NP--On the Waiting List--Cyclops

[rich]

I need to read as much stuff as different as Pynchon as you can get.
i'm hoping i can come back to him with a fresh eye.

on tap is Cyclops, and Thomas Powers book on Crazy Horse

p.s. recent piece on Neville Maskelyne: comes across as a bit of a dick

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/03/nevil-maskelyne-astronomer-royal-bicentenary?INTCMP=SRCH

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this...I think I will treat myself to it.
>
> I have been reading stories since the holdiays in Bosnian Nobelist Andric's The
> Slave
> Girl & Other Stories--- just to get outside my old mental self.
>
> Two almost-relevant things to say. There is one story "Byron in Sintra' which
> must
> take the Venus myth a whirl (among other things) as the protagonist is deeply
> smitten by
> a woman seen near the sea........but [Spoiler Alert!]....smittenness is not
> forever ala Mann's Death in Venice
> or marquez say, but it fades when he goes back into real life....Takes a year or
> two though...........
>
> A....and, the regular folk in his stories work out all their human close-living
> problems by themselves
> with no State, no Gov where 'politics' is village politics ala as Aristotle
> first noted sez the guy who
> wrote the introduction, I thank him for what i might not have noticed
>
> However i was, my bent wont, reminded of TRP's 'vision' of village life in Old
> Europe in  Against the Day...
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> To: "“pynchon-l at waste.org“" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, January 5, 2011 8:27:47 AM
> Subject: NP--On the Waiting List--Cyclops
>
> Hello All--never turn away from opportunity for a good read. added
> this one to the pile.
>
> rich
>
>
> In his semiautobiographical novel, Cyclops, Croatian writer Ranko
> Marinković recounts the adventures of young theater critic Melkior
> Tresić, an archetypal antihero who decides to starve himself to avoid
> fighting in the front lines of World War II. As he wanders the streets
> of Zagreb in a near-hallucinatory state of paranoia and
> malnourishment, Melkior encounters a colorful circus of
> characters--fortune-tellers, shamans, actors, prostitutes, bohemians,
> and café intellectuals--all living in a fragile dream of a society
> about to be changed forever.
>
>
> A seminal work of postwar Eastern European literature, Cyclops reveals
> a little-known perspective on World War II from within the former
> Yugoslavia, one that has never before been available to an
> English-speaking audience. Vlada Stojiljković's able translation,
> improved by Ellen Elias-Bursać's insightful editing, preserves the
> striking brilliance of this riotously funny and densely allusive text.
> Along Melkior's journey Cyclops satirizes both the delusions of the
> righteous military officials who feed the national bloodlust as well
> as the wayward intellectuals who believe themselves to be above the
> unpleasant realities of international conflict. Through Stojiljković's
> clear-eyed translation, Melkior's peregrinations reveal how history
> happens and how the individual consciousness is swept up in the tide
> of political events, and this is accomplished in a mode that will
> resonate with readers of Charles Simic, Aleksandr Hemon, and Kundera.
> (20100715)
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Cyclops-Margellos-World-Republic-Letters/dp/0300152418/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294237495&sr=1-1
>
>
>
>