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What should I read by Émile Zola? Roger Pearson's translation of Germinal seems to be popular.
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Jun 26, 2018 16:02
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all of them. germinal is a good starting place but so are l'assommoir, la bete humaine, nana, and therese raquin
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Jun 26, 2018 17:03
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Thank you for the suggestions! I will pass them forward. Except Ayn Rand. You can't fool me by suggesting the greatest american philosopher in fiction thread
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Jun 26, 2018 20:16
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Franchescanado posted:What should I read by Émile Zola? Roger Pearson's translation of Germinal seems to be popular. Radio Spiricom posted:all of them. but The Earth is a personal favourite
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Jun 26, 2018 21:08
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Any good translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich? I only have the P&V one
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Jun 27, 2018 00:37
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spb posted:Any good translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich? I only have the P&V one Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 03:56
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lynn solotaroff's was the one i was recommended by several people and the one i read so i say that one
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Jun 27, 2018 16:22
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Rereading Madame Bovary, I grow more and more certain that if French literature excels in anything, it's the depiction of human pettiness. No nation understands it better. I just read it for the first time and I'm blown away. The characters and lifestyles depicted feel more "modern" than actually being alive IRL today. Nothing has changed in 150 years.
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Jun 29, 2018 15:24
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I had that same experience reading Herman Bang's Stuk. Obviously the language has changed over time, but the characters are extremely human and could exist in any era.
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Jun 29, 2018 16:15
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Babbitt is fun because you have to remind yourself that it just didn't come out.
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Jun 29, 2018 18:06
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Missed marginalia discussion by a few days but every time people talk about it I just remember my copy of Confessions of a Mask where next to one of the passages where he's meticulously describing a bunch of young dude's muscly, glistening chests giving him a boner, the reader wrote "gay???" On an unrelated note, anybody here read any Mario Bellatin? Just picked up his Illustrated Biography of Mishima and I can already tell I want to check out more of his fiction, but it sounds like there was some dispute with his publisher and now most of it is out of print / never got translated to English. Curious if anyone happens to know another source for any of it, since buying ratty "collectible" paperbacks for $50 on ebay is not particularly enticing.
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Jun 30, 2018 03:11
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You should be looking on AbeBooks, not eBay.
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Jun 30, 2018 03:15
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I almost exclusively buy used books but for some reason i havent found any marginalia One seller, though, always put in a random bookmark which i love, so i have some recipies "from the kitchen of NN" and an old thank you card, and also a drawing that i for months didnt realize was actually pornographic
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Jun 30, 2018 03:58
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Babbitt is fun because you have to remind yourself that it just didn't come out. Sinclair Lewis is extremely underrated. Babbitt is definitely his masterpiece, but Arrowsmith is great as well. It's probably the best American science fiction novel.
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Jun 30, 2018 17:55
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Missed marginalia discussion by a few days but every time people talk about it I just remember my copy of Confessions of a Mask where next to one of the passages where he's meticulously describing a bunch of young dude's muscly, glistening chests giving him a boner, the reader wrote "gay???" you bought my old copy
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Jun 30, 2018 18:40
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:next to one of the passages where he's meticulously describing a bunch of young dude's muscly, glistening chests giving him a boner, the reader wrote "gay???"
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Jun 30, 2018 19:43
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Is babbit underrated i thought people love it. Morte d'Urban is also very good in the same vein if you can stand papists.
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Jun 30, 2018 21:02
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Missed marginalia discussion by a few days but every time people talk about it I just remember my copy of Confessions of a Mask where next to one of the passages where he's meticulously describing a bunch of young dude's muscly, glistening chests giving him a boner, the reader wrote "gay???" My favourite marginalia comment is related to my graduate advisor, who wrote in the margins of a very highly cited (but ultimately incorrect) chapter, after a declarative statement was made (along the lines of "following from this, it is clear that...") , "ONLY TO AN IDIOT" to the side. It was a real jar when reading then made me laugh, then I found out it was a thing to bond over for a few cohorts of students that also read the same chapter
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Jul 1, 2018 06:47
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Mr. Squishy posted:Is babbit underrated i thought people love it. Morte d'Urban is also very good in the same vein if you can stand papists. I thought it's the best Sinclair Lewis novel so IDK
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Jul 1, 2018 06:49
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I've never read Sinclair Lewis but he pisses me off when I go to look for Wyndham Lewis books and just find copies of Babbitt instead.
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Jul 1, 2018 08:35
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Wyndham had a persona he called "the enemy" which was just him in a floppy hat insulting anyone who night have given him money. It was quite some hat.
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Jul 1, 2018 14:16
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Mr. Squishy posted:Wyndham had a persona he called "the enemy" which was just him in a floppy hat insulting anyone who night have given him money. It was quite some hat. It's really cool how he would develop really specific criteria that art needed to be good and would then ruthlessly insult even the art of his personal friends when it didn't meet the criteria.
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Jul 1, 2018 14:35
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He also submitted a (very good, conservative) portrait of ts eliot to the royal academy just to hold a press conference when it was rejected out of spite.
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Jul 1, 2018 15:41
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Franchescanado posted:What should I read by Émile Zola? Roger Pearson's translation of Germinal seems to be popular. L'Assommoir is my favorite, probably because Gervaise is such a sympathetic character. Nana is second favorite for the opposite reason; Nana herself is an unrepentant sociopath and it's riveting to watch her cut a bloody swathe through all the people she encounters. La Bete Humaine is best for mis-en-scene, with all of the details great and small about the railroad (I liked Pot-Bouille for the same reason, though it is much less good as a novel) and a tense, spring-wound plot. Germinal has one of the most  scenes in all literature in regards to populist revenge, and it was the first novel I read that really drove home to me the relationship between literature and the human experience. I recognized my friends and family in my dirt-poor, ignorant little small town all over again in the miners of Montsou and I related so hard to Etienne that for me Germinal subbed in for the place that Catcher in the Rye seems to have in most adolescent literary awakenings. I've tried a lot of different translations, but Roger Pearson's are the ones I like best. (Bear in mind that I don't read or speak French.)
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Jul 1, 2018 18:41
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Just finished Confessions of a Mask and enjoyed it. Looking for recommendations for further reading. I would like something with a big cast of characters - I liked The War at the End of the World a lot, and Midnight’s Children was also enjoyable. Please be kind and recommend me something sprawling
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Jul 1, 2018 18:44
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Ever read Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon? That was a good sprawling read, with the Learn'd Dog and the invention of ketchup.
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Jul 1, 2018 18:51
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just finished Confessions of a Mask and enjoyed it. Looking for recommendations for further reading. I would like something with a big cast of characters - I liked The War at the End of the World a lot, and Midnight’s Children was also enjoyable. Please be kind and recommend me something sprawling The Sea of Fertility
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Jul 1, 2018 19:37
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just finished Confessions of a Mask and enjoyed it. Looking for recommendations for further reading. I would like something with a big cast of characters - I liked The War at the End of the World a lot, and Midnight’s Children was also enjoyable. Please be kind and recommend me something sprawling V. by Thomas Pynchon is cool.
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Jul 2, 2018 00:30
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just finished Confessions of a Mask and enjoyed it. Looking for recommendations for further reading. I would like something with a big cast of characters - I liked The War at the End of the World a lot, and Midnight’s Children was also enjoyable. Please be kind and recommend me something sprawling A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:18
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The Tale of Genji
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Jul 2, 2018 03:45
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Is it me or is almost all the "serious literary fiction" of the last few decades just boring middle aged dudes writing about being horny and boring?
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Jul 2, 2018 03:53
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FreudianSlippers posted:Is it me or is almost all the "serious literary fiction" of the last few decades just boring middle aged dudes writing about being horny and boring? It's just you
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Jul 2, 2018 04:07
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Thank you guys, your recommendations are great. I will probably get Mason & Dixon since V. is one of my favorite books ever. I also already have Spring Snow on my Kindle, but want to extend my Mishimas a little bit more. Tale of Genji - I feel rather intimidated by its pedigree. Finally, A Glastonbury Romance - the only recommended title that was completely unknown to me, looks like it could be what I’m looking for.
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Jul 2, 2018 06:49
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Tale of Genji - I feel rather intimidated by its pedigree. Here's a pretty informative article on the book's translations. Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 07:42
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just finished Confessions of a Mask and enjoyed it. Looking for recommendations for further reading. I would like something with a big cast of characters - I liked The War at the End of the World a lot, and Midnight’s Children was also enjoyable. Please be kind and recommend me something sprawling 100 Years of Solitude seems like an extremely obvious one e: also, Genji is good but The Tale of the Heike, also translated by Royall Tyler, is better and features an even more sprawling set of characters
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Jul 2, 2018 08:30
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FreudianSlippers posted:Is it me or is almost all the "serious literary fiction" of the last few decades just boring middle aged dudes writing about being horny and boring? original take there
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Jul 2, 2018 10:29
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FreudianSlippers posted:Is it me or is almost all the "serious literary fiction" of the last few decades just boring middle aged dudes writing about being horny and boring? There's quite a bit of stuff that isn't like that but it doesn't get reviewed in newspapers so if you're not an insane literary man you won't hear about it.
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Jul 2, 2018 10:52
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Jikes posted:Ever read Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon? That was a good sprawling read, with the Learn'd Dog and the invention of ketchup. I second this. Sometimes I think M&D is better than GR. From a character perspective it certainly is. I'll also add The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth to this list. Just finished it yesterday. Absolutely hysterical book.
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Jul 2, 2018 10:53
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Finally, A Glastonbury Romance - the only recommended title that was completely unknown to me, looks like it could be what I’m looking for. It's very cool, sort of like a sprawling 19th century realist novel in some ways but he has all these weird modernist quirks, like for example when he takes the time to explain how the lifeforce permeating all things is reacting to things the characters are doing.
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Jul 2, 2018 10:56
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 05:59 |
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just finished Confessions of a Mask and enjoyed it. Looking for recommendations for further reading. I would like something with a big cast of characters - I liked The War at the End of the World a lot, and Midnight’s Children was also enjoyable. Please be kind and recommend me something sprawling Have you heard the good news about Naguib Mahou and his Cairo trilogy, my friend?
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Jul 2, 2018 11:35
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