D
droid
Guest
IdleRich said:
Like me!
I love that book...
Books you've read recently and would unreservedly recommend
- Thread starter Rambler
- Start date
Like me!
I love that book...
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well me too, I just love all the stuff at the start more than the end. Are you honestly saying that you wouldn't have preferred it if he could have somehow tied together all that stuff about the missing boy, the utopian country in South America, time travel and whatever else (it's ten years since I read it)?
jenks
thread death
michael said:
i really like Foer's stuff. I found Illuminated surprisingly moving - i thought i was going to get a tricksy kind of knowingness and found myself drawn into a very subtle novel - the unpeeling of the story - yeah we know the grandad is going to have more to do with the story etc but still it works and surprises
also the folksy story allows for lots of, at first, amusing parodies of jewish folk stories before it too reveals a dark and bitter secret. and it seems to me as if this method is an attempt to approach the truth side-on, as if facing it full on reveals nothing - the banality of being told against the shock of being shown when least expecting it. as if the horror is too great to be approached conventionally, instead we get a skirting around, a slow circling trapping us with light humour and bad puns and then before we can escape...the horror. as if the only method left to make meaning is via other genres, other forms
i also really like his second novel about the effects of the twin towers on a prodigously gifted boy - it could come across, again, as a bit tricksy if it wasn't for the incredibly engaging voice of the boy and Foer's ability to hang three or four different narrative threads convincingly
he seems like an author who doesn't shy away from big issues - genocide, in particular;but it feels to me as if his project is to remind us of the human element in what have become historical events
Finally got round to reading Jon McGregor's If nobody speaks of remarkable things; definitely one for this thread. The language is some of the most beautiful I've read in a novel since Woolf. It's overtly poetic, but never ostentatious about it. The story's a bit trite, but actually not as trite as some might have you believe. And McGregor is a rare author with a superb ear - his descriptions of sounds are very special indeed and worth the read alone.
His second's out this August; I'll bet that's worth a read too.
His second's out this August; I'll bet that's worth a read too.
D
droid
Guest
Slothrop said:
Thats kinda how I feel as well... its more about the imagery and demented atmosphere... I think i described it on some other thread as some kind of fractured hyper-manga narrative ala Neon Genisis Evangelion or Akira (with added seediness) - though thinking about it, a closer analog might be Moebius's 'The Long Tomorrow', which has elements of politics/sex/sci-fi, but all wrapped up in a kind of pointless and chaotic intensity... loads of stuff happens, but it never 'climaxes' (or it climaxes in a way you didnt notice/expect).
There were loads of other ideas in this book that struck me as being obscenely ahead of their time... I really have to go and read it again.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Did you ever read that book called Tlooth? Reminded me of Burroughs in certain scenes but with a lot of weird word games and stuff. Very strange. I read somewhere on the internet that it was all supposed to come together and mean something in the end but if it did I'm afraid that it went over my head. I think it was by somebody called Matthews or something.
JimO'Brien
Active member
IdleRich said:
It was by Harry Mathews - I haven't read tlooth but have read many others. He is a member of Oulipo and a lot of his stuff is written under self imposed constraints. All of his books that I have read are worth reading and I would particularly recommend My Life in CIA his recent memoir/novel.
Last edited:
JimO'Brien
Active member
I found this on a website for the Oulipo Compendium. If you do a search you will easily find lots of information on the Organisation.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Thank you for that. I realised that I could look it up but I thought you might be able to give a simple overview seeing as you raised it and it is obviously something that you know more about than me. Another question coming up if you don't mind, I've read If On a Winter's Night a Traveller (and quite enjoyed it), what were the restrictions in place that resulted in him coming up with that?
I heard that one of the reviewers of A Void read it without realising the premise, didn't notice that there were no "e"s and reviewed it as a normal book. I wonder if that is true.
I heard that one of the reviewers of A Void read it without realising the premise, didn't notice that there were no "e"s and reviewed it as a normal book. I wonder if that is true.
Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
Reading this thread is like going through my wife's reading list! (That's a compliment BTW!)
I find it very hard to sit down and read a novel these days - it's almost physically painful for me. The last one I read that really got me was Absolute Friends by John LeCarre, which gently, floatingly drifts up to this towering, corruscating ziggurat of rage and disgust. If you haven't read that it's probably worth a go.
I find it very hard to sit down and read a novel these days - it's almost physically painful for me. The last one I read that really got me was Absolute Friends by John LeCarre, which gently, floatingly drifts up to this towering, corruscating ziggurat of rage and disgust. If you haven't read that it's probably worth a go.
bruno
est malade
i don't know how to put it (it has been said a thousand times before) but his insight into the human condition is truly lucid. what he does is create very well-defined characters and sets them off on a collision course. what you see is a little sequence of this. there is a sense that they are playing out predefined parts, like in a greek tragedy, all the more poignant in that you can sense the blood running through them and there are no gods pulling the strings. this empathy and feeling that there is no beginning and end to this mess is the 'truth' that emerges so vividly, i think. i like the short stories a lot (there is a modern library volume which is very nice and includes notes from the underground), but if you've plenty of spare time do the novels. start with the idiot, have a bite to eat, and move on to the brothers karamazov. finishing these you will feel that can die in peace!bassnation said:
Sheperton Babylon, authors name escapes me just now. Parts of it are hilarious, the author deconstructs the Ealing canon and reveals what talentless and overated ego maniacs many of our best actors are/were. The final chapters on the 8mm porn kings of Soho are fascinating and escpecially some of his language especially when he refers to Sid james as a walnut, not doing it justice but ig you want to read a good film book look no further.
JimO'Brien
Active member
IdleRich said:
Please excuse the delay in responding. Calvino wrote a short piece called How I wrote one of my Books about the restraints to If on a Winter's Night a traveller. The piece only dicusses the narrative half of he book and not the indiviual first chapters of the various novels within the book ( which I believe were also subject to constraints). The explanation was issued as part of the Oulipo Library and is 20 pages long so is fairly complex itself - but essentially it a scheme based on A J Greimas' structural analysis of narrative and is based on squares. The explanation is availoable in English in Atlas Press's Oulipo Laboratory - which you can order from them if you were interested. You may be better off just enjoying the book without realising the premise.
IdleRich
IdleRich
No problem. Thanks for the reply and I couldn't have hoped for a better answer to my question than to be pointed in the direction of an exact description. Now I've asked for it I really ought to check it out I guess although your comment about "just enjoying the book" sounds quite attractive.
Just finished Bernhard's Extinction - mordantly funny and with a tone, instantly recognisible as Bernhard, which, while easy to parody,is impossible to reproduce. Irish people here might like to insert the word 'Ireland' where 'Austria' occurs in the following passage;
'The whole of Austria has been turned into an unscrupulous commercial concern in which everything is bargained for and everyone is defrauded. You think you're visiting a beautiful country, but in reality you're visiting a monstrous business enterprise. You think you're entering a land of culture, but you're dismayed by the primitive mentality you encounter everywhere.... in no other country have they taken the brainless slogans of progress as seriously as in Austria, I said, and thereby ruined everything'
'The whole of Austria has been turned into an unscrupulous commercial concern in which everything is bargained for and everyone is defrauded. You think you're visiting a beautiful country, but in reality you're visiting a monstrous business enterprise. You think you're entering a land of culture, but you're dismayed by the primitive mentality you encounter everywhere.... in no other country have they taken the brainless slogans of progress as seriously as in Austria, I said, and thereby ruined everything'
jenks
thread death
I am 25 pages away from finishing David Peace's 1980 - I know it's part of a quartet and it's the third segment but it was the only one in the library
This is just gripping - very Ellroy with its clipped prose style, lots of repetition and vivid visual style. It also has a strong darkly poetic thread to it. I cannot recommend it highly enough and makes me feel pleased that there is more of him to read.
The basic premise is that a copper has been asked to review the progress of the Yorkshire Ripper case but this soon spins out into a grim investigation into the heart of darkness.
I can remember 1980 very vividly - i used to deliver newspapers and can still visualise the headlines around that time - ripper sensationalism, lennon murdered, nuclear fears - and this book really catches the atmosphere of those times.
It certainly does nothing for Yorkshire which is presented as the very centre of corruption and violent thuggery and the way he describes the repeated journeys over the moors is doom-laden and portentious.
Compulsively readable
This is just gripping - very Ellroy with its clipped prose style, lots of repetition and vivid visual style. It also has a strong darkly poetic thread to it. I cannot recommend it highly enough and makes me feel pleased that there is more of him to read.
The basic premise is that a copper has been asked to review the progress of the Yorkshire Ripper case but this soon spins out into a grim investigation into the heart of darkness.
I can remember 1980 very vividly - i used to deliver newspapers and can still visualise the headlines around that time - ripper sensationalism, lennon murdered, nuclear fears - and this book really catches the atmosphere of those times.
It certainly does nothing for Yorkshire which is presented as the very centre of corruption and violent thuggery and the way he describes the repeated journeys over the moors is doom-laden and portentious.
Compulsively readable