Penguin Classics

[jenks]

On that note (and in that tendency) can I recommend one of my own personal favourites: Rainer Maria Rilke's only novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. I dunno if it's still in print anymore, but if you can get hold of it, it really is an astonishing piece of work - beautifully lyrical, haunting, but very dark. It's about a ficitonal Dutch aristocrat living in Paris at the beginning of the 20th Century, an aesthete and poet, overwhelmed by the squalor of his existence (which sounds, from what I understand, rather Hamsun like). If there were a pictorial equivalent to the novel it'd probably be Munch's 'The Scream' - an alienated subject distressed to the point of breakdown. Ah - they don't write 'em like that anymore...

I have never heard of this but I want to read it - i'll have to go look on abebooks right now

As to the stuff about contemporary depictions - i agree with your point about the 19th C novellists - Dickens was always very careful to set his work a good twenty years earlier. I think the french were more willing to be ultra modern - Flaubert's Mde Bovary, Stendhal's Scarlett and Black, Blazac's Lost Illusions, Zola's L'Assomoir (sp?!) But the reason that they are still read isn't because they are accurate records of the past but because they have something else going for them.

I think Zadie Smith is getting better all the time and I think it is interesting that the writer she aspires to be is Forster.

I found Ali's novel fizzled out too quickly - moving towards very unconvincing characterisation of everyone except the central figure.
I thought Andrea Levy's novel Small Island worked a lot of these themes in a much more gripping manner - without falling into a box ticking exercise in 'immigrant experience' writing .

 

[D7_bohs]

Re: Hamsun; agree completely concerning Hunger; try and read 'pan' and 'Mysteries' as well

Re: John Doe's point about Victorian novelists setting their books earlier in the century than the time of writing - I guess you're right and I should have been more accurate in my earlier post; the Eliot novel I was thinking of was Daniel Deronda, where I think the action finishes up nearly contemporaneous with its time of writing, though its starts decades earlier; 19th c writers were much more willing to take on a whole life as a subject, something which perforce nmade it necessary to set the bulk of the action in the recent past (and to use words like 'perforce')

Re: Ulysses - even though it was set 20 odd years before its publication, I doubt, somehow if appeared as a period piece to its original readers, even despite all that had happened in the world and in ireland in the interval - it was an account of a particularly modern subjectivity, and thus, despite its extreme precision of location and detail, it is, at bottom one book that fits the old fashioned humanist requirement of being about 'the human condition' which also being about an irish, and a jewish, and an early 20th c. condition.

p.s. Have meant to read the Rilke for a while - will definitely now

 

[Ness Rowlah]

But your last question about Zadie Smith/Monica Ali representing the contomperary is a good one: they certainly represent, at a one level, an experience which hasn't found its way into much British fiction - the second/third generation immigrant experience, an 'ethnic', urban experience that has been crucially influential on, say, music in the UK, for instance, yet has so very rarely found its way into fiction. But I can't help thinking there's something so terribly safe about their work - it really is the sort of fiction that an Oxbridge educated liberal publisher/reviewer approaching middle age might find 'exciting' and 'cutting edge' (or whatever) but which seems to me to lack genuine bite. I dunno. I might be wrong about that. I wonder what others might think?

I haven't read Ali (have avoided her, because she sounds very much like Zadie Smith), but I agree on the "safe" bit. I found the first part of White Teeth quite good, but then it faded at the end.

As for the contemporary East meets West connection I found the short story collections of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni ("The Unknown Errors of Our Lives") and especially Jhumpa Lahiri ("Interpreter of Maladies" - the title story is up there with Raymond Carver) better than Smith's novel. Smith is to Lahiri as Nick "High Fidelity" Hornby is to Alan "Morvern Callar" Warner. I haven't read Divakaruni's ("Mistress of Spices") or Lahiri's novels yet (only so much time in a day ... specially now with the World Cup on).

"The Hunger" was published in 1890 and "Mysteries" should as mentioned probably be read as well. The problem with Hamsun is his nazi connections and views.

 

[jenks]

I have just finished James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the uncanny or dopplegangers in literature. The first part is a framing device which explains the comlex family history of a laird and his two sons, their upbringing and the eventual conflcts that arise between them due to religious principles - it's told as an editor's note before we get to the second part - the memoirs of one of the sons, the actual confession.

The closed thing I can compare it to is Jeckyll and Hyde but this is much earlier. Also elements of MR James in there as well.

Anyone else come across this?

btw the Rilke is currently on its way to me via abebooks

 

[John Doe]

I have just finished James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the uncanny or dopplegangers in literature. The first part is a framing device which explains the comlex family history of a laird and his two sons, their upbringing and the eventual conflcts that arise between them due to religious principles - it's told as an editor's note before we get to the second part - the memoirs of one of the sons, the actual confession.

The closed thing I can compare it to is Jeckyll and Hyde but this is much earlier. Also elements of MR James in there as well.

Anyone else come across this?

btw the Rilke is currently on its way to me via abebooks

Ah - so the Rilke was easy to get hold of then? That's good news. I spent a few years in the early 90's in a hopeless pursuit of it... God bless the 'net eh?

I haven't read the Hogg, though have (vaguely) heard of it. Its structure sounds reminiscent of James' 'The Turn of the Screw'. Also, have you read the Borges story 'The Garden of Forking Paths'? Not, exactly, a Gothic tale, but shares elements of the Gothic. Wonderful story btw.... but then practically all of Borges is, really.

 

[jenks]

yeah, it definitely had elements of James and Borges.

I think what I was surprised about was that it was written in about 1824. Before many of the ideas in it became a stomping ground for all kinds of writers - Poe, M R James, Dickens even (thinking of the Signalman here), Henry James etc.

A very successful spooky piece indeed ( and very good on the effect of John Knox on Scottish religion)

 

[John Doe]

yeah, it definitely had elements of James and Borges.

I think what I was surprised about was that it was written in about 1824. Before many of the ideas in it became a stomping ground for all kinds of writers - Poe, M R James, Dickens even (thinking of the Signalman here), Henry James etc.

A very successful spooky piece indeed ( and very good on the effect of John Knox on Scottish religion)

I didn't realize it was so early - it must be one of the first 'gothic' novels then - and obviously set a template for many later writers who used/reinvented some of the structural techniques Hogg employed.

When you say 'spooky' what do you mean exactly? Did you get chills or that canonical Freudian sense of 'uncanniness'? I only ask because its a sensation I'm constantly attempting to experience/define/understand. I remember one of my most intense experiences of spookiness/uncanniness came when I read a Poe story. It was late at night, I couldn't sleep, and was studying Poe, so pulled out the volume and started reading: I now can't remember the name of the story precisely - it was a woman's name, and it featured a narrator who was sat, anguished, in his room in his tower, with the drapes around him blowing in the wind. He was unnaturally obsessed by a small box on the table - and kept looking/trying to stop himself looking at the box. The story was mainly a reminiscensce of his love for the woman of the title, who'd, naturally, died - but so obsessed was he that he couldn't forget her. He was unnaturally preoccupied by her smile (or, more precisely her mouth) which Poe continually described with festishitic detail... Anyway to cut the story short, it transpired that he was so obsessed that he'd violeted her grave... only to be horrified later when, in typical Poe fashion, she'd returned to life. In the present of the story the reanimated beloved was now stalking his house - but the source of his horror was the box on the table. It contained her teeth. It turned out when he'd invaded her grave, obsessed by her smile, he'd been driven to rip her teeth from her mouth only later to be confronted by her as she walked again: her bloody violated mouth a haunting, horrific reprimand of his own driven desire....

I dunno: reading that story late at night really got me - hairs up on the back of the neck, heart going, couldn't turn the light off, couldn't sleep properly etc. I don't get affected often so strongly by such sensations, but when I do I do big time. I can still remember it vividly. I'm still not entirely sure what it was all about - but ever since I've had genuine respect for Poe as a true artist of the uncanny, the disturbing, the dark and the really sick and twisted

 

[D7_bohs]

Interesting that quite a few of the progenitors of Gothic fiction were Scottish or Irish (Hogg, Maturin, Stoker, LeFanu and later, RL Stevenson); have long held a theory that growing up in Edinburgh or Dublin post union, cities that were capitals and retained all of the apparatus of power - big houses, parliament buildings, (relatively) widely available schools and old universities, must have been wirdly conducive to an imagination bent on fantasy, on the undead, on revenants and vampires - places where forms and locales of power remained but the substance had been withdrawn, and where the glamour of the past was completely vitiated by the squalor of the present; cities of an anti- enlightenment (although E'burgh was, of course, one of the birthplaces of that same enlightenment). In a way, this alienated, tortured worldview was the secret father of modernism; it is interesting as an example to follow a thread from the weird, uncanny figure of James Clarence Mangan through Poe - who definitely read him -to Baudalaire.

 

[John Doe]

But many writers of Gothic/Horror fiction were Protestant too. I think there's a book on the subject (but can't remember what it is).

Yours is a good call though...

 

[IdleRich]

"ever since I've had genuine respect for Poe as a true artist of the uncanny, the disturbing, the dark and the really sick and twisted"

The one that did that for me is the one where they hypnotize a man who is very near death in a desperate attempt to prevent him passing away and to investigate his condition. He is in a trance and they keep asking questions to which he replies by intoning "I am dying" or something like - until eventually he says "I am dead". When I read that I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
On the other hand The Turn of The Screw didn't leave much impression on me at all.

 

[jenks]

I

When you say 'spooky' what do you mean exactly? Did you get chills or that canonical Freudian sense of 'uncanniness'? I only ask because its a sensation I'm constantly attempting to experience/define/understand. :

I definitely felt the text gripped me in a totally convincing manner - the fact that he allowed for an ambiguous interpretation - i.e was the 'double' something from within or from without? This narrative uncertainty allows for a very modern psychological reading whilst also incorporating a much more fantastical supernatural tale.

I think it's difficult to do a convincing tale about becoming possessed - so many have tried but few pull it off, i agree with what you say about Poe - i think The Imp of the Perverse and The Tell Tale Heart do it so well. For it to work we have to believe the narrator's version of events as being true to him whilst at the same time realising the impossibility of that version. It's more than merely being an unreliable narrator - it's about being entirely credible.

All this talk of the uncanny has made me realise that I haven't read Freud on the uncanny for over twenty years and it'd probably be a good idea if i read it again before I comment further on precisely what is 'canonically uncanny' about Hogg!

i would recommend it though especially as you can get it dead cheap in a wordsworth classic edition for about a quid.

 

[D7_bohs]

But many writers of Gothic/Horror fiction were Protestant too. I think there's a book on the subject (but can't remember what it is).

Yours is a good call though...

Not necessarily a contradiction - all the irish writers i mentioned were Protestants - Maturin was a clergyman - apart from Mangan; as were Hogg and Stevenson. Dublin was a much more Protestant city in the late 18th/ early 19th centuries than at any time since; just as the German speaking (and Jewish) Prague that Kafka grew up in has vanished, so has that Dublin.

 

[John Doe]

Not necessarily a contradiction - all the irish writers i mentioned were Protestants - Maturin was a clergyman - apart from Mangan; as were Hogg and Stevenson. Dublin was a much more Protestant city in the late 18th/ early 19th centuries than at any time since; just as the German speaking (and Jewish) Prague that Kafka grew up in has vanished, so has that Dublin.

No, quite - I meant it wasn't a contradiction. Stoker was Protestant too, wasn't he? You're right about that vanished Protestant Dublin (well, Protesant Ireland really) and Jewish Prague... I did read a minor classic of a story by Michael Chabon which was about a fictional guide book to a non-existant Jewish homeland the narrator found. Written in Yiddish it sketched out a fictional Jewish state based on the mittel-European Jewish experience - a way of life now entirely eradicated by history. Lovely story - alas, as ever its title eludes me.

[On the subject of Chabon, I'd recommend 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' - he does brilliant things with the Golem myth in that novel as well as giving a wonderful appreciation/evocation of the earliest days of the creation of Comic Books and comic book heroes...]

Jenks: you've sold me on the Hogg. I'm gonna go and track that novel down in the next week or so. Thanks for the tip.

 

[swears]

Just read Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and The Double as a neat little combo. (Penguin stick 'em together in one edition)

Yeah, I felt like they had very modern voices and concerns. I suppose that Dostoevsky was a bit ahead of his time anyway, though. Amused me as much as say, Martin Amis or Bret Easton Ellis would. He's sort of encouraging the reader to take a step back and not take the narrator so seriously, which is considered to be quite modern, I think.

 

[jenks]

Just finished Vanity Fair.

Somehow i had the opinion that it would be a Victorian jaunt but in fact it is much more than that. On the surface it is a novel about the rising ang falling through society. There is a real sense of the finaancial transactions of (middle class in particular) life.

However it is also akin to a Flaubertian novel - the narration scathing and ironic, never fully in love with its own characters and and willing to destroy a character within a sentence.

In the hands of Dickins this could simply have been a triumphal tale of unrequited love finally becoming requited, the bad rehabilitated and the comic cosmos restored but this instead allows for something far more ambiguous.

Finally it is a book which seems far more aware of the power of sex and sexuality in comparision with its contemporaries.

Definitely recommend it - 800 pages pretty much whistle by.

 

[D84]

Vanity Fair is one of my all time favourite books by one of my favourite writers.

If you like that try to track down his Book of Snobs where he rehearses all the themes etc - make sure it's the one with all his illustrations etc as it's half as fun without them.

I'm afraid though that this is the reason why the Penguin Classics series irritates me though. Thackeray illustrated most of his books etc and he has an idiosyncratic way of punctuating his words - as do most writers generally the further back in time you go from the 20th C. The Penguin Classics editors seem to have a "normalisng" policy in regards to spelling and punctuation no doubt to make it easier for the books to be sold to schools and students who might be daunted by the weird constructions etc, as I used to be, but I think it kills some of the character or flavour of the work.

Which is why I usually go for the Oxford Classics versions (which usually include all the illustrations - esp. for Vanity Fair) after I've checked the note on the text, or for versions from the other publishers who don't interfere with the text so much.

Re Dostoyefsky: I have yet to read any of his stuff. It might be my next literary "discovery" - after this year's exams...