what are you reading now?

[slim jenkins]

[*]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
?

Yeah, 'man up' you wimp.

You don't read Burroughs...you keep on reading him...as an ongoing experience in the form of choosing random chapters/passages/sections....jesus, you're so old school with your start-at-the-beginning-and-read-til-the-end idea...:slanted:

I'm reading Le Carre's 'The Looking-Glass War'. I've read him before but probably not enjoyed his work as much as I am now...now that I'm older and can relate more to middle-aged characters being duplicitous in shabby attire oozing cynical world-weariness...not that I lie (much), or wear shabby clothes...or am really that cynical...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, 'man up' you wimp.

You don't read Burroughs...you keep on reading him...as an ongoing experience in the form of choosing random chapters/passages/sections....jesus, you're so old school with your start-at-the-beginning-and-read-til-the-end idea...:slanted:

Ha, I was expecting that to go "You don't read Burroughs...Burroughs reads you".

In Soviet Russia...or perhaps Interzone...

Yeah, will definitely give it another shot at some point - C&P next though, I think.

 

[slim jenkins]

Well that's a great book. It was about 30 years ago that I read it, however, so I won't be able to contribute to any discussions, unfortunately. Back then I read a few 'classics'...trying to be more intellectual than I really am. :slanted: I read Zola too, when I was a Socialist (ask your Dad), Germinal ...the miners' struggle and all that. The Ragged Trousered Campanologist...bell-ringers rising up against their religious oppressors, that's good. Oh, and Moby-Dick, now that's a book for real men...just be sure to skip the detailed descriptions of every whale in the sea and it's a breeze.

Re Soft Machine, although I pray at the alter of WSB, I try not to be too sanctimonious about him, especially by implying that if you don't 'get' him you're somehow inferior. I do, however, go knocking on doors of a Sunday morning, forcing copies of Nova Express on people in the hope that they'll become converts. I usually get a door slammed in my face, but that's to be expected.

 

[droid]

Other than a few bits here and there, I havent read much fantasy in about 20 years, but loving the game of thrones books. Was always suspicious of Martin TBH. Fevre dream was pretty good, but avoided his fantasy stuff. That was a mistake.

 

[IdleRich]

I just read The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. It's an enjoyable enough read with some really funny moments and it really gets going in the middle - but really, if you're hoping for another Infinite Jest, it's not gonna satisfy. Weak methadone to stave off the sweats maybe.
There are flashes where you can tell it's the same writer and the stories that the publisher reads are really funny - they remind me of the short stories you get in Pynchon in their ludicrous over the topness. My favourite is about this wonderfully happy couple whose lives and their children's lives are slowly blighted by mental illness and a disease which means that the children have epileptic fits every time they cry. In a final traumatic ending the mother rolls on to the younger child in her sleep (caused by a mental problem that makes her fall asleep when unhappy) crushing it to death, then awakes and kills herself - meanwhile the husband is driving desperately to take their other child to hospital but unfortunately, due to a bizarre combination of circumstances, he ends up driving off a cliff taking with him the child and a policman who tried to help. Just for good measure the car lands on the house of a nun we were briefly introduced to earlier who has taken in lots of children which are too ill to be cared for anywhere else. The car explodes killing everybody inside and all the denizens of the house. Horribly.
But overall it lacks the depth and sheer emotional power of Infinite Jest and, worse, at times it borders on the wacky (the stuff with the talking bird).
Then I read Oscar Wilde's Salome which I greatly enjoyed. In the film thread I was talking about Carmeilo Bene's weird film adaptation of the Salome story but, as there are so many versions of the tale, I never realised that his film was using Wilde's script.

 

[Gregor XIII]

Actually, I think I prefer Broom. Obviously, Infinite Jest is the major work, but I just love the energy and the sense of freedom in Broom. You're right that Jest has the emotional power and depth, but I must admit I found that depressing... Especially knowing what followed, not just in his own life, but also with his books like Oblivion, which is just one of the darkest books I've ever read. And I do think that there is depth to Broom, but it's mainly a philosophical depth. But (late) Wittgenstein is probably my favorite philosopher, so I was easily sold on that part. And I love the absurdity of setting the book three years into the future, a time where DFW - wrongly - imagines nothing has really changed...

 

[luka]

slim jenkins is right as regards burroughs. its the way to read him which means you can read passages of the soft machine while reading crime and punishment.

 

[Mr. Tea]

slim jenkins is right as regards burroughs. its the way to read him which means you can read passages of the soft machine while reading crime and punishment.

Ooh now there's a thought. Just read the first chapter of C&P on the plane this morning, already liking the atmosphere of grim desperation.

 

[IdleRich]

"Actually, I think I prefer Broom. Obviously, Infinite Jest is the major work, but I just love the energy and the sense of freedom in Broom. You're right that Jest has the emotional power and depth, but I must admit I found that depressing... Especially knowing what followed, not just in his own life, but also with his books like Oblivion, which is just one of the darkest books I've ever read. And I do think that there is depth to Broom, but it's mainly a philosophical depth. But (late) Wittgenstein is probably my favorite philosopher, so I was easily sold on that part. And I love the absurdity of setting the book three years into the future, a time where DFW - wrongly - imagines nothing has really changed... "

Hmm, I thought that a lot of the ideas were still under-explored and that the book ran out of steam towards the end. I agree that it was a less ambitious book than IJ but I feel that it succeeded less even on its own terms than IJ. Not read Oblivion though.

 

[you]

Mostly @ Tea - I've ordered Crime and Punishment, it the big Dostoevsky I haven't read yet so i'll be on that soon! I think i'm going to give up on Potocki - it's just dragging. I dipped into In The Dust of This PLanet by Eugene Thacker last night, you have to read it, loads of theorizing about the anthropocentric aspects of Black Metal and Lovecraft - pretty much exactly what we touched on, but fleshed out and broke down. You may fancy a gander at that at some point.

 

[grizzleb]

Mostly @ Tea - I've ordered Crime and Punishment, it the big Dostoevsky I haven't read yet so i'll be on that soon! I think i'm going to give up on Potocki - it's just dragging. I dipped into In The Dust of This PLanet by Eugene Thacker last night, you have to read it, loads of theorizing about the anthropocentric aspects of Black Metal and Lovecraft - pretty much exactly what we touched on, but fleshed out and broke down. You may fancy a gander at that at some point.

Yeah I gave up the Potocki about halfway through. Gets a little repetitive after a while.

 

[you]

totally grizzle, it's a beautifully picturesque book, mountains, caves, camps and castles - princes, vagabonds and rebels and witches - all good shit, but it just feels like it's meandering aimlessly whilst Alphonse does two infuriating things 1- boasting again and again about his courage and honour AND 2 - makes a repetitive habit out of failing to keep his dick in his pants when ever a muslim honey is in close proximity despite the fact that it often leads to him being hounded by ghosts or demons or waking up between two corpses - muppet.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah I gave up the Potocki about halfway through. Gets a little repetitive after a while.

Not heard of this guy but I will just say: repetition isn't necessarily a bad thing in a novel if it's handled well, I think. E.g. descriptions of food orders/outfits in American Psycho (helps you get into the mindset of someone who, as well as being a serial killer (or is he???), is also cripplingly insecure, competitive and anally retentive), whale species in Moby Dick (um, maybe that's just me...) and the cycle of drunkenness/hangover/regret in Patrick Hamilton's books.

 

[DannyL]

Ha, I was expecting that to go "You don't read Burroughs...Burroughs reads you".

I think the way to read the cut-ups is out loud. Or at least imagine them being read out loud, preferably in Burroughs' voice. There's something about their fractured nature and repetiveness that benefits from being spoken.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, Burroughs is definitely one for repetition! And he had the best speaking voice ever, I always read anything by him to myself in his voice.

Still only the second chapter of C&P but loving the down-and-out ex-civil-servant (ha, halfway there myself!). He's such a perfect caricature of every maudlin, self-absorbed, self-pitying, pissed, tired, middle-aged bar-room fuck that ever lived, and having worked in a real-ale pub for four years, I've met more than one.

It's funny, I've always had this somewhat childish fear that books as Big and Old and Important as C&P are always going to be a chore to read, but for the most part I've found they're really not. I did try and tackle Sholokhov's The Don Flows Home to the Sea a few years back though, and found that a bit of a slog. Didn't help that most of the characters were related to other characters and often had almost identical names (ha, can anyone say One Hundred Years of Solitude?), which doesn't help when they're unfamiliar names to start with. Got about a quarter of the way through then lost the book. Um.

 

[grizzleb]

Not heard of this guy but I will just say: repetition isn't necessarily a bad thing in a novel if it's handled well, I think. E.g. descriptions of food orders/outfits in American Psycho (helps you get into the mindset of someone who, as well as being a serial killer (or is he???), is also cripplingly insecure, competitive and anally retentive), whale species in Moby Dick (um, maybe that's just me...) and the cycle of drunkenness/hangover/regret in Patrick Hamilton's books.

Well yeah. It's a literary device that can serve multiple ends. I meant repetitive with the implication of dullness, boredom, of going over old ground in a way which doesn't result in any deeper engagement with the subject at hand, in a storyline that becomes utterly predictable, etc. But yes, repetition of something in itself isn't bad.

 

[grizzleb]

totally grizzle, it's a beautifully picturesque book, mountains, caves, camps and castles - princes, vagabonds and rebels and witches - all good shit, but it just feels like it's meandering aimlessly whilst Alphonse does two infuriating things 1- boasting again and again about his courage and honour AND 2 - makes a repetitive habit out of failing to keep his dick in his pants when ever a muslim honey is in close proximity despite the fact that it often leads to him being hounded by ghosts or demons or waking up between two corpses - muppet.

Yes, I like the bricolage kind of element of the Potocki, where all sorts of crazy goings on are thrown into the mix, jewish mystics alongside mad zombies and things. One thing I like about it is the sharp humour, seems to be pretty dry for a pretty old book. Like you, I couldn't face knowing the same sort of shit was going to inevitably happen again. I often feel like I've 'got' a book about halfway through and force myself to keep reading, and then wish I did just give up when I considered it. It's like 700 pages as well, pretty beefy for something reasonably 'light'.

 

[you]

Tea - I read the first chapter today, just 10 pages or so I think, halfway through I flipped to the cover to check that it was the P&V translation... it was so quick and straight to the action (unlike some other Dostoevsky) and when he mentioned thinking about cuckooland I thought 'nahhh'. I know what you mean though, the start is pretty refreshing.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - pshit, I waded through that miserable farce....It's kinda epic if you really buy into it and try hard to imagine... but not sure it's quite as good as it's rep - this is wayyy simplistic for me I know but god, looking back I coulda skipped that tome fo sho.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Ha, that's too cool! I've got the McDuff translation - we can read in parallel and compare notes. Aww.

Re. 100YoS - I liked it at the time but it was a while ago I read it. I know magic realism is something that doesn't sit too well with a lot of people. I dunno, it was pretty affected and mannered but I still enjoyed it. Do you like Murakami? That's magic realism, and then some. I think he walks a very fine line between mind-expanding and up-his-own-arse, but geeeenerally stays on the right side of it. Though I expect plenty others disagree. Also, Sick Boy said his writing style is like Dan Brown! Seems a bit harsh, esp. as it's obviously gone through translation.

Edit: grizzleb, yeah that's the bad sort of reptition of course! I was just saying, like.

 

[you]

I should probably shut up now considering my own writing style.... *goes off to edit signature before colossal flaming*

edit - Tea, C&P, yeah, I've been meaning to read another Dostoevsky for ages I should've just started as soon as my garden leave began but yeah, really looking forward to this one, doesn't seem as big as Demons or Karamazov so hopefully it'll be pretty fun, it'd be cool to compare and contrast though.

The Manuscript found in Sargossa is a cool book though, some ill scenes, sat down with it many a time and looked up into the apple tree only to think 'wow, where was I? This book got me' - any book that can do that deserves props.

I've never read Murakami, I read that guy who did audition, the other Murakami, the one who does hookers and serial killers...