luka

Well-known member
its just breathtaking tbh, once you surrender to it, easy to take the piss out of as you say, but really incredible
 

luka

Well-known member
i have it here to. i doubt it's that bad actually. he can write prose. so long as its not supposed to illustrate some juvenile point or other
 

luka

Well-known member
not only is it a brilliant review but its clearly an insight into the novel pynch wished he could write if only he wasn't american
 

luka

Well-known member
i really think its a fantastic novel im love with it ive put my cowper powys aside to finish it.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
This book is very good, you should read it Luka or anyone who hasn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Obscene_Bird_of_Night
It is really good, one of the weirdest books I've read. I read it in Spanish but I've looked at the English translation of it too cos I had to write an essay on it, and it was really dated - full of outdated American slang words like 'crummy'. Couldn't imagine a more difficult book to translate though.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Read it in Spanish? Totally one-upped me there.

It was about 5 years ago since I read it and I've forgotten most of it by now, just remember some really dark and twisted sexual stuff involving witches sewing up all the orifices of a child to turn it into an imbunche


I remember the English translation being terrible though, they made the characters speak like Holden Caulfield. Quite a common problem I've found with translations of a lot of Latin American Boom stuff whenever there's any slang.
 
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Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Another really good Marquez one is
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government and Forgotten for All Time.

Non fiction from his early journalism days. It's all about this sailor that was shipwrecked and drifted in a liferaft for ten days without food or water, was proclaimed a national hero, kissed by beauty queens, made rich through publicity, and then spurned by the government and forgotten for all time.

Sorry, I might have given too much away there, but I highly recommend it.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Magic realism is very easy to parody and take the piss out of... which is normally a sign of something that is good. You can't do that with something really bland and boring cos there is nothing to grab onto in the same way. It's a long time since I read LITTOC or 100YOS for that matter or even any of his other ones but I definitely loved them in the moment.
Marquez is the soft, twee side of magical realism - the kind that's been copied the most, but stuff like Obscene bird of the night and Cortázar which get lumped in with MR sometimes are a lot harder and darker, totally different kettle of fish aren't they? I've even seen Juan Rulfo (for Pedro Páramo, which is brilliant and terribly bleak in a very Mexican way) and Borges get called magical realism. It's a bit of a bugbear of mine actually.

Not to say Marquez isn't good cos he is, but it's a bit annoying that he's sort come to represent all Latin American literature that has anything in the least supernatural about it.

Keep meaning to have a proper go Vargas Llosa, I've only only read one early short story by him called the cubs (in which a boy gets his knob bitten off by a dog) and that was great, but I don't think it's representative of his work.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It was about 5 years ago since I read it and I've forgotten most of it by now, just remember some really dark and twisted sexual stuff involving witches sewing up all the orifices of a child to turn it into an imbunche


I remember the English translation being terrible though, they made the characters speak like Holden Caulfield. Quite a common problem I've found with translations of a lot of Latin American Boom stuff whenever there's any slang.
The imbunche is the imagery that is sort of imprinted on your mind that's for sure. One of my friends is a lecture in hispanic studies and when I said I was reading that (probably almost twenty years ago now!) he said "Ah yes, the imbunche" in his annoyingly pretentious manner.

Strangely enough I don't remember the translation at all, I do remember at around the same kind of time period I read a translation of Pamuk that rang very untrue cos it had similar phrasing to that which you describe so I have a feeling that the translation of TOBON can't have been too bad or I would have remembered that too. But don't quote me on that I may be totally wrong.
 

maxi

Well-known member
The 'smug fucker laughing to show he's sophisticated at the theatre' thing is a recognisable and lamnetable phenomenon.
I saw that Coen brothers Macbeth movie in the cinema with a friend who's a big theatre guy. As soon as it started he kept making these loud noises like "MMMM" and "AhhaHH" and "ohhhkayy" to signify he was thinking "I've seen this done 1000 times and know this play like the back of my hand so can tell that's an interesting choice there Denzel"

He fell asleep 10 mins later and I chose not to wake him up
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Not to disagree and claim they're hilarious but I read 'Twelfth Night' a few years ago and found it genuinely funny.
No that's totally fair enough, there were moments where I laughed for sure, the actors were good and they brought the humour out. I mean one of them was from The IT Crowd so she was obviously comically gifted. I just think that there are some points where you can see what the joke is but you can tell the person next to you is really forcing their laugh to show how clever they are.

For me slapstick is very rarely funny. For some unexplained reason the setting for this latest take on Much Ado About Nothing was a sort of art deco hotel, presumably somewhere in Italy between the wars - it felt like a completely arbitrary setting for the play and it did not really add anything in terms of meaning, but it was very easy on the eye the backdrops and the costumes were very cool and probably increased my enjoyment on the very shallowest level in that they simply looked good.

Anyway, there is one scene where Benedick is spying on his mates by hiding in an ice cream trolley and they - knowing he is there and trying to fool him into thinking that Baetrice loves him - spout a load of nonsense about the strength of her feelings for Benedick. Standard stuff I suppose, but they added in an injection of humour with him awkwardly hidden in the trolley and it sort of rolls around to get closer to each speaker, each surreptitious movement is greeted with gales of laughter from the crowd, and then as they are tricking him they also make themselves ice cream and just as they feed him the false info they keep hilariously spilling ice cream and syrup and little bits of chocolate and so on top of him. Each little trickle of strawberry sauce brings so much laughter that you are worried that someone might end up in hospital. And then at the end when the conspirators leave and he emerges to wonder on Beatrice he's... oh my god, he's covered in syrup and chocolate and... oh fuck it's so fucking funny. Tears of laughter, streaming down my face, oh my poor sides... oh ho ho, I'm in stitches again just thinking of it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I saw that Coen brothers Macbeth movie in the cinema with a friend who's a big theatre guy. As soon as it started he kept making these loud noises like "MMMM" and "AhhaHH" and "ohhhkayy" to signify he was thinking "I've seen this done 1000 times and know this play like the back of my hand so can tell that's an interesting choice there Denzel"

He fell asleep 10 mins later and I chose not to wake him up
Ha ha. Brilliant. It's funny cos the other day for some reason I was looking up the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy for some reason, seeing versions of it done by so many famous actors, and basically they all try and put their own stamp on it - or make their choice as you put it - and I felt that a lot of them were so keen to sound unique by changing the pacing or shouting at unexpected moments, that many of them had made it much less powerful than it is when simply seen written down, all cos of their hammy over-performing.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I think theatre crowds are quite susceptible to shit comedy because everyone's a bit keyed up and nervous on behalf of the actors. Or is that just me?

I'm sitting there worrying about them forgetting their lines or whatever, or worrying that my phone will go off, or that I'll start laughing uncontrollably during a quiet part.

(One of the funniest experiences in my life was going to see The Winter's Tale at an open air thing with my parents and one of the actors sounding exactly like William Hague, which caused me and my dad to giggle uncontrollably throughout the whole thing – it was horrible but wonderful, if you catch my drift.)
 
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