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Gaius Marius posted:Like 270 pages in. poster shows signs of DFW brain infection. recommend reducing word count and commas. patient prescribed periods. Dosage: one every 10 - 15 words.
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Feb 1, 2023 17:13
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| # ? May 19, 2024 00:44 |
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Prognosis isn't good, poster shows signs of trying to insert footnotes into their posts; and of misusing punctuation marks for no effect.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:29
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periods are overrated, just ask bernhard
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Feb 1, 2023 19:32
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Speaking of DFW I'm rereading The Pale King and holy poo poo this dude loves the word "carbuncular" and specific keeps using it to describe a character with really bad acne which I am pretty sure nobody on earth has even used it that way
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Feb 1, 2023 19:37
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Guy A. Person posted:Speaking of DFW I'm rereading The Pale King and holy poo poo this dude loves the word "carbuncular" and specific keeps using it to describe a character with really bad acne which I am pretty sure nobody on earth has even used it that way His editor talks about how he would get stuck on certain words and re-use them several times without really being aware of it, because a lot of his construction was of the cut-up method and so he lost track of the Favorite Words constantly. There are at least two or three such cases in Infinite Jest that I can't quite remember at the moment.
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Feb 1, 2023 19:47
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that's no excuse imo
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Feb 1, 2023 19:56
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That happens with a lot of authors, I suppose when you're using more twenty dollar words it stands out more.
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Feb 1, 2023 20:01
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Guy A. Person posted:Speaking of DFW I'm rereading The Pale King and holy poo poo this dude loves the word "carbuncular" and specific keeps using it to describe a character with really bad acne which I am pretty sure nobody on earth has even used it that way I use it that way. Fight me
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Feb 1, 2023 20:10
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I just finished The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. It's the first book I've read by her and I suppose I quite liked it while reading, though I don't know exactly how I feel having finished it. It's basically this old theatre director who retires to a seaside house in a small village, to just sort of write a memoir, keep almost drowning, and obsess in a particular way about food which I found strangely compelling. A succession of his old lovers, friends and associates begin turning up, demonstrating in various ways how callous and self-centred he's been (and still is) in all his relationships. Possessive and paranoid, he then goes extra crazy when he discovers his lost childhood love living in the village, and immediately begins constructing elaborate fantasies around her and how he might The narrator is thoroughly unreliable, but also very introspective and towards the end begins to come to some new conclusions. Can one change oneself? I doubt it. Or if there is any change it must be measured as the millionth part of a millimetre. When the poor ghosts have gone, what remains are ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. One can live quietly and try to do tiny good things and harm no one. I cannot think of any tiny good thing to do at the moment, but perhaps I shall think of one tomorrow. I think I'll definitely try another book by Murdoch soon, after this one has had a bit of time to digest.
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Feb 4, 2023 10:31
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That’s weird, I literally just finished that book too. I enjoyed it a lot while reading it, although I’m not sure what it all added up to. I don’t know if Murdoch knew either? The postscript felt sort of like she was casting about for a way to wrap it up and explain the point. However still a very fun read. Compelling story and lots of main characters. Quite a few crazy coincidences but she mostly made them work. I was hooting when the eleventh-hour tibetan psychic powers plot twist shows up. I would definitely read more Murdoch* *i read An Accidental Man like a decade ago and don’t remember much except one desperately sad bit at the end, and one bit where a character is unexpectedly swooped on by an owl
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Feb 4, 2023 17:54
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Sounds like we had similar experiences, and the postscript certainly felt strange. Charles points it out himself, saying the neat place to ends things would have been at the part about the seals. I sort of agree, though it was useful to see some of Charles after his return to London. The way it did end was fun too, I think. Better hope James was just superstitious after all! Crespolini fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 23:01
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Picked up The Sea, The Sea from the bookshop today. Thanks for posting about it. I also grabbed Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston, and a George Saunders collection.
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Feb 4, 2023 23:49
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Would love to hear what you think of the Zora neale Hurston, I’ve read others by her that I really enjoyed but not that one.
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Feb 6, 2023 12:20
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I've been pretty sick lately, which has reduced my ability to read Infinite Jest considerably. Although it also meant that I got to read Poor Tony withdrawing from Nyquil at the same time I was going through a rough bottle a day. I want to give a shout out to Eschaton though; and the game that shares it's name. Writing about fictional games is almost certainly one of the most difficult tasks to ask of an author, one needs first spend the pages setting up a fake situation and it's parameters and then try and write the action around that scenario. One that the reader probably doesn't fully comprehend in the way the author intended, and will almost certainly have trouble visualizing. Only mystery writers seem to practice this skill as part of their craft. DFW managing to explain his rather off the wall game in understandable and easily visualizable terms is already a win. To make the playing of the game something that is both entertaining, kid solemnly donning the red beanie was legitimately hilarious, and an exploration of the various conflicts and personalities of the tennis teens takes tremendous skill. It's the first time we manage to see Hal, with a large group of people, managing to stay relatively relaxed. When he takes the joint it's an interesting positive move for him, being able to let go and just enjoy himself without worrying about the artifice of hidden vice he's managed to cook up in his head. But you can see quickly the damage the weed does to his psyche almost instantly in how paranoid he becomes afterwords; the focus shifting again and again onto the car in the parking lot, the self questioning of his actions as a result of the dope brain. The weed is a release for the emotional stressors in his life that seem to have no other release, and has allowed him to push much higher on the ladder, but it also causes him intellectual stress that he now needs to find it's own outlet for lest he retreat more and more into the labyrinth of his own paranoid psyche. Pemulis meanwhile is sensational, as in his primary concern is only with the exploration of perception rather than concrete reality. Take the board for example, when loving Ingersoll manages to gently caress up everything by lobbing the ball at a player, Pemulis is not so angry at her being hurt as much as he is about the players being unable to understand the framework that they are operating inside of. In the world of Eschaton there are no players, only nuclear weapons and alliances.; the snow question and attacking the non existent player are full denials against the shared reality the Eschatoons are supposed to be operating in, and his fury at this transgression resembles nothing so much as the anger of a director aimed at the cinema sins style cadres and their infinite capacity for idiocy.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:14
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I think I'd love Infinite Jest more if it had 80% less of the Gately stuff in the latter section of the book. It really starts feeling at a certain point like DFW had no idea how to wind this thing up and just couldn't stop himself from writing endlessly -- which I've heard is more or less the case and there was already a lot that got cut. I enjoyed the Gately stuff beforehand but the last 200 pages or so really start feeling like a rambling mess. I get that length is the point, but I think you could still turn in an 800-pager and have it still feel satisfyingly maximalist. That said, I agree about it having many moments of brilliance. There's sections of that book that are just imprinted on my brain now, and for something as long as it is I feel like I can recall a remarkable amount of it in pretty clear detail. The story where the kid gets his forehead stuck to the window still makes me squirm, there's Hal recounting his father's death, a lot of the earlier stuff with the sober house, all the scenes with Mario. As someone very into avant-garde cinema the experimental film stuff really hit home for me too. But sometimes Wallace can't get out of his own way, and particularly there's a real sexist and racist streak through the book that it's detractors are entirely right about. The descriptions of the Asian bag ladies for example. Like, I forget which character it is but early on there's a female Ennett House member we meet who is described as deeply, deeply suicidal and Wallace just paints this incredibly moving portrait of depression and the waking pain of it, then for some reason just starts going "By the way, she had huuuuuge tits. Like big fuckin' knockers, man!" Maybe it was meant to be a joke to lighten the mood or something but just felt crass and stupid. I read it over the summer of 2020 and I'm glad I did it though. It's worth the effort.
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Feb 10, 2023 19:33
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TrixRabbi posted:Like, I forget which character it is but early on there's a female Ennett House member we meet who is described as deeply, deeply suicidal and Wallace just paints this incredibly moving portrait of depression and the waking pain of it, then for some reason just starts going "By the way, she had huuuuuge tits. Like big fuckin' knockers, man!" Maybe it was meant to be a joke to lighten the mood or something but just felt crass and stupid. That was a character telling the story, one of the other halfway house tenants, I don't remember the name. Anyway it wasn't the narrator voice. The point was to show how crass the guy was after all, despite having just told this moving story about the nature of despair. Also I think he was referring to Kate Gompert, who we had already seen in hospital and I want to say there was something about her doctor checking her out, so it was a call-back of sorts. But yeah I agree there are several moments throughout that needed an editor to sand down the rough edges.
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Feb 10, 2023 19:48
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i’ve started reading this in the original Danish. it’s basically “what if groundhog day was even more existential”. just one chapter into the first volume, but this is deffo better than Present tense machine so far
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Feb 10, 2023 23:52
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I think I got Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra from this thread and HOLY poo poo why I have never heard of him boggles my mind. Apparently he's Mexico's most famous writer but I guess he got swallowed by the Marquezes and Llosas of the Latin American boom. The prose is just achingly wonderful, luxurious and hypnotic. It starts out in 1999 endtimes with the Seine boiling and 90 year old women giving birth in the streets to 16th century Spain and the madness of inbred royalty. It feels so cinematic and slow and wonderful and it is 800 pages of antiquated Spanish words that is taking me a week to read 100 pages but dear lord, I want to devour everything from this man.
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Feb 11, 2023 01:13
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Yeah it's real good OP Also you just gave me the opening to post my favorite afterword quote of all-time, from Milan Kundera: 
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Feb 11, 2023 01:31
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TrixRabbi posted:That said, I agree about it having many moments of brilliance. There's sections of that book that are just imprinted on my brain now, and for something as long as it is I feel like I can recall a remarkable amount of it in pretty clear detail. Been a decade and I can hardly remember a lot of it but the Lenz/Gately arc that culminates in Gately fighting the Quebecois really stuck with me for the plain cinematic fun and menace of it. Wallace definitely gets in his own way and is at his best when he's not trying to be clever. Personally I think he did a lot of his strongest writing in the very dreary mode of Oblivion
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Feb 11, 2023 05:41
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a lot of fuentes' shorter books aren't nearly as interesting as terra nostra, unfortunately. christopher unborn is extremely good though
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Feb 11, 2023 05:43
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mdemone posted:Yeah it's real good OP This reminds me I need to read more Kundera too
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Feb 11, 2023 07:44
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The scene with Hal and Orin talking leading up to the story of him finding his dad's body is absolutely brilliant, both for his work telling the story solely through dialogue and for the simultaneous horror and hilarity of the payoff with a punchline that's simultaneously a big joke and yet loaded with guilt and sadness at the same time. Something smells good!
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Feb 12, 2023 01:36
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ulvir posted:i’ve started reading this in the original Danish. it’s basically “what if groundhog day was even more existential”. just one chapter into the first volume, but this is deffo better than Present tense machine so far halfway through volume 1 now, and this book is really really good. I hope publishers can get their poo poo together and translate it to english soon so I can nag you anglos into reading it if you don't understand danish, there's now a german translation out at least
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Feb 13, 2023 17:03
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Segue posted:I think I got Carlos Fuentes's Terra Nostra from this thread and HOLY poo poo why I have never heard of him boggles my mind. Apparently he's Mexico's most famous writer but I guess he got swallowed by the Marquezes and Llosas of the Latin American boom. You’re reading it in Spanish, then?
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Feb 13, 2023 23:42
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DeimosRising posted:You’re reading it in Spanish, then? Slowly but surely. It's about the only use I get out of a modern languages degree. 150 pages in, I'm less enthralled with the writing of women (it is a 70s novel after all) but when it goes full dreamlike and gently caress the monarchy it is great. Also I understand Emily St. John Mandel is a good stylist but her rise to all the nominations and respect continues to mystify me. I just read Sea of Tranquility for my book club, it's apparently up for the Dublin Literary Award, and it's one of the least imaginative time travel stories I've ever read. The characters are flat, the plotting makes no sense, and time travel is governed by "quantum blockchain". All the book club people love it. I am tired.
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Feb 15, 2023 04:59
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Lmao bLoCkChAiN Way to link yourself to one exact decade in history for the rest of time
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Feb 15, 2023 06:56
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Segue posted:Slowly but surely. It's about the only use I get out of a modern languages degree. You should read the Sea of Fertility instead.
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Feb 15, 2023 09:53
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I truly can't think of a more damning statement than "book club people liked it"
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Feb 15, 2023 14:51
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How embarrassing to discuss books in a book club instead of a dead comedy forum
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Feb 15, 2023 15:43
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My extremely petty beef with Emily St John Mandel is that in Glass Hotel she hosed up what state the Florence federal prison complex is in. Confused why you would try to have “realistic” detail in your novel if you’re not going to finish reading the Google results?
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Feb 15, 2023 18:29
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ulvir posted:halfway through volume 1 now, and this book is really really good. I hope publishers can get their poo poo together and translate it to english soon so I can nag you anglos into reading it I've been meaning to check that out but of course the library copies are reserved as hell
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Feb 15, 2023 19:26
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I suspect it'll be reserved well into the next winter cycle
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Feb 15, 2023 21:00
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I woke up to this goodreads notification a few days ago
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Feb 15, 2023 23:45
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ulvir posted:I suspect it'll be reserved well into the next winter cycle 
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Feb 16, 2023 09:36
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I wished I'd have bought the physical version of Mumbo Jumbo, I can't make out any of the pictures on my Kindle, and I'm starting to think I'm gonna miss things.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:30
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Mumbo jumbo's really good. The pictures are part of the whole experience I'd say, if the ebook's poo poo then that's definitely a shame
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Feb 21, 2023 13:20
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ProperCoochie posted:I woke up to this goodreads notification a few days ago Could've swore there was a line where Fyodor Karamazov says an expression something like "so and so my foot!" (to emphasize disagreement) that made me laugh out loud but couldn't find it.
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Feb 23, 2023 15:33
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discount cathouse posted:is there a good booktuber or podcast for literature out there? I mostly read Real Literature even though its loving hard. I would probably read more often if I read more dumb books. Michal Judge’s early episodes on Pynchon are excellent and I find myself Relistening to them quite often
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Feb 26, 2023 16:52
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I recently got the collected short stories of Nabokov (compiled by his son). I'm only a few stories in, but I am liking them so far. I just read "Wingstroke" the other day, which really took an interesting turn.
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Feb 27, 2023 20:46
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