IdleRich

IdleRich
"I've just finished about 85% of David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men". It's very very clever, and he was obviously an exceptional writer, but BY GOD it's fucking tedious. Long long long and incredibly self-absorbed and obsessively detailed interior monologues, over and over again, picking apart ever painful detail - I can liken it to having an argument with a really clever friend at 5am when you're both really pissed on gin and really should be going to bed, but can't. I only managed to finish so much of it because it was the only thing I had on me on a long train ride across Catalonia. Amazingly clever, witty and perceptive, and at moments he manages to transcend the tedium, I suppose, so worth reading but rather teeth-grinding.

Has put me off wanting to read Infinite Jest, a bit."
It shouldn't because I didn't really like Brief Interviews much and I loved IJ. Had roughly the same problems with it as you - too many skilfully constructed but tedious circular arguments and infinite regresses.

Anyway, I've not had much chance to read more of A Void but what I have read is rather weird - there seems to be an unattributed retelling of Bioy Casares' (sp?) The Invention of Morel (though without any "e"s of course) and then a similar reworking of one of Poe's detective stories but with a different ending. There are also other stories which I don't recognise but which I suspect might be based on other classic novels. Anyone got any idea why he does this? Or is it just to make the reader feel clever when he spots the references?
 

faustus

Well-known member
I'm reading Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje - forensics and archaeological digs in Sri Lanka. He is a seriously good writer - the weight and rhythm of his prose, the meandering about between different time periods. anyone else read him?
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
Recently finished Franzen's Freedom. It is a perfect summer read. Not much more I can say than that, really, except, maybe, that I liked it all right.

Now I am reading He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond, based on a recommendation (or perhaps just a mention) on this board. I am halfway through but I am enjoying it. Hardboiled detective fiction type thing, I guess.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Recently finished Franzen's Freedom. It is a perfect summer read. Not much more I can say than that, really, except, maybe, that I liked it all right."
It is pretty good, kinda easy to devour in a Tom Wolfe sort of way and yet a bit too involved to dismiss as a Big Mac of literature or whatever. But not too long after I read it I read Infinite Jest and it struck me that, in some sense at least, both books seek to do the same thing - to encapsulate America (or the world) in the late 20th or early 21st century. What's gone wrong, what's gone right and how that works on both a personal and global level and ideally on every level inbetween. What western humanity is, basically - up to a point. And it also struck me that on those terms Freedom is as far behind IJ as playschool is behind university. Maybe it's unfair to castigate something because there is something similar that's so much better but that's always the way of the world. Emile Heskey is a perfectly workmanlike forward, he's just not as good as Messi. Same goes here I think.
 

slim jenkins

El Hombre Invisible
Now I am reading He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond, based on a recommendation (or perhaps just a mention) on this board. I am halfway through but I am enjoying it. Hardboiled detective fiction type thing, I guess.

Interesting writer. I read all the Factory novels when they came out, along with his 60s works. He has a unique voice as an ex-Etonian dabbling with the criminal class of old 'Swinging' London.
 

jenks

thread death
@you Have you read The Possessed by Elif Bautman about her time as doctoral student of Russian Lit? really gripping final chapter on Demons/Possessed.

I know your penchant for all things Fyodor.
 

you

Well-known member
Hi Jenks

No, I haven't came across this book before, it looks like a kind of personal and anecdotal account of Russian literature in some ways. Is there a decent amount of literary analysis for some books?? What does she say about Demons?

That book definitely looks interesting though, popped it on the wish list! Feel free to tell me more about it.

I've tentatively started reading Eugene Thackers 'In the Dust of this Planet', light relief from the Potocki.. Tariq Goddards 'The Message' arrived for me this week too.
 

jenks

thread death
Hi Jenks

No, I haven't came across this book before, it looks like a kind of personal and anecdotal account of Russian literature in some ways. Is there a decent amount of literary analysis for some books?? What does she say about Demons?

That book definitely looks interesting though, popped it on the wish list! Feel free to tell me more about it.

I've tentatively started reading Eugene Thackers 'In the Dust of this Planet', light relief from the Potocki.. Tariq Goddards 'The Message' arrived for me this week too.

It's a strange mixture of memoir and literary analysis. She has three sections on studying Uzbek in Samarkand which is mainly amusing but does sneak in quite a lot about Uzbek poetry and folklore. The other sections are based around various writers and conferences she has attended but all the time the literary analysis sits ticking away at the back. She starts with Tolstoy, her great love but has good sections on Pushkin, Chekhov and finally Dostoevsky. It's worth a read if the Russian novel is your kind of thing.

Now onto the Sister Brothers - just shortlisted for the Booker 9and which i was unaware of when i bought it) - hoping it'll take my mind off the new term and marking.
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
It is pretty good, kinda easy to devour in a Tom Wolfe sort of way and yet a bit too involved to dismiss as a Big Mac of literature or whatever. But not too long after I read it I read Infinite Jest and it struck me that, in some sense at least, both books seek to do the same thing - to encapsulate America (or the world) in the late 20th or early 21st century. What's gone wrong, what's gone right and how that works on both a personal and global level and ideally on every level inbetween. What western humanity is, basically - up to a point. And it also struck me that on those terms Freedom is as far behind IJ as playschool is behind university. Maybe it's unfair to castigate something because there is something similar that's so much better but that's always the way of the world. Emile Heskey is a perfectly workmanlike forward, he's just not as good as Messi. Same goes here I think.

I've got shitloads of train travel with work over the next couple of months and am toying with attempting Infinite Jest which is on my shelf or reading the selection of smaller books next to my bed.

Having just read Freedom also, would you recommend IJ as worth all the hours then?
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
read IJ next!
i have been wanting to reread it but i think i need for it to steep for a few more years, besides, i've got a stack of books on my nightstand that are begging for a bit of attention, including DFW's Pale King. i think i may go for Death in Venice next. only have read one other Mann, that being Magic Mountain, but that is one of my favorites, so i figure DIV is a logical next step.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm reading something kinda fluffy and not terribly literary at the moment but unsure what I should pick up next. Should I go for:

  • Crime and Punishment
  • Burroughs' The Soft Machine - started this a while ago but got a bit bored by its utter nonsensicality. Maybe just need to man up and plough on with it? Dunno
  • A. Crowley, The Drug and other stories - not sure if this is going to be worth reading or a bunch of pretentious druggy wibble (see above) - only one way to find out I guess
  • Some more Flan O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds sounds like it could be a lot of fun
?
 
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bandshell

Grand High Witch
The Soft Machine - started this a while ago but got a bit bored by its utter nonsensicality. Maybe just need to man up and plough on with it? Dunno.

I found myself in a similar situation. It was alright. Some great bits in it but I got very bored at times. Much preferred Naked Lunch and Junky.

Mind you, I enjoyed reading sections to my mother.
 

slowtrain

Well-known member
I have been reading Villette.

And while I'm not sure that I have had a real sense of wonder return to me, I can confirm that Charlotte Bronte was actually a genius.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
i loved freedom - very enjoyable, written with a lot of flair and elan, intelligent, smart etc, esp in the way as someone else posted, how it connects the personal to the global/corporate, but the corrections is better, features some of the same sorts of themes (corporations vs people, family vs personal relationships) and i think does it better as it seems to flow a little better. i think with freedom he was inevitably feeling pressure as a result of the corrections so you can tell he really edited himself very sharply at times. i still have yet to finish corrections though, got about 40 pages left. it is one of the best books ive read. going to seek out IJ based on the recommendations here.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Having just read Freedom also, would you recommend IJ as worth all the hours then?"
Absolutely. Also, although it's big it's (in most parts at least) kind of a page-turner (not so much because you want to find out what happens next, although at times that is true as well, but because of the sheer fun it is to read) and I don't think it takes long to read. Took me less than two weeks and my friend took it on a one week holiday with him on my recommendation and he has nearly finished it after that. I mean, most books are what, three hundred pages long and I suspect you wouldn't think that reading three of them would necessarily require an investment of an unreasonable amount of time.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Gonna get on the bus in a sec and open The Broom of the System by DFW. Hoping that will be somewhere near as good.
Also, should say I read a book called Embassytown by China Mieville yesterday and really enjoyed it. Some of the actual writing wasn't so good (particularly the characterisation and conversations) but the way that it deals with how limitations on language (and the lack there-of) can affect what thoughts you are capable of having and how you perceive was brilliant. Also the plot is compelling. It's basically semiotics disguised as sci-fi with the aliens having a strange language being used as part of a thought experiment. But not as dry as that sounds.
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
Mr Tea - have you never read C&P? If you haven't, I'm jealous that you will be experiencing it for the first time. Check out the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation - it is one of the more lucid translations of that book (though they are all a bit - erm...).
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Gonna get on the bus in a sec and open The Broom of the System by DFW. Hoping that will be somewhere near as good.
Also, should say I read a book called Embassytown by China Mieville yesterday and really enjoyed it. Some of the actual writing wasn't so good (particularly the characterisation and conversations) but the way that it deals with how limitations on language (and the lack there-of) can affect what thoughts you are capable of having and how you perceive was brilliant. Also the plot is compelling. It's basically semiotics disguised as sci-fi with the aliens having a strange language being used as part of a thought experiment. But not as dry as that sounds.
Ooh, I'd be interested to read that.

I read Perdido Street Station and was very disappointed by it. I think possibly my expectations were too high - a lot of people said that it was kind of bringing fantasy up to date and making it modern and radical and dark and exciting, which I took to mean that it was some kind of Ballardian reinvention of the genre as psychological-surrealism, dismantling and reimagining the conventions of the genre etc etc etc. So I was a bit disappointed when it turned out to be a lumbering all action losers-save-the-world quest in a quasi-steampunk corrupt-metropolis setting that had a few cool ideas but only really succeeded in bringing fantasy 'up to date' with somewhere that mainstream science fiction got to about thirty years ago.

But then I read The City And The City and thought it was excellent. And he seems like a guy with interesting ideas...
 

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
Absolutely. Also, although it's big it's (in most parts at least) kind of a page-turner (not so much because you want to find out what happens next, although at times that is true as well, but because of the sheer fun it is to read) and I don't think it takes long to read. Took me less than two weeks and my friend took it on a one week holiday with him on my recommendation and he has nearly finished it after that. I mean, most books are what, three hundred pages long and I suspect you wouldn't think that reading three of them would necessarily require an investment of an unreasonable amount of time.

Cool, I've read about 90 pages so far - decided to go with it for the train.

I Like it, although I often find multiple narrative standpoint type books slightly frustrating, like when you are really enjoying a certain person's story and getting into it and then you are onto another person, I stalled on the last book of the David Peace Red Riding books because of this. I checked out the length and was surprised to find it shorter than Suitable Boy which is surely the longest book I've read.

Some gorgeous wordplay in it (i liked his suggestion that tennis is a cross of boxing and chess!) and some bits where I kind of think he's trying to be too clever for his own good, but not in enough to fully judge yet...
 
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