what are you reading now?

[william_kent]

Yeah that does sound good. I love the idea of hardboiled fiction but it doesn't always live up to the idea in my head. Looking at the back of this one the writing is so clumsy

"Detective Kling, promoted off the beat, Pphelped Steve Carella - more, anyhow, than Hernandez's sister, a prostitute in a self-service vice dive. (She spilt nothing... except her own blood, and that later.)"

It's not just me is it, that's a horrible mangling of the language? I suppose a certain kind of brutish and simplistic writing could theoretically reinforce the idea that you're reading the direct thoughts of a hard-boiled man of action, not someone who has the time to mess about learning fancy words or how to use semi colons etc but that's not the feeling I'm getting here. Maybe I would in the case of The Postman Always Rings Twice - taut is the almost cliched description of this style when it's done well, but it really is what you're looking for, and I will try and check it out cheers.

that's just the blurb, pay no attention... James M. Cain is highly recommended by me, for what it's worth, Double Indemnity is another good one by him

 

[WashYourHands]

Visit Shropshire - Shropshire map and guide for visitors

To help you plan and map your visit to Shropshire we've designed a helpful map and guide of our beautiful county, and the surrounding areas.

www.visitshropshire.co.uk

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01480545.2022.2052891

 

[IdleRich]

that's just the blurb, pay no attention... James M. Cain is highly recommended by me, for what it's worth, Double Indemnity is another good one by him

First chapter and I am enjoying it so you may well be right...

 

[IdleRich]

It has a character called Meyer Meyer. It describes how the father was resentful of his son and gave him the same forename and surname as a trick on him when he was too young and his wife too weak to resist. It's almost the exact same story as Joseph Heller used for Major Major Major when Catch 22 came out 5 years later.

 

[woops]

It has a character called Meyer Meyer. It describes how the father was resentful of his son and gave him the same forename and surname as a trick on him when he was too young and his wife too weak to resist. It's almost the exact same story as Joseph Heller used for Major Major Major when Catch 22 came out 5 years later.

before or after Humbert? nabokov used the same truck in despair i think

 

[IdleRich]

Sure you got Humbert Humbert but I think that the Major thing is certainly based on Meyer, first you have the straight-forward similarity in the names, but also both books have the same story of the father taking advantage of an unopposed moment when the mother is unable to prevent it to vengefully name the child. I don't think that happens in Lolita does it?

I am sure Heller copied this... well, the only other explanation I can think of is that something inspired them both. Maybe there was a something a bit like this that actually happened around that time and two authors thought it was funny enough to borrow.

 

[IdleRich]

Recently I read a pulp seventies scifi book and there was a bit where our heroes met these characters called Howlers, and one of them said something like "These Howlers give me the fantods" and I immediately wondered if DFW had read that book - that one a bit more tenuous though, and no way to check it.

 

[woops]

Recently I read a pulp seventies scifi book and there was a bit where our heroes met these characters called Howlers, and one of them said something like "These Howlers give me the fantods" and I immediately wondered if DFW had read that book - that one a bit more tenuous though, and no way to check it.

fantods comes from Edward Gorey. don't know if he nicked it from somewhere else.

 

[woops]

Sure you got Humbert Humbert but I think that the Major thing is certainly based on Meyer, first you have the straight-forward similarity in the names, but also both books have the same story of the father taking advantage of an unopposed moment when the mother is unable to prevent it to vengefully name the child. I don't think that happens in Lolita does it?

I am sure Heller copied this... well, the only other explanation I can think of is that something inspired them both. Maybe there was a something a bit like this that actually happened around that time and two authors thought it was funny enough to borrow.

just saying

 

[IdleRich]

fantods comes from Edward Gorey. don't know if he nicked it from somewhere else.

Maybe so but the recurring phrase in Infinite Jest is "howling fantods" so I found that same unusual juxtaposition from another writer interesting.

 

[version]

According to D. T. Max, Wallace got it from his mother.

No one else listened to David as his mother did. She was smart and funny, easy to confide in, and included him in her love of words. Even in later years, and in the midst of his struggle with the legacy of his childhood, he would always speak with affection of the passion for words and grammar she had given him. If there was no word for a thing, Sally Wallace would invent it: 'greebles' meant little bits of lint, especially those that feet brought into bed; 'twanger' was the word for something whose name you didn't know or couldn't remember. She loved the word 'fantods,' meaning a feeling of deep fear or repulsion, and talked of 'the howling fantods,' this fear intensified. These words, like much of his childhood, would wind up in Wallace's work.

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah the other thing was probably just a coincidence but I liked the idea he was referencing an obscure book and noone knew.

 

[version]

Pynchon uses 'fantods' in GR.

 

[woops]

well, I've just looked it up/cheated, and found that American author Charles Frederick Briggs provides us with an early recorded use of fantods in 1839.

 

[IdleRich]

Well fantods is a word if an unusual one and of course anyone can use it. I was purely interested in the expression howling fantods.

 

[Clinamenic]

Just started The Crying of Lot 49 maybe half an hour ago, about to get on a plane. So far it reads an awful lot like DFW’s The Broom of the System, and I expect the similarity to persist.

 

[wg-]

Read a Cortazar short story this morning, "Gates Of Heaven," which I hadn't read before, got to thinking about an old raving lad i knew who got stabbed years ago; the story is about a milonguera who dies & a vision of her at a dancehall. Hadn't thought of him in ages

Don't always get on with Cortazar, Hopscotch i thought was overrated but I dont have enough Spanish to read the original. But i guess this must have had some resonance. Something about the descriptions of working class raves, "monsters" in them, old Northern gaffs just the same as 40s Argie clubs deep down

Anyway that one was good

 

[Timewriter]

One of the best ‘pulp’ things I read was Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain. Many writers could’ve learnt a lot from him

JMC was great. Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity are also recommended if you don't know them. Surely one of the few writers to have so many bona fide classic noirs made from their novels. I wouldn't call them 'pulp' though, just great novels.

 

[luka]

reading this

 

[woops]

I've got the killer inside me. tried that once or twice before. it's competent but not the best noir stuff

on Monday i read HHhH the world war two book with added author reflexivity