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Yo, can we call House of Leaves postmodern? I know it's kind of like "babby's first metatextualism," but gimmicky as it is it's a hell of a ride and it was an awesome stepping stone for me into Pynchon/DFW.
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Dec 1, 2014 04:26
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Tim Burns Effect posted:I enjoyed the Navidson Record sections but I still gave up about halfway through the book because I disliked the Jonny Truant sections so much (it felt like it was trying too hard to be "edgy" in a Chuck Palahniuk kind of way and I don't like his style either). Yeah, a lot of the Johnny Truant stuff is a bit much with the whole "I'm a street walkin' cheeta with a heart full of napalm straight outta Bukowski!" vibe, but the Navidson parts were incredibly absorbing. There were passages there that were more viscerally disturbing than nearly anything I've ever read, with the possible exception of Blood Meridian and J.G. Ballard's Crash. Anyhow, I know a ton of people hate on HoL, and that's their prerogative of course, but I can't help feeling that there's just a bit of genre snobbery underlying the backlash. Then again I was a freshman in college last time I read it, so maybe if I did a reread I'd be rolling my eyes the whole time, dunno. Falstaff Infection fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Dec 7, 2014 |
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Dec 7, 2014 06:50
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Price Check posted:
Also, yeah, that Baseball chapter is one of the best things I've ever read. Like, holy poo poo-- "He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful." If you don't have time for a "big read" like Underworld, you should still just read the first 50 or so pages. They hold up perfectly well on their own as a sort of dream-like, historically portentous short story.
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Dec 7, 2014 06:53
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Earwicker posted:There are a lot of much worse books out there than House of Leaves and parts of it are decently entertaining, but the writing is indeed bad and really the whole thing is just Borges fanfiction. Which I guess is somewhat unique. All literature is fanfiction, though. Shakespeare is Holinshed fanfiction. Cormac McCarthy is Faulkner fanfiction.
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Dec 7, 2014 21:10
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blue squares posted:This is stupid and so is the assertion that House of Leaves is Borges fanfiction. I'm not commenting on the quality of the work but trying to discount artistic influences as just "fanfiction" is so silly. I'm not discounting artistic influences though. House of Leaves was certainly inspired by Borges (which is what I understood "fanfiction" to mean in this context), as were thousands of other works. My point was pretty much the same as yours-- just because one work is heavily influenced by another is no reason to dismiss it, because all art is a result of its creators' influences. Of course, some works are more or less derivative than others, but while there are certainly problems with House of Leaves, I wouldn't say that being too derivative of Borges is one of them.
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Dec 7, 2014 22:04
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Earwicker posted:
Haha yeah, I'm not gonna sit here and try to argue that Danielewski, a reasonably talented pop-lit writer, is on par with Shakespeare, the greatest poet and playwright in the English language. And I take your point about how execution is the most important element-- that even something super derivative can be good if it's done well. I guess I just disagree with you about Danielewski's prose, except maybe the Johnny Truant sections, which can get fairly unbearable.
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Dec 7, 2014 23:36
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