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mdemone posted:I always crash out of the book soon after the chapter on Wyatt and his ape, somehow that first section is so intense that I lose momentum when Gaddis pulls back on the apocalyptic tone for a bit. I had the same problem. I bought the book three or four years ago but didn't read it straight through until last Christmas despite several attempts. It takes a long, long time for any sense of urgency to build up again after the narrative jumps forward a couple decades and switches from a mad American preacher dragging his congregation into pagan ritual to, like, Metropolitan. Eugene V. Dubstep fucked around with this message at 14:49 on May 12, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 14:45
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Mr. Squishy posted:Excited to see which one you think doesn't count. His last one was published posthumously. Who's to say what it should have been? mdemone posted:I always crash out of the book soon after the chapter on Wyatt and his ape, somehow that first section is so intense that I lose momentum when Gaddis pulls back on the apocalyptic tone for a bit. I recommend pushing on, though I can't say the apocalyptic tone ever really stops...I mean, we do live in apocalyptic times don't we? Though JR is certainly the novel where all that apocalyptic stuff gets submerged into the form and so seems less blazingly, perhaps clumsily, thrown in there. From there Gaddis becomes increasingly Southern Gothic, which is cool to see when you consider what comes before it. It's a lot like watching future Faulkner re-arrive at his own style. Edit : an exceptional passage that displays his uncanny ability to find poetry in between the character drama quote:In that undawned light the solid granite benches were commensurably sized and wrought to appear as the unburied caskets of children. Behind them the trees stood leafless, waiting for life, but as yet coldly exposed in their differences, waiting formally arranged, like the moment of silence when one enters a party of people abruptly turned, holding their glasses at attention, a party of people all the wrong size. There, balanced upon pedestals, thrusting their own weight against the weight of time never yielded to nor beaten off but absorbed in the chipped vacancies, the weathering, the negligent unbending of white stone, waited figures of the unlaid past. The image of a forest as a "party of people all the wrong size" will probably remain one of my favourite moments in literature. Gaddis's descriptions just never feel like they were put in there to move anything along. In a sense they become themselves the main character in Recognitions since u get the strong suspicion that they're the work of the painter who loses his name in the first part. He's good, guys. Like really good. almost there fucked around with this message at 15:32 on May 12, 2019 |
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May 12, 2019 14:55
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To be clear, you are writing off Agapé Agape?
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May 12, 2019 17:24
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I’ve had a tonne of stuff to take care of this last year, so my pile of books have just constantly risen. super excited to get back into regular reading after next week. really wanna finish Swann’s Way and then dive into either War & War or Melancholy of Resistance
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May 12, 2019 17:25
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that said I’ve got a hold of vol. 2 through 5 of ISOLT so my Proust days are by no means over
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May 12, 2019 17:27
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I thought Agape Agape was fully finished before Gaddis died so it seems weird to just pretend its not his book or whatever
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May 13, 2019 00:43
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I'm tearing thru My Struggle Book 2 and Capital Vol 2 right now, as well as Invisible Cities and Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas on my kindle. I want to start Swann's Way but I feel like I should atleast finish the Neapolitan novels first before starting another series.
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May 13, 2019 00:49
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Childhood by Gerard Reve. Pretty good, I hope more gets translated
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May 13, 2019 01:47
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Mel Mudkiper posted:So I've been reading a lot of mythology and folklore recently and I always wondered why Egyptian mythology wasn't as well known as Greek and Norse. A month later but any books you can recommend or found particularly interesting? Principally interested in more obscure ones, non-greek, non-norse, but those are fine too.
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May 14, 2019 11:59
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Kefahuchi_son!!! posted:A month later but any books you can recommend or found particularly interesting? Principally interested in more obscure ones, non-greek, non-norse, but those are fine too. I've just been doing a lot of public domain poo poo, lemme find a list
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May 14, 2019 13:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:So I've been reading a lot of mythology and folklore recently and I always wondered why Egyptian mythology wasn't as well known as Greek and Norse. Kefahuchi_son!!! posted:A month later but any books you can recommend or found particularly interesting? Principally interested in more obscure ones, non-greek, non-norse, but those are fine too. Mel Mudkiper posted:I've just been doing a lot of public domain poo poo, lemme find a list Oh I should've responded to this earlier sorry I missed it before The big reason for the disparity is, yeah, basically the Roman and Greek gods were "standardized" in Peak Antiquity via things like Ovid's Metamorphoses, Homer, Virgil, etc., kinda the same way Milton took about 1500 years of christian esoterica and unified and standardized it all in Paradise Lost. The egyptian stuff never went through the same kind of literary standardization AND you're dealing with a much much longer timeframe within which the various mythological narratives changed and developed over time; over 5,000 years there's time for even gods to grow old, have kids, etc. Plus there's the whole Akhenaten thing. If you want a one-stop for celtic mythology in the public domain it's hard to do better than Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/gafm/index.htm http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/authors/classic/Yeats_WB/prose/Lady_Gregory/AG_Myth2.htm Also don't forget the Kalevala: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/index.htm One favorite sub-genre of mine is "authors taking mythology and rewriting it as historical fiction"; if that's something that you might be interested in, look at Mary Renault's The King Must Die (Theseus as historical fiction) or Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:27 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 18:16
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to the light house was so flipping good. I'm glad I read it as I was sort of Meh about Orlando, the only other Woolf i've read. Wow wow wow just so good every page, every word. Is this her peak? are the others this amazing? I'm currently reading my first sci fi in a couple years, and after reading all this 'literature' it's weird how... mechanical, it seems. Like, i can see the choices he's making in the story and their reasons, as if i'm watching the internal workings of a ticking watch. It's still entertaining, and impressive even, but more in the way that watching the assembly lines on 'how it's made' is entertaining: "wow, i never knew that, and that's cool that you did that. neat"
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May 14, 2019 20:54
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derp posted:to the light house was so flipping good. I'm glad I read it as I was sort of Meh about Orlando, the only other Woolf i've read. Wow wow wow just so good every page, every word. Is this her peak? are the others this amazing? https://twitter.com/LRBbookshop/status/1127933141790883840
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May 14, 2019 20:57
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in a bizarre twist i have, literally the same week i read to the lighthouse, discovered and fallen for Maille dijon mustard (i'm not joking)
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May 14, 2019 21:53
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derp posted:
You're welcome.
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May 14, 2019 21:57
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derp posted:to the light house was so flipping good...Wow wow wow just so good every page, every word. Is this her peak? are the others this amazing? 
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May 14, 2019 23:19
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The big reason for the disparity is, yeah, basically the Roman and Greek gods were "standardized" in Peak Antiquity via things like Ovid's Metamorphoses, Homer, Virgil, etc., kinda the same way Milton took about 1500 years of christian esoterica and unified and standardized it all in Paradise Lost. That is a pretty long peak my dude. You're right that the popular understanding of Greco-Roman mythology is derived from a set of Latin works, augmented by Greek after the Renaissance. Much of this has to do with how knowledge of Latin and Roman literature was preserved and transmitted (i.e. by and through the Church, sometimes to laity) and then embedded in vernacular literatures as various authors drew inspiration from or strove to rewrite the material.
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May 15, 2019 06:28
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Boatswain posted:That is a pretty long peak my dude. Yeah that's what happens when I'm trying to think of ways to type "name of era for latin classics, oh wait, also Homer" on my phone, sorry 
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May 15, 2019 12:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah that's what happens when I'm trying to think of ways to type "name of era for latin classics, oh wait, also Homer" on my phone, sorry
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May 15, 2019 12:59
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derp posted:to the light house was so flipping good. I'm glad I read it as I was sort of Meh about Orlando, the only other Woolf i've read. Wow wow wow just so good every page, every word. Is this her peak? are the others this amazing? Mrs Dalloway is pretty great as well. It's more pointed, or the author's message is more directed and astute. To The Lighthouse very much feels like an author happy with their craft willing to let their (multifaceted) meaning rest with the reader, and ultimately come from the reader's thoughts and conclusion. Mrs Dalloway feels like the author is thinking of justifying the book as they write. To The Lighthouse is a novel where the justification is implicit in the story which to me is where an author has more confidence in themselves, an arrogant stance in general, but justified for Woolf.
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May 15, 2019 13:32
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bought a copy of Modern Arabic Poetry: an anthology today and it’s full of good poo poo 
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May 15, 2019 16:43
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ulvir posted:bought a copy of Modern Arabic Poetry: an anthology today and it’s full of good poo poo Not modern but I've been reading Anthology of Islamic Literature edited by James Kritzeck. It's an old book I picked up at a used book store, published in 1964, so the translations aren't always the most modern but it's been pretty good so far.
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May 16, 2019 09:51
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ulvir posted:bought a copy of Modern Arabic Poetry: an anthology today and it’s full of good poo poo stereobreadsticks posted:Not modern but I've been reading Anthology of Islamic Literature edited by James Kritzeck. It's an old book I picked up at a used book store, published in 1964, so the translations aren't always the most modern but it's been pretty good so far. The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic LIterature is also good with lots of commentary
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May 16, 2019 11:12
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Because of my friend's recommendation, I've been reading some of Roberto Bolano's short stories that are currently available for free on the internet. Anyone here familiar with his works? I've been enjoying them so far. Can't wait for my copy of 2666 and Savage Detectives to arrive.
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May 16, 2019 19:57
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CelestialCookie posted:Because of my friend's recommendation, I've been reading some of Roberto Bolano's short stories that are currently available for free on the internet. Anyone here familiar with his works? I've been enjoying them so far. Can't wait for my copy of 2666 and Savage Detectives to arrive. Both are really good. Savage Detectives is more enjoyable if you're somewhat familiar with literature in spanish. 2666 has a broader scope
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May 16, 2019 23:41
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i found some good ones: 
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May 17, 2019 04:47
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Somebody just finished their Nabokov thesis.
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May 17, 2019 08:52
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Thank you both!!
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May 17, 2019 10:39
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Effectronica posted:Sun and Steel, Yukio Mishima Almost all of these books are written by old white people or facists (Yukio Mishima) It's like people want to have fun while reading a book or something. Wow, imagine that.
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May 19, 2019 04:29
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You sure showed him.
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May 19, 2019 05:28
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I like the idea that you can't have fun reading At Swim Two Birds since its by a white guy.
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May 19, 2019 05:49
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TheNamedSavior posted:Almost all of these books are written by old white people or facists (Yukio Mishima) who loving cares nerd
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May 19, 2019 06:18
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goddamn did i just reply to a guy replying to a post from 2014
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May 19, 2019 06:21
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I think they blew in here from what did you just finish where a regular here tut tutted. e: about the literary merits or otherwise of john langham, whoever that may be. Mr. Squishy fucked around with this message at 07:01 on May 19, 2019 |
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May 19, 2019 06:58
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If you don't like Mishima you're insane
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May 19, 2019 07:10
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Shi Naian was very forward thinking in subscribing to fascism too.
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May 19, 2019 07:26
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A human heart posted:I like the idea that you can't have fun reading At Swim Two Birds since its by a white guy. not to mention the incredibly dour and depressing foucault's pendulum
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May 19, 2019 08:32
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the problem with people's recommendations in this thread isn't the overabundance of old white men it's the recommending of younger contemporary american white men who are universally stupid and bad at writing
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May 19, 2019 08:35
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CestMoi posted:the problem with people's recommendations in this thread isn't the overabundance of old white men it's the recommending of younger contemporary american white men who are universally stupid and bad at writing
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May 19, 2019 18:35
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Shibawanko posted:If you don't like Mishima you're insane
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