The new one by bhattacharya on John Von Neumann is good too. Bloke knew everything.
what are you reading now?
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Wonder how that compares to Zizek's joke book:
Henry Miller, The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Arthur Rimbaud
He could perhaps have called it "A Study of Henry Miller" as every description of Rimbaud thus far's been followed up with "... just like me, Henry Miller!".
It's embarrassing, but also endearing and entertaining. I get the sense he's genuinely enraptured by the poet and really does feel a kinship with him. I'm shaking my head and laughing rather than rolling my eyes and groaning. Maybe I'll end up at the latter if he keeps it up.
Apparently he didn't read him for ages because a woman he hated was a big fan.
The opposition of the scientist and the poet's interesting having read the Goethe mentioned in the thinking-in-stages thread. He felt poetry and imagination were crucial to science; 150 years or so later, Miller's dealing with the consequences of the split only having widened.
He could perhaps have called it "A Study of Henry Miller" as every description of Rimbaud thus far's been followed up with "... just like me, Henry Miller!".
It's embarrassing, but also endearing and entertaining. I get the sense he's genuinely enraptured by the poet and really does feel a kinship with him. I'm shaking my head and laughing rather than rolling my eyes and groaning. Maybe I'll end up at the latter if he keeps it up.
Apparently he didn't read him for ages because a woman he hated was a big fan.
The opposition of the scientist and the poet's interesting having read the Goethe mentioned in the thinking-in-stages thread. He felt poetry and imagination were crucial to science; 150 years or so later, Miller's dealing with the consequences of the split only having widened.
WashYourHands
Cat Malogen
Lights at sunset
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
Not trying to cramp the mood, but a squat party sounds like it would get uncomfortable after a while.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Originals are routinely considered to be superior to their translations but in Orkeny's case the English renderings are immeasurably better reads than the utterly incomprehensible Hungarian editions.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
@IdleRich you really must read this:
radayantikvarium.hu
Don't worry it's in both English and gobbledygook.
The Hungarian worldview is unique; we should all appreciate Orban's efforts to maintain 100% sardonic wryness within his country's borders.
Kosztolányi Dezső: A gipszangyal / The Plaster Angel
A kötet Kosztolányi Dezső 20 novelláját tartalmazza magyar és angol nyelven. This volume contains twenty short stories by Dezső Kosztolányi, including both the original Hungarian version and the English translation.
radayantikvarium.hu
The Hungarian worldview is unique; we should all appreciate Orban's efforts to maintain 100% sardonic wryness within his country's borders.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I get that. It's not really my thing, but I was happy to attend as a one-off. It was a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the squat and my friend was playing a warm-up disco set at about 2pm. I was virtually the only person there who wasn't Spanish or Brazilian or somehow involved and so it was nice to be invited to something which there would have been no chance whatsoever of me finding as a tourist or casual traveller. Even though. when it came to the actual stuff that happened there I did not have any particular interest in watching acrobats perform to a bunch of the criusties' children, nor did I want particularly to see a transgender stripper with a devil's tail stuck up hir arse singing about being a monster... or a load of women who were the squat's founders miming to Spanish hits in their bikinis, in fact even when they started rapping for real it wasn't really something I would have chosen to watch. And the DJ who closed it out was - how best to put this - an absolutely terrible selecta who mixed up an unholy racket that started with reggaeton and ended up as the worst kind of hardcore - but despite that the vibe was good and it was fun. And I was stumbling drunk by the end... I grabbed a great book, almost got in a fight on the metro (runs all night on Saturday handily enough) and then puked all over my host's bog shortly after.
I probably should say more about this cos it was really good, best thing I've read in ages. I thought that the Flower Show was great and I didn't want it to finish as Is was sure that the second one would be inferior, but instead it was actually better.
The Flower Show is about a guy making a documentary about death, or about people dying, he wants to call it How We Die but his superiors insist on the lighter name The Flower Show - he finds three people who are near death - or to be more precise he finds two such and the third needs a bit of a nudge in that direction - and then he persuades them to let him film their final hours in exchange for a fee to their loved ones. And it's just kinda gently ironic in its dealing with this.
The Toth Family is more surreal or possibly absurd is the word. A major takes leave from the front and stays with a family, they are eager to please him to improve their son's conditions at the front (although, cruelly he has already died, the letter informing them has been intercepted by the post man who doesn't like to deliver bad news). He drives them insane asking them to spend their nights making boxes and there are many weird events along the way and... I've got to go, but it's really good so you should read it. I want to say more about the contrast between the matter of fact writing in this and the flowery Portuguese writing in the other thing I was reading but I can't... bye.
It's much fresher than I expected. The emphasis on the synthetic and artificial only seems to have grown in relevance. That bit where it's explained he's designed a section of the house to simulate sea travel so he can experience it from home. An early adopter of The Cocoon.
À rebours
I know it as Against Nature, Against the Grain is better
I know it as Against Nature, Against the Grain is better
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yeah it was Against Nature when I read it too. I was asking if it was the same thing really, never heard that name but it was a good guess.
Alternative translations can be quite interesting, particularly with titles where there is a tug of war between literal meaning and the sense of it... a famous one is, I have to look it up, but À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is sometimes translated In Search Of Lost Time but it used to be Remembrance Of Things Past. The one I like is L'Ecume Des Jours which I've seen called, I think, Froth On The Daydream and Foam Of The Daze, I think it's pretty clever to get that pun in there... what else? Doesn't have to be French.
Alternative translations can be quite interesting, particularly with titles where there is a tug of war between literal meaning and the sense of it... a famous one is, I have to look it up, but À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu is sometimes translated In Search Of Lost Time but it used to be Remembrance Of Things Past. The one I like is L'Ecume Des Jours which I've seen called, I think, Froth On The Daydream and Foam Of The Daze, I think it's pretty clever to get that pun in there... what else? Doesn't have to be French.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yeah they definitely have different meanings, what it says there about Against the grain aligns pretty well with my understanding of the phrase... not so sure about how they characterize Against Nature though... is it reductive? I think it's quite a powerful phrase that suggests a total perversion of everything - though I make no comment as to which better translates the title.
"Baudelaire merely laid his heart bare; Rimbaud plucks his heart out and devours it slowly. And so the world gradually comes to resemble the time of the curse. The birds drop from the air, dead before they arrive. The wild beasts gallop to the sea and plunge. The grass withers, the seed rots. Nature takes on the barren, deformed look of a miser, and the heavens mirror the emptiness of the earth. The poet, jaundiced from riding the wild mare over lakes of steaming asphalt, slits its throat. In vain he flaps his rudimentary wings. The Fabulous opera collapses and howling wind rends the props. Save for the furious and most ancient witches, the heath is deserted. Like harpies, armed each and every one with grappling hooks, they fall upon him. Theirs is a more earnest greeting than that visionary brush with his Satanic Majesty. Nothing lacks now to complete the concert of hells he once begged for."
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Tempted to give a rebours a reread now. I'm nowhere near well read in it, but there's something about avant garde french literature that both attracts and repulses me at the same time, the pornographic, godlessness of a lot of it I think. It often leaves me feeling a bit soiled and depressed.