What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (6 Viewers)

[St. Fechin]

Currently reading Robert Walser's The Assistant which is surprisingly tedious and outdated. Padded out by the blandest observations. Nauseating tone. Perhaps it's the translation but I'm just gagging to be finished with it so I can move on to John Cheever's Falconer or Graham Greene's The Power & the Glory.

Yeah? I'm (sort of) a fan of his short pieces and I've been planning on reading his novels in the near future. I find Walser to be almost entirely padding, which I don't have a problem with actually, I think he's a very 'pure' writer. It's the sort of thing I enjoy reading at the time, but struggle to recall much of later. I'm certainly not sure his style would be able to sustain a long narrative without irritating the reader.
Who's the translator btw?

 

[jonah]

Ready to begin this. Anyone read any Kincaid?

 

[Nate Champion]

Yeah? I'm (sort of) a fan of his short pieces and I've been planning on reading his novels in the near future. I find Walser to be almost entirely padding, which I don't have a problem with actually, I think he's a very 'pure' writer. It's the sort of thing I enjoy reading at the time, but struggle to recall much of later. I'm certainly not sure his style would be able to sustain a long narrative without irritating the reader.
Who's the translator btw?

Susan Bernofsky.

 

[St. Fechin]

Susan Bernofsky.

Right. Christopher Middleton is his other main English translator as far as I know. I think I got more out of his translations, the first Walser I read was a Middleton collection called 'The Walk'. Although...

Beautifully written short short stories about absolutely nothing.

I posted this in Nov '09, I still think that sums up Walser for me.
I don't have a problem with precious Teutonic dandies (in small doses anyway).

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

just about finished the above,enjoyable stuff and the illustrations complete it,highly recommended.next up is

 

[Ottimo_Massimo]

Book I read over several weeks on the train

... wrong thread?

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

until we get a 'books i read on the train' thread it'll do.
was looking at that in bookstore last week,any use?

 

[Ottimo_Massimo]

Some of the tales (the British attempts to relieve Gordon for example) are so tall that it almost reads like a novel at times... crazy white folk!

The counterbalance to the swashbuckling stuff are the stories of the unnecessary cruelties perpetrated against the indigenous populations.

Personally I'd highly recommend it. The author does a very good job of highlighting just how farcical it was for European powers to fight over strips of sand, swamp, forest, etc (often for little or no obvious economic gain) that most Europeans at the time would be hard pressed to locate on a map.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

picked this up for cheap in waterstones. any use?

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

Book I read over several weeks on the train

... wrong thread?

I have that, it's becoming less and less likely that I will read it but maybe I will.

 

[rettucs]

finally finished

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

I'm almost finished this. Couldn't engage with it at all. I'm disappointed overall and am a little baffled by some of the things I read in various reviews, etc. Its a bit of a nothing book. Some good ideas, great potential, but ultimately a book I ended up skimming over for the most part.

 

[Ottimo_Massimo]

I have that, it's becoming less and less likely that I will read it but maybe I will.

This should convince you to give it a go

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[hugh]

I've read Scramble For Africa. It's good. Much more readable and engrossing than you might think.

 

[IFF]

picked this up for cheap in waterstones. any use?

i've been meaning to check it out but i decided to give my local bookshop a chance to see if they'd stock it and so haven't got it yet.

so if they get it in before next time i'n in dublin, i'll get it there but if not, i'll get it in dublin

 

[Nate Champion]

Right. Christopher Middleton is his other main English translator as far as I know. I think I got more out of his translations, the first Walser I read was a Middleton collection called 'The Walk'. Although...



I posted this in Nov '09, I still think that sums up Walser for me.
I don't have a problem with precious Teutonic dandies (in small doses anyway).

Is William Gass' foreword any use? He doesn't seem like he'd be into Walser at all. I started Omensetter's Luck last summer but it was a little too intense for me at that moment in time. Hoping to get back into it, seemed to be a strange blending of Faulkner and Barthelme.

Bernofksy admitted in the afterword it was hard to nail the Swiss (Swiz?) German nuance of some of his phrasing...


Anyway, I just started The Fallen [journo bloke decides to track down everyone who's ever played in The Fall] by Dave Simpson so I'm hoping to knock some banter out of that.

...And a shit-load of plays I've had to read for college.

 

[Richie]

Recently finished Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, and currently about halfway through his first one An Evening Of Long Goodbyes. Very enjoyable stuff. An Evening of Long Goodbyes reminds me a little bit of A Confederacy of Dunces.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

This is a great little read. I picked it up for 2 bones in Galway, which was nice. It's mad how many facets of history you hear about but are completely ignorant of.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

on a related note i picked up niall fergusons 'empire' today,gonna get stuck into it tonight.

 

[St. Fechin]

Is William Gass' foreword any use? He doesn't seem like he'd be into Walser at all. I started Omensetter's Luck last summer but it was a little too intense for me at that moment in time. Hoping to get back into it, seemed to be a strange blending of Faulkner and Barthelme.

Bernofksy admitted in the afterword it was hard to nail the Swiss (Swiz?) German nuance of some of his phrasing...


Anyway, I just started The Fallen [journo bloke decides to track down everyone who's ever played in The Fall] by Dave Simpson so I'm hoping to knock some banter out of that.

...And a shit-load of plays I've had to read for college.

Just had a reread of it there, Gass's introduction was OK, insightful in parts, but a bit odd; very heavy on interpretation some of which struck me as obscure/dubious. He mashes Walser's biographical details in with his work to produce his result in a way which seemed careless to me, although I'm sure it's tempting to do so. On the other hand, early in the essay he emphasizes Walser's ironic distance from his narrators: all that trivial detail and conventional description is supposed to arose your suspicions. I'm not sure how this applies to the novels.
I've no familiarity with Gass's work at all, but funnily enough he compares Walser's late work to Barthelme. He certainly seems to be an admirer of Walser: "the effect is complex, always wholly his own"; "like the purest poetry"; the novel Jakob von Gunten is "extraordinary"; Walser was "a postmodernist well before the fashion"...

J.M. Coetzee has an essay on Walser in Inner Workings. A review of two of the novels I think? He comes across as someone who doesn't like other people being into Walser. The essay is good though, more objective than Gass's and more accessible.

Btw, I read The Fallen myself a while back, it's good fun alright, you're obviously a fellow of some considerable taste.

 

[rettucs]

read the vast majority of this on saturday (about 40 pages to go). Pleasantly surprised by it. Its very well written and captures the interest sufficiently.

I think a lot of the charm of the book, for me anyway, is its setting and how vividly its setting is portrayed. Dublin in the 60s and the now, then through the ages where both meet. It is quite obviously the hand of someone who knows his Dublin very well.

Though I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed it half as much if the same story were written, based in some other place I'm not so familiar with. A needless consideration though. For people here, I'm sure it'll hold the same appeal. Good reading, not too taxing on the brain.