New renewal offer

Just saw the new renewal offer on the web site. Those who renew get a choice of one of eight sets (DuMaurier, Hemingway, Adam Smith, Chronicles of the Dark Ages, an Oxford University Press reference set, etc.) plus the Diary and THE BRAND-NEW SIMON ARMITAGE TRANSLATION OF SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT.

I'm not that excited about any of the sets. I guess I could order the Hemingway set, but I have the Scribners' Classic versions of the Hemingway (except the truly awful To Have and Have Not). While not great, they are decent hardcover editions with good paper.

However, the big news is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I read this translation on a flight from Buffalo to Boston earlier this year. This translation is jaw-droppingly good. For anyone who struggled through J.R.R. Tolkien's worthy but rather dull translation, this version might as well be a completely different book. It is definitely on a par with what Seamus Heaney did with Beowulf. I was completely absorbed from the minute I started.

Now, I just have to decide if I'm going to take the offer or just order Sir Gawain some time during the year.

Very clever move for FS with Sir Gawain and the Folio Diary... They seem to be very perspicacious in their proposal. I'm tempted, but I think I'm going to try to bargain something else directly with them. (I'd like to get two Dickens!)

I still haven't gotten a response from FS about whether I can use the limited edition Alice as my 4 books. They usually reply within a day or two, but it has been over a week and alas, no response. Anyone hear anything about this?

Drat! Already renewed for something I didn't want and I wanted that du Maurier set.

Ah, varielle, this is the year I learned to wait, thanks to this group. I admit I was panicking when they shut down access to the site to post the new renewal offer but it was worth it. I'm one of those people who usually renews as soon as the new book catalog comes but this year I heeded the posts about second offers. I won't be waiting for a third offer though. Du Maurier and another book to add to my Arthurian collection--I couldn't even wait to get home and renewed from work. My four renewal books were:

Blake bio
Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (I have the first book in this series and it's wonderful)
Inferno (because of the Blake illustrations)
Don't Look Now (to go with the du Maurier set)

And now that I've renewed I can see all the Christmas Sale books and I know that by the time I get home I'll have convinced myself that I cannot live without Dracula, Screwtape Letters and A Christmas Carol. The Deptford Trilogy, At the Back of the North Wind and Best of Saki are calling me too. My sister (who shares a house with me) is going to scream when all these books show up on my doorstep.

Does anyone know how long these second reneal offers last?

Until the third renewal offer hits...8^P

I would imagine it will probably go until mid-December, or perhaps until January if I recall from last year.

Re #1: pm11, have you read Gawain in the original Middle English? I must say that I can't really imagine reading it in a modern translation myself, but I would like a good translation to suggest to friends to read who aren't willing to read it in the original. Does Armitage attempt to reproduce the metric scheme and alliteration? Doing so seems to doom other translations.

Re 1 & 9: I still have the Penguin Classics version, translated by Brian Stone, that I read in my English class when I was a senior in high school (circa 1970!). My instructor was probably the best teacher that I've ever had and introduced me to the love of English literature and history that I've retained ever since. I remember enjoying it very much and intend to purchase the new FS edition.

I have the LEC edition of Gawain with Rosenberg's translation, with the Middle English original en face. But the one I return to most often is my paperback Tolkien edition of the original (the definitive version as of 1972 when I was getting my MA in English!) I wish the FS would include the original in this manner in their new edition. I am also curious to see the illustrations: Satorsky's illustrations for the LEC are quite good, though not as delightful as the ones Dorothea Braby did for the Golden Cockerel edition (alas! only in a prose translation!) Though only six in number, these are much closer to the mark for me (in fact, I used one as the image on my profile). The definitive Gawain illustrations are yet to be done, I fear. It seems like the finest Middle English Romance (perhaps even the greatest Arthurian romance in the language), should have attracted more artists worthy of the task.

@ #11: Django, I don't know if you've ever heard of Alan lee or if you've seen any of his works but he's wonderful at drawing legends & stories of the same type. I confess I haven't read Sir Gawain but it sounds to me like Lee would be perfect for it (although very different from Braby & satorsky) .
He's very well know for illustrating Tolkien & for me his drawings are near enough unsurpassable. I just wish folio would hurry up & commission him!

His LOTR & Hobbit illustrations can be seen here: http://fan.theonering.net/middleearthtours/lee.html
View larger here: http://fan.theonering.net/rolozo/collection/lee-lotr?hide=-5

Alan Lee or his friend John Howe who is a favourite of mine and a dragon specialist. www.john-howe.com

Simon Armitage wrote an article about the poem and his translation in The Guardian. He also mentioned other translations and his opinion that “alliteration is the warp and weft of the poem.” It also includes an excerpt of his translation.

There is also a short review that was in The Guardian and another review in The New York Times. Both bring up the alliteration of the poem and Armitage’s use of it in his translation.

Personally, I usually do not care for verse, but the article and reviews have made me very interested in the FS edition.

I went ahead and ordered the Cornish novels. When I placed my renewal order, a "coming soon" announcement popped up for a Folio box set of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Disappointingly the Folio Set of Shorter Crime Fiction didn't appear in the revised renewal offer. So I've just bought it - it counts as my 4 book committment. I chose the Hemingway as my renewal set.

#1 & #14
LucasTrask, thank you for posting these links. I didn't really know much about the poem other than it is part of the Arthurian legend. After skimming the articles and reading pm11's comments I think I'll make an exception in my reading practices (I try to read books in the order I receive them) and put this one at the top of the pile.

Re #12 and #13: Thanks Lulu and overthemoon. Very nice artwork! and I hadn't been familiar with either of them.

I have a feeling that their sensibilities are a little too modern for what I want to see in Gawain. Like Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth, they are in the pre-Raphaelite tradition of Rossetti and Millais which seems to self-conscious (that's not meant to be pejorative) for Gawain. (Though Burne-Jones is a pre-Raphaelite who comes closer to what I think would be right for Gawain. See his "Going to the Battle" for an example of what I mean by the recreation of the spirit of medieval art with its lack of geometric perspective and style of portraiture with expressions of unearthly calm.) The Romantic style, though attractive in itself, just seems wrong for the poem. Michael Pacher, rather than Edmund Leighton is a painter with the right kind of style. The Arthurian fantasy aspects of the poem are, after all, incidental to the central meaning of the importance of loyalty, honesty, and faith.

Of course that's just my interpretation of what kind of art I think is right. I have to say that both artists you recommend could do a spectacular job on the sensational elements--Bertilak, his castle, Camelot at Christmas, and the final trial of Gawain.

Re #14: "The warp and the weft" is an arresting metaphor, but I think it can be a disaster in a modern rendering of the poem. Alliteration was a holdover from Old English poetry that seemed dated even in the Pearl (Gawain) Poet's day--who was, after all, a contemporary of Chaucer, who eschewed it. The importance of the line's metrical structure, 4 stressed syllables in two pairs with a caesura separating them with an irregular number of unstressed syllables seems more worth trying to keep than the alliteration.

At that, I think trying to mimic a verse form of a different language is to be avoided in general. Name ONE successful translation of Homer in the Alexandrine meter. Classical Greek comes off as speedy and light when written on dactylic hexameter (at least by Homer). When you try it in English, you come up with something like "Evangeline," which is still a good poem, but which certainly doesn't have the speed and force of Homeric Greek.

Consider the opening lines in the original:

SITHEN the sege and the assaut watz sesed at Troye,
The borg brittened and brent to brondes and askez,
The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wrogt
Watz tried for his tricherie, the trewest on erthe:

(I have substituted modern equivalents for the Old and Middle English characters "thorn" and "yogh".)

A plain English translation might be:

After the siege and the battle ended at Troy,
The city razed and torched, to smoldering embers and ashes,
The man who wove the nets of treason there
Was tried for his treachery, the world's most veritable...

This may not be poetic, but it is accurate--and don't these sound stilted in comparison?

" After the siege and the assault of Troy, when that burg was destroyed and burnt to ashes, and the traitor tried for his treason..." (Jesse Weston, translator)

"After the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy, the city been destroyed and burned to brands and ashes, the warrior who wrought there the trains of treason was tried for his treachery, the truest on earth..." (W.A.Neilson, translator)

"The siege and assault having ceased at Troy
as its blazing battlements blackened to ash,
the man who had planned and plotted that treason
had trial enough for the truest traitor!" (Paul Deane, translator)

Deane's is easily the best, as he doesn't slavishly use cognates like "burg" when that word has a different connotations for today's reader, and he doesn't get into the kind of absurd language Neilson does trying to force the alliteration ("the city been destroyed"????), but "blazing battlements blackened" and especially "trial enough for the truest traitor" sound silly and vitiate the force of the original by their less than accurate meaning.

Can anyone supply the corresponding lines of Armitage for a comparison?

#15 -- Is the box set FS editions or the regular publisher? Either way, I would like to upgrade from my paperback set.

I like alliterative verse - it has a certain muscularity to it that suits these tales well.

Armitage has:

Once the siege and the assault of Troy had ceased,
with the city a smoke-heap of cinders and ash,
the turncoat whose tongue had tricked his own men
was tried for his treason - the truest crime on earth.

Perhaps I should add that alliterative verse is not ignored by modern poets or reserved solely for translations of historical alliterative poetry. The British poet Tony Harrison has used it to great effect. Some readers may be unfamiliar with his withering poem A Cold Coming that was originally published in The Guardian newspaper under the celebrated photograph of the charred corpse of an Iraqi truck driver sat at the wheel in his cab and killed during the Iraqi army's retreat from Kuwait. The corpse leans to one side and to Harrison's eye the windshield wiper looks like a pen he is holding. A commented copy of the poem and the photograph in question can be found at http://home.sslmit.unibo.it/guerra/testi/leech.pdf. It's a great poem.

I'm interested to know what those unfamiliar withthe poem think of Harrison's use of alliteration. Harrison also used alliteration in the satyrs' choruses in his play The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus - a wonderful evocation of that rarest of extant classical Greek playforms - the satyr play.

His Dark Materials? Seriously?! Sweet!!

Thank you very much for that link, appaloosaman.

Though a frequent reader and lover of poetry, I often feel I don't know enough about the technical aspects and terms to comment. I can usually only address how the poem affects me in more basic terms. Indeed, I had to look it up to remind myself about alliteration and "Apt alliteration's artful aid". Thanks Wikipedia! There is a great passage in Bolano's The Savage Detectives where three of the visceral realist poets are on a road trip and the more learned poet is throwing out trivia questions about alliteration, meter, what poet used what, etc. It was hilarious but made me realize how much I don't know about the structure of poetry. Ah well, I'm toying with the idea of getting my MA in Literature in my golden years, so maybe I'll replace all those scientific formulas I learned getting my engineering degree with poetic formulas!

I'll have to ponder the difference between Deane and Armitage. This is exactly the reason that I believe all translations, and especially poetry, should have the original on the facing page. That way I can work it out myself. AND the there is something incredibly beautiful about a poem in it's original language even if I can't necessarily read it. Seeing those verses in spanish in my editions of Neruda and Paz started me learning to read in the Spanish. This discussion has pretty much doomed me into succumbing to the FS Gawain, and possibly searching out the LEC edition.

Re #21 & 22: Thanks appaloosaman for the Armitage quote. The second line is absolutely perfect--a model of everything a translation should aspire to--suggesting the music of the original without twisting the meaning, all while working as good poetry in its own right. The 3rd and 4th lines carry alliteration about as far as it should go and is starting to sound a little too Peter Piperish for my taste, but, chacun à son goût. Based on this, Armitage may be the must-have translation of Gawain--I just wish they had included the original.

Thanks also for the link to the Harrison poem "A Cold Coming" (the title is a nice play on the opening line of "Journey of the Magi") which doesn't really need the photo to make its Swiftian point.

Actually, although the poem uses alliteration, it isn't really alliterative verse. Alliterative verse usually tries to repeat the same initial sound on the stressed syllables in the metric line which permits the use of more unstressed syllables than the verse forms we associate with classical dactyls, iambs, etc. Probably originally a mnemonic device, it emphasizes the chantlike form of the lines. Most alliteration today is used more for emphasis when words are tied together to make a point (Harrison's "safely stored" and "by proxy procreate") or for onomatopoeic effect as in Poe's "silken, sad, uncertain rustling" purple curtain.

Alliteration is as basic a tool of poetry as simile and metaphor, but alliterative verse, which uses it as the drumbeat of the line, is another matter. I think it works well in the original medieval verse, but to force it at the expense of meaning (just the opposite of its original intent) is what I object to in translation.

Re #26: jveezer, thanks for saying so well what I have been thinking: in poetry, please include the original! (My Spanish is extremely rudimentary, but even I can see how wonderful Lorca is to read in the original comapared to the English translations I have.)

The U.S. edition of Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight published by W.W. Norton has the original verse on the facing page.

I might just have to buy that - thanks for the lead.

Has the FS given any hints about when His Dark Materials will be released?

#30: I tacked that question on while getting my recent order issue resolved, and here's what I got: "We have no details of price or date, but mailings will come out in a month's time. Top secret!"
I'm excited!

FS has passed the loyalty test by keeping the British title for volume 1 in the trilogy.

...something about a Philosopher's Stone, right? Hehe.

Django:
Sorry to start this conversation then disappear. I'm a political consultant and have been swamped, so I have not been on the site for a bit.

The edition I have of the Armitage translation includes the Middle English on facing pages and I found it very interesting to read. I don't know about the Folio edition, but that seems like a good question to ask.

The alliteration in Armitage wears well over the course of the poem and never gets irritating. The translation has the benefit of being both muscular/contemporary while still feeling that it is from another time and another sensibility.

Thanks for posting that image, Kestrel.

Emboldened by the posts of members here, I e-mailed FS to see whether I might substitute the newer Beatrix Potter set as a free set for the Christmas offer. They just replied saying "we are unable to alter the terms of the offer."

I couldn't find it explicitly in the thread here so I did talk to the FS and verified that their edition of Armitage's Gawain DOES NOT have the original included with the translation.

This is a quandary for me because at the end of the day, I'm a reader. So if I can only have one edition of Armitage, it would be the Norton edition that includes both original and translation. A bummer since I do like the illustrations...

For those who are interested, I found an article with one of the illustrations for His Dark Materials.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/arts/2188751/a-power-to-enthral.th...

Oops, FS just sent a second (apologetic) note -- the offer *is* adaptable.

His Dark Materials is now available on the FS website for (US) $159.95. You have to be logged onto the site to see it.

Wow that is downright affordable...that might be enough to renew!

Hmm, just outside of the $155 credit that the FS gives as an alternative renewal offer. Maybe they'll allow a bit of wiggle room.

I believe that the credit is applied against the published price of the books and the published price of His Dark Materials is (US) $199.95.

I wish I had known about this before I renewed! I am tempted to order immediately but am forcing myself to "think about it" before I commit to $160+ for a set of 3 books. Oh, who am I kidding? I practically started drooling when I saw the photo...

This is frustrating. The FS won't even let me just apply the $155 credit to His Dark Materials and then just pay the rest myself.

But His Dark Materials has not appeared on the UK website...yet...

It's actually disappeared from the US website also.

Two comments here:

1. I find their website antics to be extremely unprofessional. Books here one day, gone another for no good reason (Alice and Dark Materials). It makes them look unorganized, erratic, and dare I say exploitative?

2. Does anyone else find it strange that His Dark Materials was 160 while the Wealth of Nations set is $199? Kind of makes me wonder how they even come up with prices for these things.

Pardon me for being a little crotchety this evening but these things have been pestering me

When I visted the (UK) site a sign came up saying the that it was down for scheduled maintenance. Perhaps that was the cause of the confusion?

I saw it on the site yesterday morning (US site) but none of the pictures were working, it just sat there trying to load them and not getting anywhere. So I guess I'm not that surprised that it's gone.

It's up there now with a front page announcement & everything. It says "100 lucky members ordering His Dark materials will receive a copy that is signed by Philip Pullman and Peter Bailey."
I must say the set looks incredibly beautiful and if I had actually liked the story I would be clambering for a copy, especially a signed one!

I'm just hoping that one day Harry Potter will get the same treatment.

Erm, am I the only one who is not happy with these illustrations? This trilogy is one of my favourites, and I was one of those lamenting the lack of fantasy books in the FS' catalogue, so I should be the last one complaining, but I am...

I know Pullman himself chose the illustrator, and that he is delighted about the outcome, but for me these are far too simplistic, childish and warm (and 2D), and most importantly, do not convey to me at all the feeling which Pullman invokes with his own descriptions - a feeling of a world both wonderful and full of danger at the same time, a world, which though resembles ours, is quite different from it.

Here is an example of a cover which for me feels closer to the content of the book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Subtle-Knife-Adult-Dark-Materials/dp/0439994136/ref=sr_1... (though a book full of these might be too dark; still this is a direction I like more).

#51

Just a note: that's a Giorgio de Chirico, "Mystery and melancholy of the street", not an illustration commissioned for Pullman's book. If you like it, you ought to look up his other paintings--perhaps you could come up with a whole set of illustrations for Pullman (barring anything involving giant armoured polar bears).

De Chirico did some book-illustrations; I have a lovely edition of "I promessi sposi" with his drawings.

Boris- As I've said I'm not a fan of the story so I shouldn't have much of an opinion on this but just to let you know you're not on your own, I don't like the drawings either. When I called it 'incredibly beautiful' I was mainly referring to the binding & general layout, and the font style which I'm a bigger sucker for.
But yes, big thumbs down for the illustrations.

Unfortunately, Gustave Dore and William Blake were unavailable to do the illustrations for His Dark Materials.

I was dismayed to see that the set is now forty dollars more than when it first appeared. In cases like this, where the price suddenly changes, does anyone know how the FS treats orders placed when the price was lower? Do they charge the lower price or the higher price?

Re #52: Wow! Who published that edition of Manzoni's novel, Lola? I'd love to see it. My LEC edition has Gonin's original illustrations which were commissioned by the author. While nice, and certainly the author must have thought they were effective, they seem rather stiff and passionless compared to the tenor of the book itself.

I'm not sure authors are the best judges of what are good illustrations for their own books.

#55

Oh, it's an Italian edition, Django, by Editoriale del Drago... Click on the link and then on the middle thumbnail on the right to get some idea of the style he used:

http://www.subito.it/promessi-sposi-illustrati-da-de-chirico-cagliari-3361477.ht...

I received that as a gift in mid-eighties and didn't like the pictures at all! Too "messy" for me in my Beardsleyan phase. :)

I had noticed on the website that I was seeing the US title for the first volume of His Dark Materials and when I receive my order today it was confirmed. The set was clearly marked with a large sticker that said:
HUS
USA/CAN
VERSION
I was wishing for the original UK version, but it was not to be. That said, I am very pleased with the set and I am glad I ordered it.

What is the deal with the 100 signed sets?

I never saw anything on the site about signed sets...

So far I've settled on The Deptford Trilogy and Dracula for my renewal offer, which adds up to $105. I'd like to get Catch-22 too, but that would be $160. Can anyone recommend any great FS books for $50 or less?

Re 58 & 59 chase.donaldson & johnjaysmith: the English site says that 'The author and illustrator have kindly agreed to sign 100 copies of this new Folio edition of His Dark Materials. Members ordering on or before midnight 9th November 2008 will be entered into a draw to receive one of the signed copies. The draw will take place on 10 November 2008 with 100 names being selected at random. Copies will be signed on the title page of volume 1, Northern Lights.' I have not decided yet whether to purchase and enter the draw.

#50
The New York Trilogy is very best FS I've bought from a book design/illustrations standpoint, but it comes in at $54.95. By the way, The Deptford Trilogy is absolutely beautiful.

Slaughterhouse Five at $44.95 has great illustrations and might fit well with your interest in Catch-22.

I'd like to add a small note to the alliterative verse discussion we had earlier. I've just finished reading Tolkien's The Children of Hurin, and found out in the appendix that Tolkien had also a poem version of the tale, written in alliterative verse, and a small part is cited there:

...they came to a country kindly tended;
through flowery frith and fair acres
they fared and found of folk empty
the leas and leasows and the lawns of Narog,
the teeming tilth by trees enfolded
twixt hill and river. The hoes unrecked
in the fields were flung, and fallen ladders
in the long grass lay of the lush orchards;
every tree there turned its tangled head
and eyed them secretly, and the ears listened
of the nodding grasses; though noontide glowed
on land and leaf, their limbs were chilled.

I personally found it really beautiful. If alliterative verse is like this, then I'm all for it.

P.S. grrr, there should be a caesura in the middle of each line, but the site won't show it for some reason.

I got a letter from the FS today telling me that His Dark Materials is now being offered as a renewal offer (at $5) and it comes with a free Penguin book on mythology and moleskin notebook. Wish I had known they'd be doing this before I paid the full price for HDM a few days ago, but this is definitely a great offer for anyone interested.

Here is my trouble though: it is such an obvious choice for a renewal offer that it will inevitably be an ebay regular soon. The Wealth of Nations on the other hand, though being the same price and everything, will probably not come around very much so from a cost point of view might be worth getting and holding out for an ebay copy of Dark Materials. That of course could be a risky move, but from the looks of it, they are taking this Pullman book and running with it.

So I thought I would share my renewal experience with everyone: I went with Wealth of Nations with the Folio Diary and Sir Gawain as my presentation volumes, and ordered His Dark Materials and Screwtape Letters as my membership volumes. I got a great deal because I got the Dark Materials set at 159.99 and Screwtape at the discounted price as well. I know that some of you paid 199.99 for the 3-volume credit to your membership obligations, so I think I lucked out. I also used my $10 voucher so I made out pretty well, and the customer service representative even let me pay in installments, so my wife won't smack me upside the head when she sees our next credit card bill.

The customer service rep told me that he just talked to a lady who had to have her books shipped to a different address because her husband kept returning the book packages back to the Society! I truly lament the fact that the book bug is not one that seems to run in families or marriages, and it is sad that I cannot share my love of books with my wife or my family. Maybe when we start a family I can indoctrinate my children early on in life.

Re # 66 Very wisely done chase.d. You will be very pleased with The Screwtape Letters. I received my copy today and it is very well produced. After further inspection, I may report this one as a triumph. I doubt that we'll see as many copies of The Wealth of Nations being offered on eBay as those of His Dark Materials as well. Could you please let us know what you think of it when you receive it? It's a shame that more executives in the banking industry (and others) have not benefitted from Mr. Smith's legendary instruction.

#66 By all means, indoctrinate the children right away! It helps with school, and it divides the value of the books up by the total of those reading. My own kids always help me pick out my books to order, so that I order too many! :)
--BJ