What are you reading now?

[Don Basilio]

Hi, vinteuil. Yes, I finished Clarissa. I took six months over it, with plenty of breaks in between. I'd feel a total pseud saying I enjoyed it, but I can see why it is fascinating, once you get in to it. Sir Charles Grandisson is not in paperback, and I have no intention.

Someone could make a joke about Clarissa and porcupines making rape, but I don't think that would be in very good taste. Richardson stacks the apparatus so much in Clarissa's favour, but then writes Lovelace's part with total conviction, leaving you to think he is a sexy, brave, Byronic hero, or (as I do) an unbelievably slimy upper class creep. (The social nuances are as varied as in Austen and like the sexual politics, can give the material for endless academic theses. But something that can inspire both Jane Austen, the Marquis de Sade and Les Liaisons Dangereuses must have something going for it.)

[Idamante]

Strangely enough, Any Human Heart is one of the few Boyds I haven't read, and I wished I had. (Cos of the TV version, y'know - that dilemma - will it spoil the book, or will reading the book first make the TV a let down?)

Russ

In my experience it's always better to read the book first. Otherwise the TV images get in the way of your personal response to the book, which is very annoying.

Whereas you can still enjoy the TV version after reading the book even if its not that good (and if it's really terrible you can just turn it off)

[Idamante]

For those of you who are in the mood for Thomas Mann, try "Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years". Very funny...unforgettable!

Perhaps you can help me with 'The Magic Mountain'? I read it recently and found it a huge let-down. You would think a "novel of ideas" by one of Germany's greatest writers, written in the 1920s and set in the years leading up to the catastrophe of World War I would be a gripping read. Sadly not.

I can only assume I missed the point of it.

[Don Basilio]

Reviews of Clarissa on WeRead vary in their assessment from

This book was a constant comapnion for over three months, and how I missed it once I'd finished it. Fantastic complex characters, great storyline, loved it.

to

hate this novel, it is soo boring :P

[Anna]

I have a pile of books to read. It may seem an odd mixture but our local Hospice shop was selling paperbacks for £1 and hardbacks for £2. So in no particular order they are:

Cosima Wagner's Diaries - Geoffrey Skelton
Prick up Your Ears - John Lehr
My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
Perpita - Vita Sackville-West
Frozen in Time, An account of the Franklin Expedition of 1848 to the Arctic
Sacred Hearts - Sarah Dunant
How the Dead Live - Will Self
Mrs, Keppel's Daughter - Diana Souham
A Family Romance - John Lanchester

Any thoughts on any of the above?

[vinteuil]

Reviews of Clarissa on WeRead vary in their assessment from

This book was a constant comapnion for over three months, and how I missed it once I'd finished it. Fantastic complex characters, great storyline, loved it.

to

hate this novel, it is soo boring :P

As often, Dr Johnson got there first:


"Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself." [ 6 April 1727]

"Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones." [ also 6 April 1727]

[sigolene euphemia]

O! Yes, if any of you have read this book, I would very much enjoy a conversation.

Olivia and Jai

A Novel of Passion and Betrayal in 19th Century India
Rebecca Ryman (pseudonym )
St. Martin's Press
1990

Euda will be glad to know I picked it up in a thrift store and on the back cover it states - Advanced Reading Copy - Not For Resale

All through out the book I imagined a film of this story and what the sound track could be. I don't recall .ever. superimposing a film and music into a novel as I read.

[Eudaimonia]

Clarissa? I liked Moll Flanders a lot better:

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who Was Born In Newgate, and During a Life of Continu'd Variety For Threescore Years, Besides Her Childhood, Was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife [Whereof Once To Her Own Brother], Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon In Virginia, At Last Grew Rich, Liv'd Honest, and Died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: online text

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/370

[umslopogaas]

Post 48 Idamante

See my earlier post (37) on Mann's 'Magic Mountain'. Yes, I know what you mean. I didnt exactly feel let down, but had a distinct feeling of under-reward for massive effort. Its over seven hundred pages and at times feels like seven thousand. I never attempted 'Joseph And His Brothers', I once saw it on the shelves in a bookshop and if I remember correctly, it runs to four volumes. A four volume retelling of a bible story? Maybe wonderful, but I fear I'll never find out.

But 'Doctor Faustus' is quite different. And, post 38, I didnt know there was a new translation. Looks as if when the copy I've ordered to give as a Christmas present arrives, I'm going to have to divert it onto my sofa and read it myself.

At the moment, I'm reading Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Just got to the stage of disturbing events on the Yorkshire coast. Van Helsing, where are you? I remember seeing the Hammer film when I was a student, it was on as a late-night double bill with the Marx Brothers' 'Duck Soup'. The cinema was crammed with beer-filled undergraduates, me included. It was the most entertaining cinema experience I can remember, I laughed so much at the famous mirror scene in 'Duck Soup' that if the seats hadnt been so tightly jammed in I'd have fallen on the floor. And the moment in 'Dracula' when Christopher Lee walks down the stairs in his castle, all black cloak and welcoming smile and purrs "Goot evenning" in what we are presumably intended to believe is a Transylvanian accent - unforgettable.

[Norfolk Born]

I'm currently reading 'A Passage to Africa' by George Alagiah.

[Idamante]

Post 48 Idamante

See my earlier post (37) on Mann's 'Magic Mountain'.

Thanks for that. The Wikipedia entry on the novel is quite interesting - more so unfortunately than the book itself.

Almost unbelieveably, there is a film version available from Amazon with - guess who - Rod Steiger & Charles Aznavour I guess Steiger must be playing Settembrini, but Aznavour...?

[Idamante]

On the subject of translation - I once worked as a freelance editor and did some work on an 'Encyclopedia of Literary Translation.' The entry on Mann's translator HT Lowe Porter was quite damning. Basically it said that she devoted her life to translating Mann into English even though she wasn't quite up to the job. Hence the need for new translations I suppose.

Following your advice I will have a go at Doctor Faustus, once Ive read everything else on my 'to do' list...

[Don Basilio]

Clarissa? I liked Moll Flanders a lot better:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/370

Funnily enough I did read Moll Flanders while I was reading Clarissa. I was giving a short talk on Fathers of the English Novel for some City of London guides, and both authors have connections. I always think Defoe sounds much, much more exciting on paper than he actually is to read. He manages to make all these adventures sound so mundane. I didn't think to compare the two works, although obviously there is the strong element of women coping in a world in which they are subordinate to men - Clarissa and Moll go about it in diametrically opposite ways.

[umslopogaas]

56 and 57 Idamante

You couldnt make it up! I thought someone must be doing some leg pulling, but I just googled it and its true: there really is a film of The Magic Mountain. Directed by Hans W. Geissendorfer and released in Germany in 1982 as Der Zauberberg.

Rod Steiger Mynheer Peeperkorn
Flavio Bucci Settembrini
Christoph Eichhorn Hans Castorp
Charles Aznavour Naphta (the Jesuit)

The reviews are quite complimentary. Steiger and some others in the cast are dubbed into German. Strangely, it isnt listed anywhere in Halliwell's Film Guide, which I thought had every movie ever made. Perhaps it only covers English language ones.

On the subject of translation quality, I have about three words of German, so cant really comment, but I thought Doctor Faustus reads very well. She does take a couple of pages at the start to point out that translating Doctor Faustus poses particular difficulties, in that he uses patches of dialect and, in a couple of places, archaic style. Still, it will be interesting to compare Lowe-Porter's version (in Penguin Modern Classics) with the new one. And whatever the qualities of her translating, she cant count. In her introduction she tells us that "Readers of Faustus will and must be involved, with shudders, in all three strands of the book" and then promptly lists four: "the German scene from within and its broader, its universal origins; the depiction of an art not German alone but vital to our whole civilisation; music as one instance of the arts and the state in which the arts find themselves today; and finally, the invocation of the daemonic."

Looks like another trip to Waterstones is called for ...

[Idamante]

The reviews are quite complimentary. Steiger and some others in the cast are dubbed into German. ...

This calls for a separate thread but Ive noticed that unlike English film buffs, Germans are quite happy to watch dubbed films. And Italian films (eg spaghetti Westerns) often have alternative English & Italian soundtracks. If only the English could get used to dubbing, rather than demanding subtitles, foreign films might at last get the audience they deserve in this country.