Do3 - One Winter's Afternoon: Sunday 19 May, 8.30pm

[Bert Coules]

If you call your protagonists Verdi and Wagner you are asking for a suspension of disbelief and the willingness to assume that this is a dramatisation of the composers' relationship.

Well, that's what it is. Clearly we differ as to the innate meaning of the word "dramatisation". Drama is not historical truth: it's emotional truth.

Bert

[aeolium]

I have no real interest in 'historical novels' either, however much they are lauded.

Nor I, though I'll take War and Peace and A Tale of Two Cities. I think novelists ought generally to write about what it's like to live in their own times - they should know that much better than they know what it's like to live in earlier times.

[Bert Coules]

This day, the 22nd of May, is the birthday of both Richard Wagner and Arthur Conan Doyle. Now there's a fictional meeting I wouldn't mind hearing a play about.

[french frank]

This day, the 22nd of May, is the birthday of both Richard Wagner and Arthur Conan Doyle. Now there's a fictional meeting I wouldn't mind hearing a play about.

Or writing one?

[Bert Coules]

Well, it's a thought, isn't it? And although the meeting itself would be fictional, the circumstances which made it possible would not: Wagner visited the UK several times, and Doyle was widely travelled, even in youth (he was 24 when Wagner died). Hard to know what they would have had in common, though, beyond a love of history and romantic literature, but maybe that would have been enough.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Hard to know what they would have had in common, though, beyond a love of history and romantic literature, but maybe that would have been enough.

Die Feen (von Cottingley)?

[Bert Coules]

I hadn't thought of that. Mind you, Wagner's fearsome Immortals are a bit different from Sir Arthur's bottom-of-the-dell fairy folk, but it would be a start...

[Flosshilde]

Bert

I've heard such an opinion described but never actually met anyone who thought it. I do know people who can't be bothered with novels though I doubt they would rationalise their dislike like that.

As a librarian I came across quite a few people who claimed never to read novels; I don't remember them claiming that novels were lies, just that they were somehow rather 'infra dig'. Many of these people did like reading biographies, especially the lighter kind, which could be said to be fiction of a sort.

[french frank]

As a librarian I came across quite a few people who claimed never to read novels; I don't remember them claiming that novels were lies, just that they were somehow rather 'infra dig'. Many of these people did like reading biographies, especially the lighter kind, which could be said to be fiction of a sort.

I'm quite easy about people thinking novels are a waste of their time and that they have no interest in them - that's just people being different. I can't abide contemporary science fiction or fantasy novels which are currently big among the younger generation of (male?)readers. Fine, but they don't interest me, any more than does contemporary fiction written for children.

As you suggest many 'factual' works written for a broad public make for easier reading than a heavy novel (I'm not making much headway with Kaputt yet ).

[aeolium]

I can't abide contemporary science fiction or fantasy novels which are currently big among the younger generation of (male?)readers. Fine, but they don't interest me, any more than does contemporary fiction written for children.

I am not a great reader of science fiction or fantasy novels but after resisting for a long time reading books by Terry Pratchett (after starting one and not really getting on with it) I was finally persuaded recently to give him another go, and very much enjoyed his Pyramids. Like a lot of science fiction or fantasy, I suppose, his work seems to contain more oblique commentary or satire of contemporary life than pure fantasy. I also like his style and his wit.

I sometimes think long Mitteleuropean novels acquire a spurious and undeserved gravitas simply by virtue of being long and Mitteleuropean. I was put off reading anything Mitteleuropean for quite a long time after enduring Musil's The Man Without Qualities

[french frank]

I sometimes think long Mitteleuropean novels acquire a spurious and undeserved gravitas simply by virtue of being long and Mitteleuropean. I was put off reading anything Mitteleuropean for quite a long time after enduring Musil's The Man Without Qualities

Damn! And there was me resisting Pratchett and having the Musil on my 'To read' list. But I'm sure you're right!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am not a great reader of science fiction or fantasy novels but after resisting for a long time reading books by Terry Pratchett (after starting one and not really getting on with it) I was finally persuaded recently to give him another go, and very much enjoyed his Pyramids. Like a lot of science fiction or fantasy, I suppose, his work seems to contain more oblique commentary or satire of contemporary life than pure fantasy. I also like his style and his wit.

He has a wonderful, mordently inventive way with wordplay that I find irresistable. (And anyone who refers to "Folksong" being "perpetratred" in Pubs has my vote! )