what are you reading?

[wba]

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...

He definitely has the Gombrowicz touch, in some ways, and it might be better to position him between someone like Bernanos and Gombrowicz in that regard. His (jewish, not catholic) faith seems important to him, but he has that slightly surreal middle-european touch, that playfulness and a wicked gleam in his eye. I don't know if he lets loose and goes all out in some of his other works, but in this one you also have the moralizing - and the misanthropy goes only as far as a decadent lifestyle and the corruption of values is concerned. So he's kinda doing the wicked dance, but it's not all men he's condemning, but just the many who have succumbed to moral decay and such. So the Gombrowicz stuff is a bit like similar stylistics as you can also find in Dostoevsky - though I would be surprised if Hostovsky ever wrote anything as radical and avant-garde as Dostoevsky did with his initial publication of his novel "The Double" (the one from 1846 - I'm NOT speaking of his regularly available and widely known butchering of this novel with the publication of the revised edition in 1866, mind you!).

[sally]

gombrowicz via bernanos sounds amazing. am boosting up my reading list!

however, since it's belgian month i checked my shelves and on them still unread i have marguerite yourcenar, amélie nothomb, paul willems and luce irigaray so will probably read one of those if i ever finish this interminable kvachi

have in the past read georges rodenbach, jean ray, hugo claus, willem elsschot & of course simenon, and jean-philippe toussaint who i love love love

who else is belgian? maeterlinck, henri michaux, simon leys, really curious for michel de ghelderode & paul nougé

[wba]

Ha, Toussaint! A hero from my youth! I read all of his published novels back then, but haven't revisited anything (or read anything new) in over 20 years.
I guess I should change that.

As for other Belgian authors: Charles de Coster comes to mind. I have like 3 or 4 different editions of his "La légende et les aventures héroiques joyeuses et glorieuses d'Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak au pays des Flandres et ailleurs" (1867) lying around, but haven't read him yet. I also have some works by Stijn Streuvels somewhere, if I'm not mistaken. And some Materlinck, which you already mentioned.

I should probably say that I'm completely clueless, when it comes to Belgian literature (even more so than with Czech stuff, I think).

[wba]

Checking up on Toussaint, I've read:

La salle de bain (1985) - my favorite (and my first by him, so maybe that's why)
Monsieur (1986)
L'appareil-photo (1988)
La réticence (1991)
La télévision (1997)
Autoportrait (à l´Étranger) [1999]

And I seem to recall that I actually bought a translation of "Faire l'amour" (2002) when it came out in Germany in 2003, when I was eighteen or nineteen (the other novels of his I had hunted down in various libraries in my vicinity), but I never read it. So that one should still be in my possession. If I can find it, it would be a funny thing, picking up where I left off 20 years ago.

I think I will try to find it today after work, and if that works out, I'll read it in the upcoming days.

THANKS SALLY!!!

[wba]

I didn't know Toussaint was a filmmaker as well!

His (partial) filmography (the first three films are based on his novels):

1989: La salle de bain (screenplay)
1990: Monsieur (screenplay, + director)
1992: La Sevillane (screenplay + director)
1998: La Patinoire (screenplay + director)


Well, Belgian cinema is an unexplored mystery for me as well (but I know thatSkolimowski shot a wonderful film there with Leaud in the 60s, which I should finally watch!).

[sally]

Ha, Toussaint! A hero from my youth! I read all of his published novels back then, but haven't revisited anything (or read anything new) in over 20 years.

ha, same! loved them when I read them but not revisited since (my fave was television also because that was my first)

wonder if I would enjoy them now, curious how you get on!

and super curious to see these films, will have to see if I can track them down....

[rischka]

another selection from brian's favorite books list helping me catch up on women writers

[brian d]

yay! i think i've at least really enjoyed every one of her novels except for a breath of life, which was good but not as good as the others. i've been wanting to reread all of them for a little bit, but i'm trying to finish vanity fair and it's taking it's sweet time...

[sally]

too hot for movies at the minute but I am finding enough riverside shade to at least do some como reading.

so far, this is delightful, in a gloomy surreal way (no surprise, from the country that gave us malpertuis)

[nrh]

(no surprise, from the country that gave us malpertuis)

also published most recently by wakefield press, who are about as close to a sure thing as a publisher can get right now. although (to gripe) it feels like that chateaureynaud on their forthcoming page has been forthcoming for years now...

[sally]

yeah they're great, if i was richer, i'd get pretty much everything they publish, they're so pleasantly short

although i read malpertuis via atlas press, now sadly dead

[wba]

I finally found it!!!

Having over 3000 books crammed into one single room without any principle of arranging them, let alone having them all stacked in shelves (I wish I had this much shelf space...) it can seem like trying to find a needle in a haystack when searching for a specific book. That's the reason why I usually don't attempt such an undertaking.

[wba]

Currently reading



Never read anything by Vita before, but this one is excellent, so far.
Exactly what it promises on the back cover: every page is a deligh!
And it often feels like 5 pages of this novel read like 50 less enjoyable pages in the hands of a less talented writer. The writing is so fucking dense!
Only 30 pages in and it will unfortunately be over in another 120.

[nrh]

yorgos lanthimos adapting alasdair gray's poor things was already an affront to the people of scotland. but why did they have to (finally) reprint the book not with his lovely original drawings but horrible poster art from the movie?

[sally]

i saw those covers, which at least had the advantage of alerting me to the fact that this poor things film that people have been chuntering about in my feed for a while is actually based on alasdair's novel. insane, had no idea. didn't want to see it anyway, but now definitely don't want to...can't imagine lanthimos makes anything nice from it

[karl]

[wba]

Published in 1929, it's about Berlin at the end of the 1920s (before the Great Depression), and how it was to live in poverty in a big city, written from the perspective of a mother and her kids (15, 17 and 20).
Birkenfeld should be much better known.
This novel was published several times in English under the title "A Room in Berlin".

[Roscoe]

I've been going through ULYSSES, after having read THE ODYSSEY. This is my second read, and I'm enjoying the good stuff, and liking that I'm finding stuff I couldn't have noted before. Any appearance of Simon Dedalus is a treat to read.

[nrh]

got an early start on october season with fritz leiber's 1943 cult classic conjure wife (though this must have been significantly revised, since there's talk about atomic bombs here).

fascinating and in some ways very odd book - a sociology professor in a small town college finds out that his wife picked up a good deal of witchcraft all those years when she was accompanying him for research; he convinces her that it's all neurosis, burns the talismans she'd created to keep them safe, and then almost immediately his life starts to fall apart. works pretty well as horror, but also as domestic suspense, and its strange play with gender roles means that the male protagonist keeps trying to rationalize everything even as obviously supernatural events pile up around him. would bet even money that val lewton read this.

a couple of movie adaptations - a universal one from the 40s with lon chaney, and burn witch burn/night of the eagle from the early '60s, by the not particularly good director sidney hyers that everybody seems to like well enough...

[sally]

autumn approaching and i have a desire to cosy up with bernhard or other such snuggly austrians but still plodding on with como, so simenon will do

[rischka]

another selection from brian's favorite books list helping me catch up on women writers

i can't believe a 23 yr old wrote this

[sally]

continuing belgian theme

had this for years but was always scared a bit by yourcenar's reputation, thought i should have done a classics degree or something to appreciate it. but anyway, foolishness. we'll see...

[rischka]

i read that and adored it. how often do we gals think about ancient rome

[sally]

i read that and adored it. how often do we gals think about ancient rome

ha! seeing as my twitter feed is approx 70% archaeology (tenacious lot, those guys, they remain when everyone else disappears) literally every day

[wba]

I'm reading another novel by Günther Birkenfeld, this time from 1930, called "Liebesferne".
Nowhere as good as his "Dritter Hof links", from the previous year.
In fact, if I didn't know this was the same writer, I'd never assume it. "Liebesferne" reads much like an early work from an adolescent, and I believe he might have written it much earlier, but only got it published after the success of "Dritter Hof links". Not a great idea to publish this as a subsequent effort, so to speak...

[Roscoe]

FInished off ULYSSES, and was left rather wobbly by that final chapter. Needed something less earth-shattering so, after a couple of days, I moved on to Donald E. Westlake's DON'T ASK, a comic crime novel about attempts to steal the preserved femur of a saint from the UN mission of a small East European country.

[wba]

Just finished my first Cees Nooteboom, PHILIP AND THE OTHERS from 1954, which he wrote when he was 20, and it was a chore and took me some time (even if the novel is just a bit over 100 pages long).
It's really a collection of short vignettes, rather than a "novel", and it seems that he wrote the first chapter (which is rather a self-contained short story without any connection to the rest of the book), sent it to a publisher who then sent him money in order to "complete the novel", which he did in 2 months time. Nooteboom should have left his short story alone instead of expanding on it - then it would have undoubtedly been one of the great short stories of the 20th century. It's absolutely brilliant, and shows what gifted teenagers are able to do when they have a moment of true inspiration. The rest of the novel is completely mediocre existentialist coming-of-age stuff, the kind that youths all over the world write all the time while other youths might enjoy it (identification and such). I might have liked the novel when I was 18, but it's really nothing special.
Not sure if Nooteboom is worth reading and if he ever reached the heights of this early short story, and I don't know if I'm interested enough to find out (I guess not).
But at least I finally read something from the Netherlands which wasn't written in German. ^^

[sally]

i like nooteboom....but it's a mild like, as in i know i'll sort of enjoy it even if i won't remember it again or think it's the greatest book ever written. actually found a nooteboom in a charity shop here last week (minor miracle because even something like nooteboom is too 'difficult' for normal local charity shop shelves)

[rischka]

i've embarked on gravity's rainbow

[wba]

Halfway through Kurt Kluge's - yes, he's related to Alexander - DIE SILBERNE WINDFAHNE (1934), and it's great!
I'll try to read more by this author in the future.