Forgotten & Obscure Gems

[Stewart]

Use this thread to list forgotten or obscure gems that the world really needs to read. Preferably why, too.

[Gem]

Anna Kavan.
I read her short story collection Asylum Piece and was completely taken by her style of writing. Perceptive, vivid and memorable.

[saliotthomas]

First volume of the Transylvanian Trilogy
I read this book last year and was amazed i never eard of this autor before.Even now i find very few reference about him.It is like in finding War and peace one realized that Tolstoy was an obscure Russian writer.
Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz (1873—1950) was an Hungarian nobleman, politician, and novelist. His books include The Transylvanian Trilogy (They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided), and The Phoenix Land.
Bànffy" Paints an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, as seen through the eyes of two young aristocratic Transylvanian cousins"

[Bjorn]

"Only two things are white, Tintomara: innocence - and arsenic."

One of my all-time favourite novels, which seems to be out of print in English, is Carl Jonas Love Almqvist's The Queen's Diadem. Written in 1834, this is a remarkably modern novel mixing both genres and styles (It's a novel! It's a play! It's a musical!) re-telling the murder of Gustav III with the focus on a young woman (?) of very ambiguous gender and sexuality called Tintomara, who somehow ends up in the middle of it... Simultaneously political conspiracy thriller (by 19th century standards) and a smart literary (if slightly over-romantic) novel not completely dissimilar to Woolf's Orlando, leaving very few lines unblurred... highly recommended if you can find it.

[Stewart]

The Queen's Diadem does sound interesting. If it precedes the highly modern Doctor Glas by seventy years and still feels modern then I am certainly going to look out for it. Sounds like an abebooks job, to me.

[saliotthomas]

Ernesto Sabato El Túnel "The Outsider" or "The Tunnel" Written in 1948, this novel is told as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him. Throughout the novel Castel questions his actions and those of others. As narrator, Castel offers a detailed expose on why he killed his lover, María Iribarne. Authors such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene particularly lauded Sabato's novels.(wikipedia)

I read this novel a long time ago and my sole souvenir is that it was very cold,different.I get it next time i go to France re read it and try to devellope.
I was curious to know is you heard of Sabatohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Sabato

[obooki]

I've got a Sabato novel called The Angel of Darkness, but I haven't got around to reading it yet. He was also praised, according to the back of my copy, by Thomas Mann. A remarkable thing is that he's still alive, born 1911. He is a very revered figure in Latin America.

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by obooki

I've got a Sabato novel called The Angel of Darkness, but I haven't got around to reading it yet. He was also praised, according to the back of my copy, by Thomas Mann. A remarkable thing is that he's still alive, born 1911. He is a very revered figure in Latin America.

and he deserve to be,if my memorie doesn't fail me.If you read the angel of darkness i would be very curious to know your opinion on it.

[nnyhav]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Ernesto Sabato El Túnel "The Outsider" or "The Tunnel" Written in 1948, this novel is told as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him. Throughout the novel Castel questions his actions and those of others. As narrator, Castel offers a detailed expose on why he killed his lover, María Iribarne. Authors such as Albert Camus and Graham Greene particularly lauded Sabato's novels.(wikipedia)

I read this novel a long time ago and my sole souvenir is that it was very cold,different.I get it next time i go to France re read it and try to devellope.
I was curious to know is you heard of Sabato http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernesto_Sabato

I've been trying to get hold of that for years. Apparently the Sabato estate has been recalcitrant regarding English translation rights. Fortunately, Helen Lane's translation of Of Heroes and Tombs is easier to find, and well worthwhile.

[Patrick Murtha]

Anyone interested in this subject should thoroughly explore the "Neglected Books" website and re-check it regularly:

http://neglectedbooks.com/

[Jan Mbali]

Originally Posted by Patrick Murtha

Anyone interested in this subject should thoroughly explore the "Neglected Books" website and re-check it regularly:

The Neglected Books Page

Thanks - it is worth a visit. Dredged from my mind two books I read as a precocious child - no TV in South Africa then:

H. Van Loon's "Lives" about having dinner with historical characters summoned from the past. Bought it at a second-hand bookshop recetently. Seems now like dubious and over-described history is presented - I could not have understood much as a child, but I loved it then.

Charles Erskine Scott Wood's "Heavenly Discourse", which is a charm against bigotry and mean-mindedness.

[nnyhav]

Unusual, Neglected and/or Lost Literature

from one of the few who were blogging back in '99

[Eric]

My question is always: unusual, forgotten or obscure from whose perspective? Should we always take American and British tastes as default position? (If you can't find it in Foyle's, and in English, it doesn't exist.)

Just about everything I translate, and much of what I read, has never been heard of in London and New York. But does that mean it has been forgotten or is obscure throughout the world? Even in the country where it has been written?

[Jan Mbali]

Eric's general point is sound, but spoils the fun. Out of print and little known (excpet here and there!) books in the bowels of some dusty shop or charity shop surely can measure up. A candidate from my little collection is "Consuming Passions", an amazing historical study of food as connected to love and lust.

Great fun is the "Penguin book of Insults" which I have used so extensively it has fallen apart - I cannot find another copy. I remember a French statements insult re the USA: that it has gone "from barbarism to decadence without passing through the uusal period of civilisation".

I have two of Brendan Behan's illustrated collections of Irish sketches called "Hold your hour and have another" and the other is titiled "Sketches and Impressions". His Borstal Boy must still be well known - he was sentenced after an IRA bombing to prison in a prison for juveniles. I cannot find another Irish gem I picked up there decades ago. Perhaps it is in a box in the garage or , fately, I loaned it out: Tomas O'Crohan's wonderfully poetic account of primitive life on the Great Blasket Island (in county Kerry) in the late C19. He dictated it to Robin Fowler in Irish, being illiterate like all the islanders. I remember his account of boxes of tea being washed up which they fed to the pigs, which died. And a fight with the tax collectors when a women was so enraged and ran out of stones and was stopped just in time from hurling her baby at them. In revenge they smashed up the islanders' boats. But Eric's point is right, in that I assume the book is still a classic amongst the more liberally educated educated Irish.

Mostly my shelves are filled with obscure but largely pointless social science works, with a few exceptions such as CW Mills "The Sociological Imagination" which I hope undergrads are forced to read the whole of.

[Eric]

Jan, of course it spoils the fun. But that's the whole point. Brits and Yanks are exceedingly arrogant about obscurity and oblivion. People who live in a bell jar never explore the world beyond. I could list all sorts of English books involving the comic, the curious, the zany, like the ones Jan mentions, but it's still a sub-genre. Things like "Puckoon", and "The Penguin Book of Comic and Curious Verse".

But as a serious literary translator, I prefer to get my laughs from the telly, leaving my reading to cover more sober stuff. In literature, I prefer wit, puns (in moderation), to belly laughs. If you want innuendo, the "Carry On..." films, and "Are You Being Served?" or "'Allo, 'Allo" are as good as anything in print.

So while others are smashing up boats I'm going to watch the telly.

[cuchulain]

Sabato's The Tunnel is one of my favorite books, all time. Latino Existentialism. Brilliant.

Famine, by Liam O'Flaherty, is a truly moving, beautifully written novel, set in Ireland during, well, the famine.

Sean O'Failain's Bird Alone is another favorite. The quality of prose is exemplary. I've read few novels in English that surpass it for that quality. And it holds together extremely well as a novel, regardless of the quality of prose.

Kallocain, by Karin Boye. A brilliant, dystopian novel, by a renowed Swedish poet.

Movieland, by Ramon Gomez de la Serna. Known, primarily, as a great aphorist, Gomez de la Serna imagined a Hollywood, never visited. Brilliant novel, made of whole cloth.

[lenz]

I like to find odd but interesting obscure books (to me, at least).
"Quirky" writing, too, that works, that fits the story without obscuring it, or trying too hard, is always a good find. Flann O'Brien is a supreme example of dark, alcoholic quirkiness - hilarious and a little creepy. I was attracted by the title The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman in a sales bin - it has nothing to do with those poets!!

Of course, antiquarian (second-hand) book shops are great for old books that may not be masterpieces, but tell a story that illuminates a certain historical period or offers the biography of a forgotten, but fascinating person.

My favourite obscure find is a slim autobiography (1935, first published 1910) of George Sanger, owner of a travelling circus caravan in 19th c. England, with his performing family.

This is like Dickens without the cloying sentiment, a picture of determined struggle through grim poverty, horrible violence, rise to fame and prosperity and the joy of theatrical invention. He even gets to meet Queen Victoria!

The book itself is beautifully made, as well - looks nice on the shelf.
Could this be a thread? - Obscure finds in dusty old book shops? The dust is essential.

[saliotthomas]

Tada..... Forgotten & Obscure Gems
Without the dust but obscurity prevail .
Even a site dedicated to it.

[lenz]

OK. You're too quick for me. I'll switch to that thread - but I blame Lionel who encouraged me.

[saliotthomas]

Lionel is evil, a well known fact.