Penguin Modern Classics 6–Irish & Latin American Classics

To start with Irish modern classics, there are only three represented in my collection. The first is a 1966 edition of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I vaguely recall was on the curriculum of my Literature course at university.

1966 edition – photographs from the National Gallery of Ireland

The other two Irish novels are At Swim- Two- Birds by Flann O’Brien and Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime and other stories by Oscar Wilde.

1971 edition – “The Bus By The River” by Jack B Yeats	1974 edition – A Private View 1881” by W P Frith

As for South American novels I have of course Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths,  my introduction to his work, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez  which was also the first book of his that I read.

1972 edition – “La Havane” by Portocarrero	1977 edition – “Misery of the Peasants by J C Orozco

And finally for this post, two novels by Alejo Carpentier, a Swiss born Cuban writer, who was a major influence on  magic realist writers such as Marquez , Fuentes etc. I can’t remember if I ever read the two following novels, Explosion in a Cathedral and The Lost Steps, but these Penguin Modern Classics editions have wonderful surrealist covers.

1971 edition – “Tete Raphaelesque Eclatee” by Dali	1968 edition – “The Great Forest” by Max Ernst

The next post will feature a miscellany of nationalities and the last of the Penguin Modern Classics in my personal library.

Picador Books – Part 10 – Flann O’Brien, Marcel Pagnol, John Cowper Powys & David Profumo

Myles na gCopaleen aka Flann O’Brien aka Brian O’Nolan needs no introduction, being the well known writer of satiric novels The Third Policeman and At Swim Two Birds. I have a pretty good collection of his books, becoming highly enamoured of The Third Policeman back in the 1960s, but they are all in diverse editions. Picador published his The Poor Mouth and The Best of Myles in the 1970s along with the aforementioned books. The cover art is by Ralph Steadman.

Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist whose books, collectively called The Water of the Hills, became popular in the English speaking parts of the world in the 1980s after they were adapted to film. Below are the Picador edition of the books Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources in one volume.

The Picador edition of A Glastonbury Romance was my first introduction to the novels of John Cowper Powys. Even though it is over thirty years since I have read it, images from the book still resonate in my head – a jug stuffed with bluebells, a drowned girl, an iron bar…. It’s a hefty tome, too big to carry around commuting, but I look forward to rereading it when I retire from work.

I can’t say I remember much about the rest of his books I have in Picador editions, but here they are anyway, and they are all large books.

David Profumo is the son of the infamous former British government minister John Profumo of The Profumo Affair. David Profumo wrote a book about that scandal titled Bringing The House Down, but he did write two novels, one of which is The Weather In Iceland that I recall rather enjoying when I first read it.

More Picadors to follow – Damon Runyon, Salmon Rushdie and others.

A Miscellany

This entry marks the end of the books I will display from the small bookshelf. From here on I will move onto bigger, and hopefully, better things on the other two bookcases.

First off, two hard cover copies of famous books, which I basically purchased to fill a gap when the paperback copies disappeared.

The Enormous Room I first read way back in the 1960s when my sister in law recommended it to me. It was her favourite book. It is an oddity, a memoir by ee cummings on his experience when he was detained as a suspected spy in France during the first world war. It is written in the idiosyncratic style Cummings later developed in his poetry.

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien is one of the great absurdist novels and probably O’Brien’s best known novel. I do have a first edition copy of The Dalkey Archive on another bookshelf, but alas this edition of The Third Policeman is a later edition.

Janwillem Van De Wetering wrote a series of detective novels set in Amsterdam featuring Police Officers Grijpstra and de Geir, two very engaging characters. The novels are laid back and gently humorous with ingenious plots. The following two novels, The Mind Murders and The Streetbird were published in 1981 and 1983.

I am saddened to see, on his Wikipedia page, that Van de Wetering died early this month on July 4^th which coincidentally is the day the remarkable Thomas Disch chose to end his life.

Another pair of oddities – Azazel by Isaac Asimov and The Kingdom Fanes, are respectively, a collection of short stories featuring the two centimetre tall demon Azazel published in one volume in 1988, and the other is an unusual fairy tale by Amanda Prantera. As a physical object, The Kingdom of Fanes is a lovely little hard cover. Amanda Prantera wrote several metaphysical novels early in her career – Strange Loop and The Cabalist to name a few, and also wrote a sort of tribute to Lord Byron in her novel Conversations with Lord Byron on perversion, 163 years after His Lordship’s death. She is an interesting writer and deserves to be better known.

Lastly, two unusual Faber publications – The Mystery of the Sardine by Stefan Themerson and The Pearl Killers by Rachel Ingalls. These books were part of the haul given me by my Faber rep friend.

Oh, I almost forgot – Billion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss – a respected history of Science Fiction, a bit out of date these days, but still valid.

There may be a short hiatus in postings as I scan books for the next stage of bookcase revelations - art books, science fiction and fantasy.