What are you currently reading?

[Mandryka]

I need to get around to reading this too, though if The Sound & the Fury stumped me, I'm not sure how much I'll take away from it. However I've learned to stop thinking "I'll save this one for when I'm smarter" as I think I'm over the hump and only losing intelligence if anything

You'll be fine! Especially if you've got a southern accent - you can read it out loud and enjoy the rhythms, the tempo.

[AnotherSpin]

Time to tackle a biggie.

Astonishing prose - Shakespearean - like « Out, out brief candle. » or « What a piece of work is man. »  Faulkner could turn a good phrase.

At first I thought - this is too gothic for me. But I'm completely seduced. I'm up to Chapter Five - Rosa talking to Quentin. Just amazing prose! Who cares whether it makes sense?  Not me! I really don't want to spoil the experience with close reading or philosophical analysis, I just want to enjoy the music of it, the poetry of it.

I kind of wish I knew a bit more about the context - American history and culture. Is there a sort of « American Studies for dummies » book?  Something important  obviously happened in 1865 . . .

Many years ago (in the 70s) this Faulkner book was translated and published in the USSR in the monthly Foreign Literature (Иностранная Литература). I tried to read it then, and I think I even read it, though I didn't get much out of it. Maybe I should try it again, in original? Although I have The Sound and the Fury in my reading queue already...

I'm reading a lot of new stuff now and re-reading what I read decades ago. I have found that continuous reading is the good remedy for PTSD.

[Mandryka]

Many years ago (in the 70s) this Faulkner book was translated and published in the USSR in the monthly Foreign Literature (Иностранная Литература). I tried to read it then, and I think I even read it, though I didn't get much out of it. Maybe I should try it again, in original? Although I have The Sound and the Fury in my reading queue already...

I'm reading a lot of new stuff now and re-reading what I read decades ago. I have found that continuous reading is the good remedy for PTSD.

I think The Sound and the Fury would be very very hard to translate. The first chapter is a stream of consciousness inside the head of a teenager with moderate learning difficulties, the last chapter centres on a sermon delivered in dialect by a Southern preacher. The first half of Absalom, Absalom is possibly more translatable - but you would lose a huge amount. It would be like translating Shakespeare or The King James Bible. Generally in these books, Faulkner is really drawing on the music and the semantic nuances of English. 

If you're able to understand spoken English easily, I'd say both of them would respond really well to audiobook treatment, especially if there's a version with a southern accent.

I read somewhere that Faulkner was really into Balzac - and though I couldn't see it so much in The Sound and the Fury - which wears its modernism on its sleeve as it were - I can see it I think in the first half of Absalom Absalom. That's not to say it's in the style of a 19th century novel - far from it. But the two authors seem to share an interest in society and how it forms character. There's a bit of Rastignac in Thomas Sutpen.

Best of luck with PTSD - get it under management when this thing is over, whatever the outcome. I know it can come back to bite you years later.

[AnotherSpin]

Thanks for the kind words.

I don't usually listen to audiobooks, only read the text. We'll see how it goes with Faulkner.

As for translations. There used to be a very good translation school in the USSR. A lot of things that were translated before 70-80s turned out very well and it made some authors, like Vonnegut or Remarque very popular in the USSR, at least as much as in the West. Later I compared the translations with the originals, and although it's nonsense, I liked some translations better than the original. Catcher in the Rye may be an example.

As for stream of consciousness, a lot of the "difficult" stuff was translated. Joyce, Woolf, and many others. There are many translations of Shakespeare, some of them very successful. A lot of things have been published, but in such small print runs that from an ideological point of view it was merely noticeable. Book crazies read Sartre and Céline, but the average builder of communism was not even aware of such literature.

Later the quality of translation went down, but I don't care, as I've been reading English language literature in the original for decades, and even non-English authors, Japanese or German, in English translation.

[DavidW]

Entrancing and disturbing read for me:

[BWV 1080]

Entrancing and disturbing read for me:

liked the movie

[BWV 1080]

Really liked his debut, this is a dark, creative nonfiction take on Paul Ehrenfest and John Von Neumann



https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/14/the-maniac-by-benjamin-labatut-review-a-journey-to-the-far-edge-of-knowledge

[BWV 1080]

Interesting.  I'm currently working my way through this:



The Man From The Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
Ananyo Bhattacharya

Cool, then you would appreciate that the title Labatut's book refers to the computer, not to John himself

[DavidW]

liked the movie

I'll have to give it a watch.

[Brian]

A classic 1950s British murder mystery I picked up at Hatchards in London. I did not know what to expect, but this turned out to be one of the finest, suavest, wittiest, most cleverly plotted classic mysteries I've ever read. Just pure joy to read. Gilbert was a lawyer and set the mystery in a law firm, so he relies on all kind of insider knowledge and (clearly) put some of the more annoying characters he'd met in real life into the story. And I was absolutely delighted when I "solved the crime" midway through, mentally worked it all out, and then the detective followed my logic to solve it afterwards...and then we were both wrong!

Urgently recommended to anyone who loves classic British crime. Better prose and weirder characters than Christie.

[AnotherSpin]

[vers la flamme]

Never read that one, but his The Remains of the Day is one of the best books I've ever read.



Reading short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. A genius, no doubt. All of these stories have been good, but Hell Screen in particular blew my mind. So did Loyalty.

[AnotherSpin]

Never read that one, but his The Remains of the Day is one of the best books I've ever read.

Reading short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. A genius, no doubt. All of these stories have been good, but Hell Screen in particular blew my mind. So did Loyalty.

I'm right in the middle of Ishiguro's book. Exciting.

Thanks for the reminder. I read Akutagawa so long ago that I don't remember anything, almost. Oddly enough, what remained in my memory, and inaccurately, is a little story about a humble samurai who was very fond of yam porridge. I'll have to go back to this author.

[DavidW]

I love it.  Some people find it too depressing.  But I think it is still beautifully written.

[AnotherSpin]

I love it.  Some people find it too depressing.  But I think it is still beautifully written.

Finished it today. Very strong impression. The last chapters were hard to read, the emotions were overwhelming.

[Henk]

Continuing reading this book. Very difficult, but the writing is very stylistic and aesthetical.

D&G refer much to theories that were developed in the times the book has been written. It's almost impossible to get to know all those theories (books are very expensive and also takes a lot of study). I have already acquired a basic understanding. I'm trying to better understand the complexity of the content and dig deeper into the book. I should be able to make it my own in a way that makes sense to me.

Trying to stick to it now. I try to work on my health with this book. Deleuze stress the problematic of the unconscious. I recognize this much personally. Deleuze makes it key to escape from capitalism and psychoanalysis. It's a 'universal history' he presents with Guattari. They aim for some new culture of desire (my words) and a new earth.

[AnotherSpin]

Continuing reading this book. Very difficult, but the writing is very stylistic and aesthetical.

D&G refer much to theories that were developed in the times the book has been written. It's almost impossible to get to know all those theories (books are very expensive and also takes a lot of study). I have already acquired a basic understanding. I'm trying to better understand the complexity of the content and dig deeper into the book. I should be able to make it my own in a way that makes sense to me.

Trying to stick to it now. I try to work on my health with this book. Deleuze stress the problematic of the unconscious. I recognize this much personally. Deleuze makes it key to escape from capitalism and psychoanalysis. It's a 'universal history' he presents with Guattari. They aim for some new culture of desire (my words) and a new earth.

Made attempts to read this book in English translation. Maybe I'll get around to it later.

[AnotherSpin]

José Saramago, just started.

[Papy Oli]

Panorama du Quatuor à cordes.

A one-volume summary of 4 books on the history of string quartets.

[Mandryka]

Time to tackle a biggie.

Astonishing prose - Shakespearean - like « Out, out brief candle. » or « What a piece of work is man. »  Faulkner could turn a good phrase.

At first I thought - this is too gothic for me. But I'm completely seduced. I'm up to Chapter Five - Rosa talking to Quentin. Just amazing prose! Who cares whether it makes sense?  Not me! I really don't want to spoil the experience with close reading or philosophical analysis, I just want to enjoy the music of it, the poetry of it.

I kind of wish I knew a bit more about the context - American history and culture. Is there a sort of « American Studies for dummies » book?  Something important  obviously happened in 1865 . . .

So I'm now approaching the end of this puppy and it's more interesting than my comments above - made after reading the first five chapters - suggest. It's a novel of two halves, and the nature of the second half is rather different than the nature of the first half.

Experimental; avant garde. There are many challenges, the most pressing of which, IMO, is to make it cohere. I need help, I need secondary literature, I need a course. This is not light, relaxing, reading.

The Sound and the Fury is challenging because of the stream of consciousness writing, and maybe because of the end. This is more difficult - more experimental -  both at the level of form and at the level of function - Faulkner's aim.