Smoking Crow posted:Yeah, but the new poo poo isn't narrative. Someone needs to get on writing a modern epic poem many 20th century poets tried, often with hilariously lovely results (see under 'murray, les' and 'olson, charles') in fact, "no modern epic poem is good" was the original "i liked them before they were mainstream", going all the way back at least to the late 18th century
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Jun 20, 2014 05:29
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What's everyone's thoughts on Beowulf? I personally enjoyed it in the various classes that had me read it, and think a lot of goons would too. Part of me wants to learn Old English just to read it in that. The other part of me is sane.
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Jun 20, 2014 05:37
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Mike Gallego posted:What's everyone's thoughts on Beowulf? I personally enjoyed it in the various classes that had me read it, and think a lot of goons would too. I liked reading Beowulf a lot, actually, and there are a lot of really good plot points and twists that feel really refreshing for something written in Old English
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Jun 20, 2014 06:30
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Since this thread has a lot more activity than the "Books that aren't awful megathread", could anyone hit me up with some contemporary American authors that are worth reading? I've already given Pynchon and DFW a go, and I've got DeLillo on my radar.
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Jun 20, 2014 08:40
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ulvir posted:Since this thread has a lot more activity than the "Books that aren't awful megathread", could anyone hit me up with some contemporary American authors that are worth reading? I've already given Pynchon and DFW a go, and I've got DeLillo on my radar. why specifically american?
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Jun 20, 2014 09:17
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Iamblikhos posted:why specifically american? I'm eurogoon and felt I'd like to read more from still living American authors. I'm already reading contemporary authors from other places and figured why not.
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Jun 20, 2014 09:54
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I'm a big believer that a lot of people cheat themselves out of reading cool books because they get caught up in the myth that lit is all boring and 'pretentious' promoted by people who never got over high school. It's all about finding books relevant to your interests, then branching out from there once you've got the taste. Cormac McCarthy is a goon favourite because a lot of his books deal with macho genre topics while also being thought-provoking and packed with fantastic prose. The Road (shortest) is post-apocalyptic, Blood Meridian (best) is a western, No Country for Old Men (most accessible) is a thriller. McCarthy's style is weird but beautiful, laden with symbols and philosophical excursions. Moby Dick is a crazy whaling adventure packed with memorable characters that will teach you how whaling worked. It's akin to a seaborne Blood Meridian in that it mixes intense, (literally) visceral description of the business at hand with a fog of symbols, ruminations and memorable characters. It has some long infodumps about whales and ships but if you can read SF&F that shouldn't put you off. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (mediaeval monastic mystery) and Foucault's Pendulum (hilarious adventure into fake Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracies) I haven't read recently enough to advertise in detail, but I really enjoyed both when I was a wee teen raised on Pratchett and Harry Potter. Peel fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 13:09
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ulvir posted:Since this thread has a lot more activity than the "Books that aren't awful megathread", could anyone hit me up with some contemporary American authors that are worth reading? I've already given Pynchon and DFW a go, and I've got DeLillo on my radar. I like John Brandon.
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Jun 20, 2014 13:33
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Peel posted:I'm a big believer that a lot of people cheat themselves out of reading cool books because they get caught up in the myth that lit is all boring and 'pretentious' promoted by people who never got over high school. It's all about finding books relevant to your interests, then branching out from there once you've got the taste. To be fair, demanding genre fic readers 'stop being loving children' and telling them to go back to their bad book threads  doesn't help that.I also don't think much of the modern literary fiction genre helps. What's the goonsensus on it? Because of it, I think 'literature' to a lot of people is associated with navel gazing by privileged inter-war Europeans, or po-faced reflections on oh-so-topical issues. Not to mention the deluge of totally non autobiographical novels about western ~writers~ with conveniently crazy sex lives. You'd think the artistic relevance of troubled bourgeois academics, or writers writing about writers writing about writing, would be mined out by now. For all the precisely trained prose, a lot of literature-as-a-genre is all craft and no art. This stuff won't be remembered, but there's enough of it to perpetuate the myth and put people off. (Yes, I know most genre stuff is no craft and no art)
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Jun 20, 2014 15:57
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Strategic Tea posted:To be fair, demanding genre fic readers 'stop being loving children' and telling them to go back to their bad book threads What about The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach? That's a great literary novel that's about college baseball players. What about White Teeth by Zadie Smith? That's about regular people in London. You can't paint literature in one stroke. And face it, if I didn't title my thread this, you wouldn't have clicked on it. Smoking Crow fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 16:20
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Smoking Crow posted:
speaking of, why is it going back and forth between infantilism and pedophilia?
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Jun 20, 2014 16:40
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Also jfc I assumed that gurm quote someone had in their custom title was a parody. I really can't get into poetry, it just bounces off, even though I like well-turned prose. I feel like this is a hole in my reading but I don't really know what I should do about it.
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Jun 20, 2014 16:49
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Strategic Tea posted:To be fair, demanding genre fic readers 'stop being loving children' and telling them to go back to their bad book threads From that one statement I can tell you haven't read much 'modern literary fiction'. The last two lit-fic books I read were The Accursed (which I talked about further up the thread) and A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain which is about the BC Highway of Tears and unsolved murder of hundreds of First Nations women. Peel posted:I'm a big believer that a lot of people cheat themselves out of reading cool books because they get caught up in the myth that lit is all boring and 'pretentious' promoted by people who never got over high school. It's all about finding books relevant to your interests, then branching out from there once you've got the taste. LOL Cormac McCarthy!!! Seriously though he's good. But TBB should branch out and try new things, maybe some William Gay or late Joe R Lansdale (The Bottoms, The Thicket) Poutling fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 16:57
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Strategic Tea posted:I also don't think much of the modern literary fiction genre helps. What's the goonsensus on it? I've literally never read a "High Literature" book that's even close to "navel gazing" and I have no freaking clue where that sentiment would even come from.
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Jun 20, 2014 16:59
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ulvir posted:I've literally never read a "High Literature" book that's even close to "navel gazing" and I have no freaking clue where that sentiment would even come from. Never read any John Updike then. http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/observer1.html
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Jun 20, 2014 17:06
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Clipperton posted:Never read any John Updike then. http://www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/observer1.html Guess I better add him to my list, this was a great quote "Makes misogyny seem literary the same way Limbaugh makes fascism seem funny."
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Jun 20, 2014 17:22
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ulvir posted:Guess I better add him to my list, this was a great quote "Makes misogyny seem literary the same way Limbaugh makes fascism seem funny." I hate it when people say poo poo like that. Anything can be literary if it's written well. That's not the same as advocating or even admiring it. Thomas Mann and Nabokov sure as hell made pedophilia "seem literary", so what? Also, "the same way" means wtf knows what - here it's a phrase used pretty much to make you form certain associations through Pavlovian conditioning. People who say poo poo like that are the same kind of people who were in favor of banning "Leaves of Grass" and "Ulysses" because "OBSCENITY!  "gently caress those people!
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Jun 20, 2014 18:06
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David Foster Wallace was a poo poo dude, hell yes I said it, fight me
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Jun 20, 2014 18:08
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Oxxidation posted:David Foster Wallace was a poo poo dude, hell yes I said it, fight me i second that, actually (well, he's not the worst by any means, but he's 99% undeserved hype)
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Jun 20, 2014 18:10
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Oxxidation posted:David Foster Wallace was a poo poo dude, hell yes I said it, fight me The one thing I've learned over all else being an english major has been that every single author is completely poo poo and crazy nutso if you dig deep enough
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Jun 20, 2014 18:11
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Iamblikhos posted:I hate it when people say poo poo like that. Anything can be literary if it's written well. That's not the same as advocating or even admiring it. Thomas Mann and Nabokov sure as hell made pedophilia "seem literary", so what? Also, "the same way" means wtf knows what - here it's a phrase used pretty much to make you form certain associations through Pavlovian conditioning. You don't know a whole lot about John Updike do you. e: Iamblikhos posted:i second that, actually the fact your uncle was wearing a bandanna when he touched you does not actually bear on wallace's merit as a writer Clipperton fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jun 20, 2014 |
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Jun 20, 2014 18:25
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Iamblikhos posted:I hate it when people say poo poo like that. Anything can be literary if it's written well. That's not the same as advocating or even admiring it. Thomas Mann and Nabokov sure as hell made pedophilia "seem literary", so what? Also, "the same way" means wtf knows what - here it's a phrase used pretty much to make you form certain associations through Pavlovian conditioning. The quote was brilliant, and accomplished the exact opposite of what intended. But I agree completely that the sentiment is ridiculously dumb. I have a feeling those people he quoted would also actually throw away a book in anger, or refuse to read any of Nabokov's works because they're convinced he's a pedo because of a fictional character he invented.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:33
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Tarranon posted:Since we are talkin' about beginner's literature, any of you get to do All the King's Men? Do it. That book is amazing. Like others have said, good books help you see more about yourself and about your world - while still telling a good story. All the King's Men is a gripping tale of dirty Louisiana politics, but it also addresses the idea of corruption, not just in politics but of the self. East of Eden (Steinbeck) is a family saga that sets the Cain and Abel conflict in an Eden-like early California, and it has a lot to say about sibling rivalry and love too - and has one of the best "villains" I've ever read. Personally I'm a big literature reader, but I started out in genre fiction. Swords and sorcerers are cool for the most part, but over the last few years I've decided that stuff set in the real world is FAR more interesting - I've read books about Italian motorcyclists in WWI, striking miners in 19th century France, a young boy traveling with abolitionist John Brown, logging clans in Oregon, etc., and they're vastly more engaging than another hero quest across the Kath'nar Mountains and through the Pikili Desert or whatever strange geography some guy made up. Even if a book doesn't have personal significance to me, I find it really interesting to learn more about the world we live in. I still enjoy reading fantasy and sci-fi (I'm rereading the Dark Tower now, read all of the Wheel of Time last year, and I enjoy Brandon Sanderson's books despite their stilted dialogue) but those books are good escapism. If you are curious about really, truly unique fantasy, I'd say try Walter Moers - someone else mentioned The City of Dreaming Books, but I love The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear, which has giant spider demons, 2374 dimensions, a ship the size of an island, a predator that masquerades as an island, and Atlantis. For sci-fi, I've really come to love Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness is a sci-fi adventure that has a lot to say about gender roles and how we are conditioned to react to them. (The aliens in this book are somewhat hermaphroditic, meaning the Envoy to this planet has a lot to adjust to in dealing with this people.) In the end, books really help me expand my scope of what life is like, how people live it, and what our world is capable of. I feel like I'd really be missing out if I just stuck to genre fiction.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:34
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Poutling posted:From that one statement I can tell you haven't read much 'modern literary fiction'. Smoking Crow posted:What about The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach? That's a great literary novel that's about college baseball players. What about White Teeth by Zadie Smith? That's about regular people in London. You can't paint literature in one stroke. Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming all or even most lit fic is bad. I'm saying that a lot of trash also gets published and marketed as 'literary' and that it can start putting people off - I admit, myself included - before we get to any real literature .
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Jun 20, 2014 18:44
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Strategic Tea posted:Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming all or even most lit fic is bad. I'm saying that a lot of trash also gets published and marketed as 'literary' and that it can start putting people off - I admit, myself included - before we get to any real literature . Your whole philosophy is the example of why this thread was made. A lot of trash gets published and marketed as every genre - and there's a lot more 'halo video game novels' out there than trashy lit-fic. Just because you don't like it, or don't understand it, it doesn't mean that it isn't valid. I don't like po-mo because it doesn't appeal to me but it doesn't mean that it sucks. It just isn't my cup of tea. If you don't like Don DeLillo or Paul Auster or John Updike then read something else. It's like saying 'there's too many dragonball z books out there so all of fantasy sucks'. Make an effort to educate yourself.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:53
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Non-genre fiction is just like genre fiction in that quality varies a lot - just because a book isn't genre fiction doesn't automatically make it good. On top of that, personal taste obviously comes into it. I personally can't get on with Julian Barnes' books at all and regard him as very overrated but that's partly just my own taste in books, I think. Also it probably did him no favours to read The Sense Of An Ending straight off the back of bingeing on Jeffrey Eugenides' books, as it seemed like a pretty stark step down in quality.
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Jun 20, 2014 18:57
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Oxxidation posted:David Foster Wallace was a poo poo dude, hell yes I said it, fight me The condescension towards the reader in Infinite Jest was way too much for me, jesus christ.
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Jun 20, 2014 20:54
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John Charity Spring posted:Non-genre fiction is just like genre fiction in that quality varies a lot - just because a book isn't genre fiction doesn't automatically make it good. I actually hate separating books into this is genre fiction and this is not. There are plenty of genre fiction authors out there who write great books that stand along non genre fiction. To separate them is to ghettoize what authors write. I really think all fiction should be viewed on its merits of being a good book or not and not just a good urban fantasy book. I think I have written this post before......
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Jun 20, 2014 21:43
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Dave Foster Wallace was pretty awesome and if you enjoyed that review of Updike, you should pick up his essay collection Consider the Lobster - it's full of hilarious poo poo like that and was how I got into DFW years ago. Since this has become the "give me recommendations for transitioning to capital-L literature" thread, I want to mention a book I just finished, I, Claudius. Fans of George R.R. Martin in particular will find a lot to like about it - the narrator, Claudius, is a lot like Tyrion Lannister; a cripple who everyone hates but keeps surviving through three generations of Caesars by being smarter than everyone else. There's lots of backstabbing and poisoning and witty banter. Also, there's the last 1/4th of the book featuring Caligula, who even if Robert Graves made up half of the poo poo he wrote about him out of whole cloth would still be the most crazy motherfucker to ever walk the Earth. He forced random people on the street to marry each other and got his horse elected as a Senator and led his troops into a massive attack against the loving ocean. Seriously, anyone who says that "literature" isn't fun as hell to read should pick this up and see how wrong they are.
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Jun 20, 2014 22:56
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Clipperton posted:You don't know a whole lot about John Updike do you. them's some sick burns yo
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Jun 20, 2014 23:12
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Popular Human posted:Dave Foster Wallace was pretty awesome and if you enjoyed that review of Updike, you should pick up his essay collection Consider the Lobster - it's full of hilarious poo poo like that and was how I got into DFW years ago. Honestly, I think Wallace's essays are his best stuff, though only a handful are truly interesting. Popular Human posted:Since this has become the "give me recommendations for transitioning to capital-L literature" thread, I want to mention a book I just finished, I, Claudius. Fans of George R.R. Martin in particular will find a lot to like about it - the narrator, Claudius, is a lot like Tyrion Lannister; a cripple who everyone hates but keeps surviving through three generations of Caesars by being smarter than everyone else. There's lots of backstabbing and poisoning and witty banter. Also, there's the last 1/4th of the book featuring Caligula, who even if Robert Graves made up half of the poo poo he wrote about him out of whole cloth would still be the most crazy motherfucker to ever walk the Earth. He forced random people on the street to marry each other and got his horse elected as a Senator and led his troops into a massive attack against the loving ocean. Seriously, anyone who says that "literature" isn't fun as hell to read should pick this up and see how wrong they are. It's pretty much what Caligula actually was like according to ancient historians. Caligula is basically what'll happen if Kim Jong Un develops schizophrenia.
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Jun 20, 2014 23:23
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Graves also wrote a sequel that's pretty good too, Claudius the God.
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Jun 20, 2014 23:35
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Martin Amis is one of my favorites and I've yet to see him mentioned. I recommend Money, London Fields, and Time's Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offence. Time's Arrow is a fantastic read and could probably be considered sci-fi to some extent considering the narrator is traveling backwards through time. Along with Amis I really enjoy Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Saul Bellow, Nabokov, and Heller. With that knowledge, is someone able to suggest someone new for me? That'd be pretty god drat awesome.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:35
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Happy Hedonist posted:Martin Amis is one of my favorites and I've yet to see him mentioned. I recommend Money, London Fields, and Time's Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offence. Time's Arrow is a fantastic read and could probably be considered sci-fi to some extent considering the narrator is traveling backwards through time. Have you read anything by Italo Calvino?
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Jun 21, 2014 01:38
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Iamblikhos posted:Have you read anything by Italo Calvino? No. His wiki looks interesting though. Have a tip on where to start?
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Jun 21, 2014 01:43
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Poutling posted:LOL Cormac McCarthy!!! Seriously though he's good. But TBB should branch out and try new things, maybe some William Gay or late Joe R Lansdale (The Bottoms, The Thicket) He's overegged in this forum but that's precisely because he's a good fit for our demographics. So I think it's still worth pointing to him.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:46
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Happy Hedonist posted:Along with Amis I really enjoy Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan...
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Jun 21, 2014 01:47
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If people are looking for "literature" that's gruesome as all get-out for some reason then Tom Franklin would be right up their alley. He's got a brisk, robust prose style that's kind of like McCarthy's (clipped dialogue, lavish descriptions, often brutal imagery) but without the typography gimmicks, and his stories are generally action-driven which keeps them moving at a good pace. Poachers is a short story collection of his - mostly modern-day realistic fiction taking place in the Alabama bayou - and a good place to start. Hell at the Breech is historical fiction about a vigilante group gotten out of hand that casts a pretty uncompromising eye at the attitudes in turn-of-the-century Southern towns. Smonk is an almost pornographically violent Western (seriously, there's poo poo going on in that book that would make Blood Meridian take a few polite steps to the side) about an aging, syphilitic outlaw's campaign of vengeance on a small town that attempted to execute him. They're all good stuff, though Smonk is really not for the faint of heart.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:54
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Sir John Feelgood posted:Christoper Hitchens, James Fenton... I was specifically thinking fiction so I didn't include Hitchens in my list, but in retrospect he should be in there. Letters to a Young Contrarian hosed my world up. I've been meaning to read Fenton for years now.
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Jun 21, 2014 01:58
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Happy Hedonist posted:No. His wiki looks interesting though. Have a tip on where to start? "If on a winter's night a traveler" or "The Baron in the Trees" perhaps?
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Jun 21, 2014 02:09
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