what are you reading now?

[william_kent]

He's changed a bit

you sure you weren't talking to Carlos Castaneda? it was an ayahuasca ceremony you were at?

it all makes sense considering the Tim Leary book reference in the PROFESSIONALS actually, he obviously had leanings in that direction, I wonder how much input he had into the props?

 

[IdleRich]

Went to the beach yesterday and forgot the book I was reading so I started reading Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen, just thirty or so pages in but so far it reads like fairly enjoyable nonsense in an almost stream of consciousness style.

 

[jenks]

“Faraway the Southern Sky,” Joseph Andras a novel about the early life of Ho Chi Minh in Paris only using factual details- the kind of thing the French seem to excel at - small novels using mainly historical sources to dwell on a real person/event - thinking Binet's Hhhh, Guez's Mengele book, Vuillard's Order of the Day and An Honorable Exit and Leys' Death of Napoleon. Usually very short factual novels - not quite sure why it's such a French thing but as a form and approach it is one I do enjoy.

 

[kid charlemagne]

started on this dostoevsky 3 stories book. too much comiserating. going to intentionally lose it on the train tomorrow. then buy a new book at the store.

 

[kid charlemagne]

any books or authors i should look for at the store tomorrow that i should read or that i may like?

 

[other_life]

i have been assigned bressons on the cinematographer...

 

[yyaldrin]

got a bunch of books by yaşar kemal that i'm going through now. i love them because so far all of them have been about the oppressed taking revenge or resisting the oppressor and all of that set against beautiful landscapes filled with hills, mountains, plateaus, rocks, caves, rivers, streams, flowers and animals always changing according to the seasons. it's very romantic.

 

[jenks]

you sure you weren't talking to Carlos Castaneda? it was an ayahuasca ceremony you were at?

it all makes sense considering the Tim Leary book reference in the PROFESSIONALS actually, he obviously had leanings in that direction, I wonder how much input he had into the props?

i fried my brain on a lot of Carlos back in the 80s when he was a constant on any head's bookcase, along with the I Ching, Colin Dexter's The Occult and The Stand by Stephen King.

 

[version]

any books or authors i should look for at the store tomorrow that i should read or that i may like?

Dashiell Hammett.

 

[kid charlemagne]

Dashiell Hammett.

oh shit those sound alright. though i was thinking about grabbing another burroughs since i finished queer

 

[version]

oh shit those sound alright. though i was thinking about grabbing another burroughs since i finished queer

Why not both?

 

[kid charlemagne]

true. idk which to get from either. ill see what the store has.

 

[version]

Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon are the two Hammetts I've read and they're both good, although preferred Red Harvest. The best Burroughs have been Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Wild Boys and Cities of the Red Night.

 

[dilbert1]

@version have you seen the film adaptation of Naked Lunch? Wondering if I should watch it. Never read the book

 

[version]

@version have you seen the film adaptation of Naked Lunch? Wondering if I should watch it. Never read the book

Yeah, it's decent. Not a lot of the book in it though. It's Cronenberg's own jumble of Burroughs' life and bits and pieces of his bibliography. There are characters, locations and routines from Naked Lunch but it doesn't follow the book and it's all tangled up with the stuff about Burroughs shooting his wife, Ginsberg and Kerouac helping him assemble the book, Burroughs working as an exterminator, and whatnot.

The book's better, but the film's an interesting companion piece to Burroughs in general. It's got a similar feel to eXistenZ, if you've seen that one. Cronenberg in his Beige Period.

 

[IdleRich]

@version have you seen the film adaptation of Naked Lunch? Wondering if I should watch it. Never read the book

I think that the film adaptation is a pretty good stab at making un unfilmable book into film. As I remember it, it would be perfectky possible abd even reasonable to finish the film and say that it wasn't really a film of the book- and yet at the time it really doess feel that the film you get is somehow a truer rendering of the book than if someone just took the book and filmed it scene by scene from beginning to end.

In other words it's surprisingly true to the spirit of the book and to my mind, at least as my memory tells me (and I'm sticking with that cos it's all I got) it's a better than I ever expected or even hoped.

Though all or the above is based on a vague thirty year memory and if you think I'm talking nonsense then I reserve the right to disavow everything I said and put it down to senility.

Although I see that @version said something similar which gives me a bit more confidence... except he also says good stuff about Existenz which I really can't get with despite several attempts, I remember a load of us seeing if in the cinema when it came out and all of us being horribly underwhelmed by the final line and its sheer unnecessity ... perhaps if that weren't there then we wouldn't have all left being so down on it, it certainly has good bits but it just felt that the last bit kinda spelled out what we all knew in a way that made us feel like we were being treated like idiots - show and don't tell had been thrown aside and we all left discussing that. I dunno, I don't think it eas great anyway but that final fuck up felt and still feels important. It's the main thing I remember from the film however many times I've seen it.

 

[IdleRich]

Enough negativity, I enjoyed Red Harvest though I'm pretty sure it requires quite a suspension of disbelief. Is it really possible for some guy to wander into a town called Personwood (or is it Poisonwood?) and then basically swap siides whenever he feels like it from one gang to another including the police, leaving behind him a trail of bodies that makes you wonder if there can be anyone at all left alive to arrest.

On the other hand, Hammet was some kind of private eye I believe so I guess he knows a hell of a lot more about it than me - or Chandler, though from what what I've read (and seen) I do prefer Chandler.

Red Harvest has been adapted several times I reckon, thing is, some of the films that say they are based on it seem to have relatively little to do with the book whereas there are several films (eg that one with Bruce Willis and Christopher Walken) which are pretty much identical, but which, at least when they out didn't even acknowledge the influence.

ps Dashiell is a strange name, if I recall correctly it was an adaptation of his mother's surname, she was of French descent and I think she was called De Chiele of something like. Interesting tidbit for you iff you ever find yourself in a pub quiz in which mobile phones are allowed. Although I probably misspelled it so you will get it wrong anyway.

 

[version]

Enough negativity, I enjoyed Red Harvest though I'm pretty sure it requires quite a suspension of disbelief. Is it really possible for some guy to wander into a town called Personwood (or is it Poisonwood?) and then basically swap siides whenever he feels like it from one gang to another including the police, leaving behind him a trail of bodies that makes you wonder if there can be anyone at all left alive to arrest.

Yeah, at times it feels like watching someone leisurely walk across several lanes of traffic and somehow make it to the other side.

On the other hand, Hammet was some kind of private eye I believe so I guess he knows a hell of a lot more about it than me - or Chandler, though from what what I've read (and seen) I do prefer Chandler.

He was a Pinkerton. There's a good Ellroy piece I've posted before comparing the two -

Dashiell Hammett was allegedly offered five Gs to perform a contract hit. It is most likely a mythic premise. He was a Pinkerton operative at the time. A stooge for Anaconda Copper made the offer. The intended victim was a union organiser. The stooge had every reason to believe Hammett would take the job - post-first-world-war Pinkertons were a goon squad paranoically fearful of all perceived reds. Hammett's mythic refusal is a primer on situational ethics. He knew it was wrong and didn't do it. He stayed with an organisation that in part suppressed dissent and entertained murderous offers on occasion. He stayed because he loved the work and figured he could chart a moral course through it. He was right and wrong. That disjuncture is the great theme of his work.

It explains why Hammett's vision is more complex than that of his near-contemporary Raymond Chandler. Chandler wrote the man he wanted to be - gallant and with a lively satirist's wit. Hammett wrote the man he feared he might be - tenuous and sceptical in all human dealings, corruptible and addicted to violent intrigue. He stayed on the job. The job defined him. His job description was in some part "Oppression". That made him in large part a fascist tool. He knew it. He later embraced Marxist thought as a rightwing toady and used leftist dialectic for ironic definition. Detective work both fuelled and countermanded his chaotic moral state and gave him something consistently engaging to do.

James Ellroy on Dashiell Hammett's day job

Rereading: Dashiell Hammett knew that his day job as a detective for the anti-trade union Pinkerton agency made him in large part a fascist tool - his guilt, writes James Ellroy, was the driving force of his crime fiction.

www.theguardian.com

 

[Benny Bunter]

Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon are the two Hammetts I've read and they're both good, although preferred Red Harvest. The best Burroughs have been Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Wild Boys and Cities of the Red Night.

Did you ever get round to reading ticket? I started it and it seemed really good but I got distracted and never finished it. I think I burned myself out by reading nova express and soft machine back to back - spending too much time in Burroughs world messes with your head

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah, at times it feels like watching someone leisurely walk across several lanes of traffic and somehow make it to the other side.



He was a Pinkerton. There's a good Ellroy piece I've posted before comparing the two -

Dashiell Hammett was allegedly offered five Gs to perform a contract hit. It is most likely a mythic premise. He was a Pinkerton operative at the time. A stooge for Anaconda Copper made the offer. The intended victim was a union organiser. The stooge had every reason to believe Hammett would take the job - post-first-world-war Pinkertons were a goon squad paranoically fearful of all perceived reds. Hammett's mythic refusal is a primer on situational ethics. He knew it was wrong and didn't do it. He stayed with an organisation that in part suppressed dissent and entertained murderous offers on occasion. He stayed because he loved the work and figured he could chart a moral course through it. He was right and wrong. That disjuncture is the great theme of his work.

It explains why Hammett's vision is more complex than that of his near-contemporary Raymond Chandler. Chandler wrote the man he wanted to be - gallant and with a lively satirist's wit. Hammett wrote the man he feared he might be - tenuous and sceptical in all human dealings, corruptible and addicted to violent intrigue. He stayed on the job. The job defined him. His job description was in some part "Oppression". That made him in large part a fascist tool. He knew it. He later embraced Marxist thought as a rightwing toady and used leftist dialectic for ironic definition. Detective work both fuelled and countermanded his chaotic moral state and gave him something consistently engaging to do.

James Ellroy on Dashiell Hammett's day job

Rereading: Dashiell Hammett knew that his day job as a detective for the anti-trade union Pinkerton agency made him in large part a fascist tool - his guilt, writes James Ellroy, was the driving force of his crime fiction.

www.theguardian.com

Interesting, never knew that internal struggle be muat have constantly wrestled with.

It should also be mentioned I guess that Hmmett's character, simply known as the operative or, I think it is, the continental op, was a kinda forefather to Leone's man with no name and no doubt many other nameless heroes my brains too broken to those k of just now. Cool name anyhow.