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Got "zeroville" by steve erickson for christmas because i apparently had it on my wishlist, did somebody in this thread recommend it or did i hear about it somewhere else pretty good so far, might be too early to tell but it seems like it would make a good companion read to "inherent vice" if you're interested in that setting
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Jan 7, 2019 18:41
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Tim Burns Effect posted:Got "zeroville" by steve erickson for christmas because i apparently had it on my wishlist, did somebody in this thread recommend it or did i hear about it somewhere else I read it but I don't know if I posted about it. It's a good book, makes sense to parallel it with inherent vice.
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Jan 7, 2019 20:32
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Foul Fowl posted:i think that discrepancy is partly why post-modernism is so in love with recognizing itself as writing. because you already got ulysses and to the lighthouse and in a station of the metro etc. etc. which tried really, really hard to solve it and couldn't. real life and the artifice of fiction are kinda eternally at odds. so gently caress you, my book's gonna be about books and the main character is gonna be a writer. I can't think of anything I've read that's been considered definitively post-modern, maybe I should seek something out (I will seek something out, although what I read of Beckett and Molloy seems like it could smack very much of post-modernism.) Based on what I've read about post-modernism, at least in its small scope, it seems like it's "just" making evident something writers have experienced for a long time in their writing. The feeling, writing a particular piece of the book, that what you're writing is very much a representation of your thoughts about what you're writing. A simple example would be where a part of the book that's written is a message to the author themselves. Go through a stretch of writing introspection, and the character might feel they need to be more decisive, or follow through to action on a particular thought, but this is more representative of the author thinking, "There's nowt much happening at the moment, I have to change things up a bit." And so in writing the character's thoughts, they're writing their own reaction to the story. If you get into the whole Death of the Author aspect of reading then it should apply just as much to the person who wrote the story as any end-reader. Sure, there's a separation in it saying the author's intent doesn't matter, but there's still ample room for the story to reveal the author. Reading back your own work you're revealing and understanding more about yourself. From the little I can imagine about post-modernism this seems to be seen not just in a post-fact reading, but in the actual creation with the writing. It's an immediate reference to the layers of meta-understanding. I wonder how much post-modernism is entirely new, and more something that's always happened just being revealed to the reader.
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Jan 7, 2019 22:25
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yet more proof that stephen king is greatest living titan of post-modernism
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Jan 7, 2019 23:15
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whatevz fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2019 01:08
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On the one hand, King is amazing at story kernels and characterization, and terrible at so many other aspects of the craft. But on the other hand he's sold more books than Jesus Christ and people are consistently entertained. So I think litgoons probably don't want to dig too deep into that, for fear of finding out it's not paradoxical after all.
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Jan 8, 2019 01:18
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mdemone posted:On the one hand, King is amazing at story kernels and characterization, and terrible at so many other aspects of the craft. Really, it's for the same reasons Mervyn Peake or Elmore Leonard aren't really discussed here. But lol, his characterizations are actually one of his most derided characteristics as a writer! The joke about him is that he only knows how to write two kinds of characters, writers and hicks, and that he's completely incapable of writing women (which doesn't really distinguish him from a lot of male literary authors, to be fair.)
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Jan 8, 2019 01:30
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I don't think the thread about real literature needs to talk more about Stephen King.
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Jan 8, 2019 01:34
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Different Seasons and Dolores Claiborne are Real Literature.
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Jan 8, 2019 02:28
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oh good its time to talk about stephen king again
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Jan 8, 2019 04:23
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pleasecallmechrist posted:Ive never read him so I've always wondered why this thread gives Stephen King a pass aka doesn't poo poo on him. Is it nostalgia? Is he just a good storyteller or what? The girl at the bookstore recommended Four Past Midnight so I picked it up. Stephen king is bad and he shouldn't be discussed in this thread, even though it is also bad. thank you
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Jan 8, 2019 05:52
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pospysyl posted:Really, it's for the same reasons Mervyn Peake or Elmore Leonard aren't really discussed here. We can't talk about Mervyn Peake? 
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Jan 8, 2019 06:26
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pleasecallmechrist posted:Ive never read him so I've always wondered why this thread gives Stephen King a pass aka doesn't poo poo on him. Is it nostalgia? Is he just a good storyteller or what? The girl at the bookstore recommended Four Past Midnight so I picked it up. Do we give him a pass though? I think Stephen King sucks. He just has some funny oogie boogie ideas that then get made into movies that are fun to watch when drunk.
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Jan 8, 2019 06:29
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goddamn, Crying of Lot 49 is funny. I can't have been that young when I read it the first time, but I think so much of the humor still sailed over my head. It makes me wonder what other good books I read in high school/early college I should revisit now that I am not quite so juvenile.
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Jan 8, 2019 20:29
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After The War posted:We can't talk about Mervyn Peake?
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Jan 8, 2019 21:01
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What's good horney gay lit, thread. I don't have enough Or bi. Just none of that 'het' b.s.
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Jan 8, 2019 21:16
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M. lost in postation would you recommend me some romans (anything but Camus) I might be able to struggle through with my schoolboy French & some dictionaries and grammars? Can you also explain the difference between a récit and a roman? 
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Jan 8, 2019 22:36
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MockingQuantum posted:goddamn, Crying of Lot 49 is funny. I can't have been that young when I read it the first time, but I think so much of the humor still sailed over my head. It makes me wonder what other good books I read in high school/early college I should revisit now that I am not quite so juvenile. (re-)visit inherent vice, my dude
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Jan 8, 2019 23:29
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ulvir posted:(re-)visit inherent vice, my dude Oh definitely, I was planning on Inherent Vice, V., and Gravity's Rainbow all in the near future, moreso now that I'm enjoying this re-read so much. Lot 49 is the only Pynchon I've read to date and I feel like I've wasted a lot of time.
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Jan 8, 2019 23:38
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ulvir posted:(re-)visit inherent vice, my dude its a good un, its my default pynchon entry suggestion these days
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Jan 9, 2019 00:20
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Inherent Vice had moments of total brilliance, the car caravan/fog passage is great etc but too often it seemed like a pastiche of itself or something, like it chose to go over-the-top and sideways instead of digging inward. Anyway, read Lerner's Hatred of Poetry (he did 10:04) which had some mixed bits that felt like a long letter to a friend (relaxed, casually indulgent, which is acceptable when you're in discourse mode but a little boring in a finished product, where's the urgency). I like the premise of the book though: he starts with a high school memory of trying to find the shortest poem in the library to memorize for a class assignment and comes across Marianne Moore's 1967 "Poetry": quote:
And goes on to discuss the kind of hatred for poetry even among poets, the disdain held by so many for its (perceived or real) obsoletion and which Lerner himself holds despite dedicating his life to poetry. The rest is sort of predictable Lerner: discussion of Allen Grossman's ideas, musings on the poet as a translator of private self to a public, reflections on thematically appropriate social interactions. Which is all enjoyable if you love Lerner like me.
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Jan 10, 2019 07:35
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leaving the atocha station is the worst thing i've ever read
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Jan 10, 2019 07:55
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Officer Sandvich posted:leaving the atocha station is the worst thing i've ever read I loving hate ben lerner so god drat much. I am seething with rage just at remembering he exists. Anyway, reading Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson, it's good. So far a woman has read the new York times every day (page 125/1300)
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Jan 10, 2019 08:10
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10:04 is a work of distinguishment, its first pages are some of the best prose put to page in the 21st century. Anyway, a wild passage from Moore's History of the Novel I can't get over... they had epistolary novels in the 2nd C! And at least from Moore's description, there's a kind of Dostoevskyish psychology at play in one. quote:Having established the conventions of the romantic novel, the Greeks developed two more variants: the epistolary novel and the fantasy-adventure story. The Letters of Themistocles and Chion of Heraclea are anonymous novellas written in the early 2nd century CE consisting solely of letters. The technical challenges of the epistolary novel are great: the first letter has to quickly introduce characters and their circumstances without unrealistically spelling out things two correspondents would take for granted; there is also the challenge of a limited point of view, and (when only one side of the correspondence is given, as here) of conveying the essence of the other correspondents' replies without clunkily repeating them in detail, challenges met by these two anonymous writers. suspendedreason fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jan 12, 2019 |
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Jan 10, 2019 08:44
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suspendedreason posted:Inherent Vice had moments of total brilliance, the car caravan/fog passage is great etc but too often it seemed like a pastiche of itself or something, like it chose to go over-the-top and sideways instead of digging inward. It's heavily a response to/satire of hard-boiled detective novels, especially Chandler and Hammett, and also noir films.
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Jan 10, 2019 13:31
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Franchescanado posted:It's heavily a response to/satire of hard-boiled detective novels, especially Chandler and Hammett, and also noir films. This is true, I think I meant more that the Pynchon whackiness felt less... bizarre-orthogonal and more generic over-the-top. The "vibe," if you wanna call it that, the kind of affective worldbuilding of something like Lot 49 seemed endlessly more interesting than IV's, which mostly rolled off my back. You know how good vibes are generative, the way that specific linguistic-sociocultural feeling of a text (especially a poem) seems embryonic, like it could generate a whole body of work along the same affect vector? It could also just be a problem of watching and loving the PTA before reading the paperback, or else just that the 60s psychedelia is a tough, oversaturated setting for anyone to write in.
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Jan 12, 2019 18:46
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Boatswain posted:M. lost in postation would you recommend me some romans (anything but Camus) I might be able to struggle through with my schoolboy French & some dictionaries and grammars? There's an inexhaustible supply of French realist literature from the 19th century that's usually recommended in these cases, but Flaubert is probably your best bet, because he writes wonderfully and his grammar, style and sentence structure are always impeccable. On a formal level, La Tentation de saint Antoine and Trois contes are probably the best works of fiction French realism has ever produced, although one is a arguably a prose poem and the other is a short story collection. Needless to say, if you haven't read Madame Bovary, you should probably do so as well! For more modern novels, you might want to try Tournier (Le Roi des Aulnes, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique). He's considered slightly middlebrow in France but his prose is excellent and pretty accessible. "Récit" is roughly equivalent to "narrative"; afaik it doesn't refer to a specific literary form (unlike "roman", a novel or novella).
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Jan 13, 2019 00:25
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read houellebecq do it
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Jan 13, 2019 00:52
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V. Illych L. posted:read houellebecq Submission makes him sound like a shithead and I don't have time for it. Change my mind and I'll read one.
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Jan 13, 2019 01:00
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mdemone posted:Submission makes him sound like a shithead and I don't have time for it. Change my mind and I'll read one. he's a huge shithead but also a very good writer La carte et le territoire is good read that e. basically he's a reactionary anti-modernist in the old-school hamsun vein. he writes novels full of unbelievably alienated people who sort of waft through their meaningless lives which they keep trying (and failing) to improve somehow. submission, more than being ooga-booga-islam, is basically about how nothing matters in the post-modern world and this makes basically everyone unhappy and anaemic and gives us bad sex, like all his novels that i've read thus far of course it's also pretty ooga-booga-islam, because he is if nothing else a conceited, racist shithead V. Illych L. fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Jan 13, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 01:04
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V. Illych L. posted:he's a huge shithead but also a very good writer You know now that I skim through the first chapter I feel like I have read at least part of it. Maybe I'll give it another shot.
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Jan 13, 2019 01:07
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A professor who fucks his students and lives in luxury doesnt suddenly become more appealing because he is french imho Houllebecq is the worst trends of modern American fiction giving the veneer of an accent and knowledge of cheeses
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Jan 13, 2019 01:09
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V. Illych L. posted:read houellebecq I've just finished his new book, Sérotonine. It's about a depressed civil servant who lives in a brutalist tower with his Japanese girlfriend. It kind of feels like he's just playing the hits at this point, but without the dread, anger and disgust that drove something like Plateforme.
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Jan 13, 2019 01:14
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Mel Mudkiper posted:A professor who fucks his students and lives in luxury doesnt suddenly become more appealing because he is french imho oh, he's the stuff you read but french?
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Jan 13, 2019 01:15
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lost in postation posted:I've just finished his new book, Sérotonine. It's about a depressed civil servant who lives in a brutalist tower with his Japanese girlfriend. It kind of feels like he's just playing the hits at this point, but without the dread, anger and disgust that drove something like Plateforme. haven't read sérotonine yet, can't comment, but i can imagine this to be the case. he's gotten trapped in his own project Mel Mudkiper posted:A professor who fucks his students and lives in luxury doesnt suddenly become more appealing because he is french imho i am 99% sure that michel houellebecq is not a professor it would be really funny if he were, given his open anti-intellectualism, but sadly i don't think he is
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Jan 13, 2019 01:20
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V. Illych L. posted:haven't read sérotonine yet, can't comment, but i can imagine this to be the case. he's gotten trapped in his own project The protagonist in submission is a professor, that was my reference
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Jan 13, 2019 01:37
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Yeah, of all the things you could level against Houellebecq, accusing him of liking academia and sex is comically off the mark
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Jan 13, 2019 01:39
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lost in postation posted:Yeah, of all the things you could level against Houellebecq, accusing him of liking academia and sex is comically off the mark yeah i mean he hangs out with bernard henri-levy it's clear he's got a bone against the academy
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Jan 13, 2019 05:28
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I picked up an ancient paperback Penguin Classics print of Don Quixote and I'm nigh thirty pages in and he's already gotten the poo poo kicked out of him with his own lance. Book owns
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Jan 13, 2019 05:49
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Read Halldor Laxness' epic novel Independent People about sheep farming and small country politics in preparation for a trip to Iceland. Essentially the 'To Kill a Mockingbird' of that country I later found out. It is an incredible achievement in tragedy, and managed to convey a litany of contradictions inherent in the early 20th century Icelandic mentality, incarnated here in the imperturbable Bjartur, a man obsessed with self-sufficiency and independence and the suffering he unleashes upon his family as a result. I bought a copy of Under the Glacier at the visitor's center of one of the national parks I frequented during my stay, and spent much of the book crying with laughter. I'm saddened this nobel prize winner is not more well known, because he was capable of some incredible range and his prose is fantastic. God Hole fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jan 13, 2019 |
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Jan 13, 2019 21:15
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