The re-reading project

[Wilfrid]

An unexpected poignancy of this project is discovering the fragility of some of these books that I've lived with for decades. I will be lucky to get through this madcap masterpiece without the dramatic Oskar Kokoschka cover coming adrift.

[Wilfrid]

I was halfway through Alexanderplatz when I set off on travels recently. It didn't look ready for the experience, so I jumped way ahead in my list to A Light Comedy by Eduardo Mendoza. It's set in Barcelona after the end of the Civil War, and it paints a very detailed picture of the city's streets and dives. The thriller plot has some loose ends, but I've forgotten how relentlessly funny it is. Recommended. Almost 500 pages, but I had four flights and finished it on the last.

Final stages of Alexanderplatz now. I think I then want something short before launching into Middlemarch or Karamazov.

[Wilfrid]

I had skipped The Unnamable, feeling it's not that long since I last read it, but it is comparatively short so I read it after Alexanderplatz. Strange that something so intensely experimental should also have so many funny lines.

What made it fresh is that about a year ago I read a study by Pascale Casanova that sought to show that Beckett, especially in his later writings, was not addressing existential angst but the literary project itself -- essentially, writing about writing. That's controversial, but it's certainly possible to read The Unnamable that way, and it makes it a different book.

Now I'm far into Karamazov, which meanders of course but is compulsively readable. And thank god at 800 pages.

[Wilfrid]

17. Eliot, Middlemarch

18. Ellison, Invisible Man

19. Faulkner, probablyThe Sound and the Fury. Maybe As I Lay Dying.

20. Fosse, Septology. But which part(s)?

I am still reluctant to go direct from Karamazov to Middlemarch because of the sheer bulk, so  I may jump forward to Faulker. I have to figure out which parts of Septology I have already re-read.

[Wilfrid]

I arrived today at the two thunderclap chapters at the heart of Karamazov, "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor."
I remember them well but had not expected how they would resonate. First with Ivan's horrifying plea for murdered children. Then with the Inquisitor's insistence on the evils of freedom, education and science.

Holy shit. Dostoevsky's answers might not appeal but he asked all the hard questions back in 1880.

[AaronS]

I would read absalom, absalom or go down moses  over the two you mention, assuming length is not a key criteria.

[Wilfrid]

I remember Go Down Moses very well, but I will take a second look at both of those. Thanks.

Halfway through the Bratya now.

[Wilfrid]

Larry McMurtry and he had, at time of writing, 28,000 books. Got me beat there. I wouldn't say "angry," but I know what he means.

[Wilfrid]

Nearly done with the Karamazov brats, but jeez he could have cut Mitya's endless blathering.

 

[Wilfrid]

I've seen off the brothers  -- how many people can come down sick with some kind of brain fever in one novel? Read an old piece on it by Somerset Maughan who calls out all its manifold faults but still regards it as a great masterpiece. True enough.

Middlemarch is different in every way except length, so I am taking a break by re-reading The Midnight Bell, the first volume of Patrick Hamilton's 20,000 Streets Under the Sky trilogy. Hamilton is best known for his stage thrillers, and the movies based on them, Rope and Gas Light. In his novels, however, he is just one of the funniest writers there is, even when his stories are kind of sad as they usually are. This is also a great London novel; Hamilton knows the West End and its pubs intimately.

I think I've read almost all his novels twice, Slaves of Solitude more than that. 

[AaronS]

I'm really enjoying tony tulathimutte's rejection and am happy the new patricia lockwood is next. lots of neat stuff coming out this fall, adam johnson, pynchon, dewitt etc.

[Wilfrid]

Thanks for the reminder on Lockwood, I see it came out this week.

[Wilfrid]

Kindle tells me I am a third of the way through Middlemarch. It feels like its much slower than Karamazov; even when nothing is happening in the latter, the prose gallops. When Mitya starts a crazy, repetitive, deranged rant, you can skim it at speed.

Eliot could not be more different. Her long, multi-clause sentences are precise, balanced, melodious and often very funny. Rather than skim, the temptation is to re-read them.

I'll be done before Christmas.

[mongo]

my memory is that the first third is slow. and then it suddenly gets going.

[Wilfrid]

After Dorothea strangles her husband and elopes with Fred? 😂

[StephanieL]

17 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

After Dorothea strangles her husband and elopes with Fred? 😂

Hey, no spoilers!  😜

[Wilfrid]

In sight of the end of Middlemarch. Henry James complained about it not being "compact" enough. Henry James.

Sadly, the politicking around the Reform Act (1830? 1832?) has limited interest in 2025. But who could ever get enough of Dorothea?

[relbbaddoof]

While the lofty among you read and discuss Middlemarch, my wife and I are sticking to our Wodehouse (re-)read-aloud-at-bedtime regimen. We are two years into it, and at a slow book a month we have some time to go. We're done with the entire Blandings series and are not quite mid-way into Jeeves&Wooster. We've just finished The Code of the Woosters with its very funny fascist Roderick Spode and his tiny square of moustache (and his guilty secret -- spoiler alert -- that he designs women's underwear). That book is from 1938, which makes Wodehouse's inability to see evil when captured by the Nazis in 1940 somewhat more puzzling -- Orwell's stout defense of him notwithstanding.

Still, he's very funny, even on a rereading 50+ years after my first reading. 

 

Edited October 31, 2025 by relbbaddoof

[Wilfrid]

There if I need it.

 

 

[Wilfrid]

Middle has Marched. Beautifully written from page one, but it is true to say the plot really picks up pace in the second half. And the closing pages are priceless.

Where next?

17. Eliot, Middlemarch

18. Ellison. Invisible Man

19. One Faulkner or another

20. Some part of Septology

21. Gogol, Dead Souls

22. Goncharov, Oblomov

Maybe I'll dip into Septology before Ellison. I will have to split those two funny, but again long, Russian novels apart.

[Wilfrid]

I might rethink that. I read Septology in 2020 or '21. I recently reread the first part. I read all Fosse's fiction as soon as it appears in English. There's no distance, as there was with Karamazov, Middlemarch, Quixote. I'm not sure it belongs on this list.

 

[Wilfrid]

I decided to go straight on to Ellison, Invisible Man. And while splashing out $2.50 on a Kindle copy (which really does accelerate the reading) had to be careful not to buy the one by H.G. Wells.

[relbbaddoof]

To again introduce frivolity into this seriousness, in *our* rereading project we're at these next two Wodehouses:

 

 

The first is a battered Penguin, the other a glamorous reprint. The Penguin has this to offer

along with the question of who, nearly 50 years ago, Hartwell Bryant was.

Edited November 29, 2025 by relbbaddoof

[Wilfrid]

Love the old book. Hope it stands up to the re-read.

 

[Wilfrid]

Just finishing up Invisible Man.  I had forgotten just how much the structure is picaresque, one set piece after another, some brilliant -- the eviction scene -- some a little tiresome -- Barbee's speech, the encounter with Sybil. 

My hard copy is the Penguin Classic with a photo on the cover by an old friend of mine.

I am still indecisive about what Faulkner to read. Think I'll jump ahead to Dead Souls, which is shorter than I remembered.

19. One Faulkner or another ???

20. Gogol, Dead Souls

21. Goncharov, Oblomov

22. Hamilton, The Midnight Bell (done)

23. Hawthorn, The Marble Faun

24. Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms