Ersatz TLS discussion

Greetings, all! Here we are, slouching towards April. Still blustery more often than not here in Seattle, but I have hopes for the coming week. Still dark here, but the sky is clear and a full Worm Moon is glowing through the dining room window...



Happy reading, everyone. I look forward to your reviews and lively discourse.

Interesting Links about books and reading...

How Would the Publishing World Respond to Lolita Today?

When Edith Wharton Graced the Cover of the Book Review

Ann Patchett puts her house in order (this one hit close to the bone for me).

Literary Birthdays

...here

Literary Quiz

...I'm looking, will update when I find a good one.

Afternoon all....17c and blazing sun in the south east of england, a 3 day heatwave has arrived, rather early, as slowly SE England becomes a dry, warm location from April to October. Global warming!!!

Plenty of great reading in 2021 so far, non-fiction is particularly strong, here is a brief summary of whats underway(havent read any Pla this week, so no update on his 600 page diaries of 1919-20 in Catalunya)

Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson(1954) is really impressive so far,Wilson has a light touch but her descriptions of the Fraser Valley and a woman leaving a troubled marriage is something i could expect someone to make a film about

Immigration and Nationalism: Argentina and Chile 1890-1914 is a work of history but fascinating as its sources are mainly based on literature and journalism from that era. The author moves his study on well from the initial clamour for new blood in these two Southern Cone nations, into the backlash against "the other". This was felt more strongly in Argentina as the influx produced large urban working class movements that radically changed a landowning nation, in Chile it was a more middle class influx of immigrants and the changes were slower and more subtle. The Argentine racism against the "Turcos(ie Syrian-Lebanese)" is vile and poisonous, they were successful immigrants and ex-Argentinian president Carlos Menem had Turco parents

Lastly, there is Jeffersons fascinating Notes on Virginia much more readable than The Federalist Papers, the writings of a polymath fascinated with the state of his birth and how it looked in the 1780s

Oh and Wolf Moon is going well, post spanish civil war fighting in the Cantabrians Mountains of Green Spain. The first novel that Julio LLamazares published

AB76 wrote: "Afternoon all....17c and blazing sun in the south east of england, a 3 day heatwave has arrived, rather early, as slowly SE England becomes a dry, warm location from April to October. Global warmin..."

Yes, I finally got out into the garden. On Friday, for really the first time since the lockdowns started, I got a case of the grumps and just wanted some warm sunshine to cheer me up. So I spent this morning in the front garden tidying up with a quick coffee withh one neighbour in the garden in the middle. Then in the afternoon my next door neighbour invited me round and we had coffee and newly made Christmas cake! We were able to sit outside until 5 o'clock and it made such a lovely change that I am all cheered up now.

On a literary level, having finished Cold Tuscan Stone I have started the latest Alex Delaware novel Serpentine by Jonathan Kellerman. I do like the series, more of which in due course.

It’s MrC’s 87th birthday today and this morning I baked a cake which was a bit of a disaster. It was a simple Victoria sponge with raspberry jam and whipped cream but I did not whip the cream enough and the top layer slid off and the jam splurged out. It tasted fine so it didn’t really matter.
This got me thinking about special cakes and teas in literature but could only think of Miss Havisham’s wedding cake with mice eating it, Lady Bracknell’s cucumber sandwiches and the Mad Hatter’s tea party where there was only tea.

Well I just watched a delightful remembrance of Beverly Cleary on OPB - here's a link just scroll down.

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/2...

giveusaclue wrote: "I have started the latest Alex Delaware novel Serpentine by Jonathan Kellerman. I do like the series..."

Ooh, I didn't realise there was a new one - thank you!

CCCubbon wrote: "special cakes and teas in literature but could only think of Miss Havisham’s wedding cake with mice eating it, Lady Bracknell’s cucumber sandwiches and the Mad Hatter’s tea party where there was only tea. "

A very happy birthday to your husband, then!
These are great examples. The only others coming to mind now are Proust's Madeleines and the "Lebkuchen" (the witch's house is built of) in the Brother Grimm fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel".

Here is a literary cakes quiz, but it works the other way round - the cakes representing specific books:
https://www.sporcle.com/games/timmyle...
(edit: I had 15/20 just now)

Thank you for pointing me to Bridget Riley last week, yesterday, that is. I had not known her. In fact, I learnt about the existence of a lot of Opart pretty late, sometime in the late Nineties (and still don't know lots). Escher, I had encountered before.

Bill, I appreciate your post on Persuasion and Schubert's "Leiermann" from yesterday very much. Thank you. I hope I may get back to you about them, later.

Shelflife_wasBooklooker wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "special cakes and teas in literature but could only think of Miss Havisham’s wedding cake with mice eating it, Lady Bracknell’s cucumber sandwiches and the Mad Hatter’s tea party w..."
Oh yes, should have remembered the madeleines and the house, gingerbread?
I think I have said that I became fascinated with kinetic art and the wonderful exhibition at the Hayward Gallery around 1970, so much so I spent time making revolving stained glass structures and mirror boxes that one crawled inside. I think it is back to that kaleidoscope I mentioned last week and patterns. Bridget Riley and opArt interested me then.
I will try the quiz, thanks.

@CCCubbon there's always Remarque and brioche buns. More of a bread than a cake, but great when you need to soak up all of that lost generation sadness ;)

BBC4 to become an "archive channel", considering it remains an evening only channel, this will see a huge reduction in the value of the channel

With Britbox hoovering up shows that you will have to pay for, the BBC is being filleted under Tim Davie. I know he has a huge issue on his hands with grasping tory de-regulators swimming around him but its another blow to public service tv, like when Osborne demanded the BBC reduce the reach of their news site in 2014ish

CCCubbon wrote: "It’s MrC’s 87th birthday today and this morning I baked a cake which was a bit of a disaster. It was a simple Victoria sponge with raspberry jam and whipped cream but I did not whip the cream enoug..."

Happy birthday to Mr C. And you can just pretend the cake is a trifle!

I'm enjoying "Olive Kitteridge". It reminds me a lot of "Commonwealth" by Ann Patchett, which I adored. Interesting, crisply written and loosely linked stories with a great sense of place.

I'm also reading "Oshi, Moyu" ("Idol, Burning") by Usami Rin. She uses a lot of young people slang (she's only twenty-one! and she won the Akutagawa Prize!!!) that I don't know (it's depressing to think the young people slang from my exchange student days is considered "old") and she has a sophiticated, interesting writing style - which is fantastic, but I got very lazy with my Japanese novels (a lot of defaulting to authors with lees complex sentences and grammar), so as a second-language reader I'm taking it slowly.

It's an interesting book - it takes the fairly popular trope in Japanese literature these days (seemingly) of the somewhat alienated female outsider ("Hoshi no Ko", the last book I read, had an uncertain female lead - but probably the most famous of that type of lead right now are Sayaka Murata's heroines). It's a first person novella from the POV of a teenage girl who suffers from psychological problems (although she explains she's been diagnosed and medicated, we aren't given the name of her disorder) and finds it difficult to navigate life "properly". She channels all of her thoughts, dreams and concentration into an intense and protective fandom centering around a young male pop/acting idol. Everything in the novel is refracted through the lens of her obsession - it's claustrophobic and intense.

@Glad just saw your comment on "Oshi, Moyu" in last week's thread, and "Perfect Blue" is a good shout! There's a lot of really interesting fiction to be mined from the world of Japanese and Korean pop/acting idols and the fandoms around them. I had a lot of friends in my exchange student days and my Japanese office days who were very involved in that whole scene (my colleague would leave group drinks early every Saturday we went out to watch the Johnny's variety shows, even though she was also taping them). So I only ever saw it from the sidelines but these idols really inspire a devoted following. "Oshi, Moyu" so far does explore the more positive side of fandom - the community it gives the girl and the sense of stability. But there is a lot about the parasitic and voyeuristic side of obsessive fandom, just like in "Perfect Blue". When you look at the very strict and controlled lives these idols leave (the head shaving incident a few years ago made it to Western news outlets as well, but there are other issues that sometimes hit the news), it can feel quite sad.

After spending some time in the company of James Crumley's hard-boiled PIs, who indulge in excessive boozing,casual sex, and a bear or two, I thought it time for a change of gear. So, on to Penelope Fitzgerald's The Beginning of Spring, set in 1913 Moscow.
And what do I find? Vodka drinking! Extra-marital affairs! Gunfire! The secret police! And a bear, naturally - well, it is Russia. I'm only joking, of course - sort of. All these ingredients are covered in the story, but in Fitzgerald's cool and witty hands, the tale is anything but melodramatic.

Frank Reid is an English printer - however, he was born and brought up in Moscow, so just as much Russian as English in many respects. This gives him an understanding of 'Russian ways', and the patience required to navigate their systems of bureaucracy and of personal relationships. The book starts with the unexplained decision of his English born and bred wife Nellie to abandon Frank, and travel back to England. Frank, then, has to cope with this unexpected turn of events as best he can, while also dealing with problems at his printing company.

I won't say much more about the plot, to avoid spoilers. This is, though, a wonderfully imagined version of Tsarist Moscow, only a year before the start of WW1 and a few years before the October revolution. I do not know if Fitzgerald ever visited Moscow, but clearly she could not have known it in this period, which makes the absolute conviction of the descriptions all the more impressive. Authors who attempt to re-create a specific past only very rarely succeed in telling such fluent tales, in which lives are lived in a convincingly re-imagined period.

In some ways, this book reminded me of Anne Tyler - with some quirky characters giving us very funny moments within a realistic-sounding setting. (Coming from me, that is high praise.) It is one of the best, most entertaining literary novels I have read for some time. Highly recommended.

(I did wonder about one incident in the book, where we come across a group of - literal - tree-huggers. Does this refer to some sort of social or political movement in Russia at that time - Tolstoy is mentioned occasionally - or is it simply a slightly surreal moment?)

Now, of course, I expect to read the rest of Fitzgerald. I'd place this one level with Offshore, better than the colder and more academic The Blue Flower, and far better than Human Voices. An excellent, if slightly inconsistent, author.

CCCubbon wrote: "This got me thinking about special cakes and teas in literature..."

It wasn't cake or a tea, but I remember Bridget Jones's dinner party in Bridget Jones's Diary. I was travelling from Heathrow to London on the bus at the time and thought I was going to bust a blood vessel trying not to laugh out loud.

I’ve really loved The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, which has kept me in jovial spirits. I think a reader probably doesn’t realise how much of an impact these stories had in our culture until coming across a phrase like ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night’. I’ve heard the expression so many times, without knowing of its origins in a Holmes story. The tales are full of curiosities, such as a gruesome cardboard box sent in the post, containing two human ears, not a match. The collection (of stories, not ears) is perhaps defined for many people by the introduction of the arch-villain Moriarty. I’ve still got a couple of volumes of Holmes stories to go, so I could pick those up before the end of the year.
I’ve started and abandoned The History of Mr Polly by H.G. Wells. I chose it because I was in the mood for something that was supposed to be funny, but I guess I just wasn’t feeling it. I’m going to now start The Long Take by Robin Robertson, who I’ve been assured is a frightful scoundrel.

scarletnoir wrote(14): "After spending some time in the company of James Crumley's hard-boiled PIs, who indulge in excessive boozing,casual sex, and a bear or two, I thought it time for a change of gear. So, on to Penelop..."

I am generally not drawn towards "noir", so I didn't pay much attention to your Crumley posts. Until I stumbled over the name somewhere else:

Started "The Scarecrow" by Michael Connelly some days ago.
The dedication reads: "To James Crumley for The Last Good Kiss"

MC is one of my all-time favourite crime writers (yes, I know...), so that's decided.

Georg wrote: "Started "The Scarecrow" by Michael Connelly some days ago.
The dedication reads: "To James Crumley for The Last Good Kiss"

MC is one of my all-time favourite crime writers (yes, I know...), so that's decided."

FWIW, although that was the first Crumley I read - and liked it well enough to continue with the others (am currently on the fourth) - the one I liked best so far was Dancing Bear. It happens to be the third book featuring ex-lawyer and PI Milo Milodragovitch, but I don't think the reading order makes a huge difference, though there are some back references. Whichever Crumley you pick up, I hope you enjoy it.

Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson (1954) a Canadian classic, set in British Columbia has suprised me with its open ended first 40 pages and its subtle feminist message

Not many 30 something women in the 1950s would head into the British Columbia interior after walking out on their husband and travel alone into fishing country in the Fraser Valley

Maggie Lloyd takes a bus to Kamloops and then steps off it, on a lonely stretch of highway, to simply sit by the nearby river and fish in the early Spring sunshine. To sit and cast her rod and to think.

As many of you can tell, i am fascinated by what i call "dominion novels", the emerging literature of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

The "dominion" term comes from their formative years as dominions of the British Empire but even by the 1930s that description was fading, though my reading era is roughly 1880-1960

Some suggestions of the best "dominion novels":

Australia, possibly the most "british" of the four in this era, probably has the most literature available via Text Classics and Nonnsuch. I recommened:
An Australian Girl by Catherine Martin (19th century)
For The Term of his Natural Life by Marcus Clarke (19th century)
The Refuge by Kenneth Mckenzie (1950s)
Capricornia by Xavier Herbert (1930s)N

NZealand suffers from a real dearth of classic fiction in print and is the smallest dominion
I recommend:
Collected Short Stories by Frank Sargeson
Man Alone by Richard Mulgan

South Africa is culturally more Afrikaaner than British, among the white population and has had the most disrupted history during this period. The best publisher is Human and Rousseau or Vintage
I recommened:
Jacaranda In The Night by HC Bosman (1940s) Afrikaaner lives in the Transvaal
A World of Strangers by Nadine Gordimer
A Dry White Season by Andre Brink (outside the era but a superb 1970s novel)

Canada has the distinctive presence of the French-Canadians to flavour their novels but the french are less influential than the Afrikaaners in S Africa. The best publisher is New Canadian Library
I recommend:
Thirty Acres by Ringuet (french canadian)
The Well by Sinclair Ross (a canadian counterpart to Mulgans NZ novel)
A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence
Barometer Rising by Hugh Maclennan

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "NZealand suffers from a real dearth of classic fiction in print and is the smallest dominion."
I haven't read much NZ lit, but Katherine Mansfield's [book:New Zealand Stories: Mansfiel..."

Yes, good point, i have read all Mansfields stories and they are superb

Janet Frame should also be there and importantly unlike Mulgan and Sargeson, its very easy to find Mansfield and Frame novels in print

Mulgans "Man Alone" was perfect for me, depression era NZ, you get a real feel for the culture and society in difficult times

Miri wrote: "@Glad just saw your comment on "Oshi, Moyu" in last week's thread, and "Perfect Blue" is a good shout! There's a lot of really interesting fiction to be mined from the world of Japanese and Korean pop/acting idols and the fandoms around them."

Thanks a lot for following this up Cardellina! Yes, we've seen too many times in the news some idols, esp. in SK I think, kill themselves or struggle with their mental health. On the other hand, I have now much more time for K-pop fans and what they can achieve with their social network united power...

So glad you're enjoying Olive Kitteridge. More than one year on and I still remember vividly so many scenes from it, but the one that I think is the most powerful is one close to the end iirc (view spoiler)[which has to do with the stain on Olive's blouse (hide spoiler)]. Back then, I reported back on my experience of reading the book and watching Kiki's Delivery Service in the same post, because they both struck me as very fine observations of how the mundane facts of life can lead to poignant emotions.

When @bl asked what might be our favourite scene from Persuasion, I took it off my shelves to check whether this was when she's with Mr Elliott, in Bath and realises what a tool he is, or when she gets her heart broken by the cavalier attitude of Wentworth when they go for a walk, or... Anyway, I couldn't find them easily in the book, so decided to read it again (for the 3rd time).

Despite being probably my favourite Austen, I do not particularly like the opening chapters. This still holds true, but it strikes me this time around that there might be a clear intention behind it: starting with a focus on (insufferable) Sir Elliott and Elizabeth, entirely excluding Anne, just serves as a mirror of her own, frustrating and frustrated life. It takes two chapters to hear about her, a bit more to hear her and four to hear her thoughts for the first time. Then the show can truly start.

scarletnoir wrote(18):... the one I liked best so far was Dancing Bear.

Hm... "My name is Georg and I have a problem with bears in literature. That started, quite insiduously, when I was a great fan of John Irving and therefore had to put up with all the bears in his early books. Now I am allergic to John Irving and, by extension, bears in books....."

Except Winnie-the-Pooh

The Snow Collectors by Tina May Hall
Having lost her parents and sister at sea, in order to deal with her grief, Henna moves to an isolated Arctic village to write. On a walk with her dog, she discovers the body of a woman in the snowy woods, clutching the fragment of a letter in her hand, relating to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. She becomes fascinated by the story of the Captain's wife, Lady Jane.
I don't need much persuading to read anything about Arctic exploration, especially if it concerns the Franklin Expedition, though I must admit I had not expected much from this.
Much of it though, was a pleasant surprise. Hall creates a suitably claustrophobic atmosphere despite the wide open spaces of what I assume, is remote Alaska. Henna finds herself trapped in a small community of odd characters, hemmed in by the winter conditions.
Its not a book to embark upon though looking for historical accuracy. Franklin's background is hazily sketched; but I suppose this is fiction...
In reality he wasn’t at all popular with his crew, wholly unsuited to his role, his previous experience impressive, but hardly relevant, and grossly overweight. But his wife does seem to have been far more of a character, and that is what Hall focuses on; for example her remarkably determined efforts in beseeching Parliament to send boats to find the missing ships.
But the plotline Hall follows is flawed, and predictable. Of much more interest is her occasional foray into Henna's sanity, and the novel's sporadic weird parts.
But being plot-driven, there has to be a climax, and its a pretty awful one, and quite predictable. Hall seems intent on neatly tidying the various threads, when there was an opportunity here to write a much stranger and open-ended story.

I've had Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories on my bookshelf for years and years, despite not having read any of his works since I was a teenager. I had consumed Sherlock and Professor Challenger repeatably before my face became a pimply relief map.
Wonderfully escapist, refreshingly light, unexpectedly humorous I had never appreciated how well Conan Doyle actually wrote. Etienne Gerard is a fantastic wank of a character. A foolhardy lummox whose bravery outstrips his good sense, Conan Doyle thrusts him into all the campaigns of Napoleon's army campaigns. Easily read, but not easily written, Gerard bears no resemblance to any of Conan Doyle's other creations. It's impressive how he was able to so masterfully colonize completely different genres. Definitely recommended as a diverting read.

Now I'm onto a sure to be less light read, Maxim Gorky's My Childhood.

This is an update on the two main books that I am reading, both demand some suspension of reality, an opening of imagination.
First, there is Crow by Ted Hughes. I take only one or at most two of the continuing poems about horrid, evil, grinning, magnificent Crow and I am only in Creation still. The work is ‘hit you between the eyes’, fantastic. Crow fascinates.
I know that Hughes published this after the suicide of his second wife and her child, after his first wife, Sylvia Plath committed suicide, both women using a gas oven. That was a common method the. There are stories of domestic violence, how could one man carry such guilt, but quite apart from that, Crow is a wonderful piece of writing, the poems becoming the fantasy.

The second book is The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox. I don’t read very fast these days and am only a fifth in partly because it is full of allusions and references to books, books, books, burning libraries, historical events, people, multitudes littering the pages and, yes,
I cannot resist looking up the unfamiliar ones - it a bit like doing a quiz interspersed with a story! It is rather a cupcake of delights for any book lover.

Paul wrote: "I've had Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories on my bookshelf for years and years, despite not having read any of his works since I was a teenager. I had consumed Sherlock and Professor Ch..."

Gorky is a hugely under-rat3ed writer, i havent read "My Childhood" but have read "The Life of a Useless Man" and most of his plays.

He is part of a very talented group who bridged the last years of the Russian classics and were writing into the WW1 and revolutionary era. This group was Bely, Bunin and Andreyev, all born with a decade of Gorky but with different approaches to 1917 and the revolution

Wolf Moon by Julio LLamazares is a joy and good to see Peter Owen getting it translated into english. Sadly Llamazares has very few translated novels

Thanks to Andy and Tom for the tip off, i aim to finish it tonight if possible.

I love the region of Spain it is set in too, seasonal spain as i call it, up in the north alongside the Cantabrian Mountains. Cold winters, cool autumns, plenty of rain and harsh conditions up high above the plains

I had a sudden urge to reread The Notebook by Agota Kristof at the weekend. Just as stupendous this time round. I'm having to restrain myself from picking up the next two before I've finished the other books I have on the go.

AB76 wrote: "As many of you can tell, i am fascinated by what i call "dominion novels", the emerging literature of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa

The "dominion" term comes from their formative..."

Definitely NOT lit, I just finished Arthur W. Upfield's The Sands Of Windee, an early (1931) Bony mystery. In addition to the mystery itself, I like the history of this, and other old mysteries.

Up next is Slough House by Mick Herron. Got to get crackin' as the library wants it back soon.

I've been reading a lot of Cold War fiction/non fiction from the Eastern Bloc since 2018 (16 in all,5 were non-fiction. Of the 16, 9 were from the USSR)

Latest in the series is The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov(1982) which i include as modern fiction. I greatly enjoyed his Pushkin Hills in 2016. He is a witty writer and its great to see his novels from the late 70s and early 1980s in print

Georg wrote: "scarletnoir wrote(18):... the one I liked best so far was Dancing Bear.

Hm... "My name is Georg and I have a problem with bears in literature. That started, quite insiduously, when I was a great ..."

Then you absolutely must find a copy of - The Bear Went Over the Mountain. It's delicious.

Paul wrote: "I've had Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard stories on my bookshelf for years and years, despite not having read any of his works since I was a teenager. I had consumed Sherlock and Professor Ch..."

Wasn't Brigardier Gerard a racehorse?

MK wrote: "Up next is Slough House by Mick Herron. Got to get crackin' as the library wants it back soon."

The best of the series.

Hushpuppy wrote # 26: "When @bl asked what might be our favourite scene from Persuasion, I took it off my shelves to check whether this was when she's with Mr Elliott, in Bath and realises what a tool he is, or when she gets her heart broken by the cavalier attitude of Wentworth when they go for a walk, or... Anyway, I couldn't find them easily in the book, so decided to read it again (for the 3rd time).

Despite being probably my favourite Austen, I do not particularly like the opening chapters. This still holds true, but it strikes me this time around that there might be a clear intention behind it: starting with a focus on (insufferable) Sir Elliott and Elizabeth, entirely excluding Anne, just serves as a mirror of her own, frustrating and frustrated life. It takes two chapters to hear about her, a bit more to hear her and four to hear her thoughts for the first time. Then the show can truly start. "

That's a very good observation, Hushpuppy! I think, too, the first two chapters, written mostly from Sir Elliott's and Elizabeth's rather... limited... (as you say, insufferable) focalizer perspectives, provide an excellent foil for Anne's neglected position, and delayed 'proper' entrance as so far unsuspected main protagonist. Am only in chapter 3, but have greatly enjoyed the sarcastic takes on the "book of books". (Reminds me of the former - phew - orange twit in the White House, whose preferred texts were those in which his own name was inserted every couple of lines, or so rumours have it.)

Really glad you are reading along.

Looking forward to getting to Bill's subtly marine-infused passage, too. In fact, I have been considering, while reading, how Dickens might have characterized Sir Elliott and Elizabeth... he was even less subtle on pomposity. A pleasant imagined comparison.

My book looks very straggly, I made quite a lot of annotations on my first read. It's interesting to revisit them now. (To me, at least.) Obviously had strong views then (too).

I have posted this postcard set before, on G TL&S, and I do not think the design that successful, but I received it as a gift and still enjoy the selection of quotes from Austen's works and letters, so here goes once more: https://janeausten.co.uk/products/pos...-
Maybe of interest to some?
The moods expressed often seem to lend themselves to current events. I have been sending off quite a few recently, to some people I was sure might appreciate them despite the floweriness.
To someone I had not been in touch with a while: "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery" (with distinct apologies, of course).

Hope all this makes some kind of sense? For whichever reason, I have been awake since 5:00 a.m. Maybe I should just start trilling along with the early birds? But I have never really been one. (My mother says that I would keep asking for yet another goodnight story as a child, herself almost tumbling into my bed for being so tired.)

@Bill: Also want to post something on Winterreise, but I can't listen to it just now. (Gets me every time.)

MK wrote: "Then you absolutely must find a copy of - The Bear Went Over the Mountain. It's delicious."

Ah, Kotzwinkle. Don't think I've met any other TLSers who know of him.

Back in the 80's sometime, when my brother was between jobs and between wives, he lived in my spare bedroom (here in Seattle) for a year or two. His books (what he had accumulated by that point anyway) must have been in storage somewhere; he was forced to read through my shelves. Got him hooked on a number of authors, including Kotzwinkle. Found The Hot Jazz Trio in his current collection, and of course, it's now in one of my boxes.

Lljones wrote: "Ah, Kotzwinkle. Don't think I've met any other TLSers who know of him."

In the 1980s I remember his novelization E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in His Adventure on Earth being praised as better than most movie novelizations (perhaps that's fairly faint praise).

I read Fata Morgana, one of David Pringle's Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels: in English Language Selection, 1946-1987, a number of years ago, but I remember absoluetly nothing about it, which makes the book pretty much a failure in my estimation. Nevertheless, I did pick up a copy of Night Book at a book sale a few years ago, as it looks like it might be a dirty book.

Tea talk and tea-cakes in The Picture of Dorian Gray:

A week later Dorian Gray was sitting in the conservatory at Selby Royal, talking to the pretty Duchess of Monmouth, who with her husband, a jaded-looking man of sixty, was amongst his guests. It was tea-time, and the mellow light of the huge, lace-covered lamp that stood on the table lit up the delicate china and hammered silver of the service at which the duchess was presiding. Her white hands were moving daintily among the cups, and her full red lips were smiling at something that Dorian had whispered to her. Lord Henry was lying back in a silk-draped wicker chair, looking at them. On a peach-coloured divan sat Lady Narborough, pretending to listen to the duke's description of the last Brazilian beetle that he had added to his collection. Three young men in elaborate smoking-suits were handing tea-cakes to some of the women. The house-party consisted of twelve people, and there were more expected to arrive on the next day.

"What are you two talking about?" said Lord Henry, strolling over to the table and putting his cup down. "I hope Dorian has told you about my plan for rechristening everything, Gladys. It is a delightful idea."

"But I don't want to be rechristened, Harry," rejoined the duchess, looking up at him with her wonderful eyes. "I am quite satisfied with my own name, and I am sure Mr. Gray should be satisfied with his."

"My dear Gladys, I would not alter either name for the world. They are both perfect. I was thinking chiefly of flowers. Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my button-hole. It was a marvellous spotted thing, as effective as the seven deadly sins. In a thoughtless moment I asked one of the gardeners what it was called. He told me it was a fine specimen of Robinsoniana, or something dreadful of that kind. It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for."

"Then what should we call you, Harry?" she asked.
(Chapter 17)

Ha, I knew there was a tea ceremony in there!

While I was very impressed by the book on my first read (at a young and impressionable age), I found Lord Henry a bit too spouting on a later reread... And not dribbling, but pouring. Sorry to any fans of his!

Seeing fuzzywuzz and Georg's comments on the the Auschwitz concentration camp novel, last week I was very interested in this debate, from a philosophical point of view, as to what is beyond, morally, it seems, re-rendering a real-life story into a fictional version. It is a debate about history, and at what point do the stories of old, retold, have a seeming right to be portrayed by others, in an imagined way, rather than having to stick to the often limited 'facts' of known history.

Its a big question, with no satisfactory answer at the moment, it seems. Is it OK to retell a story version of what happened, with imaginary episodes, if everyone involved, at that particular time, is now dead? Such as the Mary Anning, fossil-collecting story, being made into a film, with a lesbian sub-story to the narrative, with no actual evidence that Mary had any particular sexual history, let alone a possible lesbian one?

I don.t know. but I am interested in 'borderlands' of all kinds. At what point, in the 'borderlands' of historical portrayals, is it permissible to make up imagined dialogue, and thoughts, and actions that have no evidence, in known history, as having actually happened, but attached to real people that lived their own lives.

I consulted the 'sprog' here, being the only one in the family with academic qualifications in 'history' to pontificate on the matter, but he just said, that the further away from present time, it was, then the greater licence there was for being able to interpret history with a novelistic gaze. A sort of wedge-shaped 'grayscale' of history, with a tapering off into a land of 'anything goes' I guess...

But there are other 'borderlands' of acceptability, such as Lisa has brought to our attention this week with the article on the publication of Nabokov's 'Lolita' as to whether it is an OK thing to do, to novelise the grooming of an underage girl, by an obsessed pedophile, even though it seems to be commonly acknowledged that it is, in terms of literature, an acknowledged 'classic'? I don't know, but I'm interested in other's views that are out there.

I have not read Lolita, but I have memories of watching the 1962 Stanley Kubrick version, which I did not rate at all. But its not my kind of film anyway. But 'borderlands', and the questions that surround them are, I think, very much my thing... Anyway a possible 'rabbit hole' here, for me!.. and possibly anyone else out there, up for commenting on this subject, that is... I would be very interested in others comments.

MK wrote: "Georg wrote: "scarletnoir wrote(18):... the one I liked best so far was Dancing Bear.

Hm... "My name is Georg and I have a problem with bears in literature. That started, quite insiduously, when ..."

Ah, Kotzwinkle. I very vaguely remember "Fan Man". Which I must have read eons ago and can hardly remember at all.
But that Bear book sounds tempting.

Paul wrote: "I had never appreciated how well Conan Doyle actually wrote."

Yes, I think his skills are very much underrated. I'm glad in a way that I've found the Sherlock stories as an adult, because I think people often underappreciate them.

Machenbach wrote: "I'm still disappointed that The Red-Headed League wasn't an actual thing though. I would have subscribed."

So would I! Unfortunately, my auburn hue may not have been quite as flaming as was required for the position.

According to On Conan Doyle, Conan Doyle's rules for good writing were: “The first requisite is to be intelligible. The second is to be interesting. The third is to be clever.”

Bill wrote: "Conan Doyle's rules for good writing were: ... "be clever.”

The thought occurred to me when reading the Holmes stories that the great challenge of representing an intelligent character is to find plenty of clever things for them to say - not all authors could pull it off.

@SydneyH, @Mach it seems like TLS has its own Red-Headed League now :)

Georg wrote: "I am allergic to John Irving and, by extension, bears in books....."

In truth, there isn't all that much about bears - and I agree about Irving. I read two of his (I think) and decided that he was a cynical and facile writer, so no more.

Oddly, the 'bear story' (which only covers two or three pages) appeared again in the Crumley I'm currently reading - The Final Country - word for word the same. I can't decide if this arose as a result of a publishing error, an oversight by an editor or Crumley himself, or if Crumley decided to plagiarise his own work (if that is possible or makes sense). Whatever, it's another enjoyable story, but so long and with so many characters that a list of the 'dramatis personae' would have been helpful...

Lljones wrote: "MK wrote: "Then you absolutely must find a copy of - The Bear Went Over the Mountain. It's delicious."

Ah, Kotzwinkle. Don't think I've met any other TLSers who know of him. "

I read 'The Bear...' quite recently, probably prompted by MK - certainly, by one of the TLS contributors. It was pretty amusing, but not extraordinary, so I'm not sure if I'll read another - not really my genre. But I don't rule it out completely...

Tam wrote: "Seeing fuzzywuzz and Georg's comments on the the Auschwitz concentration camp novel, last week I was very interested in this debate, from a philosophical point of view, as to what is beyond, morall..."

If I may shoot from the hip, rather than give a long and carefully thought out answer -

I would distinguish between films or novels dealing with dead individuals, where a certain amount of licence doesn't do much harm (except, perhaps, to any surviving friends or family members - the point about acceptability being proportional to time elapsed is a good one) - and films or novels about the Holocaust - which can at times appear as cynical enterprises. You sometimes feel that film-makers, in particular, are fishing for Oscars (Academy Awards) by portrayals of the horrors inflicted on so many during WW2... and by their superficial approaches, end up by trivialising the whole dreadful events. There's a sort of implied: "You don't dare not nominate our film for an award, because it's about the Holocaust!" aura about some of these 'works' - not all, evidently.

How to distinguish between cynical manipulation and genuine, heartfelt works dealing with the same material? Now, that is where the problem lies, as 'proving' a particular work belongs to one category or the other is not a matter of science or mathematics. In the end, it'll come down to the tastes of individuals, and whereas there may be some sort of consensus in many cases, it's far from guaranteed that this will always be the case.

(As this response was dashed off quickly, I am more than willing to be persuaded of any faulty thinking in this comment.)

Most recent story I've read that features a bear was HG Wells's "A Story of the Stone Age", from his Tales of Space and Time. Very interesting story, you can tell that Wells did a bit of research based on the state of anthropological thought at the time, the 1890s*.

Favourite bear reference that comes to mind: the Jeeves & Wooster story where Bertie quotes Shakespeare.

*edited to correct 1980s to 1890s, just in case the two decades aren't indistinguishable parts of a far distant past.