Have just put Burgess: Long Day Wanes on my reading list.
I see you a Slaughterhouse Five and raise you a Tristram Shandy (what Sterne says here about historiographer and history applies to storyteller and story) – sorry if Iʼve sent before:
Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,—straight forward;—for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,—he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey's end;—but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly.
I've just finished rereading 'Time for a Tiger,' the first of the 3 novels in The Long Day Wanes, and I may have to upgrade my goodreads rating from 4 to 5 stars. It has very little by way of plot, and although there is some fine satire in it, there is less than some reviews might lead you to believe. But the characters! Their voices! The descriptions of their worlds and concerns. . . just magnificent. I shall look forward to reading your comments on it whenever you get around to reading it.
Tristram Shandy is the mother lode, the apogee, the wellspring, the exemplar and the deity before which all writers of squirrelly discursive autobiographical meditations must genuflect. I'm going to take your mentioning of it here as an implied comparison of SFIO! to it, which is a supremely high compliment, for which I thank you. And if you did not mean to imply that my writing is Sterne-like, too bad, because that's how I'm going to chose to read your comment. Moreover it's likely to appear in one of my SFIO essays coming up Real Soon Now.
Thanks for posting your comment publicly. I hope it generates some discussion beyond my comment. Whether it does or doesn't, I appreciate it.
One more book to add to the list: Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, by Diderot.
Not anywhere near the same level, but still may be worth a look: Adam Thirlwell: Delighted States, which playfully imitates Sterne, Diderot, and many others.
It really doesn't bother me that Harvey doesn't like the way I write these essays. Chacun à son goût, after all. It certainly didn't bother me that my high school buddy Pat Doyle didn't make it past three sentences.
But I confess that I did find it a bit irksome that Harvey kept re-explaining to me what I was doing wrong, as if I didn't understand what I was doing. I might or mightn't be a good writer, but I've been making my living as a writer 3 out of 4 years since 1980, so I have a pretty good handle, I think, on what I'm doing. If you don't like it, fine. The corollary to the Abraham Lincoln thing is, of course, "People who don't like this kind of thing will find that this is the kind of thing they don't like." But if you assume that I'm too stupid to understand what I'm doing, well, y'know. That's kind of rude, I think.
But Harvey and I have been friends for a long time and I'm sure we'll continue to be friends. This is no big deal.
That's all well and good, Paul, but I'd much rather hear or read your response to the essay into which I put far too much time & effort than I am in your response to techbro proclamations.
It is curious, though, and actually amazing to me, that the same Anthony Burgess who wrote A Clockwork Orange wrote the three novels of The Long Day Wanes. They're as different, one from the other, as cheesecake and the Golden Gate Bridge. It's as if it were to turn out that Groucho Marx was the author of the Voynich Manuscript.
Have just put Burgess: Long Day Wanes on my reading list.
I see you a Slaughterhouse Five and raise you a Tristram Shandy (what Sterne says here about historiographer and history applies to storyteller and story) – sorry if Iʼve sent before:
Could a historiographer drive on his history, as a muleteer drives on his mule,—straight forward;—for instance, from Rome all the way to Loretto, without ever once turning his head aside, either to the right hand or to the left,—he might venture to foretell you to an hour when he should get to his journey's end;—but the thing is, morally speaking, impossible: For, if he is a man of the least spirit, he will have fifty deviations from a straight line to make with this or that party as he goes along, which he can no ways avoid. He will have views and prospects to himself perpetually soliciting his eye, which he can no more help standing still to look at than he can fly.
I've just finished rereading 'Time for a Tiger,' the first of the 3 novels in The Long Day Wanes, and I may have to upgrade my goodreads rating from 4 to 5 stars. It has very little by way of plot, and although there is some fine satire in it, there is less than some reviews might lead you to believe. But the characters! Their voices! The descriptions of their worlds and concerns. . . just magnificent. I shall look forward to reading your comments on it whenever you get around to reading it.
Tristram Shandy is the mother lode, the apogee, the wellspring, the exemplar and the deity before which all writers of squirrelly discursive autobiographical meditations must genuflect. I'm going to take your mentioning of it here as an implied comparison of SFIO! to it, which is a supremely high compliment, for which I thank you. And if you did not mean to imply that my writing is Sterne-like, too bad, because that's how I'm going to chose to read your comment. Moreover it's likely to appear in one of my SFIO essays coming up Real Soon Now.
Thanks for posting your comment publicly. I hope it generates some discussion beyond my comment. Whether it does or doesn't, I appreciate it.
One more book to add to the list: Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, by Diderot.
Not anywhere near the same level, but still may be worth a look: Adam Thirlwell: Delighted States, which playfully imitates Sterne, Diderot, and many others.
Boo, Harvey, you can't recognize originality and style! John is one of a kind.
Podor and its fort are hauntingly beautiful, under the dark blue African sky.
It really doesn't bother me that Harvey doesn't like the way I write these essays. Chacun à son goût, after all. It certainly didn't bother me that my high school buddy Pat Doyle didn't make it past three sentences.
But I confess that I did find it a bit irksome that Harvey kept re-explaining to me what I was doing wrong, as if I didn't understand what I was doing. I might or mightn't be a good writer, but I've been making my living as a writer 3 out of 4 years since 1980, so I have a pretty good handle, I think, on what I'm doing. If you don't like it, fine. The corollary to the Abraham Lincoln thing is, of course, "People who don't like this kind of thing will find that this is the kind of thing they don't like." But if you assume that I'm too stupid to understand what I'm doing, well, y'know. That's kind of rude, I think.
But Harvey and I have been friends for a long time and I'm sure we'll continue to be friends. This is no big deal.
You're much kinder and more generous than he deserves. You're a good man, John, a rare breed.
My default response to techbro proclamations these days: https://youtu.be/xhe9kRCySxM?si=Nkx33pNjCaXwjzgV
That's all well and good, Paul, but I'd much rather hear or read your response to the essay into which I put far too much time & effort than I am in your response to techbro proclamations.
It is curious, though, and actually amazing to me, that the same Anthony Burgess who wrote A Clockwork Orange wrote the three novels of The Long Day Wanes. They're as different, one from the other, as cheesecake and the Golden Gate Bridge. It's as if it were to turn out that Groucho Marx was the author of the Voynich Manuscript.