of her parents’ home. First published in 1929,
White Narcissus was a groundbreaking work in the development of the Canadian realist novel, fusing Knister’s imagistic sensibility with the deeply felt experience of a real time and place.”
Bienviendo by
Marta Brunet (Chile)
Menschen Im Hotel by Vicki Baum (1929 German novel; published in U.S. as Grand Hotel in 1931 by Doubleday) made into a film starring Joan Crawford
Riven by
Jean Devanny – “a romance describing modern urban life in Wellington” (New Zealand/Australia)
http://epress.anu.edu.au/anu_lives/trans...MiscellaneousDorna or The Hillvale Affair by Ellis Parker ButlerDesert Dogs by Stuart Cummings Ripley
http://www.donswaim.com/ripley-bio_1.htmMoonchild by the British occultist Aleister Crowley
Madonna Without Child by Myron Brinig
*thud*
urania hastily calls 911 in Taiwan to come rescue Murr
>86
Thank you for your extensive list, urania1.
I believe Steppenwolf, The Great Weaver of Kashmir and
Death Comes for the Archbishop were first published in 1927, while
Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man is from 1928...
But correct me if I'm wrong, please!!!
I personally am not terribly interested in books that were first published in English translation in 1929, simply because it expands an already impossible reading list even further. Similarly with - albeit magnificent - books that were published just on either side of 1929.
But those are just my criteria - to be honest, I wish I could concentrate on
all of the Twenties at one time. I do want to read other things next year though, hence the restriction. As far as I'm concerned, Steppenwolf, Fox-hunting Man et al are fair game, if that's what you want to read. I'll join in the discussion, where I can.
Many thanks to Lois for the poetry and to vpfluke, too! I'll update the list as soon as I get a chance.
ETA - How could I forget Vicki Baum! Great catch, urania1.
Message edited by its author, Dec 22, 2008, 7:24am.
*clears throat and pipes up feebly*
I posted some poetry, too (message #64).
*crawls back into hole*
Dear Rob - you suggested Graves, Bridges, Yates to mention but a few wonderful poets! Meanwhile back in post 39 I was caught up in childrens books! If *you* are crawling back into a hole ... watch out as I'll be in there as well!
Message edited by its author, Dec 22, 2008, 10:23am.
I received
Berlin Alexanderplatz from The Norwegian Book Club's series 'World Library' today, and I plan to read it in 2009.
Other members of this group who are going to read 'BA' next year?
#94 I will be reading
Berlin Alexanderplatz this year. I have had it on my TBR book pile for a long time!
>92, 93 Dear Rob and Julie, please accept my apologies and flay me with a cat o' (twenty)nine tails... the Mother of all Corrected Lists will appear tomorrow.
.jpg)
>94 kjellika, I fully expect to re-read
Berlin Alexanderplatz this year, although probably not until February or March. I'm curious to hear which translation people will be reading (is yours Norwegian?). I wasn't too impressed by the Eugene Jolas English translation (Continuum), but I'm not sure what else is out there.
These are the books that I
definitely plan to read or re-read in 2009, I'll add more as soon as I've acquired them.
Edited to resize.
Message edited by its author, Dec 22, 2008, 3:49pm.
Citizenkelly,
You are correct about the aforementioned publication dates. I did not double check the list. Strike them at once.
#96
Yes, my edition of
Berlin Alexanderplatz is Norwegian with an introductory essay by the Norwegian author Erik Fosnes Hansen.
I plan to read this novel in one or two months.
Wow! Who knew so many great books were published in one year! I'm doing the 999 challenge this year--wish I had made a 1929 category! However I notice that several great mysteries were published that year and there are some I haven't read yet. Since I had planned to read mostly "Golden Age" mysteries for that category--I already have
The Dain Curse planned for that category because I own it--I will pick off the 1029 list as many as I can locate. This should be fun! I also notice a couple of "classics" on the list that I may be able to fit into my classics category.
I just finished
A Room of One's Own a couple of week ago, so I will join in that discussion, too.
So many books--so little time!
Hullo, I've pimped the spreadsheet somewhat, or rather created an extra one with basic information and links, but I'm only as far as message #82 - I'll tackle all suggestions that have come since then as soon as I can.
>100 Good to see you on board MusicMom41.
A few more writers – Mostly Canadian and a few others
The Great Fright by Tommy Burns – Canadian novel shocking at the time but considered a tame read now
Red Willows by
Constance Lindsay Skinner - Canadian historical novel
All Else Is Folly by Peregrine Acland – “This fictional account of Acland's war experiences make for heart-rending reading. His frankness and his sense of action are riveting. Ford Maddox Ford wrote the introduction to this novel and called it one of the best war novels written in the English language.”
The Eternal Forest by
George's Godwin – “Through experiences and thoughts of a central character called the Newcomer, it vividly portrays pioneer life, the prevailing racism of the times, the terrain of present-day Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge, the clash of socialist hopes versus capitalism and the emergence of Vancouver as a city. The couple buys and clears property at 'Ferguson's Landing', a fictionalized version of Whonnock, located approximately 25 miles upstream from New Westminster, but their poverty and World War One lead them to renounce pioneering in favour of a return to England.”
The Iron Man and the Tin Woman with Other Such Futurities by
Stephen Leacock science fiction parody
The Amber Riders by Annie Charlotte Dalton though born in England, is perhaps Canada's greatest living woman poet.
Our Daily Bread by Frederick Philip Grove described as “
almost morbidly dark and depressing.” I wonder what it would have taken for the book to have achieved honest-to-goodness morbidity and depression?
Satan as Lightning by
Basil King – “Novel of a bitter exconvict who finds regeneration and true love. A former priest and believer in spiritualism, King turned to writing full time when his health and his eyesight began to fail. He continued to write even when blind and claimed that some of his books were finished with the aid of the spirits of some deceased persons.
While Dashiell Hammett called his work prim and priggish, saying of one book ‘Mr. King always succeeds in annoying me before I am two chapters into him,’ King had fans in Hollywood, including Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks.”Whiteoaks of Jalna by
Mazo de la Roche – Jalna books were among the most popular series of books of the time.
The Few OthersPovest (
The Tale) by
Boris Pasternak - originally published as a novel
Zahradníkův rok (
The Gardener's Year) by Karel Čapek
Povídky z jedné a z druhé kapsy (
Stories from a Pocket and Stories from Another Pocket) by Karel Čapek – Note:
Stories from One Pocket was published in 1928, followed by
Stories from Another Pocket in 1929 and I think the two were also published collectively in 1929. I’m sure citizenkelly will correct me if I’m wrong. Of course, our resident Czech expert polutropos is probably the better authority on this one.
Regarding Annie Charlotte Dalton, being dead since 1938 she obviously cannot be one of Canada's greatest living poets (unless we're talking alternative realities here).
>101: Carolyn, that spreadsheet is turning into an amazing resource! It's also a huge undertaking to create and maintain. If you're up for that, fine ... but if you would like help from group members, you could move it to GoogleDocs and provide interested parties with the ability to edit. Just a thought.
#102 the resident Czech expert speaks up:
the Czech sources in front of me say that Povídky z jedné kapsy, Povídky z druhé kapsy and Zahradníkův rok are all published in Czech in 1929.
Zahradníkův rok (The Gardener's Year) subtitled Musings about Gardening, reveal the Czech character through the reactions to gardening happenings such as the weather.
Double and triple-checked, and yes, Stories from a Pocket and Stories from Another Pocket were indeed published in Czech in 1929. But looking them over, I just cannot resist sharing a small excerpt, translated freely by me:
"Aaah, that's nothing," said Jandera, a writer. "Chasing a thief, we are all familiar with that but what is unusual is when the thief is looking for the one whom he robbed. Just so that you know, that happened to me. So I wrote this story and had it published and as I was reading it in print I had a most unpleasant feeling. "Damnation," I said to myself, I have read something like that before. Who did I steal that material from? For three days I wandered around like a stubborn sheep and for the life of me I could not come up with the name of the author from whom I 'borrowed' the material. Finally I bumped into a friend and said to him, "I am convinced that my last story is stolen from somewhere." "I noticed it immediately," he said, "you stole that from Chekhov." "Well, I was immediately relieved but then I was talking to a critic, and said to him, 'Sir, you would not believe it, but sometimes you can plagiarize something and you aren't even aware of it. For example my last story was stolen." "I know," he said, "it is the one from Maupassant." So I went around to all my good friends and listen, once a man is on the sharp slope of crime he has no idea where to stop. If you can imagine, I also stole that one story from Gottfried Keller, Dickens, D'Annunzio, A Thousand and One Nights, Charles Louis Philippe, Hamsun, Storm, Hardy, Andreyev, Bandinelli, Rosegger, Reymont, and a whole pile of others. From that you can see how a man falls deeper and deeper into evil."
The Story of an Old Convict
#106 Dear Andrew,
There you go again. I now have yet another Karel Čapek book that I must purchase. Before I am through and dead, I am sure you will have suggested a good Czech grammar. I can see now that I must learn the blasted language. Suggestions on books with which to start (i.e., grammar books, dictionaries, etc.)?
Yes, it's really just too much, Andrew. MY TBR pile is currently being stored in this building
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/11/... and there is simply no more bloody room for this one!!!
Fantastic excerpt though, and brilliantly translated.
On seeing Murr's TBR building, urania falls over in a dead faint.
*frantic licking of Urania'a face*
Quick, smelling salts!!!!!!
>102
I’m sure citizenkelly will correct me if I’m wrong. Of course, our resident Czech expert polutropos is probably the better authority on this one.Hey, I'll have you know that I share a birthday with Karel Čapek and know everything about him!
Just kidding. I know almost nothing about him...
Thanks for the translation, polutropos, very interesting.
The list has been pimped some more.
Message edited by its author, Dec 28, 2008, 3:47am.
Amazing lists, citizenkelly! They will be really helpful.
#112 :-)
Just received a used book for my Global Reading. The Seven Madman by Roberto Arlt. This was first published in 1929. First English language edition in 1984.
Touchstone not working.
Rob,
Was the cock recovered? Or did it continue to roam around? Should we be nervous? Has anyone done a Freudian analysis of the title and its alternate title? What conclusions should we draw about the connections between dead men and cocks on the loose?
Further discussion questions to add to Urania's:
What influence if any did Gogol's short Story
The Nose have on D.H. Lawrence?
And why is the touchstone so creative today?
Message edited by its author, Jan 1, 2009, 3:09am.
The Nose If your desired touchstone isn't the default, click (others) and check out the list of other choices and click on whichever is appropriate.
(Hope that made sense.)
>118 Well, if we use the early modern metaphor represented by "death' and "dying," there's certainly a connection to escaped cocks.
Edited for typo.Message edited by its author, Jan 1, 2009, 11:15am.
Here's Lawrence's
own description of the book: "I wrote a story of the Resurrection, where Jesus gets up and feels very sick bout everything, and can't stand the old crowd any more - so cuts out - and as he heals up, be begins to find what an astonishing place the phenomenal world is, far more marvellous than any salvation or heaven - and thanks his stars he needn't have a mission any more."
The Man Who Died was all the rage when I was in college in the late 60s. For that matter, DHL was pretty hot then too -- the film of
Women in Love, directed by Ken Russell, with Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden came out in 1969. There was definitely an erotic affinity between the Jazz Age and the Sixties.
Two more to add to Mary's (#86) list of Harlem Renaissance books:
Countee Cullen,
The Black ChristWalter White, Rope and Faggot
The Male Impersonator by E.F. Benson, 1929
Tiffin,
Awesome. I love Benson.
For a children's book published in 1929, I've got a copy of
Lad of Sunnybank by Albert Payson
Terhune. A dog story, and part of a series.
Has Modesta by G. B. Stern already been mentioned?
eta: tried to fix touchstone!
Loading...Message edited by its author, Jan 3, 2009, 11:03pm.
thank you vpfluke!
Murr, the only reason my TBR pile doesn't require such a sky-scraping edifice is lack of funds...
thanks, sqdancer, for the advice on touchstones. I mess it up all the time and wind up with links to totally irrelevant books.
FYI, for pop culture enthusiasts, both Buck Rogers and Tarzan were first published in comic strips in 1929, and the first four-colour comic publication, The Funnies, came out that year too.
Thanks ever so much for the continuing suggestions - the list has been arighted anew, at least as far as the basic titles and authors are concerned. Further details to be filled in at a later stage.
By the way, if anyone would like to use the
website to upload and share large files or documents, please let me know and I can give you the password to access the site, or I can upload the stuff for you. We have loads and loads of room. The only thing I'm having difficulty with at present is uploading photos there, which never usually causes problems... I'll keep at it.
I'm going into the Carleton College Library special collections next week to look at first editions of Edith Sitwell's
Gold Coast Customs and Countee Cullen's
The Black Christ. I'll take (and then try to post) some photographs of the Cullen, at least, which evidently has interesting illustrations.
Great idea, Rob!
I saw a collection of Dorothy Parker essays and reviews in a bookshop yesterday (the latest Penguin edition) and there was a book review of
Dodsworth from 1929... I didn't have time to do more than scan it, but it seemed to be quite scathing (quelle surprise). Does anyone have a copy? It might be interesting to have to hand, when we get around to reading and discussing
Dodsworth...
More books (not good ones I fear) for Project 1929
While on a little adventure to ye local used and rare book store today, I discovered and bought what I fully expect to be potboiler sentimentality at its best or worst depending upon how one feels about potboiler sentimentality. The title is a hoot:
The Methodist Faun by Anne Parrish. I’ve never met any Methodist fauns. Methodists just do not seem like the sorts who turn faunlike. I have not read the book, but based on the jacket notes the novel appears to deal with the spiritual dilemmas of one Clifford Hunter and “the good women of Pine Hills” (no mention of the bad women of Pine Hills but perhaps they will show up. One can always hope). At any rate our hero has been born and bred a Methodist, but “He wanted beauty and mystery. Alone in the woods, he found comfort and satisfaction (doing what I know not), but he could never realize it in life. He could not harmonize the conflicting elements in his temperament; he was disappointed in his dream love (one of the bad women perhaps?), and bored in his conventional humdrum marriage. Torn by ambitions which he had not the capacity to fulfill, he was out of tone with prosaic commonplaces of his natural circumstances.”
The author Anne Parrish sounds a lot more interesting. According to
Wikipedia, she was the author of the #8 bestseller for the years 1925, 1927, 1928. Her mother, an artist, studied with Mary Cassatt. Anne Parrish originally set out to be an artist, trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women with Thomas Eakins. She married into wealth first and later into poetry, and amassed a collection of art, which now belongs to the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. She also won a Newbery Honor for her children’s book
The Dream Coach. Her 1928 best seller
All Kneeling was made into a movie entitled
Born to be Bad starring Joan Fontaine.
And . . . on the back of the dust jacket I discovered a veritable treasure trove of 1929 fiction including the following:
Give Me My Sin Again by Naomi Royde-Smith (whose middle name I found out was Gwladys). The book was published the same year in Great Britain under the title
Summer Holiday. The basic plotline? Lovely, innocent, probably virginal young woman “comes to love before she is mentally or spiritually equipped to meet it.”
Five and Ten by Fannie Hurst, who has a
Wikipedia article devoted to her. She was a feminist (fought for a woman’s right to keep her maiden name after marriage), had a torrid affair with Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and hung out in Greenwich Village. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a low opinion of her writing and noted in
This Side of Paradise that she belonged to that class of writer who will not produce “one story or novel that will last 10 years.” As for
Five and Ten, young Joshua Ratrick parlays his wife’s dowry into his own position as the “Thirteenth Richest Man in the World.” Supposedly the story contains symbolism as well, but I was unable to determine what it was.
The Unwilling God by Percy Marks is a sequel to
The Plastic Age (1926), “a realistic treatment of undergraduate life at Stanford, with depictions of gin and petting parties,” which became “a controversial bestseller, with some praising its frankness and others decrying its sensationalism.” Alas,
The Unwilling God, which deals with the “spiritual growing pains” of the “Younger Generation” flopped.
The World’s Delight by Fulton Oursler. Printed below is a review from
Time MagazineMonday, Aug. 19, 1929, Time Magazine
THE WORLD'S DELIGHT—Fulton Oursler —Harper ($2).
Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,/And thy limbs are as melodies yet,/ And move to the music of passion/ With lithe/ and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you/ For creeds that refuse and restrain?/ Come down and redeem us from virtue,/ Our Lady of Pain.
Called by Frenchmen "England's greatest poet," Algernon Charles Swinburne in the above lines described and addressed his friend and mistress, a U. S. woman, the late famed Adah Isaacs Menken. In her the poet was pleased to see a Pagan Virgin Mary, coming to crush the new, romantic Christianity, to revive old, lustful paganism. Novelist Oursler met the lady only spiritually and after considerable research. Noting in her written remains the kind of dour, ineffectual yearning popular in Victorian days, he endows her with a faithless first lover, from whom, as a circus horsewoman at 17, she galloped away.
An Irish-Creole girl of New Orleans, originally named Dolores McCord, she paraded down the main street of Galveston in the first crinoline that town ever saw. Her charms thus enhanced induced old Isaacs Menken, vocal teacher, to make her a Jewess and his bride. A memory of her first love drove her from Menken's hearth, but later gave morbid ardor to her acting of Lady Macbeth in New Orleans. In New York she became a poetess and the wife of Heavyweight Champion John C. Heenan. Her acting in Mazeppa brought her fame. This was the sensational play wherein, as a Tartar boy, she wore the first boyish bob on the New York stage. The place was the Bowery Theatre, lately burned down. Part of her part every night was to let herself be strapped quasi-nude to the back of a black, spirited horse. When the horse ran away, the audience gasped; their excitement, insinuates Author Oursler, for some reason of his own, being more spiritual than physical.
In Europe, after living at the seashore with the red-haired Swinburne, she took refuge in Paris at the house of that famed, fatherly quadroon, Alexandre Dumas Sr. Her poems, edited by Swinburne, were published, praised. She became the toast of Charles Dickens, Napoleon III and many another celebrity, staid and profligate. Yet for the Montparnasse tombstone, bestowed on her remains by Baron de Rothschild, the epitaph she wrote in advance was mournful, cryptic: Thou Knowest. She died in 1868, aged 33.
The Significance. There is a supposition that Nana, Naturalist Zola's novel, includes some Menken escapades. Nana, one of the realest characters of all fiction, lives and breathes lustily for present-day readers while Adah Menken, who lived just as lustily, pulsates feebly in Author Oursler's sentimental brief. Yet whether or not the "spirit" he discusses is more Oursler than Menken, Author Oursler has succeeded in writing the first book about a U.S. figurine no less famed in her day than Isadora Duncan, Aimee Semple MacPherson, Peggy Hopkins Joyce.
The Author. How much academic education does it take to be a writer earning respectable money? Charles Fulton Oursler, now 36, finished all schooling with seventh grade grammar, in Baltimore. Thereafter he studied French literature, sleight-of-hand, farm implements, music. He earned money by the last three. Real success came with his play, The Spider, a Broadway smash in 1927, now playing in Budapest and Paris. His somewhat spiritualized view of Adah Menken is partly explained by his membership in the American Society for Psychic Research.
And finally
Black Sun by Aben Kandel better known for writing the screenplay of
I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf. James Thurber did the illustration for the book cover described below:.
Dust jacket: front and spine on red. On front, in black, one-line quotation by Heywood Broun, title and subtitle, Thurber drawing in white outlined in black of naked seated man and woman (she is pointing at him; he is looking angry), authors, seven-line quotation by Isabel Patterson, heavy rule, publisher. Spine titled in black, with large question mark below title.
Apparently the book deals with travails of a “good, decent” but weak young man name Michael and the “domestic, loyal, nice, but unperceiving” hussy named Louise. It was made into a film and translated into French
Message edited by its author, Jan 22, 2009, 11:08pm.
Ah, yes, Mary! How could we have neglected those?
Truly some lost classics there, Urania.
I've got a children's book to add,
The Funny Thing by Wanda Gag. I can even quote from memory: "And very good they are, jumjills!"
Also,
New Worlds To Conquer by Richard Halliburton (adventure stories about the author's travels in Latin America), and
Swift Water by romance writer Emily Loring, whose delightfully purple prose always contains detailed descriptions (complete with fabric) of every gown the heroine appears in. (One for you, vintage_books!) I couldn't immediately lay my hands on this one, but here's a representative sample from
It's a Great World (from 1935):
"The recently opened Supper Club was done in rose color with silver lacquer trim and gold fittings. It was dimly lit and throbby with music. In the circular room where dancing went on, the tables, placed around a slowly-revolving platform on which were grouped the dusky-skinned musicians in cloth of silver mess jackets and cloth of gold trousers, were slabs of synthetic pink tourmaline, bordered with glittering green jewels, also synthetic. The silver frames of the chairs and benches were covered with dusty pink leather with here and there one of tourmaline green for accent....
At one of the tables Eve shrugged off a honey-colored wrap which matched her deftly simple frock of soft, gleaming satin. In a mirror, she caught the reflection of her head, of the sleek swirl of her dark hair which ended in a delicate mass of short curls, of the sheen of pearls about her throat."
I have to admit I finder her a sort of guilty pleasure, and I have quite a number of her books.
Message edited by its author, Jan 23, 2009, 2:10am.
Comment to all of the above:
...As if I did not already have enough books.....sigh.....
Portrait in a Mirror
By Charles Morgan
Published by MACMILLAN, 1929
320 pages
This book won the Prix Femina-Vie Heureuse Anglais for 1930
hereThe details of this and many other prizes are in
Famous Literary Prizes and their Winners (1935), which you can download
here.Here's
an article from last August about how the bad economy in Japan has sparked interest in
A Crab-Canning Boat by Takiji Kobayashi (no touchstones), a Marxist novel published in 1929! An English translation doesn't seem to exist.
Message edited by its author, Jan 28, 2009, 8:33am.
How I wish there was an English translation of
Adelaide!!
I have just started reading
The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt. The front flap says that this was first published in 1929.
Hello? Is anyone out there? I just found a little book of literary criticism, mostly about Virginia Woolf, by
Storm Jameson, published in 1929. The title is
The Georgian Novel and Mr. Robinson. Apparently too obscure to have a touchstone.
Hello Rob and how very interesting. Thank you for posting.
Having read the new
Storm Jameson biography by
Jennifer BirkettI am planning on reading more of her work next year. I have heard of this one but most likely through the bibliography of said book.
(back to top)
