July 2005 Archives

Another current book in my Lifetime Reading Plan is The Thousand and One Nights [33], also known as The Arabian Nights. The biggest problem with reading this is that the recommended version is the 16(sic) volume translation by Sir Richard Burton from the 1880s. Or maybe just the 13(sic) volume translation by John Payne from about the same time. Zoiks!

Luckily, Jack Zipes has abridged the collection, but not the stories, in a two volume paperback set called Arabian Nights, Vol 1 and Vol 2. As mentioned in the NLRP, it's important to get an unexpurgated version because, like The Brothers Grimm, the original stories bear little resemblence to the bowlderized versions normally told.

It's been alot of fun so far. I just finished the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, with Aladdin and his magic lamp coming up next.

Good short bio on DH Lawrence, as well as the complete text for several of his books, including a current read, Women in Love:
D.H. Lawrence Biography

I'm currently listening to Sterling Audio presentation of DH Lawrence's [113] Women in Love. It is read (very well) by Maureen O'Brien and is, of course, unabridged.

I'm finding it a fascinating read. He gets a fairly long entry by Fadiman in the NLRP, where he admits to not particularily liking the man, but admiring his work.

The most striking thing to me about the writing is his way of repeating adjectives and adverbs, often several times within a single paragraph:

Gudrun, new from her life in Chelsea and Sussex, shrank cruelly from this amorphous ugliness of a small colliery town in the Midlands. Yet forward she went, through the whole sordid gamut of pettiness, the long amorphous, gritty street.

And many many other examples of this. When I write, I tend to avoid this like the plague, but Lawrence revels in it, almost overdoes it. It is a real cool effect.