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I'll certainly keep an eye out for The Judge's Story. I'm taken with the plot, by your mention of a mystical quality, and by the fact that he was popular in France. (That last I learned from The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, a joke of a book which hitherto has been useful only as doorstoop/help with TLS crosswords.)
Should I read it, shall I continue the thread with a rant re Morgan's post-Husserlian gender-dynamised dialectic of 'thatness' and objectivity 'of' non-spiritual dynamics of quasi-Hegelian normatives '?' (viz. N. Bourbaki, R. Selavy)
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the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on the dissecting table. . . |
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Sorry, the joke is beyond me when you say:
Quote:
If you could say which of his books you have read and what you think, I would be grateful. If you haven't read any, do. C'est la vie, Afrikaner tobacco. |
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So sorry. Alighted upon this thread immediately after reading the one on Orwell, which of course you had no way of knowing.
No, I've not read Morgan but shall look into getting The Judge's Story from amazon. Was thinking of Duchamp--Rrose Selavy--but is that truly the name of a tobacco? Calls to mind disgusted Afrikaners harrumphing 'c'est la mort, more like.' In any case, thanks for the information on Morgan.
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the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on the dissecting table. . . |
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I remember in my teens (a long, long time ago) coming across a French book on English literature, probably dating from the Thirties or Forties, in which Charles Morgan was considered the most important contemporary English writer. I got the impression that what the French liked about him was that he dealt with spiritual themes, rather like French Catholic writers of the time like Mauriac and Bernanos.
As far as I know, Morgan is now as forgotten in France as he is in English-speaking countries. |
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Howard, from my cursory researches, this is quite correct: the Frogs loved him, the Brits dumped him when he died, rather prematurely. Morgan had many kind words to say about the French, even the Italians, when Britain was at war with them in 1943. Although I've changed the book I'm now reading as announced in the window of the postings here, I am still reading his essays, which are illuminating.
The latest one I've read was about Turgenev, where he contrasts the somewhat more tranquil Turgenev with the rather wild Dostoevsky. Morgan's essay on Emily Brontë is also interesting, suggesting that Branwell may have help her write parts of "Wuthering Heights", but that the spirit of the book is wholly hers. This time it is her wildness that impresses him. As it happens, Accidie, I am a fan of Afrikaner literature. The caricature of nasty Boers that fought Churchill and a few other Brits like Kitchener, then turned into Black-hating savages in the 1940s, is a total travesty. Their history is interesting, their literature likewise. Many of the better authors nowadays are women, not the bandwagon-butch anti-apartheid heroes such as Brink and Breytenbach. In the same way as German literature is not endless pale reflections of "Mein Kampf", so too have the Afrikaners developed a sophisticated prose and poetry. They are best at short-stories. |
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