A Change of Seasons
Winter finally arrived here a couple of weeks ago, two months after it hit the economy, credit markets frozen, ok technically not winter but a prolonged fall (but now NBER says it's official), financial storms of an intensity exceeding even the direst forecasts. So there's been a chill on my posting as well, as I've been occupied by reading the harvests of sown wind, the excesses of the Great Moderation (for which the internets surfeit, the best filtration & blogroll being Yves Smith's; but, sadly, RIP, Tanta [add: I would be remiss not to mark the passing of Kiyoshi Ito, coformalizer of stochastic calculus]), though not occupationally for the moment.
Autumnal outings included Trio Solisti performing their last CD plus something even better from their next, Piazzolla's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, wittily transcribed to pianotrio; the fall meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society, whereat I got to meet the illustrious illustrator and snarkaeologist; and Martin Ramirez's exhibit 2.
What else? A compendium of reading since July (translator in parens):
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
B.S.Johnson, The Unfortunates
Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun (Donald Keene)
L.P.Hartley, The Go-Between
Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (Ralph Manheim)
Francis Carco, Streetcorners (Gilbert Alter-Gilbert)
Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte (Anthony Kerrigan)
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
Amos Oz, A Perfect Peace (Hillel Halkin)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Tove Jansson, The Summer Book (Thomas Teal)
G.V.Desani, all about H.Hatterr
Paul Verhaeghen, Omega Minor (Paul Verhaeghen)
Alan Bennett, Untold Tales
Juan Goytisolo, Makbara (Helen Lane)
Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa
Arno Schmidt, Collected Stories (John E. Woods)
Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup (Ralph McCarthy)
Venedikt Erofeev: Moscow To The End Of The Line (H. William Tjalsma)
Yury Dombrovsky, The Keeper of Antiquities (Michael Glenny)
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (Grace Frick)
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony (Tim Parks)
André Breton, Nadja (Richard Howard)
Camilo José Cela, The Hive (J.M.Cohen)
Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (Donald Keene)
Elie Wiesel, Night (Marion Wiesel)
Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (Toby Talbot)
Seamus Heaney, Electric Light
Flann O'Brien, An Béal Bocht/The Poor Mouth (Patrick Power)
Ignácio de Loyola Brandão: Zero (Ellen Watson)
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness (Katherine Silver)
Ariel Dorfman, Konfidenz
Shusaku Endo, The Sea and Poison (Michael Gallagher)
Christina Peri Rossi, The Museum of Useless Efforts (Tobias Hecht)
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
J.F. Powers, Morte D'Urban
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
Roberto Bolano, 2666 (Natasha Wimmer) [1]
Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases
Ariel Dorfman, Widows (Stephen Kessler)
1/2way thru Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone (David Hawkes)
on deck: Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry selected and translated by Vladimir Nabokov, ed Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin
[1] best of 2008 publication: I'll reprise the 4 seasons based on the fictional author's pennamesake: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, but there's one picture worth a thousand pages:
Autumnal outings included Trio Solisti performing their last CD plus something even better from their next, Piazzolla's The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, wittily transcribed to pianotrio; the fall meeting of the Lewis Carroll Society, whereat I got to meet the illustrious illustrator and snarkaeologist; and Martin Ramirez's exhibit 2.
What else? A compendium of reading since July (translator in parens):
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
B.S.Johnson, The Unfortunates
Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun (Donald Keene)
L.P.Hartley, The Go-Between
Günter Grass, The Tin Drum (Ralph Manheim)
Francis Carco, Streetcorners (Gilbert Alter-Gilbert)
Camilo José Cela, The Family of Pascual Duarte (Anthony Kerrigan)
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
Amos Oz, A Perfect Peace (Hillel Halkin)
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Tove Jansson, The Summer Book (Thomas Teal)
G.V.Desani, all about H.Hatterr
Paul Verhaeghen, Omega Minor (Paul Verhaeghen)
Alan Bennett, Untold Tales
Juan Goytisolo, Makbara (Helen Lane)
Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa
Arno Schmidt, Collected Stories (John E. Woods)
Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup (Ralph McCarthy)
Venedikt Erofeev: Moscow To The End Of The Line (H. William Tjalsma)
Yury Dombrovsky, The Keeper of Antiquities (Michael Glenny)
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian (Grace Frick)
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony (Tim Parks)
André Breton, Nadja (Richard Howard)
Camilo José Cela, The Hive (J.M.Cohen)
Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human (Donald Keene)
Elie Wiesel, Night (Marion Wiesel)
Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (Toby Talbot)
Seamus Heaney, Electric Light
Flann O'Brien, An Béal Bocht/The Poor Mouth (Patrick Power)
Ignácio de Loyola Brandão: Zero (Ellen Watson)
Horacio Castellanos Moya, Senselessness (Katherine Silver)
Ariel Dorfman, Konfidenz
Shusaku Endo, The Sea and Poison (Michael Gallagher)
Christina Peri Rossi, The Museum of Useless Efforts (Tobias Hecht)
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
J.F. Powers, Morte D'Urban
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
Roberto Bolano, 2666 (Natasha Wimmer) [1]
Nathan Englander, The Ministry of Special Cases
Ariel Dorfman, Widows (Stephen Kessler)
1/2way thru Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone (David Hawkes)
on deck: Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry selected and translated by Vladimir Nabokov, ed Brian Boyd & Stanislav Shvabrin
[1] best of 2008 publication: I'll reprise the 4 seasons based on the fictional author's pennamesake: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, but there's one picture worth a thousand pages:
posted by nnyhav | 13:59
5 Comments:
Really good to see you back, and thanks for the plug!
I see that you've gotten to "All About H. Hatterr", it is a great favorite of mine and I think it's such a perfect specimen of the educated Indian's sense of humor … a masala of Tristram Shandy and PG Wodehouse. Unfortunately, most Indian prose now is deadly dull & hackneyed, cleverly marketed to US editors who are themselves the living embodiment of cleverly-marketed educations & tastes … sigh
I must thank you for the Savinio, Lives of the Gods, it was absolutely superb. Next … Chirico's memoirs
"Moscow to the end of the Line" looks very interesting though rather short at 164 pages.I'll have to look for a copy.
Yes, H.Hatterr was sui generis. So were the brothers.
JA, Erofeev's good stuff, as per my bookchat assessment (my assessment of bookchat might also be inferred therefrom, but still it's better than blogposting). It started a hot slice of reading, esp the Calasso and Yourcenar; overall, before this year, I hadn't read anything by 2/3 of the authors (including Desani and Erofeev) on this list (to which, now add Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters and Coover's A Night at the Movies); even ata rate of 100 books/yr, so much gets passed by.
I went to the bookstore today and all I could recall was Moscow so I'll write it down.By the By I noticed a new Laxness in hardcover"The Great Weaver from Kashmir" but I understand he wrote it quite young for what that's worth.
Coover's "A Night at the Movies" is fabulous. Also, try "John's Wife" (I hope that's correct) by same.
R. Mueller
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