*Elizabeth Costello* is also really good. US Weekly is better plane reading, though. And *Invitation to a Beheading* is unreadable, or at least the first 60-some-odd pages are.
I wouldn't say he's spirit crushing, but somber. Disgrace is -- or can be seen as -- about a guy who rediscovers his humanity. Albeit there are ugly parts.
Waiting for the barbarians, too, has its decency. Coetzee is all for the spirit. But sees what it is up against.
I'm sure these are all great. I should print this thread for my own use. But -- to push my lovelies -- The Moviegoer is not at all depressing, and takes place in New Orleans, during Mardi Gras.
Or maybe even Cadillac Desert, which you've probably read (you know people say that just to make you feel inadequate, right?), but is surprisingly compelling non-fiction about bringing water to all those desert western cities.
Along the same lines (though I haven't read it, but have been told that it's very good), The Secret Knowledge of Water. The Amazon review even says explicitly that it's better than eb's recommended Desert Solitaire. Ha!
Judging by the excerpt, Secret Knowledge of Water ain't all that. It's been years since I read Solitaire so I'll leave off the comparisons.
But philosophers may not like this:
As for the 'solitary confinement of the mind,' my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for the brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.
The Lovers of Algeria, Anouar Benmalek. It's sad and sometime quite violent but had a very nice love story.
Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer, its about a man trying to write a book about DH Lawrence, and as dry as that could be it is very very entertaining
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. A bit old (1997, I think), so maybe you've read it, but I found his first-person perspective on the 1996 Everest disaster, what went wrong, and the trend of guiding rich inexperienced clients up big mountains very compelling.
I haven't read A Long Way Down yet, but Hornby is generally very enjoyable.
I agree Moviegoer is great, and not depressing except in an Kierkegaardian existential angst kind of way. Which I guess is depressing when you think about it; but it doesn't feel depressing.
On Coetzee, it's like this. I know in my heart that the best have no conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity, I just wouldn't want that reinforced on my way to Sunny California...
Baa: fair enough on Coetzee. He doesn't ruin my mood, but I tend to walk around with a shit-eating grin, and need to take my coffee black to counteract the goofy.
In the Moviegoer, though, the Kierkegaardian angst is overcome, and shown to be a silly sort of game, or anyway, that's how Binx treats it. And there are several lovely secretaries.
I second the Fante recommendation above; read it myself on a plane recently. Ian McEwan's always good, and Saturday is more easy-going than most of his stuff. Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook is very funny and readable.
Short shorties work well on flights, too. Try Steve Almond's My Life in Heavy Metal, Adam Haslett's You Are Not a Stranger Here, or Ryan Harty's Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona.
Re academic novels, I hope FL has read the classics of the genre, like Lucky Jim. Good call on Straight Man above, it's hilarious. I think, though, that FL desires to be the main character in Erik Tarloff's The Man Who Wrote the Book; he just doesn't know it yet.
Just to elaborate briefly on Straight Man, what makes it such a gem, I think, is that it is an academic novel which exhbits some tenderness for its characters, and dose not embrace an entirely nihilistic stance towards the very possiblility of meaningful human action.
This is a rarer feature of academic novels, than you would imagine.
Peter Griffith's An Economist's Tale. I picked it up after seeing the Crooked Timber plug, and it was excellent, if you like reading about narrowly averted famines.
I like David Lodge's academic trilogy--Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work. CP is the weakest--SW literally made me laugh out loud, and NW is just really damn good. And avoids the problems of 47, I think. Though I also thought Straight Man was somewhat nihilistic about the possiblities of meaningful human action, in academic work--I mean, doesn't it seem as though it's taken for granted that nobody is doing anything useful in their work? In fact--spoiler, shift each letter back one in order to decode (e.g. "IBM" becomes "HAL"):
Of course, it may be that I instinctively think of academic research as something that should count as meaningful human action, and baa thinks of it as something that can't possibly.
For airplane reading, I second Carl Hiassen and heartily endorse Christopher Moore, particularly Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Funny, funny, funny. If you're looking for something a little denser, I can't recommend Robertson Davies highly enough, especially the Cornish Trilogy.
I like David Lodge's academic trilogy--Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work. CP is the weakest--SW literally made me laugh out loud, and NW is just really damn good.
And this -- although I would say that 'weakest' doesn't mean that it isn't itself terribly funny. But Small World was so funny it hurt.
Which one is Fifth Business in? That was a rollicking good read--great for airplanes--but I thought it would've been better without the sequels (though they had their moments).
Yes to 57--Changing Places is recommended, anyway. (Actually, you can read Small World first if you like, since you can't really say it spoils the ending of Changing Places. And each book stands alone. When I read Lodge's explanation of the unifying theme of Small World--uif lojhiut pg uif ipmz hsbjm--I felt like a doofus for not picking it up myself.)
The one which hasn't been mentioned yet, whose title I can't place offhand: Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders. I liked WoW a great deal, wasn't entirely crazy about the first two books, particularly not the second.
In WoW, I had a problem with the way that one particular character was set up for humiliation. In general the book was kind of preachy, I thought, but that sort of cruelty to characters often bugs me.
Kingsley Amis was a past master at humiliating characters in that way--often unfairly, I thought--but I loved it in one of his novels (I can't say which, for obvious reasons). Early on this character gets made a complete ass of by two other characters. Garden-variety unfairness. Then Amis introduces God Himself into the story and has Him call the character a moron. That's brilliant.
(I also especially didn't like The Manticore--I suspect it's just not that good.)
I can't remember, actually. I think The Genius? The one who... ah hell, I'd better see if I can find a plot summary online.
[pause]
Well, at least I remembered Magnus's name right. Doesn't Magnus have a beloved old mentor, whose feelings were hurt by someone at the dinner party, and Magnus gets to tell that person off with great relish? That person.
Looking at what I could find of a plot summary, I think I found it a bit too dark and cruel, with the things Magnus has to endure--also, the structure (and this goes double for Manticore) doesn't lend itself to the forward momentum of the plot that I loved in 5th B. Also, I liked the solution of the mystery that was strongly suggested at the end of 5th B., and it annoyed me that the sequels seemed to retract the suggestion. I think all of this shows that I am shallow.
2. I am glad I am not the only one who found Manticore a vast disappointment after Fifth Business. World of Wonders, was, at last to me, a real return to form. Also, LB, I agree that Leaven of Malice (Salterton, no?) would be a great intro to Davies.
3. The character you guys are thinking of in WoW is "the cantab" who as a callow, Huxley-worshipping youth, is a member of the acting troupe of Magnus's idol/double. Later, the cantab assumes more responsibility (as "an artist with a gift for administration," if I recall) and cuts the old man out of a tribute reading for a fellow actor in a particularly humiliating fashion (he arrives at the door, finds his place has been taking by another, and is crushed). Magnus's revenge, such as it is, seemed entirely to me appropriate to the offense. He could have done more, and it would have been OK with me.
4. The darkness of Davies. Yes, some really horrible things happen in that book (WoW), and in 5th Business Davies holds up some equally ghastly aspects of hobo life. Given that I was so hard on Coetzee upthread, why is it that I don't find Davies equally distressing? I suspect it's because where Davies seems to genuinely enjoy life, I find Coetzee radiates an aura of unrelieved dreariness and hopelessness. Anyone with any moral sense whatsoever is invariably ineffectual, and no one seems to ever enjoy a meal, or a walk in the country, or a game of Parchesi. No, it's all "I'm dying of cancer in aprtheid South Africa and my only human contact is with a crazy vagrant." I'm getting depressed now just writing about it.
I can't speak as to the other points, but I differ greatly on Coetzee. In fact, I'd like to know which books you are referring to specifically when you say "anyone with any moral sense is invariably ineffectual." From the works I have read, that statement is simply false. I would replace "ineffectual" with "thoughtful."
And, certainly in "waiting for the barbarians" there is great celebration of simple pleasures -- good food, sex, a mountainous horizon, even "walks in the country." I don't know that we can even debate these books -- I just fundamentally disagree with your above characterizations, and I don't see where you are coming from at all.
I've not read Age of Iron. I've read Elizabeth Costello. I don't see how that work fits in with your above statements at all. It's a portrait of a complicated woman with strong, well argued opinions, that by no means are taken to be correct. In a lot of ways, it's about writing and characterization itself, and the limits of that process.
There's a long screed against eating meat. It is preachy, but I didn't find it depressing. The most moral character I can think of is EC's sister, who is not at all ineffectual.
Not to turn this into a discussion of elizabeth costello (and recall that I've only read the abbreviated short-story version), I'd say the following. The relationship between costello and her son is depressing, the relationship between costello's son and his wife is depressing. And the subjective description given by Costello of feeling like she's surrounded by a society of well-meaning seemingly decent people that are weridly indifferent to/complicit in ongoing crimes of stupendous magnitude (comparable to the holocaust, in fact), that's, well, depressing is too mild. I don't mean this as a rebuke to Coetzee, or to ascribe Costello's views to him (although it would not surprise me one whit if he did share them). Rather it's that in the two books of Coetzee's I've read (admittedly, not a large sample), I have been struck by the way all action seems to occur against the background of a moral nightmare. At this point, let me offer this as an observation, rather than a criticism. Do you find this in the other Coetzee you have read?
Apostropher:
Have you read any of Davies' shorter works, like his ghost stories or collected magazine journalism? They're awesome.
69.1: I can see that about Changing Places actually (you mean Hilary Broome=Hilary Swallow? not sure about spelling). And Small World does seem to present academia as a crazy contentless runaround, though the very end gives some hope--and anyway it's a farce, the characters are self-absorbed for kind of the same reasons as in Wodehouse. Mostly I was thinking of Nice Work--its picture of academia is the closest to my experience so far. (With a little Miss Pym Disposes thrown in, perhaps.)
Did we mention Pictures of an Institution as a classic academic novel? Not necessarily the least depressing.
69.3: My memories are dim, but wasn't the old man at least partly culpable? Didn't he fail to phone ahead or something? I remember that as being the basis for my annoyance.
70: I didn't want to do rot13 because I figured that you would just be able to read it off the screen, so everything would be spoiled for you. (Actually, for those of us without extensions, rot1 is easier to code and decode. Do a little honest work, young Ben!)
Oh, and 69.3 again: My beef isn't so much that something awful happens to the character in the story--isn't it, it's probably something he'll forget the next day--but in the way that Davies stacks the deck against the character for the reader. That's my general beef with this sort of unfairness to characters. And it's probably a bit of an eccentricity that this bugs me so much.
Matt, you're right that the cantab is meant to be exceptionally unlikable. In that sense, it's a set up. You also recall correctly that the old man behaves twerpily. He's a histrionic actor type, and yes something of a doofus, but he doesn't earn the humilation he gets.
Also, you're right: Swallow. Why did I think Broome? Is that her maiden name?
I remember her maiden name being Broome. And agreed, I don't remember the old man deserving the humiliation that he gets. In fact, that's part of my beef with the author--Davies sets it up so that what might be an innocent mistake (by the old man) leads to disproportionate humiliation--by missed connections and such--and then blames all the humiliation on the Cantab. It's as if Shakespeare were to have used Romeo and Juliet as a screed against fake-death drugs. (Remember that my memories of WoW are so fuzzy that I couldn't think of a single character's name beyond Magnus's--couldn't think of the narrator's--so don't take this so seriously.)
I read that as Magnus, rather than Davies, being undeservedly hard on the Cantab: wasn't the point that the Cantab's treatment of the old man, while it might have been callously thoughtless, wasn't anything particularly unusual, and that the strength of Magnus's reaction tells us something about his status as someone outside social norms. Did you get the impression that we were supposed to endorse Magnus's reactions?
(I should also say that when you initially brought up a "beloved old mentor", I didn't remember the actor, and was sitting here boggling: "You mean the magician who kidnapped him??!?" I was quite horrified.)
I think Coetzee is concerned with moral questions, and a pervasive theme in his works is the struggle a person faces who sees a vast immorality, or injustice, where others see nothing. Another theme would be the awakening of moral consciousness in a pleasant, but otherwise amoral character. The latter theme is dealt with in Disgrace. Which is my favorite of the Coetzee books I've read.
Where I disagree with you is your reading that the actions of the protagonist are always futile, that nothing can be done. I don't think that's right. The characters are often frustrated, but only because they try to do so much.
Personally, I don't see the moral struggle as being at the forefront of Elizabeth Costello. She gives that one animal rights speech somewhere in the middle -- it does not stand out as a particularly important chapter. But I think the longer version must be quite different from the shorter. The fact that the mother and son weren't close didn't depress me -- neither the son nor mother appeared particularly distressed by the fact.
What I like in Coetzee is that he is concerned with moral questions without being soft-headed about it. His prose is crisp, a little chilly. The language is understated -- he is a master, purely on the basis of his language, my opinion. So many writers can't write about moral issues without becoming melodramatic, can't create believable characters, don't know how to understate. Coetzee stands out from them.
Magnus is a bit of a scary dude, no doubt. He turns his not so beloved mentor into a sideshow attraction, if I recall. I did come away thinking that Davies thinks the cantab got what he deserved, however. So I suppose I read it as Matt did (at least in that sense). And while I am never a fan of the obvious author set up of the hateful character, this one didn't offend me much.
And now that I think of it, the authorial set ups of a horrible character can be really enjoyable. Sack Lodge in "Wedding Crashers" comes to mind as a recent example. I wonder if can think of examples of this from "high literature." (perhaps the argument is: what makes high literature high is that it avoids crowd-pleasing simplifications like the completely hateful character, but that doesn't seem like it can be right...).
John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" is fun.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:17 AM
I like Barthelme's stories for the plane.
Posted by Kriston | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:25 AM
I liked the new John Irving, but I think you have to like John Irving generally to like this particular instance of John Irving.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:32 AM
The Third Policeman
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:32 AM
Fiction:
Straight Man -- Richard Russo.
Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream -- John Derbyshire (really!)
Non-fiction:
A History of War John Keegan
Within the Context of No Context -- George Trow
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:38 AM
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy. Or Disgrace, JM Coetzee.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:41 AM
I think you'd like Coetzee -- probably you have already read most of his stuff.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:43 AM
The Marrano of Reason - Yirmiyahu Yovel
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:46 AM
The Simple Art of Murder - Raymond Chandler
Invitation to a Beheading - Nabokov
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:49 AM
>The Moviegoer, Walker Percy. Or Disgrace, JM Coetzee.
Those are not two books you see put together every day!
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 9:58 AM
No, but there is something binx bollings-ish about the gayatollah. And Disgrace is good stuff.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:07 AM
*Elizabeth Costello* is also really good. US Weekly is better plane reading, though. And *Invitation to a Beheading* is unreadable, or at least the first 60-some-odd pages are.
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:13 AM
elizabeth costello is quite good, yes. So is waiting for the barbarians, and probably everything else Coetzee has ever written, or doodled.
teh bastard.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:24 AM
Is this Coetzee theme an attempt to fashion the ideal spirit-crushing vacation reading list?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:28 AM
I wouldn't say he's spirit crushing, but somber. Disgrace is -- or can be seen as -- about a guy who rediscovers his humanity. Albeit there are ugly parts.
Waiting for the barbarians, too, has its decency. Coetzee is all for the spirit. But sees what it is up against.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:35 AM
This does not sound like vacation reading.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families
Great book! Don't take it with you!
Liar's Club, on the other hand (if you haven't already read it), you will love.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:39 AM
or maybe, yes, baa has discovered my secret plot. I shall scatter depressing books to the multitudes. Then nobody will have taste for pie, but me.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:41 AM
I'm sure these are all great. I should print this thread for my own use. But -- to push my lovelies -- The Moviegoer is not at all depressing, and takes place in New Orleans, during Mardi Gras.
But you may have read it.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:44 AM
You say you're going west?
Fiction:
Something by Cormac McCarthy. (I can't vouch for the third of the border trilogy, but the first two are quite good. Opinions vary, though.)
John Fante, Ask the Dust
Nonfiction:
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:46 AM
Or maybe even Cadillac Desert, which you've probably read (you know people say that just to make you feel inadequate, right?), but is surprisingly compelling non-fiction about bringing water to all those desert western cities.
And some kind of biscuit.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:50 AM
Along the same lines (though I haven't read it, but have been told that it's very good), The Secret Knowledge of Water. The Amazon review even says explicitly that it's better than eb's recommended Desert Solitaire. Ha!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:53 AM
The new Nick Hornby novel, A Long Way Down.
It's written in small chunks (changes perspective) which makes it good/easy for reading in a setting with disruptions.
Posted by profgrrrrl | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:57 AM
I say "but you've probably read" because I feel inadequate -- that I've no new suggestions to make.
Also I'd like to make ogged feel inadequate, to the extent that he hasn't read anything that I suggest.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 10:58 AM
he hasn't read anything that I suggest
'Tis true, but I've basically given up on books, and no longer feel the rush of shame when I haven't read something.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:00 AM
Judging by the excerpt, Secret Knowledge of Water ain't all that. It's been years since I read Solitaire so I'll leave off the comparisons.
But philosophers may not like this:
Also in nonfiction:
William de Buys, Salt Dreams
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:03 AM
Shit, he says that? That's stupid.
Ok, eb's recommendation is better.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:05 AM
The quotation is from Desert Solitaire, so you probably want to reverse 26.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:08 AM
Oy.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:09 AM
The Lovers of Algeria, Anouar Benmalek. It's sad and sometime quite violent but had a very nice love story.
Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer, its about a man trying to write a book about DH Lawrence, and as dry as that could be it is very very entertaining
Posted by Claudia | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:10 AM
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. A bit old (1997, I think), so maybe you've read it, but I found his first-person perspective on the 1996 Everest disaster, what went wrong, and the trend of guiding rich inexperienced clients up big mountains very compelling.
I haven't read A Long Way Down yet, but Hornby is generally very enjoyable.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:23 AM
text:
Nice try, pie-hoarder!
I agree Moviegoer is great, and not depressing except in an Kierkegaardian existential angst kind of way. Which I guess is depressing when you think about it; but it doesn't feel depressing.
On Coetzee, it's like this. I know in my heart that the best have no conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity, I just wouldn't want that reinforced on my way to Sunny California...
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:28 AM
Why Airplanes Crash
That should unsettle the other passengers. It hasn't been a good month for flying.
I like re-reading favorites on flights 'cause the drone cuts my attention-span to 10-15 minutes. Hmm, Catch 22 or Richard Powers' Prisoner's Dilemma.
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:29 AM
Earplugs!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:30 AM
I just read "the double helix". It would make a good airplane book.
Posted by joe o | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:34 AM
Beheading is brilliantly absurd, which might be mistaken for unreadable.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:35 AM
It's a staff pick in every Barnes & Noble in the country, but Kite Runner really is a compelling read.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, not so sci fi'ish and a fun yarn.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:41 AM
I'm telling you, The Third Policeman.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:50 AM
Baa: fair enough on Coetzee. He doesn't ruin my mood, but I tend to walk around with a shit-eating grin, and need to take my coffee black to counteract the goofy.
In the Moviegoer, though, the Kierkegaardian angst is overcome, and shown to be a silly sort of game, or anyway, that's how Binx treats it. And there are several lovely secretaries.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:55 AM
How does The Moviegoer compare to The Last Gentleman?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:57 AM
I second the Fante recommendation above; read it myself on a plane recently. Ian McEwan's always good, and Saturday is more easy-going than most of his stuff. Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook is very funny and readable.
Short shorties work well on flights, too. Try Steve Almond's My Life in Heavy Metal, Adam Haslett's You Are Not a Stranger Here, or Ryan Harty's Bring Me Your Saddest Arizona.
Re academic novels, I hope FL has read the classics of the genre, like Lucky Jim. Good call on Straight Man above, it's hilarious. I think, though, that FL desires to be the main character in Erik Tarloff's The Man Who Wrote the Book; he just doesn't know it yet.
Posted by pekka | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 11:58 AM
Is Double Helix the one where the deathrow inmate is infused with Jesus' DNA and turns out to be a pretty good guy until you know..?
Posted by Sam K | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 12:03 PM
Haven't read The Last Gentleman. The review I just read makes it seem somewhat less silly. Which could cut either way. Do you recommend it?
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 12:08 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 12:11 PM
The Ratzinger Report by (now) Pope Benedict XVI. An oldy but goody on ecclesiology, eschatology, mariology, demonology. Lite on moral theology though.
Posted by bill | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 1:04 PM
For academic novels, I really enjoyed *Coming from Behind* by Howard Jacobson.
It includes this line, which sums up what it's like to have an academic career with no momentum about as well as it could be summed up:
"Although he couldn't remember why he had once liked his own subject he hadn't in the least forgotten what he hated about other peoples'."
Posted by pjs | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 1:10 PM
anything by Carl Hiaasen.
Great for trips.
Posted by fasteddie | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 1:21 PM
Just to elaborate briefly on Straight Man, what makes it such a gem, I think, is that it is an academic novel which exhbits some tenderness for its characters, and dose not embrace an entirely nihilistic stance towards the very possiblility of meaningful human action.
This is a rarer feature of academic novels, than you would imagine.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 1:41 PM
Cold Comfort Farm, particularly if you've efer read any D.H. Lawrence or Hardy.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 1:47 PM
Last time I was on a transatlantic flight, I had a copy of Motley's Crüe's autobiography The Dirt, and I couldn't put it down- a fascinating read.
Posted by mike d | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 2:08 PM
Peter Griffith's An Economist's Tale. I picked it up after seeing the Crooked Timber plug, and it was excellent, if you like reading about narrowly averted famines.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 3:08 PM
I (almost literally) just picked up Risks and Wrongs by Jules Coleman from the library. The preface is good. I therefore recommend it.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 3:28 PM
I second the Cold Comfort Farm.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 3:47 PM
Yeah, Cold Comfort Farm is fantastic.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:17 PM
I like David Lodge's academic trilogy--Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work. CP is the weakest--SW literally made me laugh out loud, and NW is just really damn good. And avoids the problems of 47, I think. Though I also thought Straight Man was somewhat nihilistic about the possiblities of meaningful human action, in academic work--I mean, doesn't it seem as though it's taken for granted that nobody is doing anything useful in their work? In fact--spoiler, shift each letter back one in order to decode (e.g. "IBM" becomes "HAL"):
epfto'u uif pomz qspevdujwf nfncfs pg uif efqbsunfou hfu gjsfe? boe epo'u hjwf nf uivu C.T. bcpvu "if'mm hfu bopuirs kpc." Jm uijt nbslfu?
Of course, it may be that I instinctively think of academic research as something that should count as meaningful human action, and baa thinks of it as something that can't possibly.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:39 PM
For airplane reading, I second Carl Hiassen and heartily endorse Christopher Moore, particularly Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Funny, funny, funny. If you're looking for something a little denser, I can't recommend Robertson Davies highly enough, especially the Cornish Trilogy.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:40 PM
Ooo, yes, although for lighter Davies, I might read the Salterton Trilogy first.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:44 PM
I like David Lodge's academic trilogy--Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work. CP is the weakest--SW literally made me laugh out loud, and NW is just really damn good.
And this -- although I would say that 'weakest' doesn't mean that it isn't itself terribly funny. But Small World was so funny it hurt.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:47 PM
Which one is Fifth Business in? That was a rollicking good read--great for airplanes--but I thought it would've been better without the sequels (though they had their moments).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:48 PM
Well, Matt, that character may be qspevdujwf but he's not rxlozsgdshb.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:51 PM
Yes to 57--Changing Places is recommended, anyway. (Actually, you can read Small World first if you like, since you can't really say it spoils the ending of Changing Places. And each book stands alone. When I read Lodge's explanation of the unifying theme of Small World--uif lojhiut pg uif ipmz hsbjm--I felt like a doofus for not picking it up myself.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:51 PM
The one which hasn't been mentioned yet, whose title I can't place offhand: Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders. I liked WoW a great deal, wasn't entirely crazy about the first two books, particularly not the second.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:52 PM
Fifth Business is in the Deptford Trilogy.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:52 PM
uif lojhiut pg uif ipmz hsbjm
But once you get it, the recursiveness of the whole thing (e.g., Angelica's paper at the conference) just gets funnier and funnier.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:54 PM
In WoW, I had a problem with the way that one particular character was set up for humiliation. In general the book was kind of preachy, I thought, but that sort of cruelty to characters often bugs me.
Kingsley Amis was a past master at humiliating characters in that way--often unfairly, I thought--but I loved it in one of his novels (I can't say which, for obvious reasons). Early on this character gets made a complete ass of by two other characters. Garden-variety unfairness. Then Amis introduces God Himself into the story and has Him call the character a moron. That's brilliant.
(I also especially didn't like The Manticore--I suspect it's just not that good.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 4:59 PM
That's funny, it's not entirely obvious to me who you mean. The Genius (that was the epithet, right? The pretentious young playwright)?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 5:08 PM
I have Winne Ille Pu!
Probably not best for planes, though, unless your Latin is a hell of a lot better than mine.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 5:12 PM
I can't remember, actually. I think The Genius? The one who... ah hell, I'd better see if I can find a plot summary online.
[pause]
Well, at least I remembered Magnus's name right. Doesn't Magnus have a beloved old mentor, whose feelings were hurt by someone at the dinner party, and Magnus gets to tell that person off with great relish? That person.
Looking at what I could find of a plot summary, I think I found it a bit too dark and cruel, with the things Magnus has to endure--also, the structure (and this goes double for Manticore) doesn't lend itself to the forward momentum of the plot that I loved in 5th B. Also, I liked the solution of the mystery that was strongly suggested at the end of 5th B., and it annoyed me that the sequels seemed to retract the suggestion. I think all of this shows that I am shallow.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 5:15 PM
beloved old mentor
The actor whose double Magnus is. And I think the Genius was the one who slighted him, although the details of the incident escape me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-16-05 5:17 PM
It is just so interesting to me how differently we all seem to have responded to these books!
A couple of thoughts:
1. Believe it or not, Matt, I *was* thinking of Changing Places as a nihilistic view of the humanities, and life in general. Broom's marriage: ye gods! As for Small World, it seemed to me to be a book which speaks, as he man says, not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope. But hey, that's just me!
2. I am glad I am not the only one who found Manticore a vast disappointment after Fifth Business. World of Wonders, was, at last to me, a real return to form. Also, LB, I agree that Leaven of Malice (Salterton, no?) would be a great intro to Davies.
3. The character you guys are thinking of in WoW is "the cantab" who as a callow, Huxley-worshipping youth, is a member of the acting troupe of Magnus's idol/double. Later, the cantab assumes more responsibility (as "an artist with a gift for administration," if I recall) and cuts the old man out of a tribute reading for a fellow actor in a particularly humiliating fashion (he arrives at the door, finds his place has been taking by another, and is crushed). Magnus's revenge, such as it is, seemed entirely to me appropriate to the offense. He could have done more, and it would have been OK with me.
4. The darkness of Davies. Yes, some really horrible things happen in that book (WoW), and in 5th Business Davies holds up some equally ghastly aspects of hobo life. Given that I was so hard on Coetzee upthread, why is it that I don't find Davies equally distressing? I suspect it's because where Davies seems to genuinely enjoy life, I find Coetzee radiates an aura of unrelieved dreariness and hopelessness. Anyone with any moral sense whatsoever is invariably ineffectual, and no one seems to ever enjoy a meal, or a walk in the country, or a game of Parchesi. No, it's all "I'm dying of cancer in aprtheid South Africa and my only human contact is with a crazy vagrant." I'm getting depressed now just writing about it.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:05 AM
You know, Matt, it's customary to use ROT13 instead of your blasted 2001 encoding.
Here I am with a firefox extension offering rot13, base64, uuencode, 1337, morse, and several other codecs, but not yours.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:16 AM
I can't speak as to the other points, but I differ greatly on Coetzee. In fact, I'd like to know which books you are referring to specifically when you say "anyone with any moral sense is invariably ineffectual." From the works I have read, that statement is simply false. I would replace "ineffectual" with "thoughtful."
And, certainly in "waiting for the barbarians" there is great celebration of simple pleasures -- good food, sex, a mountainous horizon, even "walks in the country." I don't know that we can even debate these books -- I just fundamentally disagree with your above characterizations, and I don't see where you are coming from at all.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:22 AM
It could be that we have simply read different Coetzee novels.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:24 AM
I've read Age of Iron and Elizabeth Costello (the short version that was his Tanner lecture. Just thinking about Age of Iron makes me depressed.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:33 AM
I've not read Age of Iron. I've read Elizabeth Costello. I don't see how that work fits in with your above statements at all. It's a portrait of a complicated woman with strong, well argued opinions, that by no means are taken to be correct. In a lot of ways, it's about writing and characterization itself, and the limits of that process.
There's a long screed against eating meat. It is preachy, but I didn't find it depressing. The most moral character I can think of is EC's sister, who is not at all ineffectual.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:39 AM
It makes me ever so happy that Davies apparently enjoys the same esteem in this community that he does in my own head.
So Labs, what did you end up buying?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 10:40 AM
Text:
Not to turn this into a discussion of elizabeth costello (and recall that I've only read the abbreviated short-story version), I'd say the following. The relationship between costello and her son is depressing, the relationship between costello's son and his wife is depressing. And the subjective description given by Costello of feeling like she's surrounded by a society of well-meaning seemingly decent people that are weridly indifferent to/complicit in ongoing crimes of stupendous magnitude (comparable to the holocaust, in fact), that's, well, depressing is too mild. I don't mean this as a rebuke to Coetzee, or to ascribe Costello's views to him (although it would not surprise me one whit if he did share them). Rather it's that in the two books of Coetzee's I've read (admittedly, not a large sample), I have been struck by the way all action seems to occur against the background of a moral nightmare. At this point, let me offer this as an observation, rather than a criticism. Do you find this in the other Coetzee you have read?
Apostropher:
Have you read any of Davies' shorter works, like his ghost stories or collected magazine journalism? They're awesome.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 11:04 AM
High Spirits is, indeed, awesome, but a particular kind of awesome. I especially like "The Ghost who Vanished by Degrees".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 11:07 AM
I haven't, but will make a point of it now. Thanks for the tip.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 11:40 AM
The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks is a nice collection of short essayish pieces -- excellent pick-it-up-and-read-for-ten-minutes stuff.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 11:44 AM
69.1: I can see that about Changing Places actually (you mean Hilary Broome=Hilary Swallow? not sure about spelling). And Small World does seem to present academia as a crazy contentless runaround, though the very end gives some hope--and anyway it's a farce, the characters are self-absorbed for kind of the same reasons as in Wodehouse. Mostly I was thinking of Nice Work--its picture of academia is the closest to my experience so far. (With a little Miss Pym Disposes thrown in, perhaps.)
Did we mention Pictures of an Institution as a classic academic novel? Not necessarily the least depressing.
69.3: My memories are dim, but wasn't the old man at least partly culpable? Didn't he fail to phone ahead or something? I remember that as being the basis for my annoyance.
70: I didn't want to do rot13 because I figured that you would just be able to read it off the screen, so everything would be spoiled for you. (Actually, for those of us without extensions, rot1 is easier to code and decode. Do a little honest work, young Ben!)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 11:52 AM
Oh, and 69.3 again: My beef isn't so much that something awful happens to the character in the story--isn't it, it's probably something he'll forget the next day--but in the way that Davies stacks the deck against the character for the reader. That's my general beef with this sort of unfairness to characters. And it's probably a bit of an eccentricity that this bugs me so much.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 11:54 AM
Matt, you're right that the cantab is meant to be exceptionally unlikable. In that sense, it's a set up. You also recall correctly that the old man behaves twerpily. He's a histrionic actor type, and yes something of a doofus, but he doesn't earn the humilation he gets.
Also, you're right: Swallow. Why did I think Broome? Is that her maiden name?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 12:07 PM
I remember her maiden name being Broome. And agreed, I don't remember the old man deserving the humiliation that he gets. In fact, that's part of my beef with the author--Davies sets it up so that what might be an innocent mistake (by the old man) leads to disproportionate humiliation--by missed connections and such--and then blames all the humiliation on the Cantab. It's as if Shakespeare were to have used Romeo and Juliet as a screed against fake-death drugs. (Remember that my memories of WoW are so fuzzy that I couldn't think of a single character's name beyond Magnus's--couldn't think of the narrator's--so don't take this so seriously.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 12:27 PM
I read that as Magnus, rather than Davies, being undeservedly hard on the Cantab: wasn't the point that the Cantab's treatment of the old man, while it might have been callously thoughtless, wasn't anything particularly unusual, and that the strength of Magnus's reaction tells us something about his status as someone outside social norms. Did you get the impression that we were supposed to endorse Magnus's reactions?
(I should also say that when you initially brought up a "beloved old mentor", I didn't remember the actor, and was sitting here boggling: "You mean the magician who kidnapped him??!?" I was quite horrified.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 12:43 PM
Hiya Baa --
I think Coetzee is concerned with moral questions, and a pervasive theme in his works is the struggle a person faces who sees a vast immorality, or injustice, where others see nothing. Another theme would be the awakening of moral consciousness in a pleasant, but otherwise amoral character. The latter theme is dealt with in Disgrace. Which is my favorite of the Coetzee books I've read.
Where I disagree with you is your reading that the actions of the protagonist are always futile, that nothing can be done. I don't think that's right. The characters are often frustrated, but only because they try to do so much.
Personally, I don't see the moral struggle as being at the forefront of Elizabeth Costello. She gives that one animal rights speech somewhere in the middle -- it does not stand out as a particularly important chapter. But I think the longer version must be quite different from the shorter. The fact that the mother and son weren't close didn't depress me -- neither the son nor mother appeared particularly distressed by the fact.
What I like in Coetzee is that he is concerned with moral questions without being soft-headed about it. His prose is crisp, a little chilly. The language is understated -- he is a master, purely on the basis of his language, my opinion. So many writers can't write about moral issues without becoming melodramatic, can't create believable characters, don't know how to understate. Coetzee stands out from them.
Now I eat pie.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 12:48 PM
Did you get the impression that we were supposed to endorse Magnus's reactions?
Yes. But like I said, I'm shallow.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 12:49 PM
That's what we've all been saying about you behind your back.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 12:56 PM
Magnus is a bit of a scary dude, no doubt. He turns his not so beloved mentor into a sideshow attraction, if I recall. I did come away thinking that Davies thinks the cantab got what he deserved, however. So I suppose I read it as Matt did (at least in that sense). And while I am never a fan of the obvious author set up of the hateful character, this one didn't offend me much.
And now that I think of it, the authorial set ups of a horrible character can be really enjoyable. Sack Lodge in "Wedding Crashers" comes to mind as a recent example. I wonder if can think of examples of this from "high literature." (perhaps the argument is: what makes high literature high is that it avoids crowd-pleasing simplifications like the completely hateful character, but that doesn't seem like it can be right...).
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 1:03 PM
I've started a thread for listing examples.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 08-17-05 1:28 PM