The 'eh?' factor

One of my favourite books is Un Nos Ola Leuad by Caradog Prichard, the English translation (I won't claim I even came close to following the Welsh) is One Moonlit Night and it's bloody brilliant.

I don't really attach any kind of pleasure to dropping the names of obscure books. In conversation with most people, any name I drop that isn't a celebrity is unheard of, and I have to explain it. In bookish circles, it's taken for granted that everyone's read loads of books that others haven't - there's so many authors around that only a few will ever arrive in any kind of canon, and since these will be ones that literature students study anyway, there's not much point in 'recommending' them to each other.

I suppose I sometimes get a buzz from dropping in the names of comic artists, but that's tempered by the fact that I have to follow on by describing comic art in words. It's easy enough to enthusiastically relate a kooky idea for a book, or say what an author writes about, but saying why, say, Yoshitako Amano is such a fabulous concept artist is more of a struggle.

I love hearing people talk about books and authors that I've never heard of. I am so unread anyway but always looking around for the next thing to read. Thanks to Liana I'm now following up a Balkan writer whose name escapes me for the moment ... great fun and part of the whole cycle of hunting books ...

maybe that's just me though

I like to learn about books that were either popular or considered very important in the past but which are now just, well...."lost classics." Quite often, these books are wonderful, or at least interesting bits of history. One relatively recent example is "The Wild Party" by John Mancure March. It is a syncopated rhyming poem narrative and was very well known in the 1920s in the U.S. It then disappeared for decades and was re-issued with illustrations in the 1990s. It's great!

clearly Mark's right and a lot of people do get pleasure out of citing the titles of obscure books and music (perhaps especially music?) that their friends have never heard of. have to say though that, like Hen, i don't get anything out of this myself. if i've read a book and enjoyed it, and someone else has never heard of it, i just feel frustrated and want them to go out and buy it immediately, so that we can discuss it.

for me, there's no conversational pleasure in citing an obscure name to someone who's never heard of it, for it doesn't give a conversation anywhere to go. "have you read x?" "no, i haven't." full stop. end of conversation. or else a 'title' battle occurs, with obscure names being batted back and forth, and where the conversation is trapped inside a narrow corridor of the form: "have you read a?" "no, have you read b?" "no, have you read c?" etc.

overall, i'd say the gap between my and other people's interests tends to be wide rather than narrow and this is something i take no pleasure from. i'd much rather have things in common than things that just serve to widen the gap.

bravo.. me too... i get especially frustrated when people close off when i mention a balkan or similar author, instead of listening as to why he or she is great. i get a lot of that at Uni, surprisingly.. i also get it when i am describing the beauty of belgrade to a person that goes regularly to Lanzarote.. it makes me sad.

It shouldnt matter, but it does...

Yeah, I'll throw my hat into the ring. It's something of a conversation stopper when someone says 'Have you read anything by x?' and you shake your head. As soon as two people have read the same book you have common ground you can work over. It's the literary equivalent of discussing soaps - a Neighbours fan is unlikely to get much enjoyment out of talking with an Eastenders junkie.

I don't think it's a conversation stopper at all if someone says, "Have you read A Author?" and you go, "No." You might want to find out what the author is like, does s/he fit into a certain 'school' of writing, is it poetic writing or is it direct, is the plot the most important aspect. You can find out whether the author is political or not and a whole range of things. As such it can be the start of a whole bunch of stuff.

And to quote from an obscure film, you don't need to have read a book to have an opinion on it. As such once you've covered the ground above you can form a set of opinions, have a conversation and then, possibly, go find the book and read it.

I'm all up for listening to someone relating a new book to me regardless of its recognised stature.. or whether I've heard of it.. if they enjoyed it or they had a strong reaction to it then I imagine they will relate aspects of it that I can take away.. my head is always full of recommendations from others.. I just hope that I can remember them long enough to have a peek at. Carson McCullers was recommended recently and blew me away.

It's weird because there is this dual pressure to discover new books and also to trawl recognised territory so that you'll have an opinion on forums like this ..AND you'll be able to recommend obscure stuff. I still haven't read Tender is the Night. It depends what world you're in. I imagine Julio Cortazar, in some areas of Argentina and France, is what Larkin is to us British.. this unchallengeable giant.. and that seems to me to be the worst thing.

Also did you know that only an average of two percent of the English novel market is taken up by translations?? This is a f.ucking crime if ever there was one and makes me wonder if obscurity will be more and more a thing of the past.. with publishers constantly backing the better bet.

What I think is great abt what's been happening to me recently, reading-wise, is that a good third of good stuff I've read recently has been scattered over photocopies that I've grabbed from the net or have been sent by people I know ..or off of ABC. It makes the act of writing real even if obscure.. hopefully some of these people will break the cycle a little and have a modicum of success.

God's Other Son by John Donald Imus, a radio personality in NYC. Very funny, very American story about an evangelist preacher/con man, the Right Reverend Dr. Billy Sol Hargis.

Imus has been on the air since the early 70s in NYC. Hargis was his best know radio character, so he wrote a novel about the guy. Published in the early 80s.

I've read a lot of obscure books that are crap, but some have been wonderful.

Laughing Gas by P.G.Wodehouse: often thought, even by Plum fans, to be one of his worst books, it taught me how to write dialogue.

A Dictionary of Modern American Usage by Bryan.A. Garner: not noted even among usage books, this one's a corker. If you read it from back to front you'll know what very few writers know: how to write a sentence. It sits on my desk and I smell it and stroke it for comfort.

The Artistic Anatomy of Trees by Rex Vicat Cole: no one should write about trees without first getting this beaut down their necks.

Gunner Asch by H. H. Kirst: I'd never have guessed Kirst could write a comic novel, but this is brilliant and funny - it's about a shirking German soldier during the second world war.

The Little Grey Men by BB: won the Carnegie Medal in about 1947 but has fallen into obscurity. I'd take this children's book over Watership Down, The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, you name it.

The Card by Arnold Bennett: another great comic novel by a writer you'd not expect to write one. I'd nominate Bennett as the most underrated British writer of all: the Old Wives'Tale is one of the greatest British novels, in my opinion.

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard: the greatest true adventure book ever, I'd say.

I could go on.

d.beswetherick.

i've read lots of obscure books. The titles were obscure, the authors were obscure... I forget in the obscurity who or what they were all about.

'Fool on the Hill' and 'Sewer, Gas & Electric: the public works trilogy' by Matt Ruff - the first one is my favourite book ever, and it really frustrates me that no-one else seems to know him, cos I'd love to talk about it with someone! Also I'm loathe to lend anyone my only copy, as it's an import and my most precious book (well, along with a copy of 'Them' signed by the fabulous Jon Ronson...anyone read that either?)

No, but I read a story by Ronson in the paper a few weeks ago - about Christmas - that I cut out because it was so well written. Till then I thought Ronson was a buffoon, judged by his appearances on television.

I thought Ronson was a cigarette lighter.

I love Jon Ronson dearly. I saw him give a reading from 'Them' a while back and he was very interesting and fielded questions very well. I've been a fan of his for years, way back to 'The Ronson Mission' on BBC2 and that documentary he did where he tried to do Kerouac' 'One the Road' but in Britain. I even liked 'For The Love Of...' on Channel4 at yond time in the morning....

The Kerouac documentary sounds really interesting, I didn't know about that...have to see if I can track it down...