What are you currently reading?

[vers la flamme]

Great book. When I saw the movie first and later read the book around 20 years old, I never imagined that I would live in Deep South.

I hope that when you got here you found it slightly less bleak than McCullers made it out to be

Just finished Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. I'm not sure I entirely agree with its virulent anti-sex message, and I definitely don't agree with the author's seemingly total rejection of music. But it was excellently written, very evocative, and very psychological, like the best of Dostoevsky, only more concise. 

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I hope that when you got here you found it slightly less bleak than McCullers made it out to be

Just finished Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. I'm not sure I entirely agree with its virulent anti-sex message, and I definitely don't agree with the author's seemingly total rejection of music. But it was excellently written, very evocative, and very psychological, like the best of Dostoevsky, only more concise. 

We all discussed Dostoyevsky VS Tolstoy several times. I even made a thread. I used to admire Tolstoy when I was a teenager, but not anymore. IMHO, the preachy stories/narratives and the mixup of (self-serviced) ethics and aesthetics make his works unrealistic.

Have you seen the movie, Mississippi Burning by great Gene Hackman? That depicts the South very well imo.

[vers la flamme]

We all discussed Dostoyevsky VS Tolstoy several times. I even made a thread. I used to admire Tolstoy when I was a teenager, but not anymore. IMHO, the preachy stories/narratives and the mixup of (self-serviced) ethics and aesthetics make his works unrealistic.

Have you seen the movie, Mississippi Burning by great Gene Hackman? That depicts the South very well imo.

We watched it in school. It's been a while, maybe I'll watch it again.

Thanks for your perspective on Tolstoy, it seems a lot of people approach him with blind adulation. What do you make of Ivan Ilyich? That book completely blew me away, each time I've read it.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

We watched it in school. It's been a while, maybe I'll watch it again.

Thanks for your perspective on Tolstoy, it seems a lot of people approach him with blind adulation. What do you make of Ivan Ilyich? That book completely blew me away, each time I've read it.

I remember I was not a big fan of The Death of Ivan Ilych while I liked Karenina, War and Peace (currently titled as Special Operation and Peace in Russia), Resurrection, and some short stories. I will purchase the Ilych and re-read it.

[Florestan]

War and Peace (currently titled as Special Operation and Peace in Russia),

 

Also, I expect the scelerate Putin to celebrate in his speech today The Great Patriotic Special Operation. 

[Ganondorf]

Just finished Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. I'm not sure I entirely agree with its virulent anti-sex message

Havent completely read Kreutzer but I remember that part bothering me. Not that considering sex sinful was anything exceptional back then but all the more awful considering he had sex with serf girls in his youth who most likely had little choice in the matter.

[vers la flamme]

Havent completely read Kreutzer but I remember that part bothering me. Not that considering sex sinful was anything exceptional back then but all the more awful considering he had sex with serf girls in his youth who most likely had little choice in the matter.

This is something I didn't know, but had been suspecting: that Tolstoy was something of a "reformed libertine" who went as far as possible in the other direction after finding God, renouncing sex altogether.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Havent completely read Kreutzer but I remember that part bothering me. Not that considering sex sinful was anything exceptional back then but all the more awful considering he had sex with serf girls in his youth who most likely had little choice in the matter.

I read that Tolstoy had partly a similar experience and resulting remorse. We see that in Resurrection.

[Florestan]

I read that Tolstoy had partly a similar experience and resulting remorse. We see that in Resurrection.

Exactly.

Isaiah Berlin made the astute observation, in his superb and highly recommended book Russian Thinkers, that it is absolutely incorrect that Russians are chaotic and unpredictable in behavior; on the contrary, once a Russian has embraced a philosophical, ethical or political system or doctrine, they think and act it to its ultimate consequences with unflinching obstinacy, no matter how high the price is to be paid for that, either by themselves or by others. Tolstoy is exemplary in this respect, both in debauchery and asceticism.

[BWV 1080]

once a Russian has embraced a philosophical, ethical or political system or doctrine, they think and act it to its ultimate consequences with unflinching obstinacy, no matter how high the price is to be paid for that, either by themselves or by others.

Yep, or a Georgian wannabe Russian

[Florestan]

Yep, or a Georgian wannabe Russian

Of course. Not to mention a former KGB resident in Berlin...

[toledobass]

Has anyone read Robert Persig's Lila?

It's a fascinating book that I'm spending a lot of time with.

I find it much more interesting and a deeper exploration of what he was thinking about in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

A lot to grapple with but quite a profound way to look at the world.

~Allan

[SimonNZ]

Finished this quickie:



Less what you might expect from the title, more a very freewheeling memoir of Wilson's own changing attitudes to the work throughout his life and especially a series of reminiscences of a friend who challenged his thinking about the work.


Starting:



The fact and fiction of the siege and of the Texas Revolution followed by a cultural history of the myth and the political uses made of it.

[vers la flamme]

Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. Quite a silly book, but an enjoyable read.

[Florestan]

Halfway through the first volume of Mann's complete short stories and novellas, three stand out head and shoulder above the others: Bajazzo, Tristan and Tonio Kroeger. All deal with the theme that obsessed him all his life: the contrast between spirit and life, between the devitalized and tortured soul of the true artist and the healthy and cheerful bourgeois existence. Additionally, Tristan has commonalities with Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata and contains the embryos of The Magic Mountain.

[vers la flamme]

Halfway through the first volume of Mann's complete short stories and novellas, three stand out head and shoulder above the others: Bajazzo, Tristan and Tonio Kroeger. All deal with the theme that obsessed him all his life: the contrast between spirit and life, between the devitalized and tortured soul of the true artist and the healthy and cheerful bourgeois existence. Additionally, Tristan has commonalities with Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata and contains the embryos of The Magic Mountain.

I just reread a bunch of these last month. I agree that Tristan was a standout, another one I really enjoyed was Gladius Dei, and of course Tonio Kröger is a masterpiece. I'm not sure if you're going to read it this time around but as you may already know Death in Venice is incredibly beautiful: inspired surely by Mann's hero Richard Wagner's own death in Venice, and also by the then-recent death of Gustav Mahler who has the same first name as Mann's protagonist, who is kind of a tragic, parodistic self-insert. It contains some of the best writing I've ever read, and I find it to be a perfectly written story, though it covers some extremely dark subject matter: pedophilia, decadence, and death.

[Florestan]

I just reread a bunch of these last month. I agree that Tristan was a standout, another one I really enjoyed was Gladius Dei, and of course Tonio Kröger is a masterpiece. I'm not sure if you're going to read it this time around but as you may already know Death in Venice is incredibly beautiful: inspired surely by Mann's hero Richard Wagner's own death in Venice, and also by the then-recent death of Gustav Mahler who has the same first name as Mann's protagonist, who is kind of a tragic, parodistic self-insert. It contains some of the best writing I've ever read, and I find it to be a perfectly written story, though it covers some extremely dark subject matter: pedophilia, decadence, and death.

I am reading them in order, so Death in Venice is the last in the volume and will soon reach it.

I'm afraid I didn't find Gladius Dei particularly inspired and its meaning somehow eluded me. Was Mann implying that the modern (for him) world was immunized against would-be Savonarolas and they could be met only with amused irritation and mild violence? If yes, he was wrong, because after 30 years the Savonarolas were to have their way in a quasi-general enthusiasm, even frenzy. 

And now that I think of it, Tristan may be read as a satire on Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, because in a rather similar situation Mann's character, instead of killing his wife, merely threatens the seducer with a defamation lawsuit. 

[ritter]

In the "Antique and Used Book Fair" here in Madrid (it's held in spring and autumn every year in the central--and beautiful-- Paseo de Recoletos), I found a rebound copy of the second --1938-- edition of Agustín de Foxá's novel Madrid de corte a cheka (Madrid, from Court to Cheka).



Foxá (1906-1959) was an aristocrat and diplomat, and an avowed Falangist (although he later on became sceptical, and said that "Falangism was the adulterous daughter of Karl Marx and Queen Isabella the Catholic").

The novel, widely considered --despite its author's discredited political views-- as one of the best written in Spain in the 20th century, tells the events in Madrid from the downfall of Alfonso XIII's monarchy in 1931, during the years of the Second Republic, up to the "red terror" in besieged Madrid in the first years of the civil war. The work "cheka" in the title was the term (derived from the infamous Soviet repression apparatus) applied to makeshift detention centres that almost any organisation on the left of the political spectrum felt had the right to establish in the last days of the Republic and during the civil war.

So far (I'm some 40 pages into the 360-page book), this is proving a fascinating read, and no pamphleteerish political views have yet been expressed. The emergence of street violence prior to the downfall of the monarchy is wonderfully described (and some events take place a couple of blocks from my home in central Madrid).

I'm reading this straight after the memoirs of poet, painter, and art historian José Moreno Villa, who --although not really politically engaged-- supported the Republic, and ended up in exile in Mexico from 1937 to the end of his life. Although written from opposed perspectives, both books describe the disintegration of institutions in the last days of the Republic quite vividly, and to a certain extent confirm that there are many shades of grey in history, and that the Manichean view that is now widely espoused by many in current Spanish politics, namely that the Republic was a sort of idyllic Arcadia, followed by a criminal uprising and forty years of "hell on Earth" under Franco, is not quite exact.

[Florestan]

In the "Antique and Used Book Fair" here in Madrid (it's held in spring and autumn every year in the central--and beautiful-- Paseo de Recoletos), I found a rebound copy of the second --1938-- edition of Agustín de Foxá's novel Madrid de corte a cheka (Madrid, from Court to Cheka).



Foxá (1906-1959) was an aristocrat and diplomat, and an avowed Falangist (although he later on became sceptical, and said that "Falangism was the adulterous daughter of Karl Marx and Queen Isabella the Catholic").

The novel, widely considered --despite its author's discredited political views-- as one of the best written in Spain in the 20th century-- tells the events in Madrid from the downfall of Alfonso XIII's monarchy in 1931, during the years of the Second Republic, up to the "red terror" in besieged Madrid in the first years of the civil war. The work "cheka" in the title was the term (derived from the infamous Soviet repression apparatus) applied to makeshift detention centres that almost any organisation on the left of the political spectrum felt the right to establish in the last days of the Republic and during the civil war.

So far (I'm some 40 pages into the 360-page book), this is proving a fascinating read, and no pamphleteerish political views have yet been expressed. The emergence of street violence prior to the downfall of the monarchy is wonderfully described (and some events take place a couple of blocks from my home in central Madrid).

I'm reading this straight after the memoirs of poet, painter, and art historian José Moreno Villa, who --although not really politically engaged-- supported the Republic, and ended up in exile in Mexico from 1937 to the end of his life. Although written from opposed perspectives, both books describe the disintegration of institutions in the last days of the Republic quite vividly, and to a certain extent confirm that there are many shades of grey in history, and that the Manichean view that is now widely espoused by many in current Spanish politics, namely that the Republic was a sort of idyllic Arcadia, followed by a criminal uprising and forty years of "hell on Earth" under Franco, is not quite exact.

Thanks you, Rafael, for this most interesting post. Incidentally, Agustin de Foxá in his guise as the Spanish ambassador in Helsinki during WWII is a character in Curzio Malaparte's Kaputt. If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to do so, it's a fascinating reading.

[Florestan]

Foxá (1906-1959) was an aristocrat and diplomat, and an avowed Falangist (although he later on became sceptical, and said that "Falangism was the adulterous daughter of Karl Marx and Queen Isabella the Catholic").

Clever and not far from the truth.

Well, this is in line with Foxa's views as recorded by Malaparte.