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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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Finished suttree and liked it a lot, I'm starting to think that even though I liked Ulysses alright what I really like is books that when you look them up you see quotes about how people compare it to Ulysses (dhalgren by Samuel Delaney and suttree). What are some other books that when you look them up you see quotes about how people compare it to Ulysses (also do people just do that all the time)? Flournival Dixon fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 05:22
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Just finished Foucault's Pendulum, I can't help but read it against crying of lot 49 even though they're barely similar in anything other than being about conspiracy stuff. A lot less wild and fun and a bit more self serious about intellectually unraveling a conspiracist mode that feels a little outdated in the age of openly fascist post-truth qanon stuff. Maybe the templar guys are still holding out for the secret history of the world to finally be pieced together and be granted access to the power of the earth though maps of telluric current but I don't see them around that much. Funny enough the idea of pynchons goofy and insane conspiracy about an alternative postal delivery system that might be based on selling the bones of dead soldiers to cigarette companies feels more relevant not to the world as it exists but how it feels to exist in the world that exists now lol. The hopelessness and resignation of the Western "leftist" intellectual in the period of failure and failure and failure again through the second half of the 20th century feels like it underlies the characters all the way through but that could just be me bringing my own position in history to the reading. As depressing as it is to be one of those now it must have felt even more nihilistically doomed back when the empire seemed invincible and unending. Somewhat recommend a quick refresher on kabbalah before reading it, it's not important to the plot really but it's a fun little structuring thing in the book. I haven't read the davinci code but it sounds like what everyone says about this book is like "what if the davinci code was good".
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May 3, 2024 22:05
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Speaking of bringing my own historical position to a reading I also just finished listening to the audiobook of laughter in the dark as well and I'm starting to think that this Nabokov guy might be the perfect embodiment of the petty cruelty and ironic self aggrandizement at the heart of the liberal bourgeois mindset. Fun little story about the shittiest little dude you ever saw (if you never read Lolita). I really liked Lolita and Pnin as well and I think he's extremely talented and funny but also there's something so wrong about his fundamental world view that I feel is so ingrained in the world I already live in that it's hard to put a finger on it. I'd almost think he was parodying the whole thing of it if I didn't already know his political stance and family origin. From what I've heard about Pale Fire it seems like it might not lend well to audio format on account of it being made of hypertext and intra-referencial stuff so I'll have to keep an eye on the used book stores around here until I get a paper copy. Flournival Dixon fucked around with this message at 22:46 on May 3, 2024 |
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May 3, 2024 22:33
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That's probably true, I definitely understand that he's making fun of the people in his class pretty sincerely. It might be a little hypocritical of me to make excuses for Umberto Eco and then immediately talk poo poo about Nabokov just because his claimed ideology is bad and Eco is at least ostensibly on my side lol Maybe sometime when I have the stomache for it I'll reread Lolita with an eye to how he treats lower class people, i feel like he was always pretty kind (but also a little patronizing?) in that regard but it's been a little while. Flournival Dixon fucked around with this message at 00:41 on May 4, 2024 |
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May 4, 2024 00:31
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