Why is this simple minded doggerel regarded as a text that's worthy of study? Can someone convince me that its inclusion on syllabi isn't a sign of dumbed down standards? Is it a particular favorite of anyone here?

Just finished reading the brilliant nonsense of Lewis Carroll's two Alice books. Now stuck in the tedious pages of Lethem's Chronic City. This is my first Lethem book and perhaps I chose poorly.

i loved chronic city, but it's probably one of the worst places to start off with him. still better than you don't love me yet, which is pretty much worthless. if you are willing to give up on it, try picking up as she climbed across the table, or maybe men and cartoons (a short story collection). both are less convoluted, more fluid than chronic. my personal favorite is fortress of solitude, but that one has a good deal of excess and might not be the wisest starting point either.

last week's reading:









i'm on a big nerd kick these days, so i'm sticking to genre material for the time being. don't know why i've been craving sci-fi and fantasy, especially since i never was into either of those genres, even as a kid. but this summer, it seems to be all i want to read. of those above, i'd recommend all but bitter seeds. feed wasn't so well written, but was a joy to read anyhow. the passage has its flaws, but it's respectable, gripping, etc. and extra lives is probably the best written of the bunch, but a little lightweight and unconvincing.

on tap for this week:

We had this conversation months ago, or maybe it was last year? But yeah, all my books are in boxes right now and I was digging through them looking for something to read. It's hard for me to decide on a book to read in general. It's extra hard when I can't look at my books all at once. It's not a terrible book, just kind of..... flat. I'm going to plow through to the end, though. Maybe it'll pick up for me or I'll find something to like about it. The only other Lethem book I have is Fortress of Solitude. I might have to pick up one of your recommendations at the library one of these days.

if you're going to get through it, then i'll try and engage with you in terms of things i appreciated about the book. i loved the pop cultural wasteland milieu, perkus tooth is a fantastic character, very nearly plausible, and a great portrayal of a critical personality. the child actor protagonist is a little too blank, though his ennui is probably deliberately flat, impersonal. the plot is probably the weakest thing about the book. loved the immersion in a arcane, urban stoner world, felt very real to me, especially coming from a book oriented around the question of realness and authenticity of experience.

to be fair, lethem is not much of a stylist. at his best, he's an invisible presence within his books. at worst, his writing is just dull and superficial. some of his best work is in short story form, where he captures the voice of others, and is especially convincing when discussing the agonies of romance and longing, in unusual circumstances. too often he gets bogged down by plotting, that he fails to achieve a plausible voice for his characters.

Best Lethem gateway drug is Motherless Brooklyn, IMO.

always thought that one was a little over-rated, viv. it's his most normal, ostensibly. just a straight-forward pi novel, at least compared to an early hybrid like gun with occasional music. comes off as it's definitely a good book, but it falls apart towards the end for me. the narrator is one of his best written characters though. i guess it's a toss-up for me.

can't wait to read that Tom Bissell book.

it's beautifully written and really enjoyable to read. but he fails to address "why video games matter." there are some strong arguments in defense of the narrative possibilities offered by video games, and his academic deconstruction is impressive and admirable. but it never comes off as entirely convincing. still, it's a joy to read.

sorry for being a know it all and lording over this thread today. bored at work, my aspergian roots are showing.

you know I was involved with a movie he was in, right?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1033466/

I've read two of his books and liked them a lot.

i was aware of your involvement in film festival stuff, but not of that one. any way i can see it online? i assume that bissell is a decent enough dude, then? his autobiographical portions in extra-lives are a real trip.

Yeah, I can't read Chronic City now. It's doing so little for me and I'm less than 100 pages in. Maybe in the future after I've gotten some other Lethem under my belt.

Now reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, which I'd pretty much entirely read 7 years ago but for some reason stopped short of completely finishing.

Chronic City's phosphorescent orange spine is irritating me from the bookshelf so I might have to read it to make it stop. Motherless Brooklyn is a great one. I especially loved the Octopus joke. Lethem's essay The Ecstasy of Influence is a thoughtful read. Is the David Lynch profile in the DFW volume? Oh no wait, that's short stories, innit?

Anyone read "Lush Life" by Richard Price? I found it interesting how he's comparing hipster aspiration to a cultural prison sentence after which you emerge as who you're authentically gonna be.

Hideous Men is short fiction. I think the David Lynch essay is in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.


Keep doing it. This thread briefly comes alive.

Just read "Forever Overhead," the third story in Hideous Men. What a great piece. Begs to be read aloud in a slow, relaxed, sun-drenched way.

Seconded.



I love DeLillo's ability to write with overblown eloquence about ideas that I wouldn't normally give much consideration to. But reading this is a predominantly intellectual exercise--the characters are so alien & remotely drawn that I don't much care what happens to them.

That's how I felt about his Americana. Good piece of writing, but I just didn't care at all about anything that was happening. Is there anything else in his body of work like White Noise? I own Underworld, Libra, and Mao II. Would like to read them eventually. But would love something with the warmth and humor and humanity of White Noise.

About 3/4 of the way through Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage and just can't wait 'til the end to rant and rave. Strunk and White probably got ulcers reading Maugham - I've never seen anyone write in the passive voice and switch back and forth between 1st and 2nd person w/o leaving an enormous mess all over the pages, but Maugham's the fucking master. The prose is so beautiful, and his observations and meditations, in character, on the nature of art and beaut and truth; of the role of poverty in an artist's life; of pleasure and pain - gah. Look at me write in banalities and generalities.

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded."

Maugham suffers in today's enlightened climate - he has the too-typical xenophobia and anti-Semitism of Englishmen in the early 20th century. I don't want to apologize for it; don't know if I need to. Res ipsa loquitur - the thing speaks for itself.

I read The Razor's Edge a decade ago and loved it, but Of Human Bondage may quite possibly be the best bok I've read in years.

Ha. In 'The Catcher in the Rye', Holden mentions that he liked 'Of Human Bondage' but wouldn't call Maugham on the phone which is his ultimate honor given to a writer of a book he liked. Ever read Evelyn Waugh? I hear he was influenced by WSM but was a great deal better.

I read Vile Bodies - it was good. Don't have enough of a comparison to judge him better or worse than Maugham.

That's on my list. 'A Handful of Dust' is marvelous and quietly devastating. I've yet to read 'Brideshead Revisited' but I'm told its atypical of his work.

love it

White Noise might be my favorite book ever. On the third book of kings "dark tower" series. it's OK.

Yeah, I think it's the weakest of the series.

Based on comments upthread I'd been looking forward to reading Underworld but James Woods' famously negative review keeps lumping Cosmopolis and that one into the same pile so now I dunno.

Apparently David Cronenberg is slated to write/direct the film that's in development (Cosmopolis), so that's something. Otoh they've got Colin Ferrell playing Eric...fitting, except that he's about 10 years too old.

really? I've always thought the last two were noticeably weaker than the first five...

Been on a bit of a Gore Vidal kick recently. Normally I don't like historical fiction, but Burr and Lincoln were both outstanding. Very witty novels, I laughed out loud several times reading both of them.

Great writing and storytelling that every clubber should read!

Two of my favorite books. Vidal is phenomenal at this kind of writing.

Funniest novel of the last decade.

I might be a sucker for the metafiction, perhaps. . For me though, #3 is all situation, with no firm purpose other than to solidify the relationships between the leads. Not saying it's a bad novel, but it's so much one peril after another, like a not-all-that-great adventure movie.

Finally got through Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I was too depressed to deal with it a couple winters ago. Don't know quite what to say about it, if only b/c he has so many fans here and, the more of him I read, the more underwhelmed I am. His prose is perfect, and that's kind of the problem. It's almost too perfect; too clean. He reminds me of painters and filmmakers wwhose technique is flawless but whose works lack emotional weeight. Yes, I cried a bit at the end, and yes, he creates a vivid word picture of a post apocalyptic landscape, but through most of the narrative, I found myself admiring his way with a sentence rather than reacting emotionally to what was described. Perhaps that's the intent, but I've read four of his novels now and always come away somehow both impressed and indifferent.

For a palate cleanser, I polished off Camus' The Stranger in one afternoon. This novel terrifies me every time I read it. (This was my 3rd time, but it had beeen almost 20 years since the second.) The terrifying component is that I always identify with the main character who is, at least in some ways, clearly psychotic. His ambivalence and bewilderment at social convention connects with me, though. When he tells the prison chaplain he just doesn't understand why people care whether or not he believes in God, I knew exactly what he meant.

I'd say Camus > McCarty, but that'd be like comparing apples with - hell, I dunno... Volkswagon Jettas.

i dont know if anyone has posted this yet so sorry if being redundant but this is great:



short read...and if you liked moneyball and liars poker - this is right up your alley

I've read all of Cormac's books and in my mind, The Road is his least impressive alongside the The Orchard Keeper, though when I picked it up I was just coming off a stretch where I'd pretty much read his entire output and was going into this new one knowing how much praise it was getting and thinking, "Well, shit, his other work is brilliant and no one really talks about it. This one must be really brilliant." It lacks the complexity and richness of his other work. It's too stripped down, too much of a skeleton, and perhaps he shows too much of his hand. He's using the same metaphors, but there's nowhere for the metaphors to hide here. What was ambiguous in his other works is impossible to miss in this one.

I'd say give Suttree a try, if you're not completely turned off of the dude by now. Much more relaxed and melancholy, less apocalyptic, damn hilarious (it's got a character who gets caught fucking a watermelon, if that tells you anything). It might change your mind about the emotional weight of his books, which I disagree with you about. I don't know which ones you've read, though. Suttree and the Border Trilogy as a whole definitely affected me on a deep emotional level.

Ever read Blood Meridian? Harold Bloom thinks its one of the best american novels of the post war era.

Have you read Blood Meridian, Tony? Brilliant book.

Well, Ogawa, the other three were The Border Trilogy. Pefect prose, but in the end I just didn't much care about his journey to manhood.

Still, I have an inclination to read more - not like he makes the process unpleasant.

McCarthy and EL Doctorow have both specialized in the no-quote-marks-no-punctuation-in-dialogue thing. McCarthy gets fawned over; Doctorow largely ignored (around these parts, anyway - pretty sure critics love them both) yet Doctorow's a warmer writer. Guess I just have a resentment to work out.

Blood Meridian slows to the point of absolute tedium about halfway through. Not a book I seem able to finish.

I see. Well, maybe Suttree will be different? haha. I think it's superior to the Border Trilogy, probably second only to Blood Meridian (an entirely dissimilar work, so no worries). If nothing else, it's just more perfect prose.

Nope.



following Joyce I guess.

brainstorm, is that really true about doctrow? mccarthy's a hipper choice, but i don't get the sense that doctrow isn't highly respected. maybe he's just diluted his oeuvre with some subpar late period work (i don't know, haven't read his new stuff), or maybe his great work was recognized too early, rather than mccarthy whose reputation has steadily grown. but goddamn if the book of daniel and ragtime aren't both fantastic. book of daniel in particular is one of my all-time favorites.

and nagode, i wrote about the big short a few pages back. really enjoyed that one, was my first exposure to lewis' books.

anyhow, my reading plans for last week got derailed by apartment moving shit. so i only got to read a couple hundred pages of game of thrones, along with these two:



and



the egan book was wonderful. it's a series of interconnected vignettes which jump back and forth through time for maximum emotional impact. borderline sci-fi at times, also a punk/rock & roll novel. but beautiful vision, some really strong writing, albeit with a few occasional lulls.

the bedwetter was much better than i expected. still suffers from the same showbiz memoir pitfalls (narrow focus, glib style, too glossy for its own good), but as someone who is ambivalent about silverman, i was surprised to connect with it. first of all, there's little chance that this one was ghostwritten. so much scatology. but the early half of the book, where she recounts her struggle to stop being a bedwetter, is actually quite well recounted and emotionally affecting. there's very little 'woe is me'-ishness to the book, and she does a good job of balancing self-effacement with genuine personal revelation.


now i'm halfway through the left hand of god (paul hoffman) which is, so far, an excellent fantasy/anti-religious mini-epic. writing is crisp, without too many awful adjective choices (always a problem in fantasy), characters are interesting, as is the concept. i should be done with this one by the end of the day. also still wading through game of thrones, but that one's a bit of a wash. i'll finish it when i finish it.

up next is tom rachman's the imperfectionists, which i've heard nothing but good things about:

^ STE, as I noted, critics seem to love Doctorow, and SOMBies may, as well. I just haven't noticed much praise/discussion of him, here. Stylistically, though, you can read both their work and see they've done many of the same things, esp. w/regard to dialogue. You make a good point about his later work - I read City of God a few years ago and while it was compelling enough to finish, it was a swing-and-a-miss. I saw him reaching for interesting things, then falling short. The March, about Sherman in the Civil War, was a return to form, as well as being, in part, the previous adventures of Ragtime's Coalhouse Walker.

I think Billy Bathgate is my favorite, though.

Ever see the film? It vanished from theaters without a trace.

That's b/c it's an exercise in failure, at almost every level. Which is kind of surprising, considering it was a Robert Benton (screenwriter of Bonnie & Clyde, dir. of Nobody's Fool) project. Benton's work is usually at least interesting. Bathgate wasn't. (It did get a DVD release at some point - I checked it out of the library a few years ago.)

Finished Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, a nearly perfect collection of short fiction tarnished only by the inclusion of "Church Not Made with Hands" and "Tri-Stan: I Sold Sissee Nar to Ecko," two incredibly tedious and overlong writing exercises that simply don't belong here. The rest of the stories, however, with their detailed worlds and situations and layering of complex emotions and endless insecurities, combine and build on each other and achieve a sort of sublime power over the length of the book so that when the last "Brief Interview" finally ends it's like a punch to the gut. I might read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again next, as far as David Foster Wallace goes. I want to read Infinite Jest eventually, but I'm not ready for the timesink just yet.

Now reading Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night. Picked this up after reading a negative review of Houellebecq's work that said he'd been reading too much Céline.

The only thing I know about the Billy Bathgate movie is that Nicole Kidman is naked in it and the reason I know this is because when I was young and the Internet was young naked celebrity websites were my playground. I rented it from the video store once. Didn't watch it though.

Does Celine end every sentence in this with an exclamation point? The only book of his I tried did that. After a chapter I said to myself, "What a bold, stylistic exercise! Which I will never finish! I'm returning this to the liberry today!"

Haven't made it very far yet. Most of the exclamation points so far have been confined to dialogue.

I have 'Journey...' sitting on the shelf. I'll get to it one day. I guess Celine was a staunch Nazi supporter.