What are you reading?

[Faust]

On a "lighter" note :-)

[nomemorial]

I've always said that the best thing about growing up in the Soviet Union was that you grew up an atheist. So, I cannot relate on the personal level, but it have read enough fiction and memoirs to sympathize. Have you read The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler?

I have not, but I will most certainly add that to my queue. I just read a quick description and it sounds right up my alley in terms of content and relevance. Thank you!

[NOHSAD]

Planning to start today after just finishing another book 2 days ago, Hopefully it'll keep me interested.

[GucciAmen]

Finished Journey to the End of the Night on the bus today. Don't usually say this, but it is damn brilliant. I would say Celine is just as quotable as Oscar Wilde. His philosophical musings easily rival Dostoevsky in my opinion. Most interesting nihilist/misanthrope I have come across thus far. Just started my first Hemingway novel, The Sun Also Rises as well. About 20 pages in or so, and the brevity in his writing style is quite interesting. Haven't read anything like this so far, very concise...

[kamsky]

I've had a copy of "Voyage..."/"Journey..." since the early aughts, when I started learning French; was way over my capacity to really even grasp its surface-level meanings at the time, am tempted to go back to it now.

I'm curious if anyone is familiar with Gaddis's "The Recognitions" or "JR"? If so, any thoughts or impressions you may've had would be welcome.

[MJRH]

Finished Journey to the End of the Night on the bus today. Don't usually say this, but it is damn brilliant. I would say Celine is just as quotable as Oscar Wilde. His philosophical musings easily rival Dostoevsky in my opinion. Most interesting nihilist/misanthrope I have come across thus far.

I'd say it's Celine's surplus misanthropy that keeps him far less quotable than Wilde and far less philosophical than Dostoevsky. Either of the latter had as good, or probably better, an understanding of sadness and pain, misery, ennui, the whole rigmarole, etc., etc., but they saw it as one facet of a many-sided world that was at least partly redeemed by beauty, or faith, or art.

Just had a read through some quotes-sites at a few of Celine's lines to make sure I wasn't missing something, and most of his lines, although often quite clever and funny, just seem a rehash of this:

“My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.”

Actually... I've never read anything in full of his because... in English translation at least... it's exceedingly tedious... however, that said... if you have a quotation of his that's not in the vein of the above line then I'm all ears.

[nathanhamilton1]

first post

Right now I am reading Barry Giffords shorts "My last Martini", Alejandro Jordowosky's "Meta Genealogy" and RZA's "The Tao of the Wu" I also just finished "Physics of The Future" and being on a bit of a Boris bandwagon just picked up "The Wasp House" today.

[GucciAmen]

I'd say it's Celine's surplus misanthropy that keeps him far less quotable than Wilde and far less philosophical than Dostoevsky. Either of the latter had as good, or probably better, an understanding of sadness and pain, misery, ennui, the whole rigmarole, etc., etc., but they saw it as one facet of a many-sided world that was at least partly redeemed by beauty, or faith, or art.

Just had a read through some quotes-sites at a few of Celine's lines to make sure I wasn't missing something, and most of his lines, although often quite clever and funny, just seem a rehash of this:

“My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.”

Actually... I've never read anything in full of his because... in English translation at least... it's exceedingly tedious... however, that said... if you have a quotation of his that's not in the vein of the above line then I'm all ears.

Interesting. I personally regard opinions in this matter to be completely unique, so I'm not going to try and tell you otherwise. I think all of the authors I have just mentioned should be acknowledged in a similar way, as all three of them have clearly added something quite special to literature in their own way.

I think the issue here is that you have not read a work of his in its entirety. When I was reading the first fifty or so pages of Journey to the End of the Night, I felt the same way as you do, the droning of misanthropy did feel quite tedious after some time. But, if you persevere and hear him out, he tells a beautiful story of humanity through his own experiences and relations. Once you reach the end, you're able to grasp the culmination of his musings based on the events he endures throughout the novel. The messages actually become quite uniform by the end, atleast for me they did. This novel actually left me in a more pensive state than most novels I have read, but that is just how it affected me.

Regarding quotes... I recall enjoying so many over the course of reading the book, but, I never left any notes so I could track them down later. I just leafed through the novel, here's one that hopefully does not appear as a rehash of the one you stated,

"Maybe what makes life so terribly fatiguing is nothing other than the enormous effort we make for twenty years, forty years, and more, to be reasonable, to avoid being simply, profoundly ourselves, that is, vile, ghastly, absurd. It's the nightmare of having to represent the halt subhuman we were fobbed off with as a small-size universal ideal, a superman from morning to night"

You have to love the translator's excessive use of commas . But I do think that there are many better quotes in the novel, I just do not have the time right now. I suggest you give the book a go once more.

Perhaps what makes Celine's work so attractive to me is how immersed he is in such melancholy. Authors' that have a more balanced view of society are interesting as well, but sometimes it is interesting just to read about one person's extreme perspective to really make you think.

[MJRH]

Agreed on much of what you've written--except the ultimate point of liking Celine! That quotation did sound like it was written by somebody who'd gotten too little sleep, and to be fair my request was rather snarky, since what I quoted was Celine himself admitting everything he wrote to be an outgrowth of nothing more than an overblown headache.

Maybe he should've exercised more. I hear that helps with sleep.

It's not that misanthropy or extremity of view is objectionable. I admire Lautreamont, and de Sade, and Nietzsche and Swift and Cendrars, among others. It's Celine's assumption that everyone shares his experience that rubs the wrong way... I'm not often fatigued, seldom if ever reasonable unless down with the 'flu, and as for superman, he's a fiction, and any adult who's discouraged to discover this has only themselves to blame, not life in general.

Thanks for taking the time to respond, though. You had me thinking about another go--for just a minute

[Faust]

I'd say it's Celine's surplus misanthropy that keeps him far less quotable than Wilde and far less philosophical than Dostoevsky. Either of the latter had as good, or probably better, an understanding of sadness and pain, misery, ennui, the whole rigmarole, etc., etc., but they saw it as one facet of a many-sided world that was at least partly redeemed by beauty, or faith, or art.

Just had a read through some quotes-sites at a few of Celine's lines to make sure I wasn't missing something, and most of his lines, although often quite clever and funny, just seem a rehash of this:

“My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line.”

Actually... I've never read anything in full of his because... in English translation at least... it's exceedingly tedious... however, that said... if you have a quotation of his that's not in the vein of the above line then I'm all ears.

This is exactly why I love Wilde! We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

[GucciAmen]

^ Faust, do you think you could recommend me some notable works by Wilde? I have only read his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
One of my favourites.

[Faust]

Sure, all the plays! Especially The Ideal Husband, The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windemere's Fan.

Also some essays - De Profundis, which is heartbreaking, his damning letter to his lover that ruined his life, The Artist as Critic, and The Soul of Man Under Socialism.

[MJRH]

This is exactly why I love Wilde! We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

The devil in me wants to point out that the poor simple humble folk who don't spend all day gazing at the stars, very seldom find themselves relegated to the gutter in the first place

Wilde *is* a great author, though, in all... er... earnestness, and deserves wider reading than just Dorian Gray or the Fan. (Speaking of heartbreaking, howzabout The Ballad of Reading Gaol?) And, anyone who's a Shakespeare fan or admirer of far-fetched conspiracy theories oughta give the Portrait of Mr W.H. a go. It sort of comprises its own unique genre: fictional criticism.

[Magic1]

Late to the game, but The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein.

[Faust]

Late to the game, but The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein.

Curious what you think of her thesis.