| Author | Message | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
On returning from the Caribbean, and after finishing an Eliot bio, I've decided to attempt Levi-Strauss' Tristes Tropiques. Anyone had a go at this? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Not me: I'm far too superficial! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Factory-Made-Sixties-Steph en-Watson/dp/0679423729/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books &qid=1209115639&sr=8-1 - excellent, but with a couple of terrible misprints: someone once described Nureyev as having "a Tartar beauty," but here he's "a Tartan beauty." Nice idea. And this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Picturing-History-Jo hn-Harvey/dp/0948462736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books &qid=1209115828&sr=8-1 | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
I'm in 'Ulysses' just now... got the student edition, with extensive notes, which are proving very useful. *wakes up from the nightmare of history* | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Ah - "ineluctable modality of the audible," eh? *Looks even more of a smug git than usual* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBh1d7R2n6Y - or there's the glamorous Kate version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJc64xncBt4 | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
On holiday I have just read/re-read Jon Silkin's Making a Republic (an uneven last book with truly great poems in it) and Robin Robertson's Swithering: brilliant. And Uncle Asimov's Robots and Empire. Which is jolly nice. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
*impressed* I'll fry you a kidney when I see you next... On youtube - alternatively, this invaluable document of Beckett and Joyce in conversation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8 | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
" 'Tis himself!"  I've been reading some of Beckett's shorter prose, like "From an Abandoned Work," which now sounds like testimony from a psychiatric patient on 'Father Ted': "Ducks are perhaps the worst, to be suddenly stamping and stumbling in the midst of ducks, or hens, any class of poultry, few things are worse ... What happens now is I was set on and pursued by a family or tribe, I don't know, of stoats, a most extraordinary thing - " An utterly hopeless hilarity. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I am not fond of kidney's - by themselves - but I will put up with a plate of peas. Is that an impressive list, al? I often read or re-read new poetry collections, however not recently for some reason; well, the cause perhaps being the non-encounter with the fabled author of Minsk. Minsk is a collection I quite liked but the total absence of that personage from the building I work in during her year's stint as 'poet in residence' annoyed me more that I would have expected; and put me off reading poetry and made me dislike poets in general. My excuse is I am sensitive. Something I have noticed generally about my reading is that my skill at it has greatly improved over the years. I can now read John Donne's work end to end; whereas when I first started I couldn't really manage a single poem. I can read a collection of 16th C poetry like a novel but it is very different of course to read poetry in that fashion and enjoyable as its own kind of experience. Incidentally, to put the record straight: I re-read Heaney's District and Circle for about the 5th time, and this time it worked. It is actually a very brilliant and subtle poem in which (seems unlikely but it's true) Heaney finds himself on the tube. I just wish I could find muyself on the train but so far have only partially succeeded: flitting footless flickered by trapped flies or something. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Reading is a curious activity. Like watching tv, I suppose too. You can do it well or badly. There are circumstances in which it doesn't matter what is read. Not because the thing read is a matter of utter indifference but because in the end one's opinion of it is. Part of the manifold function of reading lies the way that it puts us in touch with our intelligence: with a real as opposed to false mind. And why should not a telephone directory do that as effectively? Or a local government reorganisation document, exhaustively setting out the conditions under which the extent of street lighting is to be installed and then at some stage discontinued into cat's eyes? Or the list of ingredients on a rice krispies packet the proportions and nutritional values and the average sugar, fat and salt traces? All to put one in touch with the intelligent mind - a subject as polyvarious as a field of wheat blown flat after an overnight storm? There are many people who are clever but stupid for example. In my own case I would classify myself as stupid but intelligent: therefore full of surpises. In no case have I ever encountered someone who is simply intelligent; well, except present company. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Simply intelligent" - a great oxymoron that describes us all! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
As a reader the importance of reading doesn't matter except that it matters; so if it doesn't matter then it is a thing of no concern. Being of no concern what importance can it be? One can shout oneself hoarse loudly whispering one's opinions but as is well known the horse is traditionally a science fiction enhancer of intelligence: if you think approximately twenty yards from a horse you think brighter and more intelligently than if there were no horse about. | ||
| arturo Username: arturo Registered: 10-2006 |
I did try to read Levi-strauss ending in what in show bussines is called utter dismal failure. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Same here, Arturo - great titles, impenetrable prose. This is much more entertaining: and any reader of "Light" should check out his views on the Tarot. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Renegade-Lives-Tales-Mark- Smith/dp/0670916749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid =1210064375&sr=1-1 | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I am currently reading (taking my time) a new translation of Virgil's Aeneid. The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Frederick Ahl, published by Oxford. As the blurb says: "Frederick Ahl's new translation echoes the Virgilian hexameter in a thrillingly accurate and engaging style". It is quite thrilling, especially book five in which Virgil describes a kind of mini Olympics, Trojan style, amazing, horrifying and funny all in one. I have never read this work before but I can't imagine a better modern translation than this. It particularly appeals to me because it imitates Virgil's extended rhythmic lines and makes them seem natural in English; unlike for example Fagles' coincidentally new translation of the same, which reverts to a five foot line. Reading the two translations side by side I think Ahl's is better and more faithful. To get something of an impression of the grandeur of this book you can read Robert Lowell's On falling asleep reading the Aeneid poem. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
(Looking at that statement about faithfulness, actually I have little idea of how faithful it could be; nor have I read the Fagles version with any sort of sustained attention. I say it because it just seems that way to me. But the same principle I suppose applies as with Logue's Homer: if the work creates an 'epic' feeling one is inclined to go with it.) | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I've been reading this Poundian version of Ovid - sometimes wonderful, sometimes well-gosh too damned cute by half: http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2007/05/metamorpho ses-iii-1989-semele.html | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
By the way the Penguin 2004 version of Metamorphosis is superb. Very fluent, real poetry | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Baucis and Philomen: I am not sure why but that is one of the most moving stories one could ever read. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
John Gray's Black Mass, which I picked up yesterday, starts out by exploring the importance of religion and utopian ideas to our culture. He argues that they are equally definitive, in fact ultimately the same thing. Anyone else read or reading this? This seems to me an important book. The Sunday Telegraph gives the opinion that it "could hardly be more bonkers if it was crawling with lizards". The implied orthodoxy I suppose is that it is ok and sensible to side with Pope Dawkins against religion and for atheism - or to adopt a position vice versa - but that what makes no sense to do is to refuse to make this choice, which is John Gray's position. However, I am of the same mind as Gray. How you are getting on with Levi Strauss io? | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
About 150 pages into Tristes Tropiques. We're in the deeps of Brazil observing the development of towns and villages on the Amazon with their immigrant populations of Germans, Russians and Eastern Europeans. It's a big dense book where people, livestock, plants and cultures sprout from unlikely places in the wilderness. At the same time I've been distracted by EC Tubb's Angado, an unlikely gay space opera, various vance short stories, and a half-arsed re-read of Moorcock's Mother London. Not to mention peering at Electromagnetism and The Sacred by Lawrence Fagg, which sees a Catholic particle physicist examining the place of light in theology and physics, and Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millenium. Essentially I'm not concentrating very well at the moment. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Black Mass" - indeed. I think it gets a little self-involved in the last third or so, but a fine piece of work. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Gray is an indepedent, articulate thinker. The book is full of impressive sentences. It shows occasional signs of haste where further impressive sentences (ie fully meditated) would have been better but no matter. I too am all over the place with my reading. I seem to have a boundless appetite for ancient epic writing. Virgil and Dante especially. I like the new penguin Dante translations; not at all perfect but still strong. Canto 25 for example reads like a CGI horror movie looks. It is truly horrific; which makes you wonder at the state of mind Dante was in when he wrote it. The American imprint of Oxford also has a very good new translation. The Oxford over here still has C H Sission's version, which is highly readable but not that inspiring. The new American Oxford prose version though ... Also reading Browning and Swinburne. I actually like Swinburne alot; somehow reminds me of Bradbury with his verbal extravagances. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Recently, I, um, came across a copy of this by Swinburne: very far from Bradbury, though! http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14974486 | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
I just started reading The Pornographer of Vienna: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pornographer-Vienna-Lewis- Crofts/dp/1905847122 Pretty good stuff, although like the Guardian reviewer, I'd kind of prefer either straight biography or straight fiction (inasmuch as either of those genres are ever "straight"). |