In contrast Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, which I have read before, (in an edition which cost me the grand sum of 35 pence all those years ago) is full of surprises and seems to me just about as modern as a novel can be in terms of postmodern fictive games. I'd be inclined to say it was derivative except that O'Brien got there first, except for Joyce, of course. But O'Brien does the Joyce thing on a level that's relatively easy to get into, producing something that's funny rather than forbidding. I'm reading this one very slowly, just to savour it. Delicious.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Current Reading
December's sojourn in Kuala Lumpur featured a reasonable amount of reading, I'm pleased to report, and I came back with a couple of novels that normally reside on the shelves there in order to make sure I have something to be going on with that isn't work-related, except in the very loosest sense, as term begins. The one I'm furthest into, L. P. Hartley's The Go-Between, I've never actually read before, though I'm aware of the story line from Losey's movie adaptation. I don't recall how the novel ever came into my possession. It looks like quite an old edition but I don't think I could have had it that long before I came out to Singapore as I would then have read it. It's certainly highly readable in a traditional sort of manner. The big set pieces, like the cricket match in the middle of the novel, work particularly well. It has interesting things to say about social class - but it feels dated in this respect. The past may be 'a foreign country' but you need to be able to relate it to current concerns if it's not to become a sort of period piece, and that's how the novel feels at the moment. However, I'm only around two-thirds of the way into the text so there may be surprises in store.
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5 comments:
I have a copy of The Go-Between mouldering somewhere. Perhaps I ought to take it out one day and read it. But too many, far too many books to read. Current read is Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec.
O'Brien's The Third Policeman is also pretty wonderful but hard to find. It might be a metaphysical detective story, except that that would make me think of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday and then inexorably towards that odd TV serial of bygone days, Sapphire and Steel. Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, remember?
Oh, I am old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. That is what the first day of term does to you.
The Perec is a cracking read. He also wrote a novel which completely avoids the use of the letter 'e' if I'm not mistaken, translated into English by Gilbert Adair, methinks. I've not read it but it sounds like fun.
I vaguely remember Sapphire and Steel but I was thinking of the even earlier The Prisoner. When I was at university a publisher called Picador published all the Flann O'Brien novels except At Swim-Two-Birds to which I don't think they had the rights. This inspired quite a vogue for the great man and most of my copies date from that period. You don't seem to hear so much about him now.
By the third day of term I was hearing the mermaids singing. (Which can surely only be regarded as a plus point.)
Ah yes. I read A Void too and have just finished Life. Both demonstrate that Perec writes in an obsessive, almost maniacal manner. Both demand re-reads. Both required incredibly perspicacious translators. Oh, and did you hear about what Justin said to Ms. Jaime Tan in class?
Ah, no. But I assume it was something that added to the weight of charity, wisdom and simple goodness in the world. If otherwise I wouldn't want to know.
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