[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 11 KB, 275x315, copy-of-vicomte-robert-dhumieres..jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687492 No.2687492 [Reply] [Original]

Favourite books/films of writers/directors?

Harold Bloom's favourite film is Aguirre. TS Eliot's favourite film was Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.

Faulkner's favourite book was Don Quixote, he thought the best novel was Anna Karenina and the novel he most wished he had written was Moby-Dick.

Kafka and Proust loved Flaubert's Sentimental Education. Borges absolutely loved Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone.James Joyce thought Tolstoy's "How much land does a man need?" was the greatest story ever told.

>> No.2687500

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/polls/topten/poll/list.php?list=voters&votertype=director

A list of directors and what films they voted for sight and sound can be found here. For some of them can see in their work the influence of the films they've listed.

Not sure about writers and films though but I've read a really amazing quote about film by Tolstoy that i'll try to find now.

>> No.2687501

>Harold Bloom's favourite film is Aguirre.

that's pretty interesting actually

looked up harmony korine since you got me curious and apparently his favorite authors are flannery o'connor and sj perelman, i can fuck with that

>> No.2687507

>>2687500
Yeah those lists are pretty amazing. Here's something pretty similar, but older.

http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/faves.shtml

>> No.2687508

Asimov's favorite book was Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

>> No.2687509

>>2687492
Harold Bloom's favourite film is Aguirre? That's quite interesting, didn't know that.

I know David Lynch's favourite books are Crime and Punishment and The Metamorphosis, the latter of which he wanted to make into a movie where the events would take place in 1950's America. He actually completed the script for it. Imagine what Gregor's beetle-hood would've looked like.

Nabokov thought Borges to be a kindred spirit and highly praised his works, though I don't know what Borges thought of Nabokov and his work.

>> No.2687515

>>2687509
I've read that Nabokov said something like Borges was "infinitely inspiring" or something like that. The only thing I recall Borges writing on Nabokov was a very short phrase vindicating Dostoevsky saying "...the critic Nabokov said there was not one single page of Dostoevsky's worth reading, that's because one needs to read his entire work." Or something, I forget.

Borges dug Dostoevsky's Demons but still critiqued Dostoevsky and said he liked him a lot more when he was younger and when he was older and came back to Dostoevsky, he lost a lot of respect.

>> No.2687516

I may have to look into Throne of Blood. Sounds like Japanese Macbeth.

>> No.2687517

I'm guessing Bolano's favourite Flaubert was Bouchard and Pecuchet.

>> No.2687521

>>2687516
That's exactly what it is, my intelligent tripfag.

Also check out Kurosawa's Ran (it's King Lear, in case you're stilll a dumbass).

>> No.2687525

>>2687521
>2012
>recommending Kurosawa's Hollywood-est film

oh you

>> No.2687535

>>2687525
I'll see that and raise you

> recommending Kurosawa over Ozu and Mizoguchi

Your move, anon.

>> No.2687538

>>2687515
Yes, I actually read the essay where he wrote about Nabokov and Dostoevsky just yesterday. Apparently, Nabokov chose not to include a single passage by Dostoevsky in a compilation of some sort, justifying this by writing that not a single paragraph by Dostoevsky is worth inclusion. Borges retorted that perhaps Dostoevsky should not be considered on the basis of a single page but rather by all the pages that comprise the book. I don't know about Borges losing respect for Dusty, though. Nabokov actually has some interesting things to say about Dostoevsky notwithstanding the brutally dismissive tone. Nabokov relates how, as a child, he thought C&P a very powerful and moving book but as he grew older he began to loathe the book on moral grounds. On a loosely related note, Kafka considered Dostoevsky and Flaubert to be his blood relatives.

>> No.2687546

>>2687538
Yeah, Borges basically said the same thing. Loved him when he was young and then when he was old thought he was tendentious and anti-semitic.

James Joyce loved Dostoevsky and thought he was one of the greatest novelists.

And Siggy Freud thought Brothers Karamazov, along with Hamlet and Oedipus were the greatest works of literature. But only Freud would think that.

>> No.2687547

>>2687535
>not knowing ozu and mizoguchi are just rehashing older, better Noh and Kabuki works
>2012

See a production of Matsukaze anon

>> No.2687552

>>2687547
Damn, nigga. You got me. Looking into it, been meaning to tackle some Jap lit (pre-war).

>> No.2687558

Franz Kafka loved Dickens. David Copperfield was supposed to be a model for Amerika.

>> No.2687560

>>2687552
desudesu

http://www.amazon.com/The-Noh-Theatre-Japan-Complete/dp/0486436993/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&am
p;qid=1338660030&sr=1-3

>> No.2687578

>>2687546
And by a commodius vicus of recirculation (sorry, I couldn't resist since you mentioned Joyce) we reach Bloom again who is constantly urging people to give Freud a Shakespearean reading, not the other way around. And this may be getting a little redundant, but both Nabokov and Borges thought Finnegans Wake to be a horrible novel, the former calling it Punningans Wake/Winnipeg Lake and Borges calling it completely unreadable ( I agree with Borges).

>> No.2687582

Proust loved the shit out of Ruskin.

Ozu thought Naruse' Floating Clouds was a masterpiece.

Tarkovsky loved the shit out of Robert Bresson.

>> No.2687589

>>2687578
Yeah, I'm with Borges and Nabokov on FW. Borges said it has a few beautiful sentences like (hither and tithering waters of. Night!) but it's unreadable.

I've heard Bloom talk about Freud's Shakespeare complex but I still don't really get what he's saying. I mean, what does Bloom say that separates Shakespeare from Freud? How does he free Hamlet from Freudian readings?

I'm curious about that but Bloom always seems to write a lot and say little.

>> No.2687607

Teshigahara and Kobo Abe had a bromance.
Tarkovsky loved the fuck out of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
Raúl Ruiz was able to adapt Proust without fucking it up.

>>2687578
It's a well-known fact that Finnegans was 2deep4borges.

>> No.2687608
File: 87 KB, 333x250, baywatch-show.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687608

How could anyone's favorite film be Aguire? Klaus kinski kidnaps a 14 year old and takes her up a river. Boring as shit, my best fiend is better.

>> No.2687612

>>2687607
Yeah, Borges was a right auld Chuffy Nangel.

>> No.2687617

>>2687608
Aguirre is a fucking great movie, fuck you talking about

>> No.2687618

>>2687589
Well, Bloom, as interesting as he can be at times, has basically reached a point where he doesn't have to prove himself anymore, in contrast to a younger person who's statements are invariably going to be taken skeptically, that is, he would have to prove the validity of his ideas. I think what Bloom is trying to get at is that Freud, who was greatly influenced by Shakespeare, as you yourself mentioned, took Shakespeare's ideas and simply prosefied them. I don't know, I'm probably wrong here since i haven't read Freud very much. But to AGAIN return to good ol' Nabokov, he absolutely detested Freud and expressed this notion in pretty much every single preface he wrote, calling him The Viennese Withdoctor and warned The Viennese Delegation about interpreting his works (they'd probably have a field-day). Kafka had also read Freud and considered psychoanalysis a huge mistake, writing: ''No more psychology!''

>> No.2687619

>>2687608

gee it's almost as if a plot summary doesn't do justice to a lot of films

>> No.2687626
File: 142 KB, 350x400, 766308-baywatch.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2687626

Celine was Stanley Kubrick's 'favorite anti semitic writer.'. ( Kubrick was jewish).

Kubrick also told this joke to a Jewish friend once:

What's the definition of the american dream?

6 million blacks swimming back to Africa with a Jew under each arm.

>> No.2687649

Borges thought Dante's Commedia was "the best book ever written."

I think he thought it was the greatest single piece of literature, but he would probably have put Shakespeare above Dante, but would say that Shakespeare hadn't had a single work as good as Dante's Commedia.

I think.

>> No.2687682

>>2687649
His essays on Dante are some of the very best ever written, in my opinion. Have you read them?

>> No.2687720

>>2687682
I've read most of them and they're pretty awesome considering I haven't read any Dante.

But I'm going to fix that soon.

I've got the Weinberger edition of Borges' non-fiction and it's fantastic. Always rereading that shit.

>> No.2687751

>>2687720
I've got the Penguin Total Library version which has most of his essays from 1922-1986. I've read the whole thing atleast twice now (not boasting) and still continue to read atleast one essay every day. A source of infinite knowledge indeed. As far as Dante goes, I've only read the Inferno, although I'm planning on getting The Portable Dante translated by Mark Musa in the near-future.

>> No.2687786

>>2687751
> that feel when you've met your twin

Borges has made me 20x a better reader and writer.

I've got a bilingual french/italian translation of the Inferno and I'm going to attempt that this summer and try to learn a bit of italian reading Dante.

Just like Borges did.

>> No.2687822

>>2687786
> that feel when you've met your twin

The feeling is reciprocal. I assume you're French, since you're getting the french/italian version? The thing about Borges is that his ideas about writers and any other themes for that matter is that he writes about them in such a unique, metaphysical way as if everything was fantastical. Every time I read another one of his essays, it feels like entering a wholly different world, so far removed from everything mundane that it's stunning. I mean, he manages to twist even the most ordinary subject into a limpid metaphysical tale.

>> No.2688865

I really like this thread, so I'm bumping it.