Shit-stirring provocation (was Women Crime Writers)

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks, Jochen. Now it is better known and exact.



On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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