Book Meme Replies

[selenak]

B – Best Sequel Ever for likeadeuce: Welllllll. The standard answer to this in the AngloAmerican Literature world is probably “Huckleberry Finn”, isn’t it? Possibly also “The Lord of the Rings”, if you count it as a sequel to “The Hobbit”. Yet both HF and LotR partly are so successful because they’re very much their own creatures, which is why today they tend to be read independently and often before the novels that preceded them. In any event: I’m not passionately in love with either of them, though I like them. “Best ever” is such a tricky criteria anyway; “best written” doesn’t have to mean “best loved”, etc. And I’m not that fond of sequels, though I make an exception for mystery novels with detectives I like. (More about this perhaps in another letter reply.) Hmmmm. Maybe I’ll have to go with Richard III. In which young Will S. suddenly goes to a whole new level by picking one of the supporting baddies from his so-so wannabe Marlovian three parter Henry VI as the central character, cuts out the ramblings from the earlier work and genuinely tops Kit M. in the charismatic villain department. Not to mention that he preempts the whole “audience is taken into confidence of villain while he schemes and murders his way to the top” thing that currently tv shows are so fond of, but doesn’t do so by making everyone else one dimensional and dumb – au contraire, the women in particular, Queen Margaret, Cecily Neville, Elizabeth Woodville are all given steely determination, and Anne Neville gets the scene of simultaneous hate and seduction that people still try to match in vain. Even a historical Ricardian such as myself can’t deny that Richard III is a fantastically effective drama and The Best Sequel Ever.

E – E-reader or physical books for amenirdis: when travelling, E-Reader, when at home, physical books. It’s as practical as that. (I.e. a question of weight.)

G – Glad you have this book a chance for flo_nelja and wee_warrior: Jud Süss by Lion Feuchtwanger. This novel, NOT the basis of the Nazi movie of the same title, was translated into English first by the Muirs and published as both “Power” and “Jew Suess” in the 1920s, which transformed Feuchtwanger from okay doing dramatist and not yet successful novelist into a beststelling international novelist, which he remained from that point onwards. (This also meant he was one of only three German writers who actually had a devoted American readership already when he ended up in exile in Los Angeles during the Third Reich.) After the novel became a hit with the Brits, German readers began to pay attention, too, and Jud Süß ended up as a German bestseller as well. In 1933, it was banned by the Nazis immediately along with Feuchtwanger’s other works. (He wrote the earliest fictional satire on Hitler and the Nazis, Erfolg , which was published 1930 and had as its background the 1923 failed coup attempt.) Goebbels infamously years later had the UFA produce his own version of the story of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, which became one of the vilest and most effective propaganda movies the Nazis created. Neither it nor Feuchtwanger’s novel were the first or only fictional dealings bearing this title; Wilhelm Hauff also wrote a novella “Jud Süß” in the 19th century, and various pamphlets detailing Süß Oppenheimer’s fate had this title. Still, inevitably the Nazi shadow looms largest, which is why, laboring under the assumption that Feuchtwanger’s novel was connected to it and not having read anything else by Feuchtwanger at that point, I probably wouldn’t have touched the novel on m own initiative if not for the fact I had to read it as part of a university project back when I was in my early 20s.

Here’s why I was glad I did: first of all, it’s easy to see why this was Feuchtwanger’s breakout novel. (After an until then only moderately successful writing career which spanned decades already.) It has an antihero main character – which wasn’t standard back in the early 1920s – who becomes more and more sympathetic the more he loses without his earlier flaws being excused. What had fascinated Feuchtwanger about the historical Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was that Süß could have saved himself if he’d converted, but despite being not orthodox at all and having lived an assimilated life, he refused. For Feuchtwanger, with a Jewish orthodox family background and a decidedly unorthodox life, this offered the chance to ponder Jewish identity – which he did in many of his novels - , and to do so not by picking an obviously heroic and immediately admirable figure but a morally ambiguous one, which, as I discovered when reading his other novels, was the type of character Feuchtwanger as author was drawn to and excelled at. Jud Süß in particular is also a linguistic tour de force; probably one of Feuchtwanger’s most expressionistic works, and a great baroque language pastiche.
I ended up reading all of Feuchtwanger’s other works and writing my thesis about him, and still attend conferences about it. So giving “Jud” Süß” a chance turned out very crucial indeed.

H – Hidden Gem Book for loki_fan: Kein Ort. Nirgends. by Christa Wolf. Not as famous as her previous Nachdenken über Christa T. or her later Cassandra, but for my money one of the best things she ever wrote. It’s a novella about a fictional meeting between German poets (and later, suicides) Karoline von Günderode and Heinrich von Kleist, during a gathering of mutual (actual) acquaintances, the circle of of the Brentano siblings (Bettina, Achim, both of whom are famous Romantic writers in German literature) and non-famous siblings and spouses). Nothing sensational happens in this novella. It’s all conversation and some unsaid things. And a brilliant portrait of two writers who are both vastly dissimilar and share parallels (not just the fact they both would later on end up killing themselves).

I – Important Moments Of Your Reading Life for falafel_musings: first novel read, obviously (Winnetou by Karl May, when I was six years; also the cause for first tears about fictional people and life long imprint about Injustice Done To Indians); Discovery That Short Stories Can Be Awesome (Edgar Allen Poe when I was 11); first novel to teach me about telling a story from a different pov than I was used to and teaching me about feminism (The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley when I was 13, and yes, the news about MZB as an enabler and practitioner of child abuse was shattering to me); first novel assigned by school which I devoured in one go and which left me shaking and never seeing human nature the same way again (“Lord of the Flies” by William Golding when I was 12); Poetry Can Be Witty And Political (Heinrich Heine, Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen) when I was 14). Not a complete list, but some highlights.

K – Kinds of Books You Won’t Read for trobadora: actually, since I do a lot of research as part of my daily life and have done so for decades, there aren’t any. This includes theological pamphlets from the 17th century (not recommended) and pharmaceutical articles. And a whole lot of novels I found headache inducing or boring. (Looking at you, Peter Handke.) However, there are of course books I wouldn’t pick up if I have a choice about it. Erotic writing works best for me if it leaves a lot to the imagination, which means I find porn more often than not boring and/or involuntarily funny. And without an urgent recommendation, I wouldn’t go for, say, a tech thriller a la Tom Clancy or the biography of an athlete or sports manager. (Unless we count ballet managers like Diaghilev?)

O – One Book That You Have Read Multiple Times : true of many of my favourites, actually. But here we go: Child of Morning, Pauline Gedge’s novel about Hatshepsut, was one I devoured multiple times as a teen (and cried my heart out over). It made Hatshepsut my favourite Egyptian pharaoh ever, and no matter how often I read it, each time part of me hoped for another ending.

P – Preferred place to read for itsnotmymind: Curled up on my couch, but I can read anywhere.

Q – Quote from a book that inspires you/gives you feelings for falena:


“Tis to create, and in creating live
A being more intense, that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The life we image, as I do even now.”

It’s from the third canto of Childe Harold by Byron. I’m actually a Don Juan girl all the way as far as Byron’s verse epics are concerned; Childe Harold made him famous but also established the cliché his name became an adjective for, and it’s sadly lacking of the satire and wit of Don Juan or The Vision of Judgment. Otoh, CH does have some great descriptive passages, including this one, which I know by heart, since it’s my favourite description of the process of writing ever.

R – Reading Regret for kaena: There have been books that bored me to tears (see above, re: Peter Handke), and books that I found incredibly icky and disturbing to read (if you’ve ever tried the Malleus Malificarum by Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris, one of the most misogynistic texts in all of history, you know whereof I speak), but usually there were reasons why I had to read them. If there is no outward necessity to read, and I find I don’t like where a text is going, I usually don’t finish it, so I don’t think this qualifies as a “reading regret”. Now, recently I became aware that an author whose work meant a lot to me when I was a teenager was in real life a horrible person who did a lot of damage (Marion Zimmer Bradley), and that had an emotional impact, but I wouldn’t call it “regret”. Regret would imply I wished I had never read her books, and I don’t wish that, since they gave me a lot of positive impulses and experiences, without which I would be a different person than I am today. I wish she hadn’t done what she did, but that’s a different emotion from “regret”.

U – Unapologetic Fangirl For for bimo and blueswan : The „Angelique“ Series by Anne and Serge Golon. Well, the first six novels anyway. They were among the earliest historical novels I read, and to this day I remain deeply fond of them. Sure, among other things, they’re bodice rippers. And most men in them fall in love with Our Heroine. But you know what? Angelique is a heroine who goes from countess to beggar woman in her first outing and claws her way back up the social ladder by patenting the still relatively new chocolate in the France of Louis XIV. While the novels were never explicit, they gave kid!me the impression that sex must be a joyful thing, if shared consensually. Novel No.4 – “Angelique Sa Revolte” – has her heading a rebellion against the Sun King and coping with the aftermath of gang rape (and having a child that resulted from said rape) in a way that is far more sensitively written than in most novels. Those novels described baroque France on every level, from Versailles over the provincial impoverished nobility to the rising and ever more confident merchants (both of the Huguenot and Catholic persuasion), lawyers and judges to the beggars, thieves and newly established police force in the capital and the starving peasants in the countryside. You bet I’m still a fan!