March 30: All Literature Edition

From my own temperament and experience, I can thoroughly endorse every word of this bibliophilic post by litlove at Tales from the Reading Room:

http://litlove.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/bookaholic/

I recently got into a debate at a Korean jobs forum about my upcoming move: I innocently inquired about shipping my personal library to Korea, and all hell broke loose. Apparently, if I can't fit my entire life in a single suitcase, I'm a worthless human being, and why transport books when you could just get a Kindle?

To which my reply is: I don't think so.  Oh, I may get a Kindle eventually, that's not the issue. It wouldn't eliminate my love for the books I buy, borrow, collect, handle, and read; it would just be another toy. I will undoubtedly spend way too much money getting my books overseas and way too much space storing them in my no doubt small apartment, or in exorbitantly priced Korean storage. And what of it? Books, as litlove says, just make me happy, and that's that. Pfui on the haters.

John Self at Asylum has a go at Jocelyn Brooke's The Image of a Drawn Sword, a perennial on "neglected novels" lists:

http://theasylum.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/jocelyn-brooke-the-image-of-a-drawn-sword/ 

Kevin from Canada performs a similar resuscitating service for James Schuyler's What's for Dinner?, and considers the phenomenon of the poet-novelist:

http://kevinfromcanada.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/whats-for-dinner-by-james-schuyler/

At the Neglected Books Page, high praise for Miklos Banffy's Transylvanian Trilogy, "one of the finest works of the 20th century":

http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=332

Brooks Peters investigates, in his inimitable style, the peeping-out-of-the-closet Forties novelist Hubert Creekmore (who also shows up on "neglected" lists):

http://www.brookspeters.com/2010/03/southern-discomfort/

Did you know that A.A, Milne of Winnie-the-Pooh fame wrote a novel about marital challenges? I had heard of his crime novel The Red House Mystery, but not of Two People:

http://hannahstoneham.blogspot.com/2010/03/hundred-acre-wood-way-of-matrimony-two_29.html 

Jabberwock likes Paritish Uttam's new Dreams in Prussian Blue, in the Penguin India Metro Reads series:

http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2010/03/metro-read-dreams-in-prussian-blue.html

Jabberwock also has a neat interview with Gautam Bhatia about his graphic novel Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India:

http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2010/03/on-lies-and-satire-chat-with-gautam.html

Weirdmonger tantalizes with a brief appreciation of Frances Oliver's Xargos:

http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/xargos__a__novel_by_frances_oliver.htm

More established novels deserve their re-appreciations, too, such as Steve Donoghue's of Howard's End:

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/stevereads/2010/03/howards-end/

Priests are having a rough time of it in the news media lately, so many salacious episodes are coming to light; but let us remember their better side, too, as with these great priests in literature:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/27/ten-best-priests-john-mullan

Among notables born on this date are painters Francisco Goya and Vincent Van Gogh, novelists Tom Sharpe, Jon Hassler, Jean Giono (France), and Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (Bengal), poets Paul Verlaine and Countee Cullen, dramatist Sean O'Casey, children's writer Anna Sewell, psychologist Melanie Klein, statesman McGeorge Bundy, singers Tracy Chapman, Celine Dion, and Frankie Laine, rocker Eric Clapton, bandleader Ted Heath, race horse Secretariat, and actors Warren Beatty, Paul Reiser, John Astin, and Robbie Coltrane. Shakespeare apart, even highly literate people are likely to have read fewer great plays than great novels, short stories, or poems. I'm not sure why this is, because with a decently developed "mental theater" you can not only read but see astonishing performances of countless masterpieces. When I bring up Sean O'Casey in educated company, I am likely to draw blanks in a way that I simply wouldn't if I mentioned James Joyce or William Butler Yeats. But he is their equal, and -- to name just one of his plays -- The Plough and the Stars is as great an experience as reading has to offer. If you can see it in the theater, by all means do that; but read it in any case.