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Speaking of, is there an accepted best translation of Don Quixote?
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Oct 5, 2014 21:06
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TrixRabbi posted:Actually, Tao Lin is the Wal-Mart Don DeLillo. ShutteredIn posted:Read The Arabian Nights. The Haddawy translation is great.
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Oct 5, 2014 22:09
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mallamp posted:Actually you do have to read whole western canon. In original languages. I'm going to read the Epic of Gilgamesh in its original Assyrian/SUmerian/possibly Hittite in places.
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Oct 5, 2014 22:58
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amuayse posted:Sorta like Palaniuk is to Pynchon? I've actually never read any Pynchon (any suggestions for the best place to start?) but I assume that's probably fair. Actually, I do really like Taipei, but it still reads like Lin is trying too hard to ape DeLillo.
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Oct 6, 2014 06:09
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The Crying of Lot 49 is short and will let you know if you like his style.
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Oct 6, 2014 08:25
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Don't read Lot 49 to get an idea of Pynchon's style because it's not very good. Read Gravity's Rainbow and if you don't like it stop reading it but you'll probably like it.
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Oct 6, 2014 11:59
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CestMoi posted:Don't read Lot 49 to get an idea of Pynchon's style because it's not very good. Incorrect. CestMoi posted:Read Gravity's Rainbow and if you don't like it stop reading it but you'll probably like it. Correct.
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Oct 6, 2014 13:11
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Peel posted:Speaking of, is there an accepted best translation of Don Quixote?
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Oct 6, 2014 14:21
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Sir John Feelgood posted:Edith Grossman.
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Oct 6, 2014 15:15
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CestMoi posted:Don't read Lot 49 to get an idea of Pynchon's style because it's not very good. Read Gravity's Rainbow and if you don't like it stop reading it but you'll probably like it. I like The Crying of Lot 49. At the very least it's short which makes it a good choice for babby's first Pynchon. I was going to say if you're going to go with Gravity's Rainbow to try to get into part 2 before making a decision on whether or not to put it down, but it's a little bit further in than I thought (page 180 in my copy, I was thinking it was more like 100). I don't know about anyone else, but it took me a couple false starts to get into it. Once I got over the hump I found it relatively smooth sailing though.
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Oct 6, 2014 15:43
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Just because it is short does not mean its the way to go in. Especially with Pynchon. Read gravitys rainbow.
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Oct 6, 2014 15:55
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IMO you'll end up with a way more satisfying, enjoyable, and Pynchony book reading the first 150 pages of Gravity's Rainbow than reading the 150 pages of Lot 49.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:04
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Just about every internet discussion of Pynchon I've seen seems to ignore all of his books except Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. Many of his other books are good and in some cases could also make good starting points. Against the Day for example is a much better book than Crying of Lot 49, a lot more depth and a lot more history, but it's not nearly as hard to get into as Gravity's Rainbow can be for many readers.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:35
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CestMoi posted:IMO you'll end up with a way more satisfying, enjoyable, and Pynchony book reading the first 150 pages of Gravity's Rainbow than reading the 150 pages of Lot 49. I can definitely understand that Lot 49 isn't a good "intro" to Pynchon but it is still a rad book. We Await Silent Tristero's Empire.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:36
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I liked V. but not really any of the other ones.
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Oct 6, 2014 22:11
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Recently read The Death of Ivan Ilyich and it floored me. A bit hesitant to dive into W&P or AK, but intrigued by the possibility someday in the near future. So many books to read in the meantime though. For those who have read it, is W&P the complete, towering, essential masterwork it is made out to be? And how accessible is it despite its length?
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Oct 7, 2014 17:30
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Wraith of J.O.I. posted:Recently read The Death of Ivan Ilyich and it floored me. A bit hesitant to dive into W&P or AK, but intrigued by the possibility someday in the near future. So many books to read in the meantime though. For those who have read it, is W&P the complete, towering, essential masterwork it is made out to be? And how accessible is it despite its length? Towering is the exact word I used to describe it after I finished. The only books I can compare it to in that aspect are Moby Dick and Infinite Jest. It's pretty accessible if you're already reading Tolstoy and enjoying it. If you plan on reading both eventually I would read Anna Karenina first. They are both masterpieces and it's a little more gripping for someone first approaching Tolstoy since it focuses more on interpersonal relationships and moves pretty quickly compared to War and Peace which occasionally digresses into historical philosophy and has more of an internal focus with its characters.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:41
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drat, I'm through the first book of War and Peace and it feels well...really soapy. I kinda get the same feeling when I read Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire. There's just endless scenes of important royals and nobles just faffing about and doing small talk between the exciting bits.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:40
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Bought a beautiful hardback copy of Ulysses yesterday and started reading it today. It's pretty breezy so far but I expect it'll get pretty heavy. Wish me luck
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Oct 9, 2014 17:19
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Mescal posted:Bought a beautiful hardback copy of Ulysses yesterday and started reading it today. It's pretty breezy so far but I expect it'll get pretty heavy. Wish me luck Sir John Feelgood fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Nov 17, 2017 |
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Oct 9, 2014 19:16
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Sir John Feelgood posted:Which edition? Modern Library? Everyman's? Modern Library. Conflicted about whether I want to mark it up with marginalia... Edit: naturally the book is 50 years old and looks like it's never been opened. Mescal fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2014 19:51
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Most classic literature is classic because it's good in some way, but my God Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" is terribly written. The book contains such thrilling prose as "He was sad", and I have never seen so many sentences start with "Indeed". I'd read about 100 pages in before I googled "Dreiser terrible writer" and got back a bunch of hits. Apparently it's commonly compared unfavourable with Gatsby since they came out in the same year and chronicle the gap between rich and poor in early 20th-century America. I mean, the story itself is interesting, the moral emptiness of rich and poor as a poor boy climbs up the social ladder, but the clunky, horrendous prose and ridiculous exposition destroys it. It's the first "important book" I've read that is godawful, only classic apparently because of its themes. Yes the theme is important, but the whole point of a story is that it's told with some modicum of skill. How anything this bad got into the American canon mystifies me. Are there any other books out there that are this misplaced in the "classics" section? I'm interested.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:10
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Segue posted:Most classic literature is classic because it's good in some way, but my God Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" is terribly written. The book contains such thrilling prose as "He was sad", and I have never seen so many sentences start with "Indeed". I'd read about 100 pages in before I googled "Dreiser terrible writer" and got back a bunch of hits. How are you determining that it's in the "American canon" in the first place? I know it used to be fairly popular but I didn't realize it was authoritatively considered a real "classic", especially these days.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:17
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Well canon's always a loose term, but it made both Time and Modern Library's top 100, Bloom's written about it, it's been adapted to film and stage. It might be less popular these days, but it's still an "important book". I'm just surprised it was ever popular.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:42
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Interesting, I really liked "Sister Carrie" and "The Bulwark" by Dreiser and thought they were well written so I'm surprised that "American Tragedy" has aged less well.
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Oct 13, 2014 02:22
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Segue posted:Most classic literature is classic because it's good in some way, but my God Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" is terribly written. The book contains such thrilling prose as "He was sad", and I have never seen so many sentences start with "Indeed". I'd read about 100 pages in before I googled "Dreiser terrible writer" and got back a bunch of hits. I've never read Dreiser, but I don't think that "He was sad." is a bad sentence out of context. I could see that in a Raymond Carver style short story.
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Oct 13, 2014 02:33
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Smoking Crow posted:I don't think that "He was sad." is a bad sentence out of context. True. It's one of those sentences that only a confident writer can get away with. It's not as if it can never be deployed effectively, but in the hands of a less experienced writer it's a crutch to rely on, which is why they're taught to avoid it. Not that I've read the book in question, though, it could well have been particularly poor in that passage. That said, and vaguely related to what I was talking about, I do think it's better a writer sticks to a style they are comfortable with, and that is more authentic to them, rather than adhering too strictly to a stylistic guideline. It's very plainly obvious when someone has been writing to the whims of a creative writing forum. Life's too short to 'show don't tell' all the drat time. I just need to vent because thanks to the internet we have a sizeable number of people who seem to think style is reducible to a formula to be applied for optimum efficiency of Literary Value Attainment, measured in KiloHemingways or Orwells. Thankfully that attitude's not in evidence in this thread.
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Oct 13, 2014 08:29
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mallamp posted:There are lots of very good ~200-300 page academic summaries of Bible that tell you main points of each book and also add some useful commentary (what's the point of the story, was it written all at once or combined from different sources, what's the context, how has it been interpreted etc.), I'd recommend that especially for non-Christians rather than trying to read it all. (I've read it all) I'm sorry if I've missed this elsewhere, but could you recommend some of these?
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Oct 13, 2014 17:07
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Dreiser-chat reminds me how disappointed I was by W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. The story was something Graham Greene could have written and done it exponentially better -- Maugham's prose was so clunky at times and if he didn't expressly write, "He was sad," he wrote sentences just like it much too often.
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Oct 13, 2014 20:31
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Segue posted:Most classic literature is classic because it's good in some way, but my God Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" is terribly written. The book contains such thrilling prose as "He was sad", and I have never seen so many sentences start with "Indeed". I'd read about 100 pages in before I googled "Dreiser terrible writer" and got back a bunch of hits. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is just very very bad. Horrendous characters, weird writing, nonsensical plot twists and an insensitivity to a delicate subject matter all rolled up into one. Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady isn't good either. Coincidentally, I love "An American Tragedy" and find it to be eminently readable. You should watch A Place in the Sun and see if that changes your mind, as it's very strongly based on the book. Captain Mog fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 01:41
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Earwicker posted:How are you determining that it's in the "American canon" in the first place? I know it used to be fairly popular but I didn't realize it was authoritatively considered a real "classic", especially these days. I don't know whether I'd argue that it's been ousted from the canon entirely, but its star has certainly faded quite a bit from the time it was released. That's something I always find really interesting--the way critical opinion of certain works shifts over time. I remember a college professor telling me that Jane Austen wasn't really "discovered" by academics as a legitimate writer until close to the turn of the 20th century (and it took a while after that for that opinion to gain traction). Meanwhile there are writers like Dreiser or Maugham or D.H. Lawrence, who seemed much more . . . relevant? . . . at the time of their books' release than they do now. It's always interesting to see which writers have these huge shifts in critical opinion over time, as academic trends come and go (Elizabeth Barrett Browning has risen and fallen multiple times now), versus whose positions as literary giants just become more deeply entrenched.
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Oct 14, 2014 07:07
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End Of Worlds posted:I'm sorry if I've missed this elsewhere, but could you recommend some of these? But I've heard good things about Introduction to the Bible by Christina Hayes as especially good one for self-study purposes. It's a coursebook for some Yale online course. It's also pretty critical one (well all university theology is relatively critical) so it should be good for atheists too.
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Oct 14, 2014 11:07
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Oct 15, 2014 04:02
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I'm starting to try and get a crack at the Mabinogion again. Anyone know a good translation for it?
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Oct 15, 2014 04:48
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Oct 15, 2014 05:01
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you got the joke
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Oct 15, 2014 05:04
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Its a funny one
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Oct 15, 2014 05:12
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Shibawanko posted:Coetzee is probably the easiest entry level literary writer because of the way he writes, waiting for the barbarians in particular is basically a fantasy novel, only not poo poo. This was posted a while ago, but I'd like to second this. Waiting for the Barbarians is a great novel to introduce people to more complex literature, because he's one of those writers that puts the themes beneath the story. He's a great segue to Hemingway for that reason. The Life and Times of Michael K is another good starter.
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Oct 15, 2014 15:51
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amuayse posted:I'm starting to try and get a crack at the Mabinogion again. Anyone know a good translation for it? Sioned Davies' translation for Oxford World's Classics was fine for me.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:48
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Smoking Crow posted:you got the joke Please don't joke about books and reading.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:09
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