Ersatz TLS discussion

Hello, everyone

Welcome to the new thread.

I was pleased to see on Andy's blog that he has had his hip operation and seems, like giveusaclue, to be recovering quickly. He's planning to be off on a new trip soon.
Here's the link if you don't know it and would like to have a look:
https://safe-return-doubtful.com/

I wish you all lots of good reading!

Thanks to all who responded to my question about reading Stephen King in the last thread. Most of you more or less echoed my own impression: he’s OK for what he does, but nothing to go wild about.

@Paul, who has read the most King books of anyone here made several points which echoed things I gathered from the NY Times podcast about King:

Well, I suspect that most of the contributors here were not of the generation that was conquered by Stephen King. I read dozens of his books, the vast majority prior to turning 25, most of which came out in my adolescence. Since then I've read one or two but I don't seek him out anymore as I've become saturated. You get the sense that you've read the book before, despite not having ever seen it. His habit of weaving a large township and a connected underworld of sinisterness at first is entrancing , but eventually tends to feel like sameness.

He does seem to be a taste best suited to discovery as an adolescent, as the three aging fanboys on the Times podcast all attested. King’s books are popular art; the ones I read impressed me as squarely aimed at achieving a middlebrow literary status. The fact that, on the evidence of the NY Times’ adulation, they are being positioned as a highpoint of modern literature seems to me, like the critical acceptance of superhero movies, a sign of arrested development in a culture that has lost any sense of contact with “the high-art literary tradition” (to use a Franzen-ism).

I don’t know if this is quite the same as the “sameness” @Paul mentions, but it seems that one of the things a lot of King fans like about the author’s books is his habit of including characters from his earlier books in stories which are otherwise unconnected to those books (though King has also written some explicit sequels). Though I haven’t read nearly enough of King to specifically notice this, I did note an incident while reading 11/22/63 that felt tangential to the story that was being told there, and since it involved both weirdness and violence, I figured that it must be something related to another King book. Using Google I found that he had the narrator meeting characters who also appear in It.

Gpfr wrote: "Hello, everyone

Welcome to the new thread.

I was pleased to see on Andy's blog that he has had his hip operation and seems, like giveusaclue, to be recovering quickly. He's planning to be off on ..."

i never knew about this, has he been unwell, was it an injury or a routine surgery, hips getting worse with age?

Bill wrote: "Thanks to all who responded to my question about reading Stephen King in the last thread. Most of you more or less echoed my own impression: he’s OK for what he does, but nothing to go wild about.
..."

i have only read one King novel and i forget its title about 10 years ago, it was relatively modern and i didnt mind it but i didnt go back for more

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I was pleased to see on Andy's blog that he has had his hip operation and seems, like giveusaclue, to be recovering quickly. ..."

i never knew about this, has he been unwell, was it an injury or a routine surgery, hips getting worse with age?

The latter I think. He's often mentioned it in his blog, not able to walk or cycle as before.

Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I was pleased to see on Andy's blog that he has had his hip operation and seems, like giveusaclue, to be recovering quickly. ..."

i never knew about this, has he been unw..."

oh dear, the blog nevr worked for me, just directed me to a log in and i avoided it after that

A balmy day of 17c has changed into a wet cooler evening but spring is here in the shires,trees leaping into life and winter is gone.

Reading is going well, the rather unusual St John Ervine novel The Wayward Man packs a lot into 300 odd pages. Written in 1927, it seems mostly set in the late 19th century. Its a defiantly "ulster" novel, of the protestant persuasion but without bigotry. The blurb should be condemmed as it basically tells the entire story but omits that only 40% is set in Belfast, the only bad thing about the novel so far

Solidarity: Poland 1980-81 is a slim volume published ijn 1984 but in those 200 odd pages there is real depth as french sociologist Alain Touraine studies the Polish party and chats with members accross Poland between 1980-82. I have just reached Sept 1981, the first Solidarity Congress holds court in Warsaw, the military are not on the streets quite yet

I'm enjoying the TLS, though its not a very long read, am still awaiting the latest NYRB, it seems to have hit silly slow postal season as it can do which is annoying. There is a very good review in the LRB by Hofmann of a new biog of Halldor Laxness.

AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "I was pleased to see on Andy's blog..."

the blog nevr worked for me, just directed me to a log in and i avoided it after that"

I think you must be referring to the old one. His current one which he set up himself, doesn't require any logging in.

Thanks for the new thread, GP.

We had a 97% partial eclipse here this afternoon, and it’s true what they say – that remaining 3% means almost normal daylight, just a few shades off. Still, very cool seeing the sliver of sun through eclipse glasses.

I’m enjoying a new history of the Renaissance by Jonathan Jones, art critic of The G, called Earthly Delights, which caught my eye on the new acquisitions shelf at our excellent village library. Not that there aren’t already any number of such histories, just that it’s refreshing to have it talked about from a contemporary position, and in a handsome format.

This has coincided with reading a really interesting review in a back number of the LRB about Aldus Manutius who, in a span of about 20 years, from his press in Venice, published an unbelievable series of Greek and Latin classics, in clear type, and in a handy octavo that would slip into your pocket. Previously only bibles were printed in a manageable size. The book under review (by Erin Maglaque) was Aldus Manutius: The Invention of the Publisher, by Oren Margolis – not that expensive at £18, and apparently full of beautiful illustrations – woodcuts, fonts, paintings, coins, letters, dedications, and prefaces (by the crusty publisher).

Also finished an enjoyable French classic:

Cinq Mars – Alfred de Vigny (1826)

The story of a conspiracy led by a young nobleman against the iron rule of Cardinal Richelieu, an insurrection which they thought they could bring about in the name of the weak-willed Louis XIII through a combination of the garrison of Sedan, the Huguenots of La Rochelle, a French army in Italy, and a foreign army they would invite in from Spain. Predictable result; though according to Vigny it fizzled out for quite different reasons, to do with the desperate love of Cinq Mars for Princess Marie de Gonzague of Mantua.

Regarded as the first French historical novel, it is a pleasing and mature entertainment. While the character of Cinq Mars himself seems over-coloured, there are some very believable portrayals – the imperious Cardinal, the feeble Louis, the calculating Anne d’Autriche – and some very well managed scenes, as when Corneille, Molière, Descartes and a young Milton (travelling back from Italy) are imagined to be in tête-à-tête in the salon of Marion De Lorme.

Comparing it in a general way with Dumas’s The Three Musketeers and Gautier’s Le Capitaine Fracasse, it has somewhat less action and drama, even after various dates and events have been adjusted for the purposes of fiction. I liked the Gautier the best of the three, for its delightful story and the poetic turn of its writing.

Thanks for that link to Andy's blog, Gpfr. I had lost it and am relieved to hear that he's doing well. (Have bookmarked the link this time!)

Bill wrote: "He does seem to be a taste best suited to discovery as an adolescent, as the three aging fanboys on the Times podcast all attested. King’s books are popular art; the ones I read impressed me as squarely aimed at achieving a middlebrow literary status. The fact that, on the evidence of the NY Times’ adulation, they are being positioned as a highpoint of modern literature seems to me, like the critical acceptance of superhero movies, a sign of arrested development in a culture that has lost any sense of contact with “the high-art literary tradition” (to use a Franzen-ism). "

That's how it worked for me: I read all but one of the Stephen King books I've read in my late teens or early twenties - the exception was The Shining, which I read around ten years ago, curious as to how it might differ from the film.

I think anything especially popular is worthy of study on that basis alone, regardless of its other qualities - though that doesn't mean I feel obliged to read every single best-seller or the latest record-setting commercial success or what have you. But if there's something else that interests me I'll put it on my list of things I might want to look at.

This goes for earlier eras too: a few years ago I somewhere came across the assertion that the most widely read work of English language fiction in all the 19th century was not one of Thackeray's or Dickens's famous successes but G. M. Reynolds's "The Mysteries of London" (inspired by another best-seller of the day, Eugène Sue's "Mysteries of Paris").

Reynolds obviously has not received the critical attention that's been deservedly given to a Dickens or a Thackeray. But that exceptional degree of popular success - and, I admit, the contrasting lack of consideration given to his work today - attracted my interest. Probably having been semi-immersed in the 19-C in general the last few years, as far as my reading goes, also had something to do with it. So I finally decided to give it a try and bought the Valancourt paperback edition: 2 volumes, each of 1100+ pages (that high page count was one of the things that had made me hesitant).

And it was one of the most entertaining reading experiences I can remember. Its literary merit or lack thereof didn't really come into it, I was enjoying it so much. Yes, of course it's one cliché after another, many of the characters are cardboard cut-outs (though with occasional surprising exceptions), and the coincidences and plot twists make Dickens's look timid. But it is just so much fun!

And there's even something beyond the fun - because Reynolds apparently took his inspiration seriously: Eugène Sue was a social reformer as well as a novelist - in fact, one criticism of his novels is that they are too obviously didactic, even if trying to impart messages most of us today (but not then, necessarily) would agree with. Sue's own books are over the top themselves but I think better written and certainly more tightly and carefully constructed than Reynold's sprawling, meandering serial (which apparently continued under new writers even after Reynolds had finished his immense contribution).

Anyway, all this just to say that, if something catches the attention of the public at large, I think there has to be a reason and it's worth looking into what that reason is. Often, probably even most of the time, that reason is obvious and trivial and doesn't demand further investigation, except as a social phenomenon: you probably don't need to read 50 Shades of Twilight, or whatever that one was called. But in some cases - and perhaps it's easier to see the ones that are relatively far removed in time or in some other manner, e.g. culturally, linguistically - it might be worth one's time.

Berkley wrote: "I think anything especially popular is worthy of study on that basis alone, regardless of its other qualities - though that doesn't mean I feel obliged to read every single best-seller or the latest record-setting commercial success or what have you. But if there's something else that interests me I'll put it on my list of things I might want to look at."

I agree with this; part of my problem with the NY Times’ coverage of King this week is that they don’t make any attempt to dig into the meaning of his popularity.

The appearance of these articles coincided with my reading a collection of Robert Warshow’s essays and reviews of popular culture from the 1940s and 1950s, The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture. Warshow always gives consideration to the implications of the popular appeal of the material under review, whether that popularity is manifested by the expressed favor of a mass audience or merely intended, but not necessarily achieved, by its creators.

Perhaps the reason for this, as I suggested earlier, is that, while Warshow was working with a definite concept of “mass culture” in mind while writing his reviews, for most current critics, mass culture is simply “culture”, and all its products subject to the same criteria of evaluation.

I haven’t read The Mysteries of London, though I have long owned, unread, a 3 volume set of The Mysteries of Paris. I do own a copy of Reynolds’ Wagner the Werewolf in an edition from Wordsworth’s “Mystery and the Supernatural” series, From the title alone, I suspect it was inspired by the success of the much longer “penny dreadful” series, Varney, the Vampyre (also in a Wordsworth edition).

Russell wrote: "Thanks for the new thread, GP.

We had a 97% partial eclipse here this afternoon, and it’s true what they say – that remaining 3% means almost normal daylight, just a few shades off. Still, very co..."

i didnt realise De Vigny wrote fiction too, i have his military memoirs on my pile

Sky news here had the vermont eclipse footage, looked amazing...i remember the 1999 eclipse in the UK...3 mins of darkness and chilly air, birds stopped singing and it was an amazing experience

I have to at least partially retract what I said about the NY Times Stephen King coverage. Margaret Atwood's assessment of Carrie does look at how the book was reflects aspects of the early-'70s zeitgeist and touches on the sources of King's poularity.

Here's a gift link to her piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/bo...

King is a visceral writer, and a master of granular detail. As Marianne Moore said, the literary ideal is “imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” and boy, are there a lot of toads in King’s work! He writes “horror,” the most literary of forms, especially when it comes to the supernatural, which must perforce be inspired by already existing tales and books. All the quasi-scientific hocus-pocus about the genetic inheritability of telekinesis is just cover-up (as is the “natural” source of Ayesha’s powers in “She,” and the something-in-the-drinking-water, experiment-gone-wrong stuff in “The Power”: You can’t just say “miracle” or “witch” anymore and get instant credibility).

But underneath the “horror,” in King, is always the real horror: the all-too-actual poverty and neglect and hunger and abuse that exists in America today. “I went to school with kids who wore the same neckdirt for months, kids whose skin festered with sores and rashes, kids with the eerie dried-apple-doll faces that result from untreated burns, kids who were sent to school with stones in their dinnerbuckets and nothing but air in their Thermoses,” King says in “On Writing.” The ultimate horror, for him as it was for Dickens, is human cruelty, and especially cruelty to children. It is this that distorts “charity,” the better side of our nature, the side that prompts us to take care of others.

I was so benumbed by the other King pieces that I almost didn't read this article; I should have known Atwood would produce a worthwhile and thoughtful piece, in contrast to the fanboy and -girl gushing that was supplied by the other contributors to the Times commemoration.

Raymond Williams was a giant of academic and critical thought in the post war era till his death in the 1980s but less well regarded for the 4 or 5 novels he wrote in his lifetime.

I read but was rather underwhelmed by Volunteers a novel of state conspiracy and intrigue, though it was by no means a boring read

But The Fight for Manod(1979)set in his native border regions has been pitch perfect so far, mixing small rural family disputes, with local planning and a picture of late 1970s Wales that is a remarkable document of the times

It feels, rugged, realist and also modern, i havent read a novel with such a balance of style in a long time, the characters are strong and the welsh themes well defined but no overplayed.

The basic plot is a government idea to build a large new town in the Welsh borderlands and the slow reveal of the idea into the area, some can make money off selling land maybe, others oppose the idea. Quite topical with the planning situation in the UK right now!

Bill wrote: "I haven’t read The Mysteries of London, though I have long owned, unread, a 3 volume set of The Mysteries of Paris. I do own a copy of Reynolds’ Wagner the Werewolf in an edition from Wordsworth’s “Mystery and the Supernatural” series, From the title alone, I suspect it was inspired by the success of the much longer “penny dreadful” series, Varney, the Vampyre (also in a Wordsworth edition)."

I didn't know Wordsworth had an edition of Reynolds's Werewolf, I will certainly be having a look for that one.

I've read Varney - the whole thing! I'd say it's a few steps down from Mysteries of London in quality, and though it's attributed to one author, I wouldn't be surprised if was actually the work of several because it's so uneven. The biggest surprise to me was how funny it was at times - I remember the comedy in the early sections especially as broad and stereotyped (e.g. a drunken servant, a crotchety retired ship's captain) but still effective. And there are some good moody scenes and other memorable episodes as well. But there is a lot of low-quality material to wade through in between the better parts.

So I'd give Varney only a qualified recommendation: if you're interested in the history of horror fiction or vampire fiction you might want to give it a go. But I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to read it all the way through as if it were a real novel.

To Reynolds's Mysteries of London and perhaps even moreso to Eugène Sue's Mysteries of Paris I give a very strong recommendation: I think anyone interested in 19th century fiction will find them very intriguing.

Bill wrote: "Berkley wrote: "I think anything especially popular is worthy of study on that basis alone, regardless of its other qualities - though that doesn't mean I feel obliged to read every single best-sel..."

I agree with both of you that mass popular culture deserves investigation - and indeed it is the subject of certain academic disciplines, at least as a sub-set. I don't have the time or interest to read a lot of 'bestsellers' as that would leave too little time to read the books that interest me - though occasionally they probably qualify for that name.

Bill writes: "...whether that popularity is manifested by the expressed favor of a mass audience or merely intended, but not necessarily achieved, by its creators" - an interesting distinction. No doubt some authors deliberately set out to appeal to some 'common denominator', and regard writing as a means of making a good deal of money. Others set out to write as well as they can, and hope to find a decent audience. There is bound to be some overlap between those attitudes, and bestselling authors of quality as well as surprise bestsellers from literary authors.

ATM, I've started another Ross Macdonald - ... he's an interesting case, in that his writing is of very good quality even if his subject matter is 'popular'. In his biography which I read recently, a contrast was drawn between the crude but bestselling 'Mike Hammer' tales by Mickey Spillane and the 'Lew Archer' novels by Macdonald - which (according to the biographer) were far better written but sold less well. A couple of quotes from Wikipedia would appear to justify this contrast!

Ross Macdonald was the main pseudonym used by the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar (/ˈmɪlər/; December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983). He is best known for his series of hardboiled novels set in Southern California and featuring private detective Lew Archer. Since the 1970s, Macdonald's works (particularly the Archer novels) have received attention in academic circles[1][2][3] for their psychological depth,[4][5] sense of place,[6][7][8] use of language,[9] sophisticated imagery[10] and integration of philosophy into genre fiction.

but

The Mike Hammer series proved hugely successful during the 1950s and 1960s, but the books were excoriated by the literary establishment. Malcolm Cowley of The New Republic called Spillane "a dangerous paranoid, sadist, and masochist" and even his own editors sometimes found his novels distasteful. Spillane for his part was unmoved by critics, saying "You can sell a lot more peanuts than caviar" and "The literary world is made of second rate writers writing about other second rate writers." Attractively low prices (25 cents for a paperback copy, later raised to 50 cents) helped sales, and the 1956 informative guide Sixty Years of Best Sellers found that the six novels Spillane had written up to that point were among the top ten best selling American fiction titles of all time.

Lightning Men by Thomas Mullen

The second in Mullen's trilogy based on the recruitment in 1948 of black police officers in Atlanta... we are now in 1950, and things have moved on, a bit. The main driver of the storyline here is the fact that three black families have bought properties on the 'wrong' side of the unofficial border between black and white areas. Local white families are concerned, and want to drive the 'negroes' out by either fair means (or 'fair-ish' - offering to buy out the three families and resell to whites) or foul (intimidation, maybe burn the houses). There is a second strand dealing with the movement of illegal hooch and marijuana into the city with the connivance of corrupt police officers.

A number of characters reappear - black officers Boggs and Smith, white constable Rakestraw, and Sergeant McInnes - who is in charge of the black contingent as a 'reward' (not) for his involvement in a sting which led to the dismissal of several corrupt white officers.

As before, this is a well written story in which the complex feelings of the characters are convincingly portrayed. I got slightly less from it than from 'Darktown', since that book had already introduced the extreme racism of the area at that time, so there was less 'new' historical material. We do, though, get an insight into the workings of the Ku Klux Klan and also of a smaller neo-Nazi group - the Columbians - who regarded the Klan as weak 'pussies':

During the summer of 1946, Atlantans witnessed the rise of the Columbians, the nation’s first neo-Nazi political organization. The group pursued a campaign of intimidation against the city’s minorities, patrolling those neighborhoods most vulnerable to racial transition, and threatening with violence those residents who dared cross the city’s “color line.” Although they attracted some support from Atlanta’s working-class whites, the Columbians were uniformly condemned by the city’s press and targeted for arrest by its political establishment. By the following summer the group had dissolved, following the conviction of its leaders, Homer Loomis and Emory Burke, on charges of usurping police power and inciting to riot.

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/a...

It's a pity that 'inciting to riot' has not been as strongly condemned and suppressed in the USA in recent times.

scarletnoir wrote: "I've started another Ross Macdonald - Meet Me at the Morgue ... he's an interesting case, in that his writing is of very good quality even if his subject matter is 'popular'. ..."

Yesterday, after going to the cinema in the Latin Quarter, I went to Gibert and picked up two 2nd-hand books. One of them was by Ross MacDonald after all the recent mentions of him.
It's The Drowning Pool and I've just looked up your review of it — you had mixed feelings, thinking his plotting skills let him down and weren't sure if you were going to read any more of his books. I'll see what I think!

The other was a volume of Alice Munro's short stories, which I love. This one is Friend of My Youth.

scarletnoir wrote: "Bill wrote: "Berkley wrote: "I think anything especially popular is worthy of study on that basis alone, regardless of its other qualities - though that doesn't mean I feel obliged to read every si..."

i see Macdonald in the Chandler-Hammett bracket of intelligent noir or crime writing, with Spillane not in that bracket at all. Not sure where Elmore Leonard fits in, he was a darling of documentaries and reviews for most of the last 20 years but i never really liked any of his novels

Thanks once again for the new thread G. I have a new author for you:



I really did enjoy this one. Ali Falco is a police officer in Sienna and hoping to become an inspector. She gets a text from her estranged father saying I'm sorry. She is then told he has committed suicide 11 years after her mother and the cause of the estrangement. She goes to the family villa and on looking at the suicide room she realises that this is not suicide........

AB76 wrote: "... i didnt realise De Vigny wrote fiction too, i have his military memoirs on my pile..."

I read the memoirs some years ago. I remember they were well-written and thoughtful, but not much else, tttt. I picked up somewhere that he was rather a solitary and reserved figure, initially close to Hugo but standing apart from the circle of young romantics around him, because he was older and a soldier and an aristocrat. He married the daughter of an English sugar planter named Bunbury in the expectation of a large dowry, which proved disappointingly small. Poor Lydia, after a series of miscarriages, became an invalid, lost her blue-eyed looks, never learned French properly, even forgot most of her English. Vigny nonetheless nursed her tenderly, and concealed his poverty. I find him rather admirable.

I read more from Alice Roberts latest Crypt and found this interesting - the way that the Black Death spread from Asia into Europe in the fourteenth century. The fact that the Khan used the bodies of plague victims to infect a city which he was besieging is quite horrifying.
Evidently the people of Caffa tried to get rid of the rotting bodies quickly but dumping them in the sea could not be done fast enough to limit the resulting plague outbreak. I had to look up exactly where Feodosia was and the spread into Europe.


First reported in Central Asia in 1339, the Black Death spread westwards, with a particularly gruesome story emanating from Caffa on the coast of the Black Sea (modern-day Feodosia, in Ukraine). Caffa was an important port, which had been bought by Genoese traders from the Mongols, who ruled much of western Asia at the time. But in the fourteenth century, it seems the Khan of the Golden Horde, Janibeg, wanted Caffa back, and he laid siege to the city. After an outbreak of disease amongst his troops, infected cadavers were catapulted over the city walls – a very early example of biological warfare.
From Caffa, it was believed that merchant ships carried the pestilence to Messina, Marseille and Genoa by November 1347 – and then the Black Death spread rapidly across Europe.

scarletnoir wrote: "In his biography which I read recently, a contrast was drawn between the crude but bestselling 'Mike Hammer' tales by Mickey Spillane and the 'Lew Archer' novels by Macdonald - which (according to the biographer) were far better written but sold less well."

Am I the only one here who has read Mickey Spillane? (I, the Jury) My feeling is, if you’re going to indulge in pulp, don’t do things by half-measures.

Spillane writes a blunt prose without subtlety or nuance. In The Killing, Lionel White has his characters refer to machine guns as “typewriters”. Spillane sustains the metaphor in the opposite direction: his typewriter is a machine gun that accomplishes what he wants in bursts of words that require little marksmanship or finesse to hit their goal.

I’ve only read one Spillane novel, but I’m open to reading more. I certainly consider I, the Jury a better book than more celebrated mysteries like The Daughter of Time or the dreadful The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Spillane is mentioned in the opening paragraph of the Author’s Preface to The Immediate Experience, which I will take the opportunity to quote in full:

The movies – and American movies in particular – stand at the center of that unresolved problem of “popular culture” which has come to be a kind of nagging embarrassment to criticism, intruding itself on all our efforts to understand the special qualities of our culture and to define our own relation to it. That this relation should require definition at all is the heart of the problem. We are all “self-made men” culturally, establishing ourselves in terms of the particular choices we make from among the confusing multitude of stimuli that present themselves to us. Something more than the pleasures of personal cultivation is at stake when one chooses to respond to Proust rather than Mickey Spillane, to Laurence Olivier in Oedipus Rex rather than Sterling Hayden in The Asphalt Jungle. And when one has made the “right” choice, Mickey Spillane and Sterling Hayden do not disappear; perhaps no one gets quite out of sight of them. There is great need, I think, for a criticism of “popular culture” which can acknowledge its pervasive and disturbing power without ceasing to be aware of the superior claims of the higher arts, and yet without a bad conscience. Such a criticism finds its best opportunity in the movies, which are the most highly developed and most engrossing of the popular arts, and which seem to have an almost unlimited power to absorb and transform the discordant elements of our fragmented culture.

New books lined up(with Williams and Poe still being read)

One is a re-visit to my a-level english days where Graham Greene's The Comedians was on the syllabus. Aged 17-18, i was far more into Orwell and a bit bemused at my kindly english master praising Greene every day. Now aged 48, Greene is a yearly staple of my reading, despite only having read 3 or 4 of his novels (i'm taking it slow). I look foward to visiting Haiti again via the pen of Greene and thankfully i recall zilch of the plot and only a few flickers of memory about the novel at all

I am also going to start the late lamented Johnathan Rabans Coasting, its been sitting about for 18 months, a lovely secondhand Picador edition and i look foward to his writing. I first heard of him while reading Paul Theroux's 1982 book about travelling around the UK and he met Raban, as he wrote it, both at work on books about the UK

Hello everyone.

Just catching up with this and the previous thread and I have some thoughts about Stephen King books.

I started, as a young teenager reading Cujo (my Mum had a collection of crime/horror books that she ordered from a mail catalogue) and being thereafter quite scared of St Bernard dogs and rabies. It was one of SK's earlier works and not the best (I don't think SK remembers writing this - alcohol was his own demon for quite some time).

I also read 'Pet Semetary' during my teens and loved it. One thing SK does very well is characters and their interactions (Louis Creed and elderly neighbour Jud discussing life and death on the porch).

He creates characters that are believable, even if some of horror is a bit daft (here's looking at you 'The Stand' - the beginning of the book detailing the origin of the plague and its spread was brilliant - once Captain Tripps appears, it was all downhill from there).

I think what makes him a great horror writer, is that he has a great knack for integrating the typical horrifying things (vampires, reanimated corpses, monsters, disease etc.) with fear and horror that people can bestow on to each other (bullying, for instance was a core theme of 'Carrie' and 'IT'.

Some of the more recent SK books have focused more on crime aspects, for example 'Mr Mercedes' - although this too had aspects of the supernatural in it.

My favourite books of SK would be IT, Pet Sematary, The Shining and Carrie.

Brandon Taylor in the LRB writes an interesting article on his reading of all the Rougan-Macquart Zola novels in the space of 2 years. Its a brave act, i have never and would never read two novels in a row by the same author, let alone a whole series

But it made me re-think about reading The Sin of Abbe Mouret, in fact it made me even clearer that i shouldnt read it but then i think why not? My next few novels after Greene will be Fontane, Hermans and Benedetti, i could slip Zola in but i fear it will just irritate me, its the second comment in a week where that novel has come up and been trashed!

I've been binging on Thomas Harris' books, reading 'Red Dragon', 'Hannibal' and finally, 'Hannibal Rising'. I have read 'Silence of The Lambs' a couple of times previously.

Both 'Read Dragon' and 'Hannibal' were excellent. Hannibal Lector is, of course, an an abhorrent human being but he certainly is charming, with a manner of speaking which is very poetic and disarming simultaneously.

In 'Hannibal', Lector has escaped his imprisonment and has absconded to Florence, in Italy. Thomas Harris depicted what a beautiful city Florence is, so much so, that I would love to visit.

As awful as this sounds (and forgetting that Hannibal maims/kills/eats people), Hannibal makes an interesting character. He has quite exquisite (and expensive) tastes in food, wine and the finer things in life (art, the beauty of people, places etc.).

Because of his abnormal psychological traits, he applied this in a professional setting as a therapist, and so has a good understanding of the motivations of other criminals, especially killers.

I'm currently reading 'Hannibal Rising' which is about the young Hannibal Lector. It doesn't quite have the punch as the other books and found it (at least the first 100 pages or so, quite sluggish). I'm only about half way through, so will give a further update when I'm finished.

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I've been binging on Thomas Harris' books, reading 'Red Dragon', 'Hannibal' and finally, 'Hannibal Rising'. I have read 'Silence of The Lambs' a couple of times previously.

Both 'Read Dragon' and ..."

Florence, is indeed a lovely city to visit.

Gpfr wrote: "I went to Gibert and picked up two 2nd-hand books. One of them was by Ross MacDonald after all the recent mentions of him.
It's The Drowning Pool and I've just looked up your review of it — you had mixed feelings, thinking his plotting skills let him down and weren't sure if you were going to read any more of his books. I'll see what I think!"

I did pause Macdonald for a good while, until coming across a very positive recommendation in a book blog I follow, so I started again - and I'm not sorry. 'The Drowning Pool' has a convoluted plot (too much so, for my taste) but is not plain daft as is the case for another book I read at around the same time. On the other hand, his fluency and use of language are almost always top notch... the very early Archer The Moving Target, which I read recently, starts brilliantly but is a bit patchy... he soon developed a very good and consistent style.

I'll be interested to know what you think - 'Drowning Pool' was his second Archer novel.

AB76 wrote: "Not sure where Elmore Leonard fits in, he was a darling of documentaries and reviews for most of the last 20 years but i never really liked any of his novels."

I've liked most Leonards I've read, but there have been a few duds... plotting and motivations are usually well handled. Not quite the stylist that Macdonald or Chandler are, maybe.

CCCubbon wrote: "I read more from Alice Roberts latest Crypt and found this interesting - the way that the Black Death spread from Asia into Europe in the fourteenth century ..."

My current long read - long in time taken, not in length! - Évariste has a particularly effective section dealing with the spread of cholera through Paris in 1832, which had a significant effect on the city's urban planning - eventually (there was a second outbreak in 1849).
https://www.rfi.fr/en/visiting-france...

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I think what makes him a great horror writer, is that he has a great knack for integrating the typical horrifying things (vampires, reanimated corpses, monsters, disease etc.) with fear and horror that people can bestow on to each other (bullying, for instance was a core theme of 'Carrie' and 'IT'."

Have you read other modern horror writers?

I've tried Peter Straub, but found his books unsatisfying - too long and building to what seemed to me a non-resolution. I kind of liked the first two Anne Rice vampire novels - a modern updating of the Gothic novel - but the third one was too much: it "jumped the shark" as they say.

Against the grain of most readers, and all writers and publishers, I think that most genre fiction works best at the lengths of short story and novella, though I wasn't particularly taken with King's collection Night Shift.

Bill wrote: ".Am I the only one here who has read Mickey Spillane? (I, the Jury) My feeling is, if you’re going to indulge in pulp, don’t do things by half-measures.."

I mistakenly thought that the link would take me to your own review of 'I, the Jury', but it didn't... it went to the Goodreads reviews instead, and I very much enjoyed the first one there by 'Lyn':

I woke up to the alarm clock at 5 am and did 100 knuckle pushups on the sidewalk outside the apartment building. In the rain. There were some fancy boys “jogging” and I glared a contemptuous good morning to them.

Inside I had my usual breakfast: three raw eggs and three fingers of Kentucky bourbon. Quick shower and shave and I was on the pavement, hoofing it to my office on the lower east side.

Entering my building I saw old Mrs. Koleki sweeping the entrance. We glared a contemptuous good morning to each other and I went inside.

Standing outside my office door, I first saw the dame. I glared a contemptuous good morning to her and I touched my hat. She looked up and I could see the kid had been crying. I grimaced, and soaked up her weakness like a biscuit sopping up gravy.

“What kind of lily livered punk did this to you, kid?” I asked, flexing my corded guns under my trench coat, imagining the beating I’d give the guy that done this to her.

“No, “she said, sniffing, “It’s not like that, Joe, I read Mickey Spillane’s book and it got to me, that’s all.”

“Yeah, that’s all, I get it, “I said, and dropped and gave myself 100 knuckle pushups, in the rain.

“Have a shot, kid, let’s talk it over, “ as I poured her three fingers of cheap bourbon. While she sipped, I grilled a steak, rare, and did a few dozen chin-ups.

“I, the Jury” was … amazing! I, I just don’t have words,” she stammered and then broke down in wet, girly tears.

“That’s OK, kid, I know the score,” I said as I took off my jacket, “You look like you could use manly hug.” I glared at her contemptuously, and did some more knuckle pushups, downed a man-sized slug of the good stuff, and moved in.

It made me laugh, but I still don't feel inclined to read Spillane! I did like the cover art, though.

scarletnoir wrote: "I mistakenly thought that the link would take me to your own review of 'I, the Jury', but it didn't..."

I never wrote a review of I, the Jury, though I did do one for The Killing, where I quote at length the "typewriter" passage. "This is the kind of book that tells you a roll of nickels works as well as a blackjack but is less incriminating."

Bill wrote: "Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I think what makes him a great horror writer, is that he has a great knack for integrating the typical horrifying things (vampires, reanimated corpses, monsters, disease etc.) wit..."

Hi Bill,

Yes, I've read a couple of Peter Straub books 'Ghost Story' and 'Black House', the latter with Stephen King. It has been many years since I have read them - what I do remember of Ghost Story was a good cast of characters, but a rather poor ending. I have recently re-purchased Black House with the intention of rereading, but it has been added to my TBR Pile.

I do have 'Interview With A Vampire' by Anne Rice on my TBR pile - I do remember trying to read it at some point, but I couldn't get into it at the time.

I have a couple of short story collections from Stephen King. I don't normally read short stories, but Different Seasons (which has The Shawshank Redemption in it) wasn't too bad. I have got an old edition of 'Nighshift' sitting on my bookshelf.

I think the best modern Horror writer I have come across is Michelle Paver. She had previously written books for children ( I seem to recall my daughter reading 'Wolf Brother' at some point), but a couple of her standalone books have been especially haunting - I highly recommend 'Dark Matter' - it is truly frightening, not in a jump-out-of-your-seat way, more like a subtle build up of foreboding. 'Thin Air' is of a similar vein.

AB76 wrote: "Brandon Taylor in the LRB writes an interesting article on his reading of all the Rougan-Macquart Zola novels in the space of 2 years. Its a brave act, i have never and would never read two novels ..."

I haven't read The Sin of Abbe Mouret either, though I do have it. I have never heard a single positive opinion of that one. TooManyWilsons, and one or two others, said it was Zola's one failure in the cycle

@Bill, depending on how might classify horror, The Thomas Harris books featuring Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lector might not be ones to read whilst eating ones dinner!

I have now reached the age where doing very ordinary, mundane things can result in injury. Even worse is, I'm not entirely sure I remembered what it was I did.

Case in point. About 6 is months ago, I got a pain in my upper left arm/shoulder which got worse after I had my Covid/flu jab (the jabber jabbed me too high in the arm - at the time he remarked 'Do I go to the gym/work out, there is a lot of muscle there'. I do not have a lot of muscle in my upper arm at all, nor go to the gym. I suspect he might have jabbed me in the tendon instead, which exacerbated the existing pain.

Anyhow, it seemed to settle after a month or so, then I pinged it again whilst getting changed out of clothes. Now doing very normal things, has become, well, a pain in the arm. I've arranged for a phone appointment with my GP (no face to face appointments, it seems) tomorrow.

The receptionist that I spoke to to arrange the appointment asked how I did it - I replied that I suspect I overstretched my arm trying to turn off my bedside lamp!

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "@Bill, depending on how might classify horror, The Thomas Harris books featuring Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lector might not be ones to read whilst eating ones dinner!"

I remember watching Manhunter which was more frightening than The Silence of the Lambs. I don't read horror stories. The bone Collector was bad enough.

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "@Bill, depending on how might classify horror, The Thomas Harris books featuring Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lector might not be ones to read whilst eating ones dinner!"

I've picked up the first three books at used book sales over the years. Some time ago I picked up Red Dragon, but like you with Interview, I couldn't get into it at the time (after only a few pages).

AB76 wrote: "Brandon Taylor in the LRB writes an interesting article on his reading of all the Rougan-Macquart Zola novels in the space of 2 years. Its a brave act, i have never and would never read two novels in a row by the same author, let alone a whole series"

If I thought it would be worthwhile, I might try to undertake such a series in its entirety over a relatively brief period, but it wouldn't be Zola. I was quite disappointed in Nana. I do have The Masterpiece, which I bought before starting Nana and may read it some time; I'm trusting in the subject rather than the writer to inspire me to pick it up.

Has anybody else read Taylor's debut Real Life? It was well received (it was on the Booker longlist, but I don't remember if it made the shortlist). I was disappointed with it on the whole, as is true in general of works of fiction set in academia that aren't comic novels.

Paul wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Brandon Taylor in the LRB writes an interesting article on his reading of all the Rougan-Macquart Zola novels in the space of 2 years. Its a brave act, i have never and would never rea..."

every Zola i have read, i loved, not many more to read apart from the obscure ones, Dr Pascal might be next on my list.

AB76 wrote: "every Zola i have read, i loved, not many more to read apart from the obscure ones, Dr Pascal might be next on my list.

I may have been misled in my expectations before reading Zola. I'd always read of him being the great representative of "naturalism" which I anticipated would mean a starkly realistic presentation of his subject matter. But I found Nana to be more of a symbol of Second Empire decadence and corruption than an actual flesh-and-blood prostitute.

Fuzzywuzz wrote: "I have now reached the age where doing very ordinary, mundane things can result in injury. Even worse is, I'm not entirely sure I remembered what it was I did.

Case in point. About 6 is months ago..."

Sounds rather like a frozen shoulder which can take a couple of years to ease. Hope not.

We'll be off to France for a month tomorrow, which means saying goodbye to more than three months of endless problems with 'things' - they have been proving exceptionally intransigent of late - and their (male) 'handmaidens'... the plumber (a frequent visitor to Mam's house and ours of late) - last visit yesterday to replace two diverter valves which ensure that hot water goes where it is supposed to go - electricians - who worked on switches, thermostats etc - and as a bonus, the stairlift guy, also yesterday, to Mam's for an emergency repair. We are still waiting for the odd-job guy to re-lay the vinyl floor over the concrete, dug up by the plumber while looking for a gas leak.

So, to France - where on Monday the plumbers arrive to replace the old oil boiler with new heat pumps! No heating or hot water for a week. How I am looking forward to it... not. After we recover, it'll be time to contact the cesspit guy to come and bring ours up to 'les normes'... if not, we face a hefty fine or jail time! What fun.

Bill wrote: "If I thought it would be worthwhile, I might try to undertake such a series in its entirety over a relatively brief period, but it wouldn't be Zola. I was quite disappointed in Nana. I do have The Masterpiece, which I bought before starting Nana and may read it some time; I'm trusting in the subject rather than the writer to inspire me to pick it up.."

I don't think it's necessary to read them all at once or even to read the compete series at all, necessarily: to me, even though they're all set in the same fictional world and many characters reappear or at least are made mention of throughout, the various books are mostly connected in this relatively loose manner.

There are a few exceptions: for example, it would be a good idea to read La Terre before La Débâcle, as they feature the same protagonist and it lends more depth to the later novel if you already know him from the earlier one. There are a few other examples too, some less obvious, but for the most part, I think it's OK to pick and choose them on the basis of how interesting they sound in terms of setting, theme, etc.

I haven't read them all myself: I started out with the intentions of trying one or two out of a more or less casual curiosity but soon found myself draw in, and ended up reading around half of the series (10 or 11 out of 20 novels?). I'll certainly go back to read more, but even now don't feel any compulsion to read all of them just for the sake of completing the series - actually, I think series is the wrong word, since it's more like a set of interconnected stories rather than an over-arching linear narrative.

If you already have The Masterpiece, I think that's not a bad choice to try next. But then I liked Nana more than you did, even while sharing some of your reservations, so our tastes may not coincide here completely. To me really all the most famous ones - The Masterpiece, Germinal, La Terre, La Débâcle, La Bête Humaine, Money (Argent), L'Assommoir, etc - were great reads, though often quite depressing in terms of what happens to the characters and the general view of human nature, collectively (socially/politically) and individually.

A final comment afore we catch the ferry... 'Private Eye' arrived yesterday, and I'm just reading their Literary Review section... it appears that Amazon is being flooded by books 'written' by AI... including one by 'Shane Macgowan' on 'solving complex problems' in business! As if!

My favourite, though, must be the tome purporting to be a profile of Liz Truss, which apparently begins:

Once upon a time, amongst the hallowed halls of British Politics there emerged a figure whose journey would be etched in the annals of history. !!!

I don't think real authors are at risk of being replaced - not just yet, anyway.

scarletnoir wrote: "We'll be off to France for a month tomorrow, which means saying goodbye to more than three months of endless problems with 'things' - they have been proving exceptionally intransigent of late - and..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvA...

I feel your pain. The leaking hot water cylinder is repaired but my shower is rather iffy and I am not brave enough to trying getting in and out of the bath yet. I'm just hoping it can be repaired without pulling the stud wall out!

Have a safe and as peaceful as possible time in France.

giveusaclue wrote: "Have a safe and as peaceful as possible time in France."

Thanks. We start at around 5.30am for a 250 mile drive - the first half - in time taken - on 'proper roads' (I don't think our transatlantic cousins have any idea what these are like until they experience them!) and the second half on sleep-inducing duals and motorways. It'll take roughly 5h30m driving plus stops. Then a wait for the ferry, being loaded onto it, the crossing - we get to France around 20.00pm local time (19.00 UK) and hope to get to our place by around 22.00h local. After which - sleep for a while, we hope.