After all the films, albums, books and comics that get recommended in this forum, I thought it might be nice to let people know what we think of the stuff they tricked us into spending our money on! So I’ve put together something about Legion of the Damned, by Sven Hassel, an author Dang’s been plugging relentlessly, and who’s just had four of his novels re-released in the UK. Maybe you’d like to do something similar! Or, just say something about war fiction, or maybe mention a way in which Dang’s made your life better/ much much worse!
Legion of the Damned
“Let us promise each other that those of us, or the one of us, who escapes alive from this will write a book about this stinking mess in which we are taking part. It must be a book that will be one in the eye for the whole filthy military gang, no matter whether German, Russian, American or what.”
Legion of the Damned, then, is Sven Hassel’s first crack at giving that filthy military gang their shot in the eye, with Sven joining the platoon of soldiers eager to make good on the possibility that the pen is mightier than the anti-tank mine.
Such war fiction undertakes a nearly impossible task: attempting to rend language into such twisted shapes as to portray the carnage of war to audience. It’s a world few of the readers will have experienced, and you can guarantee they’ll have almost no frame of reference to. What images, what events in my life can Sven refer to in order to illustrate the experience of fighting the Red Army on the frozen steppe? About the craziest thing I ever saw was a bouncer beating up a guy in a nightclub to the sound of No Doubt’s About A Girl, in eerie strobe lit slow motion. Was war as crazy as that? “Yeah”. Wow.
So it is that such books as Legion of the Damned are littered with events that are “unspeakable”, and “indescribable”. Like All Quiet on the Western Front before it, the book sometimes has to let the silence do the talking. Language just isn’t up to the job of describing war. Whatever could be, except war itself? Sven Hassel seems well aware of these problems, frequently appealing for leniency as he sets about describing these things that defy description. “What I have to tell is so tragic,” he writes, “even now all these years afterwards, I am sometimes so oppressed by it that I feel that I have the right to ask for your help I have failed from your own vocabulary”.
What, then, makes Hassel special? He’s not the first former soldier to write a book about war being rubbish and goddamit, at least Remarque didn’t have to ask me to do half the work for him. Why was Hassel until recently regarded as one of the best authors not published in UK?
For one thing, it’s the bile spouting craziness that runs through this awesome book. Sven hates Nazi Germany, the country for whom he went to war. He hated them right from the start. I mean, not just in the way everyone hates them; but in a serious bug-eyed screaming with disgust kind of way. The book bulges with contempt, and the prose seems as though it’s struggling to contain Sven’s endless scorn. You know how you hate Richard Madely? Well. This is much worse.
The effect is intoxicating, though. For whatever you may have heard about Hassel’s graphic accounts of combat, the first half of the book contains little fighting. Instead it’s a series mistreatments, ineptitudes, absurdities and indignities at the hands of the Fuhrer’s fighting force. The narrator is a broken, battered man pushed to the edge of human endurance before he even so much as gets a sniff of the Red Army.
Oddly enough, once he hits the front lines the book brightens up a bit, and its here that the novel really hits its stride. If he falls short at describing war, he more than makes up for it when it comes to describing the men who fought in the war. His fellow soldiers are described with an affection so formidable it easily matches up to the energy of his tirades against Hitler and his SS. I can’t think of another book that champions friendship so fiercely, and with such with such enthusiasm. It’s the sense that the book isn’t just “one in the eye” for the military filth, it’s a genuine, earnest attempt at honouring the memories of those the author fought with. Not just with, actually. Against, too. Some of the strongest sections detail the bonds shared between the opposing sides, best of which is an utterly absurd section dealing with the lengths they went to not to have to fight each other.
“”It transpired that there was a regular agreement that the Russians fired off a few shells every day between four o’ clock and five thirty, while we fired ours from three o clock and four thirty., each shell dropping nively into no man’s land where it did no-body any harm. That satisfied the generals. When there was any shooting with machine guns or small arms, they were naturally fired up into the air. If the Russians sent up a four starred red light, it meant there was a staff officer inspecting them and that for the sake of appearances they would have to do a little shooting with automatics. We had all sorts of signals that helped make life very pleasant for everyone.” Maybe I was wrong and Legion of the Damned could relate itself to my life: They have elaborate systems for bunking off work, too!
Such is the overpowering affect of this camaraderie that when the inevitable casualties start coming in, it feels like a punch in the gut. You want funny Sven back. You want the bits where they stole chickens and nobbed nurses. It’s fucked, because you know you’re reading about real people.
We come now to the crowning glory of the book, and that’s Sven’s unflinching candour. He’s not shy about admitting his own part in these atrocities, gunning down a man just to prove that he could shoot a particularly hard to hit Russian (“A point of honour. How could I? How could I kill a man for the sake of my pride”). It all adds to the powerful honesty, and the sense of truth that brings gives the book its roaring vitality and raw veracity.
It’s a weird feeling reading this new edition, republished in the UK after all this time in a cheap paperback edition with a lurid and inappropriate cover. It draws attention to what hasn’t been said, the soldiers who never had someone like Sven Hassel to write them well. It’ Its absence from UK bookstores almost made the characters own tragic fears coem true: “When you write our book,” said Porta, screwing his flute back together, “give all the girls my kind regards. There won’t be a soul who’ll bother to read it, for you can’t offer the public books that aren’t about little Miss Switchboard and the boss’s stalwart son in a double room. Or she’s the nurse and he the head surgeon. At any rate none of the characters can be lousy. As I said, you’ll never get rich off our book. People just don’t care.”
Posted by Boy Racer (Member # 498) on :
I didn't go and see Van Helsing after your superb review. Does that count?
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
Thorn, to say that I've just let out an enormous sigh of relief would be to show a pitiful ignorance of the word ginormous.
I presume the general perception of Sven Hassel comes from a glance at the book covers which appear to have been carefully crafted to totally misrepresent the book's actual contents. In fact, here's what Catch 22 might look like given the same treatment:
If you fancy reading more by any chance, the next two books are Wheels Of Terror and Comrades Of War which actually run together in sequence unlike the rest of the series. I've usually got spare copies if you want to save Amazocash.
Posted by Boy Racer (Member # 498) on :
LOL at MachoHeller.
The covers are what has always put me off Hassel's stuff in the past. Generally featuring some gurning, gritted toothed Stormtrooper firing his machine gun across a lurid WWII battlescape, they are the sort of thing I associate with the more extreme end of the real ale community.
Might have to give his stuff a bash now.
[ 01.09.2004, 04:50: Message edited by: Boy Racer ]
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
Well, yeah. As Dang says the covers are absurdly mis-representative, seeming to suggest nothing more than a rubbishy blood splattered boys own adventure, with Nazi sympathies.
I especially like the SS font in Hassel. I mean... why?
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: I especially like the SS font in Hassel. I mean... why?
This has been raged over by his fans for many years. They introduced the squared off haSSel in the 70s, but even then it wasn't actual SS runes. The latest books go that bit further. The weird thing is that in an email "interview" we did with the author in 1999 he said he now had control over the cover designs and that this wouldn't happen again. Senile old twit.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
Bamba and Astro banging on about the joy of Lamb rekindled the vague memory of liking a song of theirs in 6th form, but never getting round to buying it.
Bamba then sent me 3 shiny discs of Lambchoons FOR FREE! And it was good.
As TV breakfast news makes me start the day IN RAGE, I like to listen to music in the 15-20 minutes between teeth-cleaning and leaving. However, being a nice, considerate housemate I listen to it at about Vol 8 on my new stereo (that was a quarter round the volume knob on my old stereo, if you recall). It's somewhat of a challenge to find albums that still sound good at radio volume as well as at Proper Loud. Lamb are one of the few bands who can do this. I also like the fact that I don't know the name of any of the songs.
Books:
Well done to kovacs for discovering, and others for enthusing about China Mieville, although I was a bit late to that party. The total of fantasy authors outside of Tolkien that I rate has now doubled!
I was distinctly underwhelmed by Ben-biggedup Atomised. It was allright, like, but not particularly special or memorable to me. The Ben-approved and brilliant War Against Cliche moves him back up in the RespeckRatings though.
Also Black Mask's The Killer Inside Me was just about worthy of being mentioned so often.
I think Thorn's Louche-crush will be severely tested by her response to his David Lodge recommendation; I'm sure we are all nervously awaiting that outcome.
Posted by MiscellaneousFiles (Member # 60) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: The Joy of Lamb
Alpine breeze, pure rainwater and subtropical sunshine rain down upon green grass and rich clover pastures. Sheep are free range in this mystical land and are in no need of hormones or steroids.
It is not surprising once you taste New Zealand lamb to understand that a quality premium product begins with the foundations that nature intended. We are proud to stand behind these attributes and offer you a quality array of lamb and related protein products year round, unsurpassed in taste and tenderness.
Baaaaaa Posted by Waynster (Member # 56) on :
AMP introduced me to "Spaced" and I absolutely love her for it.
Darryn has introduced me to lots of things (including the missus but that is not really the topic here is it) - Billy Bragg, although I knew of, I was at the last minute invited along to a gig which I much enjoyed, and kindled a liking for someone I already was aware.
However dude - scissor sisters are BAD.
I have taken note of a lot of peoples musical recommendations and given them a listen - Thank Thorn for SYL and sorry but I forget who for the PJ Harvey/Bjork Duet which left me cold, and I am now tracking down some more of her stuff.
There are bound to be more....
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
I thought black n white was supposed to be flattering.
Also, MNIJ gets minus 33 RespeckPoints for dirgesome The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, which adds to the minuspoints he gets anyway for being an Irish.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
quote:Originally posted by Waynster: Thank Thorn for SYL
I'm glad you liked that. My respect rating for Bambi never really recovered after he described SYL as 'nothing special'.
Posted by Bamba (Member # 330) on :
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: I'm glad you liked that. My respect rating for Bambi never really recovered after he described SYL as 'nothing special'.
The album I have seems to be some kind of live version (I'm not big on live albums in general, especially not for a band I've never heard before) and I do keep meaning to track down the studio version and give it a listen because I am genuinely disturbed that you could be so wrong in your musical opinions.
Extra exercise for readers: find the backhanded compliment in the above text. Posted by Octavia (Member # 398) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Also, MNIJ gets minus 33 RespeckPoints for dirgesome The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, which adds to the minuspoints he gets anyway for being an Irish.
YES! I have been trying to remember the name of the awful thing I struggled to get halfway through while in desperate nothing-else-to-read straits earlier in the summer, and THAT was IT. Thank you! 'Tain't often I give up on a book in a hurling-it-at-the-wall cry of why the fcuk bother - but that was one. The other of recent plaster-damage was Sarah Bradford's appallingly written biog of Jackie Kennedy Onassis Bouvier or whatever her million surnames were.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: I was distinctly underwhelmed by Ben-biggedup Atomised. It was allright, like, but not particularly special or memorable to me.
I finished Atomised on the way back from Amsterdam last night and I thought it was a mighty powerful and incredibly memorable piece of work. I also appreciated Ben's 'warning' a year or so ago about how its dim view of humanity is capable of insidiously seeping into your brain and sending you into a mild depression. The whole thing was remarkable, crackling with ideas and weightily intellectual. I liked it!
Posted by Waynster (Member # 56) on :
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: I finished Atomised on the way back from Amsterdam last night
Dude you kept that quiet! Mind you wasn't much good as I was not there either (%#^&@ Brussels...)
But next time give us a nod and I will throw a sickie if you fancy a beer. And I promise we will keep you away from the scary man again (no not Darryn..)
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
It was a work trip, so I didn't have much time for socialising - but I did leave a message for you and Darryn behind the bar at the Black and White. I was a bit smashed, though, so I don't know what it says.
Posted by froopyscot (Member # 178) on :
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: It was a work trip
I tried that explanation for my visit to Amsterdam last year. No-one believed me, either.
Posted by jnhoj (Member # 286) on :
tad williams otherland quotrology is good. im reading another book of his and it is poor though. war of the wall flowers or something.
i just read pattern recognition by william gibson and i didnt like it. dude wheres where my country was the same as the other book i read by moore , so it was just like him spittling into my face for a day.
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
I didn't like Pattern Recognition either, but I don't remember anyone recommending it -- Fifichan started a thread asking for help interviewing Gibson, but I would have bought it anyway.
I have been listening to the Delays thanks to Bailey's recommendation, and recently her shipping of a burned copy in a circular, translucent yellow sleeve that gives me almost as much pleasure as the album. When the Delays are good they sound to me like Lush but with a man singing.
Posted by Gemini (Member # 428) on :
Thorn, I have just bought Legion of the Damned from Amazon on the strength of your recommendation.
I am also on the look out for a copy of The Tain by China Mieville if anyone knows where I might find one.
[ 09.09.2004, 13:07: Message edited by: Gemini ]
Posted by My Name Is Joe (Member # 530) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Also, MNIJ gets minus 33 RespeckPoints for dirgesome The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, which adds to the minuspoints he gets anyway for being an Irish.
quote:Originally posted by Octavia: YES! I have been trying to remember the name of the awful thing I struggled to get halfway through while in desperate nothing-else-to-read straits earlier in the summer, and THAT was IT. Thank you! 'Tain't often I give up on a book in a hurling-it-at-the-wall cry of why the fcuk bother - but that was one.
I am surprised and saddened that 'THIALH' failed to capture the forum, and as a result killed the book club.
I genuinely found it touching, thoughtful and tragic.
I'll console myself with the memory of Michael Hughes cleaning out ponytailed whinger Robbie Savage.
Beautiful.
[ 09.09.2004, 14:34: Message edited by: My Name Is Joe ]
Posted by My Name Is Joe (Member # 530) on :
Also, very cool review Thorn, if I can overcome the 'skinhead and Sven Hassel, you must be a Nazi' stares of the large breasted boho girl in Waterstones, I'll buy it.
What is this 'The Tain' Gemini speaks of, is it another New Crobuzon book?
quote:Originally posted by Gemini: Thorn, I have just bought Legion of the Damned from Amazon on the strength of your recommendation.
Well - if you enjoy I hope you remember that it was my recommendation. If you hate it - Dang recommended it first.
[ 10.09.2004, 04:07: Message edited by: Thorn Davis ]
Posted by Boy Racer (Member # 498) on :
This morning I would like to recommend that TMO avoid drinking with Irish firemen.
Posted by Black Mask (Member # 185) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boy Racer: This morning I would like to recommend that TMO avoid drinking with Irish firemen.
Got bummed, again?
Posted by Louche (Member # 450) on :
I considered lying about liking Paul Auster's excellent New York Trilogy, as recommedned by the estimable Bandy, on the principle that he vaguely promised me yer'll love it or yer money back!. But I get the feeling that getting money out of Bandy would be akin to extracting ORH positive from grantite. Just my supposition. Anyway. New York Trilogy was beautifully, chillingly mesmeric, so merci Bandy.
Carter Beats the Devil was also brilliant, but in a thoroughly different manner. One of those books where one is rooting so hard for the protagonists all the way through that closure leaves one with a warm happy glow of empathetc satisfaction. I loved it's quirky action moments and the marvelous economic character studies.
David Lodge writes some of the best prose I've come across. Spins out description until you're suspended into his world and slowed down to a kind genteel meander. Not as sure about some of the plot devices and the entertaining but too neat closures. Perhaps I was expecting something different.
Next I am going to try some of Fionnula's recommendations, and if anyone knows of any good books about the Crimea (war in/effect on) please let me know. I'm struggling with a rather dry naval history at the moment and keep forgtetting which admiral is which and being bamboozled by paragraphs of description of 1850s weaponry.
Posted by Bandy (Member # 12) on :
Christ. Eerily accurate character assasination from someone i've never actually met. nevertheless, glad you enjoyed the book.
Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
quote:Originally posted by Louche: Next I am going to try some of Fionnula's recommendations, and if anyone knows of any good books about the Crimea (war in/effect on) please let me know. I'm struggling with a rather dry naval history at the moment and keep forgtetting which admiral is which and being bamboozled by paragraphs of description of 1850s weaponry.
Try some of Tolstoy's short stories based on his experiences of fighting in the Crimea (eg. Sebastopol Sketches); from what I recall, the moments of eerie calm, humour and bickering that punctuate the brief moments of full-on war horror feel vivid and truthful - like the finest journalism (I'd compare it favourably with Homage-era Orwell).
Anyway. Good stuff. People should read more C19 Russian authors rather than twatting around with callow London novels by callow Londoners on 3 for 2 at Borders.
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
quote:Originally posted by ben: Anyway. Good stuff. People should read more C19 Russian authors rather than twatting around with callow London novels by callow Londoners on 3 for 2 at Borders.
Good point - just take a look at all the books on this thread. At first glance it appears that a total of none (0) are set in London, and that Ben's misfired on doing his twattish culturally superior thing again, just days after the last debacle. However, look again and you realise that on second glance, your first glance was correct.
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
I was rather stung and shamed when reading Richard Hoggart's How We Live Now (whose prose I "hear" inwardly as though BEN was speaking...a compliment to them both!) to realise that I was unfamiliar with most of Hoggart's literary "touchstones" (p.87). He proposes that good novels broaden our experience of the human condition, give us a sense of something wider, alive, beyond our everyday horizons, raise our line of vision &c... quite old-fashioned and romantic but invigorating for that, like a stocky, passionate old man taking you out to his field at dawn and urging "dig, boy! dig into that fresh soil with yer bare hands... really feel it, that's God's earth", then taking you to the beach at high tide and holding your shoulders as you catch in your face the cold spray thrown up by waves slapping the sea-wall.
Anyway his "touchstones" are lines or snatches from our interior library of lit and poetry, which come to us in fitting situations or perhaps just last thing at night. He suggests
"Dostoevsky's Grushenka remembering her one supreme act of human pity... his Aloysha waking in the chill... his Ivan Karamazov giving back to God his entrance ticket... Jane Austen's Emma on Box Hill... Melville's Queeqweg looking down into the whale nursery... George Eliot's Mrs Bulstrode facing her husband... Lawrence's Will and Anna Brangwen lost in rapturous love... or Cordelia responding with 'No cause, no cause'... Hardy's Tess baptising her baby... the distraught father of the dead Barazov... that is only one quick cull of prose memories."
Well I haven't read Lear for years, and apart from that, Emma is the only one of those books I've even touched. Should I be Shamed By My Poor English? And would I enjoy the novels he's referring to, or would they be a dutiful slog? (ie. how long are they, and how hard to understand.)
Posted by Thorn Davis (Member # 65) on :
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: And would I enjoy the novels he's referring to, or would they be a dutiful slog? (ie. how long are they, and how hard to understand.)
Other than Lear, I think the only one of those I've read is Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I wouldn't recommend that one to anyone. Hardy always seemed to me to be the crummiest of that batch of 19th Century authors with the possible exception of Thackeray. Anyway. Tess is a wearisome grind through misery and suffering, written primarily to make a fast buck and offering little in the way of emotional connection, humour or anything other than tiresome lucklessness. Particularly telling, the only thing anyone seems to find to discuss about it anymore is the idea that it's pointlessly sexist. I only read it because it was set in dorset, and even then, that fuck Hardy had changed all the place names, depriving me even of that frisson of recognition.
Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Good point - just take a look at all the books on this thread. At first glance it appears that a total of none (0) are set in London, and that Ben's misfired on doing his twattish culturally superior thing again, just days after the last debacle. However, look again and you realise that on second glance, your first glance was correct.
I don't see why anyone's comments have to be restricted simply to what appears on this thread
Posted by Louche (Member # 450) on :
Genuine thanks for the suggestion, Ben. I thoroughly enjoyed War and Peace, particularly the gruesome war-amputation-death-dismemberment-human condition parts.
Of Kovac's list I'm also restricted to Emma and Tess, and whilst I haven't read Lear I recall being enthralled by an RSC production in my youth. (Starring Robert Stephens, who dies lterally days after the final performance, which gave me an odd frisson). Tess was unmitigated, unbelievable, painful tripe, though. Both Tess and Jude the Obscure read like catalogues of destruction, and I could almost sense the author behind the text rubbing his hands in glee as he manufactured another improbable disaster for his beleagured protagonists.
I have found, though, that 'Classics' I've attacked with a sense more of obligation than enthusiasm, have usually given me more pleasure than I anticipated. War and Peace proved to be a rollicking read and Adam Bede, which I read for pleasure, was not unlike being supine in an autumnal garden having your brain caressed by falling leaves.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
quote:Originally posted by kovacs:
"Dostoevsky's Grushenka remembering her one supreme act of human pity... his Aloysha waking in the chill... his Ivan Karamazov giving back to God his entrance ticket... Jane Austen's Emma on Box Hill... Melville's Queeqweg looking down into the whale nursery... George Eliot's Mrs Bulstrode facing her husband... Lawrence's Will and Anna Brangwen lost in rapturous love... or Cordelia responding with 'No cause, no cause'... Hardy's Tess baptising her baby... the distraught father of the dead Barazov... that is only one quick cull of prose memories."
...would I enjoy the novels he's referring to, or would they be a dutiful slog? (ie. how long are they, and how hard to understand.)
I found Crime and Punishment more memorable than The Brothers Karamazov; the murder scene is surely one of the most famed literary prose passages. Do I recall your saying, kovacs, that you don't read forren novels? Please to explain.
Moby Dick was pretty tedious to be honest, I wouldn't recommend it.
I suppose Middlemarch is desperately untrendy, being long and unevenly paced, and with the excellent TV adaptation somewhat eclipsed by Colin Firth in that nice clingy white shirt. I'd nominate the bit where Maggie Tulliver wakes up in Mill on the Floss and realises that she has eternally damned her soul and dirtied her reputation, as Eliot's most memorable passage though. Are there educated people around who still haven't read Middlemarch?
I find Lawrence a bit annoying. He has lots of pages that can easily be used as A-Level critical extracts though, like the famous one with the horse and the stupidly named sisters, in Women In Love. Lady Chatterley's Lover was amusing though, to try and imagine if the dialogue* could ever have sounded realistic.
*"tha's a great cnut" said medatively and fondly, or something similar. Dirty.
Are we going to have a favourite passages thread then?
[ 10.09.2004, 06:15: Message edited by: Vogon Poetess ]
Posted by Put This In Your Pipe and Smoke It (Member # 84) on :
You know - it's a real shame to hear that Moby Dick is a disappointment. I only know the famous one or two passages, and I really like them .. "if his chest was a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it." And why does noone like Hardy around here? Where are all the depressives? I thoroughly enjoyed the Mayor of Casterbridge.
Perhaps less classic, I've been reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. Mister Wilde's writing does sometimes seem like a book of quotations with less paragraph spacing, but I can't deny its wit. That's my recommendation of the moment.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
We-ell, there's a good story in there, obviously, but it's a bit over-flabby with chapters and chapters of minutely-detailed processes of whale fat rendering, and harpooning angles.
Also, I love old misery-guts Hardy. I still haven't got round to re-reading all five major ones back to back to rate my suicidalness.
Posted by Bailey (Member # 261) on :
I'd like to recommend Any Human Heart by William Boyd.
(heh, right thread this time I hope)
Posted by Put This In Your Pipe and Smoke It (Member # 84) on :
What's so good about it then?
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
I would recommend Armadillo of all the (half-dozen?) Boyd I have read. Here is the reviewer I was bigging up on the magazines thread, discussing Any Human Heart -- I'm afraid he doesn't seem so impressed!
Mountstuart is revealed for what he is: a device allowing Boyd to write about 20th-century celebrities in the pastiche idiom of a contemporary observer. Boyd hustles you through to the end despite all this, but it's hard not to wonder if it was really worth making the journey.
[ 10.09.2004, 13:41: Message edited by: kovacs ]
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Do I recall your saying, kovacs, that you don't read forren novels? Please to explain.
It's not on principle; I just don't think I've happened to do academic courses where I had to read them -- which is how I got most of the "classics" I do know under my belt -- and given the choice I'm afraid I'm quite parochial in my literary tastes, preferring to read novels that relate relatively closely to my lived experience, or experiences I can connect to readily from my own. This is a whole other debate and I certainly don't condemn anyone who chooses to read books about Kenyan women instead of, say, Richard Price's explorations of liberal, troubled white men in big American cities (one of my own personal pleasures) but as I think I said on another thread, while there are still great novels about white 20-40something guys in urban US and UK, I will opt for those before I reach for a literary experience that seems more distanced from my own life.
I have read stuff like Camus and Kafka so I do have some knowledge of forren lit -- and you could count American literature as culturally other too I suppose -- but I enjoy people like Amis, Price, Updike because they seem to speak quite immediately to me about my own identity.
quote:Are there educated people around who still haven't read Middlemarch?
I don't know if this is a bit insulting and arrogant on your part, or if I'm the one at fault because I ("still") haven't read it.
Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
I haven't read Middlematch either, Kovacs - but then I don't have a degree and I went to a 'bog standard' comprehensive. So I guess Vogon's point is proven. Posted by jnhoj (Member # 286) on :
I forced my way through middle march while i was doing clinical testing and came to the conclusion it was long winded and boring. Theres an entire module dedicated to at it uni so I suppose there must be -something- good about it.
Posted by damo (Member # 722) on :
quote:Originally posted by jnhoj: I forced my way through middle march while i was doing clinical testing
how did that go for you? you still doing it like?
Posted by jnhoj (Member # 286) on :
ye was good, regret doing the scars one but still. the next one was much better, ten day stay for a grand, ill probably do two more, cus then ill have finished uni and i suppose will get a real job and negate the need for them. But er, like thats gonna happen ;D Thank ye kindly for informing me of them !
Posted by ally (Member # 600) on :
Does trying to read something but never getting round to finishing it count as not having read it? I've tried the Hardy oeuvre, and not quite had the drive to finish them. Ditto George Eliot. I've got no idea why some of these classic novels bore me to tears, when others I quite enjoy, but there you go. I know enough about them to lie convincingly if needs be, though, which I think will stand me in far better stead than actually reading the damn things. (What's that David Lodge novel called, where a bunch of academics are playing a kind of truth or dare about what they've read. One of the 'fesses up to not having read Hamlet, and is mysteriously fired at the end of term.)
If we're recommending cultural artefacts, I'll move onto music. Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue" was my holiday listening. It may not be to your taste, but everyone should hear it at least once.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: ]
I don't know if this is a bit insulting and arrogant on your part, or if I'm the one at fault because I ("still") haven't read it.
Mostly the former. Reading books is about the only thing I'm good at, so I may as well grab the chance to assume a superior expression.
I remember discussing forrun books before and finding other people's attitudes interesting. The novels about Chilean beltmakers don't really interest me line is fair enough, but by Forrun Lit people mostly mean stuff by Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky etc, where the exploration of themes is considered fundamental enough for their appeal to be universal.
Then you get something like Heart of Darkness, by a Pole writing in his third language set in Africa, but classed as "English Literature". And published in 1902, and thus scuppering Louche's inaccurate claim for American Psycho to be Book of the Century.
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: by Forrun Lit people mostly mean stuff by Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky etc, where the exploration of themes is considered fundamental enough for their appeal to be universal.
I got quite an uncanny sense of deja lu about this so perhaps we covered the same ground before. I have read some Moliere, Camus, Alain-Fournier, Sartre, Colette, Schiller, Brecht, Frisch and Durrenmatt -- plus Mme Bovary for bonus. I know the argument about how they bring to light universals of the human condition and so apply to all of us, but it doesn't fully work for me personally -- the novels I like best engage with the specifics of conditions that I can closely identify with, as well as more fundamental truths. Novels exploring a situation alien to my own on a superficial level at least don't offer that immediate connection for me.
Posted by Louche (Member # 450) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Then you get something like Heart of Darkness, by a Pole writing in his third language set in Africa, but classed as "English Literature". And published in 1902, and thus scuppering Louche's inaccurate claim for American Psycho to be Book of the Century.
This served as hopefully the final in a series of gentle reminders that I have never got around to reading Heart of Darkness. I purchased it in Waterstones not a moment ago and will get back to you on the 'best book of the 20th Century' thing. Though making that sort of claim for anything is blatantly an invitation for a row as is all subjective, innit?
I am not quite sure how I've managed to reach the positively decrepit age of 28 without reading Heart of Drakness. It's not one of those slightly forbidding classics which is roughly the size, shape and weight of a housebrick. Its title is more or less squealing 'ought to be read by Louche' and I've heard thousands of positive reviews. I think exposure to 'da classics' is mainly determined by two factors; parental library and recommendations when you're of tender years and school/college/university syllabus. I think I'm less surprised by people* talking about not having read Middlemarch than I would be if, say, someone hadn't read To Kill a Mockingbird, which has been a fairly standard part of the pre-16 English curriculum for some time.
*i.e people on here/peopele what read as opposed to the population overall, say.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
quote:Originally posted by Louche: will get back to you on the 'best book of the 20th Century' thing. Though making that sort of claim for anything is blatantly an invitation for a row as is all subjective, innit?
To be fair, I think you did say this in a suitably slurred-but-imbued-with-alcoholic-righteousness tone whilst queueing (for a long time) at that Northmeat Bar. And we all know what silliness the mouth chunders out when the vodka monkeys are fighting for peanuts and humping each other in your brain. For example, one of mine and Thorn's oldest schoolmates said that Ben Elton had written some good books, and that Manhunter was a good film on Saturday night. I expect to receive a retraction and apology by the end of the day.
Posted by Bandy (Member # 12) on :
I read Stasiland on Rick's recommendation and was absolutely enthralled. So well done Rick.
Posted by My Name Is Joe (Member # 530) on :
Just bought China Mieville's 'Iron Council', a limited edition signed copy for 25 quid. I'm all a quiver...
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
I heard "Iron Council" is no good I'm afraid.
I am reading E M Forster Aspects of the Novel.
[ 17.09.2004, 05:29: Message edited by: kovacs ]
Posted by Abby (Member # 582) on :
My young man was reading a review of that on the tube, and looked up to see China Mieville sitting right opposite him!!!
The review said it was good.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
How the fuck did he know it was China Mieville?
I could only probably recognise Salman Rushdie, JK Rowling and Will Self in RL. Maybe Martin Amis.
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
This thread didn't seem too keen, but then it seems there is a big twist so I had better not read any more reviews. I don't have room for any hardback books anymore so I am having to wait for soft-cover.
Posted by My Name Is Joe (Member # 530) on :
boner throughly harshed. Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
No it just sounds like it takes a while for it to pick up speed, actually. I would like to read it but as I say, can't buy it, so am just jealous.
Posted by philomel (Member # 586) on :
Be excited: it is good. Sadly I am too lazy to go about starting an insightful review. Or a review of any type, in fact. When other people have read and digested I'll be up for discussion though!
Yes I ordered it from America in a fit of want! Happily, all the spellings are UK English.
Posted by My Name Is Joe (Member # 530) on :
If that happens we need a spoiler thread...
Perdido Street Station took a while to get going, so I'm not too worried. I have faith in me old China.
Posted by Gemini (Member # 428) on :
I am virtually bursting with longing to read his new book, it has been pre-ordered from Amazon and I will be rushing home on Monday night hopefully to see it on my door-step. So far the reviews have been mixed on Amazon but that doesn't bother me.
Posted by Louche (Member # 450) on :
I have just purchased China (all of it!) from Wetstones am looking forward to diving head first in with boundless enthusiasm. But I was shocked and amused by author photo! I imagined China to be small, oldish man, with wayward hair, I think, and perhaps some weatherbeaten wrinkles. But he is young and chunky with earring. Earring!
Also, S once saw Will Self on a Seacat and asked him if he were Will Self. S then (sparkling conversationalist that he is) said 'my girlfriend fancies you' and went back to the bar.
Posted by Abby (Member # 582) on :
quote: How the fuck did he know it was China Mieville?
He met him at some SciFi geekout signing thing with some other authors. He (China) lives in West Hampstead, near our old house!
Posted by Abby (Member # 582) on :
...and amusingly, for anyone who has read King Rat he says he is "not really into Drum 'n Bass anymore".
Posted by discodamage (Member # 66) on :
i would like to wholeheartedly thank london for telling me at least four times over the last 5 years that i must read charles bukowski, even though i kept doing my squeamish radfem face and going [pursed lips] oh no i dont think id like him hes a misogynist isnt he [/pursed lips]. i bought ham on rye today for one poun, the edition with the lovely lovely screenprint looking cover, and started reading it on the train, and it was just... oh. fuck. it is so fucking ace being wrong sometimes! this is how much i have uturned on charles bukowski- having read the whole thing in one sitting- on trains, on buses, walking up escalators, walking down kingsland road- i then went into fopp to see if they had any more of his work on sale for sillysmallbeans. rather than it being a trial to get through but worth it, like burroughs and selby and all those other types i kind of bunch together, i cant think of a book i have found as sweetly effortless to read all this year. i was just in it immediately. thankyou london! you have made my life better.
Posted by Black Mask (Member # 185) on :
Bukowski fills a sort-of God-like role in post-modern society. He serves as a negative moral example. A positive creative example. He drinks too much. Forgives his abusive parents. He fucks any female he can get his paws on. He tolerates every appalling task. He drinks himself into oblivion. He pours his heart out...
If you haven't read his novels. Do so. If you haven't read his poetry, do so first.
I have a line from a comic-book panel, attributed to Buke.
My beer-drunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees in the world Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
I have just finished the Kovacs-and-Modge recommended Day of Atonement by Ian McEwan. I found it took at least a hundred pages to get going but the Dunkirk scenes were gripping, as was their London sequel. At first it struck me as an upper-middle class, English riff on The Deerhunter. It has the same triptych structure (peace/war/aftermath) and a similar - rather dodgy - motif of redemption through extreme suffering. The formidable research that's gone into the novel is hardly worn lightly - at times, the press of 'authentic detail' leaves one feeling a little punch-drunk, as though bludgeoned repeatedly over the head by a unsmiling McEwan wielding a card-catalogue. That said, when it comes alive - as with a shiversome evocation of the numbingly brutal pre-MRSA hygiene routine in wartime hospitals - it's gloriously immersive and punishing.
The only really objectionable element to the book is where McEwan, in an astonishing solecism, lays out his manifesto for what literary fiction should be: ventriloquised, somewhat catastrophically for the argument itself, through a letter 'written by' excruciating fuckwit dilettante Cyril Connolly.
The trouble is that no one seems to have informed McEwan that he's become a top-flight author of middlebrow popular fiction, rather than - as he seems to imagine - the latest entrant to the canon of English Literature (indeed, a fair number of stupid critics quoted on the jacket aid and abet this regrettable delusion). I don't know. I don't suppose it matters all that much - it's a cracker of a read for the bus or train to work.
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*ben'S AUTUMN READING TIP*
The epitome of the wintry, patrician 'humorist' of the mid-Twentieth Century, Anthony Powell (pronounced to rhyme with 'noel' not 'towel') has never been less fashionable. His great advocates and contemporaries (eg. Kingsley Amis) have all passed on and the 1990s tv adaptation of A Dance to the Music of Time came and went without the BAFTA brouhaha that might have been expected. The 12-novel sequence itself can sometimes be found in the now rather elderly tv tie-in livery - or else sought out in individual volumes in good second hand bookshops. All of which helps to make this exactly the right time for you to be digging Powell - before the rush starts, right? Yeah?
Sure, you can stumble out Waterstones clutching your 3for2 booty (the latest Sadie Zmith, Jon Self and Alexander McAppallingCover Smith) but I beg to doubt that any of them will have you lol-(£)-ing and purring with delight at the gin-dry asides and forensically savage character sketches that litter the pages of A Question of Upbringing and the rest. Illustrative material is frustratingly difficult to excerpt (except at great length, for the best idea of how the wit is steeped in the setting, and vice versa) but - ffs - each individual novel in ADTTMOT is only a couple of hundred pages long... what would be the harm in you trying something different for once, eh?
Posted by kovacs (Member # 28) on :
I actually relished the pre-war, The Go-Between style section of Atonement far more than I did the overdone, already-wearisome trudging-thru-France bit, plus the "pretty English nurses are true angels, koff God bless you Miss" bit. And the "hem-hem look who the author really was bit", which had the one novelty of seeming like future fiction when it began in the "present day", after such an immersion in the past. Have we not had quite enough scenes of English soldiers discovering Fr. farmhouses with craters outside and a doll's head poignantly lying cracked in the bomb-scarred yard, and Oh Lord was it the horrific sight to be he could not rid his mind of the vision come what may seared on the sensitive young poet-soldier's memory, a single child's arm flung by the horrid bomb-blast, awfully alone and pale, by the dried-up well...O the taste of the confiture after so many days of rusted water was heavenly, Lord how many more hours must Peter march with this beastly pack, the rhythm of their boots seeming to drill the words "Forever! Forever!" into his very skull!
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I am reading Number9Dream, by apparently two-time Booker-shortlisted David Mitchell. I picked this up at my skool library finding that some scallion had already taken out the boke I wanted to read (Porno -- yes I imagine it is no good, that is why I went to the library for it) and expected it to read like that couple-authored chicklit Come Together, as written by Vikram and Fifichan.
Instead I find it is like what William Gibson should be writing.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
Mountstuart is revealed for what he is: a device allowing Boyd to write about 20th-century celebrities in the pastiche idiom of a contemporary observer. Boyd hustles you through to the end despite all this, but it's hard not to wonder if it was really worth making the journey.