Oo. Austrian economics and Adam Smith. I've got a copy of his Wealth Of Nations on my bookshelf, and it's around #282 in my To Read Any Decade Now list. Argh. There just aren't enough hours in the day, right? The world is just too gigantic and too crammed with fascinating activities to enjoy and savour them all. I'd wanted to learn more about late-18th-century economics for a while now - a while back I'd been reading a popular-history book focusing on the Early Victorian period, 1830-1850, and among other things, it discussed how the notion of sustained economic growth was soaking into popular culture (in the UK at least) for the first time, well, ever, and there was this growing understanding soaking throughout all society, that wealth could actually be created and created and created, for decade after decade, and at least theoretically make everyone wealthy. Holy crap. Turns out poverty and slumming might not be these eternal curses of the human condition, but actually curable and made obsolete. Holy crap. And how might society most wisely divvy up this new mega-wealth, eh? Eh? What's the worst that could happen?
Your reading chair… what makes it so? Would you write us a post one day on the chairs and other receptacles most conducive to good reading - your views on book stands etc? Sent from a tall man for whom the main obstacle to long reading is back pain and other aches!
About thirty years ago, I read Updike and wondered then if I was doomed in middle age to think that every detail of who said what to whom, under mundane circumstances, was worthy of lengthy qualification. You brought the boredom back. I have not read ‘Witches’, though I saw a theatrical adaptation and a film, which I remember as entertaining. If a well-made film does a better job for you than the book, then it’s worth considering why it took a huge, well-funded, team to bring the idea to life (or whether you’re uninitiated, too dim, distracted or have spent too much time in performing a few simple operations to read properly). Thank you for your contemplations!
Updike had the great fortune to be vastly overrated as a novelist during his entire career. He had a fine prose style and a true gift for lyrical description, but he had little ability to convey any character except as a variation of himself, and he lacked the talent for creating meaningful plots. His best writing was his verse. His novels have all the characteristic flaws of novels by poets—fine writing caught in a subjective, self-centered narrative.
Poets are often better at the short story than the novel. Updike’s best fiction is in the short story, though even here he is not the equal of Cheever, Malamud, Roth or O’Connor. His best novel is, I think, the early “Of the Farm,” which is really just a novella.
The current downgrading of Updike is long overdue.
"the role of 'rivalry and emulation' in the formation of character and the deciding of morals"
Forgive me if you've already discussed or read him, but I can't pass this description of your interests by without recommending the work of René Girard on this subject. This is very much his great theme.
Tell me your tips for assuaging the guilt caused by reading instead of making mango chutney, doing the ironing, vaccing the tumbleweeds, planting bulbs in the front of house troughs to prove someone lives here und so weiter.
Updike is a fascinating case study in reputational change.
Why do you think it changed?
I don't know but I sure would like to. I mean, he was so big! And now he's nothing!
Radetzky March with García Márquez is a sentence designed to make me stop whatever I’m doing. Right to the list.
Shklovsky is great. I love his concept ostranenie: “making the stone feel stony.”
but does he care about the stone?
I couldn’t say. I suppose I better hear your Austin talk.
Oo. Austrian economics and Adam Smith. I've got a copy of his Wealth Of Nations on my bookshelf, and it's around #282 in my To Read Any Decade Now list. Argh. There just aren't enough hours in the day, right? The world is just too gigantic and too crammed with fascinating activities to enjoy and savour them all. I'd wanted to learn more about late-18th-century economics for a while now - a while back I'd been reading a popular-history book focusing on the Early Victorian period, 1830-1850, and among other things, it discussed how the notion of sustained economic growth was soaking into popular culture (in the UK at least) for the first time, well, ever, and there was this growing understanding soaking throughout all society, that wealth could actually be created and created and created, for decade after decade, and at least theoretically make everyone wealthy. Holy crap. Turns out poverty and slumming might not be these eternal curses of the human condition, but actually curable and made obsolete. Holy crap. And how might society most wisely divvy up this new mega-wealth, eh? Eh? What's the worst that could happen?
A marvelous hodge-podge: many thanks!
Your reading chair… what makes it so? Would you write us a post one day on the chairs and other receptacles most conducive to good reading - your views on book stands etc? Sent from a tall man for whom the main obstacle to long reading is back pain and other aches!
My preferred position is prone on a long sofa
Speaking of Shklovsky, I'd be interested in reading your take on literary formalism—perhaps you've already written something that I've overlooked?
I like the formalists! I don’t think I have written about them though
About thirty years ago, I read Updike and wondered then if I was doomed in middle age to think that every detail of who said what to whom, under mundane circumstances, was worthy of lengthy qualification. You brought the boredom back. I have not read ‘Witches’, though I saw a theatrical adaptation and a film, which I remember as entertaining. If a well-made film does a better job for you than the book, then it’s worth considering why it took a huge, well-funded, team to bring the idea to life (or whether you’re uninitiated, too dim, distracted or have spent too much time in performing a few simple operations to read properly). Thank you for your contemplations!
The mention of Radetzky March sent me down an Austro-Hungarian rabbit hole, & now I'll be picking up some Stefan Zweig next time I'm at the library
Excellent
Updike had the great fortune to be vastly overrated as a novelist during his entire career. He had a fine prose style and a true gift for lyrical description, but he had little ability to convey any character except as a variation of himself, and he lacked the talent for creating meaningful plots. His best writing was his verse. His novels have all the characteristic flaws of novels by poets—fine writing caught in a subjective, self-centered narrative.
Poets are often better at the short story than the novel. Updike’s best fiction is in the short story, though even here he is not the equal of Cheever, Malamud, Roth or O’Connor. His best novel is, I think, the early “Of the Farm,” which is really just a novella.
The current downgrading of Updike is long overdue.
I will certainly look up the verse thank you!
I appreciate the Updike sentiment, but recommend James Wolcott's LRB review of the Letters as an instructive and viable alternative to reading them. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n03/james-wolcott/what-you-can-get-away-with
yes that was a very good piece
I’ve pre-ordered Lázár. Thank you for your recommendation. I appreciate it.
You’re doing something worthwhile.
"the role of 'rivalry and emulation' in the formation of character and the deciding of morals"
Forgive me if you've already discussed or read him, but I can't pass this description of your interests by without recommending the work of René Girard on this subject. This is very much his great theme.
PS. I see your chair is positioned so that you cannot see that montrosity outside your window.
Tell me your tips for assuaging the guilt caused by reading instead of making mango chutney, doing the ironing, vaccing the tumbleweeds, planting bulbs in the front of house troughs to prove someone lives here und so weiter.
I have no guilt…