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cumpantry posted:still navigating my way through V, it's become very captivating with how it tells its story. how many narratives set out to achieve what Pynchon does here, bouncing from viewpoint to viewpoint while still telling a coherent tale? between this and Kokoro, i feel i've been seriously treated and made aware of all sorts of creative ways to weave plots together. I've not read V yet so not sure if it's comparable but My Name is Red also does the shifting from viewpoint to viewpoint and is generally a really good book anyway. Was on my mind as well cuz I just recommended it to a mate the other day
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Jan 13, 2024 09:48
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I’m not here for this “Gatsby is bad actually” revisionism. Maybe it’s cos I read it as a teenager, but that book rules. I think it’s still a great entry point into Literature. Never got on much with the rest of Fitzgerald, though. FPyat posted:I need help understanding what is meant when an artwork is critiqued as being "sentimental." I'll see a work that affected me strongly be praised for not being burdened with sentimentality, so it doesn't seem to mean being an emotionless vulcan. On the other hand, it doesn't quite appear to be criticizing schmaltzy or cheap emotionality, but some deeper and more serious disagreement about the nature of feeling. Tbh I probably would use “sentimental” pretty much as a synonym for cheap or schmaltzy. I guess it would apply to artworks that evade the truth in favour of easy answers or a superficial positiveness. That doesn’t mean that everything upbeat is fake or untrustworthy! But, like, I think for true upbeatness, you have to look the other side of life in the eye and come through it. Have you got any examples? Lobster Henry fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jan 13, 2024 |
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Jan 13, 2024 12:53
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I see Primo Levi's Auschwitz memoir being praised as containing not a hint of sentimentality. Which I guess is the case where it makes the most sense to me, where honestly depicting life in the camp will express far more than waxing lyrical about pain and misery possibly could.
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Jan 13, 2024 13:29
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FPyat posted:I need help understanding what is meant when an artwork is critiqued as being "sentimental." I'll see a work that affected me strongly be praised for not being burdened with sentimentality, so it doesn't seem to mean being an emotionless vulcan. On the other hand, it doesn't quite appear to be criticizing schmaltzy or cheap emotionality, but some deeper and more serious disagreement about the nature of feeling. James Baldwin gave the best definition of sentimentality in his essay (click the link to the .pdf) Everybody's Protest Novel. Like all Baldwin's work, the essay hits just as hard today because we have the same problems and movies like The Green Book routinely take home Oscars. It's a genius essay.
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Jan 13, 2024 15:10
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fridge corn posted:I've not read V yet so not sure if it's comparable but My Name is Red also does the shifting from viewpoint to viewpoint and is generally a really good book anyway. Was on my mind as well cuz I just recommended it to a mate the other day Lobster Henry posted:I’m not here for this “Gatsby is bad actually” revisionism. Maybe it’s cos I read it as a teenager, but that book rules. I think it’s still a great entry point into Literature. Never got on much with the rest of Fitzgerald, though.
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Jan 13, 2024 18:25
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cumpantry posted:ill stick that onto my reading list thank you I also appreciate a short novel. He’s purple as hell, no doubt. It annoys me in every other book but Gatsby is the one where it feels integrated into the tone and sufficiently ironised for me to accept it. I believe that Gatsby’s world would have these tones, through Nick’s eyes anyway. YMMV though.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:33
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I always liked The Beautiful and Damned best. It’s not as tight as the Great Gatsby, but that’s what I like about it. I love settling in and living with these characters for a while, and watching them as they keep descending.
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Jan 14, 2024 02:28
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lifg posted:I always liked The Beautiful and Damned best. It’s not as tight as the Great Gatsby, but that’s what I like about it. I love settling in and living with these characters for a while, and watching them as they keep descending. It's the only of his novels I've read. I didn't love it. The main character sitting and reading Sentimental Education is so on the nose it hurt besides that referencing a much better work in your novel is not a winning move in my book. The scene with the Japanese butler insistent on showing the MC his pornographic postcards was pretty funny though.
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Jan 14, 2024 02:36
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ThePopeOfFun posted:James Baldwin gave the best definition of sentimentality in his essay (click the link to the .pdf) Everybody's Protest Novel. Like all Baldwin's work, the essay hits just as hard today because we have the same problems and movies like The Green Book routinely take home Oscars. It's a genius essay. That’s great, thanks. I guess a big tension point I see in sentimentalism is whether Dickens was its exemplar.
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Jan 14, 2024 04:06
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lol there's a scene in the septology where young Asle gets an anxiety attack from having to read aloud in class and considers dropping out of high school, a pretty great self-insert
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Jan 15, 2024 13:47
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Is that the same Asle as in Trilogy? Because... Spoilers...
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Jan 15, 2024 17:28
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nah, Fosse just has a thing for reusing the names Asle, Alida, and Ales (Aliss)
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Jan 15, 2024 18:21
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ulvir posted:nah, Fosse just has a thing for reusing the names Asle, Alida, and Ales (Aliss) i think he just likes names starting with "A", the scheme extends to at least some of his actual kids
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Jan 16, 2024 00:57
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V. Illych L. posted:i think he just likes names starting with "A", the scheme extends to at least some of his actual kids I quite enjoy it, I also like that he reuses semi-fictitious place names like Dylgja, Stranda and Bjørgvin
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Jan 16, 2024 22:24
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V is so cool, i love reading this poo poo. i wish more passages featured profane, maybe i'll get my wish. that entire sequence with him and Angel hunting down that alligator ending with lights out was... so cool. the way he told that sunburnt guy + crew's story earlier through all those varied lenses was fascinating, i couldn't keep up too well and had to re-read like mad but what a sweet sequence. i liked following around the burglar most, hope he shows up again too stuck trying to pick another book to read alongside, thinking either The Fall by Camus or Atlas Shrugged, even. i'm just grabbing whatever's on my shelf until i run out of reading material. hell i had to get V from the library
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Jan 17, 2024 00:00
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If you like V you're going to love the rest of his works. I pick it up and put it down after a section because it just feels amateur compared to his later works
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Jan 17, 2024 00:23
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I was not expecting the adenoid attack to come this early in the book. I assume it's a tribute to 1958's The Blob, with a few other B-movies mixed in.
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Jan 17, 2024 08:53
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Finally finished my full re-read of The Border Trilogy for the first time since I was a teenager. Cities of the Plain was a bit of a letdown tbh after the wild highs of The Crossing. I think James Wood has McCarthy’s measure when he talks about him being basically two writers – one who is preternaturally gifted at evocative, harshly poetic description; and the other who is a ludicrous ham. In CoTP, hamminess wins the day, and even McCarthy seems to be poking fun at his own solemnity by the time you get to the epilogue. It’s a vaguely silly tale of stoic cowboys, prostitutes with hearts of gold, mysterious philosophising Mexican old men, and nihilistic philosophising Mexican crime bosses. It’s a reminder that you don’t get anything for free, stylistically, and sometimes McCarthy’s stark purity also means that he can only cope with a very narrow band of reality. This is making me sound more down on it than I actually was. It’s still a fun read with some beautiful passages and moments, and some really standout set pieces like the knife fight and the hunting of the wild dogs. Next up: The Charterhouse of Parma, recommended by someone in this thread…
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Jan 17, 2024 21:32
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I also reread The Tempest. As a poem, an exercise in atmosphere and tone and language, it’s stunning, unforgettable (except for the weird boring bit about chastity). As a drama it’s frustrating: it features in so many directions that it doesn’t explore. What is the deeper significance of the relationship between Prospero and Caliban, why is Prospero singularly disturbed by his plot, to the point of provoking his great melancholy speech about the insubstantiality of everything, when he goes on to foil it effortlessly? Why does the villain of the play hardly speak in the climactic scene? Why doesn’t a Miranda care that these people betrayed her father? What’s the significance of Sycorax and Claribel? But all this is also part of the play’s elusive charm. You can’t, to coin a phrase, pluck the heart out of its mystery. The introduction to the old edition I picked up does a great job of exploring how the play has attracted loads of complex interpretative frameworks - psychological, political, mystical - and sequels/rewrites, all of which are trying to fix or reconcile these lacunae and peculiarities, but you can’t ever really do it.
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Jan 17, 2024 23:28
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Nabokov Was Wrong About Shakespeare
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Jan 18, 2024 00:13
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I find the idea of reading a play pretty odd. I was certainly bored of it when we did it in school and my aborted attempts to read any Shakespeare since have not changed my mind. Kurosawa, Luhrmann or Polanski might put their own spin on the materiel but it contains feels alive in a way that I'm sure is more of what Shakespeare intended when he wrote his plays. It bothers me for two reasons, one because many authors I respect and admire do consider his work in text to be powerful and two because it's incredibly hypocritical for me to bitch about Shakespeares play as text when I love Faust so much and thirdly because It makes me worry that I'm missing references to the man when I read other works.
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Jan 18, 2024 00:26
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Lobster Henry posted:The Crossing On a podcast I once hear someone say that the first part of The Crossing was one of the best things McCarthy ever wrote, and I’m inclined to agree. Love that book. cryptoclastic fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 05:00
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the Mormon priest’s parable might not be the best passage he’s ever written but it’s at least in the top five
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Jan 18, 2024 05:15
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Gaius Marius posted:I find the idea of reading a play pretty odd. even if plays are meant to be seen, and it could take some extra work (especially for kids who aren’t used to see texts like that in print) I do think it has its merits. for one, you don’t always have the chance to read see it yourself, so reading it is at least a way to experience it. I also find it’s easier to pick up on the smaller details in the dialogues/monologues that way, since all you’re seeing are the words.
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Jan 18, 2024 07:35
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Gaius Marius posted:I find the idea of reading a play pretty odd. I mean, fair play. (No pun intended.) I don’t read a lot of them, but Shakespeare is Shakespeare. I think it’s easier to read verse dramas because it’s similar to reading poems. I can’t do it in company because I have to read them aloud, and I generally pause between each character speech to kind of stage a a theatrical or filmed version of it in my head, far more vividly and with greater specificity (what do people look like, how do they move in relation to each other, how do they deliver their lines) than I would for a scene in a novel. But yeah, I do struggle to bring it sufficiently to life for myself sometimes, especially non-verbal moments like fight scenes for example. I’m in two minds about “should Shakespeare be read” in general. On the one hand, I totally get that grinding through it in a classroom is dull as hell, and the plays need to be constantly rescued from the dusty old scholars and celebrated as vibrant theatre. On the other hand, i think literate people used to be more willing to read a play aloud to themselves or with friends, when that was your only chance of experiencing it. It seems like maybe a case where easy access to screens has made us less willing to use our imaginations in that way, which is sad.
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Jan 18, 2024 13:52
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Reading a play is as odd as listening to a book which everyone does all the time ie its not odd at all
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Jan 18, 2024 14:53
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closet_drama
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Jan 18, 2024 15:12
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It is a blast to get together with some people and read a play out loud.
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Jan 18, 2024 15:24
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cryptoclastic posted:On a podcast I once hear someone say that the first part of The Crossing was one of the best things McCarthy ever wrote, and I’m inclined to agree. Love that book. The part with the wolf cubs wrecked me.
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Jan 18, 2024 17:29
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Gaius Marius posted:It makes me worry that I'm missing references to the man when I read other works. oh don't worry. you are
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Jan 18, 2024 21:02
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The people who claim it's weird to read plays are never the ones who write plays. Playwrights read plays all the time. Most plays aren't revived, if they are they're not revived often, and basic material considerations get in the way even if a production's revived in the first place
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Jan 18, 2024 23:57
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Anyway i'm reading Aurora Leigh by Barrett Browning and I do like her, she has a great sense of diction, but it's oddly shapeless and possibly too indebted to Wordsworth
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Jan 19, 2024 00:00
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Ras Het posted:Reading a play is as odd as listening to a book which everyone does all the time ie its not odd at all I dislike Audiobooks DeimosRising posted:oh don't worry. you are Luckily I've gotten Macbeth, Romeo and Juliette, and Hamlet under my belt plus I've played Othello before. Figured I've got most my bases covered.
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Jan 19, 2024 00:01
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Just read Dante you assholes
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Jan 19, 2024 00:35
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Just because I posted these in another thread, thought I would show off here:  There are a bunch of non-fiction shelves in the hall but they're boring
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Jan 19, 2024 03:09
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Jrbg posted:The people who claim it's weird to read plays are never the ones who write plays. Playwrights read plays all the time. Most plays aren't revived, if they are they're not revived often, and basic material considerations get in the way even if a production's revived in the first place don't forget actors. And its not like these plays are filled with staging commands, so its just prose poetry really. Also Shakespeare's sonnets absolutely must be read aloud, and loudly! Or just read.
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Jan 19, 2024 05:15
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mdemone posted:Just because I posted these in another thread, thought I would show off here: how many copies of the Divine Comedy do you need? (nice cozy book cave)
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Jan 19, 2024 05:18
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Bilirubin posted:how many copies of the Divine Comedy do you need? How many are there?
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Jan 19, 2024 06:25
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Bilirubin posted:how many copies of the Divine Comedy do you need? I’ve got at least 4 editions/translations of the Iliad and odyssey. I’ve only done the divine comedy once but I get deciding on a difficult to translate classic and diving in but being too much of a wuss to learn the original language
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Jan 19, 2024 06:51
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mdemone posted:Just because I posted these in another thread, thought I would show off here: I'm PORN.
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Jan 19, 2024 09:22
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