what are you reading?

[nrh]

just starting the dandy at dusk: taste & melancholy in the twentieth century by philip mann, for odd research purposes...



and just finished guns & thighs: the story of my life by ram gopal varma for not entirely unrelated reasons...

[wba]

LE FEMME PAUVRE (1897) by Leon Bloy.

Very good so far (I've read about 200 pages).

[brian d]

currently reading vanity fair, which is pretty funny so far. also been making my way through some b traven novels, including treasure of the sierra madre, which i just picked up today. crazy fascinating backstory on that guy, might need to get a book about the author at some point.

[wba]

MIAKRO by Georg Klein.

[karl]

and

[rischka]

[nrh]

finished donald westlake's memory, one of his earlier novels but not published until after his death. it's kind of easy to see why - it's touched briefly by crime/noir genre elements but isn't really a genre novel at all. most of it is main character, with a fading grip on memory and identity after being beaten by the enraged husband of the woman he was sleeping with, struggling to navigate post war american social spaces (rural upstate, '60s greenwich village). not at all what i expected but interesting, and nothing at all like the other westlakes i've read (which admittedly are mostly the parker books written under the richard stark pseudonym).

finally getting to the alvaro mutis maqroll collection i've had sitting around for years.

[sally]

way more jean-luc nancy, agamben, kristeva, derrida, deleuze etc than i was expecting, but anyway, interesting....

[nrh]

might need to get a book about the author at some point.

was very close to buying the mystery of b traven at a used book store this weekend, but had already picked up too much else.

have only read the death ship but was pretty taken with it - expected more of a pulp adventure novel, but it was knottier post war modernism. not sure how much i enjoyed it but the book has definitely stuck with me.

[wba]

Reading this novel by Chukovskaya in German under the title "Untertauchen", in an excellent German translation by Swetlana Geier.
Written between 1949 and 1957, it was published for the first time in 1972 in the US.

So far I can say that Chukovskaya is an excellent writer and it's a captivating read (I've read 100 pages today and will finish the book tomorrow).

The story's technically written like a diary (but like a diary from someone who writes meticulous prose like it's nothing...), with entries made during February and March 1949 in a sanatorium for writers and other Soviet artists. The protagonist, who wants to use her stay mostly as a welcome retreat to write, accidentally meets someone who tells her about their experiences in the gulag. This is extremely important for her, cause she hasn't heard from her husband in 12 years, ever since he was arrested in 1937...

PS: The Georg Klein novel was excellent, but I fear Klein's prose is almost untranslatable into English... Anyway, for anyone who is into "serious" Sci-Fi or interested in writers like Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Jakub Deml, Richard Weiner or Ladislav Klima, (or has a sufficient grasp of the german language to appreciate someone who is building their sentences mainly to make them sound good - Klein reminds me very much of German Romantic writers from 1800 to 1840...), Klein could be an interesting contemporary read.

[brian d]

might need to get a book about the author at some point.

was very close to buying the mystery of b traven at a used book store this weekend, but had already picked up too much else.

have only read the death ship but was pretty taken with it - expected more of a pulp adventure novel, but it was knottier post war modernism. not sure how much i enjoyed it but the book has definitely stuck with me.

the death ship was the other one i picked up, just finished treasure of the sierra madre and enjoyed it a lot. read the carreta just a week or so ago and found it kind of puzzling as a novel but enjoyable as enthnographic fiction, kind of like the bridge in the jungle, much more concerned with showing the cultures around than plot. but then i see speculation that not all of the "b traven" novels might be by the same person, so

[sally]

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 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.

just started the sublunary editions version of the life of the merry little schoolmaster maria wutz in auenthal, and credit to the translators as well, it's quite nice (although i think some of the jokes are going over my head), so far it's very mellow

[nrh]

decided to read something short between each of the alvaro mutis maqroll novellas, and am currently halfway through edgardo cozarinksy's milongas. i think i like the book's first section, melancholy reflections and memories of tango and the spaces and people cozarinsky associates with it, more than the second, very entertaining but drier accounts of tango's history, but it's a wonderful little book.

[rischka]

what a curious little volume

[sally]

started today reading mikheil javakhishvili's kvachi for CoMo, but it's 538 pages long. such a commitment. it had better be funny.

[lulu]

i'm new here so i dont know how all this works

but i'm about to finish this and it's been excellent - tuberculosis, sex in plaster casts, bodily fluids, punctured abscesses, rowdy sanatorium parties, vertebral rot

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Oh, is that the basis for the Radu Jude film? I didn't realize it was an adaptation. Very cool.

Also, I finally got a hold of a copy of Joseph McElroy's (extremely difficult to find) Lookout Cartridge which is noteworthy because it's literally about filmmaking. Not deep enough into it to really make sense of it yet, but one thing I find funny is how every character seems to have interest in this weird cinema verite documentary the main character made... in real life i can't imagine the film he describes being met with anything but indifference.
Fun nonetheless.

[flip]

i tried a couple of mcelroy novels (plus and smuggler's bible) a long time ago, and could never really figure out what he was about, but i know a lot of people think he's brilliant. i'll be curious to know what you make of lookout cartridge.

[nrh]

there are many ways that all the online used book sellers (biblio, abebooks, ebay, etc) have made finding things much easier, but the wildly inflated prices (over 200 for a book which had a decent print run just 20 years ago) are a great irritation. like i get that there are certain collector markets but this is something else...

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Yeah. I think McElroy's cache has more than just a little to do with the wildly inflated prices. I know more than a few people who have tracked down copies of all his books but have yet to read a single one. I think a lot of people are feeling the adrenaline rush of the hunt for difficult to find books and its bleeding into their reading experience. There's certainly an element of that happening for me.

I've only read A Smuggler's Bible, which I liked... though I wasn't blown away by it. I think I similarly can't quite figure out exactly what he's all about, but people I trust are gaga over him, and so far nothing has been unpleasant, so I carry onward.

[wba]

Added that Blecher and McElroy to my reading list! ♥

[wba]

Emil Cioran has finally managed to come to Nazi Germany in the late autumn of 1933, and he's totally loving it!

So far I've only read the first third of the novel, but it's sinister and disturbing - basically, the reader is just hanging out with Cioran and his new-found German student buddies, and it's the usual stuff: tormenting jews, shooting heroin, having fascist philosophical discussions, getting drunk and having gay sex. Nothing new there, but experiencing everything from Cioran's point of view, as if Berlin at that time is the second coming of Christ, is... unsettling, to say the least. This will probably get waaaay more uncomfortable as it progresses, though...

Kühsel-Hussaini is one of the contemporary German writers whose writing I seem to be enjoying, and this book seems even better than her last one on art historian Hugo von Tschudi.

[sally]

started today reading mikheil javakhishvili's kvachi for CoMo, but it's 538 pages long. such a commitment. it had better be funny.

not funny so far. anyway.....this was published in 1925, and in it kvachi robs a bank by pretending to be a film-crew (pathé) making a film about a bank robbery. (the bank staff agree to pretend to be frightened and hand over cash, only at some point some of them realise, are genuinely frightened, and are then commended for their acting abilities)

is that the earliest this ruse appeared? have some vague idea arbuckle filmed something similar but i might be imagining that.

[wba]

Currently reading my first novel by Egon Hostovský, and it's fun so far (read the first hundred pages today). If it holds up I'll try some more by him. Somehow, it reminds me of Gombrowicz (which is a good thing, of course).

I probably need some Czech/Slovak literature recs, though (preferably for books written before 1950).

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Which one? Not that I've read any of them. It seems like the Arsonist and the Hideout are the only two that are somewhat widely available in English, but wild that he was living in Jersey throughout the 50s and 60s and managed stay almost solely a czech literary figure.

[sally]

i got all my czech recs (though they publish writers from outside czechia as well) from twisted spoon publishers https://www.twistedspoon.com/titles.html so that's basically my reading list....

but more and more intrigued by the early 20th century german language prague authors....(aside from kafka) they don't really have an existing community any longer so no one guards their legacy....but really enjoyed the decadence of paul leppin, definitely want to read more from him

i have a long list of czech authors i need to read (on my shelf, already patiently waiting are (i think) zuzana brabcová, michal ajvaz, pavel kohout)....tho i guess my fave from recent years that i have read apart from hrabal and leppin is klíma's the sufferings of prince sternenhoch (plus the comical contemporary meta-tricks of patrik ouředník, but can't imagine that would appeal to wba)

i have a couple of škvoreckýs laying about as well but for some reason not remotely excited enough to want to read them, probably should give them straight to a charity shop or something

[wba]

Which one? Not that I've read any of them. It seems like the Arsonist and the Hideout are the only two that are somewhat widely available in English, but wild that he was living in Jersey throughout the 50s and 60s and managed stay almost solely a czech literary figure.

It's one he published in the US in 1942 under the title "Sedmkrát v hlavní úloze" (which could be roughly translated as "Seven times in the leading role", I think). The German translation I read was excellent, and the book is very good (though the Gombrowicz touch from the first third is probably rather a red herring - though I bought myself a Gombrowicz at the book store as compensation yesterday ). Hostovsky seems to me very religious and very moralist in this one, so it's rather a bit like reading a more playful version of Bernanos or Julien Green or some other talented guy from the "Renouveau catholique" mouvement. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone though (I finished it today during the hours of the early morning, while commuting by train to work), cause Hostovsky can write damn well!

I'd assume that he remained basically a Czechoslovak literary figure cause he wrote in Czech till his death and didn't switch to a foreign language (like Nabokov or Kundera).

[wba]

i got all my czech recs (though they publish writers from outside czechia as well) from twisted spoon publishers https://www.twistedspoon.com/titles.html so that's basically my reading list....

but more and more intrigued by the early 20th century german language prague authors....(aside from kafka) they don't really have an existing community any longer so no one guards their legacy....but really enjoyed the decadence of paul leppin, definitely want to read more from him

i have a long list of czech authors i need to read (on my shelf, already patiently waiting are (i think) zuzana brabcová, michal ajvaz, pavel kohout)....tho i guess my fave from recent years that i have read apart from hrabal and leppin is klíma's the sufferings of prince sternenhoch (plus the comical contemporary meta-tricks of patrik ouředník, but can't imagine that would appeal to wba)

i have a couple of škvoreckýs laying about as well but for some reason not remotely excited enough to want to read them, probably should give them straight to a charity shop or something

Thanks sally! That twisted spoon reading list looks very interesting to me. I'll see if I can get my hands on some of those in German (or Slovene) translations. Otherwise, I'll read the one's I want to have in English, of course.
Those German language Prague authors from 1900 seem to me very interesting as well. I haven't read Kafka since I was thirteen or fourteen (but I loved his writing back then: the first writer who I thought understood my fears and took them seriously, so I read a lot of his work), but from the few I've read in the past years, I'd definitely recommend "Die Tigerin" (1925) by Walter Serner (a masterpiece!), "Jazz" (1927) by Hans Janowitz (another masterpiece!) and "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" (1899/1904) by Rainer Maria Rilke (I also loved this one). And I'd advise against reading stuff by Louis Fürnberg. I have some more hidden somewhere in my library (especially Perutz and Meyrink come to my mind) and definitely need to read more of that good stuff (and I should also be able to get my hands on most of the obscurer titles through some good German libraries). Don't know why I keep putting most of them off... At least I know where one by Leppin is (Blaugast, I think), easily reachable on a shelf above my pillow.
That one by Klima you were writing about in this thread sounds great! "Contemporary literature" on the other hand is a difficult subject for me. While my difficulties with movies mostly begin from 2000 onwards, I am often not that much of a fan of writing that has been published during or after the 1950s, especially from writers who haven't started writing before 1950 (though serious literary trouble for me usually starts at the beginning of the 21st century as well). But maybe I'm just picking up the wrong kinds of books sometimes... Therefore I also doubt that Patrik Ouředník might be for me.

By far the best Czech book I've read in the last two or three years was Bohumil Hrabal's "Postřižiny" from 1976 (Cutting It Short, I belive it's called in English), my first and so far last book by Hrabal, which was writing that brings me to my knees and makes me weep for joy (so I definitely need to read more Hrabal).
I enjoyed reading "Valerie a týden divů" by Vítězslav Nezval (the 1945 version) and to a lesser degree Marketa Lazarova by Vladislav Vancura (I adore the film, though! - which hasn't much to do with the novel) as well as "Pekař Jan Marhoul", also by Vancura. I'd be interested in reading something a bit more unconventional than "Valerie" by Nezval, while Vancura simply might not be a writer that gets me excited.

[nrh]

I'd assume that he remained basically a Czechoslovak literary figure cause he wrote in Czech till his death and didn't switch to a foreign language (like Nabokov or Kundera).

though interesting you mention the gombrowicz touch earlier, since he is a rare case where he becomes a significant figure in argentina despite only writing in polish and focusing on polish concerns during his time there (the diaries being the major exception). there were some early translations to spanish but they didn't seem to make much of an impression at the time.

not sure i can think of any other major examples...

[Evelyn Library P.I.]