GhostofKinski
Well-known member
Don Quixote please
what are you reading now?
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
I definitely see why people consider it the best novel in the western literary tradition, and I might even agree. I'd like to think about it a bit longer, but I found it more impressive even than Ulysses and Moby Dick and Gravity's Rainbow. There are a few others which might be contenders which I haven't read, like In Search of Lost Time, and whatnot.
But re: DQ, I read both volumes, and I do think together they amount to more than the sum of their parts. I even think volume II hits better strides than volume I, both in terms of substance and form. That is, I think there is a bit more depth to the story of volume II, and on a formal level it seems to speed-run postmodernism well before that term was established.
Its also simply a hilarious story, mostly owing to the style of prose and the dialogue, which seems very self-aware of its verbosity and stiltedness. I think part of that is that the whole thing, even from vol 1, is a parody of what I reckon was a more earnest ur-pulp genre of knight-errantry novels, with inflated and romantic worlds depicted. Then Don Quixote, the character, functions as a vessel by which this romantic worldview relentlessly exerts itself upon the more boring and "nonteleological" world around him, and ends up actually manifesting adventures.
So where vol 1 takes the established fantasy of knight-errantry fiction as a point of departure, in the manner of an encyclopedic novel, and leads into the sheer farce and delusion and silliness entailed by taking all those stories literally, vol 2 (in which the first volume has been published, and Don Quixote has some degree of preeminence as a noble fool) takes that delusional status quo as a point of departure, and then self-referentially demonstrates how he ends up actually manifesting a certain legacy of nobility.
A good chunk of the novels come across as impertinent side quests and frame stories (the first volume especially, as it contains several extensive stories within it which don't bear out to much within the world of the main story, nor do they carry much significance formally beyond just exhibiting complex narrative structure). In vol 2 this is actually acknowledged, when reference is made to volume 1 and how it contains all these spurious little novellas within it. But overall I do think it amounts to potentially the greatest novel in western history.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Just finished The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. It didn't exactly set me on fire - a depressing, pessimistic story about pre-war rich people in unhappy marriages, with characters that are quite hard to sympathise with - but I came away pretty impressed and I'm glad I read it. I especially liked the impressionistic way the story is narrated, going back and forth in time, the infidelities and hypocrisies of these ostensibly 'good people' gradually revealed in a very clever way that must have been innovative and mildly scandalous for the time.
He was quickly to be overshadowed by the other younger, more famous and exciting modernists, but it's probably worth a reread at some point in the future - a great second-rate novel is how I'd rate it for now.
He was quickly to be overshadowed by the other younger, more famous and exciting modernists, but it's probably worth a reread at some point in the future - a great second-rate novel is how I'd rate it for now.
jenks
thread death
If you’re interested this discussion on FMF and The Good Soldier is worth a listen - I was in the audience for the recording. https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/212-the-good-soldier-by-ford-madox-ford
sus
Moderator
Reading Barbara Kingsolver's Homeland, Pessoa's I Have More Souls Than One, and Ella AlShamahi's The Handshake (paleoanthropological account of greeting rites) on my flight home
The latter two are research for my ongoing unfinished epic poem LATINO which tracks a young boy in the EXTENDED 21ST CENTURY LATIN EMPIRE as he navigates its many dialects (Italian, Sijilian, Spanish, Portuguese), religious springrenewal rites (Easter, Carnival), and searches for a form (poetic, personal)
The latter two are research for my ongoing unfinished epic poem LATINO which tracks a young boy in the EXTENDED 21ST CENTURY LATIN EMPIRE as he navigates its many dialects (Italian, Sijilian, Spanish, Portuguese), religious springrenewal rites (Easter, Carnival), and searches for a form (poetic, personal)
sus
Moderator
vós, infantes,
Que inda não tendes cura
De ter cura, reponde
Ruidosa a roda, enquanto arqueia Apolo,
Como um ramo alto, a curva azul que doura,
E a perene maré
Flui, enchente ou vazante.
you, still children
Who are not yet cured
Of being cured, restore
Rousingly the round, while Apollo bends,
Like a high branch, the blue curve which he goldens,
And the perennial tide
Runs on, flowing or ebbing
Que inda não tendes cura
De ter cura, reponde
Ruidosa a roda, enquanto arqueia Apolo,
Como um ramo alto, a curva azul que doura,
E a perene maré
Flui, enchente ou vazante.
you, still children
Who are not yet cured
Of being cured, restore
Rousingly the round, while Apollo bends,
Like a high branch, the blue curve which he goldens,
And the perennial tide
Runs on, flowing or ebbing
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The importance of being earnest, and the sermon on the mount (KJV, Mark chap 5-7) just to balance it out.
tobyshooters
Member
Read Leão-de-chácara by João Antonio, a collection of short stories around São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro about bouncers, prostitutes, and pimps. Falls into the Rabelais-Céline lineage, of which I'd appreciate more recommendations. In Brazil, I'm told Antônio de Alcantara Machado is worth looking at, and there's the much more contemporary Reinaldo Moraes I've read almost everything (Pornopopéia, Tanto Faz, Maior que o mundo).
There's tons of writing about Rio, but São Paulo really lacks the historicizing. Not much of a self-narrativizing instinct in the manner of the 60-80s authors of NYC. Not sure why...
Leão-de-chácara has some amazing urban descriptions of the historical downtown in the 50s, as well as a beautiful passage of a teenager, before becoming a pimp, riding his bicycle to the Pacaembú stadium, just a few blocks from where I'm writing this to you.
There's tons of writing about Rio, but São Paulo really lacks the historicizing. Not much of a self-narrativizing instinct in the manner of the 60-80s authors of NYC. Not sure why...
Leão-de-chácara has some amazing urban descriptions of the historical downtown in the 50s, as well as a beautiful passage of a teenager, before becoming a pimp, riding his bicycle to the Pacaembú stadium, just a few blocks from where I'm writing this to you.
version
Well-known member
Someone recommended me Rubem Fonseca along those lines recently. This was the one they were reading.
tobyshooters
Member
Yeah, Fonseca is funnily enough tied to Tommy P. He's a bit more gore/noir than urban/anthropological, but it's a direction I'll go for sure in the upcoming months. I've read a few of his short stories in one of those "Best Brazilian Short Stories" collections.
Claude's translation
Claude's translation
kid charlemagne
Well-known member
version
Well-known member
Nah, haven't read any Erickson. I've got a copy, but keep putting it off for some reason.
version
Well-known member
John Hawkes, The Lime Twig. I've got this Penguin thing with three of his novels bundled together and it's the first of them. Never read him before and really impressed. It dips a bit when he spends too long discussing some men smuggling a horse off a barge at night, but something about the way he writes. There's this great description of the fog rolling in off the water and he just has this intriguing way of describing things. He's not quite like anyone I've read before. The choice of words, the way the narration moves around. Something really sad about it too. Very bleak, bittersweet kind of worldview.
Murphy
cat malogen
‘borrowing’ from day shift office crew came good for once but the first part of the title honks a bit
Magic in Merlin's Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain by Francis Young
pivots around John Dee and courtly sedition which is superb yet anything else eg Roman Britain or post-Roman Britain just flicked through as its level of academic scrutiny is poor with overt generalisations
problem is the Tudor and Stewart sections are a fulcrum of eloquence, research and mad array of contexts you think why didnt the editor say everything outside of these chapters is redundant really, all your gold is the middle chunk of late-Medieval/Early-Modern
shame it wasn’t submitted as individual journal pieces at least then the more succinct sections are condensed further, still, worth seeking for the middle and final thirds
Magic in Merlin's Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain by Francis Young
pivots around John Dee and courtly sedition which is superb yet anything else eg Roman Britain or post-Roman Britain just flicked through as its level of academic scrutiny is poor with overt generalisations
problem is the Tudor and Stewart sections are a fulcrum of eloquence, research and mad array of contexts you think why didnt the editor say everything outside of these chapters is redundant really, all your gold is the middle chunk of late-Medieval/Early-Modern
shame it wasn’t submitted as individual journal pieces at least then the more succinct sections are condensed further, still, worth seeking for the middle and final thirds
version
Well-known member
John Hawkes, The Lime Twig. I've got this Penguin thing with three of his novels bundled together and it's the first of them. Never read him before and really impressed. It dips a bit when he spends too long discussing some men smuggling a horse off a barge at night, but something about the way he writes. There's this great description of the fog rolling in off the water and he just has this intriguing way of describing things. He's not quite like anyone I've read before. The choice of words, the way the narration moves around. Something really sad about it too. Very bleak, bittersweet kind of worldview.
