Comments on: A different book list

By: tom zipp

tom zipp — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:57:32 +0000

obscure read: HARV by Don Robertson blue collar Holden Caufield grows up. Dust jacket with promo from Stephen King.

By: David Nix

David Nix — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 16:56:44 +0000

I’m late coming to the game, but I want to mention the utterly obscure “Yarborough” by B.H. Friedman—completely overlooked when it was published in the mid-1960s, but a fabulous narrative of youth and young adulthood, set in the 1930s-50s. (It helps a lot if you know something about the game of bridge.)

By: rune

rune — Thu, 11 Dec 2003 09:06:55 +0000

Someone mentioned Egalia’s Daughters – it was actually written by Gerd Brantenberg, who is a well-known feminist in Norway. A couple for the list, maybe not overly obscure: If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino – amazingly enganging for an abstract postmodernist novel. It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis – about a fascist coup in the US in the Thirties, which may be mainstream and well-known to you Americans…

By: Phil Mole

Phil Mole — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 23:42:20 +0000

I’d like to plug Joseph Roth, who seems to be getting some belated attention lately. Someone already mentioned “Radetzky March,” so I’ll recommend his “Tarabas” as a particularly neglected novel. A wonderful book about the potential for religious impulses to make us both saints and sinners, and the disturbingly ambiguous line between the two. Other picks: Stanley Elkin’s “The Living End,” Chester B. Himes’ “If He Hollers Let Him Go” (a should-be American classic), and Olaf Stapledon’s “Odd John” (a terrific sci-fi novel about the moral and metaphysical implications posed by the potential existence of vastly superior intelligence). And Jim Crace’s “Quarantine” and Jose Saramago’s “Gospel According to Jesus Christ” – two of the best examples of Biblically themed fiction I’ve read. Daniel Schreber’s “Memoirs of My Nervous Illness” is a book that defies categorization. I just started it, but it’s part autobiography of a mentally disturbed man at the turn of the last century, part cultural criticism, part Gnostic theology, and 100% captivating. Available in a nice edition from New York Review of Books Classics. Since it’s almost Christmas, I’d like to mention Stephen Nissenbaum’s “Battle for Christmas,” which is a fascinating work of non-fiction social history. The complete history of Christmas, and how it became both a revered family holiday and a celebration of commercialism. Terrific stuff. Phil Mole

By: ANother Damned Medievalist

ANother Damned Medievalist — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 20:33:32 +0000

I see this as another example of bookish people beating up on bookishness No—just thought it odd that no one was mentioning perfectly legitimate “fun” reading that hadn’t been nominated for some prize or other. Or to put it another way, the kind of book that screams, ‘Serious Novel.’ Most of my colleagues admit quite happily that they think Nick Hornby is great (although I’m the only one who likes Fever Pitch best, but then I would. And I agree with the pitch for Michael Dibdin. I’m actually reading some Duerrenmatt now to get my crime novel fix. And I try to re-read To Kill a Mockingbird every couple of years because it’s so good, as is almost everything by Miss Austen. I just get the feeling that occasionally these lists reflect more ‘should read if you are the right kind of reader’ books than ‘books we really did love, but don’t want our colleagues to think we’re not erudite enough.’ Any particular translation of the Odyssey, BTW?

By: S. Baum

S. Baum — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 18:47:10 +0000

Try my page on Unusual Literature.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:03:24 +0000

See, that’s what I mean, it’s all like that. You can’t possibly read it quickly. Nor would you want to – but you do sort of need to put it aside and rest now and then. That’s such a brilliant bit. I think I’ll add it to Quotations.

By: nnyhav

nnyhav — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 20:57:10 +0000

Terry Teachout quotes Jarrell, obscure or no.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:44:00 +0000

Damn- Dibdin’s book is of course ‘Cosi Fan Tutti’, opera ‘Tutte’.

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 18:38:23 +0000

Undeservedly forgotten thriller writer: Eric Ambler. Read anything by him: ‘Dr Frigo’ marvellous, ‘Passage of Arms’ the least violent and very prescient abt post-colonial Asia, ‘Journey into Fear’ also very good. Thriller writer undeservedly unknown by Americans: Michael Dibdin. Variable quality- try ‘Ratking’, ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ (sic), ‘Dirty Tricks’. Essayist: Joseph Brodsky. Haven’t read ‘Grief and Reason’, but ‘Less than one’ is superb. Obscure, remaindered, brilliant book on boxing: ‘This bloody mary is the last thing I own’, Jon Rendall. I got my copy for 99p.Far better than the bloviator Mailer. Not as obscure as it used to be: Joseph Roth, ‘The Radetzky March’. Marvellous novel about the decline of the Habsburg Empire. Once-famous, now-forgotten writer who wrote poor thrillers but superb military history and historical novels: Len Deighton- ‘Fighter’ on the Battle of Britain and ‘Bomber’ on the RAF bombing of Germany. Give it a look: the latter in particular is a really sinister evocation of modern war. Geoffrey Blainey, ‘The causes of war’: very stimulating work by an Australian historian who later lurched to the far right. Only interesting general study of this subject I know.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:26:16 +0000

On the other hand, if popular fiction includes The Iliad and Philip Pullman, I take it all back. (Try the Odyssey again. Concentrate on the reunions. Read it in company with Ralph Hexter’s A Guide to the Odyssey, which is not a trot but an annotation, which enriches the reading enormously. I think.)

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:21:54 +0000

“am tired of academic colleagues who refuse to admit they read popular fiction.” Er…isn’t that a bit of a pre-judgment? Are you absolutely sure all these colleagues do in fact read popular fiction? Have you seen them doing it, found the stuff in their bookshelves (where of course it could be unread, or read by other people), heard them refer to characters or plots or bits of dialogue they would have no other way of knowing about? There seems to be this nearly universal assumption that popular fiction (all of it?) is so devastatingly attractive and compelling that everyone, whatever she may say, actually wants to read it and in fact does read it, so anyone who says she doesn’t is lying, is refusing to ‘admit’ that she does. Hmm. But is that true? Is it totally inconceivable that some people just don’t like the stuff? That they simply haven’t had any luck in finding fiction that is both popular and good? Of course it depends on how one defines popular fiction, too. But that applies to all these reproaches and accusations of people who don’t ‘admit’ they love the stuff. [To put it another way, I see this as another example of bookish people beating up on bookishness. I might have to do a dictionary, or Rhetoric Guide, to the whole thing, to keep track of all the different ways there are for bookish people to foul their own nests.]

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 15:54:34 +0000

Hey—I’m going for the pedestrian good reads here. Not obscure, but am tired of academic colleagues who refuse to admit they read popular fiction. Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi—beautifully written, and just plain interesting. Anything by Terry Pratchett Anything by Neil Gaiman All the Flashman books The Lattimore Iliad and the Fitzgerald Aeneid (I never liked the Odyssey) Philip Pullman’s His Dark Presents Trilogy and Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books (ADM has young friends and relatives, and these are way better than the Rowling books)

By: Dan Hardie

Dan Hardie — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 10:52:02 +0000

Obscure (ish) books by famous writers, undeservedly neglected: Puddn’head Wilson by Mark Twain: one of the very few books which actually deserve the sobriquet ‘savagely funny’. Can’t think why this isn’t acknowledged as a masterpiece- perhaps because it goes in even harder than ‘Huckleberry Finn’ on the perversions of a slave-owning society. Don’t let that put you off: very easy book to read. I laughed like the proverbial drain- more than at any other book this year except ‘Portnoy’s Complaint.’ ‘Hadji Murat’ by Leo Tolstoy. About a 120 pages, most of them brilliant. Entirely irrelevant book: ruthless Russians and fanatical Imams slug it out in Chechnya; frustrated by guerrilla tactics, soldiers destroy civilian houses; military losses are shrugged off by leadership…etc. Same sensation as you get with much of ‘War and Peace’, of not actually reading but witnessing something. Available in lots of Tolstoy novella collections, or in a really sexy little edition by Hesperus Press.

By: Doug Muir

Doug Muir — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 07:30:10 +0000

Just want to pitch in with a “me too” for The Siege of Krishnapur. It’s sort of like a Flashman novel, except better written, and without the faint but annoying whiff of jingo in the background. Author J.G. Farrell wrote just three or four books, then died young—in a boating accident IMS —sometime in the early ‘70s. Damned shame. Doug M.