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choose? This poll is closed. |
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| Go Down, Moses |
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2 | 14.29% |
| Swann's Way |
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2 | 14.29% |
| The Man with Compound Eyes |
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3 | 21.43% |
| Njal's Saga |
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7 | 50.00% |
| Declare by Tim Powers |
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0 | 0% |
| Total: | 12 votes | ||
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Let's start the new year right. A few options: 1) Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner quote:Go Down, Moses is a collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel. The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one." Though originally published as a short story collection, Faulkner considered the book to be a novel in the same way The Unvanquished is considered a novel. Because of this, most editions no longer print "and other stories" in the title. 2) Swann's Way by Marcel Proust The first volume of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu quote:Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorff, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide was famously given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication and, leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic errors, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay the cost of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316–7). Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous madeleine cake episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory. In early 1914 Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Lost_Time#Volume_One:_Swann's_Way 3) The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi quote:It is easy to see why Wu's English-language publishers compare his latest novel to the work of Murakami and David Mitchell. His writing occupies the space between hard-edged realism and extravagantly detailed fantasy, hovering over the precipice of wild imagination before retreating to minutiae about Taiwanese fauna or whale-hunting. Semi-magical events occur throughout the novel: people and animals behave in mysterious ways without quite knowing why they are doing so; and, in a Murakami-esque touch, there's even a prominent cat. But beyond these superficial similarities lies an earnest, politically conscious novel, anchored in ecological concerns and Taiwanese identity. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/28/man-compound-eyes-wu-mingyi-review 4) Njal's Saga by Unknown quote:Njáls saga (modern Icelandic pronunciation: About this sound listen (help·info)) (also Njála (About this sound listen (help·info)), Brennu-Njáls saga (About this sound listen (help·info)) or "The Story of Burnt Njáll") is a thirteenth-century Icelandic saga that describes events between 960 and 1020. The principal characters are the friends Njáll Þorgeirsson,[1] a lawyer and a sage, and Gunnar Hámundarson, a formidable warrior. Gunnar's wife instigates a feud that leads to the death of many characters over several decades including the killing by fire of the eponymous "Burnt Njáll". The saga deals with this process of blood feuds in the Icelandic Commonwealth, showing how the requirements of honor could lead to minor slights spiralling into destructive and prolonged bloodshed. Insults where a character's manhood is called into question are especially prominent and may reflect an author critical of an overly restrictive ideal of masculinity.[2] Another characteristic of the narrative is the presence of omens and prophetic dreams. It is disputed whether this reflects a fatalistic outlook on the part of the author. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nj%C3%A1ls_saga One day poll only! if you have other suggestions post them in this thread. As always, please only vote if you are willing to participate and read and post if your choice of book is selected.
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Dec 31, 2017 20:40
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| # ? May 2, 2024 03:00 |
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Let me plug The Man with the Compound Eyes properly. It's a bit like early Haruki Murakami, but Taiwanese, and good. It begins intertwining the stories of Alice, a suicidal professor whose husband and son have just died, and Atile'i, a boy on a Polynesian island who is about to follow his tribe's customs by leaving the island forever. Atile'i's voyage, accompanied by sperm whales who used to be other boys exiled from the island, is interrupted when he crashes into an enormous island of plastic waste, which soon enough crashes into Taiwan's east coast. The story spirals out to absorb various other characters' stories; it's not a plot-heavy book. It absorbs the stories of Taiwanese aboriginals, Chinese Taiwanese,* Polynesians, and foreigners, engineers, hunters, and prostitutes. It's full of secrets, very relevant, moving, apocalyptic, and optimistic, and it's a corner of the literary world that I think will be new to most goons. E: Oh yeah and the Vintage translation is only a couple of years old, should be easy to get your hands on.
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Jan 1, 2018 05:35
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Safety Biscuits posted:Let me plug The Man with the Compound Eyes properly. It's a bit like early Haruki Murakami, but Taiwanese, and good. It begins intertwining the stories of Alice, a suicidal professor whose husband and son have just died, and Atile'i, a boy on a Polynesian island who is about to follow his tribe's customs by leaving the island forever. Atile'i's voyage, accompanied by sperm whales who used to be other boys exiled from the island, is interrupted when he crashes into an enormous island of plastic waste, which soon enough crashes into Taiwan's east coast. The story spirals out to absorb various other characters' stories; it's not a plot-heavy book. It absorbs the stories of Taiwanese aboriginals, Chinese Taiwanese,* Polynesians, and foreigners, engineers, hunters, and prostitutes. It's full of secrets, very relevant, moving, apocalyptic, and optimistic, and it's a corner of the literary world that I think will be new to most goons. that does sound good, but on the other hand we have nordic bloodfeuds
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Jan 1, 2018 21:29
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Safety Biscuits posted:Let me plug The Man with the Compound Eyes properly. It's a bit like early Haruki Murakami, but Taiwanese, and good. It begins intertwining the stories of Alice, a suicidal professor whose husband and son have just died, and Atile'i, a boy on a Polynesian island who is about to follow his tribe's customs by leaving the island forever. Atile'i's voyage, accompanied by sperm whales who used to be other boys exiled from the island, is interrupted when he crashes into an enormous island of plastic waste, which soon enough crashes into Taiwan's east coast. The story spirals out to absorb various other characters' stories; it's not a plot-heavy book. It absorbs the stories of Taiwanese aboriginals, Chinese Taiwanese,* Polynesians, and foreigners, engineers, hunters, and prostitutes. It's full of secrets, very relevant, moving, apocalyptic, and optimistic, and it's a corner of the literary world that I think will be new to most goons. This sold me, sounds very interesting and something that would be totally new to me.
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Jan 2, 2018 04:11
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why didnt you put rebecca on the list why alloy
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Jan 2, 2018 04:27
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chernobyl kinsman posted:why didnt you put rebecca on the list I couldn't decide between rebecca and Jamaica Inn and in the end I decided it was facing pretty stiff competition already so I thought I'd slip it into a different month without as many strong contenders
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Jan 2, 2018 05:38
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OR I could flip the table and we could do Declare but maybe everyone's read that already anyway
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Jan 2, 2018 17:30
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i'd read Declare
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Jan 2, 2018 20:06
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I just checked Declare out of the library, so I guess voting that. But all of these look good and are going on my read-eventually list anyway.
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Jan 2, 2018 21:21
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Ok, let's go with Njal's and save the others for next month.
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Jan 2, 2018 21:30
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Ok, let's go with Njal's and save the others for next month. Any recommendation on which translation to get?
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Jan 4, 2018 00:59
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Any recommendation on which translation to get? penguin
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Jan 4, 2018 02:27
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chernobyl kinsman posted:penguin Penguin publishes both the robert cook and the magnusson translations...
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Jan 5, 2018 01:22
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oh i forgot about magnusson. cook is fine, it has more recent scholarship behind it. alternatively you could just learn old norse; it takes legitimately a weekend to become conversant in it. be a man.
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Jan 5, 2018 03:55
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chernobyl kinsman posted:oh i forgot about magnusson. cook is fine, it has more recent scholarship behind it. any online tutorials?
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Jan 5, 2018 06:44
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:any online tutorials? yes, actually! this one is pretty good. there's also an excellent book by Jesse L. Byock, a great scholar who's done a ton of translation work. i'm only being slightly facetious when i say you can pick it up in a weekend; i know a girl who was enrolled in an ON class but only went to about 3 lectures over the course of the semester, then sat down saturday morning and just...learned the language for the final on Monday. passed the class with something like a high B. it took me a few weeks to be able to workthrough it, but then i never gave it my full attention. it's an inflected language, so if you know how those work you'll already be at a significant advantage,* but there are a few things that make ON really easy to pick up: 1) the case endings are super simplified. no declension bullshit, not too many irregularities. 2) the grammar is sensible. word order makes sense, and usually isn't wildly different from english. 3) this is the big one - small vocabulary. you can read most extant ON texts with maybe a decent grasp on ~300 words and not have to look up too much 3a) a TON of cognates. 'angr' means anger, 'gestr' means guest, and so on. this gets easier, too, once you learn the pronunciation, and start figuring out that 'hrafn' means raven. * and if by chance you have Old English (or to a slightly lesser extant German), this'll be a cake walk.
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Jan 5, 2018 16:57
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