The recent discussion with North Star about Finnish literature (in the last readings topic (http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,68.msg841286.html#msg841286)) made me think of this topic. Because it is, in the end, frankly quite difficult to really know about other literary traditions, I guess it would be interesting if we shared what we prefer from "our" literatures.
So, only books from your country or language, but I leave you with defining more precisely what is the most relevant perimeter. I guess an American would not necessarily consider British literature as part of "his" national culture, but an Irish fellow might dislike James Joyce and feel more inclined towards Shakespeare for instance. And of course you can feel personal attachment to more than one country, or you can like an author who was only naturalized (you can feel Nabokov is Russian and like him as a Russian, or feel he is American and like him as an American).
It's essentially your choice then, but just please try to avoid making of this topic a simple "my favourite books" topic, because the whole point is about discovery, so I don't think it is interesting if everyone answers "Crime and Punishment" ;)
Also you can say 3, 5, 10 titles, again, your choice.
And not necessarily fiction !
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
Don De Lillo, White Noise
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale
Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Inter-Galactic Soap Opera
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the satirical novelist and pacifist icon, is of course from Indiana. Indiana state identity is a major part of his novels Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, although both those books are more importantly full of social criticism and humor and other things more important than Hoosiers. The short stories are often essential.
- Jean Shepherd is a humorist and comic storyteller who for a very long time had an underground radio show. You might hear his vocals on the Mingus album The Clown, or hear him as the narrator to the famous film A Christmas Story, which he wrote. That film was based on two of his books of short stories, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, both of which are essential for anyone who wants to laugh at the cultural absurdities of the American Midwest. The latter, especially, is noteworthy for the title story, which is a description of everything that can go wrong at an American school dance. Shepherd is my personal favorite, both because he successfully captures my home state's modest virtues (and virtuous modesty!), and because he is very funny. He also has a gift for making ordinary, everyday events and details seem remarkable.
- John Hay, author and memoirist, had a noteworthy career in public service, beginning as personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and ultimately becoming a member of Theodore Roosevelt's cabinet. Illness prevented Hay from continuing as Secretary of State, leaving Roosevelt himself to broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War (and win a Nobel Peace Prize).
- Rex Stout wrote a series of enjoyable murder mystery stories featuring Nero Wolfe, a snobbish, antisocial version of Falstaff who solves crimes while sitting in his house, eating compulsively. Not for the serious-minded, but fun. Also a TV series with an acting troupe - that is, the same dozen actors portray different characters every week. Nero Wolfe lives in New York, I think, and nothing in Stout's work suggests Indiana.
John Green, an Indianapolis native, recently has become famous for his books for teenagers, most famously
The Fault in Our Stars, a melodrama about cancer victims falling in love.
I can do a different list for the area where I reside - Texas.
I need to read some Rex Stout.
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 09:11:25 AM
I need to read some Rex Stout.
Those books really are a lot of fun.
(http://www.swanseashop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Collected_Poems.jpg)
(No other possibility on his centenary.)
So, a little French literature :
- André Malraux, La condition humaine (Man's Fate), 1933
This novel left me a strong impression since I read it when I was 16. Malraux was quite a character (an infatuated writer in the 30s, he was convicted for art trafficking in Cambodgia, organized a planes squadron for Republicans during the Spanish civil war, then became Gaullist during the war and ended ministry of culture under De Gaulle, writing mostly rich and weird books about art). He wrote this book about Chinese 1927 revolution without ever setting foot in Shanghai. It is a dense novel about a revolutionary group of communist idealists, and how they are crushed by history...
- Joseph Kessel, Les cavaliers (The Horsemen), 1967
An epic journey in Afghanistan, it is not really widely read in France anymore, and even less in foreign countries (and might be better known for having inspired a 2-hours long Hollywood movie by John Frankenheimer). Still, it is a wonderful novel, the kind of story you cannot forget, a contemporary and cruel Odyssey. Kessel was a kind of French Hemingway, and mainly known for his entertaining novel Le lion, a classic in French middle schools.
- Gustave Flaubert, L'éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education), 1869
Flaubert might be the greatest French writer ever, but it is a mistake to start with Madame Bovary, a masterpiece but not really representative of his author. His other novels give a more immediate pleasure, and Sentimental Education is the best Bildungsroman I know, not at all a sentimental novel (!) but packed with tension, action, arts and politics, as the story goes through 27 years among the most agitated in French history.
- Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen , 1835
I could have cited Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) or La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839). But I think I had even more pleasure reading Lucien Leuwen, for at least two reasons. First, as it is not as well-known as these 2 other novels, I did not know anything about it before starting, which enhanced the pleasure. Second, it is longer, and this is a good reason, as the main issue with Stendhal is you'd like it to keep going on and on and on...
Other writers and novels among my favourites would be :
- Proust of course, I've read the first novels of La Recherche twice, but not finished it yet... A pleasure one should not deprive himself of...
- Louis Aragon (for his novels more than his poetry, Les Voyageurs de l'impériale is superb),
- Émile Zola (among the Rougon-Macquart saga, La Conquête de Plassans is among the novels I had most pleasure reading ; La Terre also, but it is really harsh and cruel),
- Albert Cohen (his 4 novels saga Les Valeureux is a great masterpiece, with Belle du seigneur its better known part),
- J.M.G. Le Clézio : his Nobel is, imho, one of the better deserved of the last decade (with Vargas Llosa's), Désert (Desert) and Le chercheur d'or (The prospector) are really incredibly rich novels (Modiano's prize has been better celebrated, but I don't care as much for him),
- and also page turners as Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo and others...
I don't read much poetry, but I count Mallarmé and Paul Éluard among my favourites (and the unavoidable Rimbaud and Verlaine).
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 09:09:17 AM
Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the satirical novelist and pacifist icon, is of course from Indiana. Indiana state identity is a major part of his novels Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, although both those books are more importantly full of social criticism and humor and other things more important than Hoosiers. The short stories are often essential.
- Jean Shepherd is a humorist and comic storyteller who for a very long time had an underground radio show. You might hear his vocals on the Mingus album The Clown, or hear him as the narrator to the famous film A Christmas Story, which he wrote. That film was based on two of his books of short stories, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, both of which are essential for anyone who wants to laugh at the cultural absurdities of the American Midwest. The latter, especially, is noteworthy for the title story, which is a description of everything that can go wrong at an American school dance. Shepherd is my personal favorite, both because he successfully captures my home state's modest virtues (and virtuous modesty!), and because he is very funny. He also has a gift for making ordinary, everyday events and details seem remarkable.
- John Hay, author and memoirist, had a noteworthy career in public service, beginning as personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and ultimately becoming a member of Theodore Roosevelt's cabinet. Illness prevented Hay from continuing as Secretary of State, leaving Roosevelt himself to broker an end to the Russo-Japanese War (and win a Nobel Peace Prize).
- Rex Stout wrote a series of enjoyable murder mystery stories featuring Nero Wolfe, a snobbish, antisocial version of Falstaff who solves crimes while sitting in his house, eating compulsively. Not for the serious-minded, but fun. Also a TV series with an acting troupe - that is, the same dozen actors portray different characters every week. Nero Wolfe lives in New York, I think, and nothing in Stout's work suggests Indiana.
John Green, an Indianapolis native, recently has become famous for his books for teenagers, most famously The Fault in Our Stars, a melodrama about cancer victims falling in love.
I can do a different list for the area where I reside - Texas.
Indiana literature, interesting :)
The only one I've read among those is Vonnegut, and I've only read
Slaughterhouse-Five (interesting, a little simpler I expected, but still great). I intend to read
Breakfast of Champions one of these days, but I'll give a try to the short stories too.
Rex Stout, I'll try that also.
Kalevala (English translation in Project Gutenberg for free (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5186/pg5186.html))
Aleksis Kivi - Seven Brothers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seitsem%C3%A4n_Veljest%C3%A4)
Minna Canth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minna_Canth) - Työmiehen Vaimo, Anna Liisa, Kauppa-Lopo (naturalistic, feminist 19th century stuff)
Väinö Linna - Tuntematon Sotilas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_Soldier_(novel)) (The Unknown Soldier) WWII stuff, iconic depictions of an imaginary machine gun company
Veijo Meri - The Manilla Rope (http://oga.otava.fi/books/the-manilla-rope/)
And I really should read Frans Eemil Sillanpää's and Mika Waltari's work.
Oh, and there's some poetry (Eino Leino, V. A. Koskenniemi, L. Onerva, Aaro Hellaakoski, Edith Södergran, Paavo Haavikko, Aila Meriluoto, Pentti Saarikoski) I should read (more), too.
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 08:57:17 AM
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale
Do you know
The Scarlet Letter,
Karl, and if so, what do you think of it? (I haven't read it myself)
I definitely want to hunt down (a copy of)
Moby-Dick soon.
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 09:09:17 AM
Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the satirical novelist and pacifist icon, is of course from Indiana. Indiana state identity is a major part of his novels Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, although both those books are more importantly full of social criticism and humor and other things more important than Hoosiers. The short stories are often essential.[/i]
No mention of
Slaughterhouse 5,
Brian? That's currently waiting in my shopping basket..
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 08:57:17 AM
Don De Lillo, White Noise
Did you read
Underworld ? I think it might be the greatest masterpiece of these last 20 or 30 years. I liked
White Noise, but was less deeply impressed.
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 09:37:28 AM
Indiana literature, interesting :)
The only one I've read among those is Vonnegut, and I've only read Slaughterhouse-Five (interesting, a little simpler I expected, but still great). I intend to read Breakfast of Champions one of these days, but I'll give a try to the short stories too.
Rex Stout, I'll try that also.
Interesting that you say
Slaughterhouse-Five is "a little simpler I expected". Simplicity was essential to Vonnegut's art; he wanted to say what he meant, spell out his messages, and tell straightforward stories, but still to do this in an artistic and interesting way.
Quote from: North Star on October 27, 2014, 10:19:49 AM
No mention of Slaughterhouse 5, Brian? That's currently waiting in my shopping basket..
Probably the best book ever written by an Indiana native!
I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:
Top 5 -
Kurt Vonnegut
Mark Twain
Rex Stout
Larry McMurtry
Michael Connelly
8)
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 27, 2014, 10:36:05 AM
I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:
And none of the books stands out particularly? 0:)
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 27, 2014, 10:36:05 AM
I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:
Kurt Vonnegut
Rex Stout
Wow, you're really an Indiana devotee!!
Quote from: North Star on October 27, 2014, 10:37:31 AM
And none of the books stands out particularly? 0:)
I'm like that; if I like an author's style, I like everything they write. Music too... :-\
8)
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 27, 2014, 10:36:05 AM
I would sooner say authors than books, because for all of my favorite American authors, I've read the complete works of:
Top 5 -
Kurt Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions
Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad
Rex Stout - The Doorbell Rang
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
Michael Connelly The Concrete Blonde
Although narrowing loses so much.... :(
8)
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 10:38:35 AM
Wow, you're really an Indiana devotee!!
Yes, I can't honestly say 'I never heard of any good elements coming from Indiana...' (
The Outlaw Josey Wales)
8)
Borislav Pekić - The New Jerusalem
Radomir Konstantinović - Philosophy of the small town
Danilo Kiš - A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Meša Selimović - Death and the Dervish
Vasko Popa - Poetry
Ivo Andrić - Travnik Chronicles
Ljubomir Micić - Zenith
Svetislav Basara - The Cyclist Conspiracy
Jovan Dučić - Poetry
I've given the titles in English but what actually has been translated, and how, I don't know.
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 10:35:42 AMProbably the best book ever written by an Indiana native!
Sounds very prestigious, dividing the USA into individual states for a statement like this :D
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 27, 2014, 10:43:18 AM
I'm like that; if I like an author's style, I like everything they write. Music too... :-\ 8) Although narrowing loses so much.... :( 8)
Cheers!
Yes, I know how it is, of course, but if someone wants a place to start, listing all of
Bach's cantatas or
Haydn's symphonies might not be the best help. 8)
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 10:35:42 AM
Interesting that you say Slaughterhouse-Five is "a little simpler I expected". Simplicity was essential to Vonnegut's art; he wanted to say what he meant, spell out his messages, and tell straightforward stories, but still to do this in an artistic and interesting way.
Probably the best book ever written by an Indiana native!
Yes and this "simpler than expected" impression was not at all a negative remark ! :)
Oh boy! You might have never heard about these names...
Here are some classics of the Romanian literature which Florestan endorses
Poems
Vasile Alecsandri - Poems
Mihai Eminescu -Poems
George Coșbuc - Poems
Dramas
Ion Luca Caragiale - The Lost Letter
Ion Luca Caragiale - Mr. Leonida Faces the Reaction
Ion Luca Caragiale - A Stormy Night
Novels
Camil Petrescu - The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War
George Calinescu - Otilia´s Enigma
Mateiu I. Caragiale - The Old Court Libertines (very approximate English translation)
If interested, please ask me more.
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 09:33:20 AM
- Gustave Flaubert, L'éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education), 1869
Many American and English authors are frustrated with the absence of a great translation for this book. I have often wanted to read it, but my French is not good, and when I read reviews of the different translations, I grow frustrated seeing that they are all controversial in some way.
Quote from: Florestan on October 27, 2014, 11:03:55 AM
Oh boy! You might have never heard about these names...
Here are some classics of the Romanian literature which Florestan endorses
Novels
Camil Petrescu - The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War
George Calinescu - Otilia´s Enigma
Mateiu I. Caragiale - The Old Court Libertines (very approximate English translation)
If interested, please ask me more.
I wonder if these exist also in English translations. The titles are intriguing. :)
8)
Well, I feel that I've let the thread down by not adding notes . . . .
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 08:57:17 AM
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
Don De Lillo, White Noise
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale
Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Inter-Galactic Soap Opera
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor I am not sure which I read first,
Tom Jones or
The Sot-Weed Factor; I became aware of them both at roughly the same time. And in fact, I became aware of this book through a brief quote used to head a chapter in
Water Music. Like
Tom Jones, a wonderful, rollicking, headlong enchanting scold of a book. Apparently takes a genuine poem published in 1708 as its point of departure.
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music Another flat-out fun novel spun from the odd historical fact, is this idyll on Mungo Park's search for the Niger. The title (not surprisingly) caught my eye, but (in rather the Wodehouse manner) you could scarcely open it to a page which would not draw you in tight. I don't think I know anyone else who has read this book; yet it is a book which I half-feel everyone ought to read.
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End If
Water Music is great fun, only it does not end particularly well for the protagonist,
World's End is a cumulative tragedy, told comically. Part of my fondness for this book must stem from the setting, which is a part of world largely familiar to me. There's a little "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," a little
Knickerbocker's History of New York, and a little
Dark Shadows in this one. If anyone else reads this, I should be curious to learn if he or she thinks as well of it as do I.
Don De Lillo, White Noise In a way which does not (I think) leave the reader feeling that he has been bamboozled, this is a book which starts out as a carefree pop-culture riff, and which morphs into a preventable self-inflicted tragedy. I suppose that is the thing about tragedy – which, I guess, means that I find this book well made. I go back and re-read it partly remembering how funny so much of it is . . . so you could call this book one of my periodic rituals.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance There is an idyllic, "easy" pace to this story of the fictional cousin to an actual experiment in communal living from Hawthorne's day. I think it caught me by surprise, the first I read this, how Hawthorne reserves the sharpest moral reproaches for the narrator.
Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller Even when I read "Rip van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as a boy, I adored Irving's style even more than the content of the stories. The
Tales of a Traveller I read for the first time as part of my intellectual nourishment while I languished in Oklahoma one ill-favored school year, and I found it wonderful both that the author by his style was already "a friend," and yet here were all these wonderful stories which were completely new to me.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale At the UVa bookstore in Charlottesville, I chanced upon the Norton Critical Edition of this. It had been part of my obligatory reading in high school, but it was a number of obligatory books which, while my classmates sweated through, I somehow managed to shuffle through the class without actually reading . . . or without much reading. Finding the book in Virginia, I found myself curious to read it, and I just inhaled the book. It remains a book not for everyone (an excellent friend of mine, a fellow musician, tried reading it and could not endure it), but I am a huge fan.
Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Inter-Galactic Soap Opera An old schoolmate, who must just have found a stack of this title at the Forbidden Planet shop in downtown Manhattan (no idea if it's still there), gave this to me one Christmas. Sheckley was writing science-fiction as a flimsy guise for humor decades before there was any Douglas Adams (not that the Adams books are not great fun, and his own creation). I re-read this at wide enough intervals, that I forget how the whole thing gets solved at the end. I have found many short stories of Sheckley's which are as good and as witty as
Dramocles, but none of the novels which I've read has come close.
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces My eleventh-grade English teacher recommended this, I read it, I remember liking it a great deal – and it's been years, I should re-read it.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi Part yarn, part travelogue, part "processed autobiography," this book means Buffalo to me. Although the autobiography I am currently reading promises to have me re-thinking the matter, all these long years my feeling has been, if I could only save one Twain work from Cosmic Zapping, this would be that work.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass This was another Norton Critical Edition which I bought in the UVa bookstore in Charlottesville, but I left it largely unread – until I took it with my to Tallinn (and then St Petersburg) where it served me as a sort of devotional volume of American letters. Even the flaws of some of the sprawling poems are nearly virtues in my eyes. Fond memories of reading
Song of Myself aloud to a small group of expatriate English-speakers in Estonia.
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 10:31:08 AM
Did you read Underworld ? I think it might be the greatest masterpiece of these last 20 or 30 years.
I've not read that one, thanks for the rec!
Quote from: North Star on October 27, 2014, 10:19:49 AM
Do you know The Scarlet Letter, Karl, and if so, what do you think of it? (I haven't read it myself)
I do, indeed; I like it very well . . . it is apt to come across a little as a Morality Tale (well done, mind you). There something of an "it's complicated" vibe to
The Blithedale Romance which I find endearing.
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 27, 2014, 11:09:41 AM
I wonder if these exist also in English translations. The titles are intriguing. :)
8)
I don´t think so. But please get me in touch with a publishing house interested in them. I oblige to translate them into English. :D
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 11:08:16 AM
Many American and English authors are frustrated with the absence of a great translation for this book. I have often wanted to read it, but my French is not good, and when I read reviews of the different translations, I grow frustrated seeing that they are all controversial in some way.
That's a real shame then :(
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 11:08:16 AM
Many American and English authors are frustrated with the absence of a great translation for this book. I have often wanted to read it, but my French is not good, and when I read reviews of the different translations, I grow frustrated seeing that they are all controversial in some way.
There is a very good Romanian translation, but then again all the French classics have been translated into Romanian before 1950´s- :D
Think about it: after 1950 one could have been thrown in prison for reading
Cioran or
Eliade...
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 11:17:55 AM
I do, indeed; I like it very well . . . it is apt to come across a little as a Morality Tale (well done, mind you). There something of an "it's complicated" vibe to The Blithedale Romance which I find endearing.
Most interesting. :) I've read
Walden but nothing else that is at all related.
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 11:14:13 AM
Well, I feel that I've let the thread down by not adding notes . . . .
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
I am not sure which I read first, Tom Jones or The Sot-Weed Factor; I became aware of them both at roughly the same time. And in fact, I became aware of this book through a brief quote used to head a chapter in Water Music. Like Tom Jones, a wonderful, rollicking, headlong enchanting scold of a book. Apparently takes a genuine poem published in 1708 as its point of departure.
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music
Another flat-out fun novel spun from the odd historical fact, is this idyll on Mungo Park’s search for the Niger. The title (not surprisingly) caught my eye, but (in rather the Wodehouse manner) you could scarcely open it to a page which would not draw you in tight. I don’t think I know anyone else who has read this book; yet it is a book which I half-feel everyone ought to read.
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
If Water Music is great fun, only it does not end particularly well for the protagonist, World's End is a cumulative tragedy, told comically. Part of my fondness for this book must stem from the setting, which is a part of world largely familiar to me. There’s a little “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a little Knickerbocker’s History of New York, and a little Dark Shadows in this one. If anyone else reads this, I should be curious to learn if he or she thinks as well of it as do I.
Don De Lillo, White Noise
In a way which does not (I think) leave the reader feeling that he has been bamboozled, this is a book which starts out as a carefree pop-culture riff, and which morphs into a preventable self-inflicted tragedy. I suppose that is the thing about tragedy – which, I guess, means that I find this book well made. I go back and re-read it partly remembering how funny so much of it is . . . so you could call this book one of my periodic rituals.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
There is an idyllic, “easy” pace to this story of the fictional cousin to an actual experiment in communal living from Hawthorne’s day. I think it caught me by surprise, the first I read this, how Hawthorne reserves the sharpest moral reproaches for the narrator.
Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller
Even when I read “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” as a boy, I adored Irving’s style even more than the content of the stories. The Tales of a Traveller I read for the first time as part of my intellectual nourishment while I languished in Oklahoma one ill-favored school year, and I found it wonderful both that the author by his style was already “a friend,” and yet here were all these wonderful stories which were completely new to me.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale
At the UVa bookstore in Charlottesville, I chanced upon the Norton Critical Edition of this. It had been part of my obligatory reading in high school, but it was a number of obligatory books which, while my classmates sweated through, I somehow managed to shuffle through the class without actually reading . . . or without much reading. Finding the book in Virginia, I found myself curious to read it, and I just inhaled the book. It remains a book not for everyone (an excellent friend of mine, a fellow musician, tried reading it and could not endure it), but I am a huge fan.
Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Inter-Galactic Soap Opera
An old schoolmate, who must just have found a stack of this title at the Forbidden Planet shop in downtown Manhattan (no idea if it’s still there), gave this to me one Christmas. Sheckley was writing science-fiction as a flimsy guise for humor decades before there was any Douglas Adams (not that the Adams books are not great fun, and his own creation). I re-read this at wide enough intervals, that I forget how the whole thing gets solved at the end. I have found many short stories of Sheckley’s which are as good and as witty as Dramocles, but none of the novels which I’ve read has come close.
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
My eleventh-grade English teacher recommended this, I read it, I remember liking it a great deal – and it’s been years, I should re-read it.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Part yarn, part travelogue, part “processed autobiography,” this book means Buffalo to me. Although the autobiography I am currently reading promises to have me re-thinking the matter, all these long years my feeling has been, if I could only save one Twain work from Cosmic Zapping, this would be that work.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
This was another Norton Critical Edition which I bought in the UVa bookstore in Charlottesville, but I left it largely unread – until I took it with my to Tallinn (and then St Petersburg) where it served me as a sort of devotional volume of American letters. Even the flaws of some of the sprawling poems are nearly virtues in my eyes. Fond memories of reading Song of Myself aloud to a small group of expatriate English-speakers in Estonia.
Most interesting. :) I've read a dozen or so (shorter) poems of Whitman, great poet for sure, albeit he's no
Dickinson. Not that he
should be.. :)
Crime and Punishment hahaha. Actually it is my favourite novel but I am British so can't include it.
Most works by George Orwell, especially 1984 and Animal Farm but also his collected Letters, essays and Journalism.
Dylan Thomas 'Under Milk Wood' (can't ignore that today)
Evelyn Waugh 'Decline and Fall'
Many World War One poets, especially Siegdfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen
Conan Doyle 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' etc
Dickens 'A Tale of Two Cities', 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield'
Shakespeare 'The Tempest', 'King Lear'
Williams and Searle 'The Compleet [sic] Molesworth'
Quote from: vandermolen on October 27, 2014, 02:29:30 PM
Crime and Punishment hahaha. Actually it is my favourite novel but I am British so can't include it.
Love it, meself.
Quote from: vandermolen on October 27, 2014, 02:29:30 PM
Crime and Punishment hahaha. Actually it is my favourite novel but I am British so can't include it.
Most works by George Orwell, especially 1984 and Animal Farm but also his collected Letters, essays and Journalism.
Dylan Thomas 'Under Milk Wood' (can't ignore that today)
Evelyn Waugh 'Decline and Fall'
Many World War One poets, especially Siegdfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen
Conan Doyle 'Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' etc
Dickens 'A Tale of Two Cities', 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield'
Shakespeare 'The Tempest', 'King Lear'
Williams and Searle 'The Compleet [sic] Molesworth'
Nice list, you have a lot to choose from. Many of my favorites
are Brits (unlike with music), but I'm like you and the Russian.... :)
8)
Decameron
Now I have to convince you Bocaccio was a Canadian writing in English. Fortunately most of you are Americans; you guys will believe anything about Canada.
:laugh: :laugh:
Quote from: karlhenning on October 27, 2014, 11:14:13 AM
Well, I feel that I've let the thread down by not adding notes . . . .
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
I am not sure which I read first, Tom Jones or The Sot-Weed Factor; I became aware of them both at roughly the same time. And in fact, I became aware of this book through a brief quote used to head a chapter in Water Music. Like Tom Jones, a wonderful, rollicking, headlong enchanting scold of a book. Apparently takes a genuine poem published in 1708 as its point of departure.
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Water Music
Another flat-out fun novel spun from the odd historical fact, is this idyll on Mungo Park's search for the Niger. The title (not surprisingly) caught my eye, but (in rather the Wodehouse manner) you could scarcely open it to a page which would not draw you in tight. I don't think I know anyone else who has read this book; yet it is a book which I half-feel everyone ought to read.
T. Coraghessan Boyle, World's End
If Water Music is great fun, only it does not end particularly well for the protagonist, World's End is a cumulative tragedy, told comically. Part of my fondness for this book must stem from the setting, which is a part of world largely familiar to me. There's a little "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," a little Knickerbocker's History of New York, and a little Dark Shadows in this one. If anyone else reads this, I should be curious to learn if he or she thinks as well of it as do I.
Don De Lillo, White Noise
In a way which does not (I think) leave the reader feeling that he has been bamboozled, this is a book which starts out as a carefree pop-culture riff, and which morphs into a preventable self-inflicted tragedy. I suppose that is the thing about tragedy – which, I guess, means that I find this book well made. I go back and re-read it partly remembering how funny so much of it is . . . so you could call this book one of my periodic rituals.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance
There is an idyllic, "easy" pace to this story of the fictional cousin to an actual experiment in communal living from Hawthorne's day. I think it caught me by surprise, the first I read this, how Hawthorne reserves the sharpest moral reproaches for the narrator.
Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveller
Even when I read "Rip van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" as a boy, I adored Irving's style even more than the content of the stories. The Tales of a Traveller I read for the first time as part of my intellectual nourishment while I languished in Oklahoma one ill-favored school year, and I found it wonderful both that the author by his style was already "a friend," and yet here were all these wonderful stories which were completely new to me.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale
At the UVa bookstore in Charlottesville, I chanced upon the Norton Critical Edition of this. It had been part of my obligatory reading in high school, but it was a number of obligatory books which, while my classmates sweated through, I somehow managed to shuffle through the class without actually reading . . . or without much reading. Finding the book in Virginia, I found myself curious to read it, and I just inhaled the book. It remains a book not for everyone (an excellent friend of mine, a fellow musician, tried reading it and could not endure it), but I am a huge fan.
Robert Sheckley, Dramocles: An Inter-Galactic Soap Opera
An old schoolmate, who must just have found a stack of this title at the Forbidden Planet shop in downtown Manhattan (no idea if it's still there), gave this to me one Christmas. Sheckley was writing science-fiction as a flimsy guise for humor decades before there was any Douglas Adams (not that the Adams books are not great fun, and his own creation). I re-read this at wide enough intervals, that I forget how the whole thing gets solved at the end. I have found many short stories of Sheckley's which are as good and as witty as Dramocles, but none of the novels which I've read has come close.
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
My eleventh-grade English teacher recommended this, I read it, I remember liking it a great deal – and it's been years, I should re-read it.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Part yarn, part travelogue, part "processed autobiography," this book means Buffalo to me. Although the autobiography I am currently reading promises to have me re-thinking the matter, all these long years my feeling has been, if I could only save one Twain work from Cosmic Zapping, this would be that work.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
This was another Norton Critical Edition which I bought in the UVa bookstore in Charlottesville, but I left it largely unread – until I took it with my to Tallinn (and then St Petersburg) where it served me as a sort of devotional volume of American letters. Even the flaws of some of the sprawling poems are nearly virtues in my eyes. Fond memories of reading Song of Myself aloud to a small group of expatriate English-speakers in Estonia.
I knew we both liked Sot-Weed. I'm pleased you liked Water Music. I liked a lot of TCB, especiially Budding Propects.
Quote from: vandermolen on October 27, 2014, 02:29:30 PM
Dylan Thomas 'Under Milk Wood' (can't ignore that today)
'The Compleet [sic] Molesworth'
Coo ur gosh looks like we need a Molesworth thred here which (gramer) I would hav included xcept I limited myself to welsh lit chiz. That other weed r s tomas is also joly good and anyone who sa otherwise I will uterly tuough up ect.
My favourite Dutch writer (by far) is Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971). To me, he's the J.S. Bach of Dutch literature. He was very productive in all genres, except drama. He did write one libretto for an opera, though: the unfinished Merlijn of Willem Pijper.
During his lifetime, some of his novels were translated (a.o. in English and French) and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for a period of almost 20 years, but he wasn't a politically interesting figure. Nowadays he's almost forgotten, even in his own country. To me, even his 'worst' novels are better than today's best selling Dutch authors, but hey, that's just my opinion.
Vestdijk also translated a.o. Emily Dickinson, Herman Merville, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Egar Allen Poe, Paul Verlaine and Georges Simenon.
http://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/vestdijk_simon_1898_1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Vestdijk
My favourite novels by Vestdijk are:
De nadagen van Pilatus (The latter days of Pilate), about the former governor of Judea, retired in Rome, falling in love with a certain Mary of Magdala :-X, and haunted by the ghost of Jesus.
De koperen tuin (The copper garden AKA The garden where the brass band played), about a boy who dances with an older girl to her father's brass band music in 'the copper garden', falls in love with her and from that moment on a tragic love story develops.
De kellner en de levenden (The waiter and the living), probably Vestdijk's best novel, an allegory for the Final Judgment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_kellner_en_de_levenden
Quote from: Marc on October 27, 2014, 03:41:06 PM
De nadagen van Pilatus (The latter days of Pilate), about the former governor of Judea, retired in Rome, falling in love with a certain Mary of Magdala, and haunted by the ghost of Jesus.
[...]
De kellner en de levenden (The waiter and the living), probably Vestdijk's best novel, an allegory for the Final Judgment.
Thanks for these recommendations, Marc, I love religious allegories!
Hopefully I can find good translations of these. :-X
SWEDEN
Hjalmar Söderberg - Doctor Glas
(http://image.bokus.com/images2/9780385722674_200_doctor-glas_haftad)
Sweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).
Söderberg was always excellent at pinpointing feelings of loss, disgust and anguish in dealing with destiny, love and death.
Doctor Glas is his best and quite a quick read. It's thematically dark, but very "light on its feet" in style. It's brutally honest about the horrors of life, but is written beautifully, as though beauty justifies it all.
Quote from: Marc on October 27, 2014, 03:41:06 PM
My favourite Dutch writer (by far) is Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971). To me, he's the J.S. Bach of Dutch literature. He was very productive in all genres, except drama. He did write one libretto for an opera, though: the unfinished Merlijn of Willem Pijper.
During his lifetime, some of his novels were translated (a.o. in English and French) and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for a period of almost 20 years, but he wasn't a politically interesting figure. Nowadays he's almost forgotten, even in his own country. To me, even his 'worst' novels are better than today's best selling Dutch authors, but hey, that's just my opinion.
Vestdijk also translated a.o. Emily Dickinson, Herman Merville, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Egar Allen Poe, Paul Verlaine and Georges Simenon.
http://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/vestdijk_simon_1898_1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Vestdijk
My favourite novels by Vestdijk are:
De nadagen van Pilatus (The latter days of Pilate), about the former governor of Judea, retired in Rome, falling in love with a certain Mary of Magdala :-X, and haunted by the ghost of Jesus.
De koperen tuin (The copper garden AKA The garden where the brass band played), about a boy who dances with an older girl to her father's brass band music in 'the copper garden', falls in love with her and from that moment on a tragic love story develops.
De kellner en de levenden (The waiter and the living), probably Vestdijk's best novel, an allegory for the Final Judgment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_kellner_en_de_levenden
Great, thanks, never heard of him :)
There is a French translation of
De koperen tuin apparently (
Le jardin de cuivre). But I don't think any of the other titles in French correspond to
De nadagen van Pilatus and
De kellner en de levenden, unfortunately. I see
Les voyageurs (
The Travellers),
L'île au rhum (
The Rhum Island) and
Un fou chasse l'autre (
A mad man chases the other).
Well I'll start with
Le jardin de cuivre then... :)
Quote from: Linus on October 27, 2014, 05:04:00 PM
SWEDEN
Hjalmar Söderberg - Doctor Glas
(http://image.bokus.com/images2/9780385722674_200_doctor-glas_haftad)
Sweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).
Söderberg was always excellent at pinpointing feelings of loss, disgust and anguish in dealing with destiny, love and death.
Doctor Glas is his best and quite a quick read. It's thematically dark, but very "light on its feet" in style. It's brutally honest about the horrors of life, but is written beautifully, as though beauty justifies it all.
Why "culturally challenged" ? It is certainly not what I would have thought of Sweden.
I'll try to find Dr. Glas, there is apparently a French translation.
Quote from: vandermolen on October 27, 2014, 02:29:30 PM
Crime and Punishment hahaha. Actually it is my favourite novel but I am British so can't include it.
I'm sure we could have an entire topic on Russian literature :)
Quote from: vandermolen on October 27, 2014, 02:29:30 PM
Shakespeare 'The Tempest', 'King Lear'
Mmm... "What is your favourite Shakespeare play", that would be a nice discussion too.
Quote from: Florestan on October 27, 2014, 11:03:55 AM
Oh boy! You might have never heard about these names...
Here are some classics of the Romanian literature which Florestan endorses
Poems
Vasile Alecsandri - Poems
Mihai Eminescu -Poems
George Coșbuc - Poems
Dramas
Ion Luca Caragiale - The Lost Letter
Ion Luca Caragiale - Mr. Leonida Faces the Reaction
Ion Luca Caragiale - A Stormy Night
Novels
Camil Petrescu - The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War
George Calinescu - Otilia´s Enigma
Mateiu I. Caragiale - The Old Court Libertines (very approximate English translation)
If interested, please ask me more.
Eminescu is very famous, among the names you cited. There is a statue of him not far from my home.
(http://www.cosmovisions.com/images/Paris_Rue_Jean_Beauvais.jpg)
I'd like to read something of him, but French translations are out of print, and I'm not sure they are good anyway...
Except Cioran and Eliade, in French, Panaït Istrati is widely available and well-known.
Herta Müller, 2009 Nobel prize winner, is a Romanian who writes in German, mainly about life under Ceausescu.
Also, I bought one or two novels by Norman Manea a couple years back, but never found the time to read it yet. He is the only contemporary Romanian writer I see regularly in bookshops.
I don't know if you have anything to say about them.
Quote from: Linus on October 27, 2014, 05:04:00 PMSweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).
Söderberg was always excellent at pinpointing feelings of loss, disgust and anguish in dealing with destiny, love and death.
Doctor Glas is his best and quite a quick read. It's thematically dark, but very "light on its feet" in style. It's brutally honest about the horrors of life, but is written beautifully, as though beauty justifies it all.
Strindberg, Lindgren?
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 05:24:22 PM
Why "culturally challenged" ? It is certainly not what I would have thought of Sweden.
I'm not sure, but I suppose we've been a bit slow on catching up with what the rest of Europe has been up to ever since Medieval times. I feel I often have to look across the Baltic Sea (towards Germany or so) to find quality literature and music.
Quote
I'll try to find Dr. Glas, there is apparently a French translation.
Cool, I hope you like it. :)
Quote from: North Star on October 27, 2014, 05:30:13 PM
Strindberg
He would have been my next choice. ;D He's a bit of an exception to the rule though, which seems to have been his own opinion as well.
I love some of Selma Lagerlöf's writing, but it seems like she's untranslatable.
Quote
Lindgren?
Which one? ;)
Quote from: Linus on October 27, 2014, 05:48:31 PM
He would have been my next choice. ;D He's a bit of an exception to the rule though, which seems to have been his own opinion as well.
I love some of Selma Lagerlöf's writing, but it seems like she's untranslatable.
Which one? ;)
Gee, perhaps Astrid. :P
(Bach? which one?? :D)
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 09:09:17 AM
Since the United States is a big country, I will narrow my list down to my birth state, Indiana.
Dude! More greatest Hoosier books:
Ben-Hur by
General Lew WallaceRaintree County by
Ross Lockridge, which is an experimental epic of American life in the 19th century. It should be better known, but in our fading age of illiteracy, such a massive book has little chance of coming back.
Here in Ohio:
Winesburg, Ohio by
Sherwood Anderson.
Oak and Ivy poetry collection by
Paul Dunbar, whose works, like the novel by
Lockridge, should be better known. See also his novel:
The Sport of the Gods.
James Thurber: EVERYTHING! ;)
Louis Bromfield:
Early Autumn.
Conrad Richter:
The Ohio Trilogy: The Trees, The Fields, The Town, and the more famous
The Light in the Forest.
And how about three more books, even if they are NOT from America?*
The Water of the Hills: Jean de Florette,
Manon of the Spring by
Marcel Pagnol: Quite simply,
L'Eau des Collines rivals
Sophocles and
Euripides.
The Story of Mr. Summer aka
Mr. Summer's Story (
Die Geschichte des Herrn Sommer) - one of the greatest and most neglected books of the last 25 years - by
Patrick Süskind. "A story about childhood, but not for children."
(*I was tempted to mention certain other books by an Ohio author, but since they are not yet published... 0:) )
Quote from: Linus on October 27, 2014, 05:04:00 PM
Sweden is "culturally challenged" to say the least, but I think this book can compete internationally (almost).
The films of Ingmar Bergman might disagree.
Quote from: Cato on October 27, 2014, 06:37:01 PM
Oak and Ivy poetry collection by Paul Dunbar, whose works, like the novel by Lockridge, should be better known. See also his novel: The Sport of the Gods.
Paul Dunbar wrote the lyrics to the first all-African-American Broadway musical. He also wrote this poem, which later became even more famous when Maya Angelou quoted it in her memoirs:
Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 05:24:22 PM
Mmm... "What is your favourite Shakespeare play", that would be a nice discussion too.
Mmm... Since Shakespeare is hands-down the author I read most often (and I'm also constantly attending Shakespearean performances or seeing films of the plays), I'll just settle for answering that particular question.
From the tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Antony, Coriolanus. (Macbeth has been ruined for me by so many abysmal productions that I have trouble returning to it. On the other hand despite numerous abysmal productions I still love Romeo.)
From the histories: Henry IV 1 and 2.
From the comedies: the Dream, Much Ado, As You Like It, The Tenpest above all.
I'll give our Shakespeare thread a shake and see if we can have a good discussion of our favorites over there.
Quote from: Brian on October 27, 2014, 07:18:39 PM
I'll give our Shakespeare thread a shake and see if we can have a good discussion of our favorites over there.
That being the case, I'll copy my entry over there too.
Quote from: North Star on October 27, 2014, 05:55:11 PM
Gee, perhaps Astrid. :P
(Bach? which one?? :D)
Could have been Torgny, could have been Barbro. ;)
Quote from: Cato on October 27, 2014, 06:37:01 PM
Dude! More greatest Hoosier books:
Ben-Hur by General Lew Wallace
Raintree County by Ross Lockridge, which is an experimental epic of American life in the 19th century. It should be better known, but in our fading age of illiteracy, such a massive book has little chance of coming back.
Here in Ohio:
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.
Oak and Ivy poetry collection by Paul Dunbar, whose works, like the novel by Lockridge, should be better known. See also his novel: The Sport of the Gods.
James Thurber: EVERYTHING! ;)
Louis Bromfield: Early Autumn.
Conrad Richter: The Ohio Trilogy: The Trees, The Fields, The Town, and the more famous The Light in the Forest.
And how about three more books, even if they are NOT from America?*
The Water of the Hills: Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring by Marcel Pagnol: Quite simply, L'Eau des Collines rivals Sophocles and Euripides.
The Story of Mr. Summer aka Mr. Summer's Story (Die Geschichte des Herrn Sommer) - one of the greatest and most neglected books of the last 25 years - by Patrick Süskind. "A story about childhood, but not for children."
(*I was tempted to mention certain other books by an Ohio author, but since they are not yet published... 0:) )
Big yay for Sherwood Anderson! That book influenced me enormously. That's how to write prose!
Several mentions of Vonnegut. Another master prose stylist, best of his era perhaps. Still he wouldn't make my list because the
message and
how much he really really cares are IMO heavy handed and intrusive. But he could be funny! "Billy Pilgrim had a terrific wang by the way. You never know who's going to get one."
Some favorites of mines:
Andrei Bely - Petersburg
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Idiot
M.Ageyev - Novel with Cocaine
Vasily Grossman - Life and Fate
Vladimir Sorokin - The Norm
I'm hesitating to include something by Nabokov, because most of the things that I really like by him wasn't written in Russian language. Although, if i'm not mistaken Camera Obscura was originally published in Russian language.
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 05:11:54 PM
Great, thanks, never heard of him :)
There is a French translation of De koperen tuin apparently (Le jardin de cuivre). But I don't think any of the other titles in French correspond to De nadagen van Pilatus and De kellner en de levenden, unfortunately. I see Les voyageurs (The Travellers), L'île au rhum (The Rhum Island) and Un fou chasse l'autre (A mad man chases the other).
Well I'll start with Le jardin de cuivre then... :)
Sartre wanted
De nadagen van Pilatus to be translated, but he did not manage.
For good fun,
Rumeiland (
L'île au rhum) is a good choice, too. It's probably Vestdijk's best selling book worldwide, because it was translated in English, French and German (
Fahrt nach Jamaica) in its days. The central subject is the hunt of a noble Englishman for this lady:
(http://112.imagebam.com/download/qcG3tWATctcl2L0aezqZpA/36066/360659300/Bonney%2C_Anne_%281697-1720%29.jpg)
He's convinced he's able to find her, even though she's OPD (officiously/officially ;) pronounced dead).
Quote from: Marc on October 28, 2014, 01:37:41 AM
Sartre wanted De nadagen van Pilatus to be translated, but he did not manage.
For good fun, Rumeiland (L'île au rhum) is a good choice, too. It's probably Vestdijk's best selling book worldwide, because it was translated in English, French and German (Fahrt nach Jamaica) in its days. The central subject is the hunt of a noble Englishman for this lady:
He's convinced he's able to find her, even though she's OPD (officiously/officially ;) pronounced dead).
OK, so I'll see about this one too, after
The copper garden anyway.
From Belgium and Hungary:
Willem Elsschot: Lijmen (1924, translated as "Soft Soap" and collected in Three Novels, 1965)
Kaas ("Cheese", 1933, translated in 2002 by Paul Vincent [ISBN 1-86207-481-X])
Louis paul Boon:In 1953 he published the work that now stands as his greatest masterpiece, Chapel Road (De Kapellekensbaan, translated by Adrienne Dixon), which he began to write as early as 1943. Its dazzling construction combines several narrative threads, including an almost postmodern one where the writer and his friends discuss how the story should develop further. Another one is an extensive reworking of the most classic medieval work in the Dutch language, the twelfth-century story of Reynard the fox.( Wiki)
A most interesting figure:
Jean Ray is the best-known pseudonym among the many used by Raymondus Joannes de Kremer (8 July 1887 – 17 September 1964), a prolific Belgian (Flemish) writer. Although he wrote journalism, stories for young readers in Dutch by the name John Flanders, and scenarios for comic strips and detective stories, he is best known for his tales of the fantastique written in French under the name Jean Ray. Among speakers of English, he is famous for his macabre novel Malpertuis (1943), which was filmed by Harry Kümel in 1971 (starring Orson Welles). He also used the pseudonyms King Ray, Alix R. Bantam and Sailor John, among others. (Wiki)
After World War I the poet Paul van Ostaijen was an important representative of expressionism in his poems.
And it is good to re-read Maurice Maeterlinck. Not only Pelléas, Tintagilles or l'Oiseau bleu. His play 'The blind" was recently staged again .
Apart from Sandor Marai, I recently discovered Deszö Kosztolànyi (1885-1936) : Skylark and Nero, the bloody poet.
Another find: Zsuzsa Bank(1965) : The swimmer.
P.
Quote from: Cato on October 27, 2014, 06:37:01 PM
(*I was tempted to mention certain other books by an Ohio author, but since they are not yet published... 0:) )
Strooth, I felt the tug of just that temptation, myself!
Quote from: Ken B on October 27, 2014, 08:13:20 PM
Several mentions of Vonnegut. Another master prose stylist, best of his era perhaps. Still he wouldn't make my list because the message and how much he really really cares are IMO heavy handed and intrusive. But he could be funny!
Agreed, entirely.
Harry Mulisch is by far the best author in the Netherlands:
I mention only two books:
Harry Mulisch - The Discovery of Heaven (his magnum opus and his "mother book")
Harry Mulisch - The Composition of the World (his philosophical work and his "father book")
Quote from: Cosi bel do on October 27, 2014, 05:24:22 PM
Except Cioran and Eliade, in French, Panaït Istrati is widely available and well-known.
Istrati is very good and his very life could be the subject of a page-turner. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panait_Istrati (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panait_Istrati)
Quote
Herta Müller, 2009 Nobel prize winner, is a Romanian who writes in German, mainly about life under Ceausescu.
Also, I bought one or two novels by Norman Manea a couple years back, but never found the time to read it yet. He is the only contemporary Romanian writer I see regularly in bookshops.
I don't know if you have anything to say about them.
I haven´t read anything by them so I cannot comment.
Other great Romanian novelists: Liviu Rebreanu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Rebreanu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Rebreanu), Mihail Sadoveanu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Sadoveanu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihail_Sadoveanu), Cezar Petrescu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cezar_Petrescu (http://cezar%20petrescu%20http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cezar_Petrescu)
Poets: Lucian Blaga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Blaga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian_Blaga), Tudor Arghezi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_Arghezi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_Arghezi),Ion Barbu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Barbu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Barbu)
On this page http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/ (http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/) you can find a lot of original Romanian poetry and some translations (English, French, German, Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish)
Quote from: karlhenning on October 28, 2014, 03:04:34 AM
Strooth, I felt the tug of just that temptation, myself!
Well, thank you! ;)
Quote from: Ken B on October 27, 2014, 08:13:20 PM
Several mentions of Vonnegut. Another master prose stylist, best of his era perhaps. Still he wouldn't make my list because the message and how much he really really cares are IMO heavy handed and intrusive. But he could be funny!
Vonnegut (I believe) wanted to become a 20th-century
Mark Twain, but yes, the ideology was too overt.
Quote from: Linus on October 27, 2014, 05:48:31 PM
I love some of Selma Lagerlöf's writing, but it seems like she's untranslatable.
I´ve read
Gosta Berlings Saga (in Romanian translation) and it is one of my favorite books. There is also a translation of
Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige which I can hardly wait to read to my son when he´ll have the proper age.
Hugo Claus cannot be absent:
The Sorrow of Belgium (Dutch: Het verdriet van België) is a novel by Hugo Claus published in 1983. It's his best known work. In 1994 it was translated in English by Arnold J. Pomerans.
The novel is classified as bildungsroman and comprises two parts:
"The Sorrow" (Dutch: Het verdriet); 27 numbered chapters with titles
"of Belgium" (Dutch: van België); text not divided in chapters.
It tells the story of the childhood and youth of Louis Seynaeve (Claus's alter ego) in the Flemish village of Walle (a part of Kortrijk) from 1939 to 1947, coinciding with the period Second World War, the German occupation of Belgium, and its aftermath.(Wiki).
A personal favorite is writer Christine D'haen
Christine D'haen (25 October 1923 – 3 September 2009) was a Flemish author and poet. She was born in Sint-Amandsberg and died at Bruges.
D'haen studied Germanic philology at the University of Ghent and continued her studies in Amsterdam and Edinburgh. She settled in Bruges and became a teacher at high school. She made an inventory of the handwritings of Guido Gezelle while working at the Gezelle archive. She wrote a biography of Guido Gezelle and also translated work of Hugo Claus into English.
Quote from: Florestan on October 28, 2014, 03:26:00 AM
I´ve read Gosta Berlings Saga (in Romanian translation) and it is one of my favorite books. There is also a translation of Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige which I can hardly wait to read to my son when he´ll have the proper age.
Yes I've read Gösta Berling too, but I don't think the translation was good, I found this book difficult to follow. I wouldn't be surprised if it had been cut.
I like Nils Holgersson but it seems there's a newer French translation which is the first complete one. I'll have to read it again then :)
Quote from: pjme on October 28, 2014, 03:30:27 AM
Hugo Claus cannot be absent:
+1 I like his poetic works, should read more of them
Quote from: Soapy Molloy on October 27, 2014, 03:07:38 PM
Sorry to nitpick Jeffrey but the genius behind this was Geoffrey Willans "as any fule kno" :-[ ;) ;D
Chiz, moan, drone, what a fulish mistake! I was too busy to get the spelling of 'compleet' right and then spelt poor Geoffrey's name wrong. Willans died sadly young in 1958 - a great loss I think. Glad you are another fan of the book - definitely desert island material for me. I will search out the other book you mention which I was not aware of. Many thanks for alerting me to it.
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 27, 2014, 03:04:48 PM
Nice list, you have a lot to choose from. Many of my favorites are Brits (unlike with music), but I'm like you and the Russian.... :)
8)
Thank you Gurn. I just bought a new copy of a The Great Gatsby which I always enjoyed. My mother was an admirer of the short stories of O'Henry as am I . Also the stories of Edgar Alan Poe.
Yes, we are spoilt for choice over here with writers. Yet we were once described as 'the land without music' which I certainly do not believe.
Quote from: DaveF on October 27, 2014, 03:19:01 PM
Coo ur gosh looks like we need a Molesworth thred here which (gramer) I would hav included xcept I limited myself to welsh lit chiz. That other weed r s tomas is also joly good and anyone who sa otherwise I will uterly tuough up ect.
Definitely, although the exchanges will, I suspect, be lost on many who are unfamiliar with the book (as any fule kno.)
Quote from: vandermolen on October 28, 2014, 07:56:25 AM
My mother was an admirer of the short stories of O. Henry as am I .
I almost included him as an "Ohio author" by virtue of his time spent here, but some of that time was forced: he was in the state prison for embezzlement! $:) 0:)
Quote from: Ken B on October 27, 2014, 08:13:20 PM
Several mentions of Vonnegut. Another master prose stylist, best of his era perhaps. Still he wouldn't make my list because the message and how much he really really cares are IMO heavy handed and intrusive. But he could be funny!
If I had not restricted myself to Indiana, I never would have mentioned Vonnegut. There are dozens of American authors I appreciate more.
Quote from: vandermolen on October 28, 2014, 07:56:25 AM
Thank you Gurn. I just bought a new copy of a The Great Gatsby which I always enjoyed. My mother was an admirer of the short stories of O'Henry as am I . Also the stories of Edgar Alan Poe.
Yes, we are spoilt for choice over here with writers. Yet we were once described as 'the land without music' which I certainly do not believe.
Much as I love O.Henry, I'll trade him to you if I can have Saki in return. :)
8)
Quote from: Brian on October 28, 2014, 10:36:31 AM
If I had not restricted myself to Indiana, I never would have mentioned Vonnegut. There are dozens of American authors I appreciate more.
It isn't about appreciation, is it. It's about enjoyment, and there aren't a lot of American authors whom I enjoy more. I wasn't restricted to Vonnegut, I chose him intentionally. :)
8)
Kurt Vonnegut's 'Blue Beard' - he signed my copy after a lecture, a wonderful conversationalist!
William Faulkner 'The Sound and the Fury'
Stephen King 'Insomnia'
F. Scott Fitzgerald 'Tender is the Night'
Quote from: Marc on July 03, 2010, 05:21:32 AM
My favourite Dutch poet is Rutger Kopland.
Here's my fave poem by him:
Zoals de pagina's van een krant
in het gras langzaam om
slaan in de wind, en het is de wind
niet, die dit doet,
zoals wanneer een deken in de avond,
buiten, ligt alsof hij ligt
te slapen, en het is de deken
niet, zo
niets is het, niets dan de verdrietige
beweging van een hand, de weerloze
houding van een lichaam,
en er is geen hand, er is
geen lichaam, terwijl ik toch
zo dichtbij ben.
Translation by James Brockway:
Like the pages of a newspaper
flapping slowly to and fro in the grass
and it is not the wind
that is doing this,
as when of an evening, a blanket,
left outdoors, lies as though it lay
asleep, and it is not the blanket,
so near it is
to being nothing, nothing but the grieving
gesture of a hand, the vulnerable
attitude of a body,
and there is no hand, there is
no body, while I, after all,
am so close.
Taken from the collection: Rutger Kopland, Memories of the Unknown. London, Harvill Press, 2001.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Memories-Rutger-Kopland/dp/1860468950
James Brockway (1916-2000) was a very good translator of the poetry of Rutger Kopland (1934-2012), but somehow the atmosphere of the original poem cannot be equalled. I've read this poem (in Dutch) a few times aloud to friends and even colleagues, but my voice always breaks during the final verse.
Quote from: Cato on October 28, 2014, 10:32:19 AM
I almost included him as an "Ohio author" by virtue of his time spent here, but some of that time was forced: he was in the state prison for embezzlement! $:) 0:)
Leo, yes, I think I knew that. Agree about James Thurber - my dad loved his work. Recently introduced my daughter to 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty', such a great story. My daughter said that it reminded her of me. ::)
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 28, 2014, 10:43:07 AM
Much as I love O.Henry, I'll trade him to you if I can have Saki in return. :)
8)
Oh yes, I like Saki too. And let's not forget P.G. Wodehouse!
Quote from: vandermolen on October 28, 2014, 01:35:11 PM
P.G. Woodhouse!
Never heard of him.
Wodehouse, on the other hand.. 8)
Quote from: North Star on October 28, 2014, 01:41:51 PM
Never heard of him.
Wodehouse, on the other hand.. 8)
Well done for spotting the deliberate mistake hahahaha :)
Have corrected it now.
One of my colleagues is a Woodhouse.
Do you call him/her "Plum"?
I'm from the country of Kundera and Hrabal but somehow, my favourite Czech books all come from the 1920's.
Jan Weiss – Dům o tisíci patrech / The House of a Thousand Floors
A sci-fi novel written in 1929. Its main protagonist awakens on a stairway, doesn't remember anything and starts his descent through this gargantuan dome, ruled by an omnipotent despot. As the dome is continually built, its hierarchy is reversed - the lower the floor, the higher the class, with different sections representing differect aspects of society. Think Orwell on acid.
Karel Čapek – Válka s mloky / War with the Newts
You might be familiar with Čapek as the guy who invented the word 'robot' (along with his brother Josef) for his play R.U.R. and this book follows a similar concept. People discover an intelligent breed of large newts and enslave them which eventually leads to a revolt and war. Čapek was responding to the rise of national socialism and there are scenes in the book which are even more chilling now that we know how history turned out.
Eduard Bass – Klapzubova jedenáctka / The Klapzuba's Eleven
Something lighthearted to offset all the gloom. This is a witty and hilarious story about a certain Mr. Klapzuba and his eleven sons, who form a soccer team. They're simple boys from the countryside and Klapzuba trains them into an unstoppable force that conquers the whole world, sometimes by very unorthodox means (when they play Barcelona, Klapzuba puts his boys into a Michelin Man style suits to prevent injuries from illegal tackles). They end up playing for their lives on an tropical island, inhabited by cannibals.
(http://img.radio.cz/pictures/knihy/bass_capek_klapzubova_jedenactka.gif)
(by coincidence, the book was illustrated by the aforementioned Josef Čapek)
Quote from: Florestan on October 28, 2014, 03:26:00 AM
I've read Gosta Berlings Saga (in Romanian translation) and it is one of my favorite books.
Ah, how wonderful to hear that it translates well into some languages. :)
It seems that much of its appeal is lost in English; I recommended
Gösta Berlings saga to an Australian woman once and it was a huge mistake. The galloping of hooves in the night seems inconsequential in a language as "airy" as English. (Coincidentally, poetry is generally beautiful in e.g. English and French, but very often clumsy and pretentious (as if poetry didn't have that label attached to it already!) in Swedish.)
Quote from: Linus on October 31, 2014, 01:37:26 PM
Ah, how wonderful to hear that it translates well into some languages. :)
It seems that much of its appeal is lost in English; I recommended Gösta Berlings saga to an Australian woman once and it was a huge mistake. The galloping of hooves in the night seems inconsequential in a language as "airy" as English. (Coincidentally, poetry is generally beautiful in e.g. English and French, but very often clumsy and pretentious (as if poetry didn't have that label attached to it already!) in Swedish.)
I strongly disagree. I think poetry written in Swedish has its own qualities and strength. It is just different. I agree with that French and English have qualities allowing for greater variation and expression, while Swedish is a bit stark and less flowing in structure. However, I certainly would never label it as "clumsy and pretentious" (I presume you were generalizing and not thinking about a specific poet?). I suspect that each language has its own unique and beautiful qualities when it comes to poetry. Translation of poetry (as well as fiction) is a marshland as the translation will simply be an echo of the original regardless of the ability of the translator. It will be a qualified echo or a disastrous one. The only way to find out is to compare the two versions.
Quote from: Moonfish on October 31, 2014, 02:53:42 PM
I strongly disagree. I think poetry written in Swedish has its own qualities and strength. It is just different. I agree with that French and English have qualities allowing for greater variation and expression, while Swedish is a bit stark and less flowing in structure. However, I certainly would never label it as "clumsy and pretentious" (I presume you were generalizing and not thinking about a specific poet?). I suspect that each language has its own unique and beautiful qualities when it comes to poetry. Translation of poetry (as well as fiction) is a marshland as the translation will simply be an echo of the original regardless of the ability of the translator. It will be a qualified echo or a disastrous one. The only way to find out is to compare the two versions.
No, Linus has a point. For example:
How do I love thee bork bork
Let count bork bork bork the ways
I love thee bork bork to the depth bork and breadth and height bork bork bork It may be moving, but it's just not graceful.
Quote from: Ken B on October 31, 2014, 03:03:25 PM
No, Linus has a point. For example:
How do I love thee bork bork
Let count bork bork bork the ways
I love thee bork bork to the depth bork and breadth and height bork bork bork
It may be moving, but it's just not graceful.
No, Ken! That is just a result of your complete and utter inability to translate a Swedish poem. >:D >:D >:D
Hur jag älskar dig?
Låt mig räkna vägar.
Hmmm, the repetition of the a-dipthongs (which of course I have no idea as to correctly pronounce them) gives it more lilt than the original English.
(Translation by Babylon.com)
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 31, 2014, 04:44:14 PM
Hur jag älskar dig?
Låt mig räkna vägar.
Hmmm, the repetition of the a-dipthongs (which of course I have no idea as to correctly pronounce them) gives it more lilt than the original English.
(Translation by Babylon.com)
My Swedish is really rusty, but this might be closer:
Hur älskar jag dig?
Låt mig räkna dessa sätten (vägar -> Let me count the roads :D)
Quote from: North Star on October 31, 2014, 04:56:09 PM
My Swedish is really rusty, but this might be closer:
Hur älskar jag dig?
Låt mig räkna dessa sätten (vägar -> Let me count the roads :D)
Your version is even more graceful.
Interesting how many words in the computerized version are direct cognates of English words, albeit some of them obsolete.
Hur. How
Jag. I
Dig. Thee (think German dich, another cognate)
Lat. Let
Mig. Me (similarly think German mich)
Rakna. Reckon. (In the US at least, now a Southern idiom for guess or suppose)
Vagar. Ways
Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 31, 2014, 05:20:46 PM
Your version is even more graceful.
Thanks :D
Oh, and Älskar (eL-scar), rÄkna (recna), dIg ('day'), mig (rhymes with dig), dEssa, sÄttEn, almost all of the vowels are pronounced like the English long 'A' or short 'e' (bet)
And Låt is of course (loot, o's as in door)
QuoteInteresting how many words in the computerized version are direct cognates of English words, albeit some of them obsolete.
Hur. How
Jag. I
Dig. Thee (think German dich, another cognate)
Lat. Let
Mig. Me (similarly think German mich)
Rakna. Reckon. (In the US at least, now a Southern idiom for guess or suppose) [The day of reckoning...]
Vagar. Ways
Yes, the connections of English and Scandinavian languages are very interesting. Much of the basic vocabulary (especially all those great four-letter words [three or five in some cases] :D) in English has common roots with Swedish (and all the other Scandinavian languages [of which Finnish is not one], and German.
Quote from: Moonfish on October 31, 2014, 02:53:42 PM
I strongly disagree. I think poetry written in Swedish has its own qualities and strength. It is just different. I agree with that French and English have qualities allowing for greater variation and expression, while Swedish is a bit stark and less flowing in structure. However, I certainly would never label it as "clumsy and pretentious" (I presume you were generalizing and not thinking about a specific poet?). I suspect that each language has its own unique and beautiful qualities when it comes to poetry. Translation of poetry (as well as fiction) is a marshland as the translation will simply be an echo of the original regardless of the ability of the translator. It will be a qualified echo or a disastrous one. The only way to find out is to compare the two versions.
To be honest, I base this opinion on only fragmentary experience with poetry, so I may very well be wrong. ;)
I think I've mainly found it a problem with Swedish Romantic poets. They seem to have been immediately influenced by their French brethren and tried to emulate their metre which doesn't suit Swedish rhythm at all.
My knowledge of linguistics is limited, but I suspect that one reason for the "clumsiness" of Swedish and similar languages is that you have to bog down nouns with suffixed definite articles, while English and other languages can let the noun stand alone, floating freely, and it will still sound natural. (Eng.: "the rock", Sw.: "stenen") If you try the same with Swedish (in order to find the same "free-floating" feel or rhythm), it will seem unnatural or unnecessarily bombastic.
Quote from: Ken B on October 31, 2014, 03:03:25 PM
No, Linus has a point. For example:
How do I love thee bork bork
Let count bork bork bork the ways
I love thee bork bork to the depth bork and breadth and height bork bork bork
It may be moving, but it's just not graceful.
:laugh:
The Swedish Chef may very well be our foremost cultural export, which isn't even ours. ;D
Quote from: Linus on October 31, 2014, 07:15:33 PM
:laugh:
The Swedish Chef may very well be our foremost cultural export, which isn't even ours. ;D
I thought the chef was from Wisconsin...! ::)
Tanizaki, Junichiro - One of the greatest Japanese writers. Many of his works such as Diary of Mad Old Man, The Tattooer and other stories deal with desperate desire and obsession. The best kind of eroticism, but without vulgarity. The Makioka Sisters (the original title is more poetic: Sasameyuki or A Light Snowfall) is different: a story about daily life of the sisters of a wealthy family, with a central focus on one of the sisters trying to find a marriage partner, which works as traction of the story. Long, with a lot of cultural details, but never boring.
Abe, Kobo - Almost any of his works is very good. The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, The Ark Sakura, Secret Rendezvous, etc. Often associated with Kafka for his nightmarish and surrealistic style.
Mishima, Yukio - The Sea of Fertility (1-4) is a monumental work completed just before his (in)famous suicide (harakiri after agitating the defense forces.) The main theme is the ālaya-vijñāna of Buddhism: a story about the ultimate beauty, truth and fraud. Very elegant prose.
Natsume, Soseki - I Am a Cat, Kusamakura, Sanshiro. Intellectual, humorous, cool, lyrical. I think his works contain some restricted eroticism (except the first one.)
Quote from: torut on November 01, 2014, 10:29:33 PM
Tanizaki, Junichiro - One of the greatest Japanese writers. Many of his works such as Diary of Mad Old Man, The Tattooer and other stories deal with desperate desire and obsession. The best kind of eroticism, but without vulgarity. The Makioka Sisters (the original title is more poetic: Sasameyuki or A Light Snowfall) is different: a story about daily life of the sisters of a wealthy family, with a central focus on one of the sisters trying to find a marriage partner, which works as traction of the story. Long, with a lot of cultural details, but never boring.
Abe, Kobo - Almost any of his works is very good. The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, The Ark Sakura, Secret Rendezvous, etc. Often associated with Kafka for his nightmarish and surrealistic style.
Mishima, Yukio - The Sea of Fertility (1-4) is a monumental work completed just before his (in)famous suicide (harakiri after agitating the defense forces.) The main theme is the ālaya-vijñāna of Buddhism: a story about the ultimate beauty, truth and fraud. Very elegant prose.
Natsume, Soseki - I Am a Cat, Kusamakura, Sanshiro. Intellectual, humorous, cool, lyrical. I think his works contain some restricted eroticism (except the first one.)
These are 4 authors I deeply admire.
- Tanizaki : among his shorter novels I particularly like
Naomi (this is the English title, the French title translates as
An Insane Love). I still have to read
The Makioka Sisters and anticipate a great pleasure :)
- Kobo Abe is more difficult but a great read.
- Mishima is a giant, I liked a few shorter novels (
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion in particular) and still have to read
The Sea of the Fertility.
- Soseki is the one I prefer among these 4 I think.
I Am a Cat is a wonderfoul book funny and with a sensitive prose, even in French translation. I also liked
Botchan a great deal.
Japanese literature is one of the richest and of the most coherent and subtle around the world. I'm usually quite sorry people only know Murakami's best-sellers, that I mostly find poor and simplistic when compared to other authors, also including Yasunari Kawabata (not all his novels are great, but The Sound of the Mountain leaves an enduring impression), Osamu Dazai, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Akira Yoshimura, and of course older tales (shorter or longer...) and poetry.
Quote from: Cosi bel do on November 02, 2014, 01:13:48 AM
These are 4 authors I deeply admire.
- Tanizaki : among his shorter novels I particularly like Naomi (this is the English title, the French title translates as An Insane Love). I still have to read The Makioka Sisters and anticipate a great pleasure :)
- Kobo Abe is more difficult but a great read.
- Mishima is a giant, I liked a few shorter novels (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion in particular) and still have to read The Sea of the Fertility.
- Soseki is the one I prefer among these 4 I think. I Am a Cat is a wonderfoul book funny and with a sensitive prose, even in French translation. I also liked Botchan a great deal.
Japanese literature is one of the richest and of the most coherent and subtle around the world. I'm usually quite sorry people only know Murakami's best-sellers, that I mostly find poor and simplistic when compared to other authors, also including Yasunari Kawabata (not all his novels are great, but The Sound of the Mountain leaves an enduring impression), Osamu Dazai, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Akira Yoshimura, and of course older tales (shorter or longer...) and poetry.
Kobo's earlier works are very pedantic and difficult, but the later works are more entertaining without losing the quality. Dazai is also great. Probably
No Longer Human is the most famous, but I prefer the short stories that are succinct and very well crafted. I read only a few books of Kawabata and Akutagawa, and have not read Yoshimura's books yet. I want to check them out.
I tried some of Murakami's books and I was deeply disappointed. His earlier works have a certain atmosphere of detachment which may have appeal, but his novels are mostly of poor quality, IMO. However, he is influential to writers of the younger generation, and some of them are fairly nice.
I am a big fan of Mishima. He's been translated into Russian several years ago by a famous Russian detective stories writer. Haven't read the tetralogy yet, because I haven't purchased all the books in the set yet, but they're on my list to read.
I couldn't get into Kobo Abe. I tried reading Woman in the dunes, but I just wasn't getting into it. I will try to read it again sometime.
And since Haruki Murakami has been mentioned, I should say that I like his early novels, especially the sheep trilogy. He's getting back to his earlier style of writing in his new book, by the way, and mentions Liszt in it a lot.
Quote from: Artem on November 02, 2014, 12:12:54 PM
I am a big fan of Mishima. He's been translated into Russian several years ago by a famous Russian detective stories writer. Haven't read the tetralogy yet, because I haven't purchased all the books in the set yet, but they're on my list to read.
I couldn't get into Kobo Abe. I tried reading Woman in the dunes, but I just wasn't getting into it. I will try to read it again sometime.
And since Haruki Murakami has been mentioned, I should say that I like his early novels, especially the sheep trilogy. He's getting back to his earlier style of writing in his new book, by the way, and mentions Liszt in it a lot.
I saw the news that the Listz album became a best seller in Japan, thanks to the book. :) The early books (Hear The Wind Sings, Pinball, Sheep Chase, Hard-Boiled Wonderland) are memorable, though I was not so enthusiastic. I gave up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, then tried 1Q84, which I found very disappointing. However, 1Q84 used Janáček's Sinfonietta impressively, that made me re-listen to that wonderful music. He is a close friend of Ozawa and wrote/translated a few books about Classical music and Jazz.
I think Philip Glass composed a soundtrack of a movie about Mishima. I want to listen to that sometime. I have not watched the movie.
I also thought that 1Q84 was bad. However, his new book is much better.