what are you reading now?

[luka]

Hamsum invited Ibsen to a lecture he was to give in Oslo, and the subject of that lecture turned out to be Ibsen’s failures as an artist. Hamsun’s principal grievance was that Ibsen was old, that his plays were “scraped together with quivering hands.”

thats quite good isnt it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

today i read knut hamsum book called Pan. i liked it becasue it was short and easy to read. tomorrow i will read another of his books. i had a glance at the hill but i was right the first time, a bit shit really.

Hunger is really good by him, and also quite short and easy to read. If you like John Fante you'd probably like it. It came out in 1890 but it was amazingly ahead of its time in terms of its style, its still really fresh.

 

[luka]

i am reading hunger tomorrow. in the evening i will tell you if it is good.

 

[slim jenkins]

hunger is very good. i have read it.

 

[luka]

yeah im pretty sure it will be good cos pan was good and hunger is considered his master work. i also have another one out of the librbary at the moment i think it is called 'mystery'
i have never heard of john fante but i will google him now.

 

[slim jenkins]

Ask The Dust is the one.

I've just enjoyed Willeford's 'Pick-Up'. If anyone else has read it I'd be interested in your thoughts re the final twist. For '55 I thought it very 'modern' somehow. Very Bukowski too.

 

[Benny Bunter]

i have never heard of john fante but i will google him now.

John Fante is the best. I can recommend anything he's ever written. You can get a collected edition of all four of the Bandini novels on paperback, that would be a great place to start. He just writes about himself all the time and self-mythologises a lot like Bukowski did, but I think he's a better writer. Its like a hot-blooded Italian American teenage angst sort of thing, with a healthy doses of catholic guilt. He's also very very funny too which helps.

Brotherhood of the grape is one of his best later novels, which he dictated to his wife when he had gone blind and was confined to a wheelchair. For most of his life he just hacked out cheap Hollywood film scripts to get by but his Bandini novels are amazing.

 

[luka]

ok. i will give one a go. im quite fond of bukowski (the novels not the poems obviously)

 

[jenks]

Just read Coetzee's Age of Iron which would challenge Hamsun for bleak brilliance. I tried Coetzee years ago and couldn't get on with him but this year i have read half a dozen of his books and all really impressive. I think the adjective 'unflinching' is a fair one for him.

Now reading a collection of love stories compiled by Eugenides - very odd selection but in with the obvious Carvers and Chekhovs there are some gems i knew nothing about - Mary Robison,Deborah Eisenberg anyone heard of them?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Just started Bolano's 2666 - borrowed it from a housemate a while ago but he recently announced he's moving out, so it's a race against time to read the damn thing. Not really got any particular expectations other than that I know he gets a lot of love (edit: and hate and indifference) around these parts.

 

[slim jenkins]

I don't think much of Bolano. I'm sure my opinion matters.

 

[Benny Bunter]

ok. i will give one a go. im quite fond of bukowski (the novels not the poems obviously)

why not the poems? I'd agree his prose is probably better but he wrote some good poems too. Love is a dog from hell is a good collection, though it does get a bit too ugly at times

 

[empty mirror]

his poems are his prose with line breaks
not much of a distinction

as far as fante goes, i read Ask The Dust as a teen (one of the many books that Bukowski brought to my attention) and liked it enough then but i cannot stomach tough guy prose anymore

 

[Benny Bunter]

as far as fante goes, i read Ask The Dust as a teen (one of the many books that Bukowski brought to my attention) and liked it enough then but i cannot stomach tough guy prose anymore

I wouldn't call Fante's stuff tough guy prose though. Bandini is an unreliable narrator and its easy to see through his delusional tough guy posturing and realise he's really a pathetic person, an emotional wreck. Its the same as in Hunger and to a lesser extent Bukowski too.

I personally don't think Ask the dust is his greatest work, I prefer some of the other novels and short stories more like Wait until Spring Bandini. That was a good one.

 

[slowtrain]

Just started Bolano's 2666 - borrowed it from a housemate a while ago but he recently announced he's moving out, so it's a race against time to read the damn thing. Not really got any particular expectations other than that I know he gets a lot of love around these parts.

Been meaning to read this for a while now..... Don't know any real life people who've read it though

 

[luka]

if you look at dissensus' very own bolano thread you can see me slagging off that very book if you really need to.

 

[slowtrain]

if you look at dissensus' very own bolano thread you can see me slagging off that very book if you really need to.

Aha, cheers! (ALthough I will admit I may be mostly inclined to want to read it because of the cover painting and the name)

I'm reading 'one hundred years of solitude' at the moment now though, only about 50 pages in, i think its really 'nice', and im enjoying it.. but it may take a while to get through (it feels like i've read twice that)

 

[Mr. Tea]

Been meaning to read this for a while now..... Don't know any real life people who've read it though

I've only just started it but it's quite interesting so far - I thought it was about gangsters and detectives in some violent Mexican border town but so far it's about a bunch of literature academics drawn together by a shared obsession with some obscure German novelist. Though no doubt the Mexican crime thriller bit comes later. It's nicely written (and nicely translated, of course), anyway.

Just reading it earlier on the way into work I came across a passing reference to the artist Oskar Kokoschka, having heard of him for the first time on an art programme on TV last night. I love it when things like that happen.

 

[luka]

oh i did read hunger yesterday. it was good. it is a better book than pan. it is more uncomfortable to read. i had to take breaks becasue it was uncomfortbale. my character is very similar to the character in the book.

 

[slowtrain]

Just reading it earlier on the way into work I came across a passing reference to the artist Oskar Kokoschka, having heard of him for the first time on an art programme on TV last night. I love it when things like that happen.

Heh, yeah, this happened to me too recently, was reading the bit in 'to the lighthouse' where they all say sir walter scott is useless and no one reads him anymore, so the dad has to go and reread all of scotts books (for fear that people will say the same about him in the future) and then the next day was reading 'the place of dead roads' and it says that kim carsons 'fucking despised sir walter scott'

I like that sort of stuff, i like kokoschka too, his play(s?) are cool