Richard Brautigan

Yep, Kafka still on for this Sunday.  See ya at 7 PM sharp!

December selection: Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar, two novellas and poetry available in one volume, ISBN 9780395500767.  I've only read In Watermelon Sugar, which I think is an incredible piece of outsider literature with a distinctly bizarre American feel, simultaneously a product of its era and yet disembodied and idiosyncratic--"good for the soul" (sez the shelf talker).  I'm looking forward to discussing everything in this volume, but if you've only got time for one thing, Trout Fishing will probably be more than enough fodder for two hours' discussion.

Trout Fishing in America is by turns a hilarious, playful, and melancholy novel that wanders from San Francisco through America's rural waterways; In Watermelon Sugar expresses the mood of a new generation, revealing death as a place where people travel the length of their dreams, rejecting violence and hate; and The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster is a collection of nearly 100 poems, first published in 1968.
--from http://www.booksinc.net/book/9780395500767

Walser mkii

Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis & Other Stories

What an excellent Queneau discussion!  Thanks for coming.  I heard a couple folks mention they'd like to post their own Exercises in Style--this would be a great spot for 'em if you wish to post a reply, can't wait to have a read!

Next month (November): Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories.  I'm using the translation linked below, ISBN 9780143105244, but I'd love to hear reactions from folks who've read alternate translations, such as the new Oxford version, for example.  I'd love to write a few paragraphs about how Kafka has changed my life, etc, but alas! I don't have time!  Maybe I'll jot something down in this spot if I get the chance in the next couple weeks.  But please check out this Litquake event on Kafka on October 14th:
http://www.litquake.org/calendar-of-events/event/kafkaesque-sf-in-sf

Another supplement for consideration, Wolfgang Voigt's "Kafkatrax" 12"s (2011) for readers interested in experimental techno--all sounds except the drums were taken from a Kafka audiobook and bear a strong sense of paranoia and astrangement found in Kafka's writing.  I totally dig this!!
http://www.discogs.com/label/Kafkatrax

For all his fame, Franz Kafka published only a small number of stories in his lifetime. This new translation of those stories, by Michael Hofmann, one of the most respected German-to-English translators at work today, makes Kafka's best-known works available to a new generation of readers. Metamorphosis gives full expression to the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary depth of his imagination.
--from http://www.booksinc.net/book/9780143105244

Raymond Queneau - Exercises in Style

Thanks for the excellent meeting on Sunday--really great dissection of Sartre, good balance of topics and so forth.  Wish I had more time to go into details here, but as mentioned at the meeting, I'm pretty swamped lately and had to look for an easy escape for next month, something not too time consuming or heavy, but still interesting.... so I picked Raymond Queneau's 1947 classic Exercises in Style for October.  The book is one brief and largely incidental two-paragraph story written in 99 different styles such as mathematical, auditory and ode to mention a few.  I'm not exactly sure how we can go about analyzing it as we've been doing with previous and more "conventional" novels, but I think it'll be an engaging book to discuss (and hopefully read bits from together!) nonetheless.  We'll meet on Sunday, October 9th at 7 PM at the usual spot, Books Inc 2251 Chestnut St.

"A work of genius in a brilliant translation by Barbara Wright....Endlessly fascinating and very funny." --Philip Pullman

--from http://www.booksinc.net/book/9780811207898

Nausea notes & questions

As a bit of an experiment, I thought I'd post my notes for Nausea to the blog ahead of the discussion in the eventuality that it might come in handy.  These are the notes I took while reading with just a bit of retrospection, so please pardon the roughness--be sure to reference the text since the quotes are barely snippets.  This is only tip-of-the-iceberg stuff on a novel with incredible depth...

-1st person, diary format: does it work?
-Is this book basically auto-biographical?  To what extent?
-p22: "Some of these days" ... "nothing can interrupt it but all can break it" -- Theme reprised at end of book
-p34 First bout with Self-Taught Man" -is he real or Antoine's imaginary interlocutor/alter-ego?  Later on, when the Corsican punches Self-Taught Man, is Sartre making a metaphor about Antoine's triumph over ego?
-p37 "something is beginning in order to end"... "I like to see that minute pass"  Great!  What is "adventure?"
-p57 Adventure definition (paraphrased): "growing old w/ woman" -element of the passing of time & irretrievability of past.  Connection to Proust?
-p53 another example of lost time (bottom of page)
-p63 Excellent summation of Antoine & Anny, another example of time
-p70 "Must not think too much about the value of history" and "having made love is much better than making it" -do you agree?
-p84 "I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist."  p85 (top): "A right is nothing more than the other aspect of duty."  Do you relate/agree?
-p95 "True nature of the present".... at bottom -any connection to nihilism?
-p117 Categorization of humanists.  Why?  Do you agree?  Does this fit the themes of the book or seem out of place?
-p127 Sartre expounds on the nature of existence: does it hide itself?  Can we only see the ephemera and not the thing in itself?  What is "being?"  Why should we be concerned enough to ask these questions?  Related topics: terror management theory, memento mori, the inability of language to capture essence, Heraclitus ("you cannot step into the same river twice")
-p169 What does it mean to "outlive oneself?"
-Is this basically a love story?  With a person?  With existence?  With both?  Or is it a thinly-veiled philosophy book in the guise of fiction?
-Is the ending satisfactory?

I hope everyone enjoyed this book; I certainly did.  Looking forward to the discussion Sunday!

Sartre: Nausea

Great Nathanael West discussion last night--intense--loved it!  Next round: Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.  Discussion will be on September 11th at 7 PM.

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Literature, Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist, holds a position of singular eminence in the world of letters. Among readers and critics familiar with the whole of Sartre's work, it is generally recognized that his earliest novel, La Nausee (first published in 1938), is his finest and most significant. It is unquestionably a key novel of the twentieth century and a landmark in Existentialist fiction. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time--the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain." Roquentin's efforts to come to terms with life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize the tenets of his Existentialist creed.
--from http://www.booksinc.net/book/9780811217002

Italo Calvino

Stumbled on this great Italo Calvino resource/depository here awhile back, in both Chinese and English.  I've only read a couple of his books so far, but both (Invisible Cities and T-Zero) were utterly amazing combinations of Borgesian logical proofs and "what if?" mysticism, flights of surrealistic fancy a la Michel Leiris, approachably and impeccably written, words for the inner mind.