A new month, a new thread.

Infinite Jest - I'm half done!

Another Country - over halfway done, though I'm finding myself disliking the characters. It's like they're playing sexual musical chairs, everyone sleeping with everyone else.

Little, Big - though there are some neat narrative turns in this, I can't really find myself connecting with any of the characters. The whole "J.M. Barrie meets 100 Years of Solitude" thing works pretty well, but I tend to slack off on this one.

The Company by Robert Littell -- nearly halfway done.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer -- less than half done, albeit World War 2 has started. Nazi Germany conquering the USSR should be, in the words of neoconservative pundits, "a cakewalk." See ya home at Xmas, fellas.

White House Years by Henry Kissinger. Still a ways to go. This dude is as amoral and destructive as Heath Ledger's Joker.

Rising Up and Rising Down by William "Smiles" Vollmann. On the last section of the penultimate volume, about dreams and irrationality -- all about voodoo doctors in Louisiana and Miami, white survivalists, and the Japanese caste system.

Plutarch's Lives, Volume 4—Reading about Pompey now. Much more accurate that watching it one HBO.

The Brothers Karamazov—Still working through it. Schoolwork has got in the way of my reading it, though. :(

A Prayer for Owen Meany—For my English class. Not really liking it too much, but at least it's a speedy read.

I just started V. by Pynchon. I can't wait for Inherent Vice..!

V is the one Pynchon novel of the three I've read that I actually engage with. It has characters. I have to admit that I liked it more when I was young.

I hope you are having fun.

Robert

>2 - May I ask why the Shirer? Recent research has, to quote someone or other "quite exploded" him? I liked Michael Burleigh The Third Reich: A New History and the Richard J. Evans books.

Message edited by its author, Aug 1, 2009, 7:52pm.

And Hans Mommsen and Gotz Aly...

6: I'm a historian by trade. If anything, Shirer is a starting point. I'm reading it in the category of "historical journalism," since Shirer was a foreign correspondent not a historian. (Ambrose Bierce has a wonderful comparison between historians and journalists, accusing one or the other of being short-sighted.)

Since I'm a professional historian, I'm also "reading against the grain," looking for biases, fallacies, and gaps. In all three cases, there are legion. That doesn't make it obsolete, merely an Ur-text in the chain of evidence against the Third Reich. It's still a convincing indictment against the gullibility, stupidity, and cowardice of the Germans in particular and the human race in general.

The work is overly dependent on "captured documents" and it's hard to consider it objective, since the wounds of WW2 were still raw and bleeding in 1960. Not to mention, there's no coverage of the USSR, since their archives were locked and sealed. Ironically, I'm reading the 30th Anniversary Edition, published in 1990, as the USSR breathed its last ... Chechnya and Putin notwithstanding.

3: Reading Plutarch. I'm sure research has been done and Plutarch isn't considered the final authority on the lives of Roman leaders. Still, it's Plutarch. Mad propz are in order, since it's Plutarch.

Same goes for Shirer. As they say, "You had to be there," and Shirer was. I have a couple volumes of his memoirs. Might be interesting to comb through them for more initial impressions and opinions regarding the rise and fall of Nazi Germany.

About 100 pages into SAVAGE DETECTIVES and finding it a treat. Lots of sex and literary pretentiousness. But can he sustain this tone for the entire book?

I thought the first 150 pages were great and then the book degenerated into something rather boring. But i hold a minority opinion on this one~!

I finished Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism yesterday and went right on with The Spare Room. Both were very well-written, and each investigated the repercussions of ignoring truth in favor of a personal agenda.

Libby Cone aka reademwritem

11: I also just read Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism I thought it was a lot of fun.

Another 100 pages of War and Peace. . ..

I forget, Geoff, which translation are you reading? Did you mention?

I'm in the middle of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and also reading book 4 of the Patrick O'brian series, The Mauritius Command. I am also still working on The Guns of August which is very troubling for me to read.

Message edited by its author, Aug 3, 2009, 5:11pm.

Im in the middle of The Twilight Herald by Tom Lloyd, after a slow and confusing start I really believe this has potential. It is completely diffferent to the first book, so if you struggled with this first one give this a go, you wont be dissapointed, I've yet to finish it. And if the ending is to be as epic as its set up to be, this will go down as one of my favourite books of 2009.

Anna, what makes The Guns of August hard to read, other than the arrogant stupidity leading to a totally unnecessary war?

Anathem strikes me as a very unusual direction for NS. Both in style and substance it's almost an inverse function applied to snow crash. Where "Snow Crash" rock and rolled through your mind, "Anathem" is smooth and reflective. (Well, so far ~ 300 pages in) Even when the topics (discovery of potentially threatening alien ships; conflict between the producers and consumers of knowledge/science; romance) could be played at a fevered pitch, "Anathem" moves along calmly and discursively. The discursiveness hasn't bugged me, in sharp contrast to the Baroque Cycle novels' intrusively excessive wordiness.

#11 - Folks might enjoy the secret history of modernism an intriguing novel of Brit/colonial academia set in Great Britain beginning recovery from WWII in all arenas.

Message edited by its author, Aug 3, 2009, 9:20pm.

I agree with you, bob. Savage Detectives was gripping until it stopped talking about poetry and started with the Forrest-Gump's-Mexican-Sexual-Discovery trip. Counting coup is boring after 200 pages.

As for my reading, it's rather fallen off because of my work schedule, but I managed to go nuts for Kate Atkinson- I read Emotionally Weird (which is excellent and totally nuts till about halfway through), Behind the Scenes at the Museum (my favorite, and more in line with my magical realism/generations of families fixation), and Human Croquet, which so far hasn't come out of the wordwork after reading the other two. Something different, for me.

By the way, Little Big is the best thing since sliced bread & modernism, and my second favorite book behind To the Lighthouse, but I think I might be in the minority on that one.

ETA: I realize I wrote "wordwork" instead of "woodwork" but I think I prefer it that way.

Message edited by its author, Aug 4, 2009, 9:55am.

16: Exactly, the arrogant stupidity really is bothersome as well as the overarching feeling of doom as I read along about people making seemingly silly but really disastrous decisions. I've read fiction that has achieved an overall feeling of dread as you read along, but it is at the end of the day fiction. This is different because all the events I'm reading about presage the real, true, horrible bloody pointlessness that was WWI and I can't just dispel that by closing the book and doing something else.

Finished THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES.

Impressive. Can definitely see how this wouldn't be many folks' cup of tea. If you aren't in the mood for it, can't devote time to reading great swathes at once, I fear the book can become a chore. The format is a bit odd, the oral history that kicks in 120 pages in and continues for most of the book. The voices mesh, disagree, veer off topic. At times it can be quite maddening. But if you hang with the book, I think the end result is well worth the long, weird journey.

Found a number of Bolano's depictions of the Mexican literary scene really rang true--and at times that cultural milieu was eerily similar to the in-bred, self-congratulatory tone that permeates Canadian literature.

Anna, back in 1999 I thought (and still think) the only person who could really be described as "The Man of the Century" was Gavrilo Princip. His single action described, defined, framed and began the twentieth century. Everything else was commentary on his act.

But since probably one in a hundred people in America know who he was the folks at TIME must have thought if he was really important more people would have heard of him, so they ignored him. I don't think he even made it into the top hundred.

*blink*

because tipping the realpolitik balance was...good? Justified? Somehow worth literary tragedy?

I'm lost.

I can't speak for geneg, but I thought he meant - Not because it was a good action, but because it had the single biggest impact on the 20th century, making that century what it turned out to be.

A bloody mess for the most part.

Well, certainly, but I don't think they give out prizes for that.

I doubt very much that Princip's actions alone had "the biggest impact on the 20th century"-- given the cult of personalities surrounding Hitler and Stalin, and the fact that they caused so much more carnage, and were so effective.

But I am comparing wars, when what I really mean to say is that I firmly believe wars are not cause by one person shooting another and thus causing an Incident which must be redressed by War, but that they are the violent effect of many, many varying causes.

In fact I think geological metaphors work well for war- the dogs howling before an earthquake is merely the most obvious symptom.

INHERENT VICE is in the building! Lovely looking book. But I've got more work ahead of me, the rest of the summer devoted to various projects and the library called an hour ago: THE BEST OF GENE WOLFE just arrived and, since it's an inter-library loan, I have only 3 weeks to read and return it...

...help...

24: Yes, one of the reasons I am finding Guns of August so troubling is that the casus belli for WWI was really more of a pretext and how much the various sides (particularly the Germans) were already intending to have a war and planning for it.

I watched a documentary about the genocides in between WWI and WWII and was equally horrified. Or troubled, or whatever.

Isn't it amazing how prepared people are to be cruel?

#2 kswolff - regarding Rising up and Rising Down - The seven volume edition? Does this mean you've read the first six volumes? I'd like to hear your thoughts on it so far. Was it worth the time?

#27: It's only amazing if you expect better.

21: (Princip's) single action described, defined, framed and began the twentieth century. Everything else was commentary on his act.

I'd like to hear your reasoning behind those interesting claims.

How did shooting somebody "describe" the 20th century? How did shooting somebody "define" the 20th century?

How are Jonas Salk's actions or the start of the human genome project "commentary" on Princip shooting an Archduke?

28: I'm still slogging through Rising Up and Rising Down -- now I'm on the section about Bob Gritz and Idaho survivalists. Thus far, it has been worth my time, since Vollmann has written about numerous global hot-spots. His attempt at a "calculus of violence" is admirable if flawed -- like any major political, economic, or religious system, take your pick. There's plenty of worthy targets these days.

Once I'm done with RURD, I want to read another incomplete, epic, and flawed project, Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Arguably one of the best, most lucid, and comprehensive critiques of modern capitalism to date. A nice antidote to two decades of free market fundamentalism and laissez faire financial terrorism as supported by Ayn Rand's sleeper cells infecting the US govt. (I love turning the Right's rhetoric against itself.)

31: Karl, I am very interested in what you think Vollmann's "calculus of violence" is, and how it is flawed. Are you going to write a review when you are done? (I'd assume it would take a couple of months to sort through what you want to say.)

Any system created by humans is bound to be flawed (see Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, organized religions, corporations, philosophies, etc.). I've been reading RURD off and on for the last 2+ years. Not sure a basic review would be adequate. There have been plenty of reviews already. Might write a critical assessment from a historian's point of view.

While a monumental achievement, there are some chinks in the armor. Since violence is so visceral and immediate, it is easy to boil down every rationalization into "self-defense." But the sections containing his journalism from the world's war zones will be his lasting achievement. The Calculus seems amateurism and schematic. Then again, Vollmann acknowledges the fact and understands his shortcomings.

I did find his gushing admiration for the Taliban to be rather vile.

33: Well, I dont know about "plenty of reviews". There have been no reviews of the 7-volumes here on LT, and the three reviews of the abridged version are extremely superficial. Amazon is not much better---one reviewer even boasted he wasnt going to read it all....

A critical assessment from an historian's point of view or an essay that tries to engage with his ideas would be valuable. I am frustrated with the standard idiotic review that makes sure to tell you how long it is or assure you that it's "readable".

Read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Not very impressed. I also read the US edition, which was odd because it seemed to have lots of American references swapped in which didn't fit. About to start The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood.

Almost through Dead souls by Gogol.

#35 - I too have the US edition of The Eyre Affair, and wish I'd hung on for a UK edition! I adore Jasper Fforde, but accept that he may be an acquired taste - and if you find puns distressing, better avoided!

Just finished If Minds Had Toes by Lucy Eyre, speaking of Eyres, and it was better than I expected - a very good introduction to philosophy for any young 'uns you might be in the market for providing with books and food for thought ...!

#31/33 kswolff - Thanks for those comments. If you write a review, I look forward to reading it.

Puns? What puns? You mean like calling a character Millon de Floss? That's not a pun, that's a crime against English and English literature...

Fforde's stuff is cute, literary crosswords and in-jokes for those who have read more than their share of classic novels. I read EYRE and thought it amusing but I don't think I'll go out of my way to seek out his other efforts. Not putting the man down, just not my sort of thing; I feel similarly toward Christopher Moore. Lots of folks like him but I can't be bothered...

40: Sounds like Perez-Reverte. I really enjoyed the Dumas Club, and keep meaning to read more, but it is a sort of guilty pleasure, because of the literary in-jokes and the way it flatters "those of us who have read more than their share of classic novels" - makes me feel smart, unlike so many other books *cough* Durrell *cough*

Cliff - You just named two of my girlfriend's favorite authors. At least I know she'll always know some book I won't, we have such different tastes...

Going to finish Another Country tonight - thinking One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or one of my Graham Greene novels - something with a "less is more" approach to prose, since I've been reading James Baldwin, John Crowley, and David Foster Wallace for the last month and need something that doesn't sound more like verse than prose.

Reading a nonfic called Simplexity . I read The Eyre Affair too and found it amusing ,but not interesting enough to seek out the others . But Christopher Moore's books always make me LMAO .

and then i really enjoyed most of Perez-Reverte's novels (esp. the painter of battles, the queen of the south and the flanders panel - 3 very different stories and tone) and couldn't get through the one Fforde novel i tried on the recommendation of friends whose taste i often share. The first P-R mentioned is a taut modern morality play; the second a drug running adventure and the third a literary puzzle/mystery.

Message edited by its author, Aug 5, 2009, 10:24pm.

I'm a few chapters into Dickens' Our Mutual Friend; enjoying it so far, the first chapters are quite thematically dense, and very funny at the same time.

In my opinion Our Mutual Friend is the most accomplished of Dickens' works. I hope you continue to enjoy it. I sure did!

Finished The Company by Robert Littell An amazing, epic, and dense work. Imagine Burgess's Earthly Powers but involving the spy game. Highly recommended.

***

Starting Vineland tomorrow. I read Crying of Lot 49 early this year. And with all the chatter about Inherent Vice, I need to appease my Pynchon-hunger. From what I hear, it's the weakest of Pynchon's work. Then again, every third person I come across is reading Stephanie Meyer with the intensity of a Talmudic scholar. (Not just teens, but young adults and middle-aged types who should know better. And the first one to say the cop-out line "But at least people are reading!" will get a sock on the jaw. Since a reading populace with no taste or critical faculties is a threat to national security and a harbinger of cultural decline on a systemic scale.)

Just blogged a reading & watching roundup here. No idea who left the fuckwitted comment, though.

#48 - a fuckwit, methinks!

Oooh, forgot to say - i just finished Love Me by Garrison Keillor - very enjoyable indeed and wonderfully odd (the New Yorker magazine is actually run by the Mafia, and Harold Ross is really "Harold Rossi" - glorious!)

Just started Sicilian Carousel by Lawrence Durrell. After that, I plan to read The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin, so I can write about it on my blog for my annual reading challenge. And then I'll see if I can get all the way through Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, which back in the 1980s I started at least three times but failed to finish once.

Almost done with Infinite Jest.

Finished Little, Big, now moving on to A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn. After IJ is done, I'll probably go back to Graham Greene again - I need some simple, uncomplicated stuff to read.

After heavies like that I'd be suffering such brain strain comprehending the back of a bloody cereal box would be a challenge.

That's some fine readin'...

Cliff, if cereal box prose is a challenge, may I recommend Twilight or the latest trenchant tome by Glenn Beck?

Set. And spike!

Sounds like a fight is a'brewin ! LOL!!!

Cliff and I kid back and forth. When Cliff isn't distracted with joshing Mr. Sales.

Ya gotta have thick skin with this bunch. I've developed a hide like an armadillo (for the most part)...

Isn't it dead armadillos that are in the middle of the road along with the yellow stripe?

Robert

Now, now...

Actually, it's a liberal that hugs that yellow streak in the middle of the highway.

It's a conservative who thinks stop signs are manifestations of the evil of government regulations ... then plows into a bus full of orphans ... and blames his head-on collision (his fault) on socialized health care, rap music, abortions, evolution, and the Global Jewish Conspiracy.

***

Finished Vineland, which was great. I'm planning to write a critical appraisal of its place within the Pynchon oeuvre. I don't see it as a weak entry, but as a pivotal piece in understanding Pynchon.

Consider these three books:

*Crying of Lot 49 -- about the Sixties written in the Sixties.
*Vineland -- written in 1990 about the Reagan Eighties and the end of the Sixties Dream.
*Inherent Vice -- written in the 2000s about the Sixties.

I haven't read any of Late Pynchon: Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and Inherent Vice So my analysis will focus on the early stuff I have read. It is interesting to note how the writer's latest book will re-contextualize every book he or she has written previously. After the labyrinthine genius of Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland does appear to be "weak beer."

Bolano and Pynchon appear similar in their creation of ramshackle, interconnected, ambitious works that reflect a strong authorial voice.

***

Started reading Decline and Fall by Waugh. A nice little fluffy bit of Brit comedy.

well, it took me a LOT longer than some to finish "Anathem" - i've had
the book since Christmas, and made a couple of false starts. BUT I am
very glad i persevered - and ended up savoring the book, reading it in
50-75 page chunks. NS is far more concerned with his
characters than in prior novels, and makes them complex and interesting in their own right -
not merely as spear bearers for the plots (and there ARE several plot
lines and world lines going on simultaneously). I can't pretend to up
up on cosmology - but fortunately the "many worlds" hypothesis - first
developed by the father of Mark E(verett), leader of the band, Eels,
back in the 50s however complex mathematically, is conceptually easy
to use if SF though i have nil understanding of quantum mechanics!
And basing a SF novel, in large part, on Husserl's phenomenology
worked well too - i even managed to recognize what NS was doing about
half way through.

It all worked because I cared about the characters who are drawn with
affection - with their flaws and virtues wrapped up within their
personalities. Though the themes (first contact; the the uneasy fit
between science and society; proof and "truth" and religion;) are
"big" - and never set aside, the characters come first. I worried
about the young proto-savant/saunt Erasmus's love for the prickly Ala
AND for his ongoing fond, but conflicted, relationship with his
sister, Cord - who lives out in the "world" as opposed to the
cloistered scholarly orders that Erasmus inhabits. Esp. when he
nervously realizes that not only is Cord his loving and bright
sister..but that, gulp, guys find her attractive. When one of his
mates refers to her as "the exquisite Cord" he's forced to see his
sister, who he knows as a skilled machinist, a familiar family member,
as - oops oyeah..sexual being too despite being his sister.

Usually novels that flout the oft invoked rule "show don't tell" flop
- Anathem works because the telling is interesting in itself and the
telling and the POVs are integral to the characters. There IS
action, there IS conflict, there ARE super weapons that can evaporate
a planet; Anathem IS a SF novel. But it is also a talky, academic
sendup - but without the snideness of most conventional academic
satires. Anyway, it took me a long time - but in the end i liked
Anathem a great deal.

I was unable or unwilling, I really don't know which, to get on with either The Master and Margarita or Stars in my Pocket. Both went back to the library.

I am currently reading Cemetary Dance (for you combiners out there this book has two co-equal authors, not one and a coauthor). This is the latest in the Pendergast series. I'm going to submit Cabinet of Curiosities for the next SF group read. I know there is a lot of stuff to read out there, but am amazed that I can't get any action here in snobs for Douglas Preston and Lincoln child.

Love the Eels, Bob, and I didn't know the story about Mark's dad. Fascinatin'.

E's got one hell of a family. Well, what's left, anyway.

The Eyre Affair - girlfriend likes it, figured i'd give it a try. definitely fun alternate history stuff.

The Savage Detectives - with the amount that this has been talked up, i figured it's worth a look. It does seem to have a milieu that I'm completely unfamiliar with, though - the only Latin American writers I really know are Borges and Marquez. Weak, I know.

Mysteries of Pittsburgh - love Chabon, this is not a bad first novel at all.

Nearly done with Decline and Fall -- brilliant, farcical, and dead-on social satire, even if Waugh is a closeted Anglo-Catholic Royalist.

Have to figure out what to read next. I have Louis-Ferdinand Celine on my reading list, but I'd rather not touch his vicious misanthropy just yet. When I'm on an even keel financially. Like my policy of avoiding Dostoyevsky during the interminable Minnesota winters.

Time to peruse my bookshelves and see what's there.

Just finished Pandora in the Congo by Abert Pinol, translated from the Catalan; quite a peculiar mash-up of genres. Looked at from a distance, as it were, it's a meta-meta-fiction - a ripping tale inside a prisoner's plaint inside a courtroom case in GB circa WWI as told to a ghostwriter's ghostwriter. But - mostly it's a sendup of the white mans burden genre of African adventure. The prisoner, Marcus Garvey, has washed back up on British shores - the sole survivor of a disastrous expedition into the Congo led by two wastrel scions of Brit. aristocracy, planning to recoup all their prior failures through the mineral wealth of the Congo. He's jailed for suspected murder of the brothers for the two enormous diamonds that are all that he's had upon his return.
The expedition turns immediately into a horror story as the brothers treat one and all w/ a malicious abandon, marching into the heart beyond the heart of darkness. For not only do they find gold - they find humanoid aliens - who initially appear as white natives but who turn into ever more effective opponents. Of course a love story emerges - Marcus and an alien lady fall for each other, to the disgust of the brothers. Battles and batterings occur. And, most of all, stories under, through and within stories emerge.

If you are willing to totally suspend belief (and ignore errors of fact - as ripping yarns were wont to do) there IS an oddly exciting adventure story here (translated from the Catalan) that bogs down a bit every now and again in its own cleverness and perverseness. But - hey - despite knowing the tricksy nature of the beast in advance, i still got well taken in. So, that's good - I think.
3.5 stars - if you like this sort of thing.

Thanks, Robert. Well said.

Karl, the first 50 pages of DECLINE AND FALL are especially hoot-worthy. Very, very funny book.

Decline and Fall is a hoot. Enjoy!

Finished Spook Country -- some wonderfully written passages, especially the protagonist calling Hubertus Bigend's Brabus Maybach "a Cartier tank" -- but otherwise, meh.

I'll be starting Lady Chatterley's Lover soon. I'm also halfway done with The Dragonslayer, another volume of Bone.

***

Here's my review of Fulgrim:
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/boo...

Message edited by its author, Aug 22, 2009, 4:39pm.

SPOOK COUNTRY: Meh. Says it for me as well. Never got past page 40. You might say I punted it from the 40 yard line (I was up watching NFL football last night).

Enjoyed your WARHAMMER review, especially the line "epic battles studding this novel like bullet holes in battle armor". Very funky stuff, monsieur Wolff...

Since I'm ever the one for reading variety, I have my Vineland review coming up -- complete with Big Lebowski references -- and my peasant-meets-SR-71 Blackbird Gravity's Rainbow review scheduled to be posted on my website.

Almost done with Mark Shorer's Intro to Chatterley ... can't wait to get into the actual text. "Oh no, four-letter Ango-Saxon words and explicit coupling!" Looks like they is more to it than that. Another test of literature: Can it stand beyond the initial titillation? I found that there was more to Lolita than its scintillating notoriety.

I was actually disappointed by Chatterly. I hear Sons and Lovers is much better. Have you read any of his short stories? The Rocking Horse Winner is absolutely brilliant!

Is it possible to be titillated by Lolita?

Finished The End of the Affair - still mulling it over in my mind. Seems like a better knowledge of the writer would help me figure this one out. I do know that he was 1) a Catholic and 2) apparently fairly unfaithful, so this book seems like it was, if not autobiographical, at least based on some personal experience.

Started Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein - hilariously perverted already - and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Still working on Bolano's The Savage Detectives, but my lack of knowledge about Central/South American writers seems to be bogging me down a bit.

72: Yes, if you read the book like an idiot.

71: I'm finding Chatterley compelling and lyrically written. Then again, it was written in 1928, the same year as Waugh's Decline and Fall Might be worth investigating Waugh, Lawrence, and Ferdinand Celine as "Counterrevolutionaries of Modernism," since all disdained something about their contemporary times and yearned for something ideal in the past.

72: I first read it as a teen, looking for the pages with nipple and swear words on them. Also, the pedophile clerics under the aegis of Cardinal Bernard Law would probably be very titillated. One needs quality literature between molesting altar boys and holding press conferences condemning gay marriage.

74: Agreed.

#73 Graham Greene is (imo, of course) one of the great writers of the 20th C. And you're right in that his Catholicism figures prominently in many of his novels. But he wrote in a wide variety of styles/genres/moods. The ones I like best are his "political" novels from the mid 50s on. My favorites include, in chronological order: the Quiet American - a prescient take on the American presence in SE Asia; the honorary consul set in Argentina; and The Human Factor based in England and S. Africa. Le Carre drew heavily, early on, from the model Greene set forth in the quiet American.

I think you started out with one of his more depressing (and, i think you're correct) autobiographical novels. Early on he wrote "serious" novels and espionage fiction he denigrated as "entertainments." And, i think, that the early "entertainments" were a bit formulaic (although the ministry of fear boasts one of my favorite titles). But as he later combined international politics, espionage and "serious" themes, the interface between his entertainments and serious works pretty much dissolved.

I am baffled by the idea that anyone would find Lolita titillating. It's been a few years since I've read it, but I remember nothing explicit or pornographic except for the situation.

This maybe down to the inherent cleanliness of my mind, but I cannot imagine anyone successfully masturbating to it.

>77 - Oho, you'd be surprised. ;-) People masturbate to much, much less, I'm afraid. We can but hope for their success.

Moistened mud and a slight incline would be enough for some people.

Ah, Karl...

(Laughter)

Since we're on the topic of moistened mud and human urges, Lady Chatterley's Lover continues to impress. It's a lyrical novel heavy on the symbolism, so that might not be for everyone. Lawrence does get a touch heavy-handed at times. As a cultural, historical, and literary artifact, it can't be underestimated. It opened the gateways of human expression in the arts. No mean feat what with prudish American postmasters acting like cultural ayatollahs up until the 1960s. No wonder the US is so messed up in their bathing suit areas.

I finished V.. Incredible. Time for Inherent Vice!

Finished and highly recommend Conquest of the Useless.

Just read Benito Cereno: one of Melville's most interesting, I think.

Cosmos Trilogy, Fredrick Seidel. I don't get the idea that the Snobs are much into poetry, but I'd sure like to see what the group makes of Ooga Booga.

I'll get the library to bring in CONQUEST later this fall. Maybe some Christmas reading. It holds up, eh? Good ol' Werner...

>76: This is actually my 4th Greene novel, though it seems to be the most 'personal'. Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, and The Power and the Glory are all great books, I have The Heart of the Matter lined up and am eyeing Brighton Rock... when I get into an author I tend to start reading everything he or she has. This can be good sometimes, but other times you start to notice they're a little limited as a storyteller, or they tend to repeat themselves. (Atwood, I'm looking at you...)

Graham Greene: I'm Catholic, I sleep around, I worked in espionage. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Speaking of repetitive prolific authors, I finally finished Volume 6 of Rising Up and Rising Down Volume 7 looks like a breeze, comparatively speaking. When I'm done with RURD, I'll probably start Das Kapital to get a better understanding of how conservative financial deregulation skull-raped the global economy.

William Vollmann: Hookers, violence, war, California, poverty. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Then again, Chuck Berry wrote basically the same song and he helped revolutionize rock n roll. Same for the Ramones, who were called "Chuck Berry on speed."

#85 - i do exactly the same thing - once i glom on to an author, i'll go through a spate of reading everything that's at least available at the library.

Just came back from a second viewing of District 9 and am a bit brain dead.

Cliff: I think 'Conquest' is better written than most novels I've read. I could never read it in large chunks--it's as sensually dense and overwhelming as the jungle where he wrote it--but there's an amazing lot of deeply observed detail. I've never seen 'Fitzcarraldo,' but I imagine that the book would be even more interesting to someone who has. (There isn't much behind-the-scenes gossip, that's not what the book is about, but there's enough to give you extra things to notice in the movie.)

Thanks, Geoff, that's definitely one I'll be wantin'...

back to poetry and translation. I'm about 3/4 through John Crowley's The Translator - a book that i'm VERY much enjoying, although i'm not a particular fan of the other Crowley books i've tried. 1961 - the Cold War is turning colder and more dangerous. Kit Malone goes off to a midwestern land grant U - not exactly at loose ends - she has worked @ poetry and words during the whole of her articulateness. But still, of course, unsure of what to do with these words. By happenstance she signs up for an intensive "reading poems" seminar, taught by a recently exiled Soviet poet whose personal life has always been tucked away from even those few who know and admire him and his work. Bespelled by Falin's words, entrapped by his gravitas, Kit becomes Falin's amanuensis/gateway into the intricacies of English while he enlists her into the project of mutating his Russian poems into their English correlatives.

And then there's the cold war, engulfing all the characters. Kit's father has been putting together an prototype DARPA like network; her beloved older brother enlists in the Green Berets and dies, the family is told, a fatal accident in the Philippines - although Kit comes to believe he died in the expanding conflict in SE Asia; Kit comes to the attention of the CIA both through her close involvement w/ Falin - and anyone like him might be, could be, ergo probably is a spy - and her immersion in Russian language courses.

The prose is lovely; rather stately and grounded in melancholy, mirroring the various versions of the relationships between Falin and Kit. The descriptions of the process of translation are fascinating. The poetry itself is nothing special, unfortunately, but that is a surprisingly minor flaw

Crowley's prose is almost always lovely; it definitely helped me get through Little, Big when the pace of the story slowed. (Which, sad to say, was somewhat often.)

Wow! Just found this group and this thread. Literary Snobs! Love it! I read all kinds of literature, high brow and low brow, but sometimes it's good to have a talk with folks who appreciate the top shelf. Personal tastes are all cool, certainly, but I am growing weary of being told that Heart of Darkness is boring.

At any rate, the two books I've read in August that seem to me to fit this group are The Kid from Tomkinsville by John R. Tunis (a classic YA baseball novel from 1940) and Satchel: the Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye, a terrific new biography of Satchell Paige. Very well researched and written.

I am about to start Bringing Tony Home by Sri Lankan author Tissa Abeysekara.

Message edited by its author, Aug 28, 2009, 6:03pm.

Nothing wrong with quality low-brow trash. John Waters and Robert Williams would be my saints. What's worse is no-brow, gutter trash like ... wait for it ... Stephanie Meyer and Extruded James Patterson Product (TM). Low-brow, when done well, can be glorious and sensational and another avenue into the verities into the human spirit. If not, there's always Henry James

Time to knock back an unironic Pabst Blue Ribbon and read some Bolano.

Speaking of Blue Ribbon Beer. One of my faves.

rocketjk, I went through a period of reading Heart of Darkness several times a year. Boring it isn't.

Currently reading Demons by Dostoevsky.

Message edited by its author, Aug 29, 2009, 9:20am.

Gene, I highly recommend A Handful of Dust by Waugh. My micro-review: Gosford Park meets Apocalypse Now -- doesn't do it adequate justice.

***

I have 50 pages left of the last volume of Rising Up and Rising Down Then I'll begin my 3-volume version of Das Kapital

Message edited by its author, Aug 29, 2009, 9:53am.

Taking a couple of days off to let my fingers heal and recharge me batteries before I do a final, final, FINAL edit of the 4 short stories that ate my entire summer. Sheesh.

Yesterday I read Joseph McBride's well-regarded tome, ORSON WELLES. It's an excellent guide to Welles' films and also contains some good biographical info.

As for today...

Finally, finally, FINALLY finished Rising Up and Rising Down

Now I'm starting Das Kapital, Volume One. I've only read Marx's political works, so I'm interested in reading his theoretical works. As a historical materialist, I'll see how Marx builds his evidence into a coherent economic philosophy.

Just a few days left in August and I started in Montaillou by Le Roy Ladurie and Satanic Verses by Rushdie.

Just started The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson.

An oldie but a goodie. One of the best first person accounts of the mind of a killer I know of. Another great use of this device is the first 1/3 of Ira Levin's A KISS BEFORE DYING. Chilling...

Halfway through A.L. Kennedy's Day. One of those novels that relies so much on its prose that it is, by turns, brilliant and overwritten.

Halfway though The Cosmos Trilogy by Frederick Seidel.

Finished A Christmas Carol a night or so ago.

Finished Lady Chatterley's Lover today and started Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon. Some good ole Warhammer 40K.

I just read the very short book Postmodernism and Holocaust Denial. It was more of an essay than a book and didn't say anything that surprised me, but it was a good contribution to the discussion.

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