I'm going to see the doctor in a minute, so might have to cut this off suddenly.
When I visited Devon this summer, I came back to Wales with a number of books, some of which had long been in my possession, some from the mouldering spare room of the house where I grew up, and some from the local bookshop. I will list those books here:
The Lonely Doll, Dare Wright
The Little One, Dare Wright
Days Between Stations, Steve Erickson
The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe
Confucianism and Taoism, Professor R. K. Douglas
On a Chinese Screen, W. Somerst Maugham
Allan and the Ice Gods, H. Rider Haggard
The Complete Works of D. T. Suzuki
The Western Lands, William S. Burroughs
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
Selected Stories, Anton Chekhov
Melmoth the Wanderer, Charles Maturin
The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany
Tea Life, Tea Mind, Sen Soshitsu
Some, but not all, of these, I have read before. At least one of them I have started but never finished.
Also, as a result of a conversation that took place while I was in Devon, I now have in my possession a copy of an art book – a collection of art prints – called Visions, with an introduction by Walter Hopps, which I remember from my childhood, and which left a strong impression on my young imagination, directly influencing, I believe, at least one of my stories ('The Fairy Killer').
I list these here because it's pleasant simply to make lists of books, and also, perhaps, as a small indication of the kind of competition that other books are up against in my reading, by which I mean, books that have been given me by people kindly trying to enrich my life. I'm a slow reader, and the list of books I am currently reading, of books I am theoretically about to read, and books I would some day like to read, are quite long, very long and unfeasibly long, respectively.
I am currently reading, amongst other things, the following:
Journey to the West, author unknown
The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman
The Penguin Anthology of Japanese Literature
The Bhagavad Gita
Melmoth the Wanderer (mentioned above, re-reading)
There are really so many that I'm reading that I've even forgotten many of them. Some I started years back, and never finished, so that I might have to start again at the beginning, such as Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's Sasameyuki, which I have already read in translation.
Books I have recently finished include Ice by Anna Kavan, Beroul's The Romance of Tristan and Tea Life, Tea Mind by Sen Soshitsu.
Books I would like to read… I would actually like to try and make a list. Some of these books will be ones that I actually possess, but still haven't got round to. Some will be books I have simply been dreaming of for a long time. I'll make a brief and haphazard essay at a list below, which I may or may not add to as the mood takes me:
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
Inferno, August Strindberg
Our Town, Thornton Wilder
Transformation, Mary Shelley
Dogura Magura, Yumeno Kyuusaku
虚無への供物 (Kyomu e no Kumotsu), 中井英夫 (Nakai Hideo)
The Secret Glory, Arthur Machen
Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote (or 'Cuppatea', as I call him)
Reflections in a Golden Eye, Carson McCullers
The Death of Ivan Illych, Leo Tolstoy
Hmmm, looks like I've got to get ready to see the doctor. Maybe more later. If you have any recommendations, or if you've lent or given me a book and wish to jog my memory, or recommended me a book before and wish to jog my memory, please feel free to use the 'comment' function.
Peter A Leonard writes:
Ah, I love book lists!What about a list of the books that should have been written, but weren’t? Very Borgesian, eh?“The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books.” Borges (November 1941).So, to commence:“A New Refutation of Q. S. Crisp” by Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL – Here Darwin’s Rottweiler chews the ragged bone of Quentin S Crisp’s existentialist angst, proving in the process that none of his readers actually exist, and that he – Dawkins that is – is in reality the blind watchmaker.“The Unpublished History of Cimmerian” from the manuscript of Robert E Howard – Here Howard gives us in note form a three thousand page history of Cimmeria – after reading this, you will more easily understand why Conan suffered from such “gigantic melancholies”“Dublin Days” by James Joyce – Here moving way beyond the territory of “Finnegan’s wake” Joyce shows us that “there is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless” . Morgan Murray is dead (just) and this thirty-five thousand page novel encapsulates the first half-an-hour of his death. At least three readers of this novel have lost the will to live, but I’m the fourth which goes to prove I’ll read anything and remain standing.“Life with a Shite” by Nora Barnacle Joyce (as told to J. Ross) – Here, to coincide with the launch of Joyce’s new blockbuster, is the memoir of his much-disparaged wife, a dowdy illiterate who couldn’t even cook, but was extremely adept at the terrifying double somersault of love. Get the dirt of Joyce here, straight from the horse’s mouth (so to speak).“A New View of Existence” by Pope Alexander XXXVII – Here the holy father questions the existence of Richard Dawkins. “I foresee”, he says “that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon only bandits and soldiers will be left.” Dawkins, he claims, is the opium dream of Quentin S Crisp – as are most of us, probably. This is a must read.And so it goes on. But enough for now.All the best.:jester:
About to have lunch and carry out certain odious?… no, that’s not the word… damn, I’ve lost it, word relating to heavy resposibility, adjective… onerous – that’s the one – certain onerous tasks.Thanks for the Borgesian list. More later.
Peter A Leonard writes:
Quentin, Joking aside, I first read “The Death of Ivan Illych, Leo Tolstoy” when I was thirteen and, it had the most profound impact on me. I have read it on several ocassions since, but still consider it a work of genius. :jester:
Peter A Leonard writes:
Actually this is more what I had in mind for books that should have been written:It was a remarkable find, we are all agreed on that much, if nothing else. That there should be an H. P. Lovecraft manuscript still undiscovered, still unpublished, defies logic – and yet that is precisely what we have here. “The Love Child of Hazel Heaton Van Itty” would appear to be a later work, composed between the years 1935 and 1937 when Lovecraft died. It is (for Lovecraft) a simple tale where ambiguity is amply intimated by the superfluous use of many redundant adjectives. It is a tale in which the supernatural appears to take second place to extreme (and perhaps demonic) sexuality – much of the content anticipating T H Lawrence’s “Lady C” and Miller’s “Tropic of Capricorn”. Could the content and format of this work serve to explain why it never found a publisher? In considering the character James Waite Dodd one is reminded of Arthur Jermyn (obviously) the poet and scholar who set fire to himself after examining a boxed object from Africa. Arthur is most obviously influenced by the actions of his father, Sir Alfred Jermyn, who, having joined Barnum & Bailey’s Circus, was killed by a gorilla with whom he was boxing. Both men were inexplicably destroyed by forces from out of the dark continent.Thus we are not surprised by James W Dodd’s family tree, nor his abnormally linked trinity with his twin sister and older brother. That they possess a shared soul and suffer dissolution in the same nano-second, is a commonplace. It is in the character of Hazel, poignant and embittered, that the reader experiences, finally, unexpectedly the twin emotions of ambiguity and horror.For Hazel the grayness and sameness of life is too much; she begins to take certain drugs to alleviate life’s monotony and to enhance her waking dreams of the high walled city of Zothupitt. She can’t take the grind of daily life, so increases the dosage of these esoteric narcotics. Soon ecstasy finds her, and she slips into the infinity of crystal oblivion where:“What remains to be told is easy if bacchanalian in the oddness of its impulses. We all know those nights when winds from unknown spaces whirled us irresistibly into limitless vacua beyond all thought and entity. Perceptions of the most maddeningly untransmissable sort thronged upon her. Viscous things clawed through. And in realms of greater remoteness she did conceive of a child.”So Hazel in her drug-dream is dream-raped by some sticky clammy mass “of yet “incalculable density”, with multiple genitalia of “quite analogous qualities in a non-material sphere”.We, the reader, are left to watch as drugs, dissipation, and nervous overstrain take their toll, until finally, in the deep-breathing silence of Christmas day a child is born – born in that desolate, pitch-black garret, under the eaves with the snow falling.Goody Brown helped deliver the infant with the help of Tony Bear. Them it was taught poor Hazel the secret of sinister breathing. Them it was worshiped “the ghastly and flexible face, as it shone bodiless, luminous and stark in the blackness”. To these two men, and to these alone was revealed “the truth behind those innermost and forbidden caverns of nightmare”.Finally, we the readers, struggle away from this book as if cursed. We feel slimy enormous and bloated with the promises of Goody Brown and Bear. We look away from the thin shadow, slowly writhing, of the child – “writhing as if in play with demons” – while Hazel’s mindless screams echo and echo through that hideous night.Sorry, couldn’t resist it.Kindest regards.:jester:
with multiple genitalia of “quite analogous qualities in a non-material sphere”.Indeed. Quentin, Joking aside, I first read “The Death of Ivan Illych, Leo Tolstoy” when I was thirteen and, it had the most profound impact on me.
I have read it on several ocassions since, but still consider it a work of genius.I’ve had recommendations from a number of directions. I believe it’s a particular favourite of someone without whom I would never have been inflicted upon the world. I also have an actual copy of the book, in a box downstairs, waiting to feel my fingers between its pages.“A New Refutation of Q. S. Crisp” by Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL – Here Darwin’s Rottweiler chews the ragged bone of Quentin S Crisp’s existentialist angst, proving in the process that none of his readers actually exist, and that he – Dawkins that is – is in reality the blind watchmaker.I think I might like my existence being refuted, as long as the physical was refuted along with any other aspects. It would be messy if I had to leave the physical behind when all else had been disposed of.Well, I must keep this brief, as I have a few things on at the moment,The incalculably dense, Quentin S. Crisp.
Robin Davies writes:I think you might enjoy The Course Of The Heart by M. John Harrison.
The Ice Monkey, by the same author, is one of my favourite collections of short fiction ever, so you could be right. I keep meaning to read more Harrison, actually, although for some reason, I don’t know that title. I shall look it up.