what are you reading?

[sally]

they cancelled my ancient images order (missing stock!) had to order again....

am currently reading/skimming this that was gifted to me years ago and i have completely ignored, so i can take it down the charity stop and free up some space on my shelves (optimistically looking at transferring the ones that have been sat on the floor forever to a shelf some point soon!) but adorable though he is, he's incredibly histrionic and repetitive so am now merely zooming in on anything that says cinema

[Jürka]

yesterday happened (i believe) a decisive moment in my cinephile life.
coincidentally, i discovered, bought, and started to read a local translation of "Unnatural Narrative Theory" by Brian Richardson.
i always had an issue with storytelling that academic circles (i figured out yesterday) call a "natural narration".
familiarity with the unnatural narrative schemes (i hope) will provide a solid theoretical ground to my esoteric wtf movie watching.
equipped with the terms of unnatural narratology, i will be able (i expect) to spot even more silly details (i.e. unnatural elements) in natural narratives and thus widen my critical scope, i.e. review even more films (that would otherwise slip in-between my misinterpretation (unnatural interpretation) fingers).

[sally]

i haven't watched any movies lately (boo!) but to celebrate re-animated dalkey i picked an unread one off the shelf: at the writing desk by werner kofler - it's a reality/fiction crossover full of local austrian/german detail (the notes at the back are getting heavily consulted plus google) that reads like ferdinand khittl doing bernhard (bernhard gets lots of mentions, not all of them completely brutally scathing) and i haven't read bernhard in years and am now wondering if this and his totally negative onslaught would really be as much my thing as it used to be....

but the main point is.......gustav ucicky was klimt's son????? did we know this?

[wba]

but the main point is.......gustav ucicky was klimt's son????? did we know this?

What the fuck!?!?!?

[brian d]

yeah that's definitely a wtf?!

i'm rereading the dirtiest book in the english language, moby dick, and loving it again. especially from looking for all the suggestive lines

[Jürka]

Born in Vienna, Ucicky is often stated to have been the illegitimate son of painter Gustav Klimt for whom his mother Marie Učická from Prague worked and modeled, although this paternity is unconfirmed.

never heard that before but i completely believe it!
if the First President of the First Middle Banana Republic (TGM) might have been a bastard son of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, no wonder Ucicky was most likely the bastard son of Klimt.
Vienna around 1900 was full of remarkable bastards!

https://www.bbc.com/news/38129757

A Czech DNA expert is carrying out tests on clothes belonging to the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.

The tests should provide a definitive answer to an explosive claim that has fascinated readers and troubled historians for almost a century. Was Masaryk - champion of Slav rights and father of the Czechoslovak state - the illegitimate son of the Austro-Hungarian emperor?

...

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine, not Franz Joseph the mutton-chopped kaiser of World War One, but Franz Joseph the 19-year-old sovereign, resplendent in red and white military uniform, sitting ramrod straight on his imperial horse as it trotted into the castle grounds.

He was here in December. Could he have been here in the summer, too?

And could he have been provided with female company, to while away the hours?

"Oh, that would have been quite normal," says Mr Vareka, explaining that the imperial staff selected clean, healthy local women for the emperor.

And could, perhaps, that woman has been Theresia Kropaczek, a cook at the Habsburgs' Hodonin estate?

The same Theresia Kropaczek who married her co-worker Josef Masaryk in August 1849, yet gave birth to Tomas just seven months afterwards?

...

"It all seems a very tabloid way of approaching things; at times the debate has been simply disgusting."

Disgusting? Maybe. But it could turn the history of Central Europe on its head.

[Jürka]

i believe Ucicky was begotten on one of these "extravagant costume parties"!

https://artsandculture.google.com/story ... -q6Ws3OIJg

Several times a year Otto Primavesi, industrialist, banker, and financier of the Wiener Werkstätte, invited illustrious guests to Winkelsdorf in Moravia (today Kouty nad Desnou, CZE) for a “Schweindlfest” celebration in his country house built by Josef Hoffmann in 1914. At one of these extravagant costume parties in 1915/16 some of the leading lights of the Wiener Werkstätte gathered in seemingly oriental clothing.


Gustav Klimt (first from left) is sporting the fabric Waldidyll [Idyllic Woodland] by Carl Otto Czeschka.

Gustav Klimt as an attendand of an party in the Primavesi-house, with a house-coat designed by Carl Otto Czeschka, Name of the pattern: "Waldidyll".

[wba]

i'm rereading the dirtiest book in the english language, moby dick, and loving it again. especially from looking for all the suggestive lines

I am currently also reading this and am thoroughly but pleasantly surprised by all the dirty stuff going on most of the time. Also, Queequeg and Ishmael are already one of my favorite romantic couples in literature (and I'm only like 70 pages in). The combination of gentleness, humor and in-your-face is very mellifluos to my ears. And Melville seems so very ROMANTIC!!! It's my first Melville, so I didn't know what to expect - but definitely not what I got! It's even better than imagined (a bit like reading Novalis or Cervantes) and way more erotic than a lot of supposedly erotic stuff I've read (e.g. Apollinaire).

[brian d]

yep, probably the first ever gay marriage in literature, and they're so very tender with each other. it's really cute. and very dirty too.

[wba]

yep, probably the first ever gay marriage in literature, and they're so very tender with each other. it's really cute. and very dirty too.

Yeah, I was "this is so queer, and so open and so romantic!" - I was really positively suprised. So far it also reads like a pantheistic coming-out novel, with the power-balance between the two clearly in "favor" of Queequeg, who seems to be the idealized "wet dream" as well as a "superior", more enlightened human being.

[sally]

right obviously due to my no buying books ban, i have (so far in theory) bought another book, however it's movie related. it's silent movie related! written at the time! (translated into english in 1930) and you can all buy it and support it, although it actually got funded in one day so you don't need to.

(this guy is great, i've been curious about wendy walker's secret service for years but all copies completely unaffordable until he republished it via kickstarter and now it's sat on my shelf so i can read it in approx 20 years)

https://twitter.com/twodeadmagpies/stat ... 2687714319



am currently drooling through bataille's annotated trial of gilles de rais which i started ages ago but forgot about (the ecclesiastical latin transl. by darling pierre klossowski) and bataille is always silly comfort food to me, even when he's rambling on about necro-paedophilia...

[wba]

right obviously due to my no buying books ban, i have (so far in theory) bought another book, however it's movie related. it's silent movie related! written at the time! (translated into english in 1930) and you can all buy it and support it, although it actually got funded in one day so you don't need to.

(this guy is great, i've been curious about wendy walker's secret service for years but all copies completely unaffordable until he republished it via kickstarter and now it's sat on my shelf so i can read it in approx 20 years)

https://twitter.com/twodeadmagpies/stat ... 2687714319



am currently drooling through bataille's annotated trial of gilles de rais which i started ages ago but forgot about (the ecclesiastical latin transl. by darling pierre klossowski) and bataille is always silly comfort food to me, even when he's rambling on about necro-paedophilia...

Wow, that's great!
There should really be more initiatives like this for rare out of print books.
I'll try to find out if there's a German translation available. Otherwise I'll purchase this one.

[wba]

Unfortunately it doesn't look like CINELANDIA has ever been translated into German, so I may have to support this most worthwhile endeavour to republish the english language translation. BUT, BUT I have found two other "novels" by Ramón Gómez de la Serna which have been translated into the German language: "El Chalet de las rosas" (1923) and "El torero Caracho" (1926) - the first in 1929 and the second in 1928, and I've just ordered both books at my local library and will be leaving work early to collect them this evening. Ah! The Wonders of public libraries!
Need to finish my Panait Istrati first, though, (it supposedly has the first (openly?) gay main protagonist in a Romanian novel - well it was written and published in French first... - though I unfortunately haven't noticed any actual gay stuff going on in the text so far [unlike the wonderful Moby Dick], and the protagonist seems to have mainly been sexually abused a lot by gay men in his youth [though this isn't explicitly mentioned either]).

I'll report back on the de la Serna if it's worth reporting! My girlfriend is currently reading my 1905 copy of Jules Laforgues "Moralités légendaires" (1887), so I probably have a bit of time till I'll read that one, but I also still have some Hamsun and Giraudoux sitting on my library-shelf... Fortunately my copy of Moby Dick is from another library.

[sally]

what an amazing library you have! mine has never had anything i wanted in it, but they are quite willing to order it in (if it has been published in the UK) however the charge is £6 per book for three weeks only and bugger that i might as well buy the thing and then give it to a charity shop.

am currently reading a silly british war farce written in 1939 set in a made-up ruritanian country called Insomnia and i got to this:

'Instead he came face to face with King Hannibal. The monarch, in the very best Lubitsch tradition, was genial.'

And that's just way too meta for me to cope with. (in case there was ambiguity about it being that Lubitsch there was a mention of herbert marshall further down the page)

[wba]

That's great! Never stumbled over Lubitsch in any novel myself, unfortunately.

My local library is pretty amazing, yes, but I guess because it is (or used to be? )the "state" library of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate? Anyways, the library is pretty old and has a good many older books.
I'm not sure I can loan other stuff from other German libraries there (I'd say no), so that is certainly a plus in your case, though yes, 6 pounds for a single book can be a huge hindrance. I would have gladly paid 6 pounds for the great books I got from mine (cause most of them are out of print and hard to get and cost a lot more if you get a chance to buy them), but you never know before reading, if the book is actually worth the money...

[sally]

still plodding through deleuze & guattari's anti-oedipus (gets more fun for me when it gets to the anthro-ethno-socio-historic stuff rather than the pure psycho) and pleased to see klossowski being approvingly name-checked four times (inc. yes, roberte) and gombrowicz even! which may explain why i'm getting the feeling these days of having seen the same thing said in slightly different ways over and over by many different authors.

also now have reached the old-age point of brain calcification where i can't read with headphones in or other distractions more grating than birdsong. which given the constant noise on three sides of me from other people living their lives (the 6am DIY enthusiasts vs the 2am sex maniacs) means am not getting much reading (or sleep!) done.....annoying....

[sally]

am 50 pages in to osman lins' avalovara and not enjoying it

[karl]

[sally]

am 50 pages in to osman lins' avalovara and not enjoying it

"The honey of your delight dampens my palm and smells of roses."

that's got to be a translation thing right? no sane author would write something like that? damn my can't-give-up-on-books-even-if-i-hate-them attitude...

[mesnalty]

Avalovara is one of those novels that, from the description, I really should have loved, but I really didn't, so I'm with you.

[Jürka]

i also hope once watching (the inaccessible)...
IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA (Jean-Christophe Averty, 1977)

my request for this film was filled!
whoever is a kg mogul & has a weakness for Raymond Roussel, pls, contribute to the subs pot!

[sally]

^ i'm still pleased with myself for finishing that book

unlike avalovara, which is one of the handful of books i've ever given up and i've just read light stuff since then just to convince myself i can complete things

currently reading tabucchi's pereira which this atrocious translation has titled declares pereira, whereas every other normal translation calls it pereira maintains, which sounds much nicer. no matter, this little thing, barely worth mentioning other than the ominous fascism which for some reason made me dream that i met hitler last night, smells amazing. had a few old books lately that were a bit too ripe, they'd gone full mould, even had to throw a borges away! but this one is perfect, just old paper and ink.....shame it's so short, for all the snorting i'm doing....

[sally]

has EVERYONE stopped watching movies?

i've started on igor klekh's a land the size of binoculars - which is the only ukrainian author i had on my shelves (although, seeing as how he classes himself as russian and lives in moscow, feel like i'm covering all bases of current situation) - i read also ukrainian yuri andrukhovych's perverzion years ago, and liked it so much it was a rare keeper) anyway i'm enjoying myself so much furtling around lviv in his galician motifs (the intro claimed affinity with bruno schulz but igor is much more bullish) that i doubt i shall be watching movies either at the moment.

[brian d]

maybe it's time we turn this place into an eclectic book website instead of a movie one?

[Jürka]

SCBZ

[---]

finally found a copy of LUCKY JIM by kingsley amis. been wanting to read this for yrs. i don't remember why tho. but i am reading it

[rischka]

well i guess i should be reading more books! but i've been stuck on stephens' Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan 1842-3 for months!

thinking of finally reading pynchon this year lol

[brian d]

i've been stuck on stephens' Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan 1842-3 for months!

thinking of finally reading pynchon this year lol

i've read some of that one! not sure i blame you for not tearing through it

i tried reading the crying of lot 49 once. i didn't finish it. really not a fan of american postmodernism, but maybe you'll find a better one.

[wba]

has EVERYONE stopped watching movies?

Well, I did see 6 of them in January (and I've also already watched one of them this month). But, to be honest, I've read twice a s many books in January... My current priorities are definitely on literature, yes.

I am currently reading a few novels by Francis Carco and Andrei Bely's seminal modernist masterwork PETERSBURG (in its original unabridged form, published in 1913/14), which is a delight! Can't recommend it enough to you guys, though I don't know if there's a decent unabridged English translation out there. I'm reading a German one from 2001, which is very unique in itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersburg_(novel)

[sally]

i read and loved petersburg years ago! (although i don't think an unabridged mcduff english translation was available then)

and lucky jim was one of the three books that made me cry with laughter (other two were confederacy of dunces and pratchett's reaper man)