what are you reading now?

C

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
In the last month or so I've read Freakenomics (long-winded but interesting enough), a couple Wrestling memoirs (Jerry Lawler, Daniel Bryan; both respectively well made. The latter is particularly effective at simply staying to an actual narrative and not suffering from the installment/story-telling ramble that bogs down a lot of that stuff. The former has that but Lawler is a good albeit amoral story teller like any true carny) and a collection of Kafka's notebooks/journals. If there was ever someone you could laugh at for saying in their diary "Couldn't get out of bed today", it's Kafka.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Having a hard time finishing any books this year, although I've bought several hundred.

I'm currently reading Michael Lewis's 'Liars Poker', an account of his years with the bond trading firm Solomon Brothers. It's brilliantly written. I'm fucking envious of his talent for writing, even more so than his almost as lucrative talent for trading.

Also reading W.B. Yeats's poetry in bits and pieces, and finding it so richly rewarding that I'm beginning to idly dream of dropping off the career ladder into a warm pool of a PHD in poetry, in which I can wallow and drown.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Mr. Tea said:
I've just picked up Frazer's The Golden Bough. Let's see how this goes.
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"For thousands of years ago [homeopathic magic] was known to the sorcerers of ancient India, Babylon and Egypt, as well as of Greece and Rome, and at this day it is still resorted to by cunning and malignant savages in Australia, Africa and Scotland."

- James George Frazer: anthropologist, philosopher, comic genius.
 
Wanda

Wanda

Member
I just got Ira Levin's 'The Stepford Wives' :) Loved the movie for ages but never read the book. Recently read Jelinek's 'The Piano Teacher' after loving the movie forever and was sooo impressed. Jelinek's a treasure! Hoping for the same with Levin.
 
you

you

Well-known member
I few friends have told me about Franzen's The Corrections so I started it. I do not like anything in it. I don't the stories he is telling and I don't like how he tells them.

He uses long indulgent sentences. Nothing wrong with this per se... but Franzen's don't add anything other than additional text. Tao Lin, or Bret Easton Ellis use long convoluted sentences to impart a sinking feeling or a confused feeling (or to show the obsessiveness of a narrator). But Franzen just adds brands, fabrics, food details all over the place - but this doesn't serve the characters. (We are a long way past Wolfe and Ellis here). It just paints a very detailed picture of a certain east coast scene - a scene that is more about food and property than people and desires. One line in particular really struck me. He mentions the different types of jams Enid makes. Something like

'On the same shelf as Enid's jams (apricot and lychee xxx and zzzzz, yyyy and aaaaa).'

Now, if he'd mentioned the jams and added Enid was proud of her jams being quirky or unusual or that Enid 'prided herself on her jam making creativity' etc it would've added something. But no, he just lists them - as if the reader is supposed to be impressed by this - the same way the viewer is supposed to be impressed by Sarah Jessica Parker referencing swanky restaurants in Sex and the City.

He manages to be indulgent and pretentious whilst also being quite shallow. Nice easy read though... airport lit. Put essentially, his trade so far is making peppy bouncy capers out of the binds of the privileged (Chip's shopping trip for $80 salmon. Gary's phone call, with a wife and kids in the background).

There is something horribly smug about this wallowing in the fluster and fretful business of bourgeois trapping. I feel he is writing for a small group of people.

Also - the female characters feel wafer thin. Enid in particular. Which is unfair. And this is wafer thin compared to Chip, a liberal chauvinist whose only character drive after 180 pages seems to be sexual gratification and booze.
 
Wanda

Wanda

Member
you said:
I few friends have told me about Franzen's The Corrections so I started it. I do not like anything in it. I don't the stories he is telling and I don't like how he tells them.

He uses long indulgent sentences. Nothing wrong with this per se... but Franzen's don't add anything other than additional text. Tao Lin, or Bret Easton Ellis use long convoluted sentences to impart a sinking feeling or a confused feeling (or to show the obsessiveness of a narrator). But Franzen just adds brands, fabrics, food details all over the place - but this doesn't serve the characters. (We are a long way past Wolfe and Ellis here). It just paints a very detailed picture of a certain east coast scene - a scene that is more about food and property than people and desires. One line in particular really struck me. He mentions the different types of jams Enid makes. Something like

'On the same shelf as Enid's jams (apricot and lychee xxx and zzzzz, yyyy and aaaaa).'

Now, if he'd mentioned the jams and added Enid was proud of her jams being quirky or unusual or that Enid 'prided herself on her jam making creativity' etc it would've added something. But no, he just lists them - as if the reader is supposed to be impressed by this - the same way the viewer is supposed to be impressed by Sarah Jessica Parker referencing swanky restaurants in Sex and the City.

He manages to be indulgent and pretentious whilst also being quite shallow. Nice easy read though... airport lit. Put essentially, his trade so far is making peppy bouncy capers out of the binds of the privileged (Chip's shopping trip for $80 salmon. Gary's phone call, with a wife and kids in the background).

There is something horribly smug about this wallowing in the fluster and fretful business of bourgeois trapping. I feel he is writing for a small group of people.

Also - the female characters feel wafer thin. Enid in particular. Which is unfair. And this is wafer thin compared to Chip, a liberal chauvinist whose only character drive after 180 pages seems to be sexual gratification and booze.
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However, it's nice and fat and makes a great doorstop.
 
Wanda

Wanda

Member
Wanda said:
I just got Ira Levin's 'The Stepford Wives' :) Loved the movie for ages but never read the book. Recently read Jelinek's 'The Piano Teacher' after loving the movie forever and was sooo impressed. Jelinek's a treasure! Hoping for the same with Levin.
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So, update on Ira -- This is the most stripped down book I have ever read. I love efficient writing and would say JCO and Shirley Jackson are fantastic examples of this, expertly indulging at the right times for the desired effect. But Ira, wow. Things are more than efficient; they are basic. It almost reads as a script except for the sparse mentions of different places/settings. I read a version of the script that had no action text, just the dialogue, and was surprised that it was richer. I think because you only engage with the character's voices, which are full of personality and distinction, one after the other. But it a weird way, that Ira is so basic with his treatment of everything but dialogue contributes to the eeriness of the story. There's an emphasis on the commerciality of the Stepford wives in the book that wasn't in the movie and I think this very bland, simple writing Ira has going reflects that. I think I love it.... In any case, it's very different!

Would love to hear thoughts if anyone wants to read it. Goes quickly.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
you said:
I few friends have told me about Franzen's The Corrections so I started it. I do not like anything in it. I don't the stories he is telling and I don't like how he tells them.

It just paints a very detailed picture of a certain east coast scene - a scene that is more about food and property than people and desires. One line in particular really struck me. He mentions the different types of jams Enid makes. Something like

'On the same shelf as Enid's jams (apricot and lychee xxx and zzzzz, yyyy and aaaaa).'
Click to expand...

What do your friends like about it?

Also, is it possible that the 'point' he is making is that this 'scene' is more about food and property than people and desires?

Not defending the book BTW, I've not read it, and Franzen comes across as a bit of a dickhead.
 
you

you

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
What do your friends like about it?

Also, is it possible that the 'point' he is making is that this 'scene' is more about food and property than people and desires?

Not defending the book BTW, I've not read it, and Franzen comes across as a bit of a dickhead.
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I think the friends who recommended it enjoyed it when it came out, 2001 - before the crash - back when American TV was saturated with references of consumerism (think Frasier, Sex and the City etc). One friend has recently re-read it and said it is totally irrelevant but still said I should read it.

I don't think he is consciously making a point about consumerism no. Because he tends to describe the accoutrements of the east-coast upper middle class in his own voice. He doesn't say put the awareness of niche brands and foods into the character's voice - just relentlessly adds this detail in himself. I feel this is part and parcel of this overly complicated American style - like Donna Tartt. Using such repellent detail is fine if used in a certain way - e.g. Ellis' first person riff on capitalism; American Psycho. But when it is the mode of the author it seems, like I said, at once indulgent, pretentious and shallow.

A good example of his overblown style is below. Notice the repetition and histrionic adjective choice before he flatly tells you how the character feels:

"Enid upended the pork-chop pan on the counter beside the overloaded drainer. Gary knew he ought to pick up a towel, but the jumble of wet pans and platters and utensils from his birthday dinner made him weary; to dry them seemed a task as Sisyphean as to repair the things wrong with his parents' house. The only way to avoid despair was not to involve himself at all.
He poured a smallish brandy nightcap while Enid, with unhappy stabbing motions, scraped waterlogged food scraps from the bottom of the sink."

In conjunction with this, I often feel he is telling me rather than showing me
 
droid

droid

Well-known member
I have pre-despised Franzen despite never reading him - thanks for providing some justification.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
you said:
In conjunction with this, I often feel he is telling me rather than showing me
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This is a real cardinal sin with you, isn't it? Not that it's not an important thing to be aware of (and avoid) - I think I'm guilty of it in a lot of my own writing.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
you said:
A good example of his overblown style is below. Notice the repetition and histrionic adjective choice before he flatly tells you how the character feels:

"Enid upended the pork-chop pan on the counter beside the overloaded drainer. Gary knew he ought to pick up a towel, but the jumble of wet pans and platters and utensils from his birthday dinner made him weary
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I don't notice any histrionic adjective choices before the flat 'made him weary'? Do you mean 'overloaded'? Or 'wet'?

I assume you're referring to 'Sisyphean', which certainly reads badly. Depends what this 'Gary' character is like, I suppose: is he given to such pretentiousness? Or is that Franzen?

It looks dull, in any case.
 
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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"Enid upended the pork-chop pan on the counter beside the drainer. Gary knew he ought to pick up a towel, but was wearied by the jumble of wet pans and platters and utensils from his birthday dinner; to dry them seemed as difficult as to repair the things wrong with his parents' house. The only way to avoid despair was not to involve himself at all. He poured a brandy nightcap while Enid, with stabbing motions, scraped food scraps from the sink."

Better?

By removing Sisyphean, you've removed the comic irony of considering drying the dishes that difficult (as paltry as it is).

But OTOH, I doubt even the most pretentious of people would automatically think that drying the dishes was 'Sisyphean'. For one thing, it would be inaccurate, as a 'Sisyphean' task is surely one which cannot be finished?

IN YOUR FACE FRANZEN.
 
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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I looked up an online translation of 'Madame Bovary' with a view to comparing Franzen and Flaubz. (Unfair in translation, but Flaubz is generally seen as a model of style and clarity.)

Inadvertent bonus was that I now want to read Bovez again, having only read two short paragraphs:

'Charles’s conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone’s ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel.

A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.'
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Corpsey said:
But OTOH, I doubt even the most pretentious of people would automatically think that drying the dishes was 'Sisyphean'. For one thing, it would be inaccurate, as a 'Sisyphean' task is surely one which cannot be finished?
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The kitchen is so dank that, as soon as he's finished drying the last item of crockery, the ones he washed and dried first are already begrimed anew with condensation and incipient mildew growth. And he can never properly dry out the cloth either, so even the cloth he's supposed to be drying with is permanently damp and seething with microbial infestation and hyphæ questing for nutrients. Thus rendering the whole task literally Sisyphean.

It's actually a masterpiece of existential cosmic horror.
 
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droid

droid

Well-known member
"to dry them seemed as difficult as to repair the things wrong with his parents' house"

Is awful.

"to dry them seemed as difficult as attempting to repair everything wrong with his parents' house"

Also bad, but better

"to dry them all seemed impossible. Like trying to fix everything that was wrong in his parents house"

I dunno. Id probably just dump the comparison altogether.
 
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