What are you reading now?

[umslopogaas]

M117 verismissimo

Good luck with 'Doctor Faustus'! It certainly isnt light reading, but I think you'll be glad you made the effort. I would describe it as German high art: Mann didnt waste time on small themes. As the cover blurb says, "the discord between genius and sanity". It really is very dark stuff: madness, syphilis, the doom of the German nation, the Allies bomb Germany to rubble as Zeitblom tells his terrifying tale.

Apologies if I've already posted this story on these threads, I'm sure I wrote it somewhere recently and have forgotten where, but I couldnt resist an opportunity to repeat it. Mann and Arnold Schoenberg both ended up as exiles in California, where they werent the best of friends. With some justification, Schoenberg took exception to the book on two counts: first because he didnt have syphilis and second because Mann pinched his musical theories and ascribed them to the fictional composer Leverkuhn without acknowledgment. I think he may have threatened to sue, and in subsequent editions Mann was forced to add a rather sniffy tribute which starts:

"It does not seem superogatory to inform the reader that the form of musical composition delineated in ch 22, known as the twelve-tone or row system, is in truth the intellectual property of a contemporary composer and theoretician, Arnold Schoenberg. ..."

This is the only time I have ever seen anyone make use of the word "superogatory".

And Schoenberg was apparently prone to remarking loudly to acquaintances when he bumped into them in the street or local supermarket: "I DO NOT HAVE SYPHILIS!"

[vinteuil]

And yet 'supererogatory' is an important if debated concept. Back to wiki:

"In the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, "works of supererogation" (also called "acts of supererogation") are those performed beyond what God requires. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7, Saint Paul says that while everyone is free to marry, it is better to refrain from marriage and remain celibate to better serve God. The Roman Catholic Church holds that the counsels of perfection are supererogatory acts, which specific Christians may engage in above their moral duties. Similarly, it teaches that to determine how to act, one must engage in reasonable efforts to be sure of what the right actions are; after the reasonable action, the person is in a state of invincible ignorance and guiltless of wrongdoing, but to undertake more than reasonable actions to overcome ignorance is supererogatory, and praiseworthy.

According to the classic teaching on indulgences, the works of supererogation performed by all the saints form a treasure with God that the Church can apply to exempt repentant sinners from the works of penitence that would otherwise be required of them to achieve full reconciliation with the Church. Opposition and the abuse of this teaching was the main point of Martin Luther when he began opposing the Church, and thus a seed of the Protestant Reformation as a whole. The Anglican Church also denied the doctrine of supererogation in the fourteenth of the Thirty-Nine Articles, which state that works of supererogation "cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety: for by them men do declare, that they not only render unto God as much as they are bound to, but that they do more for his sake, than of bounden duty is required: whereas Christ saith plainly, When ye have done all that are commanded to you, say, We are unprofitable servants." "

[umslopogaas]

M122 vinteuil

Phew! Many thanks for the enlightenment, it is definitely supererogatory to type all that lot out.

I've just noticed that I misspelled it in my previous post, which explains why I couldnt find it in my dictionary ... Now I have found it and they are bit briefer than wiki: "doing more than is required." They add a brief comment about its place in Catholic doctrine.

[DracoM]

Just finished 'Greenmantle' / Buchan.

Fascist, anti-semitic, racist tosh.

Or am I over-reacting?

[johnb]

DracoM,

Some time ago I read a couple of Buchan's 'Hannay' novels (including Greenmantle) and I was quite shocked by the attitudes they portrayed. The TV and film adaptations are very carefully sterilised!

They might be very much of their time. But then, no other novel I've read that was written around then has had such a nationalistic, condescending, racist attitude.

Perhaps they were just pulp fiction that somehow survived.

[french frank]

I'm sure there must have been studies on this, but I suspect we are merely being shocked by the views of another era. I reread Saki fairly recently and was uncomfortable about the references to 'Jews' in a way that wasn't plainly anti-Semitic but somehow ... unnecessary.

[verismissimo]

Um and Vinteuil: Can Schoenberg really have owned the intellectual property to the 12 tone row etc as Mann states?

Buchan is appalling. He doesn't even have the saving grace of writing well. :)

[umslopogaas]

M127 verismissimo

I dont think he meant Schoenberg literally had copyright on the dodecaphonic row, only that as its originator he had a kind of moral ownership which should be acknowledged. I do sympathise with Schoenberg, in his shoes I'd have been a bit miffed too if a famous writer had appropriated my big idea and not given me due credit.

Mind you, it sounds as if Schoenberg had an ego the size of a truck. Chambers Music Quotations has a rich vein of quiotes by and about him.

"Today I have discovered something which will assure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years". (AS in a letter to a friend).


[Of Gurrelieder] "A proof if you want it ... that Schoenberg could, as they used to say about Picasso, draw when he wanted to." (Lord Harewood)

[on being told his violin concerto required a player with six fingers] "Very well, I can wait."

[Of Richard Strauss] "He is no longer of the slightest artistic interest to me, and whatever I may once have learned from him, I am thankful to say I misunderstood."

"Only a psychiatrist can help poor Schoenberg now ... He would do better to shovel snow instead of scribbling on music paper ... Better give him the grant [from the Mahler Foundation] anyway ... You can never tell what posterity will say." (Richard Strauss)

"My music is not modern, it is merely badly played."

I think he would have been a worthy opponent for a spat with a great novelist.

[aeolium]

I will speak up in defence of Buchan's Hannay novels which I first read as a teenager ages ago. At that time I enjoyed the plots and I thought - and still think - that they are reasonably well written as spy-thrillers for their time. Yes, the style and ideas are dated but one can say that of most books, and certainly those of our own day will not wear any better.

As for the unpleasantness of the ideas, it's worth remembering the time and the context in which the books were written. The 39 Steps and Greenmantle were written in 1915 and 1916 respectively, at the height of the war. Buchan himself was working for the War Propaganda Bureau together with other writers like Kipling. It's unsurprising that Germans are portrayed in a sinister light in the books. As to anti-semitism, I didn't notice it as much in those stories as in Mr Standfast, and generally in dismissive asides not uncommon in literature of that time - anti-semitism was after all widespread even among intellectuals then (e.g. Eliot). Nationalism? What should one expect of a novel written in a time of great international conflict, set during that war and where the main protagonists are set as participants in the conflict? Racism? Actually, although there is orientalist stereotyping in Greenmantle (again not untypical of other writing of the time, e.g. Conan Doyle) there is praise for the puritan simplicity of Islam compared with the decadence of the Turkish rulers and the corrupting influence of the Germans. I'm not sure that the attitudes towards the Middle East conveyed in our own day - for instance the views of writers like Martin Amis - are any more enlightened. Fascism? I really haven't detected that in the novels at all, except insofar as there is a puritan masochism running through the stories in which indolence and comfort are described contemptuously and Hannay is always trying to test himself in conditions of physical and mental hardship.

And ultimately if one tries to confine oneself to literature where the ideas expressed are broadly in sympathy with those of our own day, it really is hopelessly restrictive. All kinds of writers would fall by the wayside. And is our own age so replete with wisdom that we can look with reassuring derision at the shortcomings of those in the past?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

And Schoenberg was apparently prone to remarking loudly to acquaintances when he bumped into them in the street or local supermarket: "I DO NOT HAVE SYPHILIS!"

[Pianorak]

deleted - wrong place

[verismissimo]

aeolium, my feeling is that Buchan's positive presentation of Islam is just another facet of his ubiquitous stereotyping. It's as though he just can't deal with people as individuals. I liked his work as a teenager, but when I came back to it several decades later, I felt embarrassed about my previous pleasure!

[aeolium]

verismissimo, I think you will probably find there is a lot of stereotyping in spy fiction generally (Fleming, le Carre?) As it happens though I think the character of Medina in The Three Hostages is quite an interesting one for a villain, showing that Buchan was capable of going beyond the caricature. Still, I don't think the novels were ever intended as 'literature' and Buchan would have been surprised by the idea that they would be read a century later. I'm not embarrassed about reading them, any more than I am about enjoying film noir. I think they stand up well against more recent spy fiction (though I think, of his contemporaries, Kipling's Kim is much better than any of the Buchan stories, and Conrad's Secret Agent is of a different order).

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i recall being enthralled by the Alexandria Quartet by L Durrell when in my late teens .... but have never returned to it; has any one read it at all recently ...

[verismissimo]

Yes and Yes to Kim and The Secret Agent, aeolium.

And I wonder with you, aka, about the Alexandria Quartet now.