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catgirlgenius posted:Mishima? the same Mishima that would pay young men to be his private audience while he play-acted his own suicide to the point of orgasm? pulling-out-a-long-red-cloth-from-his-own-stomach-to-simulate-blood-while-simultaneously-cumming Mishima? That's only marginally gay. I think writing an autobiographical novel about being gay is gayer
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Apr 24, 2022 09:37
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I realized I just read two books that are 60 years old and it was interesting to see how they each felt very much of their time despite being completely different. Hopscotch - Julio Cortázar - 1963 Rereading this for the first time in a decade. Cortázar's deconstructed ode to existential angst has some beautiful writing, but bogs down in misogyny and overwrought philosophizing that feels dated. Still the playfulness of jumping chapters, the wordplay and collage, still feel fresh even if the themes are tired and browbeaten into you. Moments of sheer pleasure and so very 60s. Another Country - James Baldwin 1962 Baldwin's sprawling attempt at the Great American Novel is achingly humanist and explores race and sexuality openly with a great ear for dialogue. It takes a slight curve with Rufus's early death but obviously feels much more traditional than Cortázar but more rooted in flesh and the struggle for civil rights. Very much a cri de Coeur mood piece that hits hard and while bloated but worth a read. In summary: holy poo poo people love Jazz.
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Apr 26, 2022 06:35
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Finished Gravity's Rainbow Part 1 was hit and miss. Part 2-3 were great.Part 4 was disappointing. I preferred all the other Pynchon I've read so far, V. being my favourite, followed by Inherent Vice then Crying of Lot 49. Heard good things about Mason & Dixon.
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Apr 28, 2022 14:06
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M&D is tremendously good. I'd call it his best if I hadn't already staked out my GR position multiple times in this thread and I can't back down now.
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Apr 28, 2022 14:07
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Nova69 posted:Finished Gravity's Rainbow It's not my favorite, but I loved it every time I sat down with it. It's not his funniest, but it easily has some of his funniest moments moments. I love when Pynchon's humor goes absurd, and it has a lot of it. The robot duck obsessed with revenge and yearning to experience love, the guy that has an electric eel sideshow where he uses it's electrical charge to light a cigar, the Ear Museum... It also regularly made me do some research because a lot of the history goes over my head. Even simple things like how bagpipes were banned as an instrument of war was news to me. I recently read through Aura by Carlos Fuentes, and I really liked it. It reads like a strange nightmare. It will throw out a quick bizarre and violent image and then move right past it. The story is predictable, but the style is great. I also read Antigona Gonzalez by Sara Uribe, which is a retelling of Antigone set in Tamaulipas, Mexico, framed around the nation's missing persons epidemic. It reads like a mix of poetry and spoken word performance, and even has some minimal stage direction. My version (gifted to me by goon Chip McFuck; thank you for this) also had essays about the translation and greater context for the piece. It was incredibly depressing in its portrayal of grief, and longing for unachievable closure. I'd recommend both. They're short enough to be read in a single sitting.
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Apr 28, 2022 14:39
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Franchescanado posted:I love when Pynchon's humor goes absurd, and it has a lot of it. The robot duck obsessed with revenge and yearning to experience love, the guy that has an electric eel sideshow where he uses it's electrical charge to light a cigar, the Ear Museum... The humorous parts of GR were definitely my favourite. I found the stream-of-conciousness philosophical stuff about rockets and stuff got a bit overwrought at times, at least compared to how he tackles those sort of sections in his other books. V. and Inherent Vice had a lot of moments that made me laugh out loud, which is always a great experience, David Foster Wallace was good for that too. Franchescanado posted:It also regularly made me do some research because a lot of the history goes over my head. Even simple things like how bagpipes were banned as an instrument of war was news to me. Yeah I did a lot of googling in the course of reading it, the extensive use of German phrases didn't help with being able to understand certain bits on initial reading. Franchescanado posted:I recently read through Aura by Carlos Fuentes, and I really liked it. It reads like a strange nightmare. It will throw out a quick bizarre and violent image and then move right past it. The story is predictable, but the style is great. Thanks for the recommendations, I find it really difficult to find new books to read, more so than with films or tv shows. I've tried Goodreads recommendations but it seems to be quite biased towards pedestrian sci-fi/fantasy/thriller books.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:16
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Segue posted:
Short or long version? The seventh function of language It was very fun, even though I only recognized about 15% of the names. A more literary Snow Crash (come at me). Binet is amazing, all three of his books are homeruns, but my favourite is still the first one, HHhH.
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Apr 28, 2022 15:33
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Nova69 posted:Finished Gravity's Rainbow yeah i also like V. over all the others, it's just a bit more fun
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Apr 28, 2022 15:40
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Mr. Nemo posted:Short or long version? Short, then long. Short version felt purposely incomplete, where you didn't get as good a pyschological portrait of Oliveira, and other characters didn't feel as filled out. But it still had some beautiful and playful parts (like the chapter where you read every other line until they converge). Long version had a looser vibe that felt less Oliveira-focused but the Morelli chapters felt very redundant after a bit. Probably prefer the long, though that may be the jumping really does give you that physical jazzy sense that Cortázar really strives for. Both endings I think had their strengths.
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Apr 28, 2022 16:50
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Mr. Nemo posted:Short or long version? Yeah Ive posted about HHhH in this thread before. Its one of the best books Ive read in my life. Just stunning in both form and execution
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Apr 29, 2022 03:22
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Nova69 posted:Thanks for the recommendations, I find it really difficult to find new books to read, more so than with films or tv shows. I've tried Goodreads recommendations but it seems to be quite biased towards pedestrian sci-fi/fantasy/thriller books. Or honestly the librarian-curated lists on Libby have worked out pretty well for me.
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May 1, 2022 20:43
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taco show posted:Book recs are difficult for me too, Goodreads is ehhhh, r/booksuggestions slightly better, but I like using old school blogs (!) like The Millions, The Morning News, LitHub, etc. i read very few books that i dont LOVE, and that's because I get all my recs here, or in the discord, or from googling references within the books im reading themselves.
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May 5, 2022 19:29
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TrixRabbi posted:Realize this is an old post but I read No One Is Talking About This last year and really loved it, both because it's very funny and aware of how cringey those parts of it are, while also tying it together with the ending where the online world becomes increasingly irrelevant when faced with actual human connection and crisis. Meanwhile, I could barely get through the first 30 pages of Fake Accounts before giving up -- insufferably bland prose, the way she went on forever trying to describe the act of using an iPhone was much more obnoxious than anything. I won't criticize too much since I didn't read much past the opening, but I instantly got the sense this book would be tortuous to get through. I had nearly the opposite reaction. No One is Talking About This was enjoyable but forgettable, I absolutely loved the prose of Fake Accounts and can't wait to read more from her.
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May 9, 2022 18:02
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Does anyone else struggle with Dostoyevsky? I'm about halfway through The Idiot (translated by Alan Myers) and it kind of feels like a slog, which is a shame because I love the idea but it's just scene after scene of psychopaths babbling at each other. I know that's kind of the point, but it's giving me real "glancing at my watch" vibes and I can't tell if it's worth pushing through.
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May 11, 2022 18:08
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The only problem I have is remembering the names. I find the works as a whole enthralling
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May 11, 2022 18:12
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Does anyone else struggle with Dostoyevsky? I'm about halfway through The Idiot (translated by Alan Myers) and it kind of feels like a slog, which is a shame because I love the idea but it's just scene after scene of psychopaths babbling at each other. I know that's kind of the point, but it's giving me real "glancing at my watch" vibes and I can't tell if it's worth pushing through. The only Dostoyevsky I've read is half of The Idiot when I was like 19 and I remember absolutely none of it (the Barnes and Noble classics translation, whoever did that) and Oliver Ready's translation of Crime and Punishment, which I found excellent and very readable.
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May 11, 2022 18:15
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The Idiot was very slow going at points but i really enjoyed it. However if you don't like all the talking then maybe not, cause that's most of what it is. I read the Ignat Avsey version fwiw. I loooved C&P and notes from underground, though. Still not read brothers K.
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May 11, 2022 19:19
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My Dostoevsky experience is The Idiot and Crime & Punishment, Pevear and Volokhonsky translations. I loved them both, esp. The Idiot. Although I think the PnV translations aren't well-received in this thread I found them to be enjoyable and easy to read without undermining any of the psychology of the characters' interactions.
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May 11, 2022 19:27
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I've never finished a Dostoevsky novel. I enjoy some of what I've read, but the dialogues carry on forever. Dialogues all the way down. Just not what I want to read.
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May 11, 2022 19:43
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apophenium posted:My Dostoevsky experience is The Idiot and Crime & Punishment, Pevear and Volokhonsky translations. I loved them both, esp. The Idiot. Although I think the PnV translations aren't well-received in this thread I found them to be enjoyable and easy to read without undermining any of the psychology of the characters' interactions. I think the P&V translations are, generally speaking, not bad, but not especially faithful to the original writing, since they use an unusual technique for translation and publishers seem to treat them like they're an authority on translating Russian anything. There's almost always an alternative to their translations available but you kind of have to go looking for it.
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May 11, 2022 19:49
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ThePopeOfFun posted:I've never finished a Dostoevsky novel. I enjoy some of what I've read, but the dialogues carry on forever. Dialogues all the way down. Just not what I want to read. Notes From Underground is pretty short, and it's basically the narrator's paranoid thoughts and moral justifications. apophenium posted:Although I think the PnV translations aren't well-received in this thread I found them to be enjoyable and easy to read without undermining any of the psychology of the characters' interactions. They're just clunky to read. I read the PnV of Notes From Underground, and it was a fine and good experience. Since then, though, every time I've compared a PnV translation to a different one, I almost always prefer the other one. They're verbose, and it comes off as clunky or overly complicated. Here's a decent write-up about them: https://www.commentary.org/articles/gary-morson/the-pevearsion-of-russian-literature/ quote:Pevear and Volokhonsky, who are married, work in an unusual fashion. She, a native Russian speaker, renders each book into entirely literal English. He, who knows insufficient Russian, then works on the rendering with the intention of keeping the language as close to the original as possible. What results from this attempt at unprecedented fidelity is a word-for-word and syntax-for-syntax version that sacrifices tone and misconstrues overall sense.
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May 11, 2022 19:56
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mdemone posted:M&D is tremendously good. I'd call it his best if I hadn't already staked out my GR position multiple times in this thread and I can't back down now. I would put it on par with GR, honestly. M&D has better characterization and "plot", but the sheer scope of GR is hard to beat. They are two very different books, both of which have T Ruggles Pynchon at the top of his craft. I'm still holding out for one more epic from him before he croaks... e: after googling, learned there is a pynchon conference happening in my city, organized by my favourite english prof from university: https://www.internationalpynchonweek.org/ thehoodie fucked around with this message at 20:08 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 20:04
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thehoodie posted:I would put it on par with GR, honestly. M&D has better characterization and "plot", but the sheer scope of GR is hard to beat. They are two very different books, both of which have T Ruggles Pynchon at the top of his craft. I think the best we dare hope for is a volume of unfinished material, which he'll no doubt have destroyed, succeeding where Kafka failed. If we get another big one it'll be an embarrassment of riches. Four doorstopper maximalist novels is three more than I'd want to write in a lifetime, and even that totally disregards the more focused works that are some of his best in terms of craft.
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May 11, 2022 20:11
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mdemone posted:I think the best we dare hope for is a volume of unfinished material, which he'll no doubt have destroyed, succeeding where Kafka failed. I've just got Against The Day and Bleeding Edge left, and then I'll have nothing new to read by him anymore. It'll be a sad day when I finish both.
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May 11, 2022 20:19
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Franchescanado posted:Notes From Underground is pretty short, and it's basically the narrator's paranoid thoughts and moral justifications. I like that this writer suggests that: quote:For Dostoevsky, familiarity with Dickens goes a long way because I can't stand Dickens.
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May 11, 2022 20:20
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Franchescanado posted:I've just got Against The Day and Bleeding Edge left, and then I'll have nothing new to read by him anymore. It'll be a sad day when I finish both. That's exactly why I'm holding off on V. We should read Bleeding Edge and get it out of the way, then when he dies we can celebrate by reading that last big epic.
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May 11, 2022 20:22
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mdemone posted:That's exactly why I'm holding off on V. V. rules, though. It's probably gonna be the first one I fully re-read once I finish his bibliography. Every so often I'll just pick a chapter at random and read through it. They're all pretty self-contained. I am probably going to read Bleeding Edge before Against the Day, though. Maybe even this year. We'll see. I'm complaining that I won't have more Pynchon to read, when I have unread novels by John Barth, Bolaņo, Gaddis and Umberto Eco on my shelves.
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May 11, 2022 20:28
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Franchescanado posted:V. rules, though. It's probably gonna be the first one I fully re-read once I finish his bibliography. Every so often I'll just pick a chapter at random and read through it. They're all pretty self-contained. Pynchon is worth Barth, Bolaņo, and Eco combined. I couldn't throw Gaddis in there because that would be a bridge too far. But I will never finish The Recognitions. I get farther and farther every time but then he beats me.
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May 11, 2022 20:30
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Speaking of Barth, does anybody want a copy of Giles Goat-boy? I've somehow ended up with 3 of them.
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May 11, 2022 20:31
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Against The Day, man I wish I could read that one again for the first time. Just rip through it in like a week on a bender.
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May 11, 2022 20:36
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Heath posted:Speaking of Barth, does anybody want a copy of Giles Goat-boy? I've somehow ended up with 3 of them. Would it happen to be the Anchor Literary Library edition? I don't have Giles Goat-Boy, but those are the editions I have for his other books.
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May 11, 2022 20:42
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Franchescanado posted:Would it happen to be the Anchor Literary Library edition? I don't have Giles Goat-Boy, but those are the editions I have for his other books. I think one of them is. I will check later
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May 11, 2022 21:15
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mdemone posted:I think the best we dare hope for is a volume of unfinished material, which he'll no doubt have destroyed, succeeding where Kafka failed. Oh, totally, anything more would be a gift. But he must have something on the go, it's been almost 9 years since Bleeding Edge came out. I can't imagine someone like him just not writing anything. All this Pynchon chat is making me want to re-read his books. Maybe I'll start with V again and go through them all.
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May 11, 2022 21:32
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Has anyone read Bleeding Edge? I don't think I've ever seen someone talking about it
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May 11, 2022 21:36
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Gaius Marius posted:Has anyone read Bleeding Edge? I don't think I've ever seen someone talking about it I've read half of it and then got distracted by other books. It's fine. Feels most like Vineland. It's weird reading about Hideo Kojima and Goku and Zima in a Pynchon book, but it works. All the stuff about the dot com boom and the dark web and hackers and internet terrorism was interesting. I still don't know much about that stuff, so it was fun to learn about that from TRP. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 21:42 on May 11, 2022 |
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May 11, 2022 21:39
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Gaius Marius posted:Has anyone read Bleeding Edge? I don't think I've ever seen someone talking about it It's one of those where he goes for a specific voice in time. And maybe he nails it. But honestly, because I remember that place and time, it's hard to read. It seems pastiche...but that's exactly what he is going for! I hope that next time I can finish it and feel as good about it as I do about Vineland, or Inherent Vice, both of which I thought were outstanding examples of homages to their respective genres.
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May 11, 2022 21:51
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Gaius Marius posted:Has anyone read Bleeding Edge? I don't think I've ever seen someone talking about it I enjoyed it. It's exactly as paranoid as you'd expect a Pynchon techno-thriller about 9/11 to be. It reminded me most of Vineland. I also felt like it was sort of Pynchon doing for 9/11 what DeLillo did for the Kennedy assassination.
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May 11, 2022 22:45
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PeterWeller posted:I enjoyed it. It's exactly as paranoid as you'd expect a Pynchon techno-thriller about 9/11 to be. It reminded me most of Vineland. I also felt like it was sort of Pynchon doing for 9/11 what DeLillo did for the Kennedy assassination. Though Libra is undoubtedly a better book. Maybe Delilo's best
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May 11, 2022 22:51
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It's good to see Bleeding Edge seems to be good, I hesitate on it because it's the only novel of his set in my lifetime. I think without that temporal removal I have from the other novels it's going to hit different.
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May 11, 2022 23:26
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I had a hard time with it primarily because I'm old enough to remember that time period Dragonball Z references from a man in his 70s was sure something though
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May 11, 2022 23:46
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