11 favourite books for FiFi LaBret

FiFi LaBret asked me for my 10 favourite books. With some trepidation - here are my favourite 11:
Coming through slaughter - Michael Ondaatje, The Visit of the Royal Danish Physician - Per Olov, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl - Siri Hustvedt, Black Tickets - Jayne Anne Phillips, Black Faces white faces - Jane Gardam, White Oleandar - Janet Fitch, The Awakening - Kate Chopin, Apartment in Athens - Glenway Wescott, Woman of the Future - David Ireland, When they lay bare - Andrew Greig, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ( a trilogy comprising - Northern Lights, The Subtle knife, The Amber Spyglass).

Please note that these are not rank ordered, and I had to exclude poetry and non-fiction.

Diorissi

walking on water - kenelm himself. 

differing responses to ancient pictish stones 

the highland look 

wading in a cold loch - tentatively 

close enough to suilven to celebrate 

Photos by William

Thanks Will. You have a lovely eye.

Janaki, can I post those images of gathering Honey from the tree by hand?

Diorissi
xxx

Those highlands and Rieff

Ah, Janaki, Annette, and Ib...there were ruined castles, walks from the back of bookstores that take you to the lap of Suilven, impossible high country lochs, and an unearthly boat trip to the summer isles that made me feel like Orphee going through a mirror to some peaceful underworld and stripped of all cares...the highlands bathed in sunlight surpassed every expectation (and I had too many). Traced the carvings on an ancient Pictish stone at Strathpfeffer, and saw Suilven everywhere (even where it wasn't).

Will post an image or two later, borrowed from William, as mine are locked in Kenelm's computer and he is half a world away (hope that's OK William).

Off on a road trip with Celi tomorrow, to introduce her cartoon character to anyone we can between Sydney and Melbourne. I'll attach a link so you can check out Cecily (the character) soon.

Philip Rieff died recently and dedicated his last book to Susan Sontag - though they divorced in the late 50's and he has been with someone else since the early 60's (strains of the last scene from Duras' The Lover?). Life among the Deathworks he called it. The LA times obituary says: Rieff defined a deathwork as a work of art that presents "an all-out assault upon something vital to the established culture." His examples included James Joyce's novel "Finnegans' Wake" and a sexually explicit self-portrait by the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. He cited Freud's theories as an extended deathwork that demolished prevailing world views without offering a new cultural order.

Perhaps I'm a deathwork fan? New cultural orders seem to form without being offered. I admire Freud's restraint. Adam Phillips suggests psychoanalysis is a project examining why we need authorities, not about providing new forms of it thereby contributing to 'the disorders of compliance'.