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quote:According to a labyrinthine hierarchical chart that resembled several thick snakes loving one another, the Southern Reach was under the army's jurisdiction here, which might be why the Southern Reach facility, closed down between expeditions, looked a bit like a row of large tents that had been made of lemon meringue. Which is to say, it looked like any number of the churches Control had become familiar with in his teenage years, usually because of whatever girl he was dating. The calcification of revivalists and born-agains often took this form: as of something temporary that had hardened and become permanent. And thus it was either a series of white permafrost tents that greeted them or the white swell of huge waves, frozen forever. The sight was as out of place and startling as if the facility had resembled a fossilized herd of huge MoonPies, a delicacy of those youthful years. Djeser fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Dec 10, 2018 |
# ? Dec 10, 2018 03:24 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:25 |
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I like that the facility's resemblance to lemon meringue is as startling as a resemblance to MoonPies would be, were it the case. A complex interplay of imagery.
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 04:11 |
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The wonderful MoonPies twitter account should reblog that passage
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 04:16 |
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shout-out to jeff using the proper MoonPie trademark guidelines, instead of "Moon Pie" or, god forbid, "moon pie"
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 04:19 |
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Djeser posted:a labyrinthine hierarchical chart that resembled several thick snakes loving one another Orgasm charts.
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 16:44 |
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I have to say, I don't know what the tents looked like
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 17:11 |
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this is why you should always eat before writing
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 17:13 |
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Mel Mudkiper posted:this is why you should always eat before writing But then I'm not a starving artist.
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# ? Dec 10, 2018 17:16 |
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Since Ben Lerner got such a raise outta folks in another thread, and I'm convinced he's one of the best prose writers of our generation, the first page of 10:04 for discussion:quote:The city had converted an elevated length of abandoned railway spur into an aerial greenway and the agent and I were walking south along it in the unseasonable warmth after an outrageously expensive celebratory meal in Chelsea that included baby octopuses the chef had literally massaged to death. We had ingested the impossibly tender things entire, the first intact head I had ever consumed, let alone of an animal that decorates its lair, has been observed at complicated play. We walked south among the dimly gleaming disused rails and carefully placed stands of sumac and smoke bush until we reached that part of the High Line where a cut has been made into the deck and wooden steps descend several layers below the structure; the lowest level is fitted with upright windows overlooking Tenth Avenue to form a kind of amphitheatre where you can sit and watch the traffic. We sat and watched the traffic and I am kidding and I am not kidding when I say that I intuited an alien intelligence, felt subject to a succession of images, sensations, memories, and affects that did not, properly speaking, belong to me: the ability to perceive polarized light; a conflation of taste and touch as salt was rubbed into the suction cups; a terror localized in my extremities, bypassing the brain completely.
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 06:46 |
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our generation is doomed
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 06:57 |
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suspendedreason posted:Since Ben Lerner got such a raise outta folks in another thread, and I'm convinced he's one of the best prose writers of our generation, the first page of 10:04 for discussion: Editor's note: by our generation, he is referring specifically to contemporary American writers
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 07:24 |
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suspendedreason posted:Since Ben Lerner got such a raise outta folks in another thread, and I'm convinced he's one of the best prose writers of our generation, the first page of 10:04 for discussion:
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 08:20 |
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And here I was thinking that it's just goons who make everything be about food
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 11:51 |
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Interesting piece by Hannibal Lecter there. In a way, yes, the New York subway system is a lot like murdering and eating conscious, intelligent beings
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 12:11 |
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suspendedreason posted:Since Ben Lerner got such a raise outta folks in another thread, and I'm convinced he's one of the best prose writers of our generation, the first page of 10:04 for discussion: What about this do you like?
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 13:32 |
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suspendedreason posted:Since Ben Lerner got such a raise outta folks in another thread, and I'm convinced he's one of the best prose writers of our generation, the first page of 10:04 for discussion: Ben Lerner loving sucks He once described crying as "a lacrimal event"
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 13:37 |
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The way it feels exactly like being back in the first year of an MFA program?
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 13:37 |
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Ben Lerner once wrote an entire chapter about volunteering to sort vegetables at the his organic food co-op he shops at and how he is deeper and less cliche than all the stereotypes around him
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 13:38 |
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A human heart posted:Editor's note: by our generation, he is referring specifically to contemporary American writers let it be noted, that I, the official stan for contemporary american fiction, loving loathe this guy
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 13:41 |
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quote:The city had converted an elevated length of abandoned railway spur into an aerial greenway and the agent and I were walking south along it in the unseasonable warmth after an outrageously expensive celebratory meal in Chelsea that included baby octopuses the chef had literally massaged to death. We had ingested the impossibly tender things entire, the first intact head I had ever consumed, let alone of an animal that decorates its lair, has been observed at complicated play. We walked south among the dimly gleaming disused rails and carefully placed stands of sumac and smoke bush until we reached that part of the High Line where a cut has been made into the deck and wooden steps descend several layers below the structure; the lowest level is fitted with upright windows overlooking Tenth Avenue to form a kind of amphitheatre where you can sit and watch the traffic. We sat and watched the traffic and I am kidding and I am not kidding when I say that I intuited an alien intelligence, felt subject to a succession of images, sensations, memories, and affects that did not, properly speaking, belong to me: the ability to perceive polarized light; a conflation of taste and touch as salt was rubbed into the suction cups; a terror localized in my extremities, bypassing the brain completely. The agent and I walked along a greenway that had been converted from an abandoned railway. The weather was warm. We had just eaten an expensive meal of baby octopuses. I ate the baby octopuses whole, which is weird if you consider their intelligence. We went down some stairs and watched Tenth Avenue traffic through upright windows. My body felt strange, like the octopuses gave me heightened senses, which worried me. That's really all that's happening in that section, and I don't think the verbosity elevates it. Sincerely, what do you like about that section?
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 13:54 |
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The endless uninspired adverbials and supposedly playful repetition makes me want to punch a wall and that person in the mouth.
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 14:05 |
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Gene Wolfe and Ben Lerner form a cadeceus twisting endlessly for eternity as they describe breakfast
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 14:10 |
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ben Lerner loving sucks Oh dear.
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 14:25 |
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suspendedreason posted:Since Ben Lerner got such a raise outta folks in another thread, and I'm convinced he's one of the best prose writers of our generation, the first page of 10:04 for discussion: I think it's dreadful. The sentences are vastly too long. This one: quote:We had ingested the impossibly tender things entire, the first intact head I had ever consumed, let alone of an animal that decorates its lair, has been observed at complicated play. The choice to join the third and fourth phrases with just a comma rather than an "and" leads to the potential reading that "the first intact head I had ever consumed" is what "has been observed at complicated play".
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 15:27 |
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So maybe there's not a consensus that every noun requires at least one adjective.
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 15:51 |
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The funny thing about 1004 is that there are five chapters and two are real good and three are real poo poo. I then found out the good chapters were from an earlier thing he wrote and the poo poo chapters were things he added to get it published as a book
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 16:01 |
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Ben Lerner loving sucks
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 18:46 |
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I am kidding and I am not kidding when I say that I want to physically harm this man, provoke such an occurrence.
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 23:15 |
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weird, my monitor turns off whenever i try to look at your post
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 23:26 |
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The_White_Crane posted:I think it's dreadful. The sentences are vastly too long. This one: long sentences are good, just not these ones
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# ? Jan 22, 2019 23:43 |
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holy poo poo lol
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 00:04 |
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Will Poulter became a doughy author with lovely prose?
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 02:24 |
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In that passage I really cringed at 'dimly gleaming'. It could work in a different context (like most prose sins), but something about how it's tossed in there makes it sound like as if it's only in there because Lerner thinks it sounds nice, not because it does something. As it stands the effect is: there's an oxymoron that sounds weird ... and then we move on. It's a weird approach, like just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if it sticks.
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 02:53 |
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J_RBG posted:In that passage I really cringed at 'dimly gleaming'. It could work in a different context (like most prose sins), but something about how it's tossed in there makes it sound like as if it's only in there because Lerner thinks it sounds nice, not because it does something. As it stands the effect is: there's an oxymoron that sounds weird ... and then we move on. It's a weird approach, like just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if it sticks. hmm, it's a good point, but have you considered
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 07:12 |
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J_RBG posted:it sound like as if it's only in there because Lerner thinks it sounds nice, not because it does something. That's a pretty succinct way to sum up my feelings on it. It's like it sounded good in his head, but he never took the time to read it out loud or think about structure or word choice.
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 14:45 |
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fwiw I don't think the text is aesthetically bad, just that the content is vile
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 15:03 |
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FWIW the text is aesthetically bad. It is not pleasing to read.
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# ? Jan 23, 2019 16:02 |
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Cool! There's a lot of really half-baked, overconfident opinions getting thrown around here, which makes it easy to go through and knock them down systematically.Mel Mudkiper posted:Ben Lerner loving sucks Why would he do this??? So weird, right??? Definitely autistic. Or maybe like, he's trying to put an emotional distance between himself and what his body is doing? "Crying" won't get you there, but a lacrimal event, that's something that happens to you. Crying's something you do. This is part of his larger project of defamiliarization, in the Russian formalist sense, so that something so overworn as a good cry can be seen anew, in different light. In fact, that's what his entire project is. In the Whitmanian walker-in-the-city tradition, he defamiliarizes and processes the familiar, and his prose matches that project. If you don't care about that project it's ok, defamiliarization is for big kids who can handle a little strangeness without falling back onto deontological wah-wah's they read in Strunk and White. Franchescanado posted:The agent and I walked along a greenway that had been converted from an abandoned railway. The weather was warm. We had just eaten an expensive meal of baby octopuses. I ate the baby octopuses whole, which is weird if you consider their intelligence. We went down some stairs and watched Tenth Avenue traffic through upright windows. My body felt strange, like the octopuses gave me heightened senses, which worried me. You wanna cut the detail about the octopus being tenderly massaged to death in brine, and say "woah weird we eat these smart creatures"? Isn't that uh, 1/ "telling" and not "showing" (if we wanna get deontological), and 2/ missing the point through synopsis yet again. The animal decorates its lair, which is to say it has an aesthetic sense. It has been observed at complicated play, implying not just intelligence but an ability to engage in pleasurable exploration of its environment. Spoiler: Ben Lerner is describing himself and his own project, and comparing it to what stupid octopuses do. Which is all to say that this passage is self-aware. Ben is a really established poet. You can slam his sensibility but the verbosity is deliberate, both mocking and not mocking the "literary," both partaking and distancing the author from its mode. Ben Lerner both loves and hates the lyrically decadent. This is absolutely foundational to the outlook of the book as a whole, and all its thematic/meta-textual/philosophic crises/contradictions/"how can I have it both ways?" is getting set up from the first page. J_RBG posted:In that passage I really cringed at 'dimly gleaming'. It could work in a different context (like most prose sins), but something about how it's tossed in there makes it sound like as if it's only in there because Lerner thinks it sounds nice, not because it does something. As it stands the effect is: there's an oxymoron that sounds weird ... and then we move on. It's a weird approach, like just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing if it sticks. This is just wrong, things dimly gleam all the time, what are you talking about? "1 : to shine with or as if with subdued steady light or moderate brightness." Sounds like the brightness of a "gleam" is definitionally ambiguous, and Ben Lerner specified. You guys gotta step up your game.
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# ? Jan 25, 2019 17:03 |
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Delete your account Ben Lerner
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# ? Jan 25, 2019 17:17 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:25 |
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bad writing done with intent is still bad
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# ? Jan 25, 2019 17:26 |