Recommendations: I just finished Styrons Lie Down in Darknessexcellent, reminded me of Wolfes flowing lyricism without his inability to know when to stop. Anything by Catherno single one of her novels is a masterwork on par with the greatsbut she never wrote a bad oneher entire corpus makes her one of the 4 or 5 best in English of the 20th century IMHO. The poems of Leopardiabsolutely magnificient. Anything by Thomas Hardyfinally started reading him a couple months agodont know why I ever waited this long. On a sidenote, has anyone seen The Claimbased on The Mayor of Casterbridge but set in the old westis it any good? Roths The Human Stainquite good. For BellowRavelstein isnt bad for an elegy, but Id take Humboldts Gift anyday. The Glass Bead Game by Hesseextremely good; sos Steppewolf. Try to avoid the version of GBG entitled Magister Ludiits considered to be a much inferior translation. For CoetzeeDisgrace and Life and Times of Michael K. were excellent readsIm going to try more of his. Amsterdam by McKewan. Almost anything by G. Eliot though Adam Bede might be my favorite. Dosteyevsky and Solzehenitsyn never go wrong. For Kawabata, try Snow Country or Sound of the Mountain. Ishiguros When We Were Orphans has the same feel as his The Unconsoledbut it actually goes somewhere and is much to be preferred.As for Hemingway; when I first tried to read him a few years agoI dismissed him as trite. Finally picked him up again and was extremely impressed. The Hemingway Code is extremely overvalued when people read himthats not what hes about. And as good as Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls are (which is very good), nothing beats The Sun Also Rises (its far less about sex than people think and certainly not about Romero despite the extensive bad criticism along that line). Just read it. Dont bother with the stuff he wrote while drunk though; i.e. Across the River and into the Trees and The Garden of Eden.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:44 AM EST EST