book rec?/ if you enjoyed P, try these /++

[Dave Monroe]

... the only problem is all those "e"s in P_r_c's name ... try also his Things,
perhaps coupled with Simone de Beauvoir's Les belles images, for that sicxities
commodity fetishism thing ("beautiful objects," or whatever, as someone said
here, hate to say it, but I agree).   And it's not that I'm advocating NOT
reading, say, Pearl S. Buck, it's just that its interesting how many Nobel
Laureates have fallen by the wayside, esp. authors as widely known and renowned
in their day as Buck, Sinclair, Kipling, whowever ... now, I think the original
request came with a no SF clause, but, indeed, as mentioned elsewhere here, Boris
and Arkady Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, filmed--twice, though only the second,
pared-down (well, for a nigh-unto-three hour film ...) version survived--by
Andrei Tarkovsky as Stalker (which I loved, but I would warn that a friend
reported it returned to her video store with the complant, "I can't think this
slow").  The Strugatskys' Definitely Maybe (Fredric Jameson, by the way,
complains that this is a "stupid" translation, but I can't recall his more
literal take on the title) was also filmed, y a different Soviet director (can't
reacll the name) as Days of Eclipse.  But, of course, the masterpiece of Eastern
Bloc SF is Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, brilliantly filmed by Tarkovsky (although he
took his liberties with it) under its own title (for once).  I'd think Lem would
indeed be of interest here, esp. Solaris, The Cyberiad, A Perfect Vacuum, er,
that other one kinda like A Perfect Vacuum ... and, of course, Philip K. Dick
(Ubik, The Man in the High Castle, Maze of Death, and so forth) ...

MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> <<... even for Americans who ought to try a little more of what at times of
> Nobel they simply can't recognize and term obscure.  >>
>
> True in my case; I read Crowds and Power, only after Canetti won the Nobel.
> It's certainly worth reading.
>
> <<hm, neglected modernist classics ... Robert Musil, The Man without
> Qualities?>>
>
> Finally available in a complete, two-volume, edition, including much from
> Musil's notebooks.
>
> <<Once again I want to reiterate with 5 *s and 14 canons George Perec's Life:
> A User's Manual.>>
>
> Perec is the author of at least two other notable works.  One, a 1,247-word
> palindrome; and the novel La Disparition, which is written without the letter
> "e."  Perhaps more remarkable, it has been translated, also without the
> letter "e," into English (A Void, trans. Gilbert Adair).
>