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1Banoo
Starting the year off with Stig Dagerman... you've just gotta love that name. Who is this writer with a name that sounds like he should be a hitman for an international crime syndicate? Well here's a link that provides an interesting background on the man. I'll have a review of his book A Burnt Child in the next few days.
This year I want to focus on BIG... books with a bunch of pages. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, and The Complete Illustrated Works of Edgar Allan Poe... these are just 3 that I want to tackle. There are many more on the top of my TBR list.
This year I want to focus on BIG... books with a bunch of pages. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett, and The Complete Illustrated Works of Edgar Allan Poe... these are just 3 that I want to tackle. There are many more on the top of my TBR list.
3theaelizabet
For all my love of Beckett, I only know him through his plays and collected letters. Will look forward to reading your thoughts on the novels.
4Medellia
Welcome. I lurked in your 50 books threads last year. I plan to read Infinite Jest, too, this spring, as part of a group read in Le Salon Litteraire. I have other big books lined up for the year, too, so we'll be in this together.
5arubabookwoman
Dagerman certainly had a compelling life story. I have The Burnt Child on my shelf and am looking forward to your comments--I got many recommendations from your thread last year. I am intrigued by the quote on the back of my volume of The Burnt Child by Michael Meyer:
"One is haunted by a secret and uneasy suspicion that Dagerman's private vision, like Strindberg's and Kafka's, may in fact be nearer the truth of things than those visions of the great humanists, such as Tolstoy and Balzac, which people call universal.
"One is haunted by a secret and uneasy suspicion that Dagerman's private vision, like Strindberg's and Kafka's, may in fact be nearer the truth of things than those visions of the great humanists, such as Tolstoy and Balzac, which people call universal.
6Banoo
The first book of the year...
01. A Burnt Child by Stig Dagerman
Stig Dagerman was a Swedish author. At the age of 31 he went into his garage and closed all of the doors and windows, started up his car, sat in the driver's seat, and died... before he did that, he was a damn good writer.
His most famous short story, To Kill a Child, can be found here.
In A Burnt Child a mother dies... a wife dies. The story revolves around four characters. The widower Knut. His son, Bengt. Gun, Knut's mistress. And, Berit, Bengt's timid and sickly girlfriend.
Bengt is the main character. Bengt has issues... mother issues. He is the burnt child. He hates and loves his father, the mistress, and his girlfriend. The saying that there is a fine line between love and hate is perfectly detailed in this story. In Bengt's life there are only extremes... extreme happiness, extreme sadness... living, dying... the beautiful, the ugly... it is a binary world Bengt finds himself in.
What Mum used to say to me when I was unhappy, when I was grown-up and unhappy. When I was little she used to kiss me to make me happy, but when I was grown-up and unhappy she used to say: Sit down at the table and write a letter to yourself. It's always worth while writing to yourself, but almost only to yourself. And when you have finished you aren't unhappy any more, but you have a long letter. A long, lovely letter.
Because Bengt is most times unhappy every other chapter is a letter from Bengt to Bengt. It is in these letters that his true character emerges and the confusions of his life are detailed.
The story begins with the mother's funeral and slowly builds in tension until we read his last letter. It's not a happy book. It's a lonely book. A cold Swedish winter book with long nights watching candles burn.
The grooves in sorrow's steps are deep and full of salt and sand.
01. A Burnt Child by Stig Dagerman
Stig Dagerman was a Swedish author. At the age of 31 he went into his garage and closed all of the doors and windows, started up his car, sat in the driver's seat, and died... before he did that, he was a damn good writer.
His most famous short story, To Kill a Child, can be found here.
In A Burnt Child a mother dies... a wife dies. The story revolves around four characters. The widower Knut. His son, Bengt. Gun, Knut's mistress. And, Berit, Bengt's timid and sickly girlfriend.
Bengt is the main character. Bengt has issues... mother issues. He is the burnt child. He hates and loves his father, the mistress, and his girlfriend. The saying that there is a fine line between love and hate is perfectly detailed in this story. In Bengt's life there are only extremes... extreme happiness, extreme sadness... living, dying... the beautiful, the ugly... it is a binary world Bengt finds himself in.
What Mum used to say to me when I was unhappy, when I was grown-up and unhappy. When I was little she used to kiss me to make me happy, but when I was grown-up and unhappy she used to say: Sit down at the table and write a letter to yourself. It's always worth while writing to yourself, but almost only to yourself. And when you have finished you aren't unhappy any more, but you have a long letter. A long, lovely letter.
Because Bengt is most times unhappy every other chapter is a letter from Bengt to Bengt. It is in these letters that his true character emerges and the confusions of his life are detailed.
The story begins with the mother's funeral and slowly builds in tension until we read his last letter. It's not a happy book. It's a lonely book. A cold Swedish winter book with long nights watching candles burn.
The grooves in sorrow's steps are deep and full of salt and sand.
7kidzdoc
Wow. I won't soon forget To Kill a Child; thank for that link, and the review of A Burnt Child, which I'll add to my wish list.
8theaelizabet
That was difficult to read, but I'd still give A Burnt Child a Try.
10janemarieprice
Just read your intro and wanted to stop by and say 'Hi'. I grew up in Houma, LA and went to LSU for Interior Design - small world!
11Banoo
i can tell this is going to be a low volume year... heavy work load and finally getting some writing done.
still in the midst of molloy, malone dies, the unnamable by samuel beckett. it's slow reading. rewarding reading. and yes, his characters still have defecation and memory issues. reading the molloy section is like hanging out with molloy and listening to his nonstop rambling. beckett forgoes the paragraph and is slowly but surely letting go of the full-stop... but wouldn't you expect his characters to just spew nonstop their thoughts and feelings? i expected nothing less.
heard on npr's wait, wait don't tell me that beckett sometimes drove andre the giant (the wrestler mammoth) to school. what a trippy ride that must have been.
still in the midst of molloy, malone dies, the unnamable by samuel beckett. it's slow reading. rewarding reading. and yes, his characters still have defecation and memory issues. reading the molloy section is like hanging out with molloy and listening to his nonstop rambling. beckett forgoes the paragraph and is slowly but surely letting go of the full-stop... but wouldn't you expect his characters to just spew nonstop their thoughts and feelings? i expected nothing less.
heard on npr's wait, wait don't tell me that beckett sometimes drove andre the giant (the wrestler mammoth) to school. what a trippy ride that must have been.
