tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-113589862024-02-08T08:35:58.708-05:00Stories to GoShort stories for your earsScoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.comBlogger195125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1149095570861096022006-05-31T12:08:00.000-05:002006-05-31T12:13:45.566-05:00All bound for Mu-Mu Land<span style="color:#ff6600;">Hi, anyone who might stumble here in late May and early June, 2006! We're traveling the land in our ice cream van, just like those Justified Ancients, and we wanted to let you know that on the way to your town our posts will be meager if not downright nonexistent. But if we have any fans left--hold on; we promise to be back to butcher a few more classics soon. Thanks for being there and enjoy the silence...</span><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;">Love,</span><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6600;"><strong>Your Faithful Editors</strong></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147458174452626402006-05-26T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-24T21:38:53.460-05:00"Love" by William Maxwell<span style="color:#cc9933;">Read by Scoot. Time 7:24. Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147458104189720472006-05-23T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-22T10:31:42.780-05:00"The History of a Good Warm Watch Coat" by Laurence Sterne<span style="color:#ff6600;">Read by Scoot. Time 30:18. Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147457989242389972006-05-20T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-22T10:31:22.243-05:00"Looking for a Rain God" by Bessie Head<span style="color:#999900;">Read by Scoot. Time 9:58. Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147457886093161992006-05-17T08:00:00.000-05:002008-12-09T03:18:38.093-05:00"The Explosion in the Parlor" by Bai Xiao Yi<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bRuk3b5EfPo/Rf35PTgxEGI/AAAAAAAAAA0/I_Y83pYBIR4/s1600-h/stockroom.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5043461199055884386" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_bRuk3b5EfPo/Rf35PTgxEGI/AAAAAAAAAA0/I_Y83pYBIR4/s200/stockroom.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><span style="color:#993300;">Read by Scoot. Time 2:32. Details to come...</span> </div><br /><div></div><br /><div><br /></div><span style="color:#993300;"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147457786863217432006-05-14T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-13T09:53:06.110-05:00"The Mountain of Signs" by Antonin Artaud<span style="color:#006600;">Read by Scoot. Time 9:37. Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147050213447949382006-05-11T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-12T13:24:43.660-05:00"Lenten Loves" by Henri Murger<span style="color:#999900;">Read by Jonathan Strong. Time 14:14. </span><br /><span style="color:#999900;"></span><br /><span style="color:#999900;">Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1147050037928257772006-05-08T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-07T20:00:37.930-05:00"On the Neverending Terrace" by Anna Maria Ortese<span style="color:#663300;">Read by Scoot. Time 14:12.</span><br /><span style="color:#663300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#663300;">Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1146873898912576772006-05-05T08:00:00.000-05:002006-05-05T19:06:22.413-05:00"The Warm" by Robert Sheckley<span style="color:#333300;">Read by Scoot. Time 19:33.</span><br /><span style="color:#333300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#333300;">Details to come...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1146241285307603512006-05-02T08:00:00.000-05:002007-03-18T21:07:16.587-05:00"Cat's Eye" by Luisa Valenzuela<span style="color:#ff0000;">Woman or she-beast? Were-panther or simply a modern, empowered Argentine female... we leave conclusions up to the reader regarding this surreal drama. Read by Scoot. Translated by Christopher Leland. Time 8:37.<br /><br />Her works have been compared to the sinuous national dance of her native country, the tango. And like a tango-dancer, Luisa Valenzuela has teased and taunted the readers of her politically charged and confrontative stories and novels, which include <em>Bedside Manners</em> and <em>The Lizard's Tail</em>. We're now going to say those two words we've almost grown to despise: "Magic Realism." OK, she's Latin American and she owes her debts to Garcia-Marquez, but is this the only way to characterize this type of writing which has been around at least since the days of Ovid? Since Valenzuela seems to live and teach permanently in the United States these days, we can guess what she thinks of modern-day Buenos Aires and the chances a woman and a writer has there. Then again, maybe it's just that the money is better.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1146240422805223232006-04-29T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-28T11:07:02.826-05:00"An Act of Reparation" by Sylvia Townsend Warner<span style="color:#cc9933;">New wife and old wife meet and it all ends up in a tale of ox-tail soup and a subtle sort of revenge. What the husband doesn't know... well, perhaps he will never find out. Read by Scoot. Time 23:59.</span><br /><span style="color:#cc9933;"></span><br /><span style="color:#cc9933;">Pity poor Sylvia. Gangly, bean-pole, four-eyed Sylvia, sent home from kindergarten and home-schooled by a mother who may have really resented her. All set to go to Germany in 1914 to study with Arnold Schoenberg, until World War I had to go and quash her dream to be a composer. The man she loved was over two decades older than her--and married. Her other lover, a "poetess," died too soon of breast cancer. And then there were the critics. But pity not poor Sylvia! She did have a successful literary life, touching upon Bloomsbury and the "Chaldon school," and her stories would be published in the <em>New Yorker</em> and other magazines for over forty years. She wrote several biographies, helped prepare books on English church music and travel guides, was active in the Communist party when that was still a good and brave thing to do, and collaborated with her longtime partner, Valentine Ackland, on volumes of poetry. In the quiet villages of Dorset and Somerset she created quite a stir with her novels and ended happily mixed with the ashes of Valentine, so it sounds like her pains were worth it.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1146056545391768802006-04-26T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-28T10:45:33.756-05:00"The Glow-Worm" by Frederic Prokosch<span style="color:#993300;">The celebrated Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova comes to visit Texas in the early twentieth century and leaves a lasting impression on a young boy and his family. The dancer ignites something in the lad which he perhaps has not realized before, a longing to visit "realms and passions immeasurably remote from Austin." Read by Scoot. Time 5:56.</span><br /><span style="color:#993300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#993300;">There is a long line of books on a shelf in our study, all by Frederic Proksoch, and most all but forgotten today, in a world of chick-lit and manly thrillers. But once upon a time Mr. Prokosch made a huge splash with his first novel, <em>The Asiatics</em>, in 1935, and managed to carve out a literary career for the next several decades as he traveled the globe, until his death in France in 1989. He invented what has been termed the "geographic novel," and landscape does indeed often play a bigger role in his works than human characters. Which is to say that they are truly sui generis, some of them both sloppy and overwritten, but most of them brilliant in their own peculiar ways. Interestingly, considering today's news of plagiarizing novelists and fake memorists, Prokosch ended his days tainted with the discovery that he had forged poetry volumes here and there and probably invented much of what he relates in his still beautifully composed last book, the autobiography of sorts, <em>Voices</em> (1983). Which is why we're including this vignette here: because he never wrote short stories, and because many critics considered the chapters of this last book to be little fictions--ironically, the one we present here might be among the most truthful of the whole book. Since he is our favorite "pet author," we could go on and on here, but advise you instead to start scouring the usual places for those foxed and faded copies of his books which can still be found.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1145893656510077712006-04-23T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-28T11:23:39.796-05:00"At the River" by Patricia Grace<span style="color:#003333;">Amongst the many Maori stories we have posted, we still haven't had featured one about eel-hunting, and so we felt compelled to introduce to you this sweetly sad episode set most likely in the New Zealand highlands. The last days of a tribal elder cause his wife and descendents to rethink their attitudes not only to eel-hunting, but to life. Read by Scoot. Time 10:01.<br /><br />Here's the entire Wikipedia entry about author Patricia Grace: "Patricia Grace </span><a title="Queen's Service Order" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen"><span style="color:#003333;">QSO</span></a><span style="color:#003333;"> (born in </span><a title="Wellington" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington"><span style="color:#003333;">Wellington</span></a><span style="color:#003333;">, </span><a title="New Zealand" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand"><span style="color:#003333;">New Zealand</span></a><span style="color:#003333;"> in </span><a title="1937" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937"><span style="color:#003333;">1937</span></a><span style="color:#003333;">) is a notable </span><a title="Maori" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maori"><span style="color:#003333;">Māori</span></a><span style="color:#003333;"> writer of novels, short stories, and children's books. She currently lives in Hongoeka Bay, </span><a title="Plimmerton" style="BORDER-BOTTOM-STYLE: groove" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimmerton"><span style="color:#003333;">Plimmerton</span></a><span style="color:#003333;">." From an external link at that venerable site, we see that she has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Wellington in Victoria. (The "QSO" means "Queen's Service Order," a badge of merit for public servcie, by the way.) And elsewhere they say that Plimmerton, where Grace now lives, is quite lovely. Anyone have anything else to add?</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1145537545790019742006-04-20T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-20T07:53:19.703-05:00"The New Melusine" by Johann Goethe<span style="color:#660000;">What to do with a wife who is nearly perfect but has the bad habit of occasionally becoming as small as an elf? In this self-contained fairy tale from the unfairy tale <em>Wilhelm Meister's Travels</em>, the narrator discovers that good things sometimes have hidden liabilities. Probably not surprised, are you? Translated from the German by Gertude C. Schwebell. Read by Jonathan Strong. Time 31:12.<br /><br />Novelist, dramatist, poet, politician, painter, philosopher, scientist... the list goes on and on for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German polymath and iconoclast who lived from 1749 to 1832. Just as varied were the movements Goethe was associated with: the Enlightenment, Romanticism, <em>Sturm und Drang</em>, and <em>Empfindsamkeit</em> (Sensibility). His thoughts and his works would go on to influence all the European arts for over a century, and may still be influencing us today. Even Darwin owed him a debt! Imagine all that, cribbed from just the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry. We are simply exhausted thinking about everything else we don't have time or space to include here...</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142869987314479262006-04-17T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-16T19:10:02.186-05:00"Three-Minute Novel" by Heinrich Mann<span style="color:#663333;">Well, three minutes to read on the page, perhaps, but three times that to read aloud. Here we have a complete <em>bildungsroman</em> in just a few pages, with the requisite gambling and fatal romance. Translated by Victor Lange. Read by Jonathan Strong. Time 9:46.</span><br /><span style="color:#663333;"></span><br /><span style="color:#663333;">Overshadowed by his much more famous brother Thomas, Heinrich Mann nevertheless had a substantial literary career of his own. Like his younger brother, he ended up in Los Angeles because of the Nazis and continued to write novels which dealt with German society and class differences there. His dates are 1871 to 1950. We wish we could think of something more exciting to say about him here, but we can't. Maybe there was a reason he was the less successful brother.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142870841385573262006-04-14T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-14T11:10:27.276-05:00"The Fall of the Roman Empire" by Haruki Murakami<span style="color:#990000;">Is this narrator crazy? you might ask, and we wish we had a ready answer for you. Maybe he's just a little... obsessive, and a little muddled when it comes to mixing up history and the weather and his girlfriend's sexual particularities. And maybe neither his diary nor his memory is telling him the truth. Translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum. Read by Scoot. Time 10:35.</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#990000;">We like this little anecdote about the popularity of Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel, <em>Norwegian Wood</em>: A big bestseller in Japan, it was sold in two volumes packaged together, one volume green, the other red. Devoted fans would dress in colors to match their preferred volume. Imagine the streetgang warfare. We saw him give a lecture once in America, and it was supremely boring--he didn't even read any fiction! (But it must be admitted that at that point his English was still pretty uncertain.) Well, we concede that his fiction might be a lot more interesting, and you might want to begin with the stories collected in <em>The Elephant Vanishes</em> (including the one here) or a novel like <em>Kafka on the Shore</em> or <em>Sputnik Sweetheart</em>. At the very least, they're good titles!</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"></span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142867650025868342006-04-11T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-10T20:54:48.436-05:00"The Angel" by Hans Christian Anderson<span style="color:#330000;">Flying to heaven with a recently deceased child in his arms, an angel conveys to the child touching secrets and profound wisdom. A discarded plant is rescued, as well--and all ends happily, we guess--but it's still so depressing! Translated by E. V. Lucas & H. B. Paull. Read by Scoot. Time 6:04.</span><br /><span style="color:#330000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#330000;">Maybe we're not supposed to be praising all things Danish these days, and after all he does have that middle name guaranteed to provoke some people, yet this is one writer whose works still live and affect lives. Anderson was the unschooled and unhappy child of desperately poor and alcoholic parents in Odense, Denmark--yet he had the wits and imagination to rise above his surroundings and captivate his countrymen and then the world with his various writings, most especially his original fairy tales which still are read nightly to children everywhere. Despite the fact that 2005 saw great celebrations upon the bicentennial of his birth, there are still very melancholy aspects to this "ugly duckling's" life--which one is welcome read about elsewhere.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142868921079889792006-04-08T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-10T09:33:15.970-05:00"Aeronautics" by Harry Crosby<span style="color:#cc0000;">Surrealism's somewhat heavy hand certainly shows in this stream-of-whacked-out-consciousness escapade from playboy poet Harry Crosby, first published in the famous modernist magazine <em>transition</em>. The litany of bizarre visions all ends, not unsurprisingly for those who know their Crosby, in awe of the mighty power of the sun. Read by Scoot. Time 7:16.</span><br /><span style="color:#cc0000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#cc0000;">Those who have read Geoffrey Wolfe's bestselling biography of Harry Grew Crosby know already the short, sweet facts of his life: escape from moneyed but straightlaced Boston Brahmins, flight to bohemian paradise with flighty wife, founding of press to publicize his work and that of other American ex-pats, double-suicide with someone not his wife. But Crosby is also an interesting writer if taken in small doses, and his diaries especially reveal the heady excitement and glamour of those far-off halcyon days of Paris in the 1920's. What other dilettante could boast that T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and D. H. Lawrence all endorsed his work? (Well, sure, there were <em>some</em> literary kickbacks via the Black Sun Press.) If we had the money and an opium habit, Harry Crosby would be our role-model, too.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142869573600371392006-04-05T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-04T22:39:02.653-05:00"The Ghosts of August" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez<span style="color:#ffcc00;">Traveling in Italy, a couple and their young children visit a famous writer who lives in a semi-ruined palazzo in the hills, an enormous place with, of course, a secret. Ghosts may indeed walk in the noonday Tuscan sun. Translated by Edith Grossman. Read by Scoot. Time 6:44.</span><br /><em><span style="color:#ffcc00;"></span></em><br /><span style="color:#ffcc00;"><em>Cien años de soledad </em>has never been one of our favorites here (a little long, isn't it?), but, hey--who are we to argue with so many people who do worship that book? Besides, we really do admire his short stories, especially the ones saddled with that bugaboo description "magic realism." There is no doubt that Garcia Marquez is one of the most famous and important writers in the modern world, a Colombian who helped make Latin American fiction trendy and whose every publication is something of an event. And he's a friend of Fidel! We point you next to his (much better) short story <em>A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings</em>, which you can find over there at Miette's site.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1143985186040015332006-04-02T08:00:00.000-05:002006-04-04T22:52:00.256-05:00"On the Sidewalk" by John Updike<span style="color:#003300;">April Fool? OK--it's not really Jack Kerouac; it's John Updike imitating <em>On the Road</em>, of course, when Updike was very young and Kerouac was still a new sensation. Bet we didn't fool anyone. Read by Scoot. Time 6:34.</span><br /><span style="color:#003300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#003300;">John Updike, John Updike, John Updike: prolific, prolix (perhaps), and peculiarly poetic to plenty of people. His short stories tend to get overshadowed by his novels, especially the more lapinate ones, but <em>At the A&P</em> is still deservedly in lots of anthologies out there and many of his humorous or more sardonic pieces (such as this) can be found beyond the pages of the <em>New Yorker</em>, his home away from home for so many years. His territory may be a little north and a little cautious of John Cheever (another writer we have yet to get to here), but it is somewhat similar in its examination of middle-class angst and couples on the brink of divorce or worse. And that's the furthest we're going to examine the many works of Mr. Updike--most of which we haven't read! Just find one of his books, read the jacket flap, and you'll know the rest.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142866668667711142006-03-30T09:00:00.000-05:002006-04-02T08:41:08.300-05:00"A Far Cry" by Zona Gale<span style="color:#666600;">Scene: small-town America, probably somewhere in the midwest circa 1925. Main characters: Mr. and Mrs. Dasher, their 40-year-old unmarried daughter Jerry, and the little son of Mr. Dasher's gravely ill niece. Time: a hot summer night, with the card for the iceman's visit tomorrow morning already in the window. Ready, set--action! Read by Scoot. Time 17:13.</span><br /><span style="color:#666600;"></span><br /><span style="color:#666600;">Sigh. Who even remembers Wisconsinite Zona Gale today aside from a few proud midwesterners and a few avid readers with a nostalgic bent? Maybe those readers would know that Gale was born in 1874, published her first novel in 1906 (<em>Romance Island</em>--probably had one of those beautiful Art Nouveau covers of the period), and won a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1921 for her adaptation of her novel <em>Miss Lulu Bett</em>. And that she was active as a suffragette, spent most of her life in her hometown of Portage, and died in 1938 shortly before the publication of her last novel (<em>Magna</em>). Well, now you know, too.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142834577480964862006-03-27T09:00:00.000-05:002006-03-26T23:38:10.276-05:00"The Drowned Giant" by J. G. Ballard<span style="color:#993300;">As a medical student, J. G. Ballard would have had to perform dissection on a human cadaver, and this story shows the influence of that no doubt very formative experience. But here the giant--a colossus from another world? a Greek god? a nightmare?--is given a symbolist treatment which Kafka or Baudelaire would have had to brood long upon. Read by Scoot. Time 25:46.</span><br /><span style="color:#993300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#993300;">The Shanghai-raised British author J. G. Ballard became known to most people outside science-fiction circles with the publication and subsequent filming of his childhood autobiography, <em>Empire of the Sun</em>. Those in the know were already familiar with Ballard's upending of sci-fi traditions and practical invention of the dystopian novel in such works as <em>The Drowned World</em> (no relation to this story or the Madonna tour). Things got weirder with Ballard by the late 1960's, with the auto-erotic novel <em>Crash</em> (no, not <em>that</em> movie, but the <em>other</em> movie), the very unsettling <em>Atrocity Exhibition</em> (no wonder Joy Division stole the title!), and our personal favorite, <em>Why I Want to </em></span><a href="mailto:F?#@k"><em><span style="color:#993300;">F#*k</span></em></a><span style="color:#993300;"><em> Ronald Reagan</em>, which sent the 1980 Republican National Convention all atwitter. (<em>Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy</em> is pretty good, too.)</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142832426474468682006-03-24T09:00:00.000-05:002006-03-22T10:10:01.903-05:00"Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!" by Conrad Aiken<span style="color:#ff6666;">Ah--a shipboard romance: the stuff of Hollywood and of clichés. This one doesn't quite avoid all the conventions, but it does give a certain poignancy and clarity to class and cultural differences of the early twentieth century, as the narrator follows the transatlantic voyage of an Irish working girl whose one wish is unfortunately fulfilled. Read by Scoot. Time 38:04. Maybe the longest story we've posted yet!</span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ff6666;">We had thought for a long time of including Conrad Aiken's stunning "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" here, but that story is even longer than this one, and with so many people having read it in some anthology or other, it might be superfluous to feature it here. Unfortunately, much of Aiken's prose is shockingly out-of-print, although his poetry remains more accessible. Aiken used to be one of the most famous writers around, but apparently his stock has fallen in this post-postmodern world (well, how many writers born before 1900, if not 1970, haven't see that happen?). However, perhaps still relevant even so, Aiken's grave figures in the popular book <em>Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil</em> (he was born on the banks of the Savannah River, though after his parents' violent deaths, he was raised in Massachusetts), and he is the father of writer Joan Aiken. </span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142831564117113162006-03-21T09:00:00.000-05:002006-03-20T10:19:12.706-05:00"Lake Ghosts" by Ilse Aichinger<span style="color:#003333;">Three ghosts, three histories, one lake in Germany. This is a somewhat enigmatic, impressionistic European travelogue, taking us to a place where few of us might want to fish or swim. Translated from the German by Harry Steinhauer. Read by Scoot. Time 10:37.</span><br /><span style="color:#003333;"></span><br /><span style="color:#003333;">In 1996, it says here, Ilse Aichinger signed a declaration for spelling reform in Germany. And about time, we concur! Well, that may be somewhat inconsequential when considering the life of this Austrian writer in general. Like so many other writers, she studied to be a doctor but wound up writing for a living instead. Her books have dealt with Nazi persecution and how the last great war changed the lives of women and Jews in so many ways. Aichinger's first book was published in 1945 and the latest in her long career in 2001--and, who knows, there may yet be more.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11358986.post-1142529965042539102006-03-18T09:00:00.000-05:002006-03-21T07:58:11.900-05:00"Seen from Paradise" by Dorothy Richardson<span style="color:#cc9933;">At last, she has a place to get away from friends and family--just a cottage in Cornwall, but paradise to one trying to write in peace and solitude. And then friends go and write to say they're coming to invade her privacy with tub-plants and orders to fulfill (after all, it is their place). But, honestly! Read by Scoot. Time 13:57.</span><br /><span style="color:#cc9933;"></span><br /><span style="color:#cc9933;">Don't you just love authors' bios which begin with the likes of "daughter of an impoverished gentleman"? And then "obliged to earn her own living" and "working as a secretary-assistant to a dental practice"? We mean, as if writers were like ordinary people or something! Not that we're not sorry to hear of Dorothy Richardson's mother's suicide in 1895, but we're more interested in learning how she beat James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and practically everyone else to the punch when it came to inventing stream-of-consciousness prose. It's nice to know, too, that good old socialist H. G. Wells (really, why have we neglected <em>him</em> for so long?) championed her cause and that she was fairly successful as a journalist in a day when such things were not so common. But a bit daunting, we admit, to be reminded that her massive novel series, <em>Pilgrimage</em>, took over her life after 1912. Only one of us here has read all thirteen (admit it--just a bit <em>tedious</em>!) books, but now at least another of us can say that he has read at least this one story, first collected in 1989 in <em>Journey to Paradise</em>.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">from Scoot & Friends</div>Scoothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16505555480300076110noreply@blogger.com3