Ersatz TLS discussion

Apologies, Ersatzers. Despite trying most of yesterday and again this morning, I found I just couldn’t pull together a recap of last week’s reviews and recommendations. Plenty of wonderful ones to choose from, but my mind kept drifting off. I’m still processing the loss of Justine, as I know all of us are.

Justine’s family has not yet made any decisions about a possible memorial service. It may take some time, given the challenge of organizing estate management issues internationally. I’ll keep you informed as more info becomes available.

I am applying some gentle pressure to one of our dear friends to take on the role of preparing the weekly TLS recap page. That person a) hasn’t decided yet, for sure, and b) isn’t available for a month or so, anyway. So I thought I’d ask all of you: would anyone be interested in serving as Guest Editor now and again? Send me a message through the GR message system if you’re interested. (If we aren’t already ‘friends’, you’ll need to send me a Friend request first.)

Interesting links about books and reading

Today is International Women's Day.

For the fans of Leonora Carrington...

Tournament of Books 2021 starts today...

Our Reading Justine project is off to a great start!

Literary Birthdays

Here are this week's Literary Birthdays.

Lljones wrote: "Apologies, Ersatzers. Despite trying most of yesterday and again this morning, I found I just couldn’t pull together a recap of last week’s reviews and recommendations. Plenty of wonderful ones to ..."

No need at all for apologies, LL - it's totally understandable and appropriate. Thanks so much for all you do.

Gpfr wrote (#2): "it's totally understandable and appropriate"

Absolutely.

When Readers Recommend (the ~equivalent of TLS for music) was about to be axed on the Guardian, it was saved for a few more years by rotating each week the curation of songs amongst the contributors. Maybe that could be a viable model too here, at least for the time being...?

Hushpuppy wrote: "Gpfr wrote (#2): "it's totally understandable and appropriate"

Absolutely.

When Readers Recommend (the ~equivalent of TLS for music) was about to be axed on the Guardian, it was saved for a few more years by rotating each week the curation of songs amongst the contributors. Maybe that could be a viable model too here, at least for the time being...?."

I was wondering how to ask Lisa about the future management here, but was worried that I would have had to say I couldn't be a full-time help. This looks a great idea if there is no one who could take it on permanently.

]Afternoon all, thanks LL for your hard work to get this new week up and running, Justine will be on all our minds i'm sure...

10c and hazy sun where i am, feels quite springlike but thankfully without the blazing warmth that i find jarring in March and April!

Reading is going well, so here we go:

Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects missed my shopping around last year, which has baffled me as its been out for almost 15 years, published by Manchester University Press. Its a collection of essays on the 1905-1917 period, looking at the reasons why even a loosely reformed Tsarist autocracy(from 1906), still failed to stop a damaging revolution. Some of the ideas are based around the works of historian RB McKean, who studied the period in the 1970s

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck (1936) is a rare re-read for me. At 28 i remember just giving up on it, maybe as i was expecting something different. At 45 and no longer as lustrous of hair or strong in opinions, i find that i have forgotten most of the first 20 pages and the Californian workers rights movements of the 1930s fascinates me. (Capitalist America was a monster to organised labour from 1900 onwards, an organised private army of thugs used continually to undercut the workers)

Friend by Paek Nam Nyong (1988) was quite a discovery via a NYRB review. A 1980s North Korean, state sanctioned classic. There are elements of modern East Asian styles in the novel, mixed with quiet social realism but in some ways the idea of marriage and the work to maintain it, is the heart of the tale rather than a socialist utopia, which North Korea,will never,ever be!

Lastly The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla(1966) is a wonderful diary of Catalan life in his youth just after WW1. The Spanish Flu has closed Pla's university and he returns to his home town on the Costa Brava to revise and work on his studies. As a document of Catalan culture and society, its already fascinating me. While it was first sketched out in 1919-20, he returned to it again and again to improve it, hence it reads as the work of quite mature early 20 something

I also just read Colm Toibin on Frances Bacon in the LRB. Bacon's art has interested me in last few weeks, when i previously had little time for him, i like the dark, deeply ambigious swirls of menace in his art.
Paek Nam-Nyong
Josep Pla

Lljones wrote: "Apologies, Ersatzers. Despite trying most of yesterday and again this morning, I found I just couldn’t pull together a recap of last week’s reviews and recommendations"

Even though I’m evidently in a minority position (as is usually the case), I’ll repeat my statement that I made when Justine started them: as far as I’m concerned, those weekly summaries can be eliminated, as I’ve pretty much continued my Guardian-era practice of ignoring them. I find the Literary Birthdays far more interesting and, as that feature seems to draw few comments on its own, I think it could profitably replace the weekly reiteration of the group’s own opinions. Isn’t it supposed to be bad to live in an online “echo chamber”?

Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Apologies, Ersatzers. Despite trying most of yesterday and again this morning, I found I just couldn’t pull together a recap of last week’s reviews and recommendations"

Even though..."

Interesting, i think the structure that Sam had set up works well, especially the links to interesting articles and Justine replicated it perfectly, maybe better.

However,i get your point and we maybe only need the new week set up with a short summary, something witty, lit birthdays maybe?

Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "as far as I’m concerned, those weekly summaries can be eliminated..."

Hmmm... What say others? I'd be okay with that, it does feel like the hardest part of putting the weekly post together (not wanting to slight anyone, etc.).

Mach, have you had a crazy reading surge?

I was about level with you on 30 something books when i observed this in about mid Feb and thought, thats interesting

i checked again and you are on 53, i'm on 38, i have been reading loads too....(18 so far in 2020)

Lljones wrote: "Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "as far as I’m concerned, those weekly summaries can be eliminated..."

Hmmm... What say others? I'd be okay with that, it does feel like the hardest part of putting the..."

i think whatever is easiest for you LL, in terms of time and effort. i think some kind of summary (a paragraph) at the start, a sort of "anchor" from the moderator is needed but not much more

In last week's postings was one on The Ratline: Love, Lies, and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive. I haven't read it, but I did listen to the podcast of the same name here on BBC4 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06l...

It gave me all the information I needed.

Re weekly recap, for what it's worth, I'm with AB. There is obviously the fact that it's a bit of a tradition, and makes the whole eTLS feel a bit more like TLS, more like home. There is the fact that inter loved doing those recaps (and had such a light touch making these). It was also for me a good way to notice some book reviews I might have missed when going through the previous week's posts...

But it certainly is a bit of an effort. This could perhaps be alleviated if it were rotated across the contributors, with a different person taking on that task each week.

Thanks for your efforts Lisa. Really appreciated.
Silence by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston.
This was one of Interwar's (Justine) 5 star reviewed books that I chose to read in her memory. (Thanks to Alby for the list).
It is absolutely something I would not have chosen to read off my own bat, but I really enjoyed it. Its dealings with religion, and being told by an an idealist Jesuit priest, would have put me off, but wrongly so, its actually a fable of idealism and its casualties, of faith, betrayal and disenchantment, and the irony of the many who suffer and are lost along the way, from cruelty, torment and torture.
It has taught me as much about a period of history than any book I can recall.
My version had an introduction from Martin Scorsese..can anyone recommend the film?

The issue of censorship and enforcing political correctness in determining which books get published and are available to the general public gets seen differently, I think, when the subject is limited to children’s books. The capabilities of the “typical juvenile reader” also end up getting debated; the issue of the capacity of the typical adult reader for understanding complexity, irony, and authorial intent seldom arise in discussions of attempts to limit adult reading matter. I am reminded that Ariel Dorfman in How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic likened childhood to an undeveloped country and adults to its colonizers.

The Ross Douthat column I linked to yesterday also mentioned Amazon’s decision not to sell When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, representing a decision on the part of a (the?) major retailer of books as to what is appropriate adult reading matter. Douthat comments, “I’ve seen little liberal concern over the dominant player in the book business playing censor in culture-war debates.” I’ll note that this is not as sweeping as the withdrawal of certain Dr Seuss titles, as the book is still available from Barnes and Noble and presumably other outlets.

Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Apologies, Ersatzers. Despite trying most of yesterday and again this morning, I found I just couldn’t pull together a recap of last week’s reviews and recommendations"

Even though..."
Think that I am with Bill here and that now the weekly recap is not really necessary, perhaps the odd comment, welcome to new members, anything of particular interest.
Hush said that it makes it feel like TLS but it isn’t TLS now, we are building something new here, growing out of TLS, maybe time to move on, accept change. Justine did the recap brilliantly but I know she wanted to spend more time with her own writing, to ease back a little.
You do so much, Lisa, don’t overdo it. There could be an occasional special feature if someone was inclined to write one but that is enough.

scarletnoir wrote (last week): "Thanks for the birthdays - always interesting - a bit dominated by the USA and England, though!"

I missed this post, scarlet, until I was preparing for this week's. There are a number of online sources for literary birthdays - the one I chose had far more international listings than any of the others I looked at. But if you are aware of any sites with broader international coverage (but written in English), I'd be happy to incorporate others into the weekly lists.

"I see that on your link Edward Thomas is listed as an 'English' poet ... 'Anglo-Welsh' would have been more accurate."

I've corrected that!

The wealth of this community here is in allowing us to uncover books outside of our normal reading routine. Justine and Lisa have always been great for that. Ongley, JMSchrei and Mach too, but one of the more prolific, internationally-focused contributors to these pages has been Andy/SafeReturnDoubtful. He has a knack for finding authors from all over the map of whom I would have never have otherwise heard.

One of those authors, Arto Paasilinna, is a bit like a Finnish Tom Drury and his The Howling Miller is a fantastic little gem. Such an odd little book, hilariously melanchonic, ruggedly vulnerable, oddly normal. It's hard to pin it down, it's a book that recalls so many other novels. There are elements of Catch-22, McMurphy from Cuckoo's Nest, Hamsun's Hunger.

It's a sad little book following Gunnar Huttunen, a tormented man escaping an indeterminate past in the Finnish taiga after WWII. He's one of those souls that don't quite fit into society, and don't understand the need to do so. Howling at night, imitating animals, aping the neighbors, it's hard to tell if he is really wounded or simply outside of the norm. Of course, the pressure comes from the villagers to conform resulting in Gunnar's incarceration in the insane asylum. I won't spoil anymore of it, but it is really a beautiful, sad little book very much in the vein of Drury's Grouse County.

Now, I'm going back to Justine's recommendations and I'm going to give Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding a read,

CCCubbon wrote (#17): "You do so much, Lisa, don’t overdo it. There could be an occasional special feature if someone was inclined to write one but that is enough."

Just to clarify: I am absolutely not suggesting that Lisa takes it on when it is clearly such a big commitment. All I'm saying is that 1. if somebody else wants to do this or 2. people are happy to do it on a rota basis, Readers Recommend style, I'd be very happy to see the continuation of that tradition.

Bill [7]
As far as I’m concerned, those weekly summaries can be eliminated.

@Lljones
I agree. They're interesting, but not worth spending a lot of time over. The effort and time put into simple maintenance of this place is effort enough, and I'm sure we all thank you.

Agreeing with everyone here that no apologies are needed at all, LLisa (if I may). Many, many thanks for providing this space.
While I loved inter's/ justine's recaps and they did make me feel more "at home" first, I agree with CCC and others who don't think them necessary, especially as I am reluctant to volunteer just now, hard times at work (though luckily not Dickensian ones) being continued for the foreseeable future.

I, like others here, keep thinking of inter, as Justine still liked to be called here, too, sometimes. Thank you for letting us know of any plans which might be of interest to us, LLisa. I appreciate all this very much.

Take good care of yourself, and please don't think you have to work hard here in any way. It is up to us (everyone) to continue making this a friendly place - which is not meant to diminish your considerable thought and lovely ideas that are evident here, most recent ones included!

Andy wrote: "Thanks for your efforts Lisa. Really appreciated.
Silence by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston.
This was one of Interwar's (Just..."

i didnt like the novel as much as i expected when i read it about a decade ago but it coincided with my interest in Japanese Christians, historically and in the modern day. Endo was a catholic and i also read "The Bells of Nagasaki" by Takashio Nagai another Japanese catholic. Nagasaki is one of the areas with the largest christian population in Japan

i havent seen the film

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Mach, have you had a crazy reading surge?
I was about level with you on 30 something books when i observed this in about mid Feb and thought, thats interesting
i checked again and you ..."

thats impressive, still faster than me! i've been reading a lot of mid length 250-300 page books at quite a rate, not sure how but then books are a lottery like that. a 19thc american novel of barely 220 pages took me almost 3 weeks last year

Paul wrote: "The wealth of this community here is in allowing us to uncover books outside of our normal reading routine. Justine and Lisa have always been great for that. Ongley, JMSchrei and Mach too, but one ..."

The Howling Miller had me chortling on my commute about 7-8 years ago!

Machenbach wrote: "Bill wrote: "The issue of censorship and enforcing political correctness in determining which books get published and are available to the general public gets seen differently, I think, when the su..."

I think there is a lot of agreement at the extreme ends, of both political sides, but what I find is more of a problem is authors being cancelled because they have dared to write a book that apparently they are not qualified to write. For example the woman author who wrote a book about Mexican immigrants, 'American Dirt' by Jeanine Cummins, who turned out, herself, to be very non Latin-American. And the most recent one that comes to mind is the Dutch non-binary author who was going to translate Amanda Gormans 'The Hill We Climb' into Dutch. They got cancelled, despite the support of Amanda Gorman, for being the wrong race.

Tam wrote: "Machenbach wrote: "Bill wrote: "The issue of censorship and enforcing political correctness in determining which books get published and are available to the general public gets seen differently, I..."

its a real worry when the whole weight of social media gets turned on the situation. i lament the fact that people cannot hold opinions anymore if they infringe on the "line ye cannot cross". Offensive hate speech or inciting violence is not good but rational debate needs more time nowadays when we live in a "click and send" culture

Books are so much more than click and send...

Niall Williams - This is Happiness

To read this novel is likened to an invitation to a weekend of Irish storytelling sitting around an open fire in County Clare, Ireland.

Chapter 1 states simply 'It had stopped raining.'

Rain is a big part of life in western Ireland but this story is not about the rain but about a warm summer of sun and the long overdue arrival of electricity to Faha.

The story is narrated by an older Noel, or Noe as he is called. He is looking back on the story of his life in County Clare where, at 17, he took an Easter break from his seminary studies to stay at the modest, damp rural home of his grandparents, Ganga and Doady.

'Built in a puddle, Doady said, because his ancestors were frogs.'

The peace and quiet of Faha was broken by the teams of temporary workers needed to fit the 'electric'.

So it was that Christy came to stay and share a room with Noe bringing with him the charm and dry wit of the Irish. And a story of his own.

The writing is so lyrical, the characters wonderfully crafted that it was a real pleasure to get lost in it's pages for the few months of summer when the electric came to Faha.

Why say a tale in in a couple of sentences when 100 would make it into a legend!

'Once he got going, my grandfather's way of telling a story was to go pell-mell, throwing Aristotle's unities of action, place and time into the air and in a tumult let the details tumble down the stairs of his brain and out his mouth. He had grown up in an age when storytelling was founded on the forthright principles of passing the time and dissolving the hours of dark.....and because in Faha, like all country places, time was the only thing people could afford, all stories were long, all storytellers took their, and your, and anyone else's time, and all gave it up willingly, understanding that tales of anything as aberrant and contrary as human beings had to be long, not to say convoluted, had to so long that they wouldn't, and in fact couldn't be finished this side of the grave, and only for the fire gone out and the birds of dawn singing might be continuing still.'

And though Ganga was older than many a job at the 'electric' would have benefited the family but he was having none of it.

'"It's a difficult job, the electricity" Ganga announced, with blithe knowingness.

"Ah no it's not really", said Christy.

To uphold the masculine charade of appearing informed, or in combat with the Faha feeling of inadequacy my grandfather surprised all by disagreeing. "It is though."

Over by the basin Doady turned and looked at the perplexity she had married.

"The insulator pins, the suspension clamps. Sure."

There was an astonished pause when my grandmother and I were not sure if we were hallucinating.

"All the earth rods, the stay rods and the connectors, Ganga added as though he knew these last were particularly troublesome. The performance of Master Quinn had made the list indelible, and by the magic of theatre and a man's need for fantasy it was as if Ganga believed he had signed up for the job when Doady urged him, was in fact an electricity worker, and had been for some time.

Sparked with the novelty of technology Ganga drove on: "The dead-end thimbles, the dead-end ones . And the air break switches". He gave a slow shake of his big head to acknowledge vexacious encounters with air-break switches, then stopped short. It was all he could remember. He had come to the end of his lines. He knew there was more, but no prompt was offered from the wings. He looked blankly at his audience, air leaking out of his performance, then some switch inside his memory was thrown, he blinked twice, tapped his forefinger on the table, and added "Of course there can be trouble with the insulators for the HT and the LT fuses too."

It was an instance of triumph and display worthy of Conway's cock. Now for you was his look back at Doady, as though the whole speech had been an articulation of love, all the more elegant for being in the argot of electricity. Speech over he tugged once more at his braces and returned to carving his tomato.

But the triumph was instantly confounded when Christy, whether impressed by the listing or partial to the comedy turned to Ganga and asked "Would you like a job?"

I didn't have the feather to knock Ganga off his chair.

Knowing he was under the round glassed scrutiny of Doady, he showed no sign of it. With the composure of a life-long draughts-player Ganga took the breath you take before a leap. He put down his knife. He swallowed a crescent of the thick skinned tomato along with the indigestible truth that the fate he had managed to evade for so long had come in the door and was sat beside him.'

Page after page of this beautiful embroidery of fabric and words. On and on it flows. This book made me happy, THIS IS HAPPINESS, surely.

Machenbach wrote: "I hope no-one objects if I respond here to @Scarletnoir's last post:
scarletnoir wrote: "MB - my recollection of the 'message' of William and the Nasties differs slightly to your own, but I haven't..."

Fair comments.

As I said, I haven't read the story for very many years, and clearly have a better recollection of how it ends (well) than how it begins (badly)!

I would not disagree with this detailed analysis.

Just watched a superb BBC documentary on John DeLorean, he of the DeLorean car and the Belfast factory

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

Its 1 hr 30 mins(just my kinda length ie longer) and well put together with BBC archive footage of N Ireland in the 1970s and 80s. DeLorean was a smooth talking accumulator of monies without returns by the early 80s period

I always wondered about his name and knew he was of Romanian descent a while back but it doesnt sound very Romanian, unless its Deloreanu maybe? Wikipedia says his parents were ethnic hungarians, well it sounds even less Hungarian

Lljones wrote: "Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "as far as I’m concerned, those weekly summaries can be eliminated..."

Hmmm... What say others? I'd be okay with that, it does feel like the hardest part of putting the..."

TBH, as I tend to read (or at least scan) all the comments - except for occasional withdrawal from online activity to give the old noggin a rest - I don't think you should exhaust yourself by referring to multiple reviews or reviewers... just two or three that have caught your eye for some reason would be enough.

We value your unpaid work on this site, and to cause some sort of burnout is something none of us want to see!

Lljones wrote: "scarletnoir wrote (last week): "Thanks for the birthdays - always interesting - a bit dominated by the USA and England, though!"

Don't worry about it! I can very well understand that the lists 'out there' tend to emphasise writers in English... but if anyone does know of a more balanced list, I hope they'll suggest it to you.

As for Edward Thomas - as I said, we're a bit like the Belgians, and cling rather desperately to anyone with a tenuous link... ;-)

AB76 wrote: "Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects missed my shopping around last year, which has baffled me as its been out for almost 15 years, published by Manchester University Press. Its a collection of essays on the 1905-1917 period, "

That sounds like something right up my alley. I had to go back to some history books and articles when reading Bulgakov's The White Guard as a lot of its context was initially going over my head. I think I got stuck in the 19th/early 20th century Russia to cope with some of the more stressful things, so this should help me get the missing angle and bury my head a bit deeper in the sand :)

Paul wrote: "The wealth of this community here is in allowing us to uncover books outside of our normal reading routine. Justine and Lisa have always been great for that. Ongley, JMSchrei and Mach too, but one ..."

Cheers Paul.
Great that you enjoyed Howling Miller.
Welty is someone I picked up from Justine a couple of years ago, but I haven’t got round to Delta Wedding yet. Interested to know how you go..

AB76 wrote: "Andy wrote: "Thanks for your efforts Lisa. Really appreciated.
Silence by Shūsaku Endō, translated by William Johnston.
This was one of Int..."

I can see what you say AB.
I think I blanked out any religious connotations and appreciated it more as a historical piece.
It really isn’t my sort of thing though, so I was pleasantly surprised.

I'll echo other comments here and say thank you so much for all your efforts Lisa, and you only need to do what you feel like doing. I am sure none of us would want you to feel under any sort of pressure to do more.

yes I agree with everyone so far... do your own thing! and enjoy yourself in the process and perhaps 'all manner of thing shall be well'

Anastasia wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects missed my shopping around last year, which has baffled me as its been out for almost 15 years, published by Manchester University Press. It..."

hope you enjoy it Anastasia, that period between 1905-17 is a fascinating one for Tsarist history. when i studied the Russian revolution at school,many moons ago, 1906 seemed such a chance for a new Tsarist vision but it never really changed the most important thing , the Tsar himself

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I always wondered about his name and knew he was of Romanian descent a while back but it doesnt sound very Romanian, unless its Deloreanu maybe? Wikipedia says his parents were ethnic ..."

i remember a footballer called Doril Munteanu, the Hungarian link puzzles me but i do find that americans with heritage from certain countries seem to lose the subtle points of their ancestral origins

for example:
Irish descent being claimed without the important Scots-Irish distinction
Polish surnames but German descent, where the Silesian borderlands or Danzig area is involved. (lots of poles in the area had germans surnames, lots of germans had polish surnames but these subtleties forgotten)

Lithuaniki/Lietuvninkai (protestant Lithuanians) claiming a kind of catholic link to aincient Lithuania when this group all lived and became protestant within Imperial Germany in the East Prussian area, likewise the Masurians in Prussia ( now NE Poland )who were Protestant not Catholic but in the USA get claimed as a catholic group. Many were catholicx but not the majority who emigrated to the USA from that area

In their defence time leads to misremembered heritage and hidden heritage, due to historical issues. My Hugenot(French Protestant) heritage (they came to UK in 1721)was remembered well on my fathers side but it wasnt until i looked into that i found they were from Northern France and not the Hugenot heartlands of the South

I am with the others. While Sam did the recap of comments partly to make a point (he once featured me in those comments because he wanted to promote the Christie-reading group month), this is not TLS. This no longer Sam's column.

What I really loved was the fact that someone started to come up with reading links again. Those brought me more joy in TLS than the comments, which I could just have read from the "archives" ...

But that is not something you have to gather all by yourself, when we come across a link we can bring that to the table, too, here. There is no more ATL and BTL ...

Yes, I'm with what seems the majority opinion on the summaries: they're nice but not necessary, certainly not worth taking too much time or trouble over.

Thanks to everyone making this group happen, it's pretty quickly become part of my online routine.

Without any inkling of what's likely to happen regarding any future iteration of TLS on The Guardian - and not dimissing the thrill of appearing in the headlines (not often!) - as a relative Johnny come lately to this forum, there and here, I share the view of others that a detailed weekly recap is unnecessary. I'm conscious too though that I won't be at the front of the queue offering to share the burden. I appreciate this "space" and all you do LLJ so whatever is easiest for you is the route you should go. All to the good if others are willing, able or enthusiastic to help.

I’ve enjoyed and appreciated the weekly intro both here and on The G, and not a little because it often reminded me of recommendations that out of my own laziness I had failed to note down. But (all honour to Justine) it’s a big ask for someone to feel they have to compile it every week. So, LL, if you wanted to start us off with whatever book-wise caught your eye during the week (maybe no more than the titles on eTLS you liked the sound of), that would be great. Otherwise I chime in with everyone else and say you shouldn’t do anything at all, not even that much, if it feels like a duty.

Machenbach wrote: "AB76 wrote: "the Hungarian link puzzles me."

As far as I can see, it seems that the father was (ethnic) Romanian, born in what was then Austro-Hungary, and now is in Romania, and the mother, who i..."

yes the Transylvanian balance was interesting between the two races and the Banffy trilogy looks at the Austro-Hungarian situation in that area where the Romanians had very little representation or rights. Nowadays its changed but Transylvania is still more diverse than the rest of Romania, with its Siebenburger Saxons, Szeklers, Hungarians and Romanians. I think the president of Romania is Siebenburger Saxon, or the last one was

AB76 wrote: "Afternoon all, thanks LL for your hard work to get this new week up and running, Justine will be on all our minds i'm sure...

Late Imperial Russia: Problems and Prospects

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck (1936)

Friend by Paek Nam Nyong (1988)

Lastly The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla(1966) ..."

All four of those sound interesting, but the first and last especially catch my eye. I hope to start getting into some early-20th century reading in a few months, once I get through the 19th century stuff I have lined up, so the Late Imperial Russia history would fit nicely with that plan.

So the answer to Douthat’s editorial question, “Do Liberals Care if Books Disappear?” is, apparently, “No.”

The annual celebration of “Banned Books Week” in the US (I cannot speak for other countries) seems increasingly misdirected if not misguided. It was instituted by the American Library Association to “celebrate the freedom to read” and has been used as a marketing tool by booksellers and publishers. Its list of “banned books” is based on challenges for the most part meant, at worst, to limit a book’s availability in a specific area and venue – hardly fitting my definition of “banned”. Here’s one of the more successful banning attempts from my native state of Pennsylvania involving The Catcher in the Rye:

Removed from the Selinsgrove, PA suggested reading list (1975). Based on parents' objections to the language and content of the book, the school board voted 5-4 to ban the book. The book was later reinstated in the curriculum when the board learned that the vote was illegal because they needed a two-thirds vote for removal of the text.

That seems pretty limited compared with, say, Amazon refusing to sell Ryan T. Anderson's book or the (ultimately unsuccessful) movement to prevent the publication of Woody Allen’s memoirs. Will either of those show up as “Banned Books” in the ALA’s 2021 list? I’ll bet not.

Before I went to school, I had a small collection of picture books from the “Golden Books” series which my parents bought me and from which I learned to read. Some of these, my favorites, came with a few tear-out pages of large color stamps at the front which you were supposed to paste in a marked spot on the appropriate page. There were also larger format “stamp books” with about 50 pages and a corresponding number of stamps – I remember having a number of these – Wonders of the World, Reptiles and Amphibians, Fire Fighters – but my favorites were Dinosaurs and an adaptation of Moby Dick (I loved the illustrations on the stamps and still think of the novel in terms of those images). The adaptation was somewhat true to the novel at least in the fact that the titular whale didn’t show up until about the final fifth of the book; I remember that other incidents in the novel such as the prophet Elijah, St. Elmo’s Fire, and Ahab’s doubloon were also illustrated.

Once I started school and had access to the children’s library, the only other books for children that I would voluntarily read were those by Dr Seuss. I don’t think I read any of the now withdrawn books, though And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street is a possibility – certainly I was aware of the title in his list of publications. I do recall If I Ran the Circus but not If I Ran the Zoo. I was vaguely aware of the purpose behind the books to teach reading skills – a 50 word vocabulary was mentioned on some covers (and, yes, even at the time I read the books I knew the word “vocabulary”, and was able to read the library stamp across the top of the books’ pages) – but I didn’t think of the books as offering any kind of life lessons (as they mostly did, though I’m not sure about One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish) ;the blatancy of such lessons tended to dissuade me from some of the non-Seuss books on offer at the library.

All that time, pre-school and during my schooldays, I was also reading comic books, which probably had a wider vocabulary than the specially designed children’s books. I’ve been trying to think why it was that comic books drew my attention and affection while most non-Seuss children’s books did not. I think that one reason was that the comic books seemed aimed at kids without condescending to them – at 10 and later 12 cents each, they were within a child’s discretionary spending limits and so had to appeal directly to their consumers. Children’s books, including Dr Seuss, had first to appeal to the adults who purchased them, either for their children or for the library system, and so perhaps had to extend the promise that they would provide the anarchic monsters they were intended for with education, and perhaps more importantly, a sense of decorum and civilized behavior.

Literary judgments in Alan Walker’s Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, concerning George Sand’s Lucrezia Floriani, by common consent based on her life with Chopin (by contemporaries like Delacroix as well as later biographers, though Sand denied this in her autobiography):

The book does little to enhance her literary reputation, for it barely rises above the level of a Harlequin romance. It contains the kind of writing that led Flaubert to call her “a great cow full of ink” – a slur on her reputation that has persued her across the generations. But Henry James admired the book at a time when the philosophy behind it – “life turned into literature” – was becoming fashionable among the literati.

And on Chopin himself, who failed to recognized himself in the novel

He had always disliked reading (he read almost nothing, save the newspapers) and certainly lacked the patience to dissect a literary text.

Quite a contrast to the other 19th century composers I’ve read about, such as Berlioz and Liszt, whose literary experiences, as expressed in their music, have always inclined me to consider them as being kindred spirits in reading.

Machenbach wrote: "...in general, I think that there's a danger of falling into an unnecessarily absolutist or fundamentalist mindset with these things, and too often a false dichotomy of free speech versus censorship is claimed. In reality, virtually none of us think that 'free speech' means that school libraries ought to stock necrophiliac porn, or, on the other hand, that a publisher choosing not to reprint an unpopular and dated book is akin to Nazi book-burnings. Rather, almost all of us think that there are limits to free speech and we are really only arguing about exactly what they are, and when and where they might be appropriate.

Perfectly put. I don't see how anyone could disagree with this point.

Bill wrote: "Literary judgments in Alan Walker’s Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, concerning George Sand’s Lucrezia Floriani, by common consent based on her life with Chopin (by ..."

Does he mention another Sand novel, Consuelo, by any chance? I just read that one a couple months ago and one of the characters in it as well was supposedly based on Chopin, though I haven't read enough about the man's life or personality to have any idea if this is plausible or just a blind assumption that any musically gifted male character in a Sand novel must be based on Chopin.

Apart from all that, Consuelo is a long, but highly entertaining historical fiction, set in the early-mid 18th century, about an opera prima donna. My copy bills it as a "Venetian Romance", but only the first section, around 120 pp out of 800, is set there. Several historical characters make an appearance, some in quite prominent rôles, e.g. a young Haydn and Consuelo's music master, whose name I forget, others more briefly, e.g. Frederick the Great and Austrian Empress Maria-Theresa. Many of them I hadn't heard of before, including Consuelo's mentor, who is quite an important character in the novel.

Regardless, it's given me the desire to read more of Sand's books and your Lucrezia Floriani post is moving that one up the list.

Red Cavalry and Other Stories by Isaac Babel didn’t really grab me, though I enjoyed some of the more unusual figurative sentences:
“stiff-starched women gleamed in the grass like enamelled teapots”
Translation has probably compounded the strangeness at times, and I think it’s possible that there is some humour in the original that isn’t obvious in the English copy.
I’ve been troubled lately by the thought that I’ve possibly wasted my youth reading dusty old classics, when other people my own age have been outdoors, living their lives. You can probably guess what I’ve done next – I bought a copy of The Tragic Muse by Henry James. I’m incorrigible, there is clearly no hope for me. Fortunately, I’m quite pleased so far, and I’m inclined to be optimistic, especially as James rarely does things by halves – when he is intent on being dull, he won’t give you a good paragraph from the first page to the five hundredth. I really quite like the description of the English characters on holiday depicted at the outset, which I would consider to be quite a comic portrait by Jamesian standards.

@SydneyH re "possibly wasting your youth reading dusty old classics": I've been worried about the opposite ever since I joined TLS. Never read James, but the fact about Babel losing his edge in translation might just be true.