Friday's recommendation shortlist

Dear all,

I'm considering various books to recommend you next Friday, but it's not easy for me to choose only one. I've decided to introduce you books that you probably don't know, as I assume that you have already read the famous ones that I really love or, at least, have some information about them (that is, from García Márquez to Benedetti, from Salinger to Foster Wallace, from Nabokov to Hemingway, from Galeano to Saramago, from Kundera to Rodoreda, from Baricco to Cortázar, from Safran Foer to Hornby...). So, I've shortlisted four authors that I assume you've probably never heard anything about, and I'd like you to vote for one of the four. So, the titles -and some information about them- are:

• April Fool's Day, by Josip Novakovich. 
• New York Times Review
• Information from his English Publisher

• Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, by Gina B. Nahai.
• Information from the author's web

• To Music, by Ketil Bjørnstad.
• Information from his Agency

•  Adam Resurrected, by Yoram Kaniuk.
• Information from Hebrew Literature Books 

So, we have a Croatian (who writes in English), an Iranian (who also writes in English), a Norwegian and an Hebrew. If you need more information about any of them, please let me know. I hope you'll help me to choose one, so I'll wait for your votes.

Aniol

Constructing a Magic Realist Narrative Worksheet

Hi all,

Here's my attempt to invent a story from the answers to the questions from last Friday:

Paul was a poor musician who lived in a small village, not far away from the Big Valley. He had the saddest of the souls, and in the Valley it has been raining since he was born, forty years ago. He was playing his flute when he first saw an old man. The old man had the saddest eyes he'd ever seen. Paul thought that he was the only sad soul in the Valley, so he was really amazed. Then he saw his wings, and he understood. He went home and told her wife: "I've just found my father, the one who flew away when I was just a kid". "Let's take him home and give him some food, then", answered the wife. And so they did. Paul was playing his flute when they arrived at the village. His music was much more moving than any other music anyone in the village had ever heard. Then, they saw Paul's father, with his sad eyes and his wings, and they began to wonder who he might be. Some said he was an angel, as only angels have such sad eyes. The priest didn't believe that. He said that Paul was also a very sad man, and he wasn't any angel, so it was nonsense to think that the old man might be one. He probably was a jinn, a very powerful spirit from the desert, who may make dreams come true just by staring at his wings. He said that it was obvious that Paul asked him to play the most moving of the musics when looking at him. The rest of the village agreed with him, and decided that they also should ask for their dreams to come true. Paul's father was very hungry, so he ate all the food that Paul's wife served him. Paul and his wife kept him in the kitchen, as he ate and ate without ending. Paul saw how all the food they had stored for the winter was being eaten by his father. But then the people from the village knocked at Paul's door and asked to see the old man. Paul didn't want his father to be shown, but he remembered his empty storage and agreed to let people look at him, charging everyone with a silver coin. When every single person in the village had asked for his dream to come true and, after that, went back home, eager to check if the priest was right about him, Paul began to play his flute again. It was during his play, just a few hours after having found his father that he saw him opening a window, spreading his wings and flying away.

I beg you not to be very severe about it. That was just an attempt, remember? Apart from the tough critics I suppose the text may receive, I guess that from it you may get my answers to the questions, right?

Aniol

The Famished Road, an astonishing read.

Well, here are my feelings about Ben Okri's The Famished Road:

Let’s make it clear form the beginning: The Famished Road is an astonishing read. Said to be a magic realism classic, though the author denies this label, the adventures of the spirit-child Azaro have just enchanted me. The plot may appear to be simple: our spirit-child hero has agreed with his spirit-companions to return to the world of spirits as soon as he is born –that is, to die–, as they can’t bear suffering and they hold their memories of their idyllic previous life, but after seeing his mother he changes his mind and decides to stay. His spirit companions try their best to make Azaro return –disease, hunger, violence…–, and his life goes by trying to survive. It is also important here to note that the name is not eventful, as it’s relation with Lazarus is more than evident. But The Famished Road can be read at very different levels, not only as a fantastic tale that may include many Yoruba mythology, but as a profound critic to African reality. We see disease, incomprehension, injustice, politics that seek votes through violence, threat and fear, alcoholism, creditors’ greed, superstition and many others, but we see all of it through the eyes of a child, which makes all of it even more unreal –or more real–. So, we get the feeling that the spirits, the gods or some amazing characters such as the blind man who can see, the Photographer or the unforgettable Madame Koto are much more real than the landlord, the family of the father –who supports a different party (The Party of the Rich)–, or the omnipresent thugs. The hallucinations that famine and disease cause in Azaro transports us to a fantastic world where life and despair holds their hand to a very different reality, but we understand that this other reality is much more palpable for Azaro than his hours in school or in the compound –that is, even commonplace may be seen as magical, and fantastic may be seen as common, and furthermore, thanks to it we see the world in all its strangeness–. Due to the pages of The Famished Road we understand that reality may be seen very differently than what we are used to.

What do you think about it? Did you had similar feelings when reading it?
Aniol

LETL: The Next Generation

Okay People,

Welcome.

As promised, here we are, finally... The Learning English Through Literature blog! As you will be able to see from the posts below by students over previous courses, this can indeed be a valuable and interesting way of keeping in touch and exchanging ideas about the texts we are looking at when your not in class, and start to miss each other... And me of course.

As a starter then, after you´ve accepted the invite and become a member of the blog, I´d like to to make a post, preferably before the class on Friday on your thoughts, if you have any... On The Famished Road. Comment on each others comments too if you like...

All right, so good luck getting to grips with it

And see you on Friday

Best

Oliver

The same but different

Hi girls and one boy

I’m sure the neo-noir or hardboiled literature is not my favourite style, but I think Mosley is a discovery, mainly because he is able to use a well known style with all noir cliché, but in a different way. Easy not only solves mysteries, he confronts danger in a cool way, but he is also an antihero, marginalized and no-prototype (in the novel he just would like some money to pay a mortgage and he aspire to live a quiet life in his new house and to work).
I also found interesting the way the author tries to enter deeply as much as possible to the negroes lifestyle in the 40s, by using the African-American slang and smoky descriptions of illegal jazz clubs to recreate the atmosphere of gangster and underground black word of LA.
Hwever, "I don't feel the book in my belly", so it remains out of my literary interests!

I also watched the movies … Maybe under the direction of Tarantino it could be transformed in something deeply different....

You find attached two links about Walter Mosley. I discovered that probably I like him more for his humor and his social compromise than for his novel. The first link is a manifest of his denounce of deep ability to live the life of marginalized people. The second is a video-speech pronounced after receiving a prize. He used a metaphoric parallelism between conventional medicine and beneficiency for poverty as the two evils. I completely agree with him…

Walter Mosley: who I’m?

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/31/mosley.who.am.i/

http://libertyhill.typepad.com/main/2010/05/walter-mosleys-remarks-the-lesser-evil-at-liberty-hill-2010-upton-sinclair-dinner.html

see you later

Federica

The Heart of the Matter and the Truth and Sin

Hi all,

What I like of Mr. Graham Greene is the way he describes the humanity values in life. Greene explains really well the absurd of being a "good man" (or a man of God) with all the responsabilities and all the insatisfaction. He doesn't use any strange word or any surrealist scene, he just describes with all the accuracy what Scobie is feeling in each particular moment of his adventure. Here, my extract of The Heart of the Matter", for instance, I loved how he describes the meaning of the word "truth" in such a war.

"...always at this region at about this time they began to sepak the truth at each other. The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being -it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human realtions kindness and ties are worth a thousand truths. He involved himself in what he always knew was a vain struggle to retain the lies."

Also, this extract is quite interesting, taking about sin:

" Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation."

On other hand, I think Greene constructs sentences using some creative comparisons that touched me. By the way, I didn't finish the book, but I can assure it wasn't because his vocabulary or his writing level. Also, I have to say I thought he wrote another kind of novels. With regard to what I dislike, I think I didn't enjoy so much the scenary where the action happens, sometimes got me bored.

In summary, for my taste, he is not Faulkner or Conrad, but he is okay.

Hopefully, I'll see you all tomorrow.

Many thanks,

Esther.

Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless mind

Hi all!

I attach you here the link of the film we have been talking about in our last class! The one we couldn't find the right translation in spanish.

"Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind" (Olvídate de mi) talks about love when you don't feel anything, and the wish of coming back to the lovely firsts days in love, when things are just perfect. Like the great Faulkner said: "Between grief and nothing I will take grief". There is a connection between their words and this film.

Michael Gondry directed "Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind", as Oliver explained us, with a great Philip Kaufman's script. A perfect vision about love and grief.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f34oYgz6bGs

A great choice...

We will see how is Mr. Greene...

Have a nice week!

Esther.

The Paris review: interview with Faulkner

Dear girls and one boy

What need a writer to write? Does he need security, economic freedom or peace?

What's the compromise of the writer with the society?

http://www.theparisreview.org/images/imgLogo.gif?1203436204

enjoy of the interview and see you later to discuss ....

cheers
Federica

Faulkner, so difficult and so poetic!

Hi girls and one boy,

Faulkner touched me! His language is too rich as well as too difficult for my vocabulary! Although I couldn't read and understand a lot, his writing is so incredible to capture my feel deeply! I loved reading some poetic description even when I didn't understand what, when, where it was happening the action.....Only Saramago is able to write a page, even a book without stopping!

But four weeks later it [the river] would look different from what it did now, and did: he (the old man) had recovered from his debauch, back in banks again, the Old Man, rippling placidly toward the sea, brown and rich as chocolate between levees whose inner faces were wrinkled as though in a frozen and aghast amazement, crowned with the rich green of summer in the willows; beyond them, sixty feet below, slick mules squatted against the broad pull of middle-busters in the richened soil which would not need to be planted, which would need only to be shown a cotton seed to sprout and make; there would be the symmetric miles of strong stalks by July, purple bloom in August, in September the black fields snowed over, spilled, the middles dragged smooth by the long sacks, the long black limber hands plucking, the hot air filled with the whine of ins, the September air then but now June air heavy with locust and (the towns) the smell of new paint and the sour smell of the paste which holds wall paper—the towns, the villages, the little lost wood landings on stilts on the inner face of the levee, the lower storeys bright and rank under the new paint and paper and even the marks on spile and post and tree of May’s raging water-height fading beneath each bright silver gust of summer’s loud and inconstant rain; there was a store at the levee’s lip, a few saddled and rope-bridled mules in the sleepy dust, a few dogs, a handful of negroes sitting on the steps beneath the chewing tobacco and malaria medicine signs, and three white men, one of them a deputy sheriff canvassing for votes to beat his superior (who had given him his job) in the August primary, all pausing to watch the skiff emerge from the glitter-glare of the afternoon water and approach the land, a woman carrying a child stepping out, then a man, a tall man who, approaching, proved to be dressed in a faded but recently washed and quite clean suit of penitentiary clothing, stopping in the dust where the mules dozed and watching with pale cold humorless eyes while the deputy sheriff was still making toward his armpit that gesture which everyone present realized was to have produced a pistol in one flashing motion for a considerable time while still nothing came of it.

I also appreciated some delicate insight when he is talking about women and love...
Wilbourne returned to the house. It was late, yet she had not begun to undress; again he mused, not on the adaptability of women to circumstance but on the ability of women to adapt the illicit, even the criminal, to a burgeoise standard of respectability as he watched her, barefoot, moving about the room, making those sutle alterations in the fixtures of the temporary abode as they even do in hotel rooms rented for but one night, producing from one of the boxes, which he had believed to contain only food, objectes from their apartment in Chicago which he not only did not know she still had but had forgotten they ever owned - the books they had acquired, a copper bowl, even the chintz cover from the ex-work bench, then from a cigarette carton which she had converted into a small receptacle resembling a coffin, they tiny figure of the old man, the Bad smell; he watched her set it on the mantel and stand looking at it for a time, musing too, then take up the bottle with the drink they had saved her and whit the ritualistic sobriety of a child playing, pour the wisky on to the hearth. "The Lares and Penates" she said....

Mr. Faulkner and The Wild Palms

The Wild Palms

Hi all,

First of all, I have to say I'm going to read this book in Spanish, because unfortunately my poor knowlege in English is miles away to understand Faulkners' vocabulary. That doesn't mean I don't like it, I suppose is just the opposite. What I like about him is his particular style to describe every situation with all those rich details. Also, I think his understanding about love and the relationships is quite peculiar and fascinating. Here, my extract from the book -which I won't finish, for sure- where Faulkner finds just the perfect words and uses the correct comparison -in my opinion- to show what's love and what happens when falls apart, Charlotte say:

"Yes. It's love. They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. I doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you're not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the one that dies. It's like the ocean: if you're no good, if you begin to make a bad smell in it, it just spews you up somewhere to die. You die anyway, but I had rather drown in the ocean than be urped up onto a strip of dead beach and be dried away by the sun into a little foul smear with no name to it, just this was for an epitaph. (...)".

So, this is about The Wild Palms, the chapters I enjoied more. With regard to The Old man story, for me more difficult even than the other one, I dislike the unending paragraphs, with no pauses and points. High level, high level...

The other point I didn't enjoy is that particular way to alternate the chapters of two different stories...that made me crazy to follow them. But, for sure, Faulker is one of the biggest.

Well, we will talk about it tomorrow!!

Esther.

LEVIATHAN

Hi all,

Leviathan is the first book I have read by Paul Auster and I was shocked by it because I was expecting a mistery novel. Nevertheless, it's like a puzzle about Benjamin Sachs' life, a sort of biography about him, so I was surprised by it.

My favourite part is the bit in which Benjamin moves with Lillian and little Maria: I couldn't stop reading because I think the relationship between them was very special, mainly in the beginning when they meet each other.

The excerpt I have selected is one that talks about the end of this relationship and how the child feels that she has been neglected by Benjamin, the first person in her life that has taken really care about her: "They have fallen in love, perhaps, but they had also upset the balance of the household, and little Maria wasn't the least bit happy with the change. Her mother had been given back to her, but she had lost something as well, and from her point of view this loss must have felt like the crumbling of a world. For nearly a month, she and Sachs have lived together in a kind of paradise. She had been the sole object of his affections, and he had coddled her and doted her on her in ways that no one else had ever done. Now, without a single world of warning, he had abandoned her".

See you tomorrow,

Neus

What I like and what I don't like of the Leviathan

Dear girls and one boy,

I’m not sure I like the Leviathan… too much emphasis in my opinion on contradictions, paradoxes, destiny and coincidences…

I really appreciated at the beginning of my reading the original point of narrative-observation, the voice off of Peter/Paul and I read anxiously, waiting for some answer of where is the clue.
However, I felt a little bit tired at the end by the repetitions of impossible coincidences, the personal signature given by Paul Auster to his novels, and by the exaggeration of some characters in their challenge to break down with the ’80 American Standard of life and thinking.
Anyway, I’d like to recognize that I found genial some part of the curious description of the Maria’s performances and the idea of the Phantom of Liberty is a really nice metaphor of the loneliness of a very little part of the American society in these years to cope with the Reagan epoch's way of life (¿The Leviathan …?).


…“In the past few months the Phantom of Liberty had been the subject of editorials and sermons. He had been discussed on call-in radio shows, caricatured in political cartoons, excoriated as a menace for the society, extolled as a man of the people. Phantom of Liberty T-shirts and buttons were on slae in novelty shops, jokes had begun to circulate and just last month two strippers in Chicago had presented an act in which the Staue of Liberty was gradually disrobed and then seduced by the Phantom. He was making a mark than he had ever thought possible”.

I don’t not very well Paul Auster, but I’d like to discuss with you what it means his fixed return to the “identity dilemma”…

see you tomorrow

federica

Leviathan and the destiny

Hi everyone,

I cannot choose an extract from Leviathan (maybe because I'm not impressed for his writing style), but I think this sentence, from the beginning of the book, can show perfectly Auster's themes: the fate, the coincidences and the destiny in lives, using as a stage New York and its history.

"Everything is connected to everything else, every story overlaps with every other story".

And this is somethings that is repeating in the rest of his novels, as "Moon Palace", which is definitely much better, in my opinion.

See you all on friday!

Esther.

MY CHOICE FOR "FRANNY AND ZOOEY"

Hi all!

Here I attach you the excerpt I have chosen from "Franny and Zooey": it talks about Franny break-down in the restaurant’s bathroom. I have liked it because, from my point of view, it reflects the anguish that everybody sometimes has felt (in fact I think that almost everybody has cried liked that in a bathroom).

“Abruptly, then, and very quickly, she went into the farthest and most anonymous-looking of the seven or eight enclosures -- which, by luck, didn't require a coin for entrance -- closed the door behind her, and, with some little difficulty, manipulated the bolt to a locked position. Without any apparent regard to the suchness of her environment, she sat down. She brought her knees together very firmly, as if to make herself a smaller, more compact unit. Then she placed her hands, vertically, over her eyes and pressed the heels hard, as though to paralyze the optic nerve and drown all images into a voidlike black. Her extended fingers, though trembling, or because they were trembling, looked oddly graceful and pretty. She held that tense, almost fetal position for a suspensory moment -- then broke down. She cried for fully five minutes”.

See you on Friday,

Neus

Franny and Zooey

Hi all!

After read the first part of Franny and Zooey, I post this first observation: "who is a good poet?" It made me think about what people expect about poets, what kind of poet reminds in our minds and why.

Franny said: "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head an leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem, for haven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings".

All the best for everyone!

Esther.

Joining the blogg

Hi everybody.

I've just joined the blogg and I'll wite something when I have read something of "Franny and Zooey".

But, for the moment I just want to say I'm having fun throuhg literature with all of you and Oliver.

See you soon.

carolina

EXCERPT SELECTED FROM "HEART OF DARKNESS"

Hi all,

This is the excerpt that I have selected from Heart of darkness written by Joseph Conrad: I have liked because I think that it shows how white men became powerful and rich by abusing black men. For many years in many parts from Africa human rights were not respected and from my point of view these lines reflect the cruelty from that time. I also have liked because it shows how some people decide to join the powerful party in order to gain some power:

‘A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings’.

See you on friday,

Neus

New Term - New Books

Hi all,

Added the new books. So now's the time to get posting. Don't forget - one page you like/don't like/find interesting - whatever - with a short commentary, explaining why.

Look forward to reading them,

Best,

Oliver

Making The Road....

Hi girls and one guy

here an interesting link about the movie.... before meeting to see it ...

http://www.notodotv.com/videos/recientes/4257/0/0/John_Hillcoat/Making_of_The_Road

cheers
federica

Hi all,

Here's the trailer to the recent film adaptation of The Road (the star-studded Sitges premiere of which I attended. Oh, yes, very sophisticated...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbLgszfXTAY

See what you think.

Incidentally I think it must be serendipity - this week every where I look there are posters for this film!

See you Friday,

Oliver

The road... an interesting information

Hi to everybody

I attach an interesting commentaire about MacCarthy.... I was positevely surprised to find this ....

Two years ago I participated to the first Resilience Congress titled: "expect the unexpected"....part of the discussion was on the relationships between science and art....

http://rs.resalliance.org/2010/01/19/cormac-mccarthy-and-santa-fe-institute/

cheers
federica

To know more about the author ...

Hi,

You will find some more information about Ben Okri in : http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth82

Ben Okri is son of the Nigerian oral and writen tradition, that has major writers and fine poets like Wole Soyinka (Nobel for Literature on with The interpreter) and Igbo. They used Yoruba tradition in their writing but they are also writers of the civil war, the poverty and the relationships between western World and Africa. Particularly, Ben Okri is able to capture images of misery and magical poetry in the real world of every day.

The book I have decided to present is "Dangerous Love"

This is the story of Omovo, an office worker and artist, who lives with his father and step-mother. In the communal world of the compound, Omovo has both friends and enemies, but most importantly there is Ifeyinwa, a beautiful married woman whom he loves with a passion

Prizes won:
1987 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa region). 1987 Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. 1988 Guardian Fiction Award (shortlist) Stars of the New Curfew. 1991 Booker Prize for Fiction. 1993 Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize. 1994 Premio Grinzane Cavour. 1995 Crystal Award (World Economic Forum) 2000 Premio Palmi. 2001 OBE


Author details available also at:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/okri.htmhttp:/
www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/author/okri/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/1391193.stm

Ben okri interview

Hi girls and one boy,

this week I'll present the Ben Okri's book "Dangerous love". He his one of my favourite authors and I think he his a wonderful example of the African niger literature, a mixture of realism and magic.
First of all, I'd like to give you some information of the author. The best way for knowing a writer is asking him what does it mean writing for him...
listen to his way of thinking ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orNNO90R-JI&feature=related

cheers
federica

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Hi all,

I attach you two parts from the film "Blade Runner" based on the novel "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" written by Philip K. Dick.

In the first part, Rick Deckard meets Rachael. He apllies her an empathy test (known as Voigt-Kampff test) in order to know if she is an android.

The second part is from the last part of the movie and it is one of the most famous parts: it's an speech made by an android called Roy who is facing death. Nevertheless, it's not based on the novel.

Finally, I attach the pages that I have selected from the book.




I hope you will enjoy them. See you on friday,

Neus