bandshell - I think Dubliners is one of my favourite books, I just love it. Don't think I've read naturalism at the quality of it anywhere else. And it's certainly the best short story collection I've read.
last several things completed:
Dreaming of Babylon - Richard Brautigan
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
In the Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami
Piercing - Ryu Murakami
reading now:
Jakob Von Gunten - Robert Walser
Exercises in Style - Raymond Queneau
The Franchiser - Stanley Elkin
Herman Hesse - Stories of Five Decades
on deck:
Tales of Pirx the Pilot - Stanislaw Lem
The Living End - Stanley Elkin
Rhinocerus - Eugène Ionesco
very curious, i'm reading the same book. it must be the financial crisis. it's very psychedelic and humorous, as you point out, but i've only read the first chapter, it could become something else. it was a choice between this and pornografia (here they are separate books) so i went with this first to get a sense of the author. i also picked up la rochefoucauld's maximes, which i'm reading in between, and sade's justine, which looks great on the shelf.I just started reading 'Cosmos' by Gombrowicz, and have for Ferdydurke lined up. Seems like a pretty funny writer from what I've read thus far.
Also reading 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' by 18th century Scottish novelist James Hogg. Quite enjoying it so far, though I'm yet to get to the meat of the book. I'm hoping it's less mannered and novelistic than it has been so far.
Strange book."If you're into the absurdity of it when one of them shouts 'Berg!' get to Ann Quin's Berg next."
thanks, i'll look it up.I really liked Cosmos, even though I read the wrong translation by most accounts (I've got the one that comes with Pornografia; the stand-alone one is supposed to be the, er, one). Good era of fiction, that. If you're into the absurdity of it when one of them shouts 'Berg!' get to Ann Quin's Berg next.
...didn't realise it was gonna be (kinda) magic-realism which is something I know people have a problem with...