What are you reading?

[kamsky]

In French. Reading a couple more or less brief novels the remainder of the year (random ones I'm curious about, J. Cocteau, T. Bernhard, M. Blanchot) to get back into its rhythms before beginning Proust around next January. That's the idea, anyway.

Don't see myself getting around to any other Claudel works in the foreseeable future.

[bukka]

I thought of reading the full Recherche but ended being caught by Mishima. In the end, it's been 7 novels, two collections of short stories and the bio by John Nathan. I got seriously obsessed. This happened:







I'm currently reading Les Mots which oddly wasn't done yet. And I'll probably read a few things from Ponge as I got his complete works in La Pléiade for almost nothing and I've always been reading only extracts of his texts.

What are you reading from Cocteau? Mishima wrote a short novel call La Mort de Radiguet where Cocteau is the main character

[kamsky]

Read an okay bit of Sartre back in my college days/early twenties (got pretty into it), but yea, same here, never got around to "Les Mots" either. One of these days, probably in some distant future; he's an author that I still like to re-read every once in a more or less long while. That Mishima text is pretty neat! Totally random and arbitrary, sure (i.e. there's nothing particularly more special --or less random-- about it being the first than, say, the sixth). Nevertheless I'm certain that if I came across a book that's numbered 1 of however many by an author that I admire, I'd be pretty psyched! Cause small mercies.

Will be reading "Thomas l'imposteur" by Cocteau, partly the reason I'm currently reading Hastings' book about the outbreak of WWI -- not really material that's very fresh in my mind anymore. So far this book seems good; accessible and engaging historiography. His prose is sometimes florid & overworked, but I can live with that.

[AKA*NYC]

that's a first edition of the french translation not a numbered copy. but a great novel nonetheless. i'm a huge admirer of mishima's life (first and foremost) and particularly enjoyed his confessions of a mask although no part of the book beats the dostoevsky passage that is its epigraph. for me sun and steel is mishima's most important text.

i'm currently reading this epic work of sociopathic trolling:

[AKA*NYC]

that's a first edition of the french translation not a numbered copy.

correcting myself: that is indeed a numbered copy - 1/26 - and printed on vellum

[trentk]

Has anyone read this, and if so, does it have anything interesting to say about fashion? I've never been able to find theoretical text on fashion which impresses me, but this looks promising: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/...o17089730.html

[bukka]

that's a first edition of the french translation not a numbered copy. but a great novel nonetheless. i'm a huge admirer of mishima's life (first and foremost) and particularly enjoyed his confessions of a mask although no part of the book beats the dostoevsky passage that is its epigraph. for me sun and steel is mishima's most important text.

Didn't read sun and steel yet, I'm a bit reluctant to read books written at the very end of his life. The biography by Nathan was like a novel and the last part was a very bad one, lots of really sad decisions and such a waste of talent. But as her wife said, right after becoming a widow, to Nathan: Don't be sad, it might be the first time in his life that he did what he truly wanted.
Forbidden colors was the first one I read, I was fascinated by Yuichi. His tragic purity. I particularly appreciate his writings from the "Body" period, like Forbidden Colors or The School of Flesh.
The tetralogy was good but the The Temple of Dawn, too much theological theory imho. The last one was especially good, The Decay of the Angel as it concentrates all his major themes in a really short time, thanks to all the elements previously built on the other three novels.
I'm going to startsun and steel this week and will let you know what I think.

[Fuuma]

[Faust]

Gave up on a Bellow novel for the first time in my life. I wonder if it's the book or my attention span going to shit.

Picked up House of Meetings by Martin Amis. Excellent thus far. It always impresses me when a non-Russian can get inside our fucked up psyche.

Well, this was phenomenal! Highly recommended.

[Landadel]

I´ve started reading my first Douglas Adams book, shame on me.
So far it´s great and I intend on reading some more of his works in the future.

[Faust]

I think I am going to re-read Doctor Zhivago after reading an utterly fascinating article in the London Review of Books about the manuscript's fate.

[gawkrodger]

As I've just returned to uni, pretty much just academic readings. Book wise, currently

[Fuuma]

[bukka]

for me sun and steel is mishima's most important text.

Finished it yesterday. I don't agree, at all. It can be your favorite, sure, but it doesn't make this his "most important" text. It works like a summary of all his obsessions and why it has to end in suicide. As I already knew all those themes from his novels/plays (the word/flesh dichotomy, the suicide as the epithome of purity/erotism, the dissolution of individuality by patriotism, etc) the only thing that remains from this is an aftertaste of terrible waste. Sad reading as every sentence sounds like a lie from someone who's enslaved to his obsessions.
In my opinion, Mishima is a ground-breaking author because of his writing style, not his (poor) philosophy.
I'll read his letters to Kawabata and the few plays remaining. Unfortunately, there is not much more translated to French...
I'm slowly translating a short novel, as a hobby, but it will probably take me a year. To anyone who can read french and it's interested, let me know, I'll be happy to send it :)

Back to Beckett, never read his novels, only the famous plays so far. Anyone here who read Molloy's trilogy? Fuuma, Kamsky?

[docus]

Back to Beckett, never read his novels, only the famous plays so far. Anyone here who read Molloy's trilogy? Fuuma, Kamsky?

Vital reading. You're in for a treat. An elliptical, looping, free-associative internal descent into mental disintegration - or is it the truest representation of how we all function? Dark, but very (grotesquely!) funny. His voice speaks to me more than any other. (Along with Thomas Bernhardt.)