Mark F’s last login was 1 hour ago. « hide recent activity
Mark F is now reading Q Road : A Novel.
Mark F rated McSweeney's Issue 32 3 days ago.
Mark F finished reading McSweeney's Issue 32 3 days ago.
Mark F finished reading Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son 3 days ago.
Mark F rated Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son 3 days ago.
Mark F is planning to read Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays.
Mark F is planning to read McSweeney's Issue 29.
Mark F is planning to read Merlin: Knowledge and Power Through the Ages.
Mark F rated The Museum of Innocence 2 weeks ago.
Mark F finished reading The Museum of Innocence 2 weeks ago.
Mark F’s last login was 1 hour ago. show recent activity »
My pleasure. I must admit that I'm unfamiliar with Bloom's work. The article, however, fascinated me with all the "enabling" discussion. That level of literary deconstruction always catches my eye but have to concede that Bloom County rather than Harold Bloom is far more my speed where such poetry is concerned! (smile)DL
Saw your review of The Anxiety of Influence by Bloom and thought you might find this to be interesting.http://www.conversationalreading.com/2009/04/when-youre-belated-make-lemonade.html#commentsDL
Thanks for that Mark - very much appreciate it. Yes, I was pretty disappointed that such a lengthy book lacked a "moral" exploration of the events it depicted. I have just read the whole of Mendelsohn's review: thank you for the recommendation. He's quite right when he says that:"...what gets lost is precisely any sense of Max as a human brother. For as appalling as the descriptions of actual atrocities are in this book, they pale in comparison to the willfully repellent fantasies that are the atrocities' counterparts on the novel's Oresteian plane."and later in his peroration when he says of such material that:"its effectiveness works against the success of the other large element, the historical/documentary: either Aue is a human brother with whom we can sympathize (by which I mean, accept that he is not simply "inhuman"), or he is a sex-crazed, incestuous, homosexual, matricidal coprophage."It's the best review I've read so far. Antony Beevor's review in the Times was shockingly bad. (He described Aue's sequence of fantasies in his sister's abandoned house as "the most extraordinary and beautiful passages of the book"). Ugh ... one would think Beevor would know better.***************Anyway, you should check out the book "Every Man Dies Alone" by the German writer Hans Fallada. Written in 1947, it's all about German resistance to the Nazis and has received its first English translation just this year. It's getting great reviews, and as you read through it, you can see why. It's a*real* morality tale.
Thanks for such a comprehensive review and suggestions regarding "The Diagnosis."
You remind me I've had the U.S.A. trilogy staring down on me from the bookcase for too many years.Looks like 'Midcentury' and 'Winter of our Discontent' both came out in '61! I think, all said, I'm none the worse for having missed that era of American life, "exciting" as it may have been. People were having a time.Roth has become a very decent writer over the past decade or so, but his early stuff (Columbus, Portnoy) don't really cut it today and his second rate Woody Allen impersonation from the 80s is hard to take seriously. I'm currently reading Updike's shockingly racist (among other things) 'Rabbit Redux' and have no idea why anyone should ever read him: just purple prose and REALLY bad sex. He's now officially at the top of my hit list of authors whose reputations need tarnishing.
Thanks for the link. I was really surprised by how the mature, less romantic, Steinbeck is still pitch perfect for today's America in 'Travels with Charlie'. It also reminded me just how insipid all these big name, post-war (capital 'A') American writers (Updike, Roth, DeLillo etc.) are.
Murr is a wonderful read, it's a shame Hoffmann didnt live long enough to complete the trilogy he had planned...we can compare notes on Sputnik, I ordered it myself today, and I'll probably read it soon, Crumeys never wait for long for attention in my immense and dangerously tottering Pile...he's something of a best-kept secret here in the states, he's more well-known and readily available in Britain...
lol...of course Tomcat Murr's available in English, I couldnt have read it otherwise...it's a Penguin classic, and you can get it at amazon or b&n...as for Crumey...he only has a handful of books, so you can start anywhere really, the first one I read was Pfitz, but my favorite was Mobius Dick...he also has a new one out, Sputnik Caledonia, it was just released last month so it's still in hardback...Crumey is a physicist, btw, so his books always reflect that...
hi, mark...thanks for the friending...oh yeah, I love nyrb books, I discovered them about a year ago when I picked up The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell...they're such a nice change from all the usual lit from Penguin, et al...been collecting them ever since...I actually discovered Hoffmann through another writer...Andrew Crumey...he's a Scot, and his books are very odd and interesting, and often very funny, in his Mobius Dick Hoffmann's The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr was part of the story, so I picked it up and it turned out to be a brilliant book, I love Hoffmann's sly, impish wit...
Hi Mark,You should be able to find 'Fantoms' in my owned library as it is at this moment one of my too numerous unread books. Unfortunately I read to many books at once to take the time to comment on them, especially as summarization is not among my talents.
Hey, the author of Watching the Traffic Go By is one of Stel's good friends. I just met him when we were in LA last month. Let me know what you think of the book!
Allende is exceptional. I don't think of her as strictly a Latin American author. Though her novel The House of Spirits definitely falls into the magical realism category, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who I also like) and others, much of her work is more difficult to categorize. She has lived in the United States for many years, and I think her writing reflects that.
I picked up Grendel because I saw a reference to it while working on a lesson on Beowulf. I always like fiction that reworks a classic from the villain's point of view, so I was intrigued.
Actually, I already finished! I just forgot to update that here. I'm not sure how I felt about it yet. I liked it, but I think I'm still digesting.
Thanks for the nudge. I'll be sure to stock some poetry on my shelves first chance I get!
I've been meaning to read Against the Day for awhile now, but a tome like that is pretty intimidating. I really liked The Crying of Lot 49, but then again, it's about 1/20th the size of Against the Day.
And for years, a friend of mine has been recommending White Noise, and it finally found its way to the top of my reading list. I'm about 2/3rds done with it, and I love it! Except that I generally read a lot before I go to bed, and it's not the most uplifting book... But as you said, the weather is supposed to be bad this weekend, so hopefully I can finish it today.
So Kalamazoo College has a summer common reading program for all the incoming freshmen, where the school sends every first year the same novel, and then has the author come during orientation to spend the week doing lectures and hosting discussions about it. Last year, it was The Known World, so Edward P. Jones actually came to my school! I didn't get to hear him speak because I was working, but we read the novel in my English major sophomore seminar. I had tried to read it over the summer and couldn't get into it, but I ended up liking it a lot once I read it in class.
Oh no! This is so addicting! Not only do I love books, I love telling people what books I've read. A fatal combination.
