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  • 550BC
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2013
    • 783

    It's a master piece, and of course it's not necessary to read it all at once. just when you feel like to, you pick it up. I have the same with In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki, gems! completed them but always good to pick up again and read certain phrases etc. Faust
    a fish out of water dies

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    • Mail-Moth
      Senior Member
      • Mar 2009
      • 1448

      Originally posted by bukka View Post
      A Barbarian in Asia by Henri Michaux. Absolute classic. Epitome of traveling book in french literature.
      Try Nicolas Bouvier's L'Usage du monde or Le Poisson-Scorpion (not french either, though). I remember enjoying those - Bouvier's inner life being a bit less intrusive than Michaux's, which always seems to change any outer reality he evokes into some of his intimate sceneries.
      (Of course, to a certain extent, this is what any writer does in a travelling book, but some of those writers - amongst which I place Michaux - seem less successfull in maintaining the illusion of an objective outside world which wouldn't be a mere mind game.)
      Last edited by Mail-Moth; 04-16-2014, 12:53 AM.
      I can see a hat, I can see a cat,
      I can see a man with a baseball bat.

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      • bukka
        Senior Member
        • Sep 2011
        • 821

        Originally posted by Mail-Moth View Post
        Try Nicolas Bouvier's L'Usage du monde or Le Poisson-Scorpion (not french either, though). I remember enjoying those - Bouvier's inner life being a bit less intrusive than Michaux's, which always seems to change any outer reality he evokes into some of his intimate sceneries.
        (Of course, to a certain extent, this is what any writer does in a travelling book, but some of those writers - amongst which I place Michaux - seem less successfull in maintaining the illusion of an objective outside world which wouldn't be a mere mind game.)

        Actually, that's not really what I'm looking when I'm reading travelling literature (the illusion of an objective outside world). I'm more interested in the impact of the foreign country on his inner being. The objective outside world is well related in the Lonely Planet and in Google Earth.
        Also, Le Poisson-Scorpion is quite similar to Michaux's litterature, in comparison to L'Usage du monde. The last being his first book, it's maybe why he was still trying to give that illusion. In Le Poisson-Scorpion, written almost 25 years after he travelled in Ceylan, you have much more poetry and "intimate sceneries".
        Btw, Czx, as you look interested in Japan, Bouvier also wrote Chroniques Japonaises, there you have a book about both travel and Japan (and it's already way different (better) than L'Usage du Monde)
        Eternity is in love with the productions of time

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        • galia
          Senior Member
          • Jun 2009
          • 1719

          Originally posted by bukka View Post
          The objective outside world is well related in the Lonely Planet and in Google Earth.
          I could not disagree with what you are saying more. I don't think that there is a way to create a rendition that would totalize "the objective outside world" (even if it did exist as such, which I'm not sure it does), but the lonely planet and google earth are eminently fragmentary and highly insufficient approaches to reality. They basically tell you nothing about the objective reality of a country, much like a map. They give you fragmentary spacial and / or cultural cues to help you navigate an unknown environment without getting irremediably lost. It's like saying that the objective reality of the north pole is sufficiently rendered by a picture of some snow and a compass. It's bullshit. That doesn't tell you what it feels like, or smell like, or sound like (all of which objective components of an experience of a place)

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          • bukka
            Senior Member
            • Sep 2011
            • 821

            Originally posted by galia View Post
            I could not disagree with what you are saying more. I don't think that there is a way to create a rendition that would totalize "the objective outside world" (even if it did exist as such, which I'm not sure it does), but the lonely planet and google earth are eminently fragmentary and highly insufficient approaches to reality. They basically tell you nothing about the objective reality of a country, much like a map. They give you fragmentary spacial and / or cultural cues to help you navigate an unknown environment without getting irremediably lost. It's like saying that the objective reality of the north pole is sufficiently rendered by a picture of some snow and a compass. It's bullshit. That doesn't tell you what it feels like, or smell like, or sound like (all of which objective components of an experience of a place)
            1st of all, the objective reality of a country is impossible to perfectly relate. Even facts are subjective as they are presented and chosen in a certain way, that's what you're saying right?. So your "feelings, smell and sounds" of a place are nothing but totally subjective... But did you think about what we were talking here? We are talking about different type of travel books - not travels. We are discussing different ways to pass on the experience of traveling. It's only in that regard that I replied to Mail-Moth complain about Michaux being too subjective. Also, you could have guess that it was intentionally provocative.
            If you're arguing that the only way to know a place is to go to that place, then I agree. If you're just trying to take a statement out of his context (a discussion about subjectivity in travel books), and show how many arguments you have against it, that's not really interesting.

            Edit: To Mail-Moth, it doesn't really look like it in my first reply, but I really love Bouvier, I just thought that L'Usage du Monde was a bit boring compared to the rest of his literature.
            Last edited by bukka; 04-16-2014, 09:12 AM.
            Eternity is in love with the productions of time

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            • Mail-Moth
              Senior Member
              • Mar 2009
              • 1448

              Originally posted by bukka View Post
              It's only in that regard that I replied to Mail-Moth complain about Michaux being too subjective.
              'Too openly subjective', I would say. I love Michaux nonetheless. But to be clear, I don't think that any writer could give an objective rendition of his travels. I simply happen to like the idea that some are firmly convinced to do so - trying to picture the real country, hopelessly for sure, but still, they tell in the process a lot of interesting things regarding who they think they are, where they think they came from. Michaux may be a bit too self-conscious for that.

              Edit (in answer to your edit): what I was explaining above is probably the reason why I would open it again someday rather than Le Poisson-scorpion. I don't mind being bored.
              I can see a hat, I can see a cat,
              I can see a man with a baseball bat.

              Comment

              • bukka
                Senior Member
                • Sep 2011
                • 821

                I don't mind being bored.
                How come? It's perfectly understandable that you prefer one type of travel book to an other one. But why would you prefer the one that bores you?
                If you were only being sarcastic or provocative, then don't mind my question.
                Eternity is in love with the productions of time

                Comment

                • Mail-Moth
                  Senior Member
                  • Mar 2009
                  • 1448

                  I was not. I like to read a book just for a few pages, even a few lines - not even the most notable / quotable ones, not even those that would capture the essence of the whole. The more I read and the less I care about being faithfull to the writer or understanding his purpose. I simply go through words. Some of them hit me, most of them don't - same goes for music.

                  I understand it is a very lazy way to do things, but as long as it is not a crime, I guess it is allright.
                  I can see a hat, I can see a cat,
                  I can see a man with a baseball bat.

                  Comment

                  • galia
                    Senior Member
                    • Jun 2009
                    • 1719

                    Originally posted by bukka View Post
                    If you're arguing that the only way to know a place is to go to that place, then I agree. If you're just trying to take a statement out of his context (a discussion about subjectivity in travel books), and show how many arguments you have against it, that's not really interesting.
                    I'd argue that it is impossible to know a place where you don't live, and even when you live somewhere it can still surprise you, so nothing is truly knowable anyway. I especially don't think you discover anything by travelling, except things about yourself. So even the most "objective" travel account can't help but be intensely subjective, just by virtue of the nature of travel. Some writers are just more self-aware (or self-indulgent) than others.

                    Also I hadn't realised your statement that I quoted was a joke, because I've heard similar things said in earnest and it annoys me to no end. So, sorry if I sounded abrasive or whatever

                    Comment

                    • kamsky
                      Senior Member
                      • Jan 2007
                      • 120

                      Originally posted by galia View Post
                      I'd argue that it is impossible to know a place where you don't live, and even when you live somewhere it can still surprise you, so nothing is truly knowable anyway. I especially don't think you discover anything by travelling, except things about yourself [...]
                      Neither here nor there, and not to hijack the thread, but would you describe yourself as solipsistic?

                      Comment

                      • galia
                        Senior Member
                        • Jun 2009
                        • 1719

                        not really, no

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                        • Magic1
                          Senior Member
                          • Jan 2011
                          • 225

                          All that is sold melts into air, by marshall berman

                          It's an analysis of modernity and marx and his relation to modern thought, with some literature criticism throughout. Section on Goethe's Faust was great.

                          Beautifully written devoid of trite academic squabbles and jargon.

                          Also reading Frederick Jameson's Signatures of the Visible. A marxist, frankfurt school critique of cinema.

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                          • viv1984viv
                            Senior Member
                            • Feb 2008
                            • 194

                            Originally posted by Magic1 View Post
                            All that is sold melts into air, by marshall berman
                            Funny typo.

                            I'm reading Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
                            Notes from the Vomitorium - The Nerve Of It -

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                            • Faust
                              kitsch killer
                              • Sep 2006
                              • 37852

                              AMAZING TYPO!!!
                              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

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                              • gawkrodger
                                Senior Member
                                • Jun 2013
                                • 334

                                RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One of the finest authors :(

                                Colombian author became standard-bearer for Latin American letters after success of One Hundred Years of Solitude

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