Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this fortnight's thread.

Right now I'm down a rabbit hole. I was reading the introduction (by Bernard Knox) to The Iliad when my attention was grabbed by a passage where Knox was talking about using archaeological records to assist with the dating of the The Iliad. He said, amongst other things, that all memory of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations had vanished from Greece during the Dark Age, and that “Schliemann and Evans had discovered things Herodotus and Thucydides had no idea of”. I haven't read either Herodotus or Thucydides, but I have become rather fascinated by the thought that they were ignorant of their own Bronze Age civilisations (not that Minoa was a Greek civilisation as such, but there is a connection to Greece). I got to wondering what did exist at Mycenae and Knossos during the lifetimes of Herodotus and Thucydides and what they would have seen if they had visited either place. I didn't/don't have access to any books on this subject so “... I just read the internet instead”. (That's a quote from Conversations with Friends which I include especially for the gratification of @LeatherCol, to whom I would also say that the first third of CwF was interesting, but by the end I was just glad to get out alive.) I'm still reading the internet, and now hopelessly enmeshed in all things Mycenae and Knossos. Further (impossible?) questions to be answered now include the matter of what was the difference between the sites that would have existed in Herodotus and Thucydides's day and the sites as first seen by Schliemann and Evans. And what would an ancient Greek of H and T's time consider an ancient ruin? I will award a Crackerjack pencil to anyone able to help with these inquiries.

During an annoying sleepless patch I also read the sixth and eighth books of Ann Cleeves's Shetland series, and can now assert that Chief Inspector Willow Reeves is one of the most irritating, ill-conceived, and poorly executed characters in genre fiction. Message to Cleeves: repetition of the same three descriptive phrases of “tangled hair”, “bottom of the trousers dragging along the ground”/”the bottom of the trousers frayed” and dressed in “charity shop clothing” isn't Homeric; it's just rubbish signpost writing.

The last fortnight's thread was one of the most discursive I can ever remember reading, and it's been impossible to capture the whole sense of the thread. I've had to be pretty brutal. I'm going to skip on past those familiar literary blue touch papers (but nice to see they evoke as much passion as ever): Stonor, Jonathan Franzen, Franzen/Oprah, Ulysses, All The Light We Cannot See. Take a pragmatic decision on ignoring the state of modern fiction; whoosh gaily past book titles which are quotations (brilliant topic, Bill); the Canadian-French question; ignore anything non-book, so that's goodbye to art, music, collections of non-book artefacts. You get the general idea ...

@Paul has been reading his annual Iris Murdoch:

A Word Child ...one of her less well-known works which continues Murdoch's streak of odd books with crap titles.

Despite being less-known, I enjoyed it quite a lot. Murdoch is an acquired taste, she's like peaty, shoe leather-flavored whiskey. If you like her, you like her, and everyone else will look at you uncomprehendingly... but she can easily be a guest that will overstay her welcome. Much of her work is a narrative work-through of her philosophical mind games, and when that philosophy gets too penetrant she can become intolerable. A Word Child doesn't suffer under the weight of her unrequited crush with Plato.
Murdoch is one of the few female authors that really excels at writing male characters (yes, I'll lob that molotov gleefully), but only of a certain type. The self-centered asses, the misogynists, the users and sponges, the internally damaged souls, she doesn't know how to write a decent person. Probably didn't believe they existed. Nor does she have much patience or empathy with females of any stripe. You get the impression that Murdoch wasn't joining book clubs with the girls. Or anything else with the girls, for that matter. You read Iris Murdoch and you get the idea that John Updike or Martin Amis are just characters in her greater narrative universe.

This one focused on Hillary Burde, a hollow, directionless man who never got over his abandonment in an orphanage. Despite grappling his way to Oxford, his sense of inadequacy burned his progress and destroyed those around him. It's clearly a reflection on whether one can ever redeem themselves. Whether confession or reparation or atonement can ever be accomplished, whether the idea is itself a self-serving meaningless exercise, and whether forgiveness can be granted from without.

@Tam has been struggling a little with her choice of book:

... 'The Forty Rules of Love', by Elif Shafak. It is a rewriting of the history of the Sufi poet and philosopher, Rumi. But I have really taken against it on some level that I find it hard to fathom. She is an interesting writer, and I admire her in many ways, but she portrays pretty much all the women in this book as victims, of mostly male ambitions and expectations. There is not one iota of hope for them, in their various positions in the story.

The poor adopted girl, who enters Rumi's household as a young girl, with only the ability to speak to ghosts, as her accomplishments, (!) is led to a horrendous marriage with Rumi's 'guru' type side kick 'Shams'. She loves him, and he denies her his love, even after having agreed to marry her. It seems so cruel to meter out such a negative story for a female protagonist... she dies...

My knowledge of Sufism is that it is quite a kind and benign religious teaching. Mostly gained through reading tales of Mulla Nasrudin, which is a sort of Bhuddist type teaching, through short, and often funny, parables of how a proper life might be conducted. I don't know why she came up with a book that seems to totally undermine her own stated, political, self...I am at a loss really, Shafik seems so feminist in her interests, but somehow continues the story of women being victims of male defined history, with very little hope at all... in her version of the retellings of other famous peoples stories. Any illumination as to this would be welcome. I remain perplexed...

A post by @Russell on his Ancient Greece reading spun off into a wonderful discussion which travelled throughout the thread. Thank you for the many thoughtful contributions and I hope you all enjoyed the discussion as much as I did. I loved the memory that came back to @FrancesBurgundy:

I feel I must jump in re Mary Renault (NOT pronounced like the car I believe, but Renorlt as it were). I read The Last of the Wine over 40 years ago and remember sobbing so hard that I couldn’t carry on reading.

Perhaps because of that I thought she was a rather ‘romantic’ writer and was slightly reluctant to say how much I liked her when speaking to a classicist. I needn’t have worried; this person (connected in some way to that amazing Greek trireme they made) was full of praise for her.

And shortly before the close of the thread @giveusaclue finally cracked her Robert Harris problem by heading back to the ancient world:

I have tried several times in the past to read books by Robert Harris and been disappointed. At last success, I started Pompeii and could hardly put it down. Yes, the final part may ask you to suspend disbelief but overall very enjoyable. It also helps to emphasise how good Roman engineering was with the descriptions of the aquaducts.

@Miri drew our attention to this piece by the Guardian on overlooked books by writers of colour: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202..., but has some riders of her own to add:

I wish when the writers talk about "overlooked" authors that they specify "overlooked in the UK". Hiromi Kawakami is an extremely successful and respected author in Japan who has won the Akutagawa Prize and more. The literary sphere is not limited to Europe, America and Australasia.

If I recall correctly, Kawakami has won the Akutagawa Prize, which is an equivalent of a Booker or a Pulitzer or similar. Some writers do tend to be more popular in their home countries, though - and that's why conflating Kawakami (a Japanese writer who is successful in Japan) with neglected afro-caribbean, asian etc heritage authors from the UK (who often ARE unfairly ignored) is tricky. Kawakami has had her books made into mainstream films and translated into many languages.

@SydneyH kicked off a fine conversation by asking for opinions on translations of Anna Karenina. Bill recommended:

Janet Malcolm... If you can access her NYRB essay "Socks" from the NYRB (I think it was reprinted in Nobody's Looking at You: Essays) it's worth reading. She came down hard for Garnett over P&V.

@Slawkenbergius, whom we welcomed back after an absence, was listening hard and now knows what he's reading next:

All this talk about Anna Karenina has intrigued me. Tolstoy will be my next (long) read!

Looking forward to hearing what Slawkenbergius has to say when he's finished it. No pressure there, Vasco … All the Constance Garnett talk made me nostalgic for the days when you could rely on @NatashaFatale to deliver a swift one-two to anyone disparaging Garnett's work.

For crime lovers, @MK recommended the British Library Crime Classics series. She is reading:

Death Has Deep Roots: A Second World War Mystery It's a murder trial echoing back to the days of the French Resistance. Lawyers, trails, and semi-amateur sleuths rank right up there with the all-time favorite - Police Procedurals.

Gpfr's envy-inducing description of her day:

Yesterday was a beautiful autumn day and really warm in the afternoon. After having lunch with a friend near Palais-Royal, I sat in the gardens for a while ...

prompted this heartfelt response from @Lass:

@Gpfr’s mention of the Palais Royal had me sighing in remembrance. Have sat there reading many a time. Which reminds me that Judith Thurman’s biography of Colette, who lived there, is very good.

You can read more about Colette (with thanks to Gpfr) here:
http://www.paris-autrement.paris/pala... [Takes a quick look] Ah, well you can if you speak French, so I'm going to recommend it to MB who has been somewhat dilatory in making good on his promise to brush up on his French.

And, finally, @CCCubbon is a satisfied customer:

Thanks to Andy I am starting to read Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owlby JC Slaght which is already full of interest and promise. It’s about the rare wonderful fish owls and I have put a photo of these marvellous birds on photos.

As I said, a wide ranging thread which was quite knotty to read at times. I'm going to suggest that we revive the practice of referring to the number of the post that we're responding to. Do please have a go at this, but no library fines if you happen to forget ...

It has been impossible to do justice to all your fantastic contributions, my apologies. But, best of all, was that you were all looking like you were having fun. Happy reading.

what did happen to natashafatale, did she not join us over here?

After that monster introduction in response to a monster sized thread, I'm heading into the next fortnight's reading mindful of this lovely description of the season by @Fuzzywuzz:

I love that it is now Spooky Story time. I've got a couple of books in my TBR pile - compendiums of short stories by E.F Benson, H.P. Lovecraft and Henry James.

It's feeling more autumnal here now. I don't like shorter days and the cold, but I love the things I do to mitigate those things - warm jumpers, hot water bottle, homemade soups, aromatic candles and of course, a good book or 76.

Tell us all about your autumn reading adventures below.

Anne wrote: "During an annoying sleepless patch I also read the sixth and eighth books of Ann Cleeves's Shetland series, and can now assert that Chief Inspector Willow Reeves is one of the most irritating, ill-conceived, and poorly executed characters in genre fiction."

Thanks for the intro, Anne - and sympathy for the insomnia, from another sufferer!

As for 'Shetland' - I don't know when that character appears, but I have yet to see him (I think) in the TV adaptations, unless the screenwriters agreed with you and excised CI Reeves... but your description neatly sums up my reaction to the TV version of Vera, which has determined me to avoid the books. I suspect you (and others) won't thank me for saying that! But it's an honest opinion.

Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. Welcome to this fortnight's thread."

Thanks Anne - that must have taken ages to put together.

Thank you Anne for this excellent introduction.

The owl book is proving most interesting even at my early stage. Life in this remote Russian village means staying friends and drinking vast quantities of vodka and ethanol, whatever that is.

I have not thought before why owls are silent when in flight and the following explains. Fish owls are not silent as they fish for salmon underwater.

A typical owl, however, is almost completely silent.1 This is because their flight feathers are fringed with miniature, comb-like protrusions that act almost like a cloaking device to displace the air before it reaches the wing, thus muffling the sound. This gives owls an advantage when stalking terrestrial prey. It was unsurprising, then, that the flight feathers of a fish owl were smooth and lacked this adaptation: their primary prey was underwater. Especially on a quiet night, one could often hear the air vibrate in resistance as fish owls labored past on heavy wings.

Here’s a photo of the edges of a barn owl feather. The ends look like baffles.

https://postimg.cc/TLm8XPx7

Scarletnoir wrote "Anyone interested in reading about Rome through novelised accounts would do far better to read Robert Graves (I, Claudius). For a more philosophical approach, Camus' Caligula makes interesting reading! Not quite the same genre, though..."

Catching up from the last thread.

I read I Claudius many moons ago, after watching the brilliant BBC series, and Claudius the God . Makes you think that politics hasn't changed that much, except that our politicians in the UK don't now tend to physically kill one another!

Will have a look out for the Camus Caligula

Thanks Anne for your hard work in making the review of the last thread.

I am trying a new-to-me crime author, Conrad Jones:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/j/co...

70 pages in the first of the series and so far so good.

giveusaclue wrote: "Will have a look out for the Camus Caligula..."

It's very different to the Graves... looking at a few moral/philosophical issues through the prism of the Roman emperor's story. You may or may not like it.

I'm not sure if you have also read the second volume of Graves' account on Claudius - 'Claudius the God' - also excellent. In addition, he wrote a similar historical novel about Count Belisarius, which I also enjoyed many moons ago.

Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. Welcome to this fortnight's thread."

Still struggling with my eye (and half of my face), so cannot read or write on a screen unless I want to bring pain, but couldn't resist reading your intro to a new week MsC!

Too true about Willow (and no, scarlet, she's - thankfully! - not in the TV series), the most annoying character by far. (view spoiler)[She should have been the one dying! (hide spoiler)] Unrelated: FFP3 mask is the one in my avatar, have a close look MsC.

@AB - Natasha is not a "she". She's dropping here sometimes to read the blog though, but unfortunately finds it too unwieldy.

To those who have written to me directly, I unfortunately can still not write at the moment (this short post being already, and immediately, costly), but thank you!

Edit@give: Caligula is perhaps my favourite play, definitely in the top 10!

Thanks for the review Anne.

I've had quite a successful run of reading since June, most recently with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Ali Smith's Autumn. Plath's description of suffering a breakdown and attempting suicide were poignant considering her fate, but never felt grim or depressing. Ali Smith was by turns poetic, humorous and thought-provoking. I especially liked the throw-back to Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities in terms of describing Brexit. It starts, "It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times" [sic].

Further to the conversation I had on here some months back regarding whether to abandon a book or not, I've just given up on Harmless Like You after reading about 13%. There are so many books out there that I want to read, and I won't waste any more time on those that annoy or bore me.

CCCubbon wrote in 6: "Life in this remote Russian village means staying friends and drinking vast quantities of vodka and ethanol, whatever that is."

Ethanol is the form of alcohol to be found in all alcoholic drinks; it is usually diluted with water, so that beer is typically 5% ethanol, wine is around 12-13% ethanol, and spirits can be around 40% ABV (alcohol by volume).

It would be unwise to imbibe pure 100% alcohol (ethanol) as it might rapidly lead to alcohol poisoning, and would in any case be unpalatable (I assume).

Other uses for ethanol are in motor fuel - it is more commonly used in countries where it can be produced in large quantities such as Brazil, but the standard 'petrol' fuel on sale in the UK is currently changing to E10, which means it will contain 10% ethanol. It was also used as rocket fuel in the V2 missiles used by Germany in WW2.

It is also used as an antiseptic in medical wipes.

So - if you have a drink, you are drinking diluted ethanol. Best steer clear of the rocket fuel, though!

Well, thanks scarlet, so many uses. From the book it says that there are so few visitors to this remote village that people want to meet the foreigners. The tradition is that a bottle is put on the table full and not taken off until empty!
Rarely drink myself, a glass of wine occasionally.

Going back to Ancestors, I wrote to Professor Alice Roberts to express appreciation and various other points and was delighted to receive a reply this morning.. she tells me that there is a sequel coming out next year so doubtless you will be hearing about that in due course.

r.e. Knossos
There are many archeologists who consider Evans to be something of a cultural vandal when it comes to Knossos. There was hardly anything visible on the site when he started excavating, and he rebuilt a great deal of it using small fragments of murals (and studying local artefacts, such as pots, found at the site) to enable him to imagine what might have been there, and recreating whole rooms where there had been little to go on before. So to an archeological purist I guess the current Knossos is something of a disney-land creation.

Still if you don't mind this factor it's an evocative place. I do remember being very impressed by the gigantic (8ft high or so) ceramic storage jars. I even met a friendly dog who lived in one on its side.. Never got to the museum in Heraklion alas. Made a mental note then, in the future, to travel with someone who was at least interested in the history, when visiting an ancient historic place!...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VJqn...
Archeologist Bettany Hughes programme on Knossos and Crete

Autumn starting to creep into the Shires, after a very mild September and early October

Two new reads this week:

Without a Dogs Chance is a new study of the 1920-25 situation in Ireland, focusing on the Nationalist politicians and people of the Ulster region, many who saw dreams of a united ireland fade and became a minoirty in the new state of Northern Ireland.

The Town Below by Roger Lemelin(1944) is a realistic tale of working class Quebec, a french-canadian classic, looking at the communities in the lower town, divided into the Mulots(working class) and the Seyeux(middle class). i thought these phrases were names of gangs at first!

For @scarletnoir - Fiona Hill (whose testimony - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gmp... - includes the reference of her father and his family being coal miners (starting at the 2 minute mark)) is how I tied Norman Cornish and is work depicting the life and times of a coal mining community in the north of England.

She has a memoir out now -

Hushpuppy wrote: "Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. Welcome to this fortnight's thread."

Still struggling with my eye (and half of my face), so cannot read or write on a screen unless I want to bring pain, but couldn't..."

Oh Dear... poor you Hushpuppy. Can I just wish you all the best for a complete eye recovery asap. At least I can send some well meant 'hope' in your direction... take care

Hushpuppy wrote: "Anne wrote: "Hello, everyone. Welcome to this fortnight's thread."

Still struggling with my eye (and half of my face), so cannot read or write on a screen unless I want to bring pain, but couldn't..."

apologies hush for the natasha mis-identification!

To pack or not to pack? That is the question, with each enticing book... have just, with difficulty, pared down my reading choices for a short work-related overnight stay:
Pauline Melville, Shape-Shifter. Hoping this will make a nice companion to the Angela Carter tales (which I have almost finished reading, but did decide, after some wibbling, not to pack due to bulk and weight).

For a seasonal part-Gothic, part murder mystery read, I also packed Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's The Jews' Beech, in German Die Judenbuche (1842).
Do you know Melville and/ or Droste-Hülshoff? We read the latter in school, a long time ago.

Thank you, Anne/ MrsC, for another brilliant start to the fortnight - just don't spoil us every fortnight, as we will get spoilt!
As you can see from my uncunning abilities of punning, I'd better spare you lengthy posts tonight.

Have a lovely evening or a good start to the day - a good time, anyway, wherever you are.

Good to see you, Hushpuppy! Have written a brief note to you elsewhere. Take care and hope to see you back soon, but, most importantly, recovered.

Machenbach wrote: "Lljones wrote: I don't recognize Eça de Queiroz"
Don't let Slawkenbergius hear you say that.

No worries, I'm thick-skinned.


Bill wrote: "I had never heard of Luís Vaz de Camões or Eça de Queiroz"

That does it: I'm not gonna take any more of this BS from philistines!

;-)

Hushpuppy wrote: "Still struggling with my eye (and half of my face), so cannot read or write on a screen unless I want to bring pain"

Bon rétablissement, Glad!

Thank you Anne for a wonderful, and inviting introduction.

Further to a post by Bill in the last thread, Sally Rooney has issued a statement filling in more detail on not having a Hebrew translation of her new book: https://twitter.com/maricohen95/statu....

This clears things up a touch, and importantly is not advocating the book not being available in Hebrew.

Slawkenbergius wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "Lljones wrote: I don't recognize Eça de Queiroz"
Don't let Slawkenbergius hear you say that.

No worries, I'm thick-skinned..."

Phew. Poor Bill.

MK wrote: "For @scarletnoir - Fiona Hill (whose testimony - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gmp... - includes the reference of her father and his family being coal miners (starting at the 2 minute mark))..."

Thanks for that - a very impressive woman, judging by that piece of testimony.

Hushpuppy wrote: "Still struggling with my eye (and half of my face)...

Good to hear from you - get well soon!

(BTW - I should have realised that the 'Willow' character was female, I suppose, but the description of such a dishevelled character made me think it was a man... there are so many 'gender neutral' names out there, it's hard to know, sometimes... and John Wayne's real name was 'Marion'!)

This is a bit left field, but links in a way to the Fiona Hill mentions, and to misrepresentation and propaganda... I was reading around some of the real-life characters present in James Ellroy's 'This Storm', and was surprised to see that Orson Welles made his debut appearance in a performance at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in Jew Süss!

Now, like many half-educated people, I only knew this title from the shocking Nazi propaganda film:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032653/...
so I was surprised, to put it mildly. Further research, though revealed this:
In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels forced Veit Harlan to direct a virulently anti-Semitic film to counter the philo-semitism of Feuchtwanger's novel and Mendes' adaption of it. Harlan's film violated almost everything about the novel's characters and its sentiments. In the Harlan film, Süß rapes a Gentile German girl and tortures her father and fiancé before being put to death for his crimes.

In Feuchtwanger's play and novel, Josef Süß Oppenheimer emerges as a father and his fictional daughter Tamar (play)/Naemi (novel) provides both an ideal centre and turning point of the narrative. In Harlan's Nazi film, the central female figure Dorothea Sturm (played by Kristina Söderbaum) is, again, represented as ideal. However, her violation and subsequent suicide transform Josef Süß Oppenheimer's execution (historically a miscarriage of justice) into a symbol of the judicial court's true righteousness that is hailed by the masses. Like a negative image, the film is a total inversion of Feuchtwanger's narrative as it mirrors the literary texts’ central elements in reverse; Lion Feuchtwanger's depiction of Josef Süß Oppenheimer's journey from a power-hungry financial and political genius to a more enlightened human being is turned into an anti-Semitic propaganda piece.

Coincidence corner - the Orson Welles debut occurred on 13th October 1931 - today! - which I only just noticed. It is also my birthday (though not year, fortunately!).

Hushpuppy wrote: "Still struggling with my eye (and half of my face), so cannot read or write on a screen unless I want to bring pain, ..."

So sorry to hear that - hope you're on the way to recovery and all will be well.

scarletnoir wrote: "This is a bit left field, but links in a way to the Fiona Hill mentions, and to misrepresentation and propaganda... I was reading around some of the real-life characters present in James Ellroy's '..."

Soderbaum was one of many Swedish blondes who appeared in a swathe of Nazi films of that period, with her ideal Aryan looks she seems to have been a poster girl for the movement. I havent read her own comments on that period in her life before, maybe she buried it.

i watched a very good docu on prime about Nazi cinema, lots of restored footage and Harlans later films were in full colour

Stamboul Train by Graham Greene.

Published in 1932.
A group of characters are travelling on the Orient Express: cold, dark, snowy, engine trouble - among the passengers are a business man, a revolutionary, a chorus girl, a best-selling novelist, a journalist, a criminal ... The atmosphere is gripping and tension builds.
However, the stereotypic descriptions of the Jew (the business man, who deals in currants) and the lesbian (the journalist who scents a far more newsworthy story than her interview with the novelist) are hard to take. I persevered and got caught up in the story, but these put me off at the beginning.

Happy Birthday scarlet

"scarletnoir wrote: "It is also my birthday ...""

Happy birthday!

Machenbach wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "It is also my birthday (though not year, fortunately!).."
Many happy returns!"

Diolch - and thanks to the rest of you. Looking forward to an annual bottle of Le Vieux Télégraphe - at current prices, once a year is barely affordable! (Of course, I won't be drinking it on my own... don't get the wrong idea!)

Gpfr wrote: " Stamboul Train by Graham Greene.

...the stereotypic descriptions of the Jew (the business man, who deals in currants) and the lesbian (the journalist who scents a far more newsworthy story than her interview with the novelist) are hard to take. "

Interesting - this is one of the few Greenes I haven't read - I left out a few of the early ones. I don't recall those attitudes in his later books, but it's a long time ago so could be wrong.

scarletnoir wrote: "Coincidence corner - the Orson Welles debut occurred on 13th October 1931 - today! - which I only just noticed. It is also my birthday (though not year, fortunately!). "

Happy birthday! Doing anything special to celebrate?

Just finished Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud, a late-50s bit of hard-SF. A quick, entertaining read that anyone with a leaning towards science and math will, I think, appreciate. Hoyle was a working scientist himself and that background comes through not only in the way his characters think and talk about science but also in their view of the world outside their field - especially politics. This was my first time reading anythng of his and I'm looking forward to seeing what else he came up with, as this was one of the more enjoyable science fiction books I've read recently.

scarletnoir wrote (26): In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels forced Veit Harlan to direct a virulently anti-Semitic film

Not sure what the source of your quote is (wiki?), but that is an "inversion of the truth"..
Harlan used it (successfully) to defend himself in his post-war trials.

The truth is that he had been a Nazi sympathiser at least since 1933, he made a film Goebbels liked very much about 2 years before Jud Süss. He became Goebbels' 'teachers pet' and made him very happy with his
"work of genius, the best antisemitic film we could have wished for".
The whole inversion (or perversion) of Feuchtwangers original was in no way forced on Harlan. It was his brainchild.

Interesting that the judges accepted that somebody could be "forced" to make such a genial piece of propaganda....

Happy birthday, scarlet!

Sovietistan: A Journey Through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan by Erika Fatland.
I've just started this, one of the books I got from Stanfords a couple of months ago - Andy has also read it, and recommended another of her books as well : The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage(if I remember correctly).
I know very little about these countries and so far I'm finding it fascinating. She begins in Turkmenistan. Here's a passage on a subject near to our hearts:

For me, one of the best indicators of how a country is doing is its bookshops. The selection of books on the shelves often says more about the country's inhabitants and politicians than all the exhibitions in all the national museums. Mira's bookshop in Ashgabat was said to be the best in Turkmenistan. But it was more like a local council library with such obscure opening times that no-one ever went there. Tattered copies of Russian classics lay in big boxes lined up against the walls... Gogol. Volume two of Dostoevsky's The Idiot. A couple of Chekhov plays. A textbook on algorithms.
...
The new books were kept in glass display cases in prime position behind the counter. Deluxe editions with glossy covers and four-colour printing. All the books had a picture of Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, the New President, on the front. Gurbanguly on a horse. Gurbanguly at his desk. Gurbanguly in the Turkmen desert. Gurbanguly in action on the tennis court. Most of the books were also written by him and were arranged according to topic, from sport and health to medecine and political vision.

@ Hushpuppy (message #10) - I hope you are on the path to recovery. I wonder have you been able to use audiobooks. I know its not the same as visual reading but it might be something useful.

@ scarletnoir (message #26) - Happy Birthday and enjoy your poison of choice (!)

Northern Ireland is offering all residents a £100 spending card to boost the local economy. My local bookstore is accepting the card. I feel rather guilty for applying for it. To somewhat assuage my guilt, I'm going to donate the equivalent amount to a local foodbank.

Not much to update on the reading front, I've been working nights lately and my brain is a bit fried.

scarletnoir wrote: "This is a bit left field, but links in a way to the Fiona Hill mentions, and to misrepresentation and propaganda... I was reading around some of the real-life characters present in James Ellroy's '..."

Happy Birthday Scarlet... Hope you have a great day. As it is also the 'International Day for Disaster Reduction' all I can say is be careful out there!...

Georg wrote: "scarletnoir wrote (26): In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels forced Veit Harlan to direct a virulently anti-Semitic film

Not sure what the source of your quote is (wiki?), but that is an "inversion of..."

Harlan was deffo a villain of the 1930s film world!
i must buy a copy of Opfergang on dvd, have yet to watch it in full, an important study in the art of artifice

Maybe I'm alone in not knowing this, but I didn't realise that BCE and CE are frequently used instead of BC and AD. I checked it out after seeing them in Erika Fatland's book.

#29 Gpfr wrote: "the stereotypic descriptions of the Jew (the business man, who deals in currants) and the lesbian (the journalist who scents a far more newsworthy story than her interview with the novelist) are hard to take. I persevered and got caught up in the story, but these put me off at the beginning."

I had the same feelings when I read it for the first time a few years ago. It did get better, and Greene is so good with pithy quotes. My favourite was regarding the show girl, "chastity was worth more than rubies, but the truth was it was priced at a fur coat or thereabouts."

#34 scarletnoir wrote: "this is one of the few Greenes I haven't read..."

Same here. I read loads of Greene when I was in my early 20s and he's one of my favourite writers. A few years ago I did inter-railing for oldies and took Stamboul Train with me for the train journey. I then decided to work my way through his books chronologically, since Stamboul Train is considered to be his first success I think. Quite a few of the early ones were new to me: It's a Battlefield (1934), England Made Me (1935), A Gun for Sale (1936), The Confidential Agent (1939). What was interesting was how he managed to convey the 1930s depression. Looking at the list now, the most memorable was It's a Battlefield.

The last one I read (re-read) was The Power and the Glory (1940), which was made all the more enjoyable after finishing his non-fiction travelogue of Mexico, The Lawless Roads (1939). He loathed Mexico, he said, and the writing is full of mosquitos, huge black beetles, discomfort and dysentery.

#26 scarletnoir wrote: "It is also my birthday'..."

Happy birthday, scarletnoir. Hope you're having a festive day. And thank you for the link to the Sara Wheeler piece on Constance Garnett. I'm just reading it now.

Reporting in from close to the town of Güéjar Sierra not far from Granada in the Sierra Nevada mountains..

The She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver. The first novel from El Salvador that I have read.

This is set out in quite an original manner, as a series of one-sided conversations from ‘narrator’ Laura Rivera, who does all the talking. She is the best friend of the recently deceased Olga Maria, who was gunned down in her own living room just a day before the novel starts. Most of the narrative revolves around Olga Maria, the ongoing investigation into her murder, her various love affairs, and Laura’s increasingly complicated explanation of who the murderer might be. These speculations are mixed in with Laura’s self-obsessed ramblings and observations, and her numerous complaints about the police investigation that merge together in an intriguing way.
By the nature of it, the whole piece is not always compelling. Laura goes off on a tangent frequently, which can at times even be annoying. But I think that’s the idea, as it’s her view, unreliable as it maybe, of proceedings.

Also of interest, was The Melting by Lize Spit, translated by Kristin Gehrman.
For the first time in many years, Eva, at 27 years old, returns to her native village Bovenmeer, to attend the birthday celebration for the deceased brother, Jan, of her former two best friends, reluctantly, as she clearly carries a sense of embarrassment. The three of them, her, Pim and Lorens, were the children in her year group at school, despite the others having at least a dozen.
There are three timelines including the current one in which the novel begins.
The key flashback is to the summer of 2002, when the great drama of Eva’s youth took place; the friendship between thirteen year old Eva, Pim, and Laurens exploding with the exploration of lust. The boys involve the insecure Eva in their pubescent sex game, though not directed in anyway at her, which steadily escalates out of hand.
In the other key thread, the facts behind the death of Pim’s brother Jan, at 16 years old, are revealed.
This is a debut novel for Spit, who was just 27 years old herself when this was published to high acclaim in the Netherlands. She writes really well about adolescence and is brave enough to take on topics, such as pubescent sexuality and bullying, that many more experienced authors tread carefully around. She is meticulous is her descriptions, at times to the novel’s detriment. It would have worked much better at 80 pages less.

#14 Tam wrote: "r.e. Knossos
There are many archeologists who consider Evans to be something of a cultural vandal when it comes to Knossos. There was hardly anything visible on the site when he started excavating,..."

Thanks, Tam. I'm wondering if I should move this discussion to the ancient archaeology thread. I've asked @CC, who I consider the guardian angel over there, what she thinks and will wait for her to respond before taking this any further here. Watch this space please!

Anne wrote: " #14 Tam wrote: "r.e. Knossos
There are many archeologists who consider Evans to be something of a cultural vandal when it comes to Knossos. There was hardly anything visible on the site when he st..."

I'm fine with that... no problems...

scarletnoir wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "Will have a look out for the Camus Caligula..."

It's very different to the Graves... looking at a few moral/philosophical issues through the prism of the Roman emperor's story...."


Yes, I have read both the Claudius books and will look for the others you have suggested - thanks for letting me know.

And happy birthday to you.

Gpfr wrote: "Maybe I'm alone in not knowing this, but I didn't realise that BCE and CE are frequently used instead of BC and AD. I checked it out after seeing them in Erika Fatland's book."

Ha, that annoys me - might be a generational thing. I insist on using BC and AD. What exactly does common era mean?

Now here's a thing which I will throw out for opinions:

I am a long way through Unholy Island a crime novel by Conrad Jones. There are two threads running through it, the first being about murders committed by drug dealing gangs and the second about a serial killer. Now there is a real serial killer called Peter Moore who murdered 4 men on or around Anglesey in 1995 and is in prison for life. The premise in the book is that the current serial killer is the illegitimate (by rape) son of Peter Moore. He has had killing instincts since childhood but these took over when he discovers who his father is rather by accident and proceeds to kill using the same methods. My problem is that I feel uneasy using a real life killer's exploits for a work of fiction like this; it doesn't sit easily with me, especially as the families of the victims, and also the actual victims of his many sexual assaults will still be alive today.

Right, done it; I have written to him asking about the ethics of this. (Didn't sign it as Disgusted of Tonbridge Wells)

#50 giveusaclue wrote: "I have written to [Peter Jones] asking about the ethics of this..."

I am always impressed by anyone writing to an author. I get tied up in knots just thinking about doing the same. (And I share your unease about what Jones has done.)