Topic: What are you currently reading?

[Mandryka]

You could just download it for free from Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2650

I know, I know, but I want to smell the print etc. It's a sensual thing.

[ritter]

Thanks, Ritter. I knew you'd have ethe answer! Galimard ordered.

You're welcome. I hope you enjoy it.

[André]

Another short break from Martin du Gard’s Maumort, with sections of the second volume (1953) of Jean Cocteau’s diary Le passé défini.

In this year, Cocteau headed the jury of the Cannes Film Festival (Clouzot’s Le salaire du peur—starring Yves Montand—was awarded the Palme d’Or), and then in July made his first trip to Spain. These diaries (I had read volume 1 many years ago) were written with their posthumous release in mind, and are IMO among the best things Cocteau wrote. Some insightful opinions on what’s happening around him (in the arts world, mainly, with a focus on—an obsession at times—Picasso), peppered by the inevitable—for this author—gossipy social chitchat, all in a clear and elegant prose. Then there’s self-flattery alternating with self-belittlement. And since Cocteau seems to have known everyone of any notoriety in the French and international cultural world of his time, there’s a lot of (rather entertaining) name-dropping. A pleasant read.

Very interesting, Rafael !

It seems to be a 400+ page book. And it covers only that year 1953 ? Or does it cover a longer period ?

[ritter]

Very interesting, Rafael !

It seems to be a 400+ page book. And it covers only that year 1953 ? Or does it cover a longer period ?

Indeed, it covers only 1953. Le passé défini comprises 8 volumes in total. Volume 1 starts in mid-1951, and volume 8 covers the two last years of Cocteau’s life (he died in October 1963).

Cheers,

[AlberichUndHagen]

Guermantes way almost finished. At times it is a bit dull and heavy reading, probably intentionally as Proust is trying to show the banality and decadence of aristocracy. But I think intentionally dull writing is bit of a shooting yourself in the leg. There is much to enjoy too, however. I'm at the part when the narrator has just left Guermantes dinner and is now headed to Charlus's place.

[Mandryka]

Guermantes way almost finished. At times it is a bit dull and heavy reading, probably intentionally as Proust is trying to show the banality and decadence of aristocracy. But I think intentionally dull writing is bit of a shooting yourself in the leg. There is much to enjoy too, however. I'm at the part when the narrator has just left Guermantes dinner and is now headed to Charlus's place.

Some of the dinner party scenes are really special; anything with Charlus in it will be fun. When I read it, I remember skipping a few large sections which seemed neither interesting nor important: there was a long discussion with St Loup about military strategy, and some of the stuff on the etymology of place names too.

À côté de chez Swann arrived this morning, but I’m in the middle of another book, so I haven’t done more than read the first four pages or so. Reading them when you know the whole story, as it were, is a very different experience and I was amazed how, even in those first few pages, he sows seeds for ideas I know will come up (much) later. I especially like the bit where he talks about dreaming about a young girl between his legs.

[Florestan]

Proust is trying to show the banality and decadence of aristocracy.

Talk about clichés... 

[SimonNZ]

In specific places he's showing the banality and decadence of aristocracy, but his overall attitude towards them is much more nuanced, is always pulling in two direction simultaneously, and he's genuinely sad at their decline and their being replaced by the unambiguous banality and decadence of the salon "nobility" (spoiler alert).

[aligreto]

Huxley: Eyeless in Gaza





This is the tale of a particular circle of people told over a period of more than thirty years but within different time frame periods. The characters and their interweaving stories are all interesting. However, I have an issue with the structure of the novel. The plot is not linear, not chronological. It is a weighty tome of over six hundred pages and the constant flitting from one period to another I found a struggle to keep up with. Trying to remember who was who and the various interrelationships was a difficult enough task. This is unfortunate as it is essentially a good read.

[Mandryka]

Here's a well known example of Proust on aristocratic "decadence."

Swann, a gentleman, is a friend of the Duke and Duchesse de Guermantes. He is ill, and one day as they are getting ready to go into town for a dinner party, he tells them that he has just a couple of months to live. The Duchess, not knowing quite how to deal with the situation, responds by saying "you're joking!" and when he assures her it's no joke, she just says "let's meet up and talk about it over some dinner."

The Duke gets impatient, tells her to hurry up and stop nattering on about morbid things with Swann, or they'll be late or the dinner party, and that'll never do.

But this is the killer. She gets in the carriage and her husband notices that she's forgotten to change her shoes. She's wearing black shoes, not red. She dutifully gets the red ones, putting her costume at a greater priority than sharing a moment with her dying friend.

« Hé bien, en un mot la raison qui vous empêchera de venir en Italie ? questionna la duchesse en se levant pour prendre congé de nous.

- Mais, ma chère amie, c'est que je serai mort depuis plusieurs mois. D'après les médecins que j'ai consultés, à la fin de l'année le mal que j'ai, et qui peut du reste m'emporter tout de suite, ne me laissera pas en tous les cas plus de trois ou quatre mois à vivre, et encore c'est un grand maximum, répondit Swann en souriant, tandis que le valet de pied ouvrait la porte vitrée du vestibule pour laisser passer la duchesse.   

-  Qu'est-ce que vous me dites là ? » s'écria la duchesse en s'arrêtant une seconde dans sa marche vers la voiture et en levant ses beaux yeux bleus et mélancoliques, mais pleins d'incertitude. Placée pour la première fois de sa vie entre deux devoirs aussi différents que monter dans sa voiture pour aller dîner en ville, et témoigner de la pitié à un homme qui va mourir, elle ne voyait rien dans le code des convenances qui indiquât la jurisprudence à  suivre et, ne sachant auquel donner la préférence, elle crut devoir faire semblant de ne pas croire que la seconde alternative eût à se poser, de façon à obéir à la première qui demandait en ce moment moins d'efforts, et pensa que la meilleure manière de résoudre le conflit était de le nier. « Vous voulez plaisanter ?  dit-elle à Swann.   

-  Ce serait une plaisanterie d'un goût charmant, répondit ironiquement Swann. Je ne sais pas pourquoi je vous dis cela, je ne vous avais pas parlé de ma maladie jusqu'ici. Mais comme vous me l'avez demandé et que maintenant je peux mourir d'un jour à l'autre... Mais surtout je ne veux pas que vous vous retardiez, vous dînez en ville », ajouta-t-il parce qu'il savait que, pour les autres, leurs propres obligations mondaines priment la mort d'un ami, et qu'il se mettait à leur place, grâce à sa politesse. Mais celle de la duchesse lui permettait aussi d'apercevoir confusément que le dîner où elle allait devait moins compter pour Swann que sa propre mort. Aussi, tout en continuant son chemin vers la voiture, baissa-t-elle les épaules en disant : « Ne vous occupez pas de ce dîner. Il n'a aucune importance ! » Mais ces mots mirent de mauvaise humeur le duc qui s'écria : « Voyons, Oriane, ne restez pas à bavarder comme cela et à échanger vos jérémiades avec Swann, vous savez bien pourtant que Mme de Saint-­Euverte tient à ce qu'on se mette à table à huit heures tapant. Il faut savoir ce que vous voulez, voilà bien cinq minutes que vos chevaux attendent. Je vous demande pardon, Charles, dit-il en se tournant vers Swann, mais il est huit heures moins dix. Oriane est toujours en retard, il nous faut plus de cinq minutes pour aller chez la mère Saint-Euverte. »

Mme de Guermantes s'avança décidément vers la voiture et redit un dernier adieu à Swann. « Vous savez, nous reparlerons de cela, je ne crois pas un mot de ce que vous dites, mais il faut en parler ensemble. On vous aura bêtement effrayé, venez déjeuner, le jour que vous voudrez (pour Mme de Guermantes tout se résolvait toujours en déjeuners), vous me direz votre jour et votre heure », et relevant sa jupe rouge elle posa son pied sur le marchepied. Elle allait entrer en voiture, quand, voyant ce pied, le duc s'écria d'une voix   terrible : « Oriane, qu'est-ce que vous alliez faire, malheureuse. Vous avez gardé vos souliers noirs ! Avec une toilette rouge ! Remontez vite mettre vos souliers rouges, ou bien, dit-il au valet de pied, dites tout de suite à la femme de chambre de Mme la duchesse de descendre des souliers rouges. »

[AlberichUndHagen]

Also, is it just me or does Proust appear extremely misogynist, even for his time? It seems he complains infinitely more about female characters than men, even when in later books the narrator's narcissistical personality goes into extremes yet the fault is almost always the ladies? Although it is hard at times to distinguish what is meant as a narrator's opinion and what as author's (that is assuming the narrator isn't absolute 100 % Proust himself). It also seems a bit inconsistent how the narrator seems to know exactly what every character thinks and what his/her motives are, even though one of the overarching themes is that you really can't perfectly know everything about other people.

[SimonNZ]

Huh. I always felt that the narrator's jealousy  and suspicion was presented as the narrator's own fault. I don't think of Proust as hating the women at all. Maybe Madame Verdurun...

[Mandryka]

It seems he complains infinitely more about female characters than men,

The nastiest people are blokes -- Charles Morel and the Duc de Guermantes.

In a bit I've just read at the start of A cote de chez Swann, Marcel's jealousy of the time his mother is spending without him at a dinner party with her husband and Swann is presented as a sort of nervous illness, a nervous failing, something ( he comments with hindsight) that Swann would have fully understood. And again it's striking how this sows the seed for what will be a really major idea in the book, so early on (I'm on about page 40.) So yes, as Simon says, his gnawing suspicion is indeed presented as his own fault.

[SimonNZ]

That far too frequently quoted bit about the cake near the start also has a parallel in the final volume. But I don't think Proust had the whole structure mapped out at the time of writing book one (or rather: he had a structure, but massively and continually changed it as the work progressed and expanded). He had recurring preoccupations which he examined from various angles which gives an appearance to some facets of the book to deeper structures and intention which in a lot of cases might have been more improvisational and retro-fitted with callbacks to earlier moments.


TD: currently reading:



very Bill Bryson-y, which is fine by me

[Mandryka]

That far too frequently quoted bit about the cake near the start also has a parallel in the final volume. But I don't think Proust had the whole structure mapped out at the time of writing book one (or rather: he had a structure, but massively and continually changed it as the work progressed and expanded). He had recurring preoccupations which he examined from various angles which gives an appearance to some facets of the book to deeper structures and intention which in a lot of cases might have been more improvisational and retro-fitted with callbacks to earlier moments.

I just read the madeleine incident for the first time since the 1980s. What’s remarkable about it is that it leads so smoothly into the second part of the book, it’s a good segue. It also is well written, I mean, it made me put the book down, make a cup of tea and eat a bit of cake.

[Brian]

Finished War and Peace on Saturday. 18 days! The first half was substantially better than the second, and after the narrative climax at Borodino, there are probably 100 pages of material that are excess to the book's needs.

What's remarkable is that the first 700 pages have no fat whatsoever. They're all plot and all remarkable - insightful but gossipy, operatic but subtle, exciting but restrained. Like Powell & Pressburger in film ("Colonel Blimp"), Tolstoy has a surprising way of backing away at moments you'd expect to be climaxes - he tells stories like the duel sequence with sparse, minimalist detail, almost like a cross between Austen and Hemingway. His way with storytelling is continually surprising. There's also the remarkable late chapter which ends with an offhand, "oh yeah, also they freed Pierre."

I want to know more about how W&P was received at the time, because it is so bizarre to our sensibility now that Tolstoy includes rants, arguments, and citations on the practice of history at the time and the state of Napoleonic scholarship. Just as a random example, you wouldn't expect, say, James McBride to suddenly stop his novel and have a 15 page section of his own views on African American Studies departments at universities.

It is amusing to see the vivid characterization given to people like Dolokhov, Natasha, even Prince Vasily or old man Bolkonsky, contrasted with the utter contempt with which Tolstoy writes real historic figures like Napoleon, whose appearances are laughable.

Tolstoy's own views are so much his own fixation that, after Andrey dies, he nearly abandons the epic plot. Rather than tying together loose ends a la Dickens, Tolstoy seems not to care. People like Kuragin, Dolokhov, and Boris just straight up disappear. Hélène's fall is reported from offstage but not shown. Pierre's own transformation is narrated with detachment. Sonya and Denisov inexplicably do not get married. The book just kind of...ends. Given the epic grandeur of everything through Borodino, the chamber-music finale is quite strange.

It made me think of the ending of Middlemarch, which, besides not being followed by 40 pages of dense argument, manages to flawlessly encapsulate the story's message and its narrative drive at the same time.

I've been telling people two things about W&P. First, it is structured like those sales pitches where you get a free dinner, but you have to listen to a guy explain his get rich quick scheme. You think you're reading for the plot, which really is outstanding for 800 pages or so, but Tolstoy has a totally different agenda.

Second, I'll try to read it again in 15 years or so to see how it grows with age.

[aligreto]

Golding: The Paper Men





This is an interesting study of a man spiraling out of control into self destruction through total selfishness. It is an engaging story that is very well told.

[AlberichUndHagen]

[kitsune]

Really engaging terraforming saga -- goes deep into the various politics of the colonists, the ethics of even trying to terraform in the first place, the dangers of corporatism/global capitalism, and the really neat speculative technology of the near future (the year 2026; it was written in 1993).

[AlberichUndHagen]

there was a long discussion with St Loup about military strategy

Ironically, that was one of my favorite parts in Guermantes Way. I don't know why but it felt really interesting and St Loup is one of my favorite characters. Finished Guermantes way today. Soon will possibly begin Anna Karenina (although considering how my family matters seem to be going increasingly downhill, don't know if I am able to finish it, which would mark the second time I abandon reading this book, for same-ish reasons).

I will probably take at least a short break from Proust since while he is very rewarding writer, he also exhausts me a bit.