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Burgin and O'Connor is the one I read and I quite liked that
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Jul 30, 2023 17:51
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Same
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Jul 30, 2023 18:41
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Score, sounds like I got lucky.
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Jul 30, 2023 18:50
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Burning Rain posted:I enjoyed the Employees more than I expected halfway through. I liked how the initial SCP-like atmosphere takes a turn for melancholy. Reminded me of the new Ishiguro a bit, but Ravn's book is better (although not as good as Never Let Me Go, which touches on similar themes) yeah melancholy is right, also i see the ishiguro comparison!
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Jul 31, 2023 08:39
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About done with Ferrante’s 2nd of the Neapolitan novels. So drat good.
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Aug 1, 2023 23:06
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ThePopeOfFun posted:About done with Ferrante’s 2nd of the Neapolitan novels. So drat good. agreed. easy reads that feel fresh with no contrivances. I always see these for cheap at used book stores, next time I'm grabbing #3 and #4
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Aug 2, 2023 16:05
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Is Auster real literature?
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Aug 2, 2023 16:20
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Paul Auster? No, dude is a hack. One of those dude with "big ideas" with no ability to write about the in a way that is entertaining or interesting.
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Aug 2, 2023 16:41
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Gaius Marius posted:Paul Auster? No, dude is a hack. One of those dude with "big ideas" with no ability to write about the in a way that is entertaining or interesting. Yeah that was my feeling with the "New York Trilogy". I didn't hate it or anything (well, at times I did). e: After finishing I thought "well, now I know why I got the book for free".
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Aug 2, 2023 16:42
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paul auster is fine
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Aug 2, 2023 17:42
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i really liked the new york trilogy, but i read it before i'd read any really good books, so who knows
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Aug 2, 2023 17:59
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i also liked the new york trilogy when i last read it in like 2007 (?), and then found timbuktu kind of maudlin and middling i enjoyed the trilogy (esp. city of glass) because i was reading a bunch of detective stories for "work" and metatextual stuff for not-work and it engaged with those things in a way i found fun and interesting
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Aug 2, 2023 19:45
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City of glass rules but I read it pretty young so that’s probably not an objective take or whatever. I also remember leviathan being fun. Nothing else from the auster oeuvre really stands out.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:48
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Started reading bruno schulz, 'nocturnal apparitions'. Good short stories
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Aug 3, 2023 11:04
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What do people think of Conrad? I just reread Lord Jim and read Victory for the first time. I don’t begrudge anybody who wants to throw him on the dustbin of history for being an appallingly racist shithead, but if you do feel able to set that aside, these books are both fascinating character studies, exquisitely told and structured. Lord Jim especially. It’s like a solid Victorian novel is cracking open and all this darkness and weirdness and uncertainty is starting to seep out and corrupt everything. I remember that nostromo is also a truly incredible book… with a crummy ending. E: also they’re cool adventure stories with outlaws, intrigue and murder Lobster Henry fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 12:50
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i feel like conrad is surprisingly not racist, to me, particularly in lord jim, he's clearly trying to overcome those sorts of boundaries in his thought far more so than his contemporaries. anyway, i kind of like lord jim even though i feel it takes forever to get going, and i find it very funny that the complexity of jim as a person, his way of thinking, his drives is just being told to you by some guy who's mostly guessing. it's a funny way to do a character study. i thought the secret agent was cool too, though i would've preferred a more orthodox marxist critique of anarchism.
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Aug 3, 2023 14:21
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CestMoi posted:it takes forever to get going This was my experience with Nostromo. I think old-timey writers simply didn't know how to start a novel.
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Aug 3, 2023 14:27
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CestMoi posted:i feel like conrad is surprisingly not racist, to me, particularly in lord jim, he's clearly trying to overcome those sorts of boundaries in his thought far more so than his contemporaries. anyway, i kind of like lord jim even though i feel it takes forever to get going, and i find it very funny that the complexity of jim as a person, his way of thinking, his drives is just being told to you by some guy who's mostly guessing. it's a funny way to do a character study. i thought the secret agent was cool too, though i would've preferred a more orthodox marxist critique of anarchism. Oh definitely, it’s not cut and dried. Lord Jim and other books for sure are interrogating/satirising the colonial mentality. But then you also have parts of heart of darkness, or eg the character pedro in victory, where it seems like Conrad can’t find words to express the depth of his visceral repugnance and contempt. I wanted to put it out there as an earnest disclaimer because I imagine it can be off putting to see people come into a public forum and lavish unqualified praise on a writer like Conrad and not mention these aspects of his work. I love it when Conrad’s stories are told by Marlowe or another narrator, puzzling it over and, as you say, guessing. I can’t quite put my finger on the effect. It’s like the character is becoming slightly mythic, or an exemplar or symbol of something mysterious, and the narrator just can’t stop proving the mystery. IDK, it works great I blanked on the secret agent but that one also rules
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Aug 3, 2023 15:18
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CestMoi posted:i thought the secret agent was cool too, though i would've preferred a more orthodox marxist critique of anarchism. Why would you want The Secret Agent to be a boring polemic instead of the absurd comedy it already is?
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Aug 3, 2023 16:34
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had the secret agent been more convincing we might have prevented the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
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Aug 3, 2023 17:21
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Late to Austerchat, but I used to have a copy of Moon Palace sitting around in the dining room that I'd open up and search for a total dogshit sentence, which never took very long
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Aug 4, 2023 04:50
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Ended up being stuck in. Barnes and Noble the other day and after far too much searching for something of worth I ended up picking up a copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot. It was a lark, but I'm enjoying it a lot. From the get you've got two distinct sisters with a loving but odd relationship based on the elder's religious fervor and desire for knowledge, the younger's deference and silent social awareness, and their mutual inability to operate Independently in the world. Like an Austen Novel where things that aren't social comedy is allowed to happen.
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Aug 6, 2023 03:00
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Middlemarch isn’t personally my kind of thing — there’s a little bit too much “tea with the vicar”/gossiping about marriage-prospects type stuff for my taste—but nevertheless it is really well done. She has a real gift for characterisation. The sisters do leap off the page straight away, and I like how you think for a moment it’s a portrait of “virtue” vs “frivolousness” or whatever, but it starts getting more complicated right away, and in a comic way too
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Aug 6, 2023 08:58
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Seeing people bring up the lack of phones in movies, have any authors handled the invention of the smartphone artfully yet?
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Aug 6, 2023 11:19
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I could easily imagine Proust writing 400 pages of The Narrator gradually breaking down in jealousy and FOMO just from scrolling through Albertine's instagram story
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Aug 6, 2023 12:55
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FPyat posted:Seeing people bring up the lack of phones in movies, have any authors handled the invention of the smartphone artfully yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Numbers_%28novel%29?wprov=sfla1 I think he wrote a book of essays on tech and such. Closest I know.
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Aug 7, 2023 01:38
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Lampsacus posted:Joshua Cohen? It's more internet though but kinda? there was that recent movie about the rise and fall of Blackberry, not sure that qualifies though
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Aug 7, 2023 05:39
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I haven't posted in this thread in a long while, I kept forgetting to and also I was intimidated and felt like a big stupid faker who has no business discussing Literature. I did read a few titles that qualify for the thread recently though. I read Suttree (thanks BOTM!) and it was really good, and A Brief History Of Seven Killings might belong here being a 700-page epic set across 25 years and a dozen POV characters. Also some Gogol and all of Jerusalem so uh AMA about Alan Moore's megabook
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Aug 7, 2023 09:32
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Gertrude Perkins posted:I haven't posted in this thread in a long while, I kept forgetting to and also I was intimidated and felt like a big stupid faker who has no business discussing Literature. I did read a few titles that qualify for the thread recently though. I read Suttree (thanks BOTM!) and it was really good, and A Brief History Of Seven Killings might belong here being a 700-page epic set across 25 years and a dozen POV characters. Welcome back! Was Jerusalem good?
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Aug 7, 2023 10:31
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I just finished The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (Very good) and am now reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Catch ya later..
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Aug 7, 2023 20:23
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God drat it, every time Lolita becomes part of the online discourse, I feel compelled to leap in on Nabokov's defense
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Aug 7, 2023 21:33
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I mean as you should, but why the gently caress would you want to participate in "online discourse"?
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Aug 7, 2023 21:35
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Gaius Marius posted:I mean as you should, but why the gently caress would you want to participate in "online discourse"? BECAUSE SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET ABOUT A THING I CARE DEEPLY ABOUT edit: I mean you can say what you want about the erudite tone of the novel but to blame it on Nabokov is loving stupid because being cultured and smart is HOW HH SURVIVES
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Aug 7, 2023 21:38
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I can't find what you're talking about, I'm assuming it's onw Twitter then. It looks like you're saying people are taking Humbert erudition as a sign of Nabokov's approval, and that if he disagreed with molesting children he should've instead written a dim witted cretin with nothing resembling humanity, no matter how faint? Honestly there's a certain amount of people who are never going to be able to grapple with any sort of work that confronts them rather than comforting them. Pity them, but never give them an inch in argument. They are wrong.
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Aug 7, 2023 22:02
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Yeah they're conflating the narrator voice with the author's personality and I'm pretty sure it's just the first-person effect. It's annoying but it makes me want to help them read books better Edit: it's doubly annoying because Nabokov was erudite and didn't mind showing it, though these readers would not know that Here's the quote that triggered me: "There are so many unnecessary references to obscure things in that book. He’s trying so hard to show you how cultured and smart he is. That’s why they came out with an “annotated” version, even though the book is modern" mdemone fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Aug 7, 2023 |
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Aug 7, 2023 22:21
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Bilirubin posted:Was Jerusalem good? I thought it was excellent. Exceeded my expectations. The "gearshift" at the very end of Book One practically launches you through the last two volumes. I will re-read it certainly but probably not for another couple years.
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Aug 7, 2023 22:27
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Gertrude Perkins posted:Also some Gogol and all of Jerusalem so uh AMA about Alan Moore's megabook What did you think of Book Two?
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Aug 7, 2023 22:28
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I’m reading Jerusalem right now. Just finished the first chapter in book 3 and I think that might be one of my favorite bits of reading ever.
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Aug 7, 2023 22:33
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FPyat posted:Seeing people bring up the lack of phones in movies, have any authors handled the invention of the smartphone artfully yet? Haven't actually read it and I think it's more aboiut social media than smart phones per se, but I've read good things about Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This.
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Aug 7, 2023 23:42
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mdemone posted:God drat it, every time Lolita becomes part of the online discourse, I feel compelled to leap in on Nabokov's defense Just nudge them towards the Lolita Podcast. Much easier for you and Jamie Loftus handles the subject beautifully.
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Aug 8, 2023 03:44
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