Neglected Books
@neglectedbooks.bsky.social
"Perhaps Lubin was too 'nice' a director to do it justice." Sigh. A director with a hydrochloric acid view of humanity is required!
Sounds like a horrible show--but material for a great movie.
Luckily, we lived in Italy for four years and I missed a lot of 1960s TV.
I couldn't watch it. It just seemed humiliating for everyone involved. Including the viewers. The Ur show of reality TV.
A lot of folks here will say it's actually the Laserdisc of social media and smile smugly as they pop in Air Force One for the 47th time.
99%. 100% is impossible at this point. Anyone sane would quit now. But...am I sane? Tomorrow will tell.
"What I should not do is pretend that my reading is definitive, neutral, objective, or somehow free of myself and my environment.”
Important for critics to remember —but even more important for us to remember when reading criticism.
"Writing a review is the best, maybe the only, way I can discover what I think. I don’t come to reviewing with my ideas already formed; I have to build them, sentence by sentence." This is why I feel like I never really know a book until I write about it. Great essay.
yalereview.org/article/chri...
Christine Smallwood: "A Reviewer’s Life"
Christine Smallwood articulates the material constraints of writing criticism today.
yalereview.orgThis is the sort of review that tells me there must be a pony in there.
Fascinating. And his second book, at the age of 21. When I hadn't written anything longer than a term paper. Sigh.
Sometimes it's the Table of Contents that hooks you. From Java-Java by Byron Steel (Knopf, 1928). A new one for me.
"If Mr. Lecky did not find the idiot and settle with him before it became dark, or, at least, before, exhausted, he fell asleep, the idiot would probably find and settle with the drowsing Mr. Lecky."
Today's #WaferThinBook: Castaway by James Gould Cozzens (1934, 115p.)
Mr. Lecky finds himself alone and trapped inside a giant department store. Everything is at his disposal—except a way out. Is he really alone—or simply insane? Read it to find out...maybe.
I looked at the glorious goriness of 19th century accounts of Jack the Giant Killer back in 2018. If these were children's books, those were some hardcase kids.
neglectedbooks.com?p=5580
... rather than the creation of new functionality. Many organizations are running multiple generations of software and struggling to keep aging and obsolete code from holding back the new stuff. God only created the world in seven days because he didn't have to worry about backwards compatibility.
We live in a time where pretty much all the software we interact with interacts with other software. The second-, third-, etc. level effects of the web of applications and datasets in the typical enterprise are now so complex and subtle that the critical mass of programmers is devoted to integration
I had the great pleasure to talk about my life in neglected books this week with Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books) for his Friday Reads series.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofv3...
Friday Reads: Friends and Family
Friday Reads: Friends and Family I’ll Have What You’re Reading Readalong message board: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2282241 #IllHaveWhatYoureReading Jenny of Reading Envy’s Good-reads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/68030 Watch the announcement Chris and Emily and I made starting at 23:37 here: https://youtu.be/5eRoZbAa5rw?feature=shared *The week in review on my channel:* Shawn of Shawn Breathes Books reviews Wild Houses by Colin Barrett: https://youtu.be/5KGqTmluH50?feature=shared Chris, Dorian, James and Shawn chat about Edith Wharton’s 1917 novel Summer: https://youtu.be/J5BBq39WA14?feature=shared Should you wish, *support me on Patreon*: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=75826765 If you don’t want to do a regular monthly thing, but would like to make a one-time contribution, here is my PayPal-registered email address: shawnmooneyinjapan@gmail.com Time stamps (scroll down for Goodreads links): 00:00 Introduction 01:44 Mystery guest 23:04 Week in Review 24:24 Wild Houses by Colin Barrett 25:24 The Family Way by Christopher DiRaddo 30:03 My Friends by Hisham Matar 35:40 Music & Silence by Rose Tremain 39:20 Season of Fury and Wonder by Sharon Butala 41:48 Anyone's Ghost by August Thompson Books mentioned: Other Ranks by William Vincent Tilsley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44319280-other-ranks?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_12 Rediscoveries: Informal Essays in Which Well-Known Novelists Rediscover Neglected Works of Fiction By One of Their Favorite Authors by David Madden https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7463910-rediscoveries Rediscoveries II: Important Writers Select Their Favorite Works of Neglected Fiction by David Madden https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1580258.Rediscoveries_II Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct, or Otherwise Out of Commission by Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding and Linda Spalding (Editors)n https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/524603.Lost_Classics?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=6i3ZScvipr&rank=5 The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34100964-the-book-of-forgotten-authors Shawn and Ange’s joint review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl8J0zFdkDs&t=828s Gentleman Overboard by Herbert Clyde Lewis https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59524882-gentleman-overboard My bite-sized chat with James: https://youtu.be/3PjJiGJMDT0 Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist Michael Hofmann (Translator) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53529648-michael-kohlhaas Panthers and the Museum of Fire by Jen Craig https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25362962-panthers-and-the-museum-of-fire?ref=nav_sb_ss_2_13 Wild Houses by Colin Barrett https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128714412-wild-houses?ref=nav_sb_ss_2_13 The Family Way by Christopher DiRaddo https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56220542-the-family-way My Friends by Hisham Matar https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127488823-my-friends Music & Silence by Rose Tremain https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12945460-music-silence Season of Fury and Wonder by Sharon Butala https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43475906-season-of-fury-and-wonder?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=m6cYGjFPyK&rank=1 Anyone's Ghost by August Thompson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199373500-anyone-s-ghost?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=YhcrQwtlgi&rank=1 Brad Bigelow’s website, Neglected Books: http://neglectedbooks.com/ @neglectedbooks on Twitter The Recovered Books series at Boiler House Press: https://www.boilerhouse.press/recovered-books The Wafer-thin Books book club: https://waferthinbooks.com *Where else to follow me:* @shawnmooney on Litsy and on Twitter @shawnbreathesbooks on Instagram and Threads @shawnthebookmaniac.bsky.social on Bluesky My Goodreads is https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/50408211-shawn-mooney My Patreon is https://www.patreon.com/user?u=75826765
www.youtube.comFuture Perfect, both a study and an anthology of 19th century American science fiction, was one of H. Bruce Franklin's first books. It's sublimely good scholarship AND fiction: still a rare combination.
For many years I thought Bruce Franklin was a friendly older Melville scholar who was chatty online & really smart & generous. Then he sent me his memoir when it came out a few years ago. 😳 I felt so dumb, but also amazed. This is the platonic ideal of what a professor should be.
H. Bruce Franklin, Scholar Who Embraced Radical Politics, Dies at 90
A cultural historian, he was fired by Stanford University in 1972 over an anti-Vietnam War speech that became a cause célèbre of academic freedom.
www.nytimes.comRedeemed by the success of "I'm a Pigeon, GTF Outta My Way!"
Was it a play written after the book? There have been a few instances where an author was inspired to write a previously fictional work (Philip Jose Farmer as Kilgore Trout after a Vonnegut novel, for example).
Raymond Chandler once invented a neglected author named Aaron Klopstein who "committed suicide at the age of 33 in Greenwich Village by shooting himself with an Amazonian blow gun..."
Timeless, painful, and true.
youtu.be/D6sqi1aLE3c?...
Reissued last year(ish) by Faber as a quote unknown novel unquote.
I'd forgotten it because the depression is so much larger a factor than the post-partum, but you're right, of course.
#3: Erckmann-Chatrian (Émile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian)?
Where are they now? 19th Century novelists edition
Visiting the U. Montana library yesterday, I was reminded again of how literary fame is a perishable commodity. Which of these three novelists have you heard of, let alone read?
#1: Georg Ebers?
Today's #WaferThinBook: No Mama No by Verity Bargate (1978, 128p.)
Perhaps the first frank treatment of postpartum depression in fiction. The first of three slim novels Bargate wrote before dying at the age of 41. An annual award is given in her name to support new UK playwrights
An amazing musical performance. The Georgian group Orera mixes traditional polyphony with jazz vocal group influences (the Four Freshmen, e.g.) in a video that beats most contemporary Scopitones. Orera was still singing 30+ years later.
The Georgian work song, "Krimanchuli."
youtu.be/RPdVP8cIyO4
Oof. A necessary procedure but no one's favorite, I think.
Thank you, Michael. Glad to see that you enjoyed the book.
His memoir The Seventh Gate is a good place to start, but as I've learned, it's not a completely honest account.
Yes, indeed! I will have to hire a Pittman shorthand expert to mine all his secrets.
I wrote about Peter Greave and his many secrets back in 2020:
neglectedbooks.com/?p=7404
Peter Greave’s Secrets
I first came across Peter Greave in a battered Penguin paperback copy of his 1977 memoir, The Seventh Gate, that I’d found at the Montana Valley Book Store, a marvelous storehouse of books in the l…
neglectedbooks.comThree years ago, just before we left the UK, I dashed across the country to Ledbury to scan all 36 volumes of the diary kept by Peter Greave, who contracted leprosy in India and wrote two remarkable memoirs about the experience. I hope someday to get a selection published. +
Probably the most Viennese of books is Zweig's memoir The World of Yesterday. After that, a Schnitzler or two (they're #WaferThinBooks). Or for something more obscure, Edith de Born's The House in Vienna.
A brilliant album, by the way, speaking as one of the 14 people who bought it in 1973. "Rewriting the National Anthem" is one of the best things I've ever heard on live stand-up LP.
youtu.be/xc79HAg8ZXo?...
Funny — knowing him as D. A. from his Evelyn Scott biography, I didn't even notice that this one lists him as David.
So many marvelous things in it. The pencil case, the magical store windows you can see yourself in without looking, God as A.J.P. Taylor....
It's a wonderful, wonderful book. Please give it a look.