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I was sitting there wondering why it's been taking me so long to get through Terra Nostra and it finally hit me when I was reading the chapter with the astronomer and the priest talking. There are barely any conversations or actions in the novel. Ninety percent of the runtime is people monologuing to themselves, to others or to God/satan. It gives the book a glacial flow that repels my attempts to match onto its people or themes on an emotional level even when I understand it academically. That scene with the monks and the scene with La Senora and Guzman in the mistresses bedroom are my favorite scenes so far, and that is in large part because they're some of the few places where characters exist outside of their own heads.
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Mar 27, 2024 07:46
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Read some Baudelaire because a poem was mentioned in the crime mystery novel I was reading and I wanted the whole thing. 
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Mar 27, 2024 08:31
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le fleurs du mal was at several points surprisingly horny
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Mar 27, 2024 09:32
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cumpantry posted:
Good news, it's actually a great loving book
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Mar 27, 2024 12:58
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I preferred Paris Spleen over The Flower of Evil. Although both were quite good.
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Mar 27, 2024 14:09
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I came across a sarcastic quote about the titles of poetry in The Arcades Project (Benjamin was evidently in the middle of writing about le fleurs du mal):
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Mar 27, 2024 15:24
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mdemone posted:Good news, it's actually a great loving book better save it for last then, i know people here have middling thoughts on his other works like Vineland and such
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Mar 27, 2024 15:28
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now that i think about it i may as well read Pynchon in the order he wrote his works since i already started with V and plan on Crying of Lot 49 next
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Mar 27, 2024 15:37
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cumpantry posted:now that i think about it i may as well read Pynchon in the order he wrote his works since i already started with V and plan on Crying of Lot 49 next You'll need to dip into Slow Learner between books if you do that.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:42
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Vineland is perfectly fine. It fits in with his other "lesser works" and it's funny. I think I'm in the minority with that view, though.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:42
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Cassian of Imola posted:I came across a sarcastic quote about the titles of poetry in The Arcades Project (Benjamin was evidently in the middle of writing about le fleurs du mal): the parts on exhibitions and Baudelaire was great, and this reminds me that I really, really need to read the second volume of the arcades project soon.
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Mar 27, 2024 15:43
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GR has some of the best stuff in any pynchon book but I think I like ATD even better as a whole. I just finished Mason and Dixon, it's a hell of a thing to read as someone who's lost touch with the male gender and hasn't had any kind of male friendship for a long time. Kinda nostalgic. Building a big line through the forest as a means to channel feng shui energy to unleash inconceivable destruction to the west and a new channel of power for the forces of empire is also reminiscent of the time I've spent in the bush doing sampling and surveying, but I'm living in the end days of the empire they helped create rather than the beginning. The helplessness of their position as observers to genocide and colonialism without even a single thought as to their own involvement in it, much less any kind of resistance, also feels a lot like where we are now. Feels weird to read post-2022 but maybe lots of stuff does now
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Mar 27, 2024 15:46
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Gaius Marius posted:You'll need to dip into Slow Learner between books if you do that. short stories style Pynchon sounds cool. i'm game
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Mar 27, 2024 15:53
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cumpantry posted:short stories style Pynchon sounds cool. i'm game He hates them and thinks they are juvenile, which is interesting because they're still leagues better than his contemporaries' efforts
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Mar 27, 2024 15:58
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Flournival Dixon posted:I just finished Mason and Dixon, it's a hell of a thing to read as someone who's lost touch with the male gender and hasn't had any kind of male friendship for a long time. Kinda nostalgic. swing by the Aubrey-Maturin thread
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Mar 27, 2024 17:00
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Vineland is fine but it isn't going to blow you away like GR or AtD will
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Mar 27, 2024 18:16
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Might as well read it before the film comes out anyways
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Mar 27, 2024 18:46
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I’ve been reading V. very very slowly as I also read other things. I don’t really enjoy it, but I don’t hate it either. It just seems so pointless, like at any time it could end on the next page. I don’t think I really get it. For the record I’m only on page 160
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Mar 28, 2024 00:30
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blue squares posted:I’ve been reading V. very very slowly as I also read other things. I don’t really enjoy it, but I don’t hate it either. It just seems so pointless, like at any time it could end on the next page. I don’t think I really get it. It's okay. I'm a huge Pynchon nut and V. is near the bottom of my list.
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Mar 28, 2024 01:09
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Maybe I’ll skip the rest of the book. Or just keep reading it one section after another for a couple years haha. I’ve read 49, GR, IV, and M&D. I wanna do a full read of his bibliography but I’m stuck on book 1 haha
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Mar 28, 2024 01:23
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It reads as though Pynchon has reached full power but doesn't yet have the control to make it hang together. GR is when he figures it out. After that he's just flexing on everyone.
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Mar 28, 2024 01:26
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blue squares posted:Maybe I’ll skip the rest of the book. Or just keep reading it one section after another for a couple years haha. I’ve read 49, GR, IV, and M&D. I wanna do a full read of his bibliography but I’m stuck on book 1 haha if you skip it youre going to miss out on some ridiculously poignant sections. i came out the end very satisfied even though there's good chunks i didn't fully connect the dots on. that's okay, a lot of the fun is figuring out why all the characters in a room are particularly special and why, but also why there's not ever enough text to fully do that, which the book touches on quite coolly (and i would reference but just turned it back in) did the profane sewer bit happen yet? if it did, you didnt think that was badass or what
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Mar 28, 2024 02:14
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i just said this deal about novellas but the library didnt have his short stories or Crying, or any of the things i've been wanting or recommended to read... but they did have Franzen's The Corrections... 
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Mar 28, 2024 02:15
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If you've not read GR (or even if you have), read the Weisenburger companion alongside it. Just absolutely magical construction on large and small scales. The kind of book a writer reads and thinks "how am I supposed to compete with this"
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Mar 28, 2024 02:24
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I find the scenes describing them going out partying and bar hopping to be disorienting and grating… But yes hunting cocodrillos was fun  mdemone posted:If you've not read GR (or even if you have), read the Weisenburger companion alongside it. I’ve read it twice… I need to make the third reread with the companion
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Mar 28, 2024 02:25
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Don't read guides with the novels you're reading. You're robbing yourself of the discovery and allowing others to warp your ideas of a work before you've even cast your own opinions and hypotheses. Save that poo poo for the ReRead.
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Mar 28, 2024 02:32
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Gaius Marius posted:Don't read guides with the novels you're reading. You're robbing yourself of the discovery and allowing others to warp your ideas of a work before you've even cast your own opinions and hypotheses. Okay I will agree with that. I got a little too excited there because the Weisenburger is so good
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Mar 28, 2024 02:47
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Gaius Marius posted:Don't read guides with the novels you're reading. People who do are the same people who enjoy MST3K. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 28, 2024 03:13
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I guess a lot of things referenced and discussed in the book that are very familiar to me as a WW2 geek in recovery are mysterious and surprising to many readers. I did like Walther Rathenau's spirit waxing lyrical about the significance of the synthesis of mauve, an event I learned about in a children's science book when I was about 7.
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Mar 28, 2024 03:44
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Gaius Marius posted:I was sitting there wondering why it's been taking me so long to get through Terra Nostra and it finally hit me when I was reading the chapter with the astronomer and the priest talking. There are barely any conversations or actions in the novel. Ninety percent of the runtime is people monologuing to themselves, to others or to God/satan. It gives the book a glacial flow that repels my attempts to match onto its people or themes on an emotional level even when I understand it academically. That scene with the monks and the scene with La Senora and Guzman in the mistresses bedroom are my favorite scenes so far, and that is in large part because they're some of the few places where characters exist outside of their own heads. Good luck with this tome! I'd honestly say all the muck and mire is mostly worth it, despite Fuentes retreading a lot of the same abjection. The second book in the New World has a lot happening, then then the third goes full just misery, but the ending and the debauchery and the weirdness of it all leave it stuck in my head despite its length and faults. No doubt one of the oddest books for its attempt to do a through-line between Catholicism, monarchy, colonialism and modern fascism even as it climbs up its own rear end a lot of the time
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Mar 28, 2024 04:24
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3D Megadoodoo posted:People who do are the same people who enjoy MST3K. People who enjoy rad poo poo, yes. MST3K weren’t watching the Gravity’s Rainbow of movies.
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Mar 29, 2024 15:57
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3D Megadoodoo posted:People who do are the same people who enjoy MST3K. we gun fight
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Mar 29, 2024 16:35
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Did u know there's a YouTube channel that streams mst3k episodes 24 hours a day. I put it on often
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Mar 29, 2024 19:10
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3D Megadoodoo posted:People who do are the same people who enjoy MST3K. I've seen a lotta bad takes on these forums thru the years, but wow
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Mar 29, 2024 19:36
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derp posted:Did u know there's a YouTube channel that streams mst3k episodes 24 hours a day. I put it on often you got your leg up on something?
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Mar 29, 2024 19:40
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Finished Le Guin's The Farthest Shore and Powers's Bewilderment today. The Farthest Shore rules. I think Tombs of Atuan is still my favorite of the three Earthsea books I've read so far, and I think its ending was more poignant than Farthest Shore's. But The Farthest Shore manages to capture the pure, distilled joy of a fantasy adventure without compromising its moral-ethical vision. I'll probably wait a bit before reading Tehanu, to give the original 3 Earthsea books a chance to breathe. I'm really curious to read Le Guin's Searoad. Bewilderment is... a tricky book. Robin's character strains belief, and the commentary on current events and barely-concealed real-life people is a little clumsy. The father in the story is very clearly an unreliable narrator, and the novel's psychological depth comes largely from how his perspective tints the entire book. But the very elements that risk clumsiness and preciousness also facilitate the book in genuinely grappling with the question of how not to fall into despair over the state of the world. The question of what one person can do--what is one person responsible for doing?--when an entire system is broken and killing so many things, is such a painful question to examine closely. I have gratitude toward Powers for writing a book that was able to touch those raw feelings of grief and anger out of a desire for kinship. I'll probably work backwards with Powers, and read The Overstory next, before checking out The Echo Maker and The Goldbug Variations.
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Apr 1, 2024 01:20
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Finally read Achebe's Things Fall Apart and it is obviously a masterpiece. The prose is so sharp and so clear and it sits like a weight in you. Achebe shows us a clear-eyed mournfulness, despite its faults and injustices like any culture's, for a way of life that will disappear and be supplanted by another violence. This book could be in pictures it is so solid and so evocative. You can smell the foods and hear the music and drums, the hymns of the mercenaries and the clucks of the chickens. You can feel the passage of time and peoples on your skin. I need to finish this trilogy.
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Apr 1, 2024 03:35
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well poo poo guess I have to read the Sot Weed Factor now
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Apr 3, 2024 00:34
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Mel Mudkiper posted:well poo poo guess I have to read the Sot Weed Factor now u gotta
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Apr 3, 2024 02:02
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got myself the latest Vila-Matas and Pamuk books today
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Apr 3, 2024 21:45
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