Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
the sense of thwarted romanticism reminds me a little of Flaubert
Peak Corpsey right there!
the sense of thwarted romanticism reminds me a little of Flaubert
.
Backlisted did a good Lawrence episode which was very fair to him and might be a good place to jump into him from: https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/dh-lawrence-the-rainbow
This book called Madness and Modernism where this psychiatrist interprets tendencies of modernist and postmodernist culture in terms of schizophrenia. Mostly about how hyperreflexivity and alienation are symptoms of both things
I've kind of stalled with Gravity's Rainbow about a hundred pages in. I'm sure I'll pick it up again but I'm just being reminded of the things I found frustrating about it the first time around - the stupid songs, the flights of fancy, all that nonsense about "the Kenosha kid" that (AFAIR) has nothing to do with anything else that happens... which is a shame, as the main narrative is really interesting and beautifully written.
I can't stop buying books either, version.
I've kind of stalled with Gravity's Rainbow about a hundred pages in. I'm sure I'll pick it up again but I'm just being reminded of the things I found frustrating about it the first time around - the stupid songs, the flights of fancy, all that nonsense about "the Kenosha kid" that (AFAIR) has nothing to do with anything else that happens... which is a shame, as the main narrative is really interesting and beautifully written.
Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, so some people think he's saying something about him. Impossible to tell though. It's in the middle of Slothrop's "narcoanalysis" and all the language games he plays with that one phrase are a bit of a head scratcher. The Kenosha Kid is actually an old cowboy story though...
I think I'd have considered this advice heresy until recently but with Sons and Lovers I've found that it actually helps to speed through stuff which I don't like or find boring to see if it gets better, which it often does within a page or two. Old, pathetic me would have considered it heresy because YOU HAVE TO READ THE WHOLE BOOK, but new, enlightened, virile me recognises that even the greatest novel isn't a perfectly constructed thing but is bound to be full of peaks and dips in interest, if not of yours, than of the author's.
Of course, if the dips far outweigh the peaks, probably worth hurling the book into the nearest pub urinal.
Fair enough, if it does actually mean something, but the daft language games get on my tits a bit. Same with having a character called 'Eigenvector' in V - what purpose does it serve, really, other than to announce "Hey everyone, I've got a maths/physics/engineering background!"? Some bits of Pynchon make me imagine him sat at his typewriter in a little room that he's totally hotboxed, chain-smoking spliffs as he works, occasionally pausing to somberly stroke his chin in wonderment at how clever he is, or have a good old giggle at how funny he is. Which is a shame, because it detracts from the rest of the writing, where he is writing cleverly without apparently needing to demonstrate to you, the reader, that he is very clever indeed.
This is good advice. I found a similar approach can help with American Psycho if you can't be arsed reading every paragraph that starts "He/she was wearing..." or "I/he/she ordered..." - although of course the fact that Bateman is fundamentally a boring, socially conservative snob (in addition to being a psychopath) is entirely the point.