Really bad sex

I award the Empurpled Septre for Sexual Bathos to Nigel Tranter for this hyberbolic humping, from The Steps to the Empty Throne, the first book in his trilogy about Robert the Bruce:

"... My love for you has been eating me up. These many, many months. When I despaired ever to see you again. Yet still loved and hoped. And now - to have you, hold you, here! It is more than flesh and blood can stand ..." "Ah, Robert - so it is love! Then, my dear, I yield. Sweet God, I yield me!" Suddenly, fiercely, she was pressing forward, against him. "And, save us - I conceive your flesh and blood to be standing very well, my heart ...!" she got out, before his mouth closed over hers, and their lips and tongues found greater eloquence than in forming foolish words.

Tranter would have been well advised to heed his own wisdom at this stage, but decides to plough on, using many foolish words in his search for greater eloquence:

The man's hands were almost as busy as his mouth - nor were the girl's totally inactive, either. He shrugged his own cloak to the floor, and hers quickly followed it. Then he was tugging at her gown, while still he all but devoured her with his kissing. Her defter touch came to aid him, and the taffeta fell away from her shoulders. The pale glimmerof her white body was all that he could see, but his urgent fingers groped and stroked and kneaded the smooth, warm, rounded flesh of her, serving him almost better than his eyes, her nobly full, firm breasts filling the ecstatic cups of his hands to over flowing, as they overflowed the cup of his delight.

I'm not convinced her breasts could be both nobly full and at the same time firm, unless she's followed Pamela Anderson's lead, but lets not dwell on that, for Tranter certainly doesn't:

Suddenly he was down, kneeling, his lips leaving hers to seek those proud, thrusting breasts, the exultant nipples ...

Steady on!

... reacting with their own life and vigour. She bent over him, crooning into his hair, her strong arms clasping him to her, rocking. But their need was a living, growing thing, a progression, and quickly even this bliss was insufficient. He drew her down to him, pulling at the gown's folds which a golden girdle held around her waist; and willingly she came, loosening it. The spread cloaks on the floor received them, and with swift, sure co-operation she disposed herself, guiding his clamant manhood and receiving him into her vital generosity.

Clamant manhood?

The man fought with himself to control the hot tide of his passion, to give her time. Blessedly she required but little, and together their rapturous ardour mounted and soared into the high, unbearable apex of fulfillment. With blinding, blazing release, and a woman's cry of sheer triumph, they yeilded themselves together in simultaneous surrender into basic, elemental oneness, a profundity of satisfaction hitherto unknown to either.

I actually enjoyed the book, overall. It's just unfortunate Tranter likes to write really bad sex scenes every now and again.

Stop the world - a new film from Godard

The great man is working on a new film, called Le socialisme, probably due for release in 2010.

A trailer is available on You Tube:



Apparently, he is also pondering a film exploring the shoah. Themes of destruction and genocide have been immanent in his recent work, such as Forever Mozart and Notre Musique.

Fired from the Canon

A list of ten classics you shouldn't trouble with.

I haven't read them all,and I'd disagree about Absalom! Absalom! which is one of my favourites, for all the reasons it is damned. As for the others he mentions, those that I have read, I agree are definitely over-rated.

Yes, even One Hundred Years of Solitude. Especially One Hundred Years of Solitude.

My intended reading for 2009

I know it is midway through the year, but I've lost the papercopy of thislist and it's good to have it somewhere safe for reference.

FICTION

1. December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia Rosa. South American noir, apparently.
2. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser. Tragic, and American, going by the title. Because they do it differently over there.
3. The White Guard by Mikhail Bugalov. Shenanigans following the Bolshie revolution.
4. Becoming Madam Mao by Anchee Min. My token attempt to read a book my wife has read. She is sensible and doesn't return the compliment.
5. The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson. One of the authentic Big Beasts of British fantasy writing. So Harry Potter for grown-ups.
6. Purple America by Rick Moody. Purple, and American. Those crazy Yanks!
7. Quisante by Anthony Hope Hawkins. Swashbuckling nonsense, hopefully, from the author of The Prisoner of Zenda.

NON-FICTION

1. The History of the English Church and People by Bebe. Because its all true.
2. Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock. Apparently the first full biography of Hitler.
3. For The Islands I Sing by George McKay Brown. A poet's autobiography. Hopefully more interesting than that sounds.
4. America in the Twenties by Geoffery Perrett. So I can wax knowledgable about the parallels between the last Economic Apocalypse and the current one.
5. All Too Human by George Stephanopolous. Clinton insider's account of the Salacious One.
6. Big Muddy by BC Hall and CT Wood. A book about the Mississippi. Why not?
7. The Hemingway Bookclub of Kosovo by Paula Huntly. Either an account of how literature brought some relief to those suffering in the horrors of ethnic cleansing, or a book soon to be adapted into a Stallone movie in which Hemingway takes out Milosevic.

RE-READS

1. Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad. The Great Man's most difficult good book.
2. A Disaffection by James Kelman. I won't be re-reading Translated Accounts just yet.
3. Red Shift by Alan Garner. A totally mad fantasy jamboree, where the past and present and the bit in between get all mixed up. Hopefully I'll understand it better this time.
4. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Nuff said, surely.
5. The Wild Palms by William Faulkner. Faulkner's great. This novel is strange. But it is referenced in Godard's A Bout De Souffle. Which is cool.
6. From Bondage by Henry Roth. Part three of Roth's Harlem Quartet, written after a helf century of literary silence.
7. Germinal by Emile Zola. Grisly story of miners and anarchists.