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slowly revealing the gross weirdness of the gross weird guy is the entire point of the story though?
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Aug 12, 2021 19:33
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Reading La mala hora was a big surprise because Cien años de soledad had convinced me Marquez can't write for poo poo.
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Aug 12, 2021 19:38
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I went into Tanizaki's Naomi thinking it was going to be Lolita, but Japanese, and while it definitely started that way it turned so completely farcical that I was laughing through most of it
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Aug 12, 2021 20:32
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Heath posted:I went into Tanizaki's Naomi thinking it was going to be Lolita, but Japanese, and while it definitely started that way it turned so completely farcical that I was laughing through most of it I've got a collection of short stories (I think) by Tanizaki that I've been putting off reading since 2001 because the title ("Bridge of Dreams") was boring. I guess I'll check it out I like to laugh.
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Aug 12, 2021 20:49
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Really loved Tanizaki's A Cat, A Man, and Two Women and strongly recommend it to anyone who appreciates the sensual aroma of a litter box.
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Aug 12, 2021 21:13
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I've got a collection of short stories (I think) by Tanizaki that I've been putting off reading since 2001 because the title ("Bridge of Dreams") was boring. I guess I'll check it out I like to laugh. I don't know how funny his other stuff is - Naomi's main character is such a goon and gets so thoroughly owned by his Heath fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Aug 12, 2021 |
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Aug 12, 2021 22:35
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Franchescanado posted:What are thoughts on Murakami's "After Dark"? I still haven't read anything by him besides some parts from Running, and I'm curious how many of his tics everyone hates are in that one. My girlfriend gave me a copy, and it's short, so I figured I could give it a try even though this thread's wrecked any objectivity I could have towards him. After Dark rules, and I put down 1Q84 after the nth bald head. I like atmospheric books and enjoyed his nighttime Tokyo. I don't know what to do with the thread in it about cameras and gaze. The shorter format keeps Murakami to his strengths, imo. You could read it in one sitting. Edit: 37 new posts???? Nah man, just Murakami! lol
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Aug 12, 2021 23:09
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Just finished Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf. ... wow. I can't believe this was the darling of the Litstagram scene when it came out in 2019--it's quite unfriendly to the reader, and demands a serious investment (100+ painful pages) before beginning to repay it. It's unrelentingly and inventively violent, with opaque time jumps and betrayals/realliances throughout, a thousand characters with multiple names each, and monsters/fantastical beasts/witches from dozens of African mythology traditions. Someone on da internet said, "My advice would be to relax when it comes to trying to keep close tabs on all the plot links in this one," which I found helpful. The most frustrating thing is the multiple pages of tagless dialogue, so you have to go back to who said what last and follow it from there. It all jells eventually. The love stories Tracker lives with the multiple lovers throughout his life are heartbreaking. It explores who deserves victimhood and innocence, the consequences of political ambition on human lives, and what justice, family, and love mean in a life you have had to remake yourself, over and over again. Amal El-Mohtar writes for NPR that the book is like "if Toni Morrison had written Ovid's Metamorphoses: Painful and strange, full of bodies shifting from personhood into meat, and somehow, always, still, upsettingly beautiful." I can't even imagine what the sequel will be like. Apparently it's going to be a Rashomon situation, with the same events of the first book told through the perspective of another unspecified character. Also check out this marvelous New Yorker profile of Marlon James by Jia Tolentino. Very revealing. I'm excited to read his other novels based on the power of this one, but considering that The Book of Night Women has been described as even more inaccessible, e.g., it's a novel about six enslaved half sisters on a Jamaican sugar plantation plotting a rebellion against their white overseer/father, which is also "written entirely in eighteenth-century patois." I still haven't gotten through Beloved on account of its brutality so maybe I'll save that one for another time. snailshell fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 04:16
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Originality in writing: does it exist?
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Aug 15, 2021 13:37
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snailshell posted:Just finished Marlon James' Black Leopard, Red Wolf. ... wow. I can't believe this was the darling of the Litstagram scene when it came out in 2019--it's quite unfriendly to the reader, and demands a serious investment (100+ painful pages) before beginning to repay it. It's unrelentingly and inventively violent, with opaque time jumps and betrayals/realliances throughout, a thousand characters with multiple names each, and monsters/fantastical beasts/witches from dozens of African mythology traditions. Someone on da internet said, "My advice would be to relax when it comes to trying to keep close tabs on all the plot links in this one," which I found helpful. The most frustrating thing is the multiple pages of tagless dialogue, so you have to go back to who said what last and follow it from there. It all jells eventually. The love stories Tracker lives with the multiple lovers throughout his life are heartbreaking. I've probably said this in here recently but A Brief History of Seven Killings is my favorite book from at least the last decade or so. Simply outstanding in every way that a novel can be.
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Aug 15, 2021 14:37
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FPyat posted:Originality in writing: does it exist? yes
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Aug 15, 2021 18:33
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if you have trouble finding something 'original' to read then you either read very little or very narrowly, or you've read every major book written in the past 1000 years
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Aug 15, 2021 19:04
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from a rebours:quote:Closely observe that work of hers which is considered the most exquisite, that creation of hers whose beauty is everywhere conceded the most perfect and original—woman. Has not man made, for his own use, an animated and artificial being which easily equals woman, from the point of view of plastic beauty? Is there a woman, whose form is more dazzling, more splendid than the two locomotives that pass over the Northern Railroad lines?
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Aug 18, 2021 12:58
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I bounced hard off of Red Leopard because of the inaccessibility but I should probably give it a second chance seeing how I loved Seven Killings and am liking John Crow's Devils. Also I just finished Season of Migration to the North which is a beautiful and brilliant meditation on colonialism and sort of a companion to Wide Sargasso Sea in style and theme. Also was on a date last night where we both trashed Murakami so this thread's energy was in the air I guess since I just caught up to it now.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:17
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Started Blinding by Cartarescu and I really like it. This Balkan navel gazing style is always instantly engrossing though i have no idea why On the other side of Europe I'm one or two stories from the end of Dubliners. While Cartarescu explores Bucharest from a tripartite window of a brutal concrete highrise, Joyce is down in the trenches of social change in his Dublin, showing the various struggles of its meagre army. Ivy Day in the Committee Room being a particular standout.
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Aug 20, 2021 14:53
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"Catcher in the Rye is terrible" is all over Twitter again (like clockwork) and I think I finally figured out why it drives me up a wall so much. I do have a personal love for that book, but I tend not to get as upset when people dunk on other art that I like, and it's not even like I'd call Catcher in the Rye the most important piece of literature to me or anything like that. But it never ceases to drive me mad when people just dismiss it offhand because they find Holden Caulfield annoying, especially people who treat it as a point of pride that they don't like or think they are smarter than the book. Even worse is nowadays people try to add a layer of justification by making it about the fact that he's a white straight prep school boy, as if that somehow precludes him from empathy for all the loving trauma that kid has experienced. But what I hit on is that every time this topic comes up, which is often, these people will gladly engage with the assholes who just come to their threads to be pithy, because it's an opportunity to dunk on them and come out looking and feeling like they're on top. But I've never seen anyone actually engage with the people in these threads who argue in good faith for the book's merits, or who point out the fact that Holden is a mentally ill young adult whose younger brother just died a horrific death and who is heavily hinted to be a sexual abuse survivor. Like, I don't think I've ever seen any of them engage with that element of the book, and it just drives me absolutely wild. By all means, you don't have to care for the prose style and you can find the "oh but the point is he's not right about how people are" angle pretentious. But I cannot stand that these so-called literary people go online specifically to start poo poo and then won't even engage as soon as they get called out. I know I know I know It's my fault for getting mad about people being idiots on Twitter. Maybe it's just cause "Catcher in the Rye sucks" is already such a basic, garden level literary take? Maybe I care about that book more than I think I do? But like, I wouldn't be mad if anyone actually mounted a fair negative review of it, it's just that it's literally all the same exact "ugh, he's so annoying" eye rolling and smug satisfaction that everyone must agree with them. Anyway, just needed to vent that. I would actually be interested if anyone has links to negative reviews or takes of the book/Salinger in general that at least grapples with its actual themes and content instead of just complaining for the umpteenth time about "phonies" and how much they hate Holden based on their half-remembered high school assignments.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:08
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It's kind of a shame that Holden's mindset appeals to young people (and that CitR is commonly assigned to school kids), because they are the least likely readers to grasp that Salinger did not intend him to be a sympathetic narrator or a hero of any kind.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:55
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Yeah and it doesn't help that teachers assign it with the mindset of "oh, he's an angsty teenager, you're an angsty teenager, you should see yourself in this." Salinger's not necessarily asking you to identify with Holden, he's asking you to empathize with him and feel for him.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:58
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Re: the critics of Catcher, I always think about that William Gass essay, it's called something like "to a young friend charged with possession of the classics". His main point in that essay is that most of the time when a book is called a classic, it's for a good drat reason and if you think it sucks, it's probably you who are the sucker.
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Aug 23, 2021 16:03
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That reminds me a lot of how people will come into this thread wanting to read more literature but intimidated by the idea of the canon/preconceived notions from high school/etc. Most of the classics are considered great for a reason, however by design not every author is going to resonate with every reader. I for one can't stand Dickens, find him boring as hell. But I also don't think I'm smarter than Charles Dickens or make judgment calls about the morals and personalities of the people who are fans of his work. Like, you can recognize why something is considered great while not enjoying it yourself. Again, it's the pithiness. I think someone could mount a fair minded takedown of Salinger, but it's not about that it's about scoring points and vindicating your first impressions reading it as a 15 year old.
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Aug 23, 2021 16:13
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Shibawanko posted:from a rebours: Really glad someone else is appreciating Huysmans! I think that passage is from a section that's sort of the (overt) thesis of the book, right? The defense of artificiality versus "nature".
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Aug 23, 2021 23:45
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Ceramic Shot posted:Really glad someone else is appreciating Huysmans! I think that passage is from a section that's sort of the (overt) thesis of the book, right? The defense of artificiality versus "nature". yeah although thats not the only part where he says things like that but i think its hilarious how he's just like, Women < Trains i havent read much more by huysmas but from what i understand he went from kitchen sink realism to just super indulgent aristoporn because it was just a lot more interesting to explore that kind of mind. here's another bit i enjoy: quote:Goya's savage verve and keenly fanciful talent delighted him, but the universal admiration his works had won nevertheless estranged him slightly. And for years he had refused to frame them for fear that the first blundering fool who caught sight of them might deem it necessary to fly into banal and facile raptures before them.
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Aug 24, 2021 00:33
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A teacher once told us that if we hadn't read Catcher in the Rye by then, we shouldn't bother. (University teacher so we were all over 19.) I'll read it one day because I have it 
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Aug 24, 2021 03:46
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I read it in high school of my own volition and I don't remember a single thing about it
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Aug 24, 2021 04:04
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Heath posted:I read it in high school of my own volition and I don't remember a single thing about it 
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Aug 24, 2021 04:18
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We never had to read it. I think one of my teachers mentioned it once or twice but by far my main impressions of Catcher is seeing virulent hatred for it online years after I graduated. That and The Scarlet Letter seem to attract by far the most hostility
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Aug 24, 2021 09:18
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Pretty sure the hatred comes from people feeling disdain and shame about their own younger selves.
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Aug 24, 2021 14:31
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constantly impressed by how well people remember highschool
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Aug 24, 2021 16:44
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I find it's a book that's better as you age cause you have some distance from Holden and therefore can just see he's a kid that suffering. Reading it as an adult I just wanted to give him a hug and tell him it'll be ok.
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Aug 24, 2021 16:50
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mdemone posted:Pretty sure the hatred comes from people feeling disdain and shame about their own younger selves. I've always got that impression, or people being performatively angry at Holden because they see others doing the same. I can say Holden was a lot like my own younger self. I think Franny and Zooey might be something that speaks more to Teens nowadays though.
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Aug 24, 2021 16:51
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Catcher in the Rye discourse has always fascinated me. My friend who at the time really reminded me of Holden due to his family issues and struggles with school, absolutely hated the book and railed on about how whiny Holden was. Very telling, honestly. Now as an adult I feel similarly to this: TrixRabbi posted:I find it's a book that's better as you age cause you have some distance from Holden and therefore can just see he's a kid that suffering. Reading it as an adult I just wanted to give him a hug and tell him it'll be ok. It's a sign of a great book when it seems to grow and change alongside it's readers.
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Aug 24, 2021 17:28
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When I was younger, being forced to read something I otherwise probably would simply dislike would absolutely cause feelings of resentment toward the material itself. I read Catcher as a younger adult, didn't like it, not going to read it again. I recall The Scarlet Letter being a real slog and Dimmsdale being a huge wimp. Reading it as an adult I probably would want to give him a hug and tell him his religion is poison.
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Aug 24, 2021 17:41
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The gently caress is wrong with all you teen-huggers?
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Aug 24, 2021 17:58
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They're just trying to live up to Salinger's example
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Aug 24, 2021 17:59
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Shibawanko posted:yeah although thats not the only part where he says things like that but i think its hilarious how he's just like, Women < Trains Yeah, the discussions of art are really brilliant. In the novel La-Bas Huysmans takes the "aristoporn" to a really dark place, sometimes borderline Marquis de Sade, in his descriptions of Gilles de Rais, pal of Joan of Arc and later confessed child killer. I got the chance to see Gustav Moreau's paintings and prints at a museum mere months after reading about them in Against Nature. It was the most fun I've had at an exhibit. Huysman's conversion to Catholicism confused the hell out of me when I read about it, especially after reading stuff like this: ----- In the Dominican collection, was there not to be found a certain Doctor of Theology, Révérend Père Rouard de Card, a Preaching Brother, who in a brochure entitled:—"Of the Falsification of the Sacramental Substances," has demonstrated beyond a doubt that the major part of Masses were null and void, by reason of the fact that the materials used in the rite were sophisticated by dealers? For years, the holy oils had been adulterated with goose-grease; the taper-wax with burnt bones; the incense with common resin and old benzoin. But worse than all, the substances indispensable for the holy sacrifice, the two things without which no oblation was possible, had likewise been falsified,—the wine by repeated dilutings and the illicit addition of Pernambuco bark, elder-berries, alcohol, alum, salicylate, litharge; the bread, that bread of the Eucharist that must be kneaded of the fine flour of wheat, by ground haricotbeans, potash and pipeclay! Nay, now they had gone further yet; they had dared to suppress the wheat altogether and shameless dealers manufactured out of potato meal nearly all the hosts! Now God declined to come down and be made flesh in potato flour. This was a surety, an indisputable fact; in the second volume of his Moral Theology, His Eminence Cardinal Gousset had also dealt at length with this question of adulteration from the divine standpoint, and, according to the authority of this master which there was no gainsaying, the celebrant could not consecrate bread made of oats, buckwheat or barley, and though the case of rye-bread at least admitted of doubt, no question could be raised, no argument sustained, when it came to using potato meal, which, to employ the ecclesiastical expression, was in no sense a substance competent for the Blessed Sacrament. ----- On the other hand, it is extremely French to convert to a religion because you love the craftsmanship, aesthetics, and rhythm of life surrounding it, I guess. That passage read like straight satire to me at first, but I feel like there must have been more than a kernel of sincerity there too. Ceramic Shot fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 18:22
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3D Megadoodoo posted:The gently caress is wrong with all you teen-huggers? yeah, imagine having empathy, what freaks
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Aug 24, 2021 18:56
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derp posted:constantly impressed by how well people remember highschool I remember very little of what we were made to read in school. I've always loved reading (or listening since I usually use audiobooks) but in terms of mandated reading, the only books to leave a very strong impression on me were The Outsiders in middle school and To Kill A Mockingbird in high school And recently I've been reflecting on a poem we read in class that I've never forgotten even after all these years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vICuZwEMoTw
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Aug 24, 2021 18:58
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ulvir posted:yeah, imagine having empathy, what freaks I'm a Finn so a hug is an act of aggression.
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Aug 24, 2021 19:00
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I read Catcher in the Rye in high school. We got to pick a book from an available list to read at our own pace, and I read Catcher in the Rye (and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). I was the only one in my class to read either. I thought it was great. I was 16 or 17 at the time, and I felt for Holden. I remember feeling that his narration is asking for someone to listen to him for once, like him and/or empathize with him, but he's so oppressed that he's defensively obnoxious, and resigned to being misunderstood or mistreated. Also, the whole notion of hating "phonies", demanding authenticity from people, but also still being a little too naïve to fully understand that about people, while struggling with defining your own authenticity, was really interesting to me at the time. I never understood the dislike for the character, or the novel. I don't remember thinking he was whiny, but I've also never been one to demand characters in a novel be good or generally likeable.
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Aug 24, 2021 19:05
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I'm a Finn so a hug is an act of aggression. it’s like when someone helps you out by whipping your back with birch in a communal sauna
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Aug 24, 2021 19:40
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