What are you currently reading?

[bwv 1080]

[Ken B]

but no one had greater responsibility, Germany knew issuing 'the blank check' to Austria-Hungary in regards to invading Serbia would lead to war with Russia.  Their strategic view that a war in 1914 was preferable to a later war against a Russia that was rapidly industrializing and modernizing its armed forces.

They were not only German, though. 

Berchtold, perhaps after Moltke, was probably the single person most responsible for starting the war, and he lived another 25 years.

[Ghost Sonata]

Been looking forward to this for some time:

[asin] 0547391315[/asin]

[Ghost Sonata]

Eight of those--40%--are crossover CDs of one sort or another.  Well, for the rest, if he doesn't like Lenny's Elgar, that's his problem, not mine.

I noticed that as well; personally, I think his list would have been improved had the crossovers been excluded - there are so many candidates! - but it makes editorial sense for them to be included, as labels saw them as potential saviors in the era Lebrecht details most revealingly. 

[Christo]

They were not only German, though. 

That's my point. Am around page 500 by now and haven't reached at the Kaiser yet. 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

So far Sierra Madre has been a colossal disappointment. I can't even begin to understand how they managed to make one of the greatest movies of all time out of this.

[Karl Henning]

So far Sierra Madre has been a colossal disappointment. I can't even begin to understand how they managed to make one of the greatest movies of all time out of this.

I think it may be an extension of what Jeffrey observed about The Witches of Eastwick:  a charming and well-made movie, but a forgettable book.

[Ken B]

So far Sierra Madre has been a colossal disappointment. I can't even begin to understand how they managed to make one of the greatest movies of all time out of this.

John Huston.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

It took me the longest time to learn that Spielberg's Jaws was based on a book as well! Never have read it and don't know if I ever will. 

[Jaakko Keskinen]

John Huston.

Point taken. 

[Cato]

So far Sierra Madre has been a colossal disappointment. I can't even begin to understand how they managed to make one of the greatest movies of all time out of this.

I think it may be an extension of what Jeffrey observed about The Witches of Eastwick:  a charming and well-made movie, but a forgettable book.

B. Traven now and then pops up in academic journals for Germanic Studies.  Every now and then a professor decides to scour the admittedly inelegant to downright clumsy prose for "Germanisms."

e.g.

...In 1964, Swiss writer Max Schmid posited Traven obtained the knowledge he would need to write some (or all) of his books from another person, a willing or unwilling transference of stories from an "authentic" source. Known as the Erlebnisträger hypothesis ("carrier of the experiences"), this theory attempts to explain how Traven could have written as expertly as he did about itinerant life in Mexico within his first year in the country.

The carrier hypothesis gives the Traven authorship question a rugged mystique. Envision Traven in a Mexican desert town encountering a grizzled American prospector. Over glasses of tequila the American regales Traven with wild tales of gold, grit, and the Sonoran sun. How well could these orally transmitted stories translate to the page where Traven's expertise on a variety of details—technical (mining, Mexican law) and cultural (Native Mexican society and language)—seems absolute? Thus the Erlebnisträger theory has been expanded to Traven accepting (or stealing) manuscripts from the experience-carrier, and perhaps events more sinister. (Baumann suggested in 1997 that Croves/Torsvan was the experience-carrier, cooperating with Marut as a contributor rather than the rooked tramp Schmid proposed.)

This is one of the oddest aspects of researching B. Traven's past, and in particular the Marut theory. To entertain the possibility that a man who survived World War I, fomented a Communist revolution and became a member of its Soviet, survived a bloody dissolution of that state, stood charged with treason and marked for execution, eluded arrest and prison, made an Atlantic crossing by ship under various assumed names, then completely reestablished his identity on a separate continent—that such a man would have to rely on another for experiences to write a novel. If it's true.

The carrier theory also explains one of the more puzzling aspects of B. Traven's writing which is easily lost on readers (and I include myself): The German versions of Traven's work are in a distinct German argot infused with clunky translations of Americanisms, while his English versions are written in an American style with translations of Germanisms peculiar to Bavaria, that is, language tics a German-American would probably not possess. (Traven insisted he translated his own work, claiming to be an American who'd lived in Germany at points in his life as way of explanation.)

Some of his novels were even published in German first, although he maintained he always penned his novels in English and translated from there....

...An American academic fluent in German, Baumann makes a strong case that Traven's so-called American vernacular is actually a German-speaker's poor attempts to make his characters "sound" American, fooling American readers who assume the coarse and butchered language is authentic of the lower classes. Traven's characters order "another cock well iced" at a bar. They tell someone to "shut your grub-hold." Baumann theorizes these came from German approximations of American slang clumsily translated back to English, much like the unintentional hilarity provided by English As She Is Spoke. As Baumann says, "Whatever the final explanation may be, the Erlebnisträger hypothesis would appear to force itself on us as soon as we reflect upon Traven's particular use of the English language."

See:

http://j-nelson.net/2014/10/twenty-writers-b-traven-the-treasure-of-the-sierra-madre/

If you are looking for a hobby, answering the question "Who was B. Traven?" would be a good one!

I recall reading both The Death Ship and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre wondering how on earth they were ever published (while I received rejection slips, and still do    ), given such an odd and clumsy style.

[kishnevi]

More Henry James travel writing. Tonight, Portraits of Places, via Google Books.

A bit of humor.  In A Little Tour of France James makes a lightly dismissive remark on the ubiquity of Tauchnitz editions, a German publishing venture which produced a long series of literature for the general public, a sort of Victorian version of Modern Library or Penguin Classics.
The humor lies in this:
The Google copy of PoP is a scan of a Tauchnitz edition, complete with a page listing other Jamesian works available in Tauchnitz editions.

[ritter]

An interesting biography of Ernesto Halffter (published some 20 years ago to accompany an exhibition on the composer's life and work here in Madrid):

[asin]8492108843[/asin]

[Florestan]

Berchtold, perhaps after Moltke, was probably the single person most responsible for starting the war, and he lived another 25 years.

Come on, Ken! Such a colossal historical event had many more roots, reasons and motifs than the will and actions of a single individual.

That's my point. Am around page 500 by now and haven't reached at the Kaiser yet. 

but no one had greater responsibility, Germany knew issuing 'the blank check' to Austria-Hungary in regards to invading Serbia would lead to war with Russia. 

Which obvously makes Russia as culpable.

And how about England and France looking just for a good reason to curtail Germany's steadily and thoroughly march towards European industrial and economical hegemony?

[Ken B]

Come on, Ken! Such a colossal historical event had many more roots, reasons and motifs than the will and actions of a single individual.

Of course it does, but Berchtold and Moltke both wanted to use the crisis to start a war and worked to that end. They are a lot more responsible than the average man in the street!  We were discussing whether leaders were punished. Berchtold was the most culpable single man in the world still alive at the war,s end, but wasn't executed.

[Bogey]

Hitting some of Howard's Conan.  Reading it in order of publishing date.

[Karl Henning]

Interesting take: You May Be Wrong About Billy Joel

[NikF]

Belle du Seigneur: Albert Cohen

[asin]0140188711[/asin]

[bwv 1080]

Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white.

(Not reading the whole book again, just  a few chapters)

[Bogey]