| Author |
Message |
    
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:15 pm: | |
Aluísio Azevedo - The Slum.
A minor masterpiece. Imperfect but with lots of excellent stuff. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:19 pm: | |
Michail Petroviè Arcybašev - Sanine.
Russian decadence? Almost. A book that is certainly different. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:20 pm: | |
Gyula Krúdy - The Adventures of Sinbad.
A prolific author. Worth tasting if you've tasted everything else. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:25 pm: | |
Iginio Ugo Tarchetti - Fosca.
Italian gothic/decadence.
There is an English translation, but I am not sure if it has the same title. Some of his short stories are Ok, but Fosca is better. He wrote another cool book called Una Nobile Follia, but that is not in English. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:26 pm: | |
Robert Hitchins - Flames.
I liked it. Hitchins earlier works smack a bit of Wilde. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:30 pm: | |
Albert de Routisie - Irene (Le Con d'Irène)
Not for those easily offended. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:35 pm: | |
Petrus Borel - Champavert.
Short stories with some literary value. He wrote another book called Madame Putiphar, but I don't think it is in English. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:38 pm: | |
Crébillon fils - The Wayward Head and Heart
Modern critics call Crébillon 'unreadable'. I like him though. If you liked Diderot's The Nun, then you will like this book. |
des
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:42 pm: | |
Interesting suggestions, thanks. Is the 'Hitchins' the Robert Hichens who wrote The Love of Professor Guildea and Tongues of Conscience or was it Tongues of Flame?
des |
des
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:43 pm: | |
Have you read 'Le Neveu de Rameau' by Diderot?
des |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 01:58 pm: | |
Tongues of Flame? That sounds like the same book. Maybe it has a variation on the title. Yes, it is the same author as The Love of Professor Guildea.
I read Le Neveu de Rameau, but it did not do much for me. My favourite books of Diderot's are:
The Nun
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
and The Indiscreet Jewels |
des
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 02:05 pm: | |
The Love of Professor Guildea is one of the greatest ever ghost stories, imho, along with Oliver Onions' The Beckoning Fair One (well, all Onions is great - up with Aickman). |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 11:17 pm: | |
I like Onions too, though his 'non-fantastic' fiction is not as good as his fantastic. One of his books has a whiff of anti-semetism also. Still, he is a good writer. Particularly in The Beckoning Fair One. Have you ever read Lytton's 'The Haunted and the Haunters'? If the Beckoning Fair One is the greatest ghost story ever written (which it is), then I think The Haunted and the Haunters is the second best. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 11:21 pm: | |
Remy de Gourmont - The Horses of Diomedes
The greatest symbolist novel ever written. At least I think so. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 05:41 am: | |
Strindberg - By the Open Sea
Decadent Strindberg. |
GabrielM
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 07:40 am: | |
>>He wrote another book called Madame Putiphar, but I don't think it is in English.
I don't think it is, but coincidentally I just last week bought a Spanish language copy in Mexico. Weird synchronicity to see it mentioned here just a few days later. From the same publisher (called Valdemar, which has a nice line of gothic/decadent books) I also picked up a copy of a Hanns Heinz Ewers book entitled LA MANDRAGORA (THE MANDRAKE) but only after I bought it did I realize it was ALRAUNE, which I already owned. Oh well. |
des
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 08:25 am: | |
Yes I've read Lord Lytton's 'The Haunted and the Haunters'. More of a horror story than a ghost story? I don't know. Anyway, the story's other title (subtitle?) is much better, I feel, than the more well-known one above, viz:
'The House And The Brain'.
des |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 08:29 am: | |
Gabriel - Cool on Madame Putiphar. I have read Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers also. I did not like it much, as the trappings seemed a bit naive. Sort of like one of the lesser works of Rachilde. The fact that Ewers was a Nazi also manages to temper my enthusiasm. . . . The Nazi's did in the end reject him, but it would have been a good bit better had he rejected them. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 08:31 am: | |
The House and the Brain? Wasn't there a film called that? |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 08:39 am: | |
Paul Leppin - Severin's Journey into the Dark
More Prague decadence. |
des
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 08:39 am: | |
Don't know about the film, but this page:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Edward_George_Bulwer-Lytton.htm
backs up the fact that Lytton's great story is aka The House and The Brain.
des |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 11:05 am: | |
Oh, I wasn't questioning that you are right Des. I was just thinking that the name had been used for a film also. |
des
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 11:49 am: | |
Des is a strange cove, Brendan, just humour him.
Des's House. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 12:48 pm: | |
Ok. . . So you are a, um, Lytton fan? |
des's house
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 01:02 pm: | |
"Ok. . . So you are a, um, Lytton fan?"
Borderland. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 11:49 pm: | |
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt:
1) Sœur Philomène
2) Renée Mauperin
3) Germinie Lacerteux |
Brendan
| | Posted on Monday, March 01, 2004 - 11:50 pm: | |
Zola - The Beast In Man
Zola is not a particularly obscure author. But most people have not read this book, which is quite good. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Friday, March 05, 2004 - 12:27 pm: | |
Arne Garborg - Weary Men
Norwegian decadence |
Brendan
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 11:06 pm: | |
F.T. Marinetti: Mafarka the Futurist
What Des Esseintes is to decadence Mafarka is to futurism. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 12:46 am: | |
Ramon del Valle-Inclan - Spring and Summer Sonatas |
Brendan
| | Posted on Saturday, March 20, 2004 - 12:05 am: | |
Massimo Bontempelli - The Boy With Two Mothers
A good short novel. Early Italian magic realism. In English it is contained in Separations: Two Novels of Mothers and Children. The second novel in the book though, The Life and Death of Adria and Her Children, The Life and Death of Adria and Her Children, is not as good as the first...I have not read the English translation also, so I have no idea as to the quality. But the prose are simple, so I imagine it is fine. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 08:32 am: | |
Dorothy Richardson - Pilgrimage
Containing "Pointed Roofs" the first stream of consciousness novel in English....And long.... |
Nemonymous
| | Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 11:00 am: | |
I always wanted to read this. Stream of Consciousness ... and Proustian. Thanks for reminding me. |
Nemonymous
| | Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 11:02 am: | |
Another one. Caused me a lot of readerly heartache.
THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 12:29 pm: | |
Never read The Recognitions. What is it like?
Pilgrimage is truly brilliant. Probably equal to Proust. It is a shame that Dorothy Richardson is not better known. It strikes me that she influenced a few much more famous authors, such as Virginia Woolf. |
des
| | Posted on Saturday, April 03, 2004 - 01:32 pm: | |
The Recognitions is probably the densest, most allusive and elusive book I've ever read, accentuated by the fact the protagonist is only referred to as he or him after the first chapter.
I enjoyed it more in the sixties when I was young and didn't worry I didn't understand it...
des |
Brendan
| | Posted on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 01:10 pm: | |
Edouard Dujardin - We'll to the Woods No More
A good, early stream of consciousness novel. |
Brendan
| | Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 - 12:20 am: | |
Paul Leppin - Other's Paradise
This is a relatively new (2003) book out by Twisted Spoon Press - a Prague based publisher. It contains some nice short stories by Leppin, all, I believe, previously untranslated. |
