what are you reading?

[rischka]

i read the attached notes and there were a lot of them so it was difficult to read in large doses but the chapters were short.

more books should have chapters of one sentence! and in one case i think he skipped over a couple completely

[rischka]

gonna be brave and finish pym today. after a certain point i approached it with dread and stopped reading at night lol

but it reminds me of one of my childhood favorites: two years before the mast

[wba]

I just finished THE HIGHWAYMAN (1915) by Henry Christopher Bailey and it was an excellent experience.

Talking of British novels which I have read in the past months (and about which I have written here as well), this was completely on another level when compared to THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL (1848, Anne Bronte), and also much better than THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE (1878) by Hardy. THE HIGHWAYMAN is also set in the past, but much further down the lane than the other two (circa 1714, I think), and it's more reminiscent of what Alexandre Dumas has done in his historical novels. Bailey writes dialogue that's second to none, but I wish this novel was at least twice as long or preferably a 1000+ page adventure like some of Dumas' longer work. Anyway, Bailey seems like a major discovery to me, and I can't fathom why he's become so unknown. Alas, it's the same fate he shares with millions of other forgotten writers, so I guess it's the way things generally happen.

I wish I could clone Bailey with Thomas Hardy, so that we could have Bailey's characters and dialogue but also Hardy's descriptions of their surroundings. That would be perfect literature. Kinda like an even better version of Jean Giono.

Now I need to check out some other novels by Bailey. I also wish I had some second-hand bookstore in my vicinity, which would sell British literature published during the first half of the 20th century at decent prices.

[nrh]

read the new york review of books collection of theodor storm's novella's, titled "the rider on the white horse" (translated by james wright, who also wrote the introduction). am i missing something? this is the earliest german fiction i've read (edit - not true, i've read a lot of hoffmann), but all the novellas (most of them little more than short stories) leading up to the title story are rudimentary at best, and the title story is kind of fun but nothing special, certainly nothing compared to what was going on with the novel elsewhere.

50 or so pages into the 1971 printing of david r. bunch's moderan, great book.

[wba]

Never read any Storm, so can't help you with that.

[brian d]

it's german poetic realism. i did an independent study under a guy in grad school on it, and we read storm as well as some others (fontane, raabe, some others whose names i've forgotten; edit: we also read keller, and he was probably the most interesting of the bunch). the framing aspect was a big deal to him, since i guess it was more complex than what had come before, though there are plenty of framed narratives before that, and the sentimentality was also part of it. honestly i doubt you're missing too much

to get more into the weeds, i get the sense that poetic realism was a correction back to the more or less lightly conservative and apolitical following the more radical perspective of heine and the stronger conservatism of those who were against 1848, so they get praised because it fills a gap between the goethe/schiller/heine period and the early twentieth-century writers who are much better.

if you only know hoffmann, try to find some kleist. you'd probably like him quite a bit. he wrote the broken jug, the marquise von o, and michael kohlhaas.

[nrh]

forgot about kleist! have only read marquise of o and prince of homburg, should probably revisit those and read the rest. and have read fontane but only two late novels (irretrievable and effi briest), both of which i loved but seem to belong to a fundamentally different literary tradition, although i might be completely wrong there.

there is definitely something attractive about storm's narrative frames.

[brian d]

luckily with kleist it's pretty easy. i think he wrote eight plays and around eight novellas/stories, and then just some shorter essays. never read anything bad by him, and would like to reread some of it soon. also want to read some jean paul at some point, since he's in the rabelaisian tradition from what i've heard, though more mellow, but translations aren't as easy to come by and i can't remember enough german to try in the original.

[wba]

luckily with kleist it's pretty easy. i think he wrote eight plays and around eight novellas/stories, and then just some shorter essays. never read anything bad by him, and would like to reread some of it soon. also want to read some jean paul at some point, since he's in the rabelaisian tradition from what i've heard, though more mellow, but translations aren't as easy to come by and i can't remember enough german to try in the original.

I also need to revisit some Kleist (read two or three novellas about 20 years ago), and I just bought a 13-book (15.000+ pages) "complete" edition of Jean Paul's writing last weekend. Am very curious as well, cause I haven't read anything by Paul yet.

[wba]

From Fontane I had only read Effi Briest at school when I was 12, and hated it. Haven't tried anything else since then. ^^

[wba]

Keller is quite nice, but he was a Swiss writer, so I usually forget about him when it comes to German stuff from the 19th century. Though he lived in Germany for some time and wrote his Magnum Opus, the 2 part novel DER GRÜNE HEINRICH about this period in his life. DER GRÜNE HEINRICH exists in two different versions, one as he wrote and published it in his youth, and one which he revised and rewrote when he was much older.

[brian d]

not surprised you didn't like effi briest as a 12 year old read that and it was fine, but definitely not a favorite. it's been recommended to me to read der grüne heinrich before, maybe that should go on the to-read list.

[nrh]

the relatively new publisher sublunary editions has been putting out new editions of jean paul stuff recently. they must have relatively small distribution since since i don't think i've ever seen any of their books in person, even at bookstores that usually do a pretty good job at carrying small press stuff.

[brian d]

i'd never heard of that publisher, but that's outstanding. just ordered three of them

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Almost done with Warlock by Oakley Hall, which is excellent. I'll have to check out the Dmytryk film now. But the book's scope is partly what makes it so fascinating, so I'm hesitant to see a trimmed version.

[sally]

i ordered a few sublunarys last year! (the jean pauls await)

eye-watering delivery costs to the uk! more than twice the cost of the books, won't be doing that again for a while....

[wba]

I'm currently reading my first book by Elisabeth Langgässer, GANG DURCH DAS RIED published in 1936.
It is outstanding in every possible way and Langgässer is incredible in what she does with the German language.

I picked this up by chance at the local library, and it's about a French guy in Germany in 1930 who has been released from the asylum as he's been insane for some years now but is supposed to be alright now (which he isn't, of course), and he's wandering around the countryside, getting stuck in a small village as a persecuted Nazi collaborator in hiding. All the while he's trying to figure out his identity, cause he's not French (his French passport was a fake one he bought in 1920 during the communist revolution in the area of Germany he's wandering around), and he finds out that he's actually originally from around the part where he's staying and that he's probably a serial killer people have been looking for (not 100% sure about that last part, as I still have 15 pages to read to finish the novel...). The whole thing is written like a hallucinatory dream you cannot get out of, where everything is connected with everything. It's this 1920s/1930s magical realist style typical for most of the best writing in Germany at the time, but somewhat pushed to the extreme by Langgässers avantgarde sensibilities as a lyricist, as the novel also reads like a neverending 400 pages long poem.

I can't believe this was actually published in 1936 in Nazi Germany, by someone who was considered a Jew under Nazi law, was a fan of Hitler for whom she voted in 1933, and lived through the terror until after 1945 while one of her daughters was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 15. Well, you just can't make this up...

[wba]

JAN HIMP UND DIE KLEINE BRISE (Germany, 1934) written by Hans Leip. An excellent book for kids, kinda in the vein of Erich Kästner, but better written when it comes to Leips use of dialogues.
50 pages to go, and it's clear I will be reading much more by Leip in the future. I'll probably pick up his 1927 novel DER NIGGER AUF SCHARHÖRN next. Apparently it's about the blossoming friendship of a 14 year old German boy from Hamburg with a dark-skinned cabin boy of a similar age who got shipwrecked on the small German island Scharhörn, and how together they try to overcome racist prejudices [a reviewer notes that even the local Hitler Youth tries to jeopardize their friendship]. And It's supposed to be an adventure story as well. I also need to read more Erich Kästner, so I've bought some of his children's novels from the 30s, like THE 35TH OF MAY; OR CONRAD'S RIDE TO THE SOUTH SEAS (1931) or EMIL UND DIE DREI ZWILLINGE (1934).

[Roscoe]

HANGOVER SQUARE by Patrick Hamilton, after having seen the film a few weeks back. A more patient step by step picture of George Bone's dissolution than the more outlandishly romantic film, set in just barely-pre-war London.

[rischka]

melmoth the wanderer

[rischka]

first half of this book was great but he's losing me now. somewhere on a tropic isle is not as gripping as the dungeons of the inquisition

but i've yet to give up halfway through a book. it's a beast

[sally]

non puke-inducing (though now i think somewhat discredited) discussion of genuine spiritual journeys in specific landscapes (and yes! archaeology!)

[sally]

haven't read anything swedish for ages. so far the guy is drunk and wishes he was dead. checks out

[Roscoe]

PICKWICK PAPERS, finally making headway after all those years of false starts. Sam Weller really does kick the book into gear.

[rischka]

i finished melmoth!! so that took me almost 2 months lol

now i'm thinking ursula k leguin... or maybe confederacy of dunces

[brian d]

i'm reading le guin's the dispossessed. really enjoying it so far. the later hainish novels are really my style.

didn't like confederacy of dunces at all, but i'm the minority opinion on that it seems.

[rischka]

i have the dispossessed too, will give it a shot then

[sacmersault]

I'm currently reading Nuestra parte de noche by Mariana Enriquez (author of Things We Lost in the Fire). The English translation came out this February; it's called Our Share of Night. The book is really engaging. It deals with a dark cult and a sort of magical medium (feels a bit like a vampire) who is trying to raise his son away from the cult, all of this takes place during the Argentinian dictatorship and the aftermath of that. So the novel is complex, it deals with fantasy, Gothic, father/son relationship, cults, good vs. evil, and the Argentinian dictatorship, and it's effect on people. I strongly recommend it. I'm about half-way through it.

[sally]

for 1925 poll (given that all but two were published 1925) i'm reading a collection of supernatural short stories written by an australian lady

[sally]

oh walser's robber was written in 1925. no point even doing a further survey (i passed kafka and winked already)