Ideas

What books are you considering comparing? Are there any books you haven't read yet (or read too long ago to remember well) that you would like someone else to compare? Or do you just feel like throwing out a few ideas? Here's the thread for that.

I'm reading The Master and Margarita, among other things, and seem to have bogged down near the end. Too many other books distracting my attention. But I'd be interested in having someone else compare it to Gogol's Dead Souls, which I read many years ago and found hilarious.

I'm also reading Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life by a friend of mine, Pamela Smith Hill. It's kind of a comparison in itself - the first few chapters compare an early memoir Wilder wrote with the books in the "Little House" series.

And I just gobbled up Khaled Hosseini's latest, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The obvious comparison would be with his first novel, The Kite Runner, but it would be interesting to come up with a less obvious comparison. I will have to think about that.

I don't know if I am serious about this but I really enjoyed Dispatches from the Edge and recently purchased Clapton The Autobiography. Clapton is of my generation and Anderson Cooper is obviously younger but I think comparing their autobiographies might be interesting. Any thoughts?

IMO Margad--there's a bit of magical realism if you will in the Bulgakov book--so you could go in that direction--Garcia Marquez?

#1: What books are you considering comparing?
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I surprised not to see Mrs Dalloway and The Hours compared here. I think they are great companion reads. One day I'll get around to writing about it here.

Currently I'm studying Dystopic fiction, so in the next month I will compare some of 1984, Darkness at Noon, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Bend Sinister, Fahrenheit 451, The Trial, We, The Handmaid's Tale and/or Brave New World.

All great ideas!

I would bring along a positive attitude and an ability to make the most of any situation, sounds corny I know.....Health is the ingredient which I consider to be essential....

I think Reading Lolita in Tehran would be interesting to compare to Fahrenheit 451 in terms of books-in-books.

Crime and Punishment to Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart in terms of examining the psyche of a criminal.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to Crime and Punishment might also be fun when considering the stock character of "hooker with a heart of gold."

Snow Falling on Cedars to Memoirs of a Geisha in that both are written by white men trying to get into Japanese minds.

Hyperion to (the admittedly god-awful) Haunted as frame stories.

The Power and the Glory to Bless Me, Ultima in their respective depictions of South America and South American Catholicism.

My world lit students are currently comparing Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Cry the Beloved Country. It sounds like a strange combination, but they are interesting together. Cry, the Beloved Country tells its story from people doing the right thing in the midst of evil. We can conjecture about the motivations of the characters doing the wrong thing, but we don't explore the world from their perspective. Balzac, on the other hand, focuses on two very young, weak characters whose experiences with oppression draw out all their worst flaws. And Cry, the Beloved Country poses a problem: that the wealthy, powerful people in a nation rarely understand the lives of people at the other end of the social spectrum. Balzac reminds us that solving that problem is impossible if you try to force an education on people. It's been an interesting comparison so far.

I have a soft spot for really unexpected, even weird comparisons. I love the idea of comparing two autobiographies. It would be so interesting to compare the two different lives, the two different writing styles, and how the writing styles reflect (or don't reflect) the lives. Can't wait for you to finish reading Clapton, Maggie, and tell us how he compares with Anderson Cooper!

Heina, these are wonderful ideas. I haven't read all of the books you suggest, but Reading Lolita in Tehran would make a great comparison with Fahrenheit 451, especially since one is nonfiction and the other is fiction - adds that off-the-wall touch that I love.

Dostoyevsky and Poe are two old favorites of mine, so I would also love to read a comparison of Crime and Punishment and Tell-Tale Heart. Both are stories of seemingly remorseless killers who are brought down by their guilty consciences after all. What makes them different? This could be a fascinating comparison.

But all of your ideas are good, Heina. Which comparison are you going to treat us to first?

Cestovatela, it would be great to have some of your students join the group and post their comparisons! I love the way you picked books that are, in some ways, mirror images of each other.

I'm currently working on a comparison of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's book on Mao, and Phillip Short's book on Mao. I dont know how long it's going to take, but I do already have extensive notes. If anyone's interested, I could pst them now and do a sort of ongoing comparison.... It would certainly keep me motivated to continue!

Heina, those are some good ideas. I've been kicking around the idea of comparing Haunted to City of Saints and Madmen as fix-up novels, though I think Hyperion is probably a better choice. (I also considered comparing Haunted to the work of Thomas Ligotti to compare the use of puppet symbolism.) I think one blockage I've had is my intense dislike for Haunted, and my fear that any comparison would devolve into something along the lines of: "Hyperion does this correctly. Haunted doesn't. Any other questions of artistic merit will follow the same pattern."

I've also considered comparing biographies of Borges and Astor Piazzolla. The men make for some rather pointed contrasts, yet there's an interesting dynamic between the international and the provincial (Argentine) in their respective lives.

Tomcat, I thnk a running commentary is a great idea. You may be able to comment in more depth if you make regular posts while your current reading is fresh in your mind. It would be interesting to see if you feel differently about some of the earlier posts after you finish reading both books.

Carlos, what do you mean by a "fix-up novel"? There's no limit on the number of books that can be compared, so you feel free to do a three-book comparison if you feel so inclined. It might be interesting to analyze why you dislike Haunted so much, assuming your reaction relates to some of the ideas in the book and not just the author's prose style. Some of the most interesting discussions often emerge when people disagree about the value of a book, so you might spark a really good exchange.

From Wikipedia: "A fix-up (or fixup) is a novel created from short stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. "

Haunted was initially conceived as a series of short stories. When Palahniuk discovered that short-story collections don't sell well, he decided to place the stories within a frame so it would be marketed as a novel. Since one of Haunted's big weaknesses is due to its genesis, that might be worth exploring. City of Saints and Madmen isn't exactly a fix-up. It's a collection of stories set in a mythical city; the stories are connected through a variety of elements both subtle and obvious, which manages to give the collection the feeling of being a cohesive whole.

Perhaps a three-book comparison would be worthwhile. Heina, if you don't mind me stealing your idea, I'll write something about Hyperion/Haunted/City of Saints and Madmen.

Thanks, Carlos. Yes, that would be an interesting comparison.

Steal away, Carlos (:

Nabokov's "Lolita" vs. Tanizaki Junichiro's Chijin-no-ai Englished as "Naomi," the name of the young waitress the older man fell for) would be a natural. Sorry I do not have time to do it! (touchstones was stoned or something so i gave up on that here)