What are you reading now?

[vinteuil]

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Adalbert Stifter : Tourmaline

Nudged to read this by David2002's entry on another thread -

Tourmaline - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPTBymcs56E

Computer generated music produced with the help of Kulitta.
I'm not sure if this particular piece was generated completely automatically, or if there was some human input.
The ideas behind the generation are quite interesting, though I'm not sure that the end result is so interesting.
I didn't know what the name tourmaline represents - but it appears it is a mineral - gem stone - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourmaline
This page has a nice picture of a chunk of the stuff - https://www.globalhealingcenter.com/...line-gemstone/ - though it seems to have some bonkers ideas - a bit new-ageish I think.
I can't say that Tourmaline - the "music" - really grabbed me.

I like Stifter - but even for him , this is decidedly weird.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/05/20/natural-history-adalbert-stifter/

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http://imaginations.glendon.yorku.ca/?p=988

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

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[DracoM]

............what else?
'The Trial' / Kafka

[Padraig]

Coming a bit late to this writer, but making a start here:

No Is Not Enough, Naomi Klein

[pastoralguy]

'Manhood. The Rise and Fall of the Penis' by Mels Van Driel.


Very interesting ! (Although the section describing the castration of young men with good voices to provide castrati would bring a tear to a glass eye!)

[Petrushka]

'The Spy and the Traitor' by Ben Macintyre. This has to be one of the best books I've read in years, a true story that is superbly told by Macintyre and a thrilling page-turner.

On a personal note, I stopped in the Hotel Ukraine in Moscow back in 1979 very close to the signal site that plays such a significant role in Gordievsky's 1985 escape. The hotel itself, a typical building from the Stalin era, was hopelessly inefficient.

[LMcD]

'The Man Who Was Saturday' - biography of Airey Neave by Patrick Bishop.

[Belgrove]

Just finished the second consecutive reading of James Reich's book Mistah Kurtz! A Prelude to Heart of Darkness, published in 2016 to comparatively little notice. Apologies for the length of this post, but this is the finest novel I've read since McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and it is even more saturated in dreadful portent than that.

Conrad's book is certainly one of the most important of the 20th Century, influencing Eliot, Welles, Orwell, Coppola et al, and in a variety of media. But I've always found that its sub-textual ideas and mood rather more interesting than what it actually delivers through elusive and overly adjectival prose, and layered narrative constructs - the idea of the book is better than its execution. Kurtz is its kernel but, rather like the holy of holies in the Temple, is an empty enigma. His charismatic reputation is at odds with the disintegrating husk that Marlow encounters. We know that he must have done something that even The Company (an enthusiastic promoter of avarice, slavery, brutality and murder) regards as appallingly bad, but what that monstrosity is we must imagine for ourselves. Here Reich cleverly fills in the gaps while still remaining enigmatically oblique.

Reich's book derives from a very close and detailed reading of HoD, with its narrative formed from the papers that Kurtz entrusts to Marlow for delivery to his 'Intended'. We swiftly and elegantly learn of Kurtz's childhood, his dubious apprenticeship in London, meeting his betrothed, the circumstances for his rapid promotion within The Company and his own journey to, and sojourn at its Inner Station. Cursory events and asides in HoD are deftly woven into the narrative to fill-out Kurtz without explaining him. It illustrates the dangers of the highly intelligent and ambitious autodidact. The scrawled addendum to Kurtz's scholarly paper on the Suppression of Savage Customs to 'exterminate all the brutes' is completely reinterpreted by events that are entirely consistent with HoD, and (terrible as it sounds) satisfying and comprehensible.

What is fearful about this book is the sheer gorgeousness of the prose used by Kurtz to describe his own deterioration; even his terrible nightmares have a bewitching allure that spill into and inspire his awakenings. So grab yourself a very stiff G&T (plenty of quinine to ward off those clotted malarial airs) and settle down to a deeply disturbing and beautifully realised journey to Hell. But be afraid...

[Bella Kemp]

This sounds fascinating, Belgrove, and I shall seek it out. I love Heart of Darkness for its very elusiveness - reading that weirdly tangled prose is like getting lost in the rainforest and gives one a very strange joy. I also love Cormac McCarthy, by the way - surely the mirror opposite of Conrad with his ruthless culling of adjectives and 'unnecessary' words. But, in the end, I suppose I just love unnecessary words and am not a fan of the current crop of writers who all seem to come from creative writing schools where the first rule they learn is cut cut cut.

[muzzer]

A story without adjectives is a very dull story. Even Hemingway’s ‘one true sentence’ needs one or two. It would explain the state of a lot of new fiction if that’s what’s taught, though personally I find the concept of teaching creative writing troubling. If you want to learn how to write, read great writers, of which Conrad is certainly one.

[LMcD]

If you're interested in 20th century history, almost anything by:
Ben Macintyre - try 'A Foreign Field' or 'Operation Mincemeat'
Antony Beevor - he's written compelling books about, among other subjects, the invasion of Crete, the siege of Stalingrad, Arnhem and the 1944 Ardennes offensive. He pitches you into the heart of the action by means of the personal testimony of participants without ever allowing you to forget the overall strategy of the campaign in question.

[Bella Kemp]

A story without adjectives is a very dull story. Even Hemingway’s ‘one true sentence’ needs one or two. It would explain the state of a lot of new fiction if that’s what’s taught, though personally I find the concept of teaching creative writing troubling. If you want to learn how to write, read great writers, of which Conrad is certainly one.

I agree!

[DracoM]

'Falk' by Joseph Conrad.

[Pulcinella]

Just finished the set of six Starbridge novels by Susan Howatch: some interesting observations on the state of the CofE, but my affection for Trollope's Barchester has not been supplanted.
About to start Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy, recommended (in the children's section!) by DracoM.

And yesterday afternoon I had a quick skim through the section on Dialogues des Carmelites in Wilfrid Mellers' book on Poulenc: not exactly light relief!

[LMcD]

Andrea Levy - 'The Long Song'

[gradus]

Jan Morris, Trieste and the meaning of nowhere, essential if you ever visit the place.