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I TOLD ALL Y'ALL MOTHER FUCKERS TEAM VANN 24/7/365
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Sep 8, 2015 12:31
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| # ? May 15, 2024 12:16 |
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writers get so crazy about prizes it's funny. here's a piece about Osamu Dazai writing a letter in which he begged to be awarded Akutagawa prize for young writers: http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201509080065 on the other end there's Antonio Lobo Antunes who has now said he will get the Nobel prize in the next three years (http://www.rtp.pt/play/p1782/o-meu-tempo-e-hoje) it makes me wish Nobel gets awarded to Garison Keillor. "I like his stories. They're funny." (the Nobel Comittee guy)
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Sep 8, 2015 14:59
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I wonder how many more years the Nobel is going to troll Murakami
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Sep 8, 2015 15:04
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I'm willing to bet  every year until the end of time that he won't get it. his work is very different from the kind of things that get awarded top literary prizes.
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Sep 8, 2015 15:11
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Burning Rain posted:I'm willing to bet Really? He seems to hit that sweet spot of literary and commercial success that the Nobel eats up. Plus, the Nobel needs to do another non-white guy soon so they can defuse criticism and go back to awarding obscure Frenchmen for another two or three years.
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Sep 8, 2015 16:35
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Really? He seems to hit that sweet spot of literary and commercial success that the Nobel eats up. Plus, the Nobel needs to do another non-white guy soon so they can defuse criticism and go back to awarding obscure Frenchmen for another two or three years. They just did Mo Yan a couple of years ago so they're safe for at least a couple more years on the non-white front; that being said, maybe they need to re-check the non-white female box since that interval is a lot longer.
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Sep 8, 2015 17:17
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Murakami is the whitest author in the world.
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Sep 8, 2015 17:32
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Mitch loving Albom will get a Nobel before Murakami.
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Sep 8, 2015 17:50
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Furious Lobster posted:that being said, maybe they need to re-check the non-white female box since that interval is a lot longer. Haha two minority categories at once? What is this the Hugos?
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Sep 8, 2015 18:30
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Really? He seems to hit that sweet spot of literary and commercial success that the Nobel eats up. Plus, the Nobel needs to do another non-white guy soon so they can defuse criticism and go back to awarding obscure Frenchmen for another two or three years. Murakami is like hundred times more successful commercially than he is in the literary circles though. Even Modiano and Mo Yan who were relatively unknown outside of their home countries had more international literary recognition.
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Sep 8, 2015 18:41
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Burning Rain posted:Murakami is like hundred times more successful commercially than he is in the literary circles though. Even Modiano and Mo Yan who were relatively unknown outside of their home countries had more international literary recognition. Hemingway had that problem and he got a prize That was 60 years ago, but whatever
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Sep 8, 2015 18:51
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Smoking Crow posted:Hemingway had that problem and he got a prize Hemingway had an advantage over Murakami, though. He wrote good books. /burn
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Sep 8, 2015 18:55
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The Nobel prize will go to David Vann, the voice of a generation.
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Sep 8, 2015 19:03
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CestMoi posted:The Nobel prize will go to David Vann, the voice of a generation. 
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Sep 8, 2015 19:27
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CestMoi posted:The Nobel prize will go to David Vann, the voice of a generation. There is no author but Vann and Mel is his prophet
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Sep 8, 2015 19:59
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God thst's a weird face
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Sep 8, 2015 20:39
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CestMoi posted:God thst's a weird face It may not surprise you to know that he planned to be a school shooter as a teen and had to talk himself out of it at the last second
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Sep 8, 2015 20:56
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Mel Mudkiper posted:It may not surprise you to know that he planned to be a school shooter as a teen and had to talk himself out of it at the last second this sentence is unironically the one to push me over the edge. which book do you recommend I start with
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Sep 8, 2015 22:26
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Depends. I haven't read it, but The Last Day on Earth is specifically about exploring his own urges as a teen to commit violence by comparing himself with a school shooter he was researching. His best book I have read is Aquarium. If you want his essence as a writer Legend of a Suicide is his craft at its most distilled. Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Sep 9, 2015 |
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Sep 9, 2015 00:10
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I wonder how many more years the Nobel is going to troll Murakami There is no justice in the world if Murakami gets a Nobel after Kobo Abe died without one.
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Sep 9, 2015 05:54
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Paul Auster's New York Trilogy is really good, y'all.
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Sep 9, 2015 07:30
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CARL MARK FORCE IV posted:Paul Auster's New York Trilogy is really good, y'all. Why do people like it? It really did nothing for me. Way too abstract and removed from human feelings.
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Sep 9, 2015 08:18
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I started reading Raymond Chandler the other day and I don't give a poo poo what anyone thinks that dude is literature. Yeah he's pulp and not really plumbing the deepest depths but his style is so perfectly constructed for his intentions. He packs so much into descriptions just by the cynical-yet-zippy way he could describe a brick in a sidewalk. He's a triumph of style, and there's something to be said for that kind of control over a precise form of communication. There's a gutter elegance to it that I think surpasses something like Catcher in the Rye. Chandler is like a velvet sledgehammer with words and his pacing is remarkable. I'm quite taken. There's also the way he set the scene for what writers nowadays rip off from movies they've never seen, only parodied, based in booms they never read. It's slick. Ray-chan rules my bones.
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Sep 9, 2015 09:20
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After this I'm probably gonna read Pale Fire. I don't know how well it'll work in anKkndle though. The format makes it sound like one of those rare books where the physical form of the book operates as a sort of user interface. That sort of self referential poo poo. Is there an ebook version with nearly integrated footnotes between the two sections that make jumping to and fro related passages easier?
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Sep 9, 2015 09:24
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Robotnik Nudes posted:I started reading Raymond Chandler the other day and I don't give a poo poo what anyone thinks that dude is literature. Yeah he's pulp and not really plumbing the deepest depths but his style is so perfectly constructed for his intentions. He packs so much into descriptions just by the cynical-yet-zippy way he could describe a brick in a sidewalk. Chandler knew exactly what he was doing, and was definitely intending to write "literature", within his own definitions of same. You might want to read his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" :http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html
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Sep 9, 2015 13:26
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Shibawanko posted:Why do people like it? It really did nothing for me. Way too abstract and removed from human feelings. The style is very crisp, the ideas are occasionally interesting, and: hero ventures forth to a region of supernatural wonder fabulous forces are encountered there and the hero becomes a singleminded solipsist the hero dies or becomes a hikikomori is the monomyth for the modern age
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Sep 9, 2015 15:50
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Anyone ever read Eka Kurniawan? He is getting two novels released in English this week and he seems really interesting.
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Sep 9, 2015 16:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Chandler knew exactly what he was doing, and was definitely intending to write "literature", within his own definitions of same. You might want to read his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" :http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/chandlerart.html This owns. Thanks.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:09
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So I finished the Neapolitan series by Farrente. It makes Germinal seem tame in comparison and the revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo seem like child's play. There's so much Italian history and politics that I didn't know about, and it was well integrated in the story between Elena and Lila and a huge host of other characters. You really see the best and worst in almost all of them. There is a lot of "telling" of what characters feel and do, but there's so much happening it doesn't really take away from the writing, and the books would be so much longer if she didn't write like that. I've never really written a book review before and I don't really know what to say without giving anything away, but I loved the series.
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Sep 9, 2015 19:59
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Flattened Spoon posted:So I finished the Neapolitan series by Farrente. It makes Germinal seem tame in comparison and the revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo seem like child's play. There's so much Italian history and politics that I didn't know about, and it was well integrated in the story between Elena and Lila and a huge host of other characters. You really see the best and worst in almost all of them. I just finished it this morning too. This book broke me. I don't know what to think of anything or anyone. I really can't resign myself to anything, that this book is over, or anything. The series elides description, both its style and its content, but it was certainly brilliant and livelier and fuller than any book I remember reading. What a sadness to have it be over.
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Sep 9, 2015 22:28
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Anyone ever read Eka Kurniawan? He is getting two novels released in English this week and he seems really interesting. I remember browsing his book in Indonesia years ago. He's getting an English translation? Nice. Could do with more Indonesian authors on the shelves. I think I should try Indonesian literature written in English just to see the difference. Can anyone recommend me one?
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Sep 10, 2015 00:50
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I saw that Coetzee was recommended as a good introduction to literature in this thread for people who are migrating into the real world from the cozy bubble of genre fiction that has surrounded me for some time. I read Waiting for the Barbarians, deeply enjoyed it. I also saw Mel Mudkiper's post earlier in this thread about how literature should probably differ from other forms of reading in that it should be a transformative experience and I tend to agree. On the one hand, I think that in the near future I'll be working through Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Borges, and Eduardo Galeano because I live in South America and they are kind of relevant because most of the people I'll be able to discuss literature with have read those authors extensively. On the other hand I want this thread's recommendation for other "introductory" level stuff that I can read, and maybe some ideas for how I can progress from there and start to get progressively deeper into actual literature. Thanks.
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Sep 10, 2015 01:42
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Tosk posted:On the other hand I want this thread's recommendation for other "introductory" level stuff that I can read, and maybe some ideas for how I can progress from there and start to get progressively deeper into actual literature. Thanks. There is a lot of literature which invokes the adventurous spirit found in more casual reading, and can be a good bridge. My recommendation is to read literature that is very contemporary and tied into things that personally excite you. What kind of stories are you usually drawn to? We can narrow it down from there. For example, I am a big fan of fiction about Rural and Blight-area crime. There are some very good literary novels in the genre like American Rust by Philipp Meyer, Affliction by Russell Banks, and A Single Shot by Matthew F Jones. One thing I always have trouble recommending is going into the "classics". Speaking entirely for myself here, but I find a lot of literature pre-WWI has difficulty appealing to some of my sensibilities as a modern person. Fortunately, Latin America had one of the single biggest literary booms of the 20th century. You could spend years just on Latin writers and not be finished. Some good starting stuff along with what you mentioned is Aunt Julia and the Screenwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, and The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes.
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Sep 10, 2015 01:52
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I've found the classics don't often appeal to me for reasons similar to the ones you described there. I haven't heard of the novels you mentioned, but I've just put American Rust on my Kindle and I'll at least peruse it to see what I think. I find that I am drawn to a lot of bildungsromans. A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Goldfinch, Dune and This Side of Paradise are all books I enjoyed a lot. Really though, I don't think I've read enough literature to give you a good idea of the themes I'm particularly drawn to. I've found it difficult to penetrate many books. It happened to me with Yukio Mishima's Confessions of a Mask, which just didn't manage to reach me, and I tried to read John Steinbeck's East of Eden not too long ago. It didn't draw me in either, but I was busy at the time and haven't picked it up again to give it another chance. I also read David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster not very long ago and I enjoyed it. I'm pretty much willing to give anything a shot. I think I just need to develop a better attention span, haha.
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Sep 10, 2015 02:30
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I think I've said this before, but if you're wanting to break out of the genre ghetto into Real Literature land then take a step to the side and read through some of Elmore Leonard's crime novels. They're some of modern America's best examples of language-for-language's-sake writing while also being super fun and light.
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Sep 10, 2015 02:44
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Tosk posted:On the other hand I want this thread's recommendation for other "introductory" level stuff that I can read, and maybe some ideas for how I can progress from there and start to get progressively deeper into actual literature. Thanks. For what it's worth, I started with short story anthologies. You can quickly find what you enjoy, what you don't, and authors that appeal to you. It's difficult for me to switch between different authors with different voices though, and I need to take a break every so often. I still love reading them, although a lot of them seem to have a similar structure that becomes grating after a while. thehoodie posted:I just finished it this morning too. This book broke me. I don't know what to think of anything or anyone. I really can't resign myself to anything, that this book is over, or anything. The series elides description, both its style and its content, but it was certainly brilliant and livelier and fuller than any book I remember reading. What a sadness to have it be over. I don't know what I should spoiler and what's ok not to, so I'm just going to spoiler everything. For me it's the violence and oppression surrounding the neighborhood. It's how everyone is trying to get ahead but are unable to because everyone else pulls them back, creating that unending cycle of one-upping and jealousy and distrust. It feels like being in a pit trying to escape. But the thing is, everyone accuses everyone else for creating that pit and the more they try to fight to escape the deeper they dig, and because of that, the most amazing of people can never reach their potential or, really, anything. It's just heartbreaking. The reason I love Lila is because she (among others) helped Lena escape from that. She tries to help everyone she loves escape, but every time she tries to it just blows up in her face. The scene that upset me the most was the scene with the fireworks when she watches the transformation of her brother. I don't know how true this is, but it felt like no one knew how to show love or feel loved by anyone else because they never learned how to. It's just constant abuse, violence, jealousy and distrust that squashes everything. The interactions between Lenu and her mother is an example of this - her mother showed love through abuse. I hated most how every time Lina tried to show she loved Lena, Lena was unable to see it, and in the end everyone viewed Lina, including herself, as wicked. I think Ferrantes goal was to show the oppression of patriarchy and she achieved that in spades. Other scenes that got me were when Lenu found the note outside of Franco's door, I literally had to put the book down for a few minutes to brace myself for what was coming. Also, of course at the 2/3 mark of the last book. There are a lot of others but those come to mind immediately. Also, why did Bruno and Nino have a relationship between each other? It seems weird to me Nino associated with Bruno, unless it was purely financial. Also also, why was there so much written about Lena and Nino's relationship? She said she deliberately skipped other parts because it wasn't about her and Lila. Throughout the whole thing I just wanted to throttle them both. But whatever.
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Sep 10, 2015 03:38
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Tosk posted:I saw that Coetzee was recommended as a good introduction to literature in this thread for people who are migrating into the real world from the cozy bubble of genre fiction that has surrounded me for some time. I read Waiting for the Barbarians, deeply enjoyed it. I also saw Mel Mudkiper's post earlier in this thread about how literature should probably differ from other forms of reading in that it should be a transformative experience and I tend to agree. With Marquez I would actually start with short stories or maybe No-one Writes to the Colonel. 100 years might work but it's more experimental, if I recall correctly. Actually Gabi can help you track a good path through different difficulty levels of Literature, beginning with the very straightforward (but still very good) Love in the Time of Cholera and ending with Autumn of the Patriarch which is, well, it certainly is something. It's definitely worth reading a few stories of Borges but don't get hung up if you don't gel with him, a lot of people bounce right off. Galeano is a strange one. I haven't read him that much (mostly flash fiction), but Open Veins or the football books should work great if you have interest in the history/politics of Latin America or, well, football. Of the other Latin American authors I agree with Mel Mudkiper's recs, but you can also check out Maqroll novellas of Mutis and Sabato's 'El túnel'. Also, Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao should be good as a light lit-fic of the autobiographical vein.
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Sep 10, 2015 07:25
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camus and hemingway are amazing as intro to Real Literature imo
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Sep 10, 2015 13:48
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V. Illych L. posted:camus and hemingway are amazing as intro to Real Literature imo What's the point of reading camus
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Sep 10, 2015 16:18
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Smoking Crow posted:What's the point of reading camus
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Sep 10, 2015 17:37
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