What are you reading now?

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm sure you're right. His stock was certainly not high when I read Eng Lit at Cambridge back in the 90s. If there were a pecking order of 19th century novelists back them he definitely came behind Eliot, James, the Bronte sisters et al.

Interesting . I would have put the low point in the 60’s when Leavis accused him of a lack of seriousness maintaining somewhat bizarrely that Hard Times was the only novel worth studying . He famously and equally bizarrely recanted in Dickens The Novelist.
At Oxford where things were less prescriptive the main barrier to studying him was the length of the books .

[Sir Velo]

Never seen a single credible article by some one who knows what they are talking about which suggests we shouldn’t read Dickens. His critical stock has never been higher and he remains the most popular classic literary fiction author in the world. Very few achieve that - mass audience and literary critical acclaim - maybe just Shakespeare and Austen . Bleak House for example is arguably the greatest English Novel - on publication it earned Dickens a record advance - running into millions in todays money. It’s still selling by the tens of thousands globally and is a key text in any academic course in the 19th century novel.

I'm sure you're right. His stock was certainly not high when I read Eng Lit at Cambridge back in the 90s. If there were a pecking order of 19th century novelists back them he definitely came behind Eliot, James, the Bronte sisters et al.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I'm not sure whether a 'balanced curiosity' would be enough to make me bother with Ayn Rand. As for 'Dickens the misogynist' it's a characteristic of the judgemental present age - and by no means just feminists - to misunderstand the lesson of history, the vast mass of human beings being prisoners of their own age, its assumptions, attitudes and behaviour, tinged with individual inclinations and experiences.

Dickens treated his first wife very badly that is true . There’s little evidence of misogyny in the novels. They have though been criticised for their rather sketchy portraits of woman . They either tend to be idealised embodiments of threatened virtue e,g, Kate Nickleby or caricatures e.g. Miss Havisham - some one who’s personality is driven by one motive. But then there are people like that . He does write some interesting female characters E.g. the ennui of Lady Dedlock in Bleak House and thinly veneered sadism of Estelle in Great Expectations.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just about to start re-reading David Copperfield. I've never been a Dickens fan but I have enjoyed and appreciated some of his novels.

Dickens has take a lot of stick recently from feminists etc. and people who seem to be telling us he was politically incorrect by 21st centtury standards and so we shouldn''t read him. Have any of you been 'put off' a book by what you've been told about its author?

Never seen a single credible article by some one who knows what they are talking about which suggests we shouldn’t read Dickens. His critical stock has never been higher and he remains the most popular classic literary fiction author in the world. Very few achieve that - mass audience and literary critical acclaim - maybe just Shakespeare and Austen . Bleak House for example is arguably the greatest English Novel - on publication it earned Dickens a record advance - running into millions in todays money. It’s still selling by the tens of thousands globally and is a key text in any academic course in the 19th century novel.

[french frank]

Have any of you been 'put off' a book by what you've been told about its author?

I'm not sure whether a 'balanced curiosity' would be enough to make me bother with Ayn Rand. As for 'Dickens the misogynist' it's a characteristic of the judgemental present age - and by no means just feminists - to misunderstand the lesson of history, the vast mass of human beings being prisoners of their own age, its assumptions, attitudes and behaviour, tinged with individual inclinations and experiences.

[smittims]

Just about to start re-reading David Copperfield. I've never been a Dickens fan but I have enjoyed and appreciated some of his novels.

Dickens has take a lot of stick recently from feminists etc. and people who seem to be telling us he was politically incorrect by 21st centtury standards and so we shouldn''t read him. Have any of you been 'put off' a book by what you've been told about its author?

[Ein Heldenleben]

... also the memorable meal earlier on when he lunches with Mme de Vionnet in a restaurant near Notre-Dame for mere pleasure’s sake :

"How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions."

SPOILER
Yes - wonderful.
Why doesn’t Strether read the signals with M de V ? Why doesn’t he accept Maria ?
Have ever wanted to be in any scene more than that meal with the veal cutlet? The way James transmutes the Lambinet painting into the idealised vision of the village.
and then the kicker …
It’s masterly.

[vinteuil]

There’s one chapter near the end of The Ambassadors where the “hero” goes to a small restaurant near a river in the French countryside which I think is one of the finest in all European fiction. I envy you reading it for the first time.
”Live all you can - it’s a mistake not to.”

... also the memorable meal earlier on when he lunches with Mme de Vionnet in a restaurant near Notre-Dame for mere pleasure’s sake :

"How could he wish it to be lucid for others, for any one, that he, for the hour, saw reasons enough in the mere way the bright clean ordered water-side life came in at the open window?—the mere way Madame de Vionnet, opposite him over their intensely white table-linen, their omelette aux tomates, their bottle of straw-coloured Chablis, thanked him for everything almost with the smile of a child, while her grey eyes moved in and out of their talk, back to the quarter of the warm spring air, in which early summer had already begun to throb, and then back again to his face and their human questions."

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just downloaded The Ambassadors to my Kindle. Almost immediately derailed by this passage from the Preface:

"I could even remember no occasion on which, so confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, in this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that there are degrees of merit in subjects—in spite of the fact that to treat even one of the most ambiguous with due decency we must for the time, for the feverish and prejudiced hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as possibly absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among the supremely good—since with such alone is it one’s theory of one’s honour to be concerned—there is an ideal beauty of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic faith to its maximum."

Only another 500 pages to go.

If you think The Ambassadors is tricky then The Wings Of The Dove is more so, and the Golden Bowl is in places impenetrable. It sounds like I’m bragging but I’ve read all of them at least 4 times and there are still passages where I can’t work out what on earth HJ is going on about. There is a serious school of critical thought that he was partly senile when writing some of these . He dictated some of them and I’m pretty sure at the end of some sentences he wasn’t sure how he’d started. I wouldn’t read the Prefaces - it’s all part of his elliptical game with the reader.
There’s one chapter near the end of The Ambassadors where the “hero” goes to a small restaurant near a river in the French countryside which I think is one of the finest in all European fiction. I envy you reading it for the first time.
”Live all you can - it’s a mistake not to.”

[johncorrigan]

Is that the same book as Every Man Dies Alone? It was retitled when the movie was made

Same book, Richard. I didn't know that. I will have a look for the film. One of the strange things about this most interesting and enjoyable book is that the chapter titles often give you an idea of what is about to happen in the chapter...like telling you a character is about to die, or be arrested or the like. I really enjoyed this. It also has an afterword telling the story of the author's troubled life, and the story of the case which inspired the novel.

[CallMePaul]

Akhenaten - Egypt's False Prophet - by Nicholas Reeves. Published in 2001, so before the DNA work on 18th Dynasty pharoahs which has changed some of his views, but still an enjoyable read that has taught me things I was previously unaware of.

Intriguing is a passing reference to one Aper-el, a foreign-born vizier of lower Egypt in the reigns of Amenophis III and Akhenaten. Could a memory of this be a basis for the story of Joseph in Genesis, which was written centuries later? I need to investigate this further.

[french frank]

Is that the same book as Every Man Dies Alone? It was retitled when the movie was made

Yes, it is. Jeder stirbt für sich allein is more accurately rendered as Every Man Dies Alone.

[smittims]

Even if Edith did invent the whole thing (which I suspect), its a lovely story. Thanks.

[smittims]

I've just finished re-reading Henry the Sixth part one. I think Shakespeare's earlier plays are underrated . Even this one, which is full of battle scenes, is more about speaking verse than realism, a point missed by the BBC's Hollow Crown screening where they cut the text and turned it into a Hollywood action thriller . I prefer to imagine it stylised, ritual almost. At one point there are three different armies on stage; trying to make that look realistic would be absurd.

[vinteuil]

doesn't he rather make mountains out of molehills?

As HG Wells described Henry James - "It is leviathan retrieving pebbles. It is a magnificent but painful hippopotamus resolved at any cost, even at the cost of its dignity, upon picking up a pea which has got into a corner of its den."
Grotesquely unfair, but one knows what he means.

I love the Edith Wharton anecdote -
"Another year we had been motoring in the West Country, and on the way back were to spend a night at Malvern. As we approached (at the close of a dark rainy afternoon) I saw James growing restless, and was not surprised to hear him say: ' My dear, I once spent a summer at Malvern and know it very well; and as it is rather difficult to find the way to the hotel, it might be well if Edward were to change places with me and let me sit beside Cook.' My husband of course acceded (though with doubts in his heart) and, James having taken his place, we awaited the result. Malvern, if I am not mistaken, is encircled by a sort of upper boulevard, of the kind called in Italy a strada di circonvallazione, and for an hour we circled about above the outspread city while James vainly tried to remember which particular street led down most directly to our hotel. At each corner (literally) he stopped the motor, and we heard a muttering, first confident and then anguished. 'This — this, my dear Cook, yes . . . this certainly is the right corner. But no; stay! A moment longer, please — in this light it's so difficult . . . appearances are so misleading ... It may be . . . yes! I think it is the next turn . . . a little farther lend thy guiding hand ... that is, drive on; but slowly, please, my dear Cook; very slowly!' And at the next corner the same agitated monologue would be repeated; till at length Cook, the mildest of men, interrupted gently: ' I guess any turn'll get us down into the town, Mr. James, and after that I can ask' — and late, hungry and exhausted we arrived at length at our destination, James still convinced that the next turn would have been the right one if only we had been more patient.

The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. We must have been driven by a strange chauffeur — perhaps Cook was on holiday; at any rate, having fallen into the lazy habit of trusting him to know the way, I found myself at a loss to direct his substitute to the King's Road. While I was hesitating and peering out into the darkness James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze at us. 'Wait a moment, my dear — I'll ask him where we are'; and leaning out he signalled to the spectator.
'My good man, if you'll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer — so,' and as the old man came up: 'My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.'
I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: 'In short' (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), 'in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right) where are we now in relation to . . . '
'Oh, please,' I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, 'do ask him where the King's Road is.''Ah —? The King's Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King's Road exactly is?'
'Ye're in it', said the aged face at the window."