the 'Send a Writer to Devil's Island' thread

[mangaman]

Absolutely: brilliantly written and wildly entertaining too. One of my favourite books. Heart of a Dog is also excellent. Adrian can't have Dostoevsky sent away either. Come on, man, get a grip! Gogol, on the other hand, I would happily have exiled from humanity: Dead Souls is pretty much as interesting as it sounds, and it will tempt you even less when I tell you that it's a satire on the pre-Soviet Russian rural class structure. I'm sure it was very funny at the time...

The only contemporary writer I want sent away is Paul Auster, because he is the epitome of the pretentious, self-regarding New York writer, who thinks he is producing work of the style and callibre of Calvino or Perec, and has the most sycophantic (also New York) fans and reviewers who keep telling him how brilliant he is, but in fact he is an annoyingly, staggeringly bad writer. I am sure there are equivalents in every major city...

Come, come FM : Gogol is brilliant.

Dead Souls is fantastic as are his short stories and "The Government Inspector".

A far more interesting writer than Dostoevsky I think.

Nabokov's book about Gogol is well worth a read, especially as it hints at Nabokov's own thinking about his writing.

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

I thought Dead Souls was funny and quite a light read. I've not read The Government Inspector but have a recording of the play, The Gamblers which is very good.

Gogol seems much more accessible than other better known Russian authors and he satirises class and pretension as well as Wilde.

I'll look out for Nabokov's book!

 

[smutchin]

I'm happy to join in with the apparent consensus to get rid of Thomas Hardy. And you can put DH Lawrence on the boat with him.`

But George Eliot? Nooooo! Middlemarch is exquisite, one of my all time favourite novels. I can't let you get rid of her.

d.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

That American McGonagal, Walt Whitman, what a let down. You really shouldn't have bothered - Alcatraz for you!

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Come, come FM : Gogol is brilliant.

So everyone tells me. I just can't seem to like him. And I'm a serious fan of Russian literature.

 

[slowmotion]

I'm just a partial fan.

[media]
]View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2JVOrAZGU[/media]

 

[dellzeqq]

That American McGonagal, Walt Whitman, what a let down. You really shouldn't have bothered - Alcatraz for you!

nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

[Yellow Fang]

I'm happy to join in with the apparent consensus to get rid of Thomas Hardy. And you can put DH Lawrence on the boat with him.`

I am currently reading a bit of Thomas Hardy. He's a difficult read due to all the archaic vocabulary, obscure latinate words and ecclesiastical, classical and historical references. Other than that it's quite good, at least in parts. I like his descriptions of daily, rural life. It's like stepping back in time 100 years. His characters seem very realistic. I gather he's a bit of a miseryguts, so I may change my opinion by the end of the book, but Conrad, Orwell and Steinbeck are all miseryguts to name but three and they're not on the boat.

 

[mangaman]

I thought Dead Souls was funny and quite a light read. I've not read The Government Inspector but have a recording of the play, The Gamblers which is very good.

Gogol seems much more accessible than other better known Russian authors and he satirises class and pretension as well as Wilde.

I'll look out for Nabokov's book!

Here's a link - it's worth it!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikolai-Gog...1201/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338360560&sr=8-2

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

Here's a link - it's worth it!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikolai-Gog...1201/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1338360560&sr=8-2

Thanks for that, I've just ordered it (together with Will Fotheringham's biography of Merckx)!

 

[Profpointy]

I know this will be herressy and all, but Shakespere. Not for the stories or anything, but purely for having to decode what the hell he was saying!
We did The Merchant Of Venice as well as Romeo And Juliet at school, and you couldn't just sit down and idly read it unless you happened to have a Ye Olde English dictionary to hand

Noooooo !
The language is the magic of it. Just the opening chorus of Henry V - done extremely well on film by Jacobi in Ken Brannagh's version (goes downhill a bit after mind). People are still paying good money to see his plays for a reason. However, they're for putting on stage, not for reading out in class - which is admitedly a bit on the dull side.

I only did English to O-level, and we did Midsummer Night's Dream, and the modern play "A man for all seasons" which is about Thomas More. The latter is an excellent play (albeit a mediocre film with Paul Scoffield) but after a year I was truly sick of it. After a year of The Dream, despite being read out in class, I was still seeing little things I'd missed in nearly every line.

Hywel

 

[Profpointy]

and my recommendation "Shrimp and the Anemone" by LP Hartley - or Long Player Hartley in full.What a bore ! Suffered that for my last year of O-level.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Noooooo !
The language is the magic of it. Just the opening chorus of Henry V - done extremely well on film by Jacobi in Ken Brannagh's version (goes downhill a bit after mind). People are still paying good money to see his plays for a reason. However, they're for putting on stage, not for reading out in class - which is admitedly a bit on the dull side.

I only did English to O-level, and we did Midsummer Night's Dream, and the modern play "A man for all seasons" which is about Thomas More. The latter is an excellent play (albeit a mediocre film with Paul Scoffield) but after a year I was truly sick of it. After a year of The Dream, despite being read out in class, I was still seeing little things I'd missed in nearly every line.

Hywel

Oh, alright then. I must admit that my reasons for it being difficult to understand sometimes was, perhaps alittle crass, considering our language has changed since then.

 

[Scilly Suffolk]

...albeit a mediocre film with Paul Scoffield...

What? The performance for which he received a BAFTA and an Academy Award? That mediocre film?

 

[Profpointy]

What? The performance for which he received a BAFTA and an Academy Award? That mediocre film?

Yes, that's the one :-) . Basically the play is dramitically much more exciting by "alienation" of having "the Common Man" as a recurring chorus like character who drops in and out of the action and directly addresses the audience - brilliantly done in the play. This is more or less completely cut from the film which conventional, worthy and frankly a bit plodding. Scofield is Ok to be fair, but worthy and plodding wouldn't be unduly harsh either. Maybe nothing much else came out that year. Mind you, it was 35 years ago and I perhaps wasn't the literaray sophisticate I am today so maybe I missed something