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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 13, 2024 07:15 |
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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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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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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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Any good translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich? I only have the P&V one
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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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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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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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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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Babbitt is fun because you have to remind yourself that it just didn't come out.
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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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You should be looking on AbeBooks, not eBay.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 ![]() 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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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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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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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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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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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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The Tale of Genji
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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# ? Jun 13, 2024 07:15 |
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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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