May's Magical Meditations on Masterfully Manafactured Manuscripts

[j. d. worthington]

No, not a recent word at all... think of bon vivante, for example.... It means (as an adjective, and depending on context) "alive, living, lively, still fresh"*; also "in one's lifetime", or (in les vivants) "the living", etc.

As for going for a copy of it... I haven't seen a new edition of The Wandering Jew for ages, though they may exist. The most recent I found was severely abridged: about 300 pp. or so, more a summary retelling than the book (my own edition is roughly 1400 pp.), so I'd avoid such things if I were you.

Here's what I called up at Abebooks:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...+Jew&x=84&y=21

*Each of these applies quite well to this context....

[Extollager]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

As for going for a copy of it... I haven't seen a new edition of The Wandering Jew for ages, though they may exist. The most recent I found was severely abridged: about 300 pp. or so, more a summary retelling than the book (my own edition is roughly 1400 pp.), so I'd avoid such things if I were you.

Perhaps you could state which English edition(s) appear to you to be complete for the benefit of readers who want to know they are reading the whole thing. (I'm not very interested in this one myself, but...)

Kipling and Rider Haggard discussed the writing of a romance on the theme:

http://books.google.com/books?id=nwT...jew%22&f=false

By this time, from what I have read, Haggard's best writing was well in the past. (He regarded his best work as belonging to the ten years, late in the 19th C, that included King Solomon's Mines, She, Nada the Lily, Eric Brighteyes, Montezuma's Daughter, etc.) I've read about 25 books by him. Here's a handlist:

http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/16/mullen16bib.htm

[Vertigo]

Toby Frost's Space Captain Smith. This didn't start very well; the writing lacked confidence and some of the humour fell flat for me. However it is his first book and as it progressed both the writing and the humour gained confidence. In the end I thoroughly enjoyed it and the humour did take me to laugh out loud territory. I thoroughly enjoyed the nods to various other books and authors, particularly Wells' War of the Worlds.

My only complaint is that the Kindle edition suffered some formatting issues suggesting it wasn't adequately proofed after being created.

[dask]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

No, not a recent word at all... think of bon vivante, for example.... It means (as an adjective, and depending on context) "alive, living, lively, still fresh"*; also "in one's lifetime", or (in les vivants) "the living", etc.

As for going for a copy of it... I haven't seen a new edition of The Wandering Jew for ages, though they may exist. The most recent I found was severely abridged: about 300 pp. or so, more a summary retelling than the book (my own edition is roughly 1400 pp.), so I'd avoid such things if I were you.

Here's what I called up at Abebooks:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...+Jew&x=84&y=21

*Each of these applies quite well to this context....

Thanks for the info. I checked a much newer dictionary when I got home and it didn't list it either, not even in the foreign words and phrases section. Crazy. Thanks too for the link. Boy, that one copy sure looks hammered. Still, books are pretty cheap at this annual sale. If I see one for fifty cents to a buck I may pick it up anyway, if only to take up valuable space on my makeshift bookshelf in the gargage.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Extollager

Perhaps you could state which English edition(s) appear to you to be complete for the benefit of readers who want to know they are reading the whole thing. (I'm not very interested in this one myself, but...)

I am by no means all that knowledgeable about this, but from what I do know, I'd suggest either the two-volume Wm. L. Allison edition (which is what I have), which went through at least a few printings (if memory serves), or the one Disch suggested, which was the Modern Library edition, which was somewhat abridged (yet is still the size of that wonderful weird anthology, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural). This, too, was in print for quite a while, so can probably be found for a decent price....

[J-Sun]

Just finished re-reading The Best of Cordwainer Smith and reading The Instrumentality of Mankind. Good stuff overall. (Longer notes in the short story thread.)

[HareBrain]

Now halfway through The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and it must be the best thing I've read in a year or more. Why can't genre authors write this well?

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by HareBrain

Now halfway through The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and it must be the best thing I've read in a year or more. Why can't genre authors write this well?

Maybe they can and you've just been traversing the wrong burrows... If you like that you should check out Knigslover's Poisonwood Bible. It's something of a flawed masterpiece compared to The Lacuna which is her most accomplished work to date but overall still excellent.....

[HareBrain]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Maybe they can and you've just been traversing the wrong burrows...

That's rabbits! Get it wrong again and I shall declare warren you.

I know some get close, but I can't remember any SFF author who combines such lightness of touch, subtlety, depth and intensity (maybe not all in the same sentence, admittedly). If you can suggest any without derailing this thread, I shall certainly take a look.

[GOLLUM]

HMM...that will require me to apply my thinking cap. I might PM you instead later but as far as great prose stylists go a few of my favourites would include Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Patricia Mckillip's fiction esp RiddleMaster of Hed, Miller's Canticle for Liebowitz, John Crowley's Little Big, Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter, Hope Mirlees' Lud in the Mist, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Ted Chaing's Story of my Life collection, Avram Davidson's short fiction, Le Guin's Left hand of Darkness or for a more archaic but marvellous style Edison's Worm Oubourous. I'm also an admirer of China Mieville, Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson but they don't quite fall into the same class as those already mentioned.

Then moving outside the more obvious Genre fiction but still focusing on writers of the fantastic as this is more my particular field these days I would suggest as a sampling Italo Calvino's Invisible cities and If on a Winter's Night A Traveller, Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber & The Infernal Device Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles, Jorge Lois Borges' collection Labyrinths and Adolfo Bio Casare's Invention of Morel.

Moving more into General literature which I guess is where Knigslover falls into, again as a sampling the fiction of Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Wolfe, Vladimir Nabokov, Somerset Maugham esp. his short fiction, Stefan Zweig, Yeshar Kemahl, Yusinara Kawabata, Joseph Roth esp. Radetzky March and W.G. Sebald, Robert Walser...OH and the Poetry of Pablo Neruda...more 20th Century than earlier but if I go down that path I'll be here for several more hours building on this post and well and truly derailing this thread.

I realise this is a very broad response (I got a little carried away) but I wanted to encapsulate some of the authors I consider very highly, some of whom you may wish to check out/interest you that you're yet to try?

This is not to say Knigslover is in a class of her own but I'm not sure who I would compare her to directly to in or out of Genre? Following is a link that provides some suggestions...not sure how like they are but certainly Mathieson, Erdrich and Atwood are worth a look in any case and I'm a fan of McCarthy's Blood Meridian in particular but there are several about here who are not.

http://www.multcolib.org/books/lists/barbarak.html

Hope this helps a little Hare.....

Cheers.

[HareBrain]

Thanks Gollum. I like Patricia McKillip's writing in Solstice Wood, but wasn't that impressed with her Riddle-Master. Le Guin is up there, but what I've seen of the others I wouldn't put with Kingsolver ... but I freely admit that might just be a personal response to her style (or the style she uses in this book). There are others on your list I really should seek out, so thanks for providing the impetus.

A chapter from Lacuna I read last night contained a perfect description of what I like about her, and my other favourite authors. One character, writing about another, says:

"So fine for speaking, you asked him things just to hear what words he'd pick out in answer, for they'd not be the ones you expected."

I think one of the qualities I most love about her writing is that unexpected way of phrasing things, which because of their unexpectedness dart like a needle straight to your brain or heart or something. David Mitchell comes close to that, but some of his freshness of expression feels self-conscious.

[GOLLUM]

I picked Riddlemaster as much because it's one of her better known works and one I do admire. I like almost everything I've read to date by McKillip as I think she just writes such beautiful prose..

You are right though, in the end it comes down to personal taste..but I begin to better understand what you are are driving at...to this end I would certainly recommend Calvino, Carter and Schulz if you've not read anything by them before as I love their phrasing.

Still both of us are in agreement that Kingsolver (yes I finally spelt it correctly) is a fine writer.

Good night from OZ!

[Grunkins]

I'm hard pressed to come up with anyone who definitely writes better prose than Guy Gavriel Kay, whether literary or genre. Iain M Banks (don't think he's been mentioned yet) can hold his own in most circles as well.

Originally Posted by HareBrain

That's rabbits! Get it wrong again and I shall declare warren you.

^I think you just won something.

[D_Davis]

The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry

The Last Picture Show is populated with some of the most despicable characters I've ever met. I've never encountered a group of characters as small-minded, petty, and bored as those found in Larry McMurtry's portrayal of life in the small Texas town of Thalia. People use each other, abuse each other, and bully each other, and basically do whatever they can to ruin each others' days and lives through selfish acts of infidelity and manipulation, and spreading lies of rape, homosexuality, and pedophilia.

Like Loneseome Dove, I'll never forget many of the moments in this novel. From the nigh-unbelievable and incredibly hilarious antics of the worst basketball game in history, to Sam the Lion's anger at growing old, the book is simply overflowing with passages detailing the lives of characters who find themselves' half-way to nowhere on a dead-end highway of life. They're all going nowhere fast, left without a snowball's chance in hell, and they all know it, and, what's more, they all know there really isn't a damn thing they can do about it.

There is a pervasive sense of sadness to this novel, a sadness that comes from a realization. When we're young, the world is before us, and it appears to us that our elders have it all figured out. And then as we get older, we begin to wonder if people do have it figured out, and it seems to us that there are some people who don't, and as long as we don't end up like that we'll be OK. And then we get old, and we finally realize that no one has **** figured out, and everyone is basically living one day at a time trying not to **** stuff up too badly.

It's all we can do to hold on.

That's life. Holding on. And what we need to do is find the stuff that is worth holding on to, and not letting go no matter what.

[Coragem]

Originally Posted by Coragem

I'm finally reading Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes. Just over half way through and so far 10/10.

The more I read the more I'm convinced. The Heroes is a masterwork.

No, it's not a sweet or romantic story about how dark ugly enemies are killed by attractive elves. But it absolutely succeeds in what it tries to do – expose the futility of war, with an ambitious few seeking recognition at the expense of the majority.

The characters are done to perfection, every scene is perfection, the writing is superb, the dark humour is genius.

It scares me to think how talented Joe Abercrombie is.

Coragem.