what are you reading now?
I read cosmopolis about 13 years ago. it was OK. The first few pages of White Noise irritated me. Smug and grey. I like filigree and flair.
jenks
thread death
White Noise is funny and has much flair. It is interesting/odd that DeLillo becomes this lightening conductor for ire when he explores many of the areas po-mo readers like. Libra, Mao II, are both brilliant and troubling works. I guess there is a line that some felt he crossed with Underworld - too big, too ambitious, too chippy, who is he to try and explain the last fifty years in a sprawling American epic with baseball as a metaphor? Get back in your box Don!
I liked it.
Recently Dissensus has been full of sneering as if nothing is good enough, everything has been chopped down to size. As if nothing good has been created except some niche genre only you know. The cynicism does no one any good.
This isn’t really a defence of Don - like him/don’t like him but do like something and fucking celebrate it - stop being so fucking negative. It’s too easy and far too tiring. (Sorry last night I can go to the pub for a month and I’m tired.)
I liked it.
Recently Dissensus has been full of sneering as if nothing is good enough, everything has been chopped down to size. As if nothing good has been created except some niche genre only you know. The cynicism does no one any good.
This isn’t really a defence of Don - like him/don’t like him but do like something and fucking celebrate it - stop being so fucking negative. It’s too easy and far too tiring. (Sorry last night I can go to the pub for a month and I’m tired.)
I picked up the silence because it sounded like an interesting premise. I didn't come here to bury Don, I came to praise him, but he let himself down badly, the book stinks.
@IdleRich I'm also reading the wanting seed. That's wild, I think I'll stick with it. I saw Burgess give a talk once, can't have been long before he died, he was like a runaway train of Serbian swears and literary bluster.
And tonight I cracked open The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
Which is promising, anyone read it?
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That sounds like my kind of thing, I'll check it out. I've heard unsettling rumours it also has a lot on baseball.
IdleRich
IdleRich
It's just the first hundred pages or so about one hit in baseball. 'The shot that was heard around the world'.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I finished Master and Commander last night. Overall a good read and very well written (although you'd have to have the patience to learn a shitload of nautical terms to really understand what's going on in the battle scenes) but I assume it's not as good the other ones because it was the first and it does seem to meander at points and ends pretty lamely, too.
The film uses quite a lot of the first book but presumably splices it with other books in the series.
I was surprised to learn in the afterword that Patrick O'Brian knew Picasso and wrote what Kenneth Clark considered to be the best biography of Picasso.
The film uses quite a lot of the first book but presumably splices it with other books in the series.
I was surprised to learn in the afterword that Patrick O'Brian knew Picasso and wrote what Kenneth Clark considered to be the best biography of Picasso.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I might do eventually. The second book is apparently largely set on land, and concerns romantic relationships and a duel between Jack/Stephen.
Apparently PO'Brian was a big Jane Austen fan so in the second one he's somewhat emulating Austen.
OTOH in a list I found online of the best Aubrey/Maturin books the second book came out top of the list.
Apparently PO'Brian was a big Jane Austen fan so in the second one he's somewhat emulating Austen.
OTOH in a list I found online of the best Aubrey/Maturin books the second book came out top of the list.