What are you currently reading?

[vandermolen]

All three stories - haven't read them for years but I enjoy them just as much now as when I was 11.

[ritter]

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.

Thank you, Andrei. I had heard of that connection with Malaparte's book. Since I've never read any of the Italian's work (although I remember seeing some of his books in my grandfather's library), I take note of your recommendation!

By the way, Foxá has a posthumously published book, Misión en Bucarest. He acted as secretary of the (republican) Spanish embassy to Romania, and it was there that he joined the rebel side during the civil war.

[Florestan]

Thank you, Andrei. I had heard of that connection with Malaparte's book. Since I've never read any of the Italian's work (although I remember seeing some of his books in my grandfather's library), I take note of your recommendation!

Besides Kaputt, there is also The Skin, also dealing with his war experience. Malaparte started as a Fascist but the war experience, especially on the Eastern front, changed his views. I must confess that the chapter in Kaputt dealing with the Romanians (which inspired a movie by a Romanian director) is not very flattering to us, to say the least.

By the way, Foxá has a posthumously published book, Misión en Bucarest. He acted as secretary of the (republican) Spanish embassy to Romania, and it was there that he joined the rebel side during the civil war.

I am aware of these facts.

This Foxá guy seems to have been a very intelligent and witty person with a skeptic outlook and a cheerful disposition. According to Wiki, his comment on her wife's cheating on him was "prefiero una maravilla para dos que una m. para mí solo". And about revolutions he said: "Todas las revoluciones han tenido como lema una trilogía: libertad, igualdad, fraternidad fue de la Revolución francesa; en mis años mozos yo me adherí a la trilogía falangista que hablaba de patria, pan y justicia. Ahora, instalado en mi madurez, proclamo otra: café, copa y puro."

Oh, and I found his Madrid de Corte a Cheka online (go figure!). It makes for a fun reading and the portrait of Ramón del Valle-Inclán emerging from the very first paragraphs is not very flattering.

ZAMBRA y revuelo en la cacharrería del Ateneo: Llegaba don Ramón
con sus barbas de Padre Tajo, sucio, traslucido y mordaz. Hablaba a voces
contra el general Primo de Rivera.
-Ese espadón de Loja...
-Don Ramón, a la salida nos esperan los "carcas". Sentíase Valle Inclán
guerrillero de Oriamendi.

I laughed out loud reading that.

[vers la flamme]

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. 

I don't know that that was the message he was trying to get across. I think he was trying to put the reader in the head of the reactionary in an increasingly secularized world, not to say that the world is now somehow immune to such sentiments, more just to note that they are ever present—besides, the young zealot was not dejected in the end, but empowered and radicalized further; maybe he's your 1930s Savonarolas in embryonic form. In any case, I enjoyed reading Mann's vivid descriptions of the rich aestheticism of fin-de-siècle Munich.

You may be right regarding Tristan and Kreutzer—down to the fact that both novellas take their titles from famous works of music.

[Ganondorf]

Almost halfway through Balzac's Le Pére Goriot.

[Florestan]

Almost halfway through Balzac's Le Pére Goriot.

A penny for your thoughts.

[Florestan]

I don't know that that was the message he was trying to get across. I think he was trying to put the reader in the head of the reactionary in an increasingly secularized world, not to say that the world is now somehow immune to such sentiments, more just to note that they are ever present—besides, the young zealot was not dejected in the end, but empowered and radicalized further; maybe he's your 1930s Savonarolas in embryonic form. In any case, I enjoyed reading Mann's vivid descriptions of the rich aestheticism of fin-de-siècle Munich.

Interesting thoughts.

Btw, you (and others) might find this (very long) reading not without interest:

Bourgeois Ambivalence: A Comparative Investigation of Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

[Ganondorf]

The description of Mme Vauquer's boarding house is Balzac at his very best - I have no doubt Balzac influenced Zola in his horrifying descriptions of abject poverty.

I have actually some pre-knowledge about this novel and how things turn out, in kind of King Lear-fashion. Yet I must say even then that Goriot's daughters (or at least Delphine) are way more complex than Goneril and Regan could ever hope to be.

[Florestan]

The description of Mme Vauquer's boarding house is Balzac at his very best - I have no doubt Balzac influenced Zola in his horrifying descriptions of abject poverty.

Many moons ago I started (mentally only) to write a novel in which a character was described as drinking a liquor which would have made even the demon of alcoholism shrink back in indignant horror --- a direct paraphrase of Balzac's vivid description of Mme Vauquer's boarding house. 

I have actually some pre-knowledge about this novel and how things turn out, in kind of King Lear-fashion. Yet I must say even then that Goriot's daughters (or at least Delphine) are way more complex than Goneril and Regan could ever hope to be.

It's certainly an archetypal story. There is even a Romanian folklore version.

[vers la flamme]

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez. I think I'm going to actually finish it this time.

[Florestan]

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez. I think I'm going to actually finish it this time.

A page turner for me. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

I abhorr Marquez communist politics but I admire his artistry and the way he kept the latter distinct from the former.

[vers la flamme]

A page turner for me. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

I abhorr Marquez communist politics but I admire his artistry and the way he kept the latter distinct from the former.

Indeed he does keep them separate; I didn't even know he was a commie until just this moment 

And yes, it is a page turner. Márquez does some weird things with the temporal element in his narrative, which I couldn't get past the first time I read it, and I gave up. Now on this second attempt I can't see why I had so much trouble getting into it the first time.

[SimonNZ]

RIP Martin Amis.

An author who I especially loved when I was in my 20s and 30s. Its a highly uneven bibliography, but the highs could be so high. And he could be so damn funny. His The Rachel Papers is my most re-read book.

[vers la flamme]

Having burned through Love in the Time of Cholera voraciously, being left in the mood for more GGM, I started rereading Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Ah, it's a good one too. I love his writing; I feel like I ought to have read everything he ever wrote several times over by now. I fell in love with One Hundred Years of Solitude when I read it at 17 but for some reason it's taken me until recently to read García Márquez's other work.

[Florestan]

Having burned through Love in the Time of Cholera voraciously, being left in the mood for more GGM, I started rereading Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Ah, it's a good one too. I love his writing; I feel like I ought to have read everything he ever wrote several times over by now. I fell in love with One Hundred Years of Solitude when I read it at 17 but for some reason it's taken me until recently to read García Márquez's other work.

Try also The General in His Labyrinth and Of Love and Other Demons.

Btw, have you read anything by Mario Vargas Llosa?

[vers la flamme]

Try also The General in His Labyrinth and Of Love and Other Demons.

Btw, have you read anything by Mario Vargas Llosa?

Thanks! I'll look out for those. And, no, never, what would you recommend by him?

[Florestan]

Thanks! I'll look out for those. And, no, never, what would you recommend by him?

The War of the End of The World, Conversation in the Cathedral, The Green House, Death in the Andes, Who Killed Palomino Molero?. All excellent, the latter two are mystery novels, go figure!

[Florestan]

Thomas Hardy - Life's Little Ironies and Other Stories (complete)

I love the (often dark, sometimes gentle) humor of these stories about common people and their life. They are not even Levin and Kitty, let alone Anna and Vronsky, but they live their uninteresting lives and adventures just as intense.

[SimonNZ]

Started:




also on the go, for when I need something lighter:

[Iota]

Finding this interesting, despite the fact that much of the trigonometry/calculus Maor brings to bear on e.g explaining frequency ratios, and how history uncovered them, goes over my head.
Am about 2/3 the way through, and there's mention of the earliest musical instrument we know of (discovered in 2008), fashioned from the wing bone of griffon vulture, with five precisely drilled holes (so in essence a kind of flute, but one that is 35,000 years old!). It was part of a community that drank beer, played drums and danced around the campfire on cold winters evenings. And I'd so love to know what sort of music that flute player conjured up for his listeners/revellers!