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Most classic literature is classic because it's good in some way, but my God Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" is terribly written. The book contains such thrilling prose as "He was sad", and I have never seen so many sentences start with "Indeed". I'd read about 100 pages in before I googled "Dreiser terrible writer" and got back a bunch of hits. Apparently it's commonly compared unfavourable with Gatsby since they came out in the same year and chronicle the gap between rich and poor in early 20th-century America. I mean, the story itself is interesting, the moral emptiness of rich and poor as a poor boy climbs up the social ladder, but the clunky, horrendous prose and ridiculous exposition destroys it. It's the first "important book" I've read that is godawful, only classic apparently because of its themes. Yes the theme is important, but the whole point of a story is that it's told with some modicum of skill. How anything this bad got into the American canon mystifies me. Are there any other books out there that are this misplaced in the "classics" section? I'm interested.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:10
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Well canon's always a loose term, but it made both Time and Modern Library's top 100, Bloom's written about it, it's been adapted to film and stage. It might be less popular these days, but it's still an "important book". I'm just surprised it was ever popular.
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Oct 12, 2014 17:42
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Hello, thread. I was running low on books in my to-read list and I managed to get through this entire thread over the last month and now I have too many so thank you. Apparently I posted a bunch of years back trashing Dreiser and forgot this existed. Also the discussion of Mishima throughout, particularly the last few pages, was pretty great and helped inspire me to pick him up after watching Paul Schrader's movie a few months ago and feeling conflicted about the politics and aesthetic but intrigued. Just thought I'd throw in a few recommendations from stuff I read last year I really liked: Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things is incredibly difficult to get through but a really interesting metaphor for how society treats victims of sexual harassment and assault. It's really heavy but a fantastic use of fiction to explore dark subject matter. And some Canadian authors I haven't seen come up: Dionne Brand writes poetry and prose and all of it is incredible. Theory is a bone dry satire of academia and has a delightfully awful narrator, Love Enough is a fantastic short story collection. And her poetry book Ossuaries is solid too. André Alexis is probably more middlebrow and a solidly entertaining writer. His Fifteen Dogs won our Giller Prize a couple years back, but he also has a collection called the Quincunx Saga which flirts with magical realism and Pastoral is my favourite from it, with its incredibly on-the-nose Beethoven references. Also gently caress Ben Lerner. Segue fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 05:53
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ThePopeOfFun posted:making GBS threads on Dreiser? Sister Carrie is good. Yeah it was An American Tragedy which, while I remember liking the core of the story, the writing and style were just so bad to be distracting. It wasn't the worst book for message, but for presentation, woof. But hey I just picked up a sci fi tome called Children of Time so my lit cred is falling anyway.
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Mar 13, 2021 14:04
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I made the mistake of picking up Interior Chinatown after hearing it won the National Book Award and man is it some low-hanging literature. It feeks like baby's first adventure in postmodernism: oh my god the Asian characters are all playing roles! It's set out like a script! The fictional show and the life of the characters blend and become indistinguishable and did you know that maybe all of us are just playing roles in life?? There are literally two separate monologues at the end making basic points about intersectional inequality if you didn't get it. I mean it's entertaining enough and there's some fun satire but it feels like the literature equivalent if airport fiction, written to make the reader feel smart about breaking from reality and telling HARD TRUTHS about Asian stereotypes. Has it made Oprah's book club? It feels perfect for Oprah's book club.
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Mar 20, 2021 06:21
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toanoradian posted:Oh, it's non-fiction! Well, could pair well with Omeros' fiction, I hope. If you want more stunning reflections on nature, Helen Macdonald's Vesper Flights was the best book I read last year, mini poetic meditations on nature and its gradual disappearance in our modern era that reads like poetry. Her memoir H is for Hawk is also very good, and has some great reflections on TH White.
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Mar 23, 2021 03:08
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Well, I've started through my recommendations from this thread and just got through Han Kang's absolutely brutal The Vegetarian. I mean I was expecting violent metaphors for societal conformity and patriarchy but drat that book is visceral. Very good but a hard read. Though it still has that weird tendency of modern fiction of almost robot-like, distanced characters. Definitely works for the theme but still has that Brechtian feel. This essay goes into less successful versions. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/im-not-feeling-good-at-all-bergman It reminded me of Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things as a great piece of modern feminist horror that I would have a hard time picking up again. As for plays, I definitely want to pick up some Albee after hearing about his unsuccessful attempt to adapt Lolita from the Lolita Podcast. I have been reading plays more (always meant to see them live and planned to in 2020 and welp) though Slave Play I found underwhelming, written way too much for a pat yourself on the back Broadway audience (probably why it did so well).
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Apr 11, 2021 23:27
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Echoing for Seven Killings that yeah I was partway through the book when I started the audiobook and it's amazing. His follow-up fantasy novel is a bit of a mess unfortunately, but at least he tries to branch out. Finished At Swim Two Birds on this thread's recommendation and while I was pretty lukewarm at first once it starts devolving into chaos it's delightful. It's weird O'Brien isn't very well known in North America; my only friend who'd heard of him did her undergrad at Oxford. Can't wait for Third Policeman.
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May 9, 2021 23:29
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artism posted:love the narrator so much. he’s such a smug little twerp. and of course the three wise men constantly interjecting as Finn drones on. and of course the inestimable Jem Casey He had that Ignatius Reilly vibe but lazier and less aggressive, I think that's what put me off at first before warming. Jem Casey's poem was amazing. The ending paragraph is just a work of art. By god the last bit is bloody though.
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May 11, 2021 04:44
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For whoever asked for stories I just finished Yoko Ogawa's The Diving Pool collection of three novellas and it was utterly fantastic. While I quite liked Memory Police and was lukewarm on a collection of her short stories, whoever recommended it was on point since it's next level. It's an eerie, surreal variation on alienation, sweet foods, death and decay, nostalgia and love and will haunt you for days after with some of the scenes she conjures up. Each story plays off and weaves into the other and it leaves you queasy but in awe. Now to re-read Exile and the Kingdom to keep my French up. Also I looked up the Storygraph app and its first rec was I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream so it seems pretty drat on point. Segue fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 02:20
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Well I finally finished 2666 and it is definitely an opus with the whole adding up to be much more than the sum of its parts. Just seeing by the end how he's held your hand through this descent into horrible violence from a story about a privileged academic love affair is impressive, showing the whole range of human experience and a horrifying but not completely pessimistic view of humans and their society, with the last story just capstoning it all. Definitely going to check out some more Bolaño including his poetry but in the meantime gonna get through Mo Yan's opus too and get my big important book quotient.
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Jun 13, 2021 02:53
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A good one for just enjoying the ride for me is Mo Yan's Life and Death are Wearing Me Out. Yes it's a satirical novel set in Communist China that indicts the silliness and insanity of a lot of communist policy and the cultural revolution and has an unreliable narrator. But all that's in the back of my brain as I just enjoy the antics of this reincarnated landlord and the Rabelaisian sex and poo poo jokes. I'll fully digest it later but currently it's just entertaining and interesting.
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Jun 15, 2021 20:45
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I'm almost done Romain Gary's Life Before Us and there's a reason this dude won the Prix Goncourt twice (besides the alias). It is a wonderfully black, dry, crack of a novel that revels in stories of quiet humanity, loss, and love and is fast going up there with my favourite novels for just its pitch perfect tone and wit. Can't wait and go back to read his first Goncourt-winning book. The man is a capital W Writer.
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Jul 20, 2021 03:48
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Burning Rain posted:Yeah, Gary is great, although I enjoyed The Promise at Dawn more than Life Before Us, but that might be because I found the narrator's voice grating in this. Could be since I read it in French my ear isn't as attuned, but I can understand that. I found it a really great capture of a punky kid, so it worked well. Also finding a positive portrayal of a black trans sex worker in a 70s novel was surprising and nice! Also whoever recommended Nadine Gordimer for the prose holy poo poo thank you. This woman's writing is just sublime.
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Jul 23, 2021 02:50
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I bounced hard off of Red Leopard because of the inaccessibility but I should probably give it a second chance seeing how I loved Seven Killings and am liking John Crow's Devils. Also I just finished Season of Migration to the North which is a beautiful and brilliant meditation on colonialism and sort of a companion to Wide Sargasso Sea in style and theme. Also was on a date last night where we both trashed Murakami so this thread's energy was in the air I guess since I just caught up to it now.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:17
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TrixRabbi posted:No one grabbed on this, but this is the only book you've ever read that made you feel uncomfortable? That in itself says a lot about your reading selection. And I'm not saying you have to willingly subject yourself to upsetting books if you don't want to do that, but I don't think you can venture out of your comfort zone so rarely that you can only name a single novel that made you feel uncomfortable and then come out swinging with grand sweeping statements about all modern western literature. I wanted to use this as a jumping off point for literature that makes you uncomfortable, and throw in recommendations. I'd prefer if it wasn't just problematic authors and more just interesting examinations of subjects. For my part, Charlotte Wood's The Natural Way of Things is an absolutely stark examination of how society treats sexual abuse survivors told in this incredibly lucid prose that belies the almost surreal setup. I'd say Saramago's Blindness is similar but I found it both boring and uncomfortable so I don't really recommend it.
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Sep 27, 2021 03:08
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Man, I remember Gaddis's JR being recommended through here and it's just...okay? I'm about three quarters through and while interesting conceptually it's a really long performance of one note. People talking past each other, a cacophony of perspectives and people and pettiness and toxic men, I just wish it was edited down as you slog through yet another same-theme silliness. Like yeah it has some funny moments but it feels stales both by the passage of time and by length. But on the plus side, Soyinka's Nobel win means his first novel is no longer reference only at the library and I got a new addition just came in.
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Nov 18, 2021 17:27
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Ras Het posted:Have you been waiting since before 1986 Ah poo poo I guess since I just read about him in the news recently he won but it's because he has a new book out. I never keep track of prizes Anyway apparently interest in him picked up with the new novel publisher decided to reissue it I guess and all of a sudden I can check out a new edition since the library ordered a bunch of copies. Ignore my time travelling Segue fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Nov 18, 2021 |
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Nov 18, 2021 22:21
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I realized I just read two books that are 60 years old and it was interesting to see how they each felt very much of their time despite being completely different. Hopscotch - Julio Cortázar - 1963 Rereading this for the first time in a decade. Cortázar's deconstructed ode to existential angst has some beautiful writing, but bogs down in misogyny and overwrought philosophizing that feels dated. Still the playfulness of jumping chapters, the wordplay and collage, still feel fresh even if the themes are tired and browbeaten into you. Moments of sheer pleasure and so very 60s. Another Country - James Baldwin 1962 Baldwin's sprawling attempt at the Great American Novel is achingly humanist and explores race and sexuality openly with a great ear for dialogue. It takes a slight curve with Rufus's early death but obviously feels much more traditional than Cortázar but more rooted in flesh and the struggle for civil rights. Very much a cri de Coeur mood piece that hits hard and while bloated but worth a read. In summary: holy poo poo people love Jazz.
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Apr 26, 2022 06:35
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Mr. Nemo posted:Short or long version? Short, then long. Short version felt purposely incomplete, where you didn't get as good a pyschological portrait of Oliveira, and other characters didn't feel as filled out. But it still had some beautiful and playful parts (like the chapter where you read every other line until they converge). Long version had a looser vibe that felt less Oliveira-focused but the Morelli chapters felt very redundant after a bit. Probably prefer the long, though that may be the jumping really does give you that physical jazzy sense that Cortázar really strives for. Both endings I think had their strengths.
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Apr 28, 2022 16:50
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Really enjoyed the Lolita chat, but my vote still goes to Pale Fire as the superior book that makes me sympathize with a terrible person. I also read Pnin recently and it's interesting to see Nabokov play it straighter in a gentle academic satire. Apparently that book first made his career as an author and it's a nice little novel that still shows his incredible prose. Also speaking of prose, Kofi Awoonor's This Earth, My Brother is simply incredible, alternating chapters of clear novelizing with these surreal prose-poems.
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Jun 16, 2022 22:09
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I just finished Eimar McBride's A Child is a Half-Formed Thing and I think it definitely qualifies as it's absolutely miserable except that the prose is this visceral embodiment.
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Jul 20, 2022 04:09
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Criminal Minded posted:B) if, like me, you believe McCarthy's masterpiece is Suttree, I have a feeling you'll be in heaven. gently caress yes, this is the correct opinion. Halfway through Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and it's a beautifully written depiction of a wonderfully bigoted rich Englishwoman traipsing through the Balkans. If you want the liberalest of 1940s takes and extrapolations of entire people from the behaviour of one person, but also mixed with wonderfully catty royal history and incredible scene-setting this is your book. It's as much a portrait of West as the Balkans and entertaining as hell.
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Aug 23, 2022 04:00
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Reading The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, which I think this thread recommended, and I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would. It's beautifully, deliciously written, with a great slice of life feel that takes its premise quite straight and doesn't play it too much, instead just keeping it part of the larger character-driven whole. Again, outstanding prose, but also depressing to think of the world not far gone where there were decent livings to be made in busy small town restaurants.
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Nov 15, 2022 04:18
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We'll I've now bounced hard off Ada or Ardor twice, which is odd since I've loved all the other Nabokov I've read. I just think the length and the meandering ornate indulgence can't grab me without the hooks of Lolita or Pale Fire or the quiet intimacy of Pnin. Ah well. Maybe when I'm older and in a different headspace. I will say whoever recommended HhHH is great, since I just started it. A lovely mingling of memoir and history and fascists getting hosed up. Now I just need to find a similar one to cover Carrero Blanco's delightful assassination.
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Jan 26, 2023 19:13
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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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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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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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surf rock posted:Finished Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh this morning. Ottessa Moshfegh's continued success is baffling. I've yet to meet anyone who enjoys her books and the couple I've read just retread the same nihilistic misery porn as other trite modern "classics". She's basically an edgy writer who dresses up scatology and people pretend it's insightful. If you're gonna go with misery porn at least do Fernanda Melchor, the modern master. Also if you want a nice warm hug of gorgeous short stories, Deesha Philyaw's The Secret Lives of Church Ladies was a surprisingly wonderful collection on love, family and Blackness I highly recommend.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:42
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Syncopated posted:Seconding Melchor, though I’ve only read Hurricane Season, which was great. Is the rest as good? Páradais is a bit of a step down from Hurricane Season, and doesn't give as much breathing space or high eye scope since it's a lot more focused. A super hard read since it basically inhabits a sexually frustrated incel and an incest-damaged boy as they plot and carry out a crime but as a depiction of despair and a damaged worldview it's up there! Gleisdreieck posted:The only book I've read from Moshfegh is "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" and I loved it, couldn't put it down. I wouldn't call it insightful, but it was a lot of fun and the concepts lingered in my mind for weeks. Her stuff just never gelled for me at all. It just fits a type of MFA sadlit that I can't get past. I just find it boring, but I know some people like it, somehow. In other book news, I was disappointed by my two jumps into literary horror: Percival Everett's The Trees (stretched its concept beyond a short story and the comedy was fun for a bit but too low hanging) and Mona Awad's Bunny (complete waste of an interesting concept and no characters). But Sara Stridsberg's Valerie was a wonderfully crackling attempt to get into Valerie Solanas's head, if not too deep. And I'm cautiously optimistic having cracked NoViolet Bulawayo's Glory for a run through Exaggerated
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May 22, 2023 23:51
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Crespolini posted:Father and son. Money and London Fields were very good. Money was fun. Time's Arrow is also very good and somehow makes its black conceit work for a whole novel. Great bleak humour throughout his stuff, and he worked to be bit less of a dick than his dead which is nice.
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May 24, 2023 04:05
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I just finished Han Kang's Human Acts and it is one of the best books I have ever read. She unflinchingly shows the horror of the Gwangju massacre and the Korean dictatorship and makes the beautiful decision to use the second person, setting you as the reader among the killed. She follows the trauma across years and generations and shows heroism and normal life and so much pain. It's unflinching, it's beautiful, it will absolutely break your heart. A staggering achievement. The Vegetarian was middling but my god what a follow-up book. This will be the best book I read this year I bet.
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Jul 3, 2023 05:43
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Well after 120 pages I finally stopped trying to get through Can Xue's Frontiers. She was apparently a frontrunner for the Nobel this year but 360 pages of surreal dream sequences that have no real momentum couldn't sustain me. That and the translators' odd decision to translate some of the names into English. I get how some people may like the vibe but I think it would work more for short stories, which I understand she has published a bunch of. Or if your really like David Lynch and Inland Empire. Not for me! Palate cleansing with Bolaño's Savage Detectives which so far is beautiful with some odd machismo and literary obsessions but I like it a lot more.
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Oct 9, 2023 23:28
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Oh Jesus The Goldfinch was just trash. Felt like someone doing dimestore Dickens.
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Oct 13, 2023 01:31
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FPyat posted:All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren marks the first time I've read a piece of serious fiction longer than 500 pages in years. It did well to ease me into the literary groove, rich with allusion and contemplation. Warren seems both critical and affectionate towards the South, depicting it both as having deep wells of history, beauty and tradition and as being full of corrupt backwardness. It's described as a book about Huey Long's fictional counterpoint, but the protagonist Jack Burden is the heart of the story, far more so than Nick is in The Great Gatsby. The lengthy digression telling of the life of his 19th century ancestor on its own would make a tremendous short story. I was quite entertained in the end by the editor's note to the new edition, which is quite critical of Warren's original editor for being totally insensitive to theme and subtext. I absolutely loved this book when I was like 20. I hope it holds up to a reread. Just the opening pages are so beautifully evocative of the South (and its casual racism). Phrasings like "aching for the tongue and ready to bleed gold" still stick with me. It's as close as you can get really to Southern Political Gothic.
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Oct 17, 2023 02:10
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ulvir posted:another example of why it seems like a good idea to ignore most american lit. unless proven otherwise I just finished Detectives and loved it. It's a similar beast to 2666 in that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, very vibey with a lot of different stories interacting and intersecting, going deep or just skimming. 2666's Archimboldi is referenced too, a whole Bolaño universe. Part of me keeps wanting to hate the shagginess of it, but it just sinks into my brain and lives there. It also helps the writing is hypnotizing.
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Nov 12, 2023 01:07
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It's been more than a decade since I read all of Proust during the most boring summer internship, but I recall it was pleasant. The later books have some interesting exploration of queer sex practices in upper society. Decided to pick up Mason & Dixon after Bolaño and am surprised I'm not too into it. The prose is of course adventurous and fun and striking but I just really do not care for historical fiction. The fart and sex jokes are there, but I wish he'd stick with more of the surreality of the Learned Dog and the talking navigation clocks. I demand more insanity. But still, very nice way to while away some hours.
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Nov 16, 2023 07:04
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The Neapolitan novels are incredibly good. I said offhand at my book club that they're probably the best literary achievement of the new century to some consternation, but I increasingly stand by it. Just wonderful encapsulation of last century. Also halfway through Mason & Dixon where an exiled French chef is describing his flight from a sentient, horny duck automaton and I love Pynchon again. So dumb and yet smart and beautifully written.
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Nov 20, 2023 02:20
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Well Stoner was some contrived misery porn, but I enjoyed the more surreal parts of Mason & Dixon before being tethered again by the historical record. Pynchon remains an amazing stylist. One out of two isn't bad, thread.
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Nov 27, 2023 23:48
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Mel Mudkiper posted:A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe ends far too cleanly imho Yeah I just finished it too and you have the vast majority just this cowardly worm running away from everything and finally coming to peace feels a bit tacked on with how short the revelation is. Gorgeous writing though. However I will say from what I've read of Japanese existentialism I could use some cleanness. Jesus do some of those guys just dive into grime and despair and wallow.
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Feb 4, 2024 21:43
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