All the pretty hardcovers

[muckefuck]

Oh, curse that silly Nuphy! He had to go and tell me that the complete novels of Flann O'Brien (né Brian O'Nolan) were available on Amazon for only a few dollars more than At Swim-Two-Birds alone, so I went ahead and ordered them. To get free postage, I needed at least nine dollars more worth of book, so The messenger boy murders is winging its way to me as well. Assuming the translation of The poor mouth in the omnibus is the same excellent one I have in paperback, that'll free up a spare for passing on to niemandsrose and others.

During that brief interlude between dispensing with Joyce's Portrait of the artist as a young man and the arrival of the original Irish version of The poor mouth, I went traipsing through my library looking for some easy reading and uncovered Cormac McCarthy's All the pretty horses, which I'd picked for cheap up a little while ago. Unfortunately, the twists and turns of the Coen brothers' No country for old men had led me to expect something less conventional in plot than a Louis L'Amour western dressed up in a lit fic serape. (He even rides off into the sunset at the end, for fuck's sake!)

As far as the writing goes, I have to say I agree with almost everything B.R. Myers writes in his Reader's manifesto. (See the section on "'Muscular' prose".) Sorry, but overuse of polysyndetic coordination plus some claptrap about horses' souls is not enough to give your works "mythic" or "epic" resonance. If Faulkner were alive today, he would kick your ass so hard it would split open, then he'd kick it again from the inside before finally stomping your head. Then Hemingway would come to life and nail you in the balls for needlessly prolixity. But, as mollpeartree discovered with The Corrections, "if you do just sort of cruise along through the writing that way, pushing the broken metaphors and false imagery firmly and rapidly aside to corner of your eye like roadkill, it does end up having a certain amount of force and momentum and vividness."

At least he writes good dialogue. Especially at the beginning, his compact, oblique manner of immersing you in a narrative delivered mostly by means of such exchanges had me wondering if the man has read Rulfo. But then the star-crossed lovers plot takes centre stage, a predictable story arc emerges, and things go downhill culminating in a clumsily-inserted primer on early 20th-century Mexican history. At least it didn't take me long to read the whole thing and I did enjoy the bits of Spanish (anachronistic in places, I'm sure, but at least I don't have the same problem as Myers' with a Texas cowboy speaking the language fluently back in 1949) larded liberally throughout. No idea how annoying they might be for someone whose understanding of the language is nonexistent.

With that out of the way, I've decided my mind might be able to handle two non-English books at once, so I've slipped Vivir para contarla back into my bag. I was exactly half-finished when I set it down three months ago and hopefully I won't have to skim back too many pages to regain the thread. But speaking of mollpeartree and her Reading Confessional, I do hope she reminds us when she's about to start on Naipaul, since I've got my copy handy in order to follow along at home. In fact, I ended up absent-mindedly buying a second copy (see, niemandsrose, this would be the true value of LibraryThing for me; couple it with a smartphone and I'd never make that mistake again) which I offered to bunj so he can get into the action as well. It'll be like her own mini book club!

Comments

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

Have you read the review of the new O'Brien in The New Yorker? I went out and ordered the book on Amazon immediately.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Didn't see it--I peruse that magazine months late, if at all--but I've had At Swim-Two-Birds on my wishlist for some time now. The later novels sound worthwhile as well, but I'm not sure when I might get around to reading them.

[danbearnyc.livejournal.com]

I've wondered, but haven't researched, whether his columns for the Irish Times have been collected anywhere. (Or maybe I should reread the review?)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't think the article mentions that, but the Wikipedia article avers that they've been published in a series of collections, which I haven't attempted to see how difficult it would be to get a hold of them. (I'd be most interested in the early Gaelic-language ones, of course, but I imagine that there's amusement to be wrung from the lot.)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

The Naipaul is for the July 15th deadline. I would repost the original calendar in my lj, but I'm kind of hoping nobody notices I totally skipped reviewing the January book until I post it along with the February book review tomorrow. (Oh, oops.)

Sorry to hear that about McCarthy; I'd been kind of thinking about picking up No Country For Old Men on the theory that maybe it was something about the quality of the writing that made the movie so awesome.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

ATPH is the primary target of Myers' critique (largely because it carried off so much in the way of praise and literary awards) and it's apparently something of a departure for McCarthy; his previous Southern gothic novels are several shades more bleak and his later Westerns are supposedly much less romantic. I don't know if this also means that he varies his style somewhat as well, but I fear not.

Alright, so give us a heads-up on the Naipaul in June and we'll be sure to jump in with you.