What are you reading now?

[vinteuil]

:... it can be argued that [fantasy] is the chief generator of Literature before the late Eighteenth Century decided that it should be about the "everyday" lives of the Middle Class readership. Indeed, if Austen, George Eliot, Tolstoy and a tiny few others weren't so irritatingly good, there's an argument to be made that the "sub-journalist" "realistic" novel marks a serious decline in the aspirations and achievement of Literature.

... hmmm, fernet-geliebchen, very much hmmmm.

You seem to be positing a binary distinction between 'fantasy' ("good") and (to use your words) 'every day', 'middle class readership', 'sub-journalist', 'realistic', 'serious decline' ("bad" - by implication of tone : "very bad").

I look around my shelves at the prose I most relish - Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Austen, Thos: Love Peacock, Thackeray, Melville, James, Conrad, Kipling, Stevenson, Bennett, Fontane, Raabe, Storm, Stifter, Chekhov, Turgenev, Bassani, Svevo, Proust, Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, ... [that's enuff : ed.] - and I can still say that I don't "get" what you're seeing in science fiction / fantasy - and yet I will not accept your diatribe against what you see as the alternative.






.

[french frank]

I thought you'd recommended The Glass Bead Game on the "Nobel Ishiguro" Thread?

When you have a close member of the family in a monastery and have picked up a few things about the life, it doesn't seem such a fantastic starting point From there the meanderings begin. But yes, you do have a point. (I have anothe point but I'm not going to say as it does not add to my credibility).

As to the question of intelligent and profound examples, I was really latching on to their wide popularity rather than their intelligence or profundity on which I am unable to comment since I haven't read them (I read one chapter of a Harry Potter novel online to find out what all the fuss was about, and concluded that it was unnecessary to read any more, in spite of being told by respected intellects that it did have a deeper, very meaningful, layer). And Mr Pratchett is much admired on these boards, I gather

[french frank]

Well, quite. And indeed Ishiguro Never Let Me Go and The Buried Giant himself uses SF and fantasy respectively as media for addressing more immediate concerns. Not to mention Margaret Atwood... it isn't all populist stuff about time travel and magic.

Ha ha! I didn't read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or The Buried Giant, but can believe that if one likes that sort of thing, those would be the sort of things one likes (to paraphrase Miss JB once again).

For Attwood, I tried The Blind Assassin and felt aggrieved that after 200 odd pages I had wasted my time persevering with what I was not enjoying. And stopped.

As for ferny's early examples (Beowulf &c), I don't see one I would pluck from my shelves and read for pleasure, though possibly with appreciation as great works of their time

[teamsaint]

Oops. I shall have to admit my complete ignorance of his work and provisionally take your word for that.

You could combine discovering Discworld with catching up on the latest in cutting edge folk rock, RB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintersmith

[Richard Barrett]

I'm currently reading - and greatly enjoying - Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, by the way

That's a lovely book to be sure. The original painting, by the way, is and has always been in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, I can't remember whether the author ever says that.

Harry Potter: very badly written and obvious stuff. I read part of the first novel "to see what all the fuss was about" but the films are much better.

The Blind Assassin: I remember that not being on the same level as The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake. But not bad either.

Ishiguro: the point of the books I mentioned isn't their genre affiliation, any more than The Remains of the Day is primarily a "historical novel" or The Unconsoled a logical extension of Kafka. I think it's a shame to let the affiliations get in the way of the substance of the books (although I also think that their substance is such that it could only be expressed using those particular means).

Two SF books I read in the last few years with considerable depth and once more a complete integration of style and content:
The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen, a first novel by someone whose future work I look forward to enormously;
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Anathem and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
A lot of science fiction is of course crap, with narrative and characters seemingly viewed as annoying but necessary add-ons to some supposedly mind-bending concept or other. But I have to admit that a mind-bending concept can sometimes go a long way with me.

[Richard Barrett]

You could combine discovering Discworld with catching up on the latest in cutting edge folk rock, RB.

I suppose I could...

[teamsaint]

I suppose I could...

Go on, you know you want to really....

Anyway, I saw Steeleye Span perform quite a bit of that album at a festival last year, and they were fantastic. Seriously heavy, and Maddy Prior's performance was really quite extraordinary.

[vinteuil]

Go on, you know you want to really....

Anyway, I saw Steeleye Span perform quite a bit of that album at a festival last year, and they were fantastic. Seriously heavy, and Maddy Prior's performance was really quite extraordinary.

... I think our recently-much-quoted Muriel Spark -

“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”

- is preferable to the hoary "de gustibus non est disputandum".

But they're both valid.

Discworld - 'Steeleye Span' aw, c'mon, reeeaally???

.

[teamsaint]

... I think our recently-much-quoted Muriel Spark -

“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”

- is preferable to the hoary "de gustibus non est disputandum".

But they're both valid.

Discworld - 'Steeleye Span' aw, c'mon, reeeaally???

.

Don't know the first thing about Discworld,but the performance I saw was terrific, I mean REALLY good, and I'm not really a fan of theirs.

But perhaps other folk have seen them live recently, and disagree......

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You seem to be positing a binary distinction between 'fantasy' ("good") and (to use your words) 'every day', 'middle class readership', 'sub-journalist', 'realistic', 'serious decline' ("bad" - by implication of tone : "very bad").

I look around my shelves at the prose I most relish - Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Austen, Thos: Love Peacock, Thackeray, Melville, James, Conrad, Kipling, Stevenson, Bennett, Fontane, Raabe, Storm, Stifter, Chekhov, Turgenev, Bassani, Svevo, Proust, Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal, ... [that's enuff : ed.] - and I can still say that I don't "get" what you're seeing in science fiction / fantasy - and yet I will not accept your diatribe against what you see as the alternative.

You are absolutely right, of course - and would not have been tempted to make so simplistic a binary distinction had frenchie not made the equal-but-opposite distinction against the entire genre of "science fiction and science fantasy".

What really matters to me when I read is the choice of vocabulary - the rhythms, pacing, placing, composition - and the insights into the ways people think and behave. Whether that is done in a comic/tragic or realistic/fantasy manner doesn't matter - and many of your selection of writers blur distinctions, as does Pratchett, as does Woolf, as does [I won't tell you again - ed.] This is why I prefer to read D H Lawrence (especially those moments in The Rainbow describing the relationships between "fathers" and "daughters") to Tolkien. I read LotR after enjoying the radio adaptation in the early '80s - and read it twice; but the third attempt defeated me; for a Professor of Anglo Saxon poetry, who produced such wonderful modern English transcriptions of Gawain, Pearl etc, he really had a dead-on-the-page writing style. Better as films (and as Radio adaptations, for that matter) than as literature for me (as are the Potter stories - Pullman, on the other hand, is a superb wordsmith and story-teller).

But Tolkien's flaws have nothing to do with the genre he wrote in - any more than the failings of Durrell, or Trollope, or James originate in their choice to write "realistic" literature.


(With Proust, of course, we have everything that Literature has to offer.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

As for ferny's early examples (Beowulf &c), I don't see one I would pluck from my shelves and read for pleasure, though possibly with appreciation as great works of their time

Ah - but would you find the enthusiasm of others for those works "a bit tiresome"?

[eighthobstruction]

....>> "Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Austen, ...., Svevo, Proust, Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal'<< >>"Steeleye Span....Discworld""<<

....MY how are they going to cater for all us in the Nursing Home....

[Richard Tarleton]

Science fiction and contemporary satire....for hispanophile forumites, I was browsing the Spanish books in Foyles a while back when a Spanish couple standing next to me said "Get that", pointing at Eduardo Mendoza's Sin noticias de Gurb, the story of two shape-shifting extraterrestrials who are tasked with checking out Barcelona around the lead-in to the Barcelona Olympics. Except that one of them, Gurb, goes missing on day one. The narrator is the other one, the result an extremely funny commentary on life in the city as he tries to get the hang of things (and find Gurb). I see it's been translated as No word from Gurb. Highly recommended.

Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy et seq....flawed but brilliant.....

A rather earnest work of contemporary science fiction which I read at the suggestion of my niece is The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell....music is picked up by the Arecibo observatory coming from the direction of Alpha Centauri....the Jesuits decide to investigate.....

[vinteuil]

With Proust, of course, we have everything that Literature has to offer.

... yep, for science fiction and science fantasy, he's my man.



PS - and of course I don't care for the rules of them as despise "detective fiction" - cos Simenon is Great Litrachur.

PS2 - confession time - of course I read The Hobbit and The L of the R and loved them. (But I was fourteen... I think I wd find them unreadable now.)

PS3 - confession time 2 - and I devoured all of (and still love) Jules Verne.

PS4 - and Adolfo Bioy Casares - and Borges - and Calvino.

PS5 - [that's enuff postscripts - ed.]



.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

....>> "Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Austen, ...., Svevo, Proust, Balzac, Flaubert, Stendhal'<< >>"Steeleye Span....Discworld""<<

....MY how are they going to cater for all us in the Nursing Home....

We'll all have to have Kindles and i-Poddy-type things - switched off and deleted when we are. A collected Nietzsche to prompt us on our way?

(Actually, I enjoyed reading Zarathustra when I was doing Teacher Training - particularly the bit at the end of Book One (IIRC) where Zara tells his pupils to push off and find things out for themselves "or better still, be ashamed of me - I may have deceived you". I regularly used to read that bit out to Sixth-Formers on the last lesson I ever had with them - learning from teachers is fine, but the real thing comes from questioning. I'm semi-attracted to the idea of the Eternal Recurrence, too. But I've said that before.)