Grossly underrated writers

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

For my money, the unfinished Tale of Genji is the greatest novel ever written, as well as being the world's first psychological novel.

Don't know if you know this, but it so happens that the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, agreed with you. I've had Genji on my shelves for a long, long time (since I lived in Japan), but not quite got round to reading it. It's not underrated in Japan, I can tell you. But perhaps not known enough in the west.
I tried the great Chinese classic, The Dream of Red Mansions, when I lived there (i.e. in China). Read two volumes — there are five in all — but I was frankly bored by it. I dropped it. Apparently, it was Mao's favourite novel. Now that's a mind-bender…

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

The Enormous Space is one I particularly like. It can be read here:

The Enormous Space by JG Ballard

sculpture307.blogspot.com

Already, there are gold nuggets in that that only he could have written. The Johnsons' telephone being “reduced to a nervous wreck” by the teenage daughters! The 747 “ambling across the sky”, searching “none too strenuously” for London airport!
God, but he was brilliant. He loved airplanes and flight all his life. Perhaps no-one has written as well about those two things, excepting perhaps Saint-Exupéry, who of course made his living for a long time out of flying the postal services across the Sahara and the Andes. And wrote quite brilliantly about that in Terre des Hommes.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Don't know if you know this, but it so happens that the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, agreed with you. I've had Genji on my shelves for a long, long time (since I lived in Japan), but not quite got round to reading it. It's not underrated in Japan, I can tell you. But perhaps not known enough in the west.
I tried the great Chinese classic, The Dream of Red Mansions, when I lived there. Read two volumes — there are five in all — but I was frankly bored by it. I dropped it. Apparently, it was Mao's favourite novel. Now that's a mind-bender…

I’ve read Genji twice (and lived in Japan too).

I prefer the Seidensticker translation. But there’s a new one by Dennis Washburn that looks good.

Apparently, some Japanese specialists prefer the English translations to the opaque original. If you want to find out more about that, Ivan Morris’s The World of the Shining Prince is a first-rate study of Heian times.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Already, there are gold nuggets in that that only he could have written. The Johnsons' telephone being “reduced to a nervous wreck” by the teenage daughters! The 747 “ambling across the sky”, searching “none too strenuously” for London airport!
God, but he was brilliant. He loved airplanes and flight all his life. Perhaps no-one has written as well about those two things, excepting perhaps Saint-Exupéry, who of course made his living for a long time out of flying the postal services across the Sahara and the Andes. And wrote quite brilliantly about that in Terre des Hommes.

I love the fact that he leaves the car running and doesn’t bother to switch off the engine.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

I’ve read Genji twice (and lived in Japan too).

I prefer the Seidensticker translation. But there’s a new one by Dennis Washburn that looks good.

Apparently, some Japanese specialists prefer the English translations to the opaque original. If you want to find out more about that, Ivan Morris’s The World of the Shining Prince is a first-rate study of Heian times.

I've written and published on the question of the history of translation.
Waley, I think it can be said, was part of that generation of translators who could allow themselves considerable liberties. It was just sort of traditional. I can't read kanji + hiragana well enough to judge (not at all, actually). Scott-Moncrieff (born the same year as Waley, I note) took breathtaking liberties with Á la recherche du temps perdu. That oneI can read in the original, so I can compare. People I knew in Japan who had good Japanese really appreciated Seidensticker. They found Waley beautiful, but kind of distant. As I say, another period.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

I've written and published on the question of the history of translation.
Waley, I think it can be said, was part of that generation of translators who could allow themselves considerable liberties. It was just sort of traditional. I can't read kanji + hiragana well enough to judge (not at all, actually). Scott-Moncrieff (born the same year as Waley, I note) took breathtaking liberties with Á la recherche du temps perdu. That oneI can read in the original, so I can compare. People I knew in Japan who had good Japanese really appreciated Seidensticker. They found Waley beautiful, but kind of distant. As I say, another period.

There’s a wonderful article by Waley on translating Dickens from English to Chinese in the anthology of his writings ‘Madly Singing in the Mountains’ , a book that is well worth acquiring if you don’t have it.

Apparently, Waley omitted an entire chapter of Genji from his translation and his portrayal of the protagonist makes him resemble an Edwardian gentleman.

The other complete translation I have read was by Royall Tyler. Have only dipped into Waley’s version but it still looks good.

His translation of The Pillow Book is wonderful.

 

[Mozzer]

What a great thread this is, so many books to add to my ever expanding to read list.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

What a great thread this is, so many books to add to my ever expanding to read list.

Ì have about forty cardboard boxes full of books to unpack (moved three times in the space of three years, last one two and half years ago — and I am not fucking carting that lot around yet again, that's it!). That represents hundreds. Many — perhaps the majority — are unread. I still have to save the money to buy the bookshelves for them. For a long, long time, I couldn't go into any city in France or Britain without heading for the bookshops and walking out with several. When Amazon came along it became horribly easy — although I continue to buy from bookshops as well, because it will be a sad day when everyone simply reads everything off Kindle, having downloaded it.
I have, I suppose, a slightly ill relation to books. I used to go round and say (under my breath, not out loud, I'm not that touched), “Yes, I know you're here. I know you're waiting. Be patient. I haven't forgotten. I shall get round to you.” I genuinely thought I'd read every single one before my time came. Now I know I won't. Doesn't matter. They're here. They've been “saved”. They're on someone's bookshelf, in someone's home.
As I get older, I've also got into the “bad” good habit of re-reading books I read many years ago. Few have disappointed me. Some have seemed even more astonishing the second time around, if that's possible. A case in point is Kerouac's On The Road, which I devoured when I was eighteen. And then re-read during a couple of days when I was ill and decided to spend them in bed, something over ten years ago. So in my late fifties.
Just finished reading War and Peace for the first time ever. The edition I read was the oldest books I possessed — the old Penguin edition in two volumes, translation by Rosemary Edmonds, dating from the fifties. I bought those two volumes when I was twelve, in 1966. I'm now seventy. See… I do get round to it.
They know that.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

I love the fact that he leaves the car running and doesn’t bother to switch off the engine.

Not very green, though, is it?

;-)

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

I am a huge fan of J.G. Ballard. I think he's an endlessly provocative and inventive writer. He was also something of a seer.

Definitely worth a listen:

Great Lives - John Gray on JG Ballard - BBC Sounds

Philosopher John Gray chooses the iconic futuristic writer JG Ballard.

www.bbc.co.uk

Thought it would mainly cover old ground (and it does), but John Gray and Ballard's daughter offer fresh insights that Matthew Parris's questions were cleverly designed to elicit.