Forum / Recommendations
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James Lloyd DavisFeb 13, 04:11amIrish noir is one of my personal delights & diversions. You can enjoy it as much for the language as for the strength of plot and characterizations that puts literary fi9ction to shame.
I just finished The Rage by Gene Kerrigan. Read it straight through without falling to sleep, which is rare these days.
Just started reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, which I hadn't read since the late sixties. Made me want to find and read again his other books, The Glass Bead Game, Steppenwolf, Narcissus and Goldmund, Beneath the Wheel, any one of which I'd recommend to anyone who has not read them.
The Glass Bead Game is fascinating and lovely in its way, easily his best from my perspective, a rare book as books go. The game itself is described only peripherally, never with details enough to grasp its meaning and reality, an elusive intellectual exercise that is at once either superfluous or necessary or both. It is the society that maintains the game that counts. One could not exist without the other, much like the relationship between God and Man.
It's a beautiful book either way.
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whatwouldbukowskidoFeb 13, 04:31amI bought/read every HH book I could find in every bookstore in America I could find while traveling cross-country at the age of nineteen.
The car got full of 'em (and of course many others).
Only have dim memories of The Glass Bead Game, but it's the one that comes to mind.
Years later I picked up a copy of his later poems. Can't remember the name of the book, but it was wonderful.
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James Lloyd DavisFeb 13, 09:46am
Sometimes during a drought, it helps to revisit the old watering holes.
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J.A. PakFeb 13, 06:28pmI have Siddhartha in my queue. Got distracted by Don Quixote. Reading the Edith Grossman translation and really enjoying it. Translations make the difference.
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Sam RasnakeFeb 14, 12:06amThe Glass Bead Game, The Glass Bead Game, The Glass Bead Game. Absolutely. Yes.
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Joani ReeseFeb 14, 02:13amJust finished Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Found myself unable to stop myself from writing annotations in the margins and underlining gorgeous sentences. What an amazing book. I highly recommend it.
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Letitia CoyneFeb 14, 09:40amSorry to be slightly off topic here, but Joani's comment reminded me of a difference in 'good' books. One kind of story that almost demands reader interaction: the slow re reading of passages or annotation or marking in some way. Online [serialized] these are the stories that move readers to comment and participate and interact directly with the author and other readers.
Equally good stories are those that do not allow a pause. The reader enters and is carried along, not wanting to put it down when life intrudes, not thinking to speak to the author or anyone else about the book until it is finished.
It seems to me that, online at least, the first kind are more successful in attracting attention. I personally enjoy the second kind more, generally.
I loved Siddhartha in the 70s and have often thought I should read it again. That's all.
Cheers.
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James Lloyd DavisFeb 14, 03:44pm
Joani, Bel Canto is an intriguing book, but one that I've only scanned. MaryAnne has a copy and I stole it from her shelf. One day soon, I'll read it, hopefully before she notices it's missing.
Letitia, off topic is fine.
J.A. my copy of Siddhartha is a reprinting of the original New Directions edition from 1951, for which the publisher did not even think to credit the translator. That's unthinkable, since I agree that translations make all the difference, especially with writers like Hesse, whose language is so precise and sensual.
A little research reveals that the translator for the New Directions edition was Hilda Rosner, who worked for New Directions and translated several of the Hesse books, including Gertrude and Journey to the East.
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J.A. PakFeb 14, 07:15pm
James, wow, I wonder what was behind New Directions' decision not to credit Rosner. I downloaded a copy of Siddhartha that has both the German and English translation. My German is poor but I thought it'd be worth a try.
On another note, I love reading the lively debates on Amazon about which translations are the best. Reviewers actually compare snippets to prove their case. Based on the Don Quixote reviews, I sampled three different translations before buying the Grossman version.
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James Lloyd DavisFeb 14, 07:27pm
New Directions did give her credit in their editions, but this more recent publisher who used the same content with New Directions' permission, MJF Books, did not. Her name does not appear anywhere inside.
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James Lloyd DavisFeb 14, 07:29pm
Having read all of Dostoevski in the plodding Constance Garnett translations as an adolescent, I was thrilled to find newer translations in the 60's that gave his work life.
Translation is an art.
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J.A. PakFeb 14, 07:42pm
James, so agree that translation is an art. Beowulf only made sense to me after reading the Seamus Heaney version.
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Joani ReeseFeb 14, 10:48pm
My favorite word in the entire Heaney translation of Beowulf is the first, that little fragment, "So." Using the word in that context to begin such a marvelous work says everything about the author's ethos, his humility, his self-assurance, and his power as a story teller. Wonderful translation.
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Ann BogleFeb 14, 11:36pmI read Siddhartha aloud (that was my second reading of it), a great decision.
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J.A. PakFeb 15, 02:36am
Joani, I love that opening too. Have you read the recent discussion of that opening word? http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/listen-beowulf-opening-line-misinterpreted-for-200-years-8921027.html. In spite of what the scholar says, I still think Heaney got the spirit and intention right. That, after all, is the art of translation, not the literal slavery of the word.
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Joani ReeseFeb 15, 02:58am
J.A.: Haven't read that yet, but I will now. I am old enough to refuse to take scholarly criticism with too much seriousness if it's poop. Pretty arguments are still fallacies if they're inept, no matter how pretty they are. Will read it tomorrow when I can focus. Thanks!
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Gary HardawayFeb 15, 03:42amSo is such a perfect way to open Beowulf.
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whatwouldbukowskidoFeb 15, 04:16am
I re-visit this one every couple of years:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/930614.Mr_Pine_s_Mixed_Up_Signs
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Frankie SaxxFeb 15, 11:45pm
That Seamus Heaney reads pretty good too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaB0trCztM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsxxg5P-DnY -
Carol ReidFeb 19, 12:49amBack to Hermann Hesse ( just for a moment ) I've just picked up Narcissus and Goldmund and to my surprise, I think I like it. Perhaps it's the translation, perhaps just the story, but I've never taken to Hesse's books and this one, I think I am going to enjoy.
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James Lloyd DavisFeb 19, 01:11am
It is a good one. Let us know what you think when you're done.
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Carol ReidMar 03, 05:38pm
It's a beautifully written, almost magical book. Very different from my usual fare. Sensual in a transcendent way, spiritual in a very grounded way. Very glad I'm having this reading experience.
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James Lloyd DavisMar 04, 03:56am
Kurt Vonnegut, in an essay, portrayed the resurgence of Hesse during the '60s as a brief neo-romantic fling. Hesse, the man who gave us spectacular and utterly beautiful closings to his novels, brought the young in the era of peace and love during a time of strife and war to a new plane of understanding, to a kind of Chautauqua conference in the poetic realm of speculation, something the culture of their parents lacked. He redefined the meaning of life in artful, spiritual ways.
I think Hesse would have appeal today, when the world at large is an angry place, riddled with mean streets of the mind, even minefields with a need for an army of hopelessly sincere young catchers in the rye to save us all.
(Forgive the Salinger reference in a post about Hesse, but they fit so well together. Seymour Glass would have made a marvelous Magister Ludi, I think.)
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Carol ReidMar 09, 04:56am
Lucinda Kempe suggested I read the Collected Stories of Richard Yates. So glad I listened. One of the blurbs on the back cover says, "What's exhilarating about Yates is not his grasp of The Truth, but the purity of his vision and the perfection of his craft". That's it.
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James Lloyd DavisMar 09, 06:13am
I've always thought Richard Yates would be an interesting person with whom to go bar hopping in a strange city. His writing style is wonderful and his characters strained and somewhat angry. Sign of the times, I think.
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James Lloyd DavisMar 09, 06:13am
Was. Was.
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