Shit-stirring provocation (was Women Crime Writers)

Fri Jan 1 13:03:31 CST 2016

Something I hate: when authors I (we?) adore are quoted with something they
have not said. Last example here:

Kafka, "A book should crack the frozen ice within us". (or it isn't
worth reading, goes the unsaid).

What did make me suspicious was "the frozen ice", something I didn't think
Kafka being capable of writing, even in a letter.

What he did write, actually, was this:

»ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.«

Okay, something is always lost in translation, even when the person
responsible knows a little bit of the language (s)he's translating from,
but it should be rather something like this:

... a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

That's quite a difference, isn't it?

Would it not be a good resolution for the quite new year: only quote
something somebody has possibly written after a minimum of research?

(And yes, I think that even includes the difference between "'kinship'" and
"kinships".)

2016-01-01 19:21 GMT+01:00 Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>:

> I've just finished bingeing all nine episodes of the BBC Sherlock (second
> time through) in preparation for tonight's retro episode... which had me
> reflecting on the pleasures of "aha, now I see how it all fits together,"
> the central reward of detective/mystery fiction since Poe and Conan Doyle
> invented the genre.
>
> Much of Wilson's objection -- especially to Agatha Christie -- centers on
> the revelation-as-lecture: Holmes slowly retraces his lightning deductions
> for stolid Watson's benefit. Poirot gathers all the parties in the drawing
> room to offer multiple readings of events so far, pirouetting around each
> suspect, culminating with the least likely: 'it was timid benign Cousin
> Osbert all along!"
>
> Wilson deprecates that pleasure as a minor if not childish gratification
> -- a rhetorical stance parallel to that of Wood's structures on Pynchon I
> cited recently. We're supposed to absorb our soul-nourishing understanding
> slowly, gradually, via small revelations and low-key epiphanies. not in a
> junk-foody burst that rearranges everything at once. And that understanding
> should be primarily understanding of character -- psychological
> verisimilitude, relationships, human nature,
> family-friendship-romance-marriage -- rather than on the cheap, brightly
> colored Lego of whodunnit plot.
>
> AFAIC, storytelling preceded, and underlies, and has its values and
> virtues quite independent of, all the magnificent things done with long
> prose fiction since the 17th century, with Austenite-Flaubertian realism
> since the 19th. As it happens, I *like* spinach,, and eat it often. But I
> still say to hell with it when served a la Wilson or Wood or Forster, in an
> implicitly or explicitly prescriptive scheme for The Only Proper Aim of
> Fiction.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Kafka, "A book should crack the frozen ice within us". (or it isn't
>> worth reading, goes the unsaid).
>>
>> Edmund Wilson wrote "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" [famous
>> Christie mystery; look it up if spoilers do not bother you.) In Which
>> he argued that no mystery could come close
>> to being Literature because, in having to resolve the mystery, the
>> murder, no work could
>> REALLY build to resonant themes, could not overarch and subsume the
>> greatest themes for a powerful work of art.
>> (just think of GR, for one example of an overarching (ouch, pun not
>> intended but...) theme of a book full of deep themes which builds to
>> that ending which contains the beginning and so much more).
>>
>> Other Side: Crime, murder, is such an overarching (sorry. I like the
>> word. Stop reading if you don't) theme and natural metaphor of the
>> 20th and 21st Centuries that the best 'mysteries', crime novels can
>> embody themes naturally that lift them about your average 'literary'
>> novel if done right, the best, etc.
>>
>> Even though I am reading Hammet's Red Harvest today because I haven't
>> and because of one Plister's long-ago urging, I have sided with Wilson
>> most of my life (even when I read some crime writers steadily.)
>>
>> But Wilson was wrong on Kafka--"second-rate, wouldn't last". [paraphrase]
>>
>> And yes, of course, we can relax with a mystery even if we believe
>> Wilson, but that is not why I do (nor hope you who engage argue.) I
>> feel like I'm slumming; refurbishing my lucky privilege.
>>
>> Take it on.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Wow - thanks Ish - I’ve read both books - "Gone Girl" and "Girl on the
>> Train" (and Woman in White for that matter).  I can’t really say which I
>> enjoyed more -  "Gone Girl" is more twisty and surprising while "Girl on
>> the Train” is more literary (I suppose - more interesting structure and
>> character development,  great atmosphere,  what the reviewer said.)
>> >
>> > I’ve read other crime fiction focusing on women’s domestic scenes and
>> issues -   "Elizabeth is Missing” by Emma Healey  was pretty good this past
>> year (dementia)  as well as "Big, Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty from last
>> year.  There are others - “Trespass” by Rose Tremain might fit this
>> category.  The crimes are a bit different, the motives are different - I
>> enjoy the well written ones,  not those written for the sensational impact.
>> >
>> > The author is totally right about the True Crime genre (real life)
>> influencing the fiction (just to add to that thread).
>> >
>> > Bek
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Dec 30, 2015, at 4:53 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/29/crime-fiction-gone-girl-on-the-train-2015
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 5:57 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1099-_women-crime-writers_-dolores-hitchens-resurgence-continues-with-four-new-e-books
>> >>
>> >>
>> https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1097-loas-_women-crime-writers_-goes-to-the-movies-with-week-long-new-york-city-series
>> >>
>> >> http://blog.loa.org/2015/08/sarah-weinman-women-crime-writers.html
>> >>
>> >
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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