What are you currently reading?

Started by facehugger, April 07, 2007, 12:36:10 AM

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steve ridgway

I'm continuing with an illustrated prose version of Dante's "Divine Comedy" on my Kindle, just got to the end of the 8th circle of Inferno. I've been on a few caving trips so can imagine the nightmarish scenery pretty well but the twisted sadistic tortures are quite revolting :o.


Mandryka



Strangely disturbing and very deep.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Ratliff

#9562
Quote from: AlberichUndHagen on December 06, 2019, 09:43:57 AM
Wondering if I shall ever finish Joyce's Ulysses. It's an endless series of alternating between outrageously funny and witty parts and then mind-screwy enigmas impossible to figure out. There have been several months when I haven't read it at all.

Yet I must finish it. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and to be fair, it shows often enough. Appropriately enough, I have recently thought a lot of about reading Fleming's From Russia with Love again: I am sure decoders trying to figure out Joyce would have loved to get their hands on Spektor/Lektor. I wonder if Joyce ever decrypted messages in war himself? I know Fleming did.

Similar experience. I'm reminded of a quote of Joyce regarding Ulysses

QuoteI've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

It seems to me there are writers who assured their immortality by writing a good story. :)

Slow going for me, and the only way forward for me is to read through the enigmas and puzzles, ignore them, to in hopes of getting to the actual story, to the extent there is one. I seem to read 50 pages, get put off, and come back a year or two later. Not clear I will reach the end.


ritter

Quote from: Mandryka on December 09, 2019, 09:46:35 AM


Strangely disturbing and very deep.
Great stuff. I read it many years ago, and was really impressed. The novel is also the first in Duras's "Indian Cycle" (for lack of a better term), as the character of Anne-Marie Stretter appers again in Le Vice-Consul and later becomes central in the extraordinary India Song (book, play, film).

Mandryka

#9564
Quote from: AlberichUndHagen on December 06, 2019, 09:43:57 AM
Wondering if I shall ever finish Joyce's Ulysses. It's an endless series of alternating between outrageously funny and witty parts and then mind-screwy enigmas impossible to figure out. There have been several months when I haven't read it at all.

Yet I must finish it. This is often regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written and to be fair, it shows often enough. Appropriately enough, I have recently thought a lot of about reading Fleming's From Russia with Love again: I am sure decoders trying to figure out Joyce would have loved to get their hands on Spektor/Lektor. I wonder if Joyce ever decrypted messages in war himself? I know Fleming did.

The third section, 16, 17 and 18, where Bloom meets Daedelus in an all night cafe, takes him home, and then,  in one of the most unforgettable, deeply unforgettable, moments in all literature, just when you think that the father has found a son and the son has found a father,  they decide to go their separate ways, is for me unbelievably powerful. (The French call what I've just done divulgâcher-- sorry! No-one reads a book like that for the plot do they?)

I remember using this book when I first read it, only in those days it wasn't new, and I found it helpful -- there are probably others.


Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Mandryka

Quote from: ritter on December 09, 2019, 10:29:09 AM
Great stuff. I read it many years ago, and was really impressed. The novel is also the first in Duras's "Indian Cycle" (for lack of a better term), as the character of Anne-Marie Stretter appers again in Le Vice-Consul and later becomes central in the extraordinary India Song (book, play, film).

I just watched this -- she's amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/v/HWBeyd5vufE
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

ritter

Quote from: Mandryka on December 09, 2019, 10:34:45 AM
I just watched this -- she's amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/v/HWBeyd5vufE
I didn't know that interview. Thanks for posting it. I'll watch it with interest soon.


Mirror Image


steve ridgway

Quote from: Ken B on December 09, 2019, 12:31:44 PM
A change of pace, what someone is not reading. Instead they are proudly burning it.
https://www.webcitation.org/6GJvAbb2t

And https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2019/12/09/book-burning-by-chinese-county-library-sparks-fury/

If the librarians have burnt all the biased books they should have a nice easy job from now on ;).

Mandryka

#9570
Quote from: ritter on December 09, 2019, 10:29:09 AM
Great stuff. I read it many years ago, and was really impressed. The novel is also the first in Duras's "Indian Cycle" (for lack of a better term), as the character of Anne-Marie Stretter appers again in Le Vice-Consul and later becomes central in the extraordinary India Song (book, play, film).
I've just ordered Le Vice Consul.

Is India Song a novel? If it is could you find a link to it for me, in French if indeed it was written in French? When I look on amazon I'm not sure whether I'm ordering a film script or a play or what!
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

ritter

#9571
Quote from: Mandryka on December 10, 2019, 01:19:39 AM
I've just ordered Le Vice Consul.

Is India Song a novel? If it is could you find a link to it for me, in French if indeed it was written in French? When I look on amazon I'm not sure whether I'm ordering a film script or a play or what!
You'd actually be ordering "or what"!  ;D India Song is subtitled "Texte - théâtre -  film". The book is meant to be read as such (as the theatrical-cinematographic writing is rather peculiar - the action, or absence thereof,  being narrated by four "off" voices, not enacted by the actors themselves). Its genesis is theatrical, as it was a commission from Peter Hall for the Royal National Theatre in the early seventies--it seems the play was never produced. Duras went on to make the film in 1975, with the wonderful  Delphine Seyrig and Michael Lonsdale among the cast. It has been regarded by some as a masterpiece, but by others as the most boring film ever made, or as "no content and all style" by the NYT on its release.

The film was released on DVD by Benoit Jacob (http://www.benoitjacob-editions.fr/cataloguevideo.html), but seems to be OOP at the moment:

[asin]B002MD2Z1K[/asin]

The gilding of the lily is that Duras went on to make another film, Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert, which uses the soundtrack of India Song with completely new images. This one has never been released on DVD, and I've never watched it. AFAIK, the actors no longer appear on screen in this version.

I've just found out that both films are available complete on YouTube. I'll finally be watching Son nom de Venise... sometime soon.  :)

https://www.youtube.com/v/ubUIAIzLKxQ

https://www.youtube.com/v/asr1h3OEoWM&t=288s

Duras's completely imaginary Calcutta in colonial times is actually the abandoned and dilapidated Château Rothschild in Boulogne-Billancourt outside Paris.  :D



SimonNZ


Mandryka

#9573
Quote from: ritter on December 10, 2019, 02:55:48 AM
You'd actually be ordering "or what"!  ;D India Song is subtitled "Texte - théâtre -  film". The book is meant to be read as such (as the theatrical-cinematographic writing is rather peculiar - the action, or absence thereof,  being narrated by four "off" voices, not enacted by the actors themselves). Its genesis is theatrical, as it was a commission from Peter Hall for the Royal National Theatre in the early seventies--it seems the play was never produced. Duras went on to make the film in 1975, with the wonderful  Delphine Seyrig and Michael Lonsdale among the cast. It has been regarded by some as a masterpiece, but by others as the most boring film ever made, or as "no content and all style" by the NYT on its release.

The film was released on DVD by Benoit Jacob (http://www.benoitjacob-editions.fr/cataloguevideo.html), but seems to be OOP at the moment:

[asin]B002MD2Z1K[/asin]

The gilding of the lily is that Duras went on to make another film, Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert, which uses the soundtrack of India Song with completely new images. This one has never been released on DVD, and I've never watched it. AFAIK, the actors no longer appear on screen in this version.

I've just found out that both films are available complete on YouTube. I'll finally be watching Son nom de Venise... sometime soon.  :)

https://www.youtube.com/v/ubUIAIzLKxQ

https://www.youtube.com/v/asr1h3OEoWM&t=288s

Duras's completely imaginary Calcutta in colonial times is actually the abandoned and dilapidated Château Rothschild in Boulogne-Billancourt outside Paris.  :D

Amazing, such bold creativity. Thanks.

That makes two great female French writers I've discovered this year: Sarraute and Duras. If I had more confidence in written French I'd do a degree in French literature. Maybe I should work on my spelling and grammar a bit this coming year, I know it's doable.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

JBS

Quote from: SimonNZ on December 10, 2019, 03:54:18 AM


Aaron Sorkin wrote it better

Was this before or after she married Leopold?

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

SimonNZ

#9575
Quote from: JBS on December 10, 2019, 04:03:00 PM
Was this before or after she married Leopold?

I thought she must be unaware of the connection but in one bit halfway through she says that every answer to bizarre requests from the players has to be "yes" and then acknowledges her namesake.


Started: Simon Winchester's Exactly on precision engineering




looks like in America this is titled The Perfectionists:


Crudblud

Charles Rosen's The Classical Style

Picked it up yesterday at a bargain price (along with the Hackett edition of Descartes' Discourse and Meditations) at my favourite book shop here in Sheffield. Already falling in love with it.

dissily Mordentroge

Quote from: Ratliff on December 09, 2019, 10:02:29 AM
Similar experience. I'm reminded of a quote of Joyce regarding Ulysses
"Bullshit sells"?
Got one quarter of the way through and threw it at the wall. To me it signalled the beginning of a profound period of decay in Western Culture.

Mandryka



This book has the energy of a first novel by a great writer. A memorable account of a man's decline and fall into madness. I intend to read more early Le Clezio.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

SimonNZ

A secondhand bookshop I go to has a copy of The Book Of Flights ( Le Livre des Fuites), which I've been considering, but I'm not sure if that's the best LeClezio to start with.

Have you read that one?