what are you reading now?
Lucia Lanigan
Member
viktorvaughn's right about Ballard, I think: he's an ideas person, definitely not a draftsperson. Much as I like some of his stuff (B not V, not that V seems so bad), he does have an inflated reputation. I find his short stories unreadably boring, but his 70s novels are compelling and have enjoyable daft spells - we're being let loose in the psyche of an open-minded posh thug, really.
There's a sort of pulp/high culture crossover going on throughout British literary history, and I probably only say that cause I'm not in a position to know whether Polish or Spanish lit have a similar balance. Prose is a bastard form anyway, so the markers between proper and silly are arbitrary, even though the naffness or condescension can be real enough. I just know that many of my favourite British writers combine the pair: Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter, Anna Kavan, the men...
I'm going to write a series of articles about good books with a fantastical bent, starting with Arthur Machen. Read some of his free ones online - The Great God Pan, The Three Impostors, The Shining Pyramid, The Terror - and you'll see why.
There's a sort of pulp/high culture crossover going on throughout British literary history, and I probably only say that cause I'm not in a position to know whether Polish or Spanish lit have a similar balance. Prose is a bastard form anyway, so the markers between proper and silly are arbitrary, even though the naffness or condescension can be real enough. I just know that many of my favourite British writers combine the pair: Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter, Anna Kavan, the men...
I'm going to write a series of articles about good books with a fantastical bent, starting with Arthur Machen. Read some of his free ones online - The Great God Pan, The Three Impostors, The Shining Pyramid, The Terror - and you'll see why.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I loved The Great God Pan and The Hill Of Dreams. Machen's a consummate prose lyricist. TGGP is proper fin-de-siecle aestheticist-decadence horror while THOD has some of the most beautiful prose I've probably ever read. That said, the main character is a sensitive-suffering-aesthete-cast-adrift-in-a-world-of-uncouth-philistines to the point of being an insufferable emo...
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Seem to remember (though not in any detail) DH Lawrences short stories being pretty good from school, and he did some some nice little poems about animals too. Never managed to get through a novel though.
Just finished Crash, thoguht it was excellent. I wonder if Elizabeth Taylor ever read it or was aware of it? If she did it must have freaked her the fuck out. No wonder she was left out of the film version.
D
droid
Guest
re: 2666
Google street view pics of Sonora, Mexico:
Google street view pics of Sonora, Mexico:
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
is that in reference to the massive amount of highway robbery there, which Sonora is known for? I actually got a pretty crazy story about hitching there tho not in reference to robbery.
Anyone read Timothy Mo? I just finished The Redundancy of Courage, a retelling of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. He's an interesting novelist, after three Booker shortlistings in the 80s and early 90s he got pissed off with all agents and publishers everywhere and started self-publishing, and as a result kind of disappeared.
I'd also like to read The Savage detectives soon
I'd also like to read The Savage detectives soon
Lucia Lanigan
Member
Yeah, it's got about 40 pages of wonderful, lyrical writing and 100 that read like a filibuster. He suits shorter tales really; he's all about piercing images, sudden horrors and enchantments. The weird thing with Machen tales is, you know something special and unique happened, but when you try to tell people about it you have trouble identifying what it was. (Which makes rue the day I said I'd write a piece on him!)
I'd recommend The Three Impostors to anyone, it's just so moreish.
Lucia Lanigan
Member
The Hearing Trumpet. Unreservedly. Funny as fuck and wildly imaginitive.
slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
PKD's best book, for me. He's an artist who influence is immense and someone I admire, ideas-wise, but have always found his prose to be so second-rate. I'll probably try him again at some point.
I've just bought a little book called The Face On The Fork from Beat Scene Press containing texts relating to Burroughs by Iain Sinclair. Sad WSB junky that I am, I'm actually putting off reading it.
slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
Oh, and those photos from Mexico bring to mind The Wild Boys.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Currently reading Childhood, Boyhood and Youth by Tolstoy. Certainly isn't up to his later work so far, but fascinating stuff, especially taking into consideration how unhappy Tolstoy's actual childhood was compared to the idyllic vision of childhood he creates (often quite brilliantly) in the book. There's a phrase in there, how looking into the past he feels as if he's looking through a mist of tears - that haze of nostalgia, softening everything despite the brilliantly observed details that animate it all. A bit like those scenes in ''The Tree of Life'' which evoke either childhood or your romantic nostalgic memory of it.
Next I want to read The Iliad, after reading an interesting review of a new translation of it in the London Review of Books. I was trying to work out which translation to go for for about two hours in Waterstones today. Knowing me I'll probably get about one/two thirds through and then give it up for a while and never go back to it. But the bits I read today were good...
Next I want to read The Iliad, after reading an interesting review of a new translation of it in the London Review of Books. I was trying to work out which translation to go for for about two hours in Waterstones today. Knowing me I'll probably get about one/two thirds through and then give it up for a while and never go back to it. But the bits I read today were good...
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I've been reading a bit of Lovecraft recently and I do like it but I always find it amusing how often he insist on using words like ''horrible/hideous/terrible'' when describing accursed landscapes and so on. He really lays it on thick. It's particularly funny when you listen to an audiobook version of one of his stories, could make a devastatingly effective drinking game. The legacy, I suppose, of Poe - who I gather was a huge, almost tyrannical influence on him, especially in his earlier stories.
I suppose one of the things that makes Lovecraft's stories so fascinating is how revealing they are of his own psychological hang-ups (many of which we all share, to some extent). For instance ''The Shadow Over Innsmouth'', all that stuff about degenerate races going wild/evil as the legacy of civilised society rots all around them. I love the mythos aspect of it, too, the shadowy, abysmal ''Gods'', the pessimistic view of our insignificance on a universal scale. I just wish sometimes that it wasn't so hammy, but then I think thats part of its success, the cultivation of a really gothic and decrepit atmosphere.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
http://librivox.org/the-great-god-pan-by-arthur-machen/
freely downloadable audiobook of ''The Great God Pan''. No idea how good it is, just looked it up.
Wayne June does most of the Lovecraft audiobooks I've heard, always makes sure to emphasise the ''horrible''s and ''hideous''s.
freely downloadable audiobook of ''The Great God Pan''. No idea how good it is, just looked it up.
Wayne June does most of the Lovecraft audiobooks I've heard, always makes sure to emphasise the ''horrible''s and ''hideous''s.
Lucia Lanigan
Member
Yeah, Lovecraft's incredibly bombastic. I enjoy that but you really have to get on board and read a tale in one sitting, I think, cause it's a bit exhausting to start up again once you've taken a breather.
Machen's gig is realism with an occasional peak behind the veil. Has quite an impact when it happens.
Machen's gig is realism with an occasional peak behind the veil. Has quite an impact when it happens.
e/y
Well-known member
That's still my favourite Tolstoy (probably in large part b/c I read it when I was very young).