tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post5041846528693917269..comments2024-03-19T21:50:12.583+13:00Comments on The Imaginary Museum: The Machine StopsDr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-35742928914671753432020-05-05T23:51:00.638+12:002020-05-05T23:51:00.638+12:00HI Jack, I recall you said you had read Zombie. I ...HI Jack, I recall you said you had read Zombie. I got to Oates as I had picked up 'Odd Jobs' (essays by Updike, later I acquired it from the library where I had been reading it on and off since about 1995). Updike recommended the ones I read and I also read a lot of her stories. I would like to read more...<br /><br />Liv also liked, as an aside (as if such were unusual from me!), The Vivisector by Patrick White, I also loved that, but I think we shared that we had read 'Bellfleur' which is so different from Zombie etc...<br /><br />But it could be right about Well's story, as well as memory, as the ending seemed different. I intend to get that collected. By the way there was something very poetic about that ending which had him on the mountain, as if alive but he is dead. Wells could do the strange and even almost nauseating, like The Island of Dr Moreau, as well as the suddenly quite poetic, even immense which is in and beside the narrative (exciting) of The Time Machine which I re-read recently. James Gleick bases his Information, which is more scientific than literary, on Well's book about time. But the two aspects of knowledge are closer than is often acknowledged. Indeed he has the poetical daughter of Byron as the first "computer" programmer of a (theoretical) algorithm for Babbage's computer which was not as naive as it seems to us. <br /><br />Wells was more venerated in his time, and he should still be. Joyce got him to sub to his Ulysses which I think was not only politic but good as Wells was no fool. Forster of course was a good writer, and it is no competition: but as luck would have it my collection of stories of his has none of his sci fi ones.<br /><br />Attwood agonizes over the placing of Sci Fi etc which Oates thinks is due to her father being a scientist and needing to categorize things etc. But these genres frequently mix in the best writers. Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-14340066727922575422020-05-05T07:39:00.615+12:002020-05-05T07:39:00.615+12:00There are two versions of Wells's 'The Cou...There are two versions of Wells's 'The Country of the Blind' - the original one included in the Collected Stories, and a subsequent expanded one with a slightly different ending included in the more recent Complete Stories. You may be right when you say it 'seems different,' then - or it could just be a trick of memory.<br /><br />Joyce Caol Oates is indeed dauntingly prolific. I see from wikipedia that she's written 58 novels to date, as well as numerous collections of stories and essays. I read one called <i>Zombie</i> some years ago, on Liv Macassey's recommendation, which was frighteningly proficient.Dr Jack Rosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-74482311518765618322020-05-05T01:06:50.119+12:002020-05-05T01:06:50.119+12:00I read The Machine Stops. In the same book. It is ...I read The Machine Stops. In the same book. It is prescient. I also read the Gioconda smile and in my old book of English short stories Conrad's 'An Outpost of Progress' and 'The Country of the Blind' by Wells*. This post has got me onto a short story reading jag, or at least one somewhat connected to dis-utopias. The Giaconda Smile by Huxley is good also. Now for Kipling's famous 'The Man Who Would Be King'. <br /><br />Also in a more modern collection I re-read a strange story (but good) by Attwood, called 'The Man From Mars' (It's not sci fi). But re her Joyce Carol Oates writes ina book of essays an essay about Attwood's book of essays! I had read (some of) that in the intro to 'The Hand Maid's Tale'...and THAT got me to one of Attwoods list including Zamyatin's 'We'. As far as this kind of stuff goes, that is the one I think I like most. Although '1984' is good. And related I feel in some ways is 'The Time Machine' (almost required reading?)...<br /><br />But in my binge I read (reading about Southern writers) a story of Eurora Welty's called 'The Death of a Traveling Salesman' which I found very different from much I had read before...except possibly Peter Taylor's stories, almost. Welty is gentler and more focused I feel than Toole. I am abivalent about his book. The descriptions and characters are great but it does seem -- almost pointless. But then perhaps it requires a re-read. Re Welty, I once sold as many of the Pulitzer prize winners to someone who liked them. In the process I read 'The Optimist's Daughter' I need to re-read it. <br /><br />I see Welty was the the firs in that American Library Series so I might get her that way. <br /><br />As to Wells: years ago 'The Invisible Man', 'The First Men on the Moon' and 'The History of Mr Polly' as well as 'War of the Worlds'. Attwood prefers the Jules Verne kind of books connected to the earth and perhaps more 'placed'. Meanwhile I want to re-read 'Cat's Eye'. <br /><br />Joyce Carol Oates herself wrote some amazing stories and novels. (So many I would hate to study all her books as Boyd did with Nabokov!). Her stories are quite memorable also. Like many of those of Somerset Maugham. She ranges wider in her mode though (obviously from Maugham but from Attwood I think and others) from a kind of savage but vital magic realism and endless stories within stories of 'Bellfeur', to the more realist 'You Must Remember This'. Of her stories one I recall vividly was called, I am fairly sure: 'Transfigured Night' (the protagonist goes out with a man to a concert where they play Schoenberg's famous music. It is the journey home that is dramatic. The ending is clever.<br /><br />When I dialed up 12 Modern Novels, Odhams, and B. Biro [my copy has a stamp belonging to Harry Goodwin who I knew off and on a few years back, he was a poet and book man)...when I do that it goes to many of your Blog entries Jack! <br /><br /><br />*I was sure I had read that but it seems different. It was about 1968 or so so I suppose I myself was different! Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-58766096015067754602020-04-27T01:38:18.257+12:002020-04-27T01:38:18.257+12:00I have had that book 12 Modern Novels for some tim...I have had that book 12 Modern Novels for some time. I have read Conrad's story/novella several times. (I didn't notice who had edited or illustrated it). It is cryptic in that department like a lot of the books of that time. <br /><br />But not 'The Machine'. I did get an edition of Forster's stories as someone I knew had drawn from his stories for inspirations for some interesting poems she wrote. They are good. <br /><br />Of course Wells is great. I read various of his books years ago -- War of the Worlds, the voyage to the moon book, and more recently re-read The Time Machine which is brilliant, and The Island of Dr Moreau which is close to a horror story (worth reading but a bit much for me!). I cant see 'When the Sleeper Wakes'. <br /><br />I do have 'The Stolen Bacillus' and other stories and (of course) neither that nor my Omnibus has 'When the Sleeper...'.<br /><br />I agree though re Wells. And he also wrote novels that were not sci fi. His Time Machine is the starting point for James Gleick's book on Time. Gleick wrote 'Information' and a book about Chaos Theory and so on. it is interesting that in the debate between Bergson and Einstein, which in a sense turned on itself as it wasn't really Einstein versus Bergson -- but it is interesting that movies and books (like that of Wells) played as much a part in the thinking of many scientists (who were often and still are often, philosophers also) on time. Well's works are still relevant. Aristotle struggled with time,how to define it or talk about it etc and so do philosophers and other to this day. So Wells was on to things. His novels, non sci-fi are good also. <br /><br />Thanks for this I will now make a commitment to actually read the 12 Stories. I'll start with Forster's one! ( As well as looking at some of those other stories of Wells, (I did like the stories) I read by Forster also and also I need to read Forster's other famous novels as the only one of those I have read is 'Voyage to India' which I liked a lot). <br /><br />Inspiring post.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.com