Faber Books – Part 3 – Garrison Keillor, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sylvia Plath, Wilma Stockenstrom, Charles Williams

The last of the Faber books. From here I will move on to general fiction in a variety of editions.

First though, Garrison Keillor of whom I have two books, Lake Woebegone Days and Radio Romance. Keillor is of course well known as a humorist and broadcaster of Prairie Home Companion.  He also released the charming and funny Songs of the Cat, a must buy for cat lovers.

Below are the books, cover illustrations by Pierre Le Tan

Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian writer. I think when I acquired his War of the End of the World I was very taken with South American literature. These days I can’t even recall whether I actually finished the novel. Anyway, here’s the cover.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was also published by Faber and was something of a bestseller back in the 1970s. Must read it again sometime.

I can’t say I know anything about Wilma Stockenstrom or her book The Expedition to the Baobab Tree, which I find in my collection, but apparently she is an Afrikaans poet and novelist. Ah the wonders of the Internet…

And finally, Charles Williams, who was one of the Inklings along with J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis. His novels are quite distinct from theirs being of a contemporary nature and are classified as supernatural thrillers. They are somewhat weird and most unusual, often featuring demonic possession being overcome by angelic intervention.

Here are three Faber editions of his books. I have others in diverse editions elsewhere.

Next – a diverse range of large size fiction paperbacks (with a few hard covers)

Faber Books – Part 2 – Lawrence Durrell, Ellen Gilchrist, William Golding, Nikolas Kazantzakis

To continue with Faber books, and Lawrence Durrell first of all…

I cannot claim to have read either Bitter Lemons or Tunc, or maybe I have, in the dim distant past, but here are the old Faber editions of the books in question, editions published respectively in mcmlix (1960) and 1969.

Two books from Durrell’s humorous stories of the diplomatic service, Stiff Upper Lip & Esprit de Corps, very funny books indeed!

Next Ellen Gilchrist, a wonderful American novelist and short story writer from the southern state of Mississippi. Her collection In The Land of Dreamy Dreams, which I have in a first edition hardcover, was my introduction to her fiction. It introduces the character of Rhoda Manning who featured in many of her short stories. But as I am showing only paperback Faber publications, I’ll get to that book later.

The Annunciation (1983) was her first published novel and Net of Jewells was published in 1992.

Victory Over Japan is another collection of short stories, won the National Book Award in 1984, and is quite marvellous from what I can recall.

William Golding is famous for his novel Lord of the Flies, which I have in a Penguin Modern Classic. The Scorpion God is a lesser known work, that no doubt I read way back in the past, and is set in Ancient Egypt.

Finally for this entry, two novels by Nikos Kazantzakis, well known for his novel Zorba The Greek that was made into an immensely popular film in the early 1960s and thus thrust him into the spotlight. I have only two of his novels, Zorba The Greek, of course, and Christ Crucified.

The last of the Faber books will be posted shortly and include works by Garrison Keillor and Charles Williams.

Faber Books – Part 1 – Paul Auster

Faber & Faber are an interesting imprint, and they were adventurous in the authors they chose to publish. Always, you could rely on a Faber & Faber book to be out of the ordinary.

I suppose I discovered the writings of Paul Auster when a friend, who happened to be the Faber rep for Australia gave me the proof copy of The New York Trilogy in 1987 and I was subsequently blown away by it.

I sporadically collected his novels thereafter, and though they failed to thrill me after a time, I did enjoy In the Country of Last Things and Moon Palace.

An author you don’t hear much about these days is Djuna Barnes. Her most famous novel, Nightwood, was a must have novel if you in any way embraced the counter culture of the 1960/1970s. The cover is typical of Faber books of the 1960s...

…as is the case of the paperback editions of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet , a series that was immensely popular in the 1960s. I reread them about five years ago, and found them to be surprisingly well worth the effort.

Durrell’s other great sequence of novels was the Avignon Quintet which also has references to the Alexandrian series.

Monsieur, Livia & Constance are all paperback editions, but Sebastian and Quinx are first edition hard covers. The delicate cover art is by David Gentleman.

That’s it for tonight, but I will continue with more Lawrence Durrell next time.

Picador Books – Part 12 – Authors “T” to “Z”

The final post on Picadors will cover various authors of diverse nationalities, the first being Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki whose novel The Makioka Sisters was published in Picador in 1983.

Next two novels are by British writer Emma Tennant - The Bad Sister and Wild Nights.

D M Thomas’ The Flute Player is next. The author describes this novel as emerging out of a fascination with Russian poets and particularly Anna Akhmatova. The Picador edition has a rather splendid cover.

Silver Light by David Thomson “is perhaps the first Western novel inspired by Western movies. Or perhaps obsessed is a more accurate word. The old West of Silver Light is populated by ''real'' characters (Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid) and ''reel'' characters (Montgomery Clift's Matthew Garth from Red River, John Wayne's Ethan Edwards from The Searchers).” ~ Entertainment Weekly

I have been reading this book over the past few weekends, and though it is not great literature with a capital L, it’s an unusual kind of novel, and it did keep me interested from start to finish.

The cover photo is marvellously apt.

From the Wild West to Africa in the form of anthropological studies of the the Mbuti pygmies of the Belgian Congo (Forest People) and the Ik from the mountains of north eastern Uganda near the border with Kenya (Mountain People) by Colin Turnbull the famous British anthropologist.

Norwegian author Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Her best known novel is Kristin Lavransdatter a trilogy tracing the life of the eponymous heroine in 14th Century Norway. The Picador edition is an omnibus of the entire trilogy. It is a large tome, but a very enjoyable and engaging saga. I’ve read it several times, though not for many years.

The next book sounds extremely politically incorrect…

It is Memoirs of An Anti Semite by Gregor Von Rezzori and is in fact a satire on post war Europe. Elie Wiesel is quoted as saying about this book, and Von Rezzori: “Rezzori addresses the major problems of our time, and his voice echoes with the disturbing and wonderful magic of a true storyteller."

Next Fay Weldon’s early novel Female Friends, which indeed was my first introduction to her novels, and Deirdre Wilson’s Slave of the Passions, an interesting coming of age novel.

Followed by French feminist Monique Wittig’s surreal Lesbian fantasy The Guerilleres with a stunning cover by John Holmes. It was one of the first books issued in Picador in 1972.

And the final Picador is Mars, by Fritz Zorn.

It has been quite interesting displaying these old books, and it has encouraged me to reread a few of them whilst I’ve been putting up these posts.

Next - Faber books

Picador Books - Part 11 – Damon Runyon, Salman Rushie, Jose Saramago, Jonathan Schell, Idries Shah, Josef Skvorecky, Lee Smith

This is the second last post on Picadors, as I should be able to knock off the final thirteen books in my next entry.

A good couple of books to start this post are two Damon Runyon collections. As I wrote previously, Runyon was “best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the Brooklyn or Midtown demi-monde.”
His style is very individual and he is very quotable, for instance this one:
“I came to the conclusion long ago that all life is six to five against.”
Salman Rushdie won the Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children in 1981. If I recall, I never could get into it all that much and failed to finish the book. Perhaps I should give it another chance.



Baltasar and Blimunda by Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago is a magic realist historical novel set in the 18th Century. It is many years since I have it, but I recall being charmed by the story at the time it was purchased.



And now for something completely different, not fiction at all, but Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth – a chilling description of the consequences of nuclear war. The cover is understandably stark and bleak.



On a lighter note The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin and The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, by Persian writer Idries Shah, are humorous collections of folklore, featuring Nasrudin, “a fictional legendary satirical Sufi figure who is believed by some to have existed during the Middle Ages (around 13th century), in Akşehir, and later in Konya, under the Seljuq rule. Nasreddin was a populist philosopher and wise man, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes.” - from Wikipedia.

From Persia we proceed to Czechoslovakia and Josef Skvorecky’s great novel, Miss Silver’s Past. I recently reread this novel and enjoyed it tremendously. It is a satire on the publishing industry in Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia, a murder mystery and a tale of obsession. The Picador edition has a very evocative cover and a foreword by Graham Greene.



Finally, for this entry, a multi-generational mystery by American writer Lee Smith, Family Linen.


The final Picador post will feature various ‘T’ to ‘Z’ authors including Emma Tennant, D M Thomas, Sigrid Undset and Monique Wittig.