Intriguing Titles

17 years ago

I've come across titles on occasion that catch my eye and interest me enough to keep the work in mind for later investigation. Two novels by Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan are examples of this. They're the most easily available of his books in the US, and I kept seeing them on the bookstore shelves. Finally, my curiosity was aroused enough for me to buy them, and I was rewarded for doing so.

In a college bookstore, I found a three-volume set of hardbacks titled Remembrance of Things Past. I'd never heard of the books or their author, but I remembered it when I encountered references to Proust and his work in later reading. After learning about it, I decided to read it, and although difficult I found it fascinating. I also read a later edition published under a different imprint which had the more literal but considerably less evocative title In Search of Lost Time. I don't know if that would have caught my attention as well.

I'd read some of VS Naipaul's non-fiction, but none of his novels until The Enigma of Arrival was published. The title itself was enough to get me to try his fiction. It's a subtly written fictional account of his experience as an immigrant in England. On the dust jacket, the publisher reproduced the painting by Giorgio de Chirico from which the title was taken. I'd never heard of him, but, after investigating, his pre-Surrealist pictures fascinated me. I liked them enough to teach myself to paint so I could copy some since no prints were for sale. Other paintings of his have equally fascinating titles such as The Melancholy of Departure, The Soothsayer's Recompense, and others.

I was in a video store in the mid-80s and saw a tape titled Every Man for Himself, and God against All. Although the title interested me, I never got it from that store. When I looked for it years later, I couldn't find it or any reference to it. I did get another movie for the sake of its title, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and reading the notes to it, I found that the former was by the same director, Werner Herzog. The title had been changed to The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser for some unexplained reason.

I watched an anthology of animated films awhile ago because it had a short called "A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief". I didn't have any means of taping it at the time, and I looked for it on home video for years. When I had access to IMDb, it wasn't listed and still isn't. The All-Movie Guide had an entry but with very little information. I recently searched the director's name on Amazon and found a DVD that included it.

That's enough for now. Has anyone else had similar experiences?

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Comments (11)

veer
17 years ago
cjoseph, I picked up a book in the library the other day just because the title was so unusual The Largest Baby in Ireland After the Famine by Anne Barnett.
A first novel set in Ulster during the First War. Written in the cadences of the North of the country by someone who understands life in the small narrow rural communities.
woodnymph2_gw
17 years ago
Two of late author William Styron's titles appealed to me: "Lie Down in Darkness" and "Darkness Visible." The former takes its title from Browne's "Urn Burial" and the latter is a reference to Dante's "In the Middle of Life, in a dark wood....." (I don't know this in Latin). I read both of these works and found them intriguing. The former is said to be a roman a clef, featuring thinly desguised characters the author knew in his home town. The latter is a personal narrative of Styron's debilitating depression in mid-life.
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agnespuffin
17 years ago
I just finished a mystery by R. J. Kaiser. I had never read any of his. He hasn't written many. I picked it up because the title intrigued me. It wasn't the usual mystery title. It turned out to be an enjoyable read.

The title?? Fruitcake!
brendainva
17 years ago
I got a book out of the library today, titled AN ILIAD. Not -the- Iliad, but a novel, apparently. The title was irresistible.

Once I was in a used book shop, and on a high shelf I saw a faded book spine. The title seemed to be, THE TOWELS OF MARCO POLO. Now who could resist looking at a book like that? I was envisioning something like Martha Stewart on safari. But, alas! The title was actually THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO, all right but nowhere near as striking.

Brenda
anyanka
17 years ago
A recent book that caught my attention because of the quirky title was A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. The cover design is also appealing. Haven't read it yet, as it was a Christmas present to no 2 daughter; she's enjoying it so far.

I'm probably shallow, as I respond best to funny or quirky titles, rather than deep and meaningful ones (which often put me off if there's even a whiff of pretentiousness). The collected writings of Peter Cook were published as Tragically I Was An Only Twin, a title that just yelled 'pick me up' at me as I passed the shelf.
cindydavid4
17 years ago
>A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

I picked this up on a lark, for the title. It ended up being quite an excellent read.
ccrdmrbks
17 years ago
I just looked it up anmd requested it at the library-I'm thinking it might be a good bookclub title-I need to lead soon! ;-)
cjoseph
Original Author
17 years ago
Another title that caught my eye was A Dance to the Music of Time which Anthony Powell gave to his series of twelve novels depicting English society from the 20s to the 60s. I bought the four volumes without knowing anything about them, persuaded also by the Poussin painting of the same name on the covers of the U of Chicago press paperbacks. I suspect Powell aspired to be the English Proust especially since he links the two works by having his narrator visit Cherbourg, Proust's Balbek.
cjoseph
Original Author
17 years ago
Correction: Cabourg, not Cherbourg.
Jodi_SoCal
17 years ago
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks

Jodi-
dido1
17 years ago
Dance to the Music of Time saw me through a very hard period of my life. It is a wonderful sequence of novels. It will last me forever, I think.

Dido

Intriguing Titles

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