Lady Chatterley’s Brother Lady Chatterley's Brother. The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series,  called “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future. Read an excerpt.
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Hi, everyone, this is Andrew Seal. Scott has asked me to pinch-hit for this week of Your Face This Spring, and it’s a great week to do so. We’re now up to page 233, and a number of exciting developments have finally come into view, but our interest in the back-stories of Peter Wheeler and Toby Rylands has also been further piqued.
Once again (in case you’re joining us late), you can view all the YFTS posts on this page.
Some really excellent discussions have been going on here about Javier Marías’s stylistic similarity or kinship with a number of other writers: Thomas Bernhard, Samuel Beckett, W. G. Sebald, Roberto Bolaño, and Marcel Proust. At the risk of sending this conversation into compare-and-contrast overload, I’d like to add one more name to the mix and to make a slight distinction about what I think we’re seeing with Marías that differs significantly from the modernists just named. The name I’d like to add is Laurence Sterne, whom Marías has translated (as Scott has pointed out in an earlier post). Sterne’s writing is a sort of ne plus ultra of the digression and the qualification; it is practically impossible to think of fiction as being more circumlocutory or preambular (more Spanish, really—see page 188 of Fever and Spear) while still retaining a shape, endlessly filigreed as it may be.
The difference that I see between Marías and modernists like Bernhard or Sebald or Proust is in the nature and purpose of repetition, digression, and pleonasm—various forms of excess. Let’s take a look at the first sentence from Bernhard’s Correction: Continue reading YFTS: Spy Games and Redundancy
All right, so I’m assuming that everyone who reads this post is up to page 180, also known as the end of section 1, “Fever,” in accordance with our schedule.
So I’d like to put a question out there: in what sense is section 1 a unified, conclusive piece of writing, and why is it given the title “Fever”? I’m guessing as we get further into this long book (not a trilogy!) our answers to this question will change, but it’s worth thinking about right now.
Also, now that we’ve gotten into the meat of this first . . . continue reading, and add your comments
A couple of things I wanted to point out from the first 20 or so pages of the segment of Fever and Spear that we’re reading this week . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Now that we’ve gotten our feet wet with the first 90 pages or so of Your Face Tomorrow, some initial thoughts. For those who aren’t reading along, the first 17 pages are an odd sort of philosophical meditation on the ways in which we know and hide things in this world–and the perils that come with communication. After that Marias circles around the protagonist (and narrator) Jaime Deza’s business relations with a certain Senor Tupra . . . . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Turns out we’re having a bit of a translation theme this week. As I noted on Monday, Javier Marias is not only one of Spain’s most celebrated novelists, he’s also an important translator, with a list that includes Faulkner, Henry James, Shakespeare, Laurence Sterne, Joseph Conrad, John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Wallace Stevens.
Interestingly, this is something that Marias touches on in a lecture he gave for the Fundacion Juan March. (Podcast available on iTunes in Spanish only.) Marias recounts that the bulk of this translation was something he undertook while he was . . . continue reading, and add your comments
And we’re off! I’m very happy to say that after my call for all the participants to send me a little email last week, I heard from about 20 of you, which is a great number for a discussion of these books. (And you Marias-discussion lurkers out there, don’t be shy.)
This week this is what we’re reading: * Week 1, March 21-27: pp. 3 – 95 (Section ends at: “But before getting back to the Tupras . . .”)
As always, you can find the full schedule right here.
Since most of us are just starting (although . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Okay, let’s do this. Starting this spring, I’m going to read Javier Marias’ Your Face Tomorrow trilogy. Whoever wants to join me on this ambitious trip through the magnum opus of an author many consider Spain’s greatest living writer is welcome to join on in.
To make it easy on all of us, I’ve broken it down into 17 weekly segments. Throughout this trip you’ll only be reading 15 pages per day at most, so you have no excuse. If you’ve longed to read this trilogy and harbor dreams of impressing your friends at the next . . . continue reading, and add your comments
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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