IdleRich

IdleRich
Harry Matthews is the great American Oulipo writer but i like what Tony White is doing with his crime novel Fountain in the Forest. There's Calvino and Fournel as well as the godfather of the movement- Raymond Queneau
I've read a fair bit of Matthews and Calvino... not White or Fournel though. Cheers.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Restraints will always be better if imposed externally, so you've no choice, as they are then more real
Arguably they did become real in a sense, certainly they had real consequences in that Perec would have looked a right bell-end if he'd put the thing out and a few days later someone had said "No look there's an E on page 5 and another on 233".
 

catalog

Well-known member
'for the good times' by David Keenan. Just finished 'another country' by James Baldwin and 'low' by jeet thayil. Both of those very good, this one has got off to a good start.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE.
by John Donne


I FIX mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye ;
My picture drown'd in a transparent tear,
When I look lower I espy ;
Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and marr'd, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform thy will?

But now I've drunk thy sweet salt tears,
And though thou pour more, I'll depart ;
My picture vanished, vanish all fears
That I can be endamaged by that art ;
Though thou retain of me
One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've just finished a really fascinating book called Talking About Life, that was a gift from a friend. It's one of those books that's in the form of conversations, so the editor is present throughout the book but every chapter involves someone else. Some of these contributors are big names I recognise from astronomy and cosmology - Neil D. Tyson, Martin Rees, Paul Davies - but there's also science communicator Ann Druyan (Sagan's widow) and a whole bunch of top-of-their-field type people from palaeontology, microbiology, genetics, planetary science and the tech world. It's an exploration of the concept of astrobiology, or exobiology, which covers both the practical search for life elsewhere in the universe and the theoretical investigation of the possibility. So you've got people who've been instrumental in the setting up of the SETI programme alongside experts in terrestrial extremophiles and what this could mean for the possibility of life in environments that, at first glance, look extremely inhospitable. The penultimate chapter is a talk with a science fiction author (Ben Bova - yes, that's 'Bova' with a 'B' - not heard of him but apparently he's a pretty big deal) and the last chapter involves a philosopher and poet, which I thought was a nice way to round it out. Chris Impey is the editor, if anyone wants to check it out - sort of thing HMGovt might like, I reckon.

In other news I've finally given up on the Wake. I can appreciate that it's a work of great ingenuity and uniqueness but it got to the point where I thought "Am I reading this because I'm enjoying it, or because I like the idea that it's a clever book that clever people read?", and decided it was more the latter than the former. I haven't written it off, so maybe I'll come back to it in the future.
 

luka

Well-known member
The thing about the wake is, you dip into it when you're in the mood the rest of the time you feel faintly annoyed by it. BUT the thing is, it leaves all this stuff in your brain. So when you take loads of drugs you start explaining bits to people you didn't even know you understood. Not interesting for them, but fascinating for you. it sinks it's deep structure into your brain
 

luka

Well-known member
So when I went to that British museum exhibition a while back, I think is was about Assyria and two brothers fight this mega war against each other, decimate a city, throw hundreds of people down a well, it illuminated a section of the wake for me. Stuff like that. It never leaves you. You keep thinking through it.

I really hate it a lot,of the time but I can't argue with the effects
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
The thing about the wake is, you dip into it when you're in the mood the rest of the time you feel faintly annoyed by it. BUT the thing is, it leaves all this stuff in your brain. So when you take loads of drugs you start explaining bits to people you didn't even know you understood. Not interesting for them, but fascinating for you. it sinks it's deep structure into your brain

that's more and more how i'm starting to view culture. just take in disparate fragments of it, just so you've got some clever framework to use when you're doing a choon of the day.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's really useful to have all this junk in there. So you can connect it together to make all these rubbish, wheezing, creaking machines out of
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
'for the good times' by David Keenan. Just finished 'another country' by James Baldwin and 'low' by jeet thayil. Both of those very good, this one has got off to a good start.
Jeet Thayil is the one who wrote a book about opium dens in Mumbai and how all the opium fiends started getting into heroin right? I enjoyed that, also he was in that band Atomic Forest although there seems to be some debate as to whether he was part of the band when they recorded the legendary (and expensive) Obsession album

 

catalog

Well-known member
That's the badger. Yeah did you read his other one, 'the book of chocolate saints'. It was pretty long and sprawling, contained some good bits but ultimately can't remember a great deal. This one is more in the vein of 'narcopolis', but even tighter and more straightforward. All about going on a bender to deal with the grief of his wife's death. He's very reminiscent of bolano for me, and I like his writing style, he's got that same thing of spending years as a poet, so the lines are nice to read. I knew he was a musician, but the music I tracked down sounded really schmaltzy coffee table jazzy, will check out this band.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's really useful to have all this junk in there. So you can connect it together to make all these rubbish, wheezing, creaking machines out of

"The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together."
 

entertainment

Well-known member
I'm reading Karl Popper's Open Society

Very good stuff on Plato. Tracing the lines from the first ontological assumptions of the Greeks to Plato's totalitarian ideology.

You have to get the second volume before he tears into Hegel and Marx, though, was really looking forward to that.
 

jenks

thread death
'for the good times' by David Keenan. Just finished 'another country' by James Baldwin and 'low' by jeet thayil. Both of those very good, this one has got off to a good start.

i liked a lot of For The Good Times - i wasnt so keen on the comic book bits but the rest was grimly brilliant. He speaks well - his LRB interview with Bill Drummond is hilarious.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I read some more Donne last night and I was delighted by them. The famous 'Elegy to his mistress going to bed', fantastic

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50340/to-his-mistress-going-to-bed

(Don't really like the last couplet but up til then its pure porny gold)

"Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’hill’s shadow steals. "

Barty I think this could be the perfect poem for you.
 
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catalog

Well-known member
Yeah I think it's better than the previous book, the characters are more well defined. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like he's nailing a certain kind of fantasy male writing
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
That's the badger. Yeah did you read his other one, 'the book of chocolate saints'. It was pretty long and sprawling, contained some good bits but ultimately can't remember a great deal. This one is more in the vein of 'narcopolis', but even tighter and more straightforward. All about going on a bender to deal with the grief of his wife's death. He's very reminiscent of bolano for me, and I like his writing style, he's got that same thing of spending years as a poet, so the lines are nice to read. I knew he was a musician, but the music I tracked down sounded really schmaltzy coffee table jazzy, will check out this band.

My girlfriend read 'Narcopolis' a few years ago and really liked it - maybe I'll read that next.

Speaking of Indian writers, I've got a copy of 'The Satanic Verses' knocking about somewhere. Should probably read that at some point, even if only to see what all the fuss is about. I liked 'Midnight's Children' when I read that years ago, although I probably have a higher tolerance for magic realism than some people do.
 
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