Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
John Barth, Joyce, Melville, Updike, Austen, Kafka, Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Beckett, Bely, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Emerson, Proust, Salinger, Shakespeare, Sterne, Rimbaud and a bunch of others.
So basically what I said, then.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It does read like Luka though....
  • Freud, Sigmund. A figure of fun. Loathe him. Vile deceit. Freudian interpretation of dreams is charlatanic, and satanic, nonsense.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It does read like Luka though....
  • Freud, Sigmund. A figure of fun. Loathe him. Vile deceit. Freudian interpretation of dreams is charlatanic, and satanic, nonsense.
Nearly - he stops just short of "The worst man alive. Should be flayed and then tossed into a giant tub of boiling salt [etc. etc.]"
 

jenks

thread death
HHhH, Laurent Binet.
That I really liked. I knew the basic nazis in Czech back story having lived there in the early 90s so I was going to be predisposed to it but what i really liked was the audacious risks the writer took in the narration, I know some will cavil at the self consciousness of it all but that’s not my problem.
 

version

Well-known member
I dunno how far through I am as there are no page numbers, but I'm really enjoying it. He's funny, for one, and it moves quickly. I read a couple of interviews with him whilst waiting for the book to arrive and he cracked me up,

“Sollers was very, very pissed off,” Binet says. “Sollers’ friends were very, very aggressive. It was a bit tiring. I can’t deny that I was mocking him ... but I don’t think they were very fair … I shouldn’t have expected anything less from Sollers and his followers. In a way, he proved I was right about him.”
 

borzoi

Well-known member
HHhH is great. Right when the self awareness starts to get annoying it disappears and you’re left with just the story which is incredibly compelling and doubly so because you know how difficult it was to right. Also lots to ponder re narrative history, historiography etc
 

luka

Well-known member
"Nature placed England in the Gothic North, the region of magic and shadows, of elves and ghosts, and romantic legend."

The English Posts by Lord David Cecil.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Found Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars on the shelf and realised I'd started reading it a few years back but got interrupted. Dunno why cos it's an interesting book... as I remember it's kinda like Maldoror in that it's early 20th century French literature written under a pseudonym and that the protagonist is a crazed madman. Although the writing style is far less... florid.
Moravagine is the last of his line of some European nobility and has been locked in a lunatic asylum for most of his life. The narrator springs him from jail - whence he immediately murders a small child - and then they set off round Europe on a spree of international crimes and murder.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also Maldoror is a sort of pun in French meaning something like Dawn's Evil or whatever, and similarly, Moravagine can be read as something like Death to Vagina.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I finished Burgess's life of Shakespeare yesterday.

On Saturday morning I woke up at 5am and couldn't sleep so I started reading Gibbons decline and fall of the Roman empire out of curiosity, assuming I'd be quickly bored and found it unexpectedly riveting. I read it for about an hour, underlining bits all the way.
 

jenks

thread death
Sheesh, tough crowd.
What I mean is I think he just kind of knocked it out, it’s not the best - if you want a decent Shakespeare book then Will in the World or Shapiro’s books do a better job. Or Frank Kermode or Jonathan Bate...or anyone who actually did a bit of proper research.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I know next to nothing about Shakespeare, so I could write a book that would garner the luka seal of approval (very interesting, very low on facts).
 
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