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Lobster Henry posted:Can we talk about poetry ITT? you may, although i have mostly read the donne love poems that everybody reads there is also a poetry thread i am desperate to keep out of the archives but am just ever so slightly too stupid to keep going https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3851808
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Feb 18, 2022 04:10
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Famethrowa posted:dunno what to say other then my peers through school are all libertarian techbros and I was surprised to see something semi-literary being discussed. shoulda been clued in Was talking to the seven basic plots guy
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Feb 18, 2022 13:10
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I'm reading "no one is talking about this" by patricia lockwood and I dont know where to post about it so I'm doing it here.quote:A conversation with a future grandchild. She lifts her eyes, as blue as willow ware. The tips of her braids twitch with innocence. “So you were all calling each other bitch, and that was funny, and then you were all calling each other binch, and that was even funnier?” quote:In contrast with her generation, which had spent most of its time online learning to code so that it could add crude butterfly animations to the backgrounds of its weblogs, the generation immediately following had spent most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at the idiots who were stupid enough to think they meant it. Except after a while they did mean it, and then somehow at the end of it they were Nazis. Was this always how it happened? quote:At the archaeological museum, they stepped from a room full of airy beaten gold and into the tannic darkness where the bog bodies were. An informational plaque informed them that one particular bog body had had its nipples cut off, since sucking a king’s nipples was a sign of submission in ancient Ireland. A little boy stood weeping before the exhibit, his older brothers in a ring around him, laughing. The bog body’s first finger was raised as if to post. The dark brown nippleless torso twisted and twisted in the dark; it could never be king of anything now, except the little crying boy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Lockwood?wprov=sfla1 ArmedZombie fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 01:15
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I read through Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat. It's incredibly uneven, and I don't think it holds together. But there's a beautiful chapter where one of the characters preaches to his dogs about St. Francis of Assisi while they listen to him in the forest, and the dogs witness a vision of St. Francis.
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Mar 4, 2022 06:27
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ArmZ posted:I'm reading "no one is talking about this" by patricia lockwood and I dont know where to post about it so I'm doing it here. I read this and thought it was really good but also I don't think I'll ever want to revisit it or even think about it again. There's something about this wave of "Online" books (like Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts that ages instantly and that I cringe away from in hindsight. Perhaps because it's describing an embarrassing stage of human social interaction that I'd rather not think about too much. Of course the sentiment behind the book is incredible and between the parts that I cringe away from is some excruciatingly beautiful prose. The latter is timeless but the rest, which anchors it so firmly in the modern day, will not hold up (funny as it may be), and detracts from the overall experience.
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Mar 4, 2022 16:02
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apophenium posted:I read this and thought it was really good but also I don't think I'll ever want to revisit it or even think about it again. There's something about this wave of "Online" books (like Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts that ages instantly and that I cringe away from in hindsight. Perhaps because it's describing an embarrassing stage of human social interaction that I'd rather not think about too much. if i had to write a novel set in the present day i'd make it something like huysman's a rebours, just a completely detached individual retreating into a curated fantasy world and in no way "engaging" with anything
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Mar 4, 2022 16:44
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After getting into Columbo during the summer with my girlfriend who has become obsessed with all things Columbo & Peter Falk, I was watching an older interview with co-creator William Link who said the inspiration for the character came from Crime and Punishment and the cop Petrovic. World's colliding that makes a ton of sense, Dostoyevsky being my favorite author by far. It made me pick up Brothers Karamazov again and also try to get into Demons for the _th time. I'd like to read Karamazov all the way through again because of the long time period over which I first finished it. I know last time I posted about Dostoyevsky there was a translation discussion because the P&V hype machine essentially guaranteed most everyone has their translations for Russian novels. I read their War and Peace translation before learning about the issues but I did see someone say it is better than their Dostoyevsky works. knox fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 17:32
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your girlfriend has good taste, Columbo is the absolute best, I've seen every episode in the original 7 seasons at least 4 times. the inspiration of Porfiry is obvious once you see it, too. Those scenes in C+P between Raskolnikov and Porfiry are like so many scenes in Columbo, except with C+P you are inside the killer's POV instead.
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Mar 4, 2022 17:41
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knox posted:After getting into Columbo during the summer with my girlfriend who has become obsessed with all things Columbo & Peter Falk, I was watching an older interview with co-creator William Link who said the inspiration for the character came from Crime and Punishment and the cop Petrovic. World's colliding that makes a ton of sense, Dostoyevsky being my favorite author by far. It made me pick up Brothers Karamazov again and also try to get into Demons for the _th time. I'd like to read Karamazov all the way through again because of the long time period over which I first finished it. The thread recommended me Magarshack's translation before, so that's what I've got for both C&P and Karamazov.
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Mar 4, 2022 22:07
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Franchescanado posted:The thread recommended me Magarshack's translation before, so that's what I've got for both C&P and Karamazov. My original Karamazov copy that is torn up with no front or back covers is Ignat Avsey's translation which doesn't seem to get much love/isn't well known but based on the comments I've read it is one of the best ones; my Demons copy is Magarshack translation that I also know to be one of the better ones. edit; this collection of Gogol stuff I've been meaning to read is Magarshack as well. knox fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Mar 5, 2022 |
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Mar 5, 2022 01:02
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Started reading the Odyssey finally. Any suggested companions to go with it?
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Mar 5, 2022 11:46
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apophenium posted:I read this and thought it was really good but also I don't think I'll ever want to revisit it or even think about it again. There's something about this wave of "Online" books (like Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts that ages instantly and that I cringe away from in hindsight. Perhaps because it's describing an embarrassing stage of human social interaction that I'd rather not think about too much. yea this is the same way I feel. its hilarious and amazing and incredibly depressing at the same time.
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Mar 6, 2022 01:16
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i got most of her jokes and references and think she captured the feeling of "online" well but yeah, it's like how Jennifer Egan did that powerpoint presentation chapter in welcome to the goon squad
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Mar 7, 2022 01:40
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I am really connecting with Catch 22. Not only for the excellent anti-war themes but also due to how I feel about being the only person I know who still wears a mask everywhere in public and actually cares if I get Covid. I feel like Yossarian in which everybody is trying to kill me while also telling me I’m crazy for thinking they’re trying to kill me and also crazy for caring that they are trying to kill me Anything else good that explores this idea?
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Mar 9, 2022 22:31
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I have decided I wish i'd read slow learner before reading V, at least insofar as cluing me into what pynchon's deal was in the alexandria section
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Mar 10, 2022 15:18
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I read through Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays. It's got a certain perfection, like nothing needs to be added or taken away from it. I also can't help but feel like anyone who talks about the depiction of 'Hollywood nihilism' in stuff like Bojack Horseman needs to read this instead. I've started William Gaddis' JR, and so far the prose strikes me as sloppy and annoying, but I'll see if it improves as I get into it.
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Mar 11, 2022 03:04
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Two months after being BOTM, I happened to be looking at my bookshelf and realized that I had a copy of The Sun Also Rises sitting there which I had never gotten around to reading, having forgotten that I had it in the first place. I'm not too far in, but it did grab me right away. Appropriate that it begins by introducing a former boxer: the language is very "punchy" and blunt. I remember bouncing hard off of A Farewell to Arms back in high school, so I'm glad that my second outing with Hemingway is going better.
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Mar 11, 2022 05:09
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blue squares posted:I am really connecting with Catch 22. Not only for the excellent anti-war themes but also due to how I feel about being the only person I know who still wears a mask everywhere in public and actually cares if I get Covid. I feel like Yossarian in which everybody is trying to kill me while also telling me I’m crazy for thinking they’re trying to kill me and also crazy for caring that they are trying to kill me It's not quite the same, but The Trial by Kafka is the OG bureaucratic mindfuck novel.
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Mar 11, 2022 15:48
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Jrbg posted:I have decided I wish i'd read slow learner before reading V, at least insofar as cluing me into what pynchon's deal was in the alexandria section i love how his reasoning for coming up with that entire thing is that he found an old timey tourist guide to egypt and thought it was cool
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Mar 11, 2022 18:03
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Famethrowa posted:It's not quite the same, but The Trial by Kafka is the OG bureaucratic mindfuck novel. Bartleby the Scrivener, also.
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Mar 11, 2022 18:23
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CestMoi posted:i love how his reasoning for coming up with that entire thing is that he found an old timey tourist guide to egypt and thought it was cool The legend's guide to coming up with ideas for your short stories. I also like how blatantly that story was inspired by john buchan, who's great in a sort of time-capsule way
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Mar 11, 2022 18:31
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https://twitter.com/xanalter/status/1501302685689159684?s=21
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Mar 11, 2022 18:39
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AAAAHHHHHHHHH
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Mar 11, 2022 19:09
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Jrbg posted:I have decided I wish i'd read slow learner before reading V, at least insofar as cluing me into what pynchon's deal was in the alexandria section slow reader really feels like juvenalia, the stories are fun but very rough and don't have as much of a controlled structure like GR does. i like V. because it's a pleasant medium where you get these playful characters but there's more of a connecting thread and recurring elements
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Mar 11, 2022 19:10
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Yh i definitely can appreciate V a lot more having read it
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Mar 11, 2022 19:17
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Shibawanko posted:slow reader really feels like juvenalia, the stories are fun but very rough and don't have as much of a controlled structure like GR does. i like V. because it's a pleasant medium where you get these playful characters but there's more of a connecting thread and recurring elements He more or less says the stories in Slow Learner are juvenalia in the into
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Mar 11, 2022 19:54
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the stories in slow learner aren't fantastic, but the little intros and discussions he has of his process are really cool and you get much more of an understanding of how his huge maximalist novels are constructed, iirc there's a story called entropy where he's like 'yeah i learned about entropy and thought it sounded neat and i wrote this story and then later learned i'd kind of misunderstood entropy', and huge parts of books like gravity's rainbow or against the day seem to come from the same place of devour books on disparate topics and connect them constantly but this time check you've actually understood them. which is probably why we'll never get another big pynchon, he's never going to escape wikipedia
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Mar 11, 2022 20:01
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CestMoi posted:the stories in slow learner aren't fantastic, but the little intros and discussions he has of his process are really cool and you get much more of an understanding of how his huge maximalist novels are constructed, iirc there's a story called entropy where he's like 'yeah i learned about entropy and thought it sounded neat and i wrote this story and then later learned i'd kind of misunderstood entropy', and huge parts of books like gravity's rainbow or against the day seem to come from the same place of devour books on disparate topics and connect them constantly but this time check you've actually understood them. which is probably why we'll never get another big pynchon, he's never going to escape wikipedia there was a bit where he thought the spanish flu was some kind of romantic european thing where people get a psychological malaise, instead of a virus
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Mar 11, 2022 20:20
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hope it’s nothing like the road
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Mar 11, 2022 20:45
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I hope "philosophy...directly on the page" doesn't mean hamfisted like Sunset Limited, with characters named Black and White. I care about other stuff than what McCarthy seemed to want to do, but he's at his best blasting you away into the sublime with weird constructions and obscured meaning.
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Mar 11, 2022 21:04
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ThePopeOfFun posted:I hope "philosophy...directly on the page" doesn't mean hamfisted like Sunset Limited, with characters named Black and White. I care about other stuff than what McCarthy seemed to want to do, but he's at his best blasting you away into the sublime with weird constructions and obscured meaning. Nah he's got the prose to make an autofiction novel come out well
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Mar 11, 2022 21:32
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mdemone posted:Nah he's got the prose to make an autofiction novel come out well Watch him do a horny white prof book.
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Mar 11, 2022 21:34
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ThePopeOfFun posted:Watch him do a horny white prof book. the Professor rode out from the rocky arroyo and onto the blasted white salt pan. it would be two more days of hard riding before he reached the iowa writers workshop.
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Mar 11, 2022 22:06
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Tree Goat posted:the Professor rode out from the rocky arroyo and onto the blasted white salt pan. it would be two more days of hard riding before he reached the iowa writers workshop. lollllllllllllllllll
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Mar 11, 2022 22:31
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I read The Literary Conference by Cesar Aira. I was curious after reading an article about how he writes his novels without any planning or revision, one page at a time. And, well, it shows. He is obviously an intelligent guy, but it's equally obvious that he is just pulling random ideas out of his rear end. The ending in particular feels like he counted how many pages he'd written and said "ehhh gently caress it this'll do."
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Mar 12, 2022 08:26
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So my copy of The Sun Also Rises has a rather major printing/binding error that I ran into earlier today. Chapter 12 gets cut off about halfway through, followed by the last page of chapter 9; chapter 10 and 11 are printed again in their entirety, then chapter 12 comes up again and it proceeds normally from there. Almost as good as the copy of Brave New World I had in high school, which was bound upside-down.
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Mar 13, 2022 06:09
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Meaty Ore posted:So my copy of The Sun Also Rises has a rather major printing/binding error that I ran into earlier today. Chapter 12 gets cut off about halfway through, followed by the last page of chapter 9; chapter 10 and 11 are printed again in their entirety, then chapter 12 comes up again and it proceeds normally from there. Almost as good as the copy of Brave New World I had in high school, which was bound upside-down. I recently read Luster by Raven Leilani, which is pretty hilarious. I'm presently almost done with The Sellout by Paul Beatty which I am not really enjoying. It feels like a very pale imitation of Catch-22's tone and Invisible Man's topic with social science swapped in for Existentialism. It also feels like it's afraid to actually follow through on its attempts at transgression: the setup of the book is that it's about a black man who is on trial for violating the 13th and 14th amendments to the US Constitution - those are the slavery and equal protection amendments, so, that's definitely what we'd call a "high concept" plot. But it turns out it was all done with the best of intentions and so on. Maybe in the last ~50 pages the book will turn itself around but for now I'm not a fan.
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Mar 13, 2022 06:53
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I just finished Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea. It's a book I got through pretty quickly and really enjoyed... but I can see why some people would hate it and can respect that opinion. Like, yes, it is both melodramatic and repetitive, but it's taking the perspective of a self-absorbed monomaniac - I found it really effective at establishing a specific atmosphere, but can understand why someone would find it a chore to actually read. And it is very 70s. Even without the descriptions of brown wallpaper and the like the writing itself would feel very 70s. I don't know how I know this, I was born in 1991, but I do.
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Mar 13, 2022 21:40
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ulvir posted:hope it’s nothing like the road wonder if one of them is The Passenger, he’s been talking about it for years I’d become convinced that The Counselor bombing had caused him to retire from publication entirely
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Mar 14, 2022 11:35
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I've got a "Which Tranlsation?" question. I've been digging into Tolstoy's short stories, and I'd like to read his novels in the near future. I liked Sam Carmack's translation of Alyosha The Pot, but it doesn't look like they translated any of his greater works. I have P&V's translation of Anna Karenina, because that seems like the most common translation around, but I wasn't a fan of their translation for Alyosha. And it seems like P&V and the serviceable Garnett are most common for War & Peace. Are there better translations I should hunt down for both War and Peace, and Anna Karenina? I'm also open to recommendations for which of his novellas are worth reading. I've got Ivan Ilyich already (no idea which translation, since it's at home).
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Mar 14, 2022 16:38
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