Comments on: Living Inside a Tunnel of Books

By: Walter

Walter — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:04:00 +0000

Disgusting to hear that books end up as landfill when one realizes that millions of children in third world primary schools have no textbooks and rely on slates and chalk for learning basic literacy.

By: seamus

seamus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:51:33 +0000

When the San Francisco public library closed for renovation and to embrace the digital era about 15 years ago, they tossed about 25% of their collection and it ended up as landfill. Middle of the night stuff too. There would not be the shelf space for them with all those computers was the argument.

By: ec

ec — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:04:44 +0000

Did Cyril Cusack have some ongoing connection to the French New Wave? He’s (quite surreally I thought) also one of the voices on the English version of Grin Without A Cat by Chris Marker.

By: Seán Báite

Seán Báite — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:58:52 +0000

Ah - Hrabal - that other great contribution of the Czechs to civilisation (along with Pilsener). I just thank Jaysus for that Auntie Beeb ‘Bookmark’ documentary that let me know that he existed… Whenever that was (early 90s??). The missus loves him and thanks Auntie Beeb too. We’ll have to keep beating Mr. K over the head with depth and meaning, I’m afraid…
And Queneau too - you’re bunging all my faves into the one post…
I think there’s a few 60s Czech film adaptations of Hrabal - definitely one of ‘Closely Observed Trains’ - by Milos Forman before he defected to Hollywood, I think.
As to the Luther lookalike and yer AFP article - I’d be a bit dubious on the merits of saving approved GDR publications from being used in foundations of houses or whatever - but whatever gets yer beard grey….
The Zazie adaptation reminds me quite a lot of Tati’s style

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:39:10 +0000

Nice story there Donagh.

I guess it’s another book to put in my pile marked ‘Books To Read Again, As You Obviously Missed The Point The First Time Around.’ I think it must be the mitteleuropeans that cause me the problems. Thomas Mann, of my lord, how I wanted to beat my head against the wall, and don’t get me going on Gunter Grass…

I think my problem with Too Loud A Solitude was that I saw the end coming from the get-go and that the whole thing seemed to have ‘Warning: Allegorical Content Ahead!’ signs all over it. Like being beaten over the head with Depth and Meaning, Dammit!

How I remember the naive bliss of being young and reading Animal Farm before I ever heard of Communism, Uncle Joe, and all the rest of it. A heartbreaking children’s story about animals trying to run a farm.

By: Donagh

Donagh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:04:27 +0000

Ah yes, the Truffaut film. I remember Cyril Cusack was in that, and wondered when I saw it why all the speaking and acting seemed speeded up. Mind you, its a long time since I've seen it. But it could be the french style of film making at the time, where humour was injected by simply speeding things up, like a little girl mitching around Paris on the metro.

By: Walter

Walter — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:17:54 +0000

Agree that Auto-da-Fe is a difficult novel to get into. I persisted many years ago and plodded with little enjoyment towards the awful end. Another novel about books, but I only saw the film, was Farenheit 451 by US sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury. A future dictatorship sends ‘firemen’ around to dwellings to seize and burn books. The paper bursts into flame at a temperature of 451 degrees F. I remember at the end of the film members of a group of underground dissidents undertake the laborious task of memorising great books before they are detected and burnt, so that they can secretly recite them to the upcoming generation that will never be able to read books.

By: Donagh

Donagh — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:14:24 +0000

Seanachie, I had always suspected that Hrabal story, of masses of books getting chucked in the rubbish had some literal truth to it. It’s a highly metaphorical story, but there must have been lots of instances of this going on.

Walter, I have had Auto-da-fe sitting on my bookshelf for years. I started to read it a couple of times, but never got beyond the first chapter. It’s annoying because I think I’ve read every book by W.G. Sebald, and I remember reading that he considered Auto-da-fe to be one of the most important novels of the 20th century. Ah well, I’ll get to it someday.

And then of course there is this, from Walter Benjamin’s Unpacking My Library:

O bliss of the collector, bliss of the man of leisure! Of no one has less been expected, and no one has had a greater sense of well-being than the man who has been able to carry on his disreputable existence in the mask of Spitzweg,’s “Bookworm.” For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector - and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be - ownersliip is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting.

By: Walter

Walter — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:47:41 +0000

Ref. Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti (1935) a novel about a man who keeps a large home library and does chinese scholarship, surrounded by awful neighbours, some with proto-nazi sympathies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-F%C3%A9

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Canetti

By: seanachie

seanachie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:29:58 +0000

Great story, though not surprising, as these sort of things seem to proliferate throughout Mitteleuropa. I too am a fan of Hrabal’s great little book.