What are you reading?

[Fade to Black]

Just finished Will Self's Dorian, having never read the Wilde original. Starting off interesting enough with its lurid, literate style laced with just the right hint of mysterious allure, completely sputters towards its ending by mid-book. The double twist at the end is an amusing stroke of novelty, but otherwise the novel is fairly tedious. Enjoyed Self's short-story collection Liver, the only other fictional book of his I've read, much more throughout.

[laughed]

Anyone here can get this on hand now?

BLESS


seems out of print and amazon marketplace asks for 1,000 USD! Insane?

http://www.amazon.com/Bless-Celebrat...2676649&sr=8-1

got this. if interested let me know. got the movie too.

[Fade to Black]

finally took the plunge into the world of Nabokov today...started Pale Fire, have just begun reading the Poem section. I find his writing very dense and the stream of consciousness from the Foreword a bit hard to follow.

Also flipped through the first 60 pages of A Rebours, it seemed to be a fairly interesting picture of eccentricity, but was tedious given that a good 90% of those literary and worldly references went straight over my head. I like the overarching theme of the work, but don't know if I have the patience to sit through the rest of the details.

[Fade to Black]

Am deep into the 'Commentary' section of Pale Fire, it is starting to make sense and am totally digging the insanity of it. I can tell already Nabokov is going to enter the ranks of my top few favorite writers

[Faust]

It's amazing to think that English was not his native language.

I couldn't help myself and bought my sixth bellow book, Seize the Day.

[Mail-Moth]

I'm glad to read that, Corsair Sanglot. You're very welcome !

Would you post some of the translations here ? I'm very curious about this.

[Lumina]

Mail-Moth, the atmosphere of L'autre côté seems to be amazing, I'm gonna try to find more, thanks for the discovery !
The Spéléologie poem sounds like a very dark tale. Anyway, I'm starting to read Psychanalyse des contes de fée de Bettelheim, so I see tales everywhere these days

[todestrieb]

^I don't know what the French translation(s) of Die andere Seite is/are like, but the latest English translation by Mike Mitchell is marvellous. Published by the good folks @ Dedalus, no less. I encountered the text pretty early on in life, but not knowing a smattering of German and that the author was more renowned for his visual work outside of literature. It still ranks up there with some of the more brazen avant-la-lettre surrealist writings like Lautreamont's Maldoror and Bruno Schulz, but as always, to view something in the context of what came after is arguably short-sighted and should be taken with a grain of salt.

For something almost similar in stripe, Giorgio de Chirico's Hebdomeros is a fascinating and worthy bedfellow.

Also flipped through the first 60 pages of A Rebours, it seemed to be a fairly interesting picture of eccentricity,

It's a great book. An absolute classic. It's hardly eccentric, or an account of eccentricity, but more the richness and fecundity of an utterly original, singular, and erudite fin-de-siècle mind rendered to sublime prose. As a 16th century Sufi poet once said, "eccentricity in itself does not exist, only what we have yet to know and understand". One'd be hard-pressed to find a single piece of literature from the 20th century that is even remotely worthy of sharing the same shelf space with the leftover ink blots from Huysmans' unyielding pen, let alone a page or a book.

Sidenote: By far, the best English translation of the text is from Brendan King. Robert Baldick's translation isn't too bad either. I'd recommend reading them both side by side.

NR:

[Mail-Moth]

Todestrieb, I won't go as far as to say anything about the accuracy of this french translation, since I'm far from being fluent in german. Maybe the writing has been lost in the process, or maybe Kubin wasn't a man of style to begin with. In the end we have a rather flat prose. But it doesn't really matter. It may even be for the best : this almost neutral tone makes the fantasmagories displayed here all the more striking. Like the objective report of a very long nightmare. Lautréamont's visions are far too much impregnated with pathos and frenesy for my taste : here the worse happens calmly, always in a distance. I have the same feeling reading Schulz - that I'm discovering at this very moment.

Lumina, for me it is nearer from a dream's narration, mixing incongruous and comic details, disturbing insinuations and quite precise sensory notations - along with some kind of preciosity.
But yes, there's not so much distance between dreams and tales.

[Fade to Black]

As a 16th century Sufi poet once said, "eccentricity in itself does not exist, only what we have yet to know and understand".

Beautiful

[galia]

currently (and finally) reading "Malina" by Ingeborg Bachmann. Faust, you were right, it does bend my noodle.
It's incredible how close I feel to the main character, I can totally relate to her anxiety and depression. While books like "The Bell Jar" are simply annoying to me, here I have an actual identification process, which is rare for me. It's an extraordinarily beautiful book

sidenote: why do I always feel closest to the craziest and most depressing women artists ? her, diane arbus... should I fear as a consequence an early and unnatural demise? only time will tell

[kuugaia]

Very popular book that I didn't read recently, but it came up in a discussion with friends of mine so decided to post. For some reason I think I cried reading this when I was in high school.

[Faust]

currently (and finally) reading "Malina" by Ingeborg Bachmann. Faust, you were right, it does bend my noodle.
It's incredible how close I feel to the main character, I can totally relate to her anxiety and depression. While books like "The Bell Jar" are simply annoying to me, here I have an actual identification process, which is rare for me. It's an extraordinarily beautiful book

sidenote: why do I always feel closest to the craziest and most depressing women artists ? her, diane arbus... should I fear as a consequence an early and unnatural demise? only time will tell

I read an Op-Ed about Every Man Dies Alone yesterday - makes me want to pick it up (but I swore I will read Suite Francaise before that).

[TheNotoriousT]

Have just found this again, haven't read it for ten years.

[nictan]

Just started my 3 mth long summer holidays. Haven been doing much reading for quite some time. Have too much free time on my hands right now.

Anyone care to recommend a book? Im looking for something thought-provoking, not too heavy, preferably. My gf is away, i have lots of time with nothing to do, and this is a perfect time in life, to mull and brood over stuff. Hope you get what i mean. I feel kinda like a pre-midlifecrisis-crisis. And i guess reading a good relevant book should help.