Here is my first contribution to the blog of my own creation:
It is one of those desperate BBC-style polls, where they try to get the audience to participate and thereby fulfil some squalid "interactivity" clause in their corporate mission statement. *
What 5 books would you make everybody read, were you to be granted dictatorial powers?
My (correct) selection follows (you recieve 5 points for every book also on your own list):
1: Borges, Brodie's report.
2: Tadeusz Borowski, This way for the gas please ladies and gentlemen.
3: Niall Griffiths, Sheepshagger.
4: Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia.
5: Suetonius, The lives of the twelve Caesars.
That is all.
*If I walked into a bar and found somebody typing the words corporate mission statement on a laptop I would glass them. No questions, no hesitation, no excuses, no "I was writing a blog in which, ironically, I threaten violence against anyone I find writing the words corporate mission statement", no mercy, no nothing.
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Comentaris del missatge (Atom)
6 comentaris:
I'll go for some pretty obvious choices, their only shared merit being that I've bothered to read them at some point.
In no order:
Junky - William Burroghs
A Confederacy Of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The Confessions - Rousseau
The Corrections - William Franzen
Death In Venice - Thomas Mann
If any of these is rejected, my reserve is:
The Restraint Of Beasts - Magnus Mills
Mm, so far I only know two out of the five guys -Borges I find utterly verbous; Suetonius is funny, but his prose betrays him as fundamentally a History scholar. But yes, the account of Nero's orgies is just magnificient, in particular his theatrical bacchanals including bestiality and canibalism overshadow Caesar's Egyptian extravaganzas and Calligula's familiar misdemeanours.
Now, on the opposite pole, are there any strictly forbidden books for our Anti-Komintern to blacklist, BNS? Some of those social anti-war agitators: Aristophanes, Sophocles, Shakespeare...?
la bête
Burroughs, Rousseau and Mann: 9 over 10.
10 over 10: James Robertson, Cory Doctorow.
Rousseau is a very defensible choice, not read Burroughs or JKT.
The corrections....hmmmmmmm.
Prohibition, that is a good idea for another interactive BBC feature, let's stretch it out...
I mainly put it in because it rhymed with The Confessions. How about Atomised for my millenial-tension choice? I realise that i'm now naming 7 books but that's because I just don't give a fuck about the rules.
I'm edgy, see?
Mm, Tom, Les particules élémentaires is excellent indeed -unfortunately Plateforme is as vulgar as can be. I hope Mr Houellebecq will realise this and will unbury his more sinister -and interesting- atomique side.
On the other hand, the last decent book of culture I read in French was Erik Orsenna's 'Voyage au pays du cotton' (2006), a French 'précis' on mondialisation on different aspects from a(narrative) cotton paradigm perspective.
A very sound technique and a brilliant language. Unfortunately, the French reader prefers to buy du cul to get horny, so don't expect anything cultural from FNAC.
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