Re: 20/20 list
Colin (colin@cpink.demon.co.uk)
Mon, 25 Oct 1999 23:22:52 +0100
In message <19991024010339.3780363A10@zagnut.hotpop.com>, Camille
Scaysbrook <verona_beach@hotpop.com> writes
>Colin wroteL
>> 3. Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot.
>>
>> An English doctor pursues his obsession with Flaubert following his
>> adulterous wife's death: ring any bells?
>
>Aha! Someone else who actually knows/cares about this book! I believe I
>earmarked it as kith and kin along with Seymour: An Introduction and
>Nabokov's `Pale Fire' quite a while ago, but no one seemed to have heard
>about it.
I find that surprising. He is very highly esteemed in England and
France. Perhaps he is not so well appreciated elsewhere?
>
>I notice also the inclusion of Heinrich Boll on your list. I wonder if you
>have ever read his short stories? There's quite a few of them that are very
>Salingerian - not to mention very fine in their own right. My favourites
>are `Murke's Collected Silences' and `In The Valley of the Thundering
>Hooves'. Considering Boll was also the official translator of `Catcher'
>into German, perhaps this isn't such a coincidence (I believe it was Bernd
>though who said that Boll largely missed a lot of the colloquialisms?)
>
Yes, I have read some of Boll's short-stories. They are very fine.
Mostly I have read his stories based on his war experiences, but I found
them so harrowing I had to stop after a while. He is another writer
with a great concern for suffering humanity.
--
Colin