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One night in the summer of 2015 I left my telephone in the office and my WiFi wasn’t working at home. I couldn’t get on the internet on desktop or tablets and so I managed 2 chapters of War and Peace.
War and Peace IS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL, very readable indeed, undoubtedly the best novel I ever read, but I had started it in February to get ready for visiting Russia in May and didn't finish it for almost two years.
The only other book I read in 2015 was a 150 page book with big type by Lucian Boia, "Cum s-a romanizat Romania", which I picked up in a tent selling books while hanging around Vama Veche. I read it while waiting for a friend who was two or three hours late because my telephone was almost out of battery.
Of making many books there is no end and much study wearies the body (Ecclesiastes 12.12), but at least when you read a book you do come to an end. The problem with the internet is that you never reach an end to it. There’s always something else to click on.
Does anyone have any tips as to how to read these days?
I have one. I have given up social media and reading the news and anything political for Lent.
The Spoilt City by Olivia Manning
The novels I recommend, apart from Decline and Fall, Scoop and the other early Waughs, are War and Peace, the best book I ever read, the Charterhouse of Parma and the Red and the Black, second and third best in that order (but I read them at 26) everything by Miss Austen except Mansfield Park, Typhoon, The Nigger of the Narcissus (will this get my blog black (sic) listed?), Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter and The Negro of Peter the Great, Humphrey Clinker, The Old Boys - I cannot recommend this highly enough - and The Rector's Daughter.
The moderns (meaning younger than Martin Amis)? The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, but not The Goldfinch. Er, that's it.
Raymond Chandler never lets you down.
Hawthorne said it was impossible to write a good novel in America because America has no shadows, but Chandler found shadows or invented them and wrote amazingly.
It sort of works but do I have the willpower to continue it after Lent?
Holidays help. I picked up, packed and read The End of the Affair by Graham Greene for the third time when I went away last summer.
I was in tears as always, though I almost never cry.
This reminds me of a Romanian femme fatale, who once asked me if Englishmen ever felt emotion.
Catholic Englishmen also weep at The End of the Affair, or at least one does.
I have made this list of the books I have read three times or more, for my own amusement but your comments are welcome.
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana is the only book I've read four times, thanks to two visits to Havana. As I said, holidays help.
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana is the only book I've read four times, thanks to two visits to Havana. As I said, holidays help.
These are the novels I read three times. They are not in the least highbrow. The oldest came out in 1889 and that's Three Men in a Boat.
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
The Old Boys by William Trevor
The Great Fortune by Olivia ManningThe Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
The Old Boys by William Trevor
The Spoilt City by Olivia Manning
The Silence of Colonel Bramble by André Maurois
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad - I still don't much like it.
Money by Martin Amis
Dead Babies by Martin Amis
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
Success by Martin Amis
Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Greenmantle by John Buchan
Three Men in a Boat, of course
Decline and Fall and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh? I can't remember.
Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins. Oh dear.
I don't count books I read for exams like The Mayor of Casterbridge or rubbish by William Golding. I still feel the annoyance I felt when I sat A Level English and saw that I could have studied Decline and Fall rather than the pointless twaddle The Spire.
What other books? Somebody said you could divide people into two groups: those that love Freud and Hamlet and those who love Jung and King Lear. I like Jung but the only Shakespeare play I reread a lot is A Midsummer Night's Dream, which argues that I am profoundly superficial.
Money by Martin Amis
Dead Babies by Martin Amis
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
Success by Martin Amis
Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Greenmantle by John Buchan
Three Men in a Boat, of course
Decline and Fall and Scoop by Evelyn Waugh? I can't remember.
Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins. Oh dear.
I don't count books I read for exams like The Mayor of Casterbridge or rubbish by William Golding. I still feel the annoyance I felt when I sat A Level English and saw that I could have studied Decline and Fall rather than the pointless twaddle The Spire.
What other books? Somebody said you could divide people into two groups: those that love Freud and Hamlet and those who love Jung and King Lear. I like Jung but the only Shakespeare play I reread a lot is A Midsummer Night's Dream, which argues that I am profoundly superficial.
The Satyricon, which I read thrice, is more or less a novel. I read Belloc's verse over and over and over. I only read the Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses) of Apuleius twice but sing its praises. A sexy, very readable novel written in the 2nd century A.D.
You never read the same book twice, even though you reread it. You are a different person. It has become a different book. I didn't love The End of the Affair or Gormenghast quite as much as years ago.
The novels I recommend, apart from Decline and Fall, Scoop and the other early Waughs, are War and Peace, the best book I ever read, the Charterhouse of Parma and the Red and the Black, second and third best in that order (but I read them at 26) everything by Miss Austen except Mansfield Park, Typhoon, The Nigger of the Narcissus (will this get my blog black (sic) listed?), Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter and The Negro of Peter the Great, Humphrey Clinker, The Old Boys - I cannot recommend this highly enough - and The Rector's Daughter.
But then I read and in most cases reread them a long time ago and I have changed. Taras Bulba seemed the best book that could ever be written when I was 12, replacing Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter. I should reread both.
The moderns (meaning younger than Martin Amis)? The Little Friend by Donna Tartt, but not The Goldfinch. Er, that's it.
Raymond Chandler never lets you down.
Hawthorne said it was impossible to write a good novel in America because America has no shadows, but Chandler found shadows or invented them and wrote amazingly.
He learnt it all from Hemingway, but he is better than Hemingway. Better, at least, than To Have and To Hold, the only Hemingway I have yet read. I only read that because I wanted something to read in Cuba, as well as Our Man in Havana and a book with the wonderfully ambiguous title Enduring Cuba.
If you haven't read Graham Greene, gentle reader, you can repair the omission in five minutes by reading this story, which I have read dozens of times. It is worth it. (It used to be available on the net in just one place, but now it is in lots of places annotated for school pupils. How awful.)
It is not the best short story I read. The best are The Silver Mask by Hugh Walpole, a story which still absolutely horrifies me so much that I could never reread it, Markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson, of course, and the deliciously black Sredni Vashtar by Saki. I read Sredni Vashtar many times, chanting aloud with Conradin that very disturbing hymn
Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.
Saki, who had a horrible childhood terrorised by a sadistic aunt, wrote that with his heart's blood. In the story....but I mustn't spoil it for you.
The Blue Room by Prosper Mérimée, which I read in childhood, and Death In Venice by Thomas Mann, which I read last summer in a Venice deserted because of plague, deserve to be mentioned too.
Then there is a wonderful sad short story by William Trevor about a girl at a comprehensive school whose name I forget. The short story I thought the best at 18 is The Enigma by John Fowles, which gave me (a suitably adolescent) philosophy of life.
None of the stories is in the least wholesome, I am afraid. All are very morbid.
If you want wholesome read Miss Austen.
It has been a while since I read Chandler, but my impression is that Ross Macdonald surpasses him in Los Angeles detective fiction. As for Hemingway, I think that earlier is generally better, before the mannerisms hardened.
ReplyDeleteI read two books a month by setting aside time at night in bed. No internet and it relaxes you for sleep, or interests you enough to keep reading for many hours.
ReplyDeleteIs it wrong to love the Internet? I'm not sure. But I'm certainly finding the same thing - I hardly read except online now.
ReplyDeleteVery good. I too have drifted away from fiction in the last few years, even though I used to be a great reader. I can honestly say I've had as much pleasure from 'When Eight Bells Toll' by Alastair McClean as 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot. A good book can't be bettered.
ReplyDeleteI can honestly say I've had as much pleasure from 'When Eight Bells Toll' by Alastair McClean as 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot.
DeleteAlistair MacLean did what he did very very well indeed. I think Night Without End is his best book. He loved slightly unreliable narrators, something you don't necessarily expect in a very commercial thriller writer.
I found Middlemarch to be slow torture.
I liked Middlemarch but I am ashamed that I have not tread more than three of her novels. It took me 35 years to get round to Scenes From Clerical Life, which of course I loved.
DeleteIf I am honest I got as much pleasure from the first 50 pages of Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon, a murder story about a bunch of strangers cut off in a deserted house in a countryside rendered impassible by several feet of snow, as I did from the first 50 pages of The End of the Affair. I had never heard of Farjeon (unlike his sister, Eleanor) and was given it as a Christmas present. I also loved rereading Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin. I do not usually think detective stories worth reading, but Edmund Crispin and Raymond Chandler are in a class of their own except for the Red House Mystery, a "locked room" story by A. A. Milne, which was Milne's only mystery novel.
DeleteI find Henry James slow torture and Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier.
DeleteI read everything D H Lawrence wrote in quick succession... and Dorothy L Sayers is a good read.. not many authors are so compelling you want to read everything they wrote... Gurdjeieff is a good read also relaxing
ReplyDeleteI never watch TV but I did watch the Ian Carmichael versions of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (the unpleasantness is a murder, of course) and Clouds of Witness on YouTube. Both were good, though the last two episodes of the latter were tosh.
DeleteI never watch TV but I did watch the Ian Carmichael versions of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (the unpleasantness is a murder, of course) and Clouds of Witness
DeleteI thought Ian Carmichael was remarkably good as Lord Peter. I've watched all of them. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club was I thought particularly good.
Ian Carmichael is awfully good, isn't he? Too old of course at 52 but wonderful. I liked The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club as a book and on TV.
DeleteYou should try The Brothers Karamazov, I believe you will find your reflection in more than one character. It is said to be Putin's favorite novel, Freud's also, were you requiring motivation.
ReplyDeleteReading I think is such an awful luxury...
Does anyone have any tips as to how to read these days?
ReplyDeleteStep 1 - delete your facebook account.
Step 2 - delete your Twitter account.
Step 3 - only read books you actually want to read.
I wasted so much of my youth reading the books that I thought I should read. I suppose it was worthwhile at the time - I did get some exposure to the "important" writers so if someone mentions Virginia Woolf or Steinbeck I at least have some idea what those writers were on about. Even if I wouldn't read those writers today if you held a gun to my head. By the time I reached my middle thirties I'd given up reading books in order to impress people.
I read 68 books last year, but mostly I read vintage crime, vintage science fiction and vintage thrillers so they were mostly fairly short books.
The first time I read Waugh's Vile Bodies I thought it was the funniest book I'd ever read. When I reread it years later I thought it was the funniest book I'd ever read. Except perhaps for Wodehouse.
Was Graham Greene the greatest writer of the 20th century? I'm inclined to think so.
Chandler and Buchan are superb. People focus on Buchan's thrillers but he wrote some fine short stories in other genres, including both gothic horror and even science fiction. And Stevenson is so criminally underrated.
It is quite interesting how the "national" education we got in our childhood and teens place us in cultural bubbles for the rest of our lives. I know very little of the authors and books you've listed. I think I've read only Amis, Chandler and Dostoievsky from your list. Very few are German, French, Russian, Italian or Japanese for example.
ReplyDeleteHere are some of my preferates:
"The Magic Mountain", Thomas Mann. In my opinion the greatest and profoundest book ever written.
"Crime and punishment", Dostoievsky. Absolutely fantastic. Forget about "Brothers Karamazov", too incomprehensibly Russian for me with childlike innocent saints and debauched drunkards, or simply jump to the "Great Inquisitor" scene and read it as a self-contained parable.
Many books by Hermann Hesse, though don't overconsume because you may grow tired of the same theme. I would strongly recommend Steppenwolf, I found his magnum opus "The Glass Bead Game" slightly boring, maybe I was too young, but I enormously enjoyed a collection of postume essays called "Die Kunst des Müßiggangs", I don't know if it was translated into English, the title means "The Art of Idleness".
"The Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann is also a beautiful study in the rise and decline of families or culture, how money, capitalism and entrepreneurship refine first to respectability, status, political representation, next to artistic refinement, it being the antechamber of decline, putrefaction, extinction. Somehow the same themes of sickness-artistry (Magic Mountain) or overexcitation-death (Death in Venice).
"The Counterfeiters" of André Gide, my shot at French literature.
If you mentioned "War and Peace" (which is on my to-read list) then I throw back "Anna Karenina" at you. I was less enthralled by the Karenina-Vronsky plot, but I was fascinated by the Levin-Kitty mirror-image, where Levin is an alter-ego of Tolstoy himself and I would argue that the novel is actually about him.
Someone said that the three great novels of the 19th century about women and their social status and constraints are "Anna Karenina", "Madame Bovary", and "Effi Briest". I don't think much of "Madame Bovary" (sorry), but I recommend "Effi Briest" by Theodor Fontane. A Prussian husband accidentally learns of his wife's infidelity that happened 7 years before. He does not want to, but feels compelled by social convention to challenge her lover to a duel.
I also enjoy Umberto Eco's novels, my shot at Italian literature: "Foucault's Pendulum", "Baudolino". Speaking of Italians, I've enjoyed a collection of essays, first published in the "La Repubblica" newpapaer, then collected in a volume, by Alessandro Baricco. It was translated as "Barbarii" in Romanian. Baricco is a music critic and writer. He argues in the essays that the destruction of European hegemony that occurred in 1914-1918 was the result of Romanticism, of the cult and mysticism of the individual genius, extrapolated to the cult of the national genius. He argues that modernism, abstract art, cubism, dodecaphonic music, Alban Berg, Schönberg, Dadaism, everything twenties, was a conscious artistic decision, to explode the "old", classical canon of art, such that the feelings that the old art created and lead to war, could not be possible. I think there's a correlation, but I don't know which is the cause and which the effect, if art determines the Zeitgeist or the Zeitgeist if the spiritual parent of art.
I don't think William Golding is rubbish, or at least his "Lord of the Flies". Its possible interpretations are quite interesting, I'm thinking of Beelzebub and Christ figures, of the latter's second coming. I remember that when the first adult sets foot of the island and discovers the state of the children, he says something like "and you call youselves British citizen? I am quite disappointed of you", and one cannot help thinking of the second coming and we being children of God.
ReplyDeleteComing back to Germans: I would highly recommend two novels by Thomas' brother, Heinrich Mann: "Professor Unrat", first translated as "Small Town Tyrant", and "Der Untertan", litterally "The Subject", translated as "Man of Straw" or "The Patrioteer", or "The Loyal Subject". "The Blue Angel", the film with Marlene Dietrich, is based on the first. The second is a sarcastic view on Willhelminian Germany of the 1910s.
For enjoyable, extremely entertaining reading, I would recommend "Portnoy's Complaint" by Philip Roth.
My last discovery is J. M. Machado de Assis, a Brazilian writer who stopped early his formal education, but taught himself Greek and Latin. I'm currenly reading his "Counselor Ayres' Memorial" and intend to continue with "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas" a.k.a. "Epitaph of a Small Winner".
Speaking of South Americans. I thoroughly enjoyed "Hundred Years of Solitude" by G. G. Marquez in my youth and his "Love in the Times of Cholera".
I enormously enjoyed J. M. Coetzee's more autobiographical novels, "Youth" and "Summertime", which I strongly recommend. I've changed my mind about "Disgrace". I loathed it when I first read it in my late 20s, but then I saw the film some 20 years later, and saw it with another mind. "Youth" is very powerful and bleak.
I read one book chapter when I get up and another when I go to bed. The rest of the day I read on the internet!
ReplyDeleteI mean to try that. Thank you!
DeleteI forgot, until I added them now, The Great Fortune and The Spoilt City, the first two volumes of the Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning. They are set in Bucharest in 1939 to 1941. The third volume, set in Athens, I have read twice. It is not as good but the Levant Trilogy is much better. Olivia Manning had read Tolstoy before writing the Levant Trilogy and it shows. She is comparable to Tolstoy in the latter trilogy. She had also read Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy and Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time series.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Langley commented:
ReplyDeleteOK, with you on Martin Amis, the literary Godhead of my generation, especially Money, but the later books, Zone of Interest also stack up well.
Treasure Island is the greatest novel ever written. I know this because my dad, whose life it changed, left me his battered, cloth-bound copy, which I read every year. And it only ever gets better.
Everything by Waugh. Brideshead seems to be out of fashion, although it contains some of the most beautiful prose outside the King James Bible. Fitzgerald, obviously, and I’ve just read, Allan Massie’s A Question of Loyalties, about Vichy France, which may be the be the best thing I’ve somehow missed in the last 30 years.