04-06-2012, 12:48 AM | #1 |
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Obscure Nominations April 2012 • The MR Literary Club
This is the real nominations thread for April.
Help us select what the MR Literary Club will read for April 2012! The nominations will run through April 11 or until five works have made the list. Final voting in a new poll will begin by April 11, where the month's selection will be decided. The category for this month is: Obscure NEW THIS MONTH - In order for a work to be included in the poll it needs FOUR nominations - the original nomination plus THREE supporting. Each participant has FOUR nominations to use. You can nominate a new work for consideration or you can support (second, third or fourth) a work that has already been nominated by another person. To nominate a work just post a message with your nomination. If you are the first to nominate a work, it's always nice to provide an abstract to the work so others may consider their level of interest. What is literature for the purposes of this club? A superior work of lasting merit that enriches the mind. Often it is important, challenging, critically acclaimed. It may be from ancient times to today; it may be from anywhere in the world; it may be obscure or famous, short or long; it may be a story, a novel, a play, a poem, an essay or another written form. If you are unsure if a work would be considered literature, just ask! The floor is now open! * Nominations complete: The Permanent Husband (aka The Eternal Husband) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Fully Nominated Spoiler:
Columba by Prosper Mérimée - Fully nominated Spoiler:
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, as translated by Jane Kuntz - Fully Nominated Spoiler:
Hunger by Knut Hamsun - Fully nominated Spoiler:
Memoirs of a Midget by Walter De La Mare - Fully nominated Spoiler:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allen Poe - 1 Spoiler:
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe - 2 Spoiler:
Last edited by sun surfer; 04-10-2012 at 12:39 PM. |
04-06-2012, 07:33 AM | #2 |
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OK, I'll nominate one of the most neglected and obscure works by Edgar Allen Poe--The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. It is the only novel length work by Poe and while Poe based it on several real-life events and apparently intended at the beginning to make it realistic, it very soon became very strange. The novel begins as an adventure story involving a stowaway, Arthur Gordon Pym, and continues with his ever more weird adventures including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism. Poe published it in 1838 and it received very mixed reviews.
Goodreads says this about it: "Some critics responded negatively to the work for being too gruesome & for cribbing heavily from other works, while others praised its exciting adventures. Poe himself later called it "a very silly book". Nevertheless, The Narrative became an influential work, notably for Herman Melville & Jules Verne." Despite Poe's dismissive remark, it remains an interesting oddity. To be honest, I've never read it through entirely and perhaps this might provide an opportunity to do so. It's available as a free download from Project Gutenberg. It is the main text in Works of Edgar Allen Poe--Volume 3. Last edited by fantasyfan; 04-06-2012 at 02:53 PM. |
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04-06-2012, 09:27 AM | #3 | ||
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OK - I'll also go with a famous author and a lesser known work.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his novella The Permanent Husband (aka The Eternal Husband). You can pick this up at Project Gutenberg where it is bundled with Uncle's Dream. You can also purchase it standalone for about $5 from Amazon etc.. In print the story is approximately 150 pages give or take so it's not huge like some of his other more famous novels. Quote:
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04-06-2012, 11:50 AM | #4 |
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I nominate Talismano. I have a link below to then Wikipedia page for the author and a summary of the book from the Kobo website. This book is published by Dalkey Archive, a really cool non-profit publishing house dedicated to publishing and keeping in print experimental and non-commercial books.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelwahab_Meddeb "Talismano By Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jane Kuntz A lush journey into a Tunisia of memory and imagination. Talismano is a novelistic exploration of writing seen as a hallucinatory journey through half-remembered, half-imagined cities—in particular, the city of Tunis, both as it is now, and as it once was. Walking and writing, journey and journal, mirror one another to produce a calligraphic, magical work: a palimpsest of various languages and cultures, highlighting Abdelwahab Meddeb’s beguiling mastery of both the Western and Islamic traditions. Meddeb’s journey is first and foremost a sensual one, almost decadent, where the narrator luxuriates in the Tunis of his memories and intercuts these impressions with recollections of other cities at other times, reviving the mythical figures of Arab-Islamic legend that have faded from memory in a rapidly westernizing North Africa. A fever dream situated on the knife-edge between competing cultures, Talismano is a testament to the power of language to evoke, and subdue, experience." From Kobo website($10.09) |
04-06-2012, 01:26 PM | #5 |
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All three nominations so far sound interesting; I'll start by seconding Talismano.
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04-06-2012, 02:52 PM | #6 |
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I'll second The Permanent Husband.
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04-06-2012, 02:57 PM | #7 |
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I will nominate Columba by Prosper Mérimée. I nominate this based on the fact that Mérimée himself is not that well known and to the extent that he is it is for his story Carmen upon which the famous opera by Bizet was based.
Set on the island of Corsica in the 19th Century it is the tale of a young solider who after serving in the French army returns home when his father is murdered. There his sister incites him to seek a revenge killing on the rival family that she is convinced murdered their father. Very colorful portrait of the Corsican culture of the time. Wikipedia biography of Prosper Mérimée This is available here at MR and at PG |
04-06-2012, 02:59 PM | #8 |
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A Dostoyevsky novel I have not read? I well third The Permanent Husband.
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04-06-2012, 04:10 PM | #9 |
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I will fourth The Permanent Husband and second Columba.
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04-06-2012, 04:33 PM | #10 |
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I'll third Columba.
With Bookworm_Girl's support, The Permanent Husband is now fully nominated. |
04-06-2012, 05:58 PM | #11 |
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I'll fourth Columba.
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04-06-2012, 05:59 PM | #12 |
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Third Talismano.
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04-06-2012, 08:49 PM | #13 |
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I will fourth Talismano. Looks intriguing.
EDIT: By the way - love the theme for this month. It's a great idea! Last edited by caleb72; 04-06-2012 at 10:38 PM. |
04-09-2012, 03:38 AM | #14 |
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04-09-2012, 12:22 PM | #15 |
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