slowtrain
Well-known member
I read terra incognita this morning too!
I must admit to not having ever read and Dick.
And I've only read Crash and Concrete Island by Ballard.
Concrete Island was such a slog.
what are you reading now?
I read terra incognita this morning too!
I must admit to not having ever read and Dick.
And I've only read Crash and Concrete Island by Ballard.
Concrete Island was such a slog.
woops
is not like other people
I was Dora Suarez was mentioned earlier in this thread. I read How the Dead Live recently and I do agree you need a strong stomach for this kind of stuff. A lot of it's written in that kind of Stewart Home-parodiable pulp style there are some more lyrical passages, the contrast just making it harder going.
I also read (nearly all of) Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time and at the moment I'm reading an Edward St Aubyn book but these writers are too posh to be discussed on Dissensus.
I also read (nearly all of) Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time and at the moment I'm reading an Edward St Aubyn book but these writers are too posh to be discussed on Dissensus.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Reread that recently. It's very good. Slapstick is also good. I need to read more of his stuff. I always feel like there's some sort of kinship between Kurt Vonnegut and Alasdair Gray.
Yeah, if nothing else there are bits you'd forgotten about eg the fact that he sets up an entire sub-plot near the end (don't want to spoil it too much for anyone who hasn't read it...) as a build-up to one incredibly laboured pun.
woops
is not like other people
Why anyone would try to knock Nabokov to glorify Ballard is beyond me. It's a fake distinction. Nabokov is about a transition from one world to a new one. Ballard is entirely about the new one. Nabokov can be read for his style alone, no-one would do that with Ballard.
I'm tempted to say what they have in common is treating middlebrow pap as a subject from a highbrow perspective so I will. I'll also be the first to admit to an addled mind.
I'm tempted to say what they have in common is treating middlebrow pap as a subject from a highbrow perspective so I will. I'll also be the first to admit to an addled mind.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Ballard has some ok ideas but I found the books I read (admittedly only 2 or 3) pretty hard going, because he thinks the ideas are more interesting than they are. He's not the worst writer ever though, there are lots worse. Like Martin Amis.
Never tried Nabokov, but to be honest I can't really be arsed cos he sounds terrible, and I really rather liked both films of Lolita so I'll only be disappointed.
Never tried Nabokov, but to be honest I can't really be arsed cos he sounds terrible, and I really rather liked both films of Lolita so I'll only be disappointed.
Last edited:
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Only read Lolita as far as Nabo goes, but I liked it. The prose it utterly, utterly overblown, but that's kind of the point. It just wouldn't work if it were written in a very economical or forensic style, or at least it would be a very different sort of book.
It unintentionally had me in stitches at one point where he goes "Let me be sentimental for the nonce..." - LOLita indeed.
It unintentionally had me in stitches at one point where he goes "Let me be sentimental for the nonce..." - LOLita indeed.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I find that's more of an issue with the later stuff, particularly because the ideas tended to become increasingly similar from book to book...
I kind of like the level of recurring tropes in his stuff - doctors, pilots, the charismatic psychopath who dominates the younger central character, anxiety about infidelity. Someone could probably get something interesting out of totalling up the number of appearances of different fetishes and sexual practices in his books as well. It's like he's quite gleeful about laying out his own neuroses in public.
jenks
thread death
Nabokov is world class good - funny, readable and bloody clever. I think sometimes this thread is really more interested in fantasy/sci-fi than in traditional Eng Lit (and foreign Lit) stuff. Each to their own.
Anyway, i am spending the year re-reading, with just occasional forays into other stuff.
Just re-read Perec's Life A User's Manual. Am nearly through a re-read of the first volume of Proust and Something Happened by Heller.
Am also reading a hefty volume of Pound's Cantos.
D
droid
Guest
Ballard's short stories are where its at (Dick is the same). The drought is good though.
Otherwise he mainly just wrote the same story with the same protagonists in a different setting over and over again. Just like Scooby Doo.
Otherwise he mainly just wrote the same story with the same protagonists in a different setting over and over again. Just like Scooby Doo.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
that's mostly true but there are a few exceptions; Man In The High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. he was capable of writing much better prose when he took the time but he was almost always writing at a frenetic, often amphetamine-aided, pace. for a big chunk of his career before he got famous he was in pretty severe poverty, living hand to mouth so it was important to churn out words and make money.
also, droid clear ya inbox son!
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I find that's often the case with writers who are better at ideas or imagination than style and characterization, though...
I thought he wrote two stories over and over again, though? The apocalypse-comes-and-person-find-himself-embracing-it-rather-than-resisting-it one and the and the perfect-modern-society-descends-into-irrational-savagery one.
Last edited:
D
droid
Guest
Thats partly it, but its not just the shorter format, its the ideas - Ballard was pretty ingenious at the start of his career - loads of ideas (check out these if you havent got em: http://www.ballardian.com/biblio-jg-ballard-the-complete-short-stories) which he then whittled down to one or two and then repeated for the rest of his career. I would still say that he basically wrote one book with variations. Ambivalent hero crashes into utopian/transgressive project, usually through the death of a friend/relative, flirts with participation, shags the girl and eventually (mostly inadvertently) brings about the project's demise. The apocalyptic phase was basically a trilogy of his first 3/4 books, the drowned world, drought, the crystal world, and (arguably) the wind from nowhere. Concrete Island and the Atrocity exhibition are the only real exceptions to the formula after 66.
Dick had two periods of intense creativity. The early 50's when he was a struggling writer and came out with dozens of short stories which he basically rewrote (with a few exceptions) as novels until the late 60's, then from the less prolific (but more creative) late 60's to early/mid 70's (when he had his epiphany) culminating in VALIS.
@Padraig - there's space there now...
Dick had two periods of intense creativity. The early 50's when he was a struggling writer and came out with dozens of short stories which he basically rewrote (with a few exceptions) as novels until the late 60's, then from the less prolific (but more creative) late 60's to early/mid 70's (when he had his epiphany) culminating in VALIS.
@Padraig - there's space there now...
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
only just started reading ballard fairly recently and am massively impressed so far. Concrete island was great, Drowned World possibly the best sci-fi book I'ver ever read (the prehistoric recurring dream sequence section was DEEP and genuinely frightening and heavy). In the middle of crash right now...probably gonna go for high rise next. If anything I found Empire of the sun harder going than any of those, although i liked that too.
He is a much much better writer than Dick thats for sure by a mile. For me scanner darkly is the best one i've read by far. I think the drugs both made Dick and ruined his career really. Need to check out Valis at some point though. Made it through Ubik, which i enjoyed but it was definitely marred by some of the worst writing ever (same goes for the short stories).
On a related note, can anyone recommend some Harlon Ellison other than 'A boy and his dog'? Thats the only one i've read but definitely one of the best sci-fi shorts. (That and George RR Martin's 'Sandkings' to give you an idea of the sort of thing I like).
He is a much much better writer than Dick thats for sure by a mile. For me scanner darkly is the best one i've read by far. I think the drugs both made Dick and ruined his career really. Need to check out Valis at some point though. Made it through Ubik, which i enjoyed but it was definitely marred by some of the worst writing ever (same goes for the short stories).
On a related note, can anyone recommend some Harlon Ellison other than 'A boy and his dog'? Thats the only one i've read but definitely one of the best sci-fi shorts. (That and George RR Martin's 'Sandkings' to give you an idea of the sort of thing I like).
Last edited:
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
re: Nabakov
Started Lolita once and was admittedly dazzled by the prose for the first couple of chapters, but lost interest halfway through and never finished it. The Kubrick film with peter Sellars is great though.
Started Lolita once and was admittedly dazzled by the prose for the first couple of chapters, but lost interest halfway through and never finished it. The Kubrick film with peter Sellars is great though.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The imagery in the Ballard ive read so far really 'stays with you', imprints itself on your mind in a way that Dick's doesn't for me. Dick's stuff just seems a bit too out there, more like the ravings of a true madman, to have any lasting effect on me. Tbh if you asked me what Ubik was all about now I wouldn't be able to tell you, but there are parts of the drowned world that I think will stay with me forever...thats the difference.