Category Archives: literature

Introducing “You cried for night”

“You cried for night” is an Australian literary blog, found via the comments on The Reading Experience’s piece on psychological realism. From its header:

” You cried for night – it falls. Now cry in darkness.” (Sam Beckett). How quickly will these colours date in the service of Australian literature and other bookish matters? It’s the content that matters…And the dots.

In one of the comments on Freud, the novel and the New York Times Anne remarks:

Wonderful post: one thing blogging surely is good for is puncturing the gaseousness of other bloggers. You’ve done a lovely job here.

The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) – Rowland V. Lee [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]


In the 2006 film, V for Vendetta, characters V and Evey Hammond watch the 1934 version of The Count of Monte Cristo based a story by Alexandre Dumas which was serialized in the Journal des Débats in eighteen parts. Publication ran from August 28, 1844 through January, 1846. V cites it as his favorite film. [Aug 2006]

Exercises in Style (1947) – Raymond Queneau

Exercises in Style (1947) – Raymond Queneau

[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

I’m in the midst of reading 1001 Books and I am in 1947 now. Time for a bit on Raymond Queneau. Using The Reading Experience as quality qualifier method explained in my previous post I came up with two interesting posts:

via Native Sensibilities:

“But then we Americans inhabit a culture that seems to find “literary” writing in general (much less the “complex negotiations” of a Perec) to be suspiciously “effete.” That American postmodernists might seem laggardly in their capacity for game-playing and their delight in “incongruity” when compared to a Georges Perec or a Raymond Queneau would no doubt strike certain no-nonsence American readers and critics as outlandish. Too many American writers disdain “psychological realism” or good old-fashioned storytelling as it is. Thus, except through the admirable efforts of publishers like Godine (publishers of Perec) or Dalkey Archive, we probably shouldn’t expect to see books by such unmanly Europeans make much of an incursion on American literary life any time soon.”

via More on Oulipo

” The Oulipo – in full, the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature – was founded in France in 1960 by the French author Raymond Queneau and the mathematical historian François Le Lionnais. “

Robert Benayoun

 

Robert Benayoun, photocredit unidentified
Image source here

Érotique du surréalisme (1965|1978) – Robert Benayoun
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Robert Benayoun wrote in the tradition of Ado Kyrou, Eric Losfeld, Joseph-Marie Lo Duca and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, with an absolute disregard for the perceived boundaries between low and high culture. If you follow the source link of the photograph, there is a Spanish article on Benayoun’s work Érotique du surréalisme.

Regarding the publishing house of Eric Losfeld, Éditions Le Terrain Vague, I’ve always wondered if there were German and British equivalents of it. In the United States houses such as Grove Press come to mind, but I know of no equivalents in Germany or the UK.

Sherwood Anderson and grotesque fiction

Winesburg, Ohio (1919) – Sherwood Anderson
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In fiction, a character is usually considered a grotesque if he induces both empathy and disgust. (A character that inspires disgust alone is simply a villain or a monster.) Obvious examples would include the physically deformed and the mentally deficient, but people with cringe-worthy social traits are also included. The reader becomes piqued by the grotesque’s positive side, and continues reading to see if the character can conquer his darker side.

In European literature, Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of the most celebrated grotesques.

In American literature, one often cites Sherwood Anderson’s short story collection Winesburg, Ohio.

The most recent literary theory on the grotesque has been by two American scholars: Philip Thomson (1972) and David Lavery (a continuing online contribution).

I’ve cleaned up my own pages on the grotesque somewhat and transcribed some lists to Wikipedia. Please follow the links.

A final question, the beautiful cover painting on Anderson’s novel (a larger picture here), is it by Edward Hopper, that architect of American loneliness who recently guided me through chapter two of de Botton’s The Art of Travel?

Eyeless in Gaza

Apart from being the name of a British post punk band and a line of poetry in Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Eyeless in Gaza is a 1936 novel by Aldous Huxley .

In the most notorious passage of Huxley’s novel a live dog is dropped from an airplane and hits the flat rooftop where Anthony and his partner Helen are lying naked in the sun. It bursts spraying them with its blood. –Cedric Watts via 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006) – Peter Dr Boxall

Unreliable multiple narrators

Absalom, Absalom! (1936) – William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! (1936) – William Faulkner [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

For multiple and unreliable narrators, see:

The Rashomon effect is the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it.

It is named for Akira Kurosawa‘s film Rashomon, in which a crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways. The film is based on two short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke.

Does anyone know who did the cover illustration of Faulkner’s novel?

see also: 1936 – narrator

Surrealist Writers

sur_real

Surrealist Writers

Precursors: Lautréamont . . . Rimbaud . . . Roussel . . .

Surrealists: André Breton . . . Dalí . . . de Chirico . . . Desnos . . . Duchamp . . . Leiris . . . Peret . . . Queneau . . .

 

“Everything leads us to believe that there is a certain state of mind from which life and death, the real and the imaginary, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, height and depth are no longer perceived as contradictory.”— André Breton, Second Manifesto of Surrealism (1929)via http://alangullette.com/lit/surreal/

Update: After the comment of a discerning reader, I’ve decided to include a bit more of this article:

These are only my favorites, but there were and are many other excellent Surrealist Writers, including: Louis Aragon, Rene Daumal, Paul Eluard, Jacques Prevert, those listed below and others…

Other Surrealist Writer Sites

  • Leonora Carrington (b. 1917), member of the surrealist group from 1938.
  • David Gascoyne (1916-2001) English poet whose translations introduced the French surrealists to the English-speaking world in the 1930’s and 40’s. Considered a member 1926-39.
  • Philip Lamantia (b. 1927) American poet who associated with the surrealists and inspired the Beat poets.
  • Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) has been provocatively called “the only true American surrealist.”
  • Among women writers active in the surrealist movement, one might list Nancy Cunard, Claude Cahun, Meret Oppenheim, Gisele Prassinos, and Valentine Penrose.

Other Surrealist and Related Sites

Surrealist Art Sites

Institutions and Organizations

See surrealism

Translations by Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles was one of the most accomplished literary translators of the twentieth century. His early interest in the work of European and Latin American surrealist authors led Bowles to produce translations, believing that English-speaking readers should have access to their work. His initial published translations included poems and stories of Giorgio de Chirico, Jean Ferry, Paul Magritte, and Ramón Sender. His translation of the work of Jorge Luis Borges represents one of the Argentine author’s first appearances in English. Harmless Poisons In 1945 Bowles edited a special “Tropical Americana” issue of View which introduced the work of a variety of Latin American authors and genres to American readers. Bowles’s translation of Jean Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos, which he titled No Exit, was the first English-language version of this important play and remains one of the most widely-used adaptations. –via http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/bowles/translat.htm

see also: American literature