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Slackerish posted:Thanks for all the recommendations! My next and hopefully last request is for noirs that have a kind of "horror" edge to them (think True Detective season one, but like, also better) Speaking of this, I recently got Nic Pizzolatto's (TD creator) short story collection and I haven't read past the first story because it was extremely dumb: http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/302804/ I do know TD season 1 was heavily inspired by Thomas Ligotti so maybe try some of his?
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Jan 13, 2017 04:14
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please dont talk about genre fiction in literally the only thread on this subforum not dedicated to genre fiction
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Jan 13, 2017 05:03
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chernobyl kinsman posted:please dont talk about genre fiction in literally the only thread on this subforum not dedicated to genre fiction
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Jan 13, 2017 05:42
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i was under the impression that the pizzolatto short stories were supposed to be "lit fic" when i got them but i was wrong so i meant that post more as a warning than anything
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Jan 13, 2017 06:20
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A human heart posted:iirc it's basically totally rewritten so that the constraint works in English instead Bandiet posted:Pretty sure there's only the one translation. It's not too monumentally different either. In the name of God, why would anyone take it upon themselves to translate a novel-length lipogram? The level of masochism that would require simply boggles the mind. 
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Jan 13, 2017 06:27
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mdemone posted:In the name of God, why would anyone take it upon themselves to translate a novel-length lipogram? The level of masochism that would require simply boggles the mind. Because it's really cool to do that
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Jan 13, 2017 06:46
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A human heart posted:Because it's really cool to do that
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Jan 13, 2017 08:19
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Let me be honest about something, though: I don't like generation-spanning fiction. Pick the generation that is interesting and focus in, don't give me 400 pages of background about the people who won't be involved in whatever climax you've cooked up. If someone isn't even alive during your story's climax, then why do you think it's a good idea to tell me about them?
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Jan 13, 2017 10:02
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Safety Biscuits posted:What about The Sound of Waves? [In Beavis' voice] Oh yeah....
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Jan 13, 2017 10:19
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Slow Learner has a story where a married old guy leaves his wife to go hang out in a dump where a little gypsy girl comes to him at night to take him into a secret garbage tunnel network (built by a revolutionary group called The Sons of the Red Apocalypse, which I thought was a good name to use for a real group) to an underground sex chamber.
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Jan 13, 2017 10:23
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Burning Rain posted:Let me be honest about something, though: I don't like generation-spanning fiction. Pick the generation that is interesting and focus in, don't give me 400 pages of background about the people who won't be involved in whatever climax you've cooked up. If someone isn't even alive during your story's climax, then why do you think it's a good idea to tell me about them?
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Jan 13, 2017 13:09
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Burning Rain posted:Let me be honest about something, though: I don't like generation-spanning fiction. Pick the generation that is interesting and focus in, don't give me 400 pages of background about the people who won't be involved in whatever climax you've cooked up. If someone isn't even alive during your story's climax, then why do you think it's a good idea to tell me about them? I tend to agree with this, with notable exceptions like 100 years of solitude. That said, that sort of stuff can be interesting for non-literary reasons. Marek Halter's Book of Abraham is a good example. It's not particularly well written (at least in translation), but it does have a lot of merit in showcasing how much it has sucked to be a jew throughout history. military cervix fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 13:22
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Burning Rain posted:Let me be honest about something, though: I don't like generation-spanning fiction. Pick the generation that is interesting and focus in, don't give me 400 pages of background about the people who won't be involved in whatever climax you've cooked up. If someone isn't even alive during your story's climax, then why do you think it's a good idea to tell me about them? Can you give me an example of this that you disliked? I've liked the few books that I've read that fit this description, but the idea was that each generation/group was falling into the same cycles and adding to the themes represented. And if they're a good character, why would I care?
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Jan 13, 2017 15:32
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it's from goodreads, guys, from the reviews of Little, Big, which I'm not planning to read.
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Jan 13, 2017 16:08
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I liked Roots
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Jan 13, 2017 17:10
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Little? Big? pick one!
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Jan 13, 2017 19:35
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What do you guys think about Blake Butler? I've read There Is No Year and Scorch Atlas and now I'm in the middle of 3,000,000. I think he's doing things that no one is doing in terms of language but I can also see how he can be dismissed as being just a gimmick.
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Jan 14, 2017 00:42
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Just read The Name of the Rose, and any book where one monk calls out another for "breaking wind through the mouth" seems pretty great to me
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Jan 14, 2017 01:16
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elpaganoescapa posted:What do you guys think about Blake Butler? I've read There Is No Year and Scorch Atlas and now I'm in the middle of 3,000,000. I think he's doing things that no one is doing in terms of language but I can also see how he can be dismissed as being just a gimmick. I wanted to love 300,000,000, I needed to love 300,000,000, but I very much did not. I do appreciate what he is doing with language, which is the reason I persevered through finishing it -- there were enough "ah, there you go" moments of prose to make it worthwhile -- but I just can't bring myself to say I liked it. Which is sad because it should have been right up my alley. Maybe I'll try another of his, which would you recommend?
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Jan 14, 2017 06:18
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david crosby posted:It was wild to read from the perspective of a gay dude who hates women more than anything else on Earth, yeah. I can't remember anything else about the book though, except that I hated it. I read like 9 or 10 of his books in a year after watching the Paul Schrader movie, and Forbidden Colors was the worst. Read Sailor Who Fell From Grace and I'm reading Golden Pavilion right now. (I got the volume with both and Confessions of a Mask) Are each of the Sea of Fertility books about that length or is it a big time commitment? Definitely sounds like the next thing I should read by him but I've got a lot of other books to get through first.
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Jan 14, 2017 22:20
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DisDisDis posted:Read Sailor Who Fell From Grace and I'm reading Golden Pavilion right now. (I got the volume with both and Confessions of a Mask) Are each of the Sea of Fertility books about that length or is it a big time commitment? Definitely sounds like the next thing I should read by him but I've got a lot of other books to get through first. Spring Snow (the first one) can be read by itself. The last book in the series is the best though so you should really continue to read after that just to get the cool final book.
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Jan 14, 2017 22:39
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DisDisDis posted:Read Sailor Who Fell From Grace and I'm reading Golden Pavilion right now. (I got the volume with both and Confessions of a Mask) Are each of the Sea of Fertility books about that length or is it a big time commitment? Definitely sounds like the next thing I should read by him but I've got a lot of other books to get through first. They're all like 3 hundo pages or so. pretty doable.
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Jan 15, 2017 01:55
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What is the best Kafka translation? I have read none of him but I would like to.
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Jan 15, 2017 02:32
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Heath posted:What is the best Kafka translation? I have read none of him but I would like to. Have you considered learning the easy and beautiful German language?
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Jan 15, 2017 03:08
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I have enough of English left unlearned and I've never known anything else.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:20
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Kafka transcends language because he wrote in the ageless tongue of paranoid schizophrenia
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Jan 15, 2017 03:24
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Heath posted:What is the best Kafka translation? I have read none of him but I would like to. For most of his short stories, which I think you should start with, the Muir translations are the only real option. They're decent, but never really preferable. Their translation of The Trial is good as revised by E.M. Butler. I personally love Mark Harman's translations of Amerika and especially The Castle.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:32
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Bandiet posted:For most of his short stories, which I think you should start with, the Muir translations are the only real option. They're decent, but never really preferable. Their translation of The Trial is good as revised by E.M. Butler. I personally love Mark Harman's translations of Amerika and especially The Castle. Thank you, I found a Muir copy of his short stories and I'm going to start there. I flipped through a few different translations of The Metamorphosis and found the first lines translated alternately as "insect" or "vermin" and somehow that seemed to very much change the tone to me.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:41
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:Kafka transcends language because he wrote in the ageless tongue of paranoid schizophrenia Actually Kafka was at most a few degrees from sane.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:50
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Boatswain posted:Actually Kafka was at most a few degrees from sane.
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Jan 15, 2017 03:54
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DisDisDis posted:Read Sailor Who Fell From Grace and I'm reading Golden Pavilion right now. (I got the volume with both and Confessions of a Mask) Are each of the Sea of Fertility books about that length or is it a big time commitment? Definitely sounds like the next thing I should read by him but I've got a lot of other books to get through first. My copies are in order, 389, 421, 330, and 236 pages, so overall a pretty big investment but individually they're not too bad. also like someone said above Spring Snow can be read by itself, but they're all really good, especially the first and last books.
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Jan 15, 2017 06:50
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mdemone posted:I wanted to love 300,000,000, I needed to love 300,000,000, but I very much did not. I think There Is No Year is probably his best, you should give that a shot.
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Jan 15, 2017 07:04
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The German in the metamorphosis is easy.
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Jan 15, 2017 14:42
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After Blake Butler, check out Sam Pink (The No Hellos Diet and Person) then Brian Alan Ellis (The Mustache He's Always Wanted...) then Scott McClanahan (Anything its all 5 stars) and then Troy James Weaver (Marigold or Wichita Stories)
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Jan 15, 2017 15:30
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elpaganoescapa posted:What do you guys think about Blake Butler? I've read There Is No Year and Scorch Atlas and now I'm in the middle of 3,000,000. I think he's doing things that no one is doing in terms of language but I can also see how he can be dismissed as being just a gimmick. I'm always interested in this sort of thing. What is it that he's doing, exactly?
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Jan 15, 2017 17:18
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Solitair posted:I'm always interested in this sort of thing. What is it that he's doing, exactly? Lot of florid imagery, lot of burnt tongue. He's probably one of my favorite writers despite not really writing anything very good on the whole since Scorch Atlas - Three Hundred Million starts off well but disappears up its own butt halfway through, and There Is No Year is flashes of coherence in a sea of vague bad-feeling. He does do things you wouldn't see from most other writers, though. Three Hundred Million starts as an epistolary horror/crime novel but I'm pretty sure it's eventually about a man achieving enlightenment by sublimating humanity's collective Thanatos impulse. e: if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can get a decent taste of his style in the short story "We Witnessed the Advent of a New Apocalypse During an Episode of Friends" in this collection. Most of the other stories in there are kind of a mess, though. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jan 15, 2017 |
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Jan 15, 2017 17:37
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Solitair posted:I'm always interested in this sort of thing. What is it that he's doing, exactly? It's difficult to describe exactly but I'd say he uses words like an abstract painter uses paint. He uses layers and layers of apparently disconnected words to get an atmosphere or feeling going. I feel like I'm doing a disservice by describing what he does like that because it sounds incredibly pretentious, but it's really unique writing, he's one of my favorite young writers.
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Jan 15, 2017 17:51
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Person by Sam Pink is good
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Jan 15, 2017 18:06
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Oxxidation posted:Lot of florid imagery, lot of burnt tongue. He's probably one of my favorite writers despite not really writing anything very good on the whole since Scorch Atlas - Three Hundred Million starts off well but disappears up its own butt halfway through, and There Is No Year is flashes of coherence in a sea of vague bad-feeling. Oh, I've got that Bizarro Fiction collection on my list already. If I wanted to see Butler at his best without any other author weighing him down, should I just get Scorch Atlas, then?
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Jan 15, 2017 18:28
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Solitair posted:Oh, I've got that Bizarro Fiction collection on my list already. If I wanted to see Butler at his best without any other author weighing him down, should I just get Scorch Atlas, then? I'd say so. They're all short stories so he doesn't have as much time to completely vanish into abstraction like he does with his novels.
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Jan 15, 2017 18:32
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