June 16, 2004
Wednesday One
When I suggested reviving the Friday Five, I was suggesting that others take up the torch and offer questions as well. I simply don't have time to do it every week, but if no one else does, I will do it when I feel the urge, but not as a regular thing.
Meanwhile I thought of a good one, but it is just one question, so I will post it today as the Wednesday One:
Is there a book that makes you want to strangle the author? I am not just talking about being a bit peeved, but having to deal with the temptations of deep-down, homicidal impulses. If so, please explain. Be honest.
Wow! Steinbeck?!? He's one of my all-time favorite writers. In fact, I have been known to drag the family to Salinas whenever we go down to Santa Cruz. What is it about him that you hate?
Posted by: Erik Keilholtz at June 17, 2004 11:50 PMAnything, and I mean anything, by John Steinbeck.
Posted by: William Luse at June 17, 2004 5:52 PMWhat To Expect When you are expecting. Makes my job harder because it creates unreal expectations.
Posted by: alicia at June 17, 2004 2:04 PMOf books I’ve read recently, none. I throw lousy books across the room long before I reach the murderous stage. In the misty past, there are a couple I had to read for class that left scars. My ninth-grade "theology" book (I don’t remember the title or author, and I don’t care) was utterly free of content. I’d read a paragraph and find that I couldn’t remember anything whatsoever from it a moment later. I resented wasting my time on a book full of nothing. And then there was James Fenimore Cooper’s _The Prairie_. Mark Twain was *soft* on Cooper. It took me a *month* to force my way through that wretched drivel.
Posted by: Don at June 17, 2004 6:01 AMA History of God by Karen Armstrong. This ex-nun apostate pimps really shitty 4th grade modernist biblical criticism and is considered revolutionary. If there were a burning of witches I would nominate her for the torching and nominate myself to spit upon her and light the match and dose her face in gasoline. Of course I mean this figuratively. Yes- as long as I do my best not to look at that alluring cover on her book- I will be safe from mortal sin.
Posted by: Michael B Dougherty at June 17, 2004 12:50 AMOh dear, and I've just received my Pinsky. Guess I'll wait for my Italian to improve to see what I've been missing (it's side-by-side, though, so maybe there's a chance).
As for the Wednesday One, no book has ever taken me to the Keilholtzian extreme (it is enough to get published), but I've had close calls in the past year from Chellis Glendinning and Peter Mortimer.
A book I did consider reading, however, had one of the most colourful responses I've come across. Worth sharing. James Thackara's The Book of Kings.
Posted by: stephen at June 16, 2004 5:18 PMRobert Pinsky's (mis)translation of _Inferno_. I admire his own poetry and comments on contemporary literature, but the man does not understand Dante. For Pinsky, _Inferno_ is the only part of the poem worth reading. Souls like Ulysses, Ugolino, and even Vanni Fucci in Pinsky's hands are transformed from sorrowful figures to some sort of ironic heroes--victims of cruel justice rather than self-imposed exiles.
St. Mary's College insists on this translation for their freshmen and then do not have the little darlings read the rest of the _Sacra Poema_. Grrrr.
SC