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I hate Franzen because his literary opinions are Stupid and Wrong. Don't really care one way or the other about his fiction, except for the fact that I won't be reading it because the author has bad taste.
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Jan 20, 2023 19:33
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i read the corrections i think in like high school or early university and remember enjoying it but not ever thinking it was like a master work of literary genius or anything. definitely have no interest in reading anything else by him at this point
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Jan 20, 2023 19:37
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I wouldn’t necessarily consider Corrections (or any Franzen novel) to be works of genius. Like they’re not as good as Moby Dick or other massive classics. I don’t think he is the best writer (no such person exists), just that he is my personal favorite and I enjoy reading his books above all others. I’ve read many that are “better” but his just work for me in a way that I find supremely enjoyable
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Jan 20, 2023 20:06
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Is Franzen the one who thought he had a shot with Natalie Portman because she complimented one of his books because lol I always think of that scenario and how dumb you'd have to be
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Jan 20, 2023 20:26
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Guy A. Person posted:Is Franzen the one who thought he had a shot with Natalie Portman because she complimented one of his books because lol I always think of that scenario and how dumb you'd have to be I try to avoid learning anything about his life or his nonfiction writing because its always dumb as poo poo lol. He's some kind of fiction savant where he is bad and wrong about everything else However in this case it was the other Jonathan (Safren Foer) quote:According to Daulerio, Foer told his wife, the acclaimed novelist Nicole Krauss, that he was in love with a beautiful, intellectual movie star. He did not check with Portman to find out if she was on the same page but more or less took it as fact that of course they were meant to be. He and Krauss divorced. blue squares fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jan 20, 2023 |
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Jan 20, 2023 20:31
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I haven't read real literature in months 
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Jan 20, 2023 20:33
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I almost agree with his Gaddis Essay in spite of not wanting to, mostly because I also find JR to be a failure. There's a fine line between showing the exhausting overwhelming nature of modernity via exhausting text and just exhausting me with your text, and Gaddis crossed that line.
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Jan 20, 2023 20:34
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I have sympathy for both dumb Jonathans because one is veg*n and the other a birder but probably not enough sympathy to actually read either of them
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Jan 20, 2023 20:45
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I know nothing about Franzen as a person but I really liked The Corrections for its ability to bend the narrative voice just enough for you to get insight into not just how the characters think, but what they misinterpret or ignore. As the different voices start to pile up, you get a great insight into how the blinders of their perspectives and outlooks damage their understanding of one another, which is just really fascinating to me. That kind of sprawling psychological insight is why I loved Anna Karenina and Buddenbrooks.
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Jan 20, 2023 22:13
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Yeah I have to admit I did like the Corrections quite a bit when I read it all those years ago but everything else I've read by Framzen has been insanely droll and boring Signed droll and boring
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Jan 20, 2023 22:46
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I want stuff that is beautiful or weird or both. The Corrections is alright. The prose is fine. The plot has an alright bit of absurdity to it. Franzen strikes me as sort of a GoBot to DeLillo's Transformer.
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Jan 20, 2023 23:45
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Bilirubin posted:its blue squares derp doesn't get to throw shade on anyone, like two years ago he was reading cereal boxes and making impressed sounds at how well written they were
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Jan 21, 2023 04:09
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A human heart posted:derp doesn't get to throw shade on anyone, like two years ago he was reading cereal boxes and making impressed sounds at how well written they were sometimes it's fun to solve a simple puzzle!!!
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Jan 21, 2023 04:12
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Hey that was like six years ago now
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Jan 21, 2023 05:03
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All that said, this discussion has encouraged me to try Ulysses again. I gave up last time because I couldn’t follow the narrative. But if I drop that and just focus on enjoying the beauty of individual sentences and images and moments, perhaps I’d appreciate it
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Jan 21, 2023 19:03
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It gets easier as you go along, especially once Leopold Bloom enters the picture. The narrative falls into place and I think its very funny.
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Jan 21, 2023 19:30
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Reading percival everett, who's pretty good
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Jan 23, 2023 13:30
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im reading Present tense machine in the original Norwegian, it’s about a mum who creates a parallel universe by misreading a swedish word. lol
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Jan 23, 2023 21:42
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mdemone posted:I hate Franzen because his literary opinions are Stupid and Wrong. Don't really care one way or the other about his fiction, except for the fact that I won't be reading it because the author has bad taste. Would you really avoid someone just because their opinions on literature aren't similar to your own? Sometimes the fiercest criticism is the most illuminating regarding authors you might have blinders on for because of your like of them. Take Nabokov's criticism of Dostoevsky, you can dismiss it out of hand as him being aristocratic snob, but it does ring true even for someone who likes Dostoevsky. Nabokov posted:Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked - placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. When, after his return from Siberia, his essential ideas began to ripen - the idea of salvation to be found through transgression, the ethical supremacy of suffering and submission over struggle and resistance, the defense of free will not as a metaphysical but as a moral proposition, and the ultimate formula of egoism-Antichrist-Europe on one side and brotherhood-Christ-Russia on the other - when these ideas (which are all thoroughly examined in countless textbooks) suffused his novels, much of the Western influence still remained, and one is tempted to say that in a way Dostoyevsky, who so hated the West, was the most European of the Russian writers. There isn't a wrong sentence in that statement. Conversely, with Franzen in particular upon rereading his Gaddis Essay, the fact that he seems to have so much difficulty reading books seems like an entirely personal hangup. Reading between the lines, he seems like the type of person who will spend hours doing the most meaningless and tedious tasks in a videogame so they can 100% it rather than just playing the drat thing. blue squares posted:Do you really see characters as nothing more than puppets? Well, they are puppets objectively, and literature just a puppet show by other means, but the fact Characters as a facet ranks so low for me is that you cannot have good characters without good or great prose, a story, and a reason for being. You could take Mr.Dos Equis himself and give him nothing to do, no reason to think, and convey it all poorly and you've created a very boring floating man. I did however put it on the list though, I do love a good character, but I don't find they can exist inside of a vacuum. Finished Steppenwolf by Hesse a couple days ago. I feel two things most strongly about the novel. One is that like with Demian I had read it when I was younger, highschool or thereabouts, and two that I feel very sad for mister Hesse. There's a character in Demian, the one who the MC hangs out with at the church, who falls into despair upon realizing that for all his soul searching and desire to attain a new nature of the divine, that he was simply not the person destined to do so. I'd reckon that Hesse is that man, as well as the Steppenwolf. The fact that the novel ends optimistically but still with failure indicates that he still felt that he had not truly succeeded in his personal salvation, that the brief glimpses of a new world would and could quickly be pulled back and shrouded again in shadow. For the actual novel though, I enjoyed it, there's a certain fun one can gain in watching someone else trying to resolve the conflicting desires inside themselves by externalizing them in the way Hesse does. You could easily criticize the man for being a rather slapdash mix of Eastern philosophy and German thought, Goethe for instance, his Faust tale is exceedingly similar to this tale and Hesse using Eastern Esotericism is congruent with Goethe's delving into the antique thoughts of Greece for inspiration, but the core of the novel is still the delving into a middle aged man who has felt that he has lost his life. That division between the man he wants to be, the man he is, and the man he thinks that he thinks he wants to be. That sort of over educated under socialized persona that retreats into solipsism and condescension defensively. Basically that Xkcd strip that perfectly describes most goons. His method of using esotericism to grapple with his internal world is the interesting thing about the novel not the level of actual grasp he has on the learning he has received. And when the book finally reaches that Magic Theatre at the climax we get long sections of incredible writing. Both thought provoking and just drat fun. The hunting expedition where he and his chum enter a world of outright warfare between the automotive and the pedestrian, resembles nothing in my mind so much as playing GTA when I was a kid and holing upon some building and blasting every car that came close. However his concerns with the mechanization of the world are just as much a concern to one who lived through the great war as they are to the unfortunate modern whom undertaking to acquire a McChicken is forced to come to terms with the kiosk as cashier. The section with him going back to all of his lost loves, and having all the right things to say at just the right moment will surely hit everyone who isn't heartless. The gamemaster shaking up personalities is a very direct but effective way to get across the multiple nature of the human soul. The wolf taming show is a bit much, but I'm sure if I was confronted by such a direct representation of the competition of wills inside myself I would probably also be shook. Of course all the ending is "heavily" inspired by the classic PC game Harvester, c'mon Hesse change Lodge to Theatre and you think we wouldn't notice, but we shouldn't hold that too much against the man given the different direction he takes with the ending.
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Jan 24, 2023 03:31
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ulvir posted:im reading Present tense machine in the original Norwegian, it’s about a mum who creates a parallel universe by misreading a swedish word. lol explain the joke in ruinous detail, please
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Jan 25, 2023 03:49
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it’s not a joke, that’s what the book is about. I just find that premise worthy of a chuckle. book’s okay tho
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Jan 25, 2023 06:35
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Who was it asking for Miquel de Palol in ENglish? Cest? Well, here you go anyway, along with a bunch of other presumably good to great stuff https://twitter.com/willevans/status/1618282555127795712 (also Dalkey Archive is good again, Deep Vellum and Open Letter people are in charge there now)
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Jan 25, 2023 20:04
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ulvir posted:it’s not a joke, that’s what the book is about. I just find that premise worthy of a chuckle. book’s okay tho No I mean what is the word and how does she misread it
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Jan 26, 2023 01:07
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DeimosRising posted:No I mean what is the word and how does she misread it according to the internet: trädgård (orchard or garden) which she reads as tärdgård (which isnt a word, but can sort of be taken to be a misspelling of something like "corroded farm" or "wasted yard" tho idk if thats what she thinks it means in the book)
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Jan 26, 2023 07:36
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oh yeah, sorry. yeah, Carthag summed it up nicely
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Jan 26, 2023 08:26
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Carthag Tuek posted:according to the internet: trädgård (orchard or garden) which she reads as tärdgård (which isnt a word, but can sort of be taken to be a misspelling of something like "corroded farm" or "wasted yard" tho idk if thats what she thinks it means in the book) Oh, it’s actually a common mistake, reading tard instead of trad, I do it all the time
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Jan 26, 2023 08:27
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We'll I've now bounced hard off Ada or Ardor twice, which is odd since I've loved all the other Nabokov I've read. I just think the length and the meandering ornate indulgence can't grab me without the hooks of Lolita or Pale Fire or the quiet intimacy of Pnin. Ah well. Maybe when I'm older and in a different headspace. I will say whoever recommended HhHH is great, since I just started it. A lovely mingling of memoir and history and fascists getting hosed up. Now I just need to find a similar one to cover Carrero Blanco's delightful assassination.
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Jan 26, 2023 19:13
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Segue posted:
That was me. I’m glad you’re enjoying it! It’s such a fascinating work that’s equally suspenseful as it is unique in form
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Jan 26, 2023 19:18
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finished the book. the premise was a lot more interesting than the novel itself. at one point towards the end both main characters (mother and daughter that ends up in different timelines) are supposed to play at the same time at a Satie concert. I wish it did more out of that. it was 90% ennui in an otherwise seemingly happy family kind of novel. oh well
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Jan 29, 2023 20:23
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curious if anyone ITT who has read The Book of Disquiet did not enjoy it? seems like one that always gets praise. that might be my next. I only vaguely know about it as a collection of introspective journal entries that I can kind of vibe through
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Jan 29, 2023 20:49
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book of disquiet is pretty great, you should give it a go. each chapter/fragment is like a prose poem, so its pretty easy to find suitable places to stop for a bit
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Jan 29, 2023 21:19
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ulvir posted:finished the book. the premise was a lot more interesting than the novel itself. at one point towards the end both main characters (mother and daughter that ends up in different timelines) are supposed to play at the same time at a Satie concert. I wish it did more out of that. it was 90% ennui in an otherwise seemingly happy family kind of novel. oh well well that's a shame. Might still check it out though
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Jan 30, 2023 01:20
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:curious if anyone ITT who has read The Book of Disquiet did not enjoy it? seems like one that always gets praise. that might be my next. I only vaguely know about it as a collection of introspective journal entries that I can kind of vibe through are you asking this in this way because you're looking for someone to talk you out of reading it?
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Jan 30, 2023 17:02
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Oh, it’s actually a common mistake, reading tard instead of trad, I do it all the time Lol Carthag Tuek posted:according to the internet: trädgård (orchard or garden) which she reads as tärdgård (which isnt a word, but can sort of be taken to be a misspelling of something like "corroded farm" or "wasted yard" tho idk if thats what she thinks it means in the book) Thanks
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Jan 30, 2023 17:09
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I had trouble with The Book of Silence because a lot of the melancholy hit a little too close to home for me at that time in my life. I should give it another shot
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Jan 30, 2023 17:23
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Never got the hype with it, but I don't like audiobooks
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Jan 30, 2023 18:33
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I'm getting the feeling that Hal ate some of his father after his suicide.
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Jan 31, 2023 21:27
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Gaius Marius posted:I'm getting the feeling that Hal ate some of his father after his suicide. No damnit, read the loving footnotes Wait where are you in the text mdemone fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jan 31, 2023 |
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Jan 31, 2023 21:43
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Like 270 pages in. The opening in the admissions office resembles the Therapist appointment that Hal visits following the suicide, including his focus on the hands of the interviewer. He ends the section blaming his Spasms on what he ate, then leads unto the mold story, but perhaps given his noted hunger entering the house it is instead the resemblance of the admissions to the therapists that are bringing up all the memories of his father, and his inability to deliver the goods so to speak. Adding to that, we see that the conversation gets brought up in relation to Orin talking about the Quebecois hounding him for info on his father in AZ, which is also where Hal ends up in that interview and where His dad was born and his grandfather destroyed his knees trying to become a Tennis champ. There's a whole lot of returning to the original spot of the original sins of the father all packed up into that chapter, and if the Main Plot if you can call it that is about Fathers failing their sons, and trying to come to terms with that, while the Sons are forced to grapple with their father's desires to to live their lives through their sons. It's likely that the Video Hal's dad made with Mme. Psychosis was made for Hal, as a sort of apology for what the man did to him in the small amount of lucidity afforded to him on account of his sobriety, maybe the same way that DFW writing the novel is a way to express his thoughts in ways that essays and pure dialogue could not, Hal's dad was an artist and could only express himself to his son with his art. And then at the admissions office Hal is physically incapable of expressing himself to his audience as the chain of Fatherly sin has robbed him of his ability. I lost my train of thought, but he probably ate him
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Feb 1, 2023 03:29
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You were doing fine in the first half of that, but you went off the rails. Consider who would have been the only person in Phoenix to know a Saudi Arabian maxillofacial surgeon who was connected to the U.S. government. Read footnote 57, as a metaphor for the novel's structure itself. Keep going, you're doing fine Orin's interview in footnote 230-something. Hal's toothache, his toothbrush.
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Feb 1, 2023 03:47
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