November Reading! Share your thoughts...

[Pyan]

Just finished Dwellers in the Mirage, by A. Merritt.

 

[GOLLUM]

How did you find it? I've got all of Merrit's writings. The Moon Pool is amongst my favourites.

 

[Pyan]

Really enjoyed it, Goll - not over-adjectived, good story, and leaves the sex in the traditional metaphorical row of dots...

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club: Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries are a rare treat - a sort of mix of the wit of Wodehouse and the crafty plotting of Christie.

The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight: Vladimir Nabokov. This was Nabokov's first major work in English; his facility with the language is astounding. He was achieving feats of verbal virtuosity only ever equaled by Anthony Burgess, right from the get-go. The story is brilliant and complex, a sort of oblique paean to an exile's sense of loss as a man tries to piece together a definitive biography of his late half-brother, the novelist Sebastian Knight.

 

[Pyan]

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club: Dorothy L. Sayers. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries are a rare treat - a sort of mix of the wit of Wodehouse and the crafty plotting of Christie.

And that's the first one she wrote, IIRC, and they just get better...nice to see another DLS fan!

 

[nomadman]

The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight: Vladimir Nabokov. This was Nabokov's first major work in English; his facility with the language is astounding. He was achieving feats of verbal virtuosity only ever equaled by Anthony Burgess, right from the get-go.

Nabokov is one of the 20th century's finest prose stylists, and his works (those which I've read, at any rate) have a dazzling, twisting splendor to them that is as invigorating as it is intriguing. Pale Fire, a multi-layered puzzlebox of a book, is an astounding work of fiction.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

And that's the first one she wrote, IIRC, and they just get better...nice to see another DLS fan!

Likewise! I read these years ago, when I was in college. I'm looking forward to re-discovering the series.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Pale Fire, a multi-layered puzzlebox of a book, is an astounding work of fiction.

Absolutely.

I wasn't that keen on Nabokov after reading Lolita, which I thought was well-written, but didn't precisely win me over. Earlier this year I tried out Pale Fire because the central conceit - an annotated edition of an epic poem by a non-existent poet, containing the poem, the notes, a forward and an index to boot - seemed appealingly metafictional. Naturally, I revised my opinion of Nabokov several notches higher after reading this excellent book.

The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight is a sort of dry run for Pale Fire in some ways.

 

[GOLLUM]

....Pale Fire, a multi-layered puzzlebox of a book, is an astounding work of fiction.

Well as you are probably aware, it is considered by most Nabokov fans (myself included) as his true masterpiece rather than Lolita, as popular as that is.

Has anyone seen the released unfinished manuscript by Nabokov The Orignal Of Laura? I looked over it yesterday. It is a fairly incomplete manuscript and Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, did receive a fair bit of criticsm upon release of the "book". Nabokov actually requested upon his death that this unfinshed work be destroyed but the family obviously decided it was significant enough for the wider world to view.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Has anyone seen the released unfinished manuscript by Nabokov The Orignal Of Laura? I looked over it yesterday. It is a fairly incomplete manuscript and Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, did receive a fair bit of criticsm upon release of the "book". Nabokov actually requested upon his death that this unfinshed work be destroyed but the family obviously decided it was significant enough for the wider world to view.

In The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight, the narrator, half-brother to the late Knight, dutifully destroys two bundles of letters that his brother had ear marked for destruction in case of his death, even though it greatly complicates his quest to research and write a truthful biography of the deceased. I suspect this can stand as a hint towards Nabokov's own opinions on such matters.

It's sad to know that Nabokov the younger didn't share the scruples of this novel's un-named narrator.

 

[GOLLUM]

It's sad to know that Nabokov the younger didn't share the scruples of this novel's un-named narrator.

Well the thing is that Dmitri according to Wikipedia: has wavered on whether to destroy the manuscript. On the one hand, he has felt bound to uphold his "filial duty" and grant his father's request, but he has also said the novel "would have been a brilliant, original, and potentially totally radical book, in the literary sense very different from the rest of his oeuvre."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Original_of_Laura#cite_note-Rosenbaum-8 Dmitri noted "his father, ... or his 'father’s shade,' would not 'have opposed the release of ‘Laura’ once ‘Laura’ had survived the hum of time this long.

Seems slightly presumptions to me....

To me the sad thing may be that by believing he was doing the right thing, he may have damaged his father's reputation going on what several critics have been saying in the recent past about the manuscript.

On the other hand there's the dilemma of "the demands of the literary world versus the posthumous rights of an author over his art" . As wiki points out Virgil's Aenid was also meant to be destroyed upon his death but was not, so who in the end is the poorer? That is not to say the end always justifies the means but it's an issue worth pondering.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Of course, we'd have no Kafka had Max Brod respected his late friend's wishes. But saving a complete work, or a complete body of work from total immolation and scraping the bottom of the barrel to add an incomplete work of dubious merit to an already substantial bibliography aren't really the same things, are they?

Still we live in an era when even Kurt Cobain's diaries were dusted off and published for the edification of the public...

 

[GOLLUM]

Yes well I think that's where I can't agree with Dmitir Nabokov's decision. If it had been a complete or near complete manuscript, even if it had come in for some criticism, its public release I suspect would have been a lot easier to justify.

Having things published purely for the sake of the "edification of the public" has always put a sour taste in my mouth I have to admit.

 

[j d worthington]

I think that depends. If it is "completed" by other hands, the original text is altered (this does not necessarily include publishing material left out in earlier editions at the author's behest; cf. Machen's The Secret Glory), or anything of the kind... then I'm very uneasy with it, the older I get. On the other hand, when it is a writer of Nabokov's stature, I see the value in publishing even unfinished materials (heck, even fragments, sketches, and notebooks) of such. These things help to understand the creative mind which produced their acknowledged masterpieces; they can even add insight into such masterpieces, presenting different layers on which to view them; and are invaluable to scholars.

There are good reasons for both procedures; in the end, it has to be the decision of the executor which is taken, and only time will tell whether they were right in that decision or not....

 

[GOLLUM]

In this case it was fragments etc...of the story and certainly not a completed work by Nabokov Snr. You make a good point regarding how this can aid in the understanding of a writer and their process but when Nabokov explicitly stated that he didn't want it to be published but rather destroyed that's when I feel uneasy. A person's final wishes also need to be respected. That in essence is for me the main sticking point I think. I have some sympathy for Nabokov Jnr. as he is something between a rock and a hard place. The more I think on this the more I realize it must have been a real dilemma for Nabokov Jnr.

Perhaps you sum it up best when saying that only time will tell if it was the right call or not...

 

[Fried Egg]

I've finished "We have always lived in a castle" and I really enjoyed it. I find it really difficult to review but I enjoyed the somewhat sinister aspects of the story with the creeping sense of unease. The story's metamorphasis towards a fairy tale like ending was a pleasant suprise too.

Incidentally, here's another cover that I stumbled upon on line which I think is also quite symbolic:

Now I think I'm going to read "The World of a Null-A" by A.E. Van Vogt next...

 

[Connavar]

Absolutely.

I wasn't that keen on Nabokov after reading Lolita, which I thought was well-written, but didn't precisely win me over. Earlier this year I tried out Pale Fire because the central conceit - an annotated edition of an epic poem by a non-existent poet, containing the poem, the notes, a forward and an index to boot - seemed appealingly metafictional. Naturally, I revised my opinion of Nabokov several notches higher after reading this excellent book.

The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight is a sort of dry run for Pale Fire in some ways.

I do have a second copy of Lolita which i read and thought was well written specially prose style wise but the story was far from winning me over.

I almost erased Nabokov from my give him other chance list.

Will see if i can find more interesting book of his.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Under the Dome by Stephen King and In a Free State by V.S Naipaul

 

[j d worthington]

In this case it was fragments etc...of the story and certainly not a completed work by Nabokov Snr. You make a good point regarding how this can aid in the understanding of a writer and their process but when Nabokov explicitly stated that he didn't want it to be published but rather destroyed that's when I feel uneasy. A person's final wishes also need to be respected. That in essence is for me the main sticking point I think. I have some sympathy for Nabokov Jnr. as he is something between a rock and a hard place. The more I think on this the more I realize it must have been a real dilemma for Nabokov Jnr.

Perhaps you sum it up best when saying that only time will tell if it was the right call or not...

That is why I cited that particular work by Machen. When it was originally published, he removed the last portion himself, with the specific instructions that it was never to see print. Yet he didn't destroy the manuscript of the book. And, frankly, without that portion, the book itself is a crippled thing, it doesn't come off. With it, it is improved considerably (still not his best, but much better).

And yes, I also feel uneasy... yet, on the whole, I have grown more and more to feel that this may be an area where the writer him-or-herself is sometimes in the wrong. Not that they don't have the right to destroy their own material, but that they should do so, if they wish it destroyed, rather than laying the burden on someone else -- especially with writers who have become major figures (or even major figures in a minor field of endeavor), as at that point the claims of posterity may (and perhaps rightly) overbalance their own wishes in this regard. But, it is a thorny issue, and I doubt one which will ever be truly resolved to anyone's satisfaction.

As for my own reading... continuing with the Poe, but also dipping into my volumes of The Atheneum; or, as it is stated on the title page:

The Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines. Comprehending Original Communications, on All Subjects. Moral Stories. Memoirs and Remains of Eminent Persons. Miscellaneous Anecdotes. Original Letters. Curious Fragments. Intelligence in Literature, the Arts and Sciences. Dramatic Notices. New Publications with Critical Remarks. Review of the Fine Arts. Transactions of Literary and Philosophical Societies. Original Poetry. Remarkable Incidents; Deaths with Biographical Sketches; Chemical and Agricultural Improvements; &c. & c.

I picked up a fair number of these when I first moved back to Austin in 2006, and -- given the short nature of most of the pieces included -- it seems a good thing to read when I don't have enough time to go for longer works. The one I am beginning with is Vol. I of the second series, April to October 1824....

Oh, but I do love old books.....

 

[Rodders]

Low brow, i know but I just got some Star Wars Paperback releases.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Novelisation of the cartoon film that was released.)
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
Darth Bane: Rule of two.
Star Wars 501st Imperial Commando