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mango gay touchies posted:Has anybody told you nerds to read gravity's rainbow yet I'm about 100 pages from finishing Grav's Rainbow, having gone in without reading any other Pynchon and knowing very little about it other than Good. "By what man's hand was this created" is all I can say  I've read a lot of stuff, but never something that is constantly so alive. And really funny, and grotesque. Just bonkers. Raketenmensch. . . .
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Jun 19, 2014 07:25
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Speaking of essays, does anyone have a link to or remember any more details about an essay in which the author is highly critical of "writing the way writers write" and tears apart Cormac McCarthy, among others? All I can really remember is that the essay's author liked only The Orchard Keeper, and pointed out how stupid it is to pick out "favorite sentences" from books.
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Sep 21, 2014 21:50
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That's embarrassing. I guess I glanced at that and didn't recognize it as the same website/page layout. I'm crawling into a hole to di enow haha
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Sep 22, 2014 04:53
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Earwicker posted:I have not read Inherent Vice yet and but I have heard from several other people that the hippie nostalgia thing is kind of irritating and sounds like he's "trying too hard". Inherent Vice has both noir and hippie-nostalgia aesthetics on the surface but uses them to kind of undermine both conventions IMO. It's not as simple a book as "I miss the sixties." Themes of people realizing the tackiness of hippie ideals, hippies being manipulated by G-men smarter than them, mainstream folks adopting elements of the hippie movement, stoners and cops forming strange fellowships, and traditional societal structures providing recovery and rebirth after drug abuse and self-neglect.
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Dec 24, 2014 00:26
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I read Sverre Lyngstad's translation of Knut Hamsun's Hunger and not only is the translation awesome, but Lyngstad has a long appendix in the back with notes on the translation, comparisons of his translations with older, worse ones, and thoughts on translations of literature in general. Peep it
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Feb 12, 2015 21:36
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CestMoi posted:There's been maybe one funny bit in the first quarter. I agree with the cool people who say it's bloated, it reads like someone tried to write GRavity's Rainbow without understanding why Gravity's Rainbow is good. Also I'm reading it on Kindle and 140 people highlighted that bit that was like "you will become way less concerned with what people think of you when you realise how little they do" and I'm embarrassed that that line made it into a supposedly high brow novel. I'm not finished with it either, but it definitely feels like Wallace trying to write Wallace's Gravity's Rainbow. Not the least because of the direct homages (the Brocken spectre and the obsession with cinematic male gaze/females on-screen come to mind first, I noticed more while reading that I can't think of now). It's also nowhere near as funny as Gravity's Rainbow. That said, I really like the Gately sections. Marathe/Steeply just drag like crazy and are a vehicle for cultural analysis instead of any narrative and the sections go on forever. And I'm someone who loves most of Wallace's short- and non-fiction and am generous to his style, I can't imagine trying to get through IJ if you weren't already won over by him elsewhere.
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Mar 16, 2015 22:27
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blue squares posted:But infinite jest isn't postmodern. At the core, it's the opposite..It's about being a real, living, feeling individual  blue squares posted:It means being sincere and self reflective. Which postmodern lit says is impossible. Postmodernism says we're all just cogs in the machine and lack true agency Go read The Things They Carried, no need to report back Nitevision fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:13
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Borneo Jimmy posted:The book Inherent Vice is better than the movie right? Yes.
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Mar 30, 2015 00:00
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V. Illych L. posted:no, i got that, i don't get the gretzky thing It's a post from FYAD, the Latino subforum that is mostly people posting monkey chease bullshit like "jope" and "brulpus". You can safely ignore it.
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Mar 31, 2015 00:04
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Seriously I don't think y'all mother fuckers listened to me when I said read David Vann I'll check him out OP, just as soon as I'm done with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
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Apr 4, 2015 06:54
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Earnestly posted:How often does the thread title change? An endless sequence of gbs-sourced mods keep thinking of the same relaly funny joke, and executing it, I'd have to imagine
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Jun 17, 2015 09:44
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I only hope Thomas Pynchon did his own research because the idea of him playing a final fantasy game is very funny to me His son was born in 1991 and would have been square in the target demographic for Pokemon, DBZ and Final Fantasy during the time Bleeding Edge is set in. I haven't read it though so I don't know
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Jun 18, 2015 08:20
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Schmischmenjamin posted:my bad. I liked your post.
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Aug 29, 2016 03:50
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THE PWNER posted:When I'm done with prose Odyssey, should I read His Dark Materials or Harry Potter? Infinite Jest
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Oct 29, 2016 10:14
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Lex Neville posted:Hi lit thread, I need your help. I've been asked to translate a piece of my choosing pertaining to "water" (yes, it's that broad) for a literary magazine. Preferably a short story, and it needs to be originally in English. Something to make the work stand out - an author that's promising but yet to break through, uniqueness in form, prose poetry, that kind of stuff - is a big plus. Incarnations of Burned Children OP.
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Feb 1, 2020 19:08
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Gravity's Rainbow is a book about approximation, confusion, and journeys leading nowhere. If you try to scientifically understand its atomic elements you are becoming the villain of your own reading. With that said, enjoy it however you like.
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Apr 18, 2020 20:18
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Carly Gay Dead Son posted:Is Cormac McCarthy horny? I ask, yet hope I never learn the answer. I lodge "no" here given that any hints of sexuality in his works I've read is directly and unmistakably sublimated into some theme of death and amorality and not pleasant at all. Not like Pynchon or Eco where there are heartfelt scenes of intimacy sidling with all the grand themes almost like humanity breaking through the intellectual clouds
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Jun 5, 2020 18:06
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blue squares posted:After I finish Moby Dick (which owns) I am going to FINALLY read Ulysses for the first time. I read Ulysses with beginner-level knowledge of Irish history and Catholicism (basically whatever I learned from reading Portrait of the Artist in college) and the Odyssey itself, and I was still enamored with and moved by it. Just jump in and paddle
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Aug 9, 2020 20:49
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Tolkien thread for your invented doggerel is that way ----------------->
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Aug 29, 2020 17:24
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J_RBG posted:I'll happily post here. My reading has been shot to poo poo the past month because I'm tired all the time. But I'm ploughing through Vollmann's The Ice Shirt because it ticks a load of my boxes, and I'm enjoying it. I wouldn't know what his reputation is among the US goons, because nobody seems to mention him, but this book is good anyway. It's essentially a retelling of the Vinland Saga with added drama, greater emphasis on the indigenous people of Greenland and Vinland, hand-drawn maps, psychogeographic contemporary stuff and some really good prose. This sounds sick, I'm ambiently aware of Vollmann but have never read him. Going on the list
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Nov 21, 2020 23:16
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Jrbg posted:Reading david hinton's anthology of classical chinese poetry. Anyone else read it? I'm barrelling through it––the translations read as good poetry in themselves but they also come with great short primers on major figures and the Chinese philosophical tradition. I'm about to gently caress hard with this, thank you for posting
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Apr 26, 2021 04:16
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I'm reading Min Kamp 2 by good old Karl Ove Knausgård. I like it. And to an American, his life in Sweden is effective as a fantasy story as well.
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Aug 11, 2021 19:59
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ThePopeOfFun posted:I’m doing a bit where I really enjoy Kleeman’s weird book, but the twist is it’s totally sincere. Mind posting about why you're liking it? I flushed this one back when it came out because I was so exhausted of the Consumerland wacky product/advertising stuff but maybe I was premature
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Sep 27, 2021 06:29
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ThePopeOfFun posted:I dunno if it’s the best book ever, but I love it. Word, that's all that matters. I probably tried to read it after mainlining a bunch of gen X lit and could not handle a single additional satire of a product name, that was around that time for me I think. I'm reading The Secret History now so plus ça change. Far from a perfect book but some of the characters are great and I can see why grad students during the Tarantino ascendancy would love it
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Sep 28, 2021 04:56
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apophenium posted:I've started the new Knausgaard, The Morning Star, and it's good. Being unable to compare it to his other works (it's the first I've read by him) I keep thinking about it like it's a Scandinavian Stephen King novel, though much more deliberate and lacking the just slightly out of date cultural references. Oh yeah I want to check this out. I just read and loved books 1 and 2 of My Struggle, those two by themselves had such a beautiful payoff.
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Oct 14, 2021 19:12
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Lobster Henry posted:Anyway, has anyone ITT read Nightwood by Djuna Barnes? I read it like 8 years ago and liked it, OP. Think of it like a long poem Heath posted:Djuna Barnes strikes me as being in that class of early 20th century artists who are more notable for their personalities than the actual lasting quality of their work 
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Dec 3, 2021 05:57
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Each paragraph of that passage explicitly names a dynamic of atavistic lust within the observer/would-be consumer, not the woman who is being observed. Like it literally says "we feel that we could eat her". No offense but I don't think you are reading it carefully enough if you are missing that
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Dec 18, 2021 00:32
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derp posted:i stand by my previous posts. the best artworks in literature are those in which the average reader would complain 'nothing happens.' All events are pure distraction, and only surface level. Real art can only be experienced in the internal world, where the human soul resides. I'm making books illegal
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Dec 14, 2022 21:58
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blue squares posted:I’m curious. What are the aspects of literature that folks in this thread most value? https://twitter.com/neonwario/status/1463229426016165891?s=20
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Jan 19, 2023 21:58
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TrixRabbi posted:That said, I agree about it having many moments of brilliance. There's sections of that book that are just imprinted on my brain now, and for something as long as it is I feel like I can recall a remarkable amount of it in pretty clear detail. Been a decade and I can hardly remember a lot of it but the Lenz/Gately arc that culminates in Gately fighting the Quebecois really stuck with me for the plain cinematic fun and menace of it. Wallace definitely gets in his own way and is at his best when he's not trying to be clever. Personally I think he did a lot of his strongest writing in the very dreary mode of Oblivion
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Feb 11, 2023 05:41
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It can be both homie. Jesus
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Jun 14, 2023 23:04
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I just finished The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (Very good) and am now reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Catch ya later..
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Aug 7, 2023 20:23
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Just read A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck. Didn't realize the author was a Mormon. Won't be making that mistake again.
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Nov 2, 2023 18:18
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Heath posted:For some reason when I think of Proust I think of the scene where he is horse-playing with Gilberte and gets so riled up he jizzes in his pants because it made me cackle https://x.com/dril/status/820791986798075904?s=20
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Nov 15, 2023 12:02
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Here to recommend Vachel Lindsay's A Handy Guide for Beggars, which I completely stumbled upon in Project Gutenberg. It's creative nonfiction about the author wandering parts of 1910s America on foot in a self-imposed Franciscan quest to live without money, instead trading lectures on or recitations of poetry for food and board. He's a genuine unpretentious talent in prose and it makes me sad I'd never heard of him before. And it's fascinating to see, from a primary source, how people of different stripes react to Lindsay trying to embody a practice of literature.
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Dec 23, 2023 21:10
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Knausgård is fascinating because he is basically the archetype of a sloppy writer but is so immensely instinctually gifted that he makes it work. The first 70-100 pages of every book of his I've read are an awkward slog and then at some point he catches the wind and you're off.
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Feb 15, 2024 01:03
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Tosk posted:any recommendations for specifically nordic authors? I hadn't heard of Fosse until he was mentioned and Septology looks fascinating, albeit nothing I would want to commit to right now. My knowledge of Nordic writers doesn't go very far beyond Hamsun and Knausgaard really. Probably a 101-level answer for the actual nords here but I was surprised by how much I loved The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (trans. Nunnally). Seems like a book that genuinely achieved timelessness. Would love to read more of her
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Feb 15, 2024 21:51
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People who are really annoying hacks can still write great books, like Blood Meridian
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Feb 17, 2024 04:44
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Blurred posted:Absolutely, but I wonder where the line between "straining" and "honest" actually is. Case in point, I read Gertrude Stein's "Food" a couple of weeks ago, and the entire text is made up of "prose" like this: This ["EGGS"] is a poem about pregnancy and wanting an abortion. quote:Kind height, kind in the right stomach with a little sudden mill. quote:Cunning shawl, cunning shawl to be steady. quote:In white in white handkerchiefs with little dots in a white belt all shadows are singular and procured and relieved. quote:No that is not the cows shame and a precocious sound, it is a bite. quote:Cut up alone the paved way which is harm. Harm is old boat and likely a dash. I'm sure other readings are possible, and there are bits that dangle, but this is all right in there. It's a little demanding but not especially difficult as far as modernist poems go. You just need to dial the right wavelength
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Mar 5, 2024 09:05
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