What are you reading at the moment?

[Tarantella]

Conrad? I'd rather be laying "Lino" (do they have that anymore?)!! I've tried with "Nostromo" and been frustrated and disappointed as I didn't find it engaging. Apologies to those who like this author.

There's something cold about Conrad. Some lines from "Nostromo" to demonstrate the point:

"His alarm increased, and in the pauses he would dart his eyes here and there; then, loth to give up, he would branch off into feeling allusion to the dangers of his journey. The audacious Hernandez, leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the Campo of Sulaco, and was known to be lurking in the ravines of the coast range. Yesteray, when distant only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his servants had seen three men on the road arrested suspiciously, with their horses' heads together.....He rode up at speed, and touching my foot with the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling laugh."

There's an aloof detachment in his writing is all I'm saying, and this is why I disengage.

[Alberich]

Can I suggest you drop Nostomo and read Conrad's , The Secret Agent.
This is one of the most brilliant novels, I can assure you, that you will read. It is the story of a man called Veloc, who with his wife, seems to run what amounts to an Edwardian porn shop [and I do mean porn], but he is also a secret agent, and is given a task to blow up, on behalf of anarchists, the Greenwich Observatory. He does this completely insane thing, but in the process gets his wife's disabled brother killed.
The wife takes her revenge on the husband, kills him and then elopes with another anarchist.
I won't tell you the rest.
There are unforgettable characters in it.
One I've always remembered, is the anarchist professor who walks around with dynamite strapped to himself and threatens to blow up himself and everybody else within a half mile radius.
There is a police chief with the marvellous name, Inspector Heat, and they have an epic encounter.
The book is so prophetic about terrorism that it is positively disturbing. And wrtten a hundred years ago!
Conrad's language does take a little bit of getting used to. Someone once said he would have been better sticking to Polish and then having it translated back into English!
Just a great novel with a lot of overtones of Zola.

[Musaeus]

Originally Posted by Tarantella

Conrad? I'd rather be laying "Lino" (do they have that anymore?)!! I've tried with "Nostromo" and been frustrated and disappointed as I didn't find it engaging. Apologies to those who like this author.

There's something cold about Conrad. Some lines from "Nostromo" to demonstrate the point:

When I read 'Nostromo' (awful long time ago) I was convinced it was a masterpiece. Be interesting to try it again. I agree that Conrad has a certain detachment, and that he has a style that is at times clumsy and at times overdone. But he is one of our most morally intelligent novelists, with a most penetrating vision, has a great gift for conjuring up far-off places; and an even greater gift for creating situations full of ominous tension and foreboding. You can't forget Heart of Darkness for example, once read. Have you tried that?

[Alberich]

Nostromo is just far too rambling - I'm quite a fan of Conrad but I just gave up with it years ago trying to read it. Its like he was trying to make some sort of point about colonialism and corruption but lost the plot.
I agree about Heart Of Darkness - the total opposite, taut, foreboding, gripping and short. With 1984 and Brave New World, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
As Kurz goes further into the dark jungle, its gets hotter and hotter and darker and darker he comes across heads on poles - the horror, the horror! Not fanciful I think to see it as a Christian allegory and the journey of a soul to Hell.

[Herzeleide]

Tony Benn: A Political Life by David Powell -



This is essentially a history of the Labour Party and Benn's involvement therein. Since I had only the sketchiest knowledge of Labour's history, I appreciate the gaps in my knowledge being filled. And it's told, as you might expect, with sympathy for Benn's position, which, now I know it, I'd have been sympathic towards in any case. The biggest surprise was that the seeds of New Labour were sown decades before it actually occurred - for example, Hugh Gaitskell calling into question Clause IV all the way back in the 50s or supporting the need to remove free spectacles and teeth from the NHS to provide funding for the military expansion demanded by the USA. At this point there were prominent left-wingers like Bevan to counteract these right-leaning tendencies that strangely found their way into the Labour Party (perhaps people could take what they had for granted in those days, hence the Tory government throughout the 50s). As for Benn - and this is where he's quite interesting - he starts quite moderate within Labour but over time gets progressively more left-wing. And as we get into the 70s it really becomes apparent that internecine dispute is Labour's great weakness. Harold Wilson is portrayed quite negatively, on many occasions trying to sabotage Benn's attempts to nationalise or make Labour more democratic, while Benn becomes demonised by the right-wing press, who apparently were fed information by the supposedly 'social-democrat' i.e. right-wing faction of his own party! But while Wilson would at least play lip service to Clause IV and throw the lefties the odd bone you realise that it was James Callaghan who first capitulated to monetarism and the IMF's demands for loads of cuts. And that Milton Friedman liked to quote a speech Callaghan made in parliament justifying his decision. Naturally this doesn't sit well with the trade unions (who back then actually had some power) so it's for the Labour Party for ideological inconsistency and up to Thatcher to see through monetarism to its full extent with all the necessary diminution of workers' rights, power and wages and the myriad other cuts. And Labour cannot but capitulate, with Neil Kinnock affirming his left-wing commitments one year then the next praising the market as a force for good. And naturally, Benn is increasingly marginalised and mocked. The final chapter is an interview with Benn, and he is brilliantly mordant about New 'Labour'.

To recap - it's interesting that Benn became more radical the more exposed to power he got, the more he saw what really went on. And while it's not necessary to be involved or actually observe what goes on to realise it as such, it's nonetheless interesting to hear it from the horse's mouth. Here's to Tony Benn - a man of great integrity, genuinely committed to socialism and democracy, unlike so many fakers.

[Green Knight]

Franz Kafka--The Trial

[Green Knight]

David McCullough--The Path Between The Seas: The Creation Of The Panama Canal, 1870-1914

[Balthazar]

Originally Posted by Green Knight

David McCullough--The Path Between The Seas: The Creation Of The Panama Canal, 1870-1914

No bar bet is easier to win than this one.

In which direction are you traveling when you're crossing from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic through the Panama Canal?

[Mambo]

Originally Posted by Balthazar

No bar bet is easier to win than this one.

In which direction are you traveling when you're crossing from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic through the Panama Canal?

North. Have you perchance traveled through the Panama Canal?
It has one of the best palindromes ever connected to it:

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!
I'd like to see a longer sentence that one can read backwards.

[Mambo]

The Picture of Dorian Gray , by Oscar Wilde.
A most intriguing story labelled as philosophic fiction.
Not the hackneyed themes found in many novels.
The 1945 movie was my first intro to it and hope to see it again.

The preface of The Book applies to everything relevant around here.