Nobel for Ishiguro?

[french frank]

Not a fan, then, eighth? Try Hesse. Castalia in The Glass Bead Game is a community of pure intellect, where the chief occupation is playing a game of a sort of uber chess. I fancy that

....I tend to get quite a lot of books from the library so I do not have them here for reference....I think I read A Pale View from the Hills, as I remember was enjoying it well enough but seemed to end abrupty without anything resolved or indeed just seemed to stop for no reason. Floating World is a short beautiful and measured masterpiece. Remains the Day is just a long long writing exercise of developing character and not much else (really only the butler gets the psychological treatment, other characters are thin, probably because it is in the first person I think <that's the big trouble with first person>)....it's not a great book, I was glad when it ended. Never Let You Go....again thin on characterisation , motives, emotions. A Margaret Attwood rip off I thought after 20 pages, the idea of the organ harvesting was good but I was not convinced by the plot devices, depth of characters, timescale.

[Conchis]

I began reading Herta Muller's book on the basis that it had been translated by Michael Hofmann who made such a sterling job of translating Joseph Roth; I didn't get far with it, though.

To my mind, the greatest Nobel Prize Winner of all was Knut Hamsun.

Still find it rather astonishing that John Galsworthy won it. I like the Frosty Saga (it's my idea of light reading) but, really - whatever were they thinking?

[eighthobstruction]

Not a fan, then, eighth? Try Hesse. Castalia in The Glass Bead Game is a community of pure intellect, where the chief occupation is playing a game of a sort of uber chess. I fancy that

....the R3 version of Glass Bead Game was tedious enough....had a go after reading Sidhartha, but got no where....always made it sound like I had read it with out actually lying....

[eighthobstruction]

....I'm having a hell of a job with Thus Spoke ZaraThrusta at mo'....has anybody bar the translator ever got further than page 50....

[Serial_Apologist]

....I'm having a hell of a job with Thus Spoke ZaraThrusta at mo'....has anybody bar the translator ever got further than page 50....

You're probably having a Nietsche jerk reaction, eighth.

[eighthobstruction]

....boom boom superman....

[gradus]

Haven't read Never Let Me Go but I like the song presumably his title source and irresistibly sung by Aretha:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJvBWgHkHbw

Back to Friedrich........

[eighthobstruction]

....FN having a nasty effect on my outlook....having the weekend off ....

[french frank]

....FN having a nasty effect on my outlook....having the weekend off ....

Whitby's quite nice eighth, so I'm told. Never been there myself.

[vinteuil]

....FN having a nasty effect on my outlook ....

... makes me feel ill too -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Front_(France)

,

[eighthobstruction]

on imagine tonight....https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tqn0

[french frank]

on imagine tonight....https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tqn0

Interesting that you've resurrected an Ishiguro thread, eighth, after we were discussing him - and The Unconsoled* - on the What are you reading? thread recently (with me, as usual, repeating myself). 'Fraid I can't access Imagine.

* I liked Richard's description: 'a bit like being stuck in an anxiety dream'. Exactly, not relaxing reading.

[Katzelmacher]

I was surprised that he was awarded the Prize. Isn’t he something of an old-fashioned writer, who hasn’t made much in the way of innovations?

I speak from a position of relative ignorance, as I’ve only read RotD (and liked it) but didn’t feel entirely motivated to read more.

Karl Ove Knausgaard is being tipped as a future Nobel winner. Personally, I think he’s a bit of a fraud. Yet I read his ridiculously overlong and self-indulgent ‘epic’ quite happily. Maybe his achievement in making boredom interesting qualifies him for the top prize? Stranger things have happened.

[Richard Barrett]

I was surprised that he was awarded the Prize. Isn’t he something of an old-fashioned writer, who hasn’t made much in the way of innovations?

Perhaps you should read The Unconsoled.

I wouldn't presume to comment on whether one writer or another deserves a Nobel or any other prize since such things really don't interest me, but I've read all of Ishiguro's novels and find them individual, compelling and thought-provoking and he's one of the writers whose next book I look forward to most. I haven't read anything by Knausgård but he doesn't seem much like my kind of writer.

[french frank]

I was surprised that he was awarded the Prize. Isn’t he something of an old-fashioned writer, who hasn’t made much in the way of innovations?

I speak from a position of relative ignorance, as I’ve only read RotD (and liked it) but didn’t feel entirely motivated to read more.

The prize is awarded for a body of work, not for one work (why else would Bob Dylan have won it the following year?). RotD had been written 28 years before Ishiguro got it, he had then written six novels, two before it and 4 after it. Thematically, RotD has similarities with others of his novels, but if the narrative seems 'old-fashioned' the style was surely integral to the work - reflecting the character of the narrator and his memories stretching back before the war?