books, books, books

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 1:43 pm

Yes, I suppose I keep forgetting how taboo the whole embracing bit was.

"You and I are outlaws. All this"--he pointed to the middle-class comfort of the room--"would be taken from us if people knew."

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 2:21 pm

Oooh the thrill of the illicit!

so lacklustre · Post by **so lacklustre** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 2:25 pm

Which Coe? Have only read the brilliant What A Carve Up, must pick up House of Sleep too, and Rotters Club.

Yeah it is What A Carve Up that I'm reading. Have read Rotters Club which was good and musically interesting.

Post by **BlueChair** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 3:12 pm

Rotter's Club is great

SoLikeCandy · Post by **SoLikeCandy** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 3:45 pm

For the past few weeks, I have divided my time and attention between this board and the message board for the Dark Tower by Stephen King (http://www.thedarktower.net). I've read all of the books in the series and I'm hopelessly hooked. Not nearly as high brow as a Portuguese writer (and I can read in Portuguese! I'll have to pick those up), but thrilling and filling nonetheless.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Thu Jul 22, 2004 5:20 pm

Did you study Portuguese? That's a cool ability. Have you read much in it? how about Portugal's national poet, dang, forgotten what he wrote, Camoes or something. The Lusiads or something... Can you listen to Caetano Veloso and understand every word. Brazil Portuguese is so different to in Portugal, then again, compare Texan and Glaswegian.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:52 am

Update on Maurice: he "possesses" and quickly falls in love with with his ex-"friend" (Clive)'s gamekeeper. (Nothing like a servant to bring you irrevocably into the realm of the physical!) He tells Clive (who dumped him after he turned straight), and Clive is a little bit disgusted, because he thought the whole point of man-on-man love was that it was purely spiritual and platonic. Anyway, now I can see why it was banned.

Funny part: Maurice goes to see a doctor to "cure" himself. ("I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort," he confesses.) The doctor tells him there is no cure, and that he should consider moving to France or Italy. Tee-hee...

marblefaun · Post by **marblefaun** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:30 pm

In case you didn't know..
You can rent the film version starring a very young and handsome Hugh Grant. One of his first films, I think.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 2:04 pm

I most certainly did not know that! Thanks!

That sounds like a movie I could rent with my mother: for me, a young and handsome Hugh Grant, and for her...a young and handsome Hugh Grant...

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 5:01 am

The film is no great shakes, if memory serves, unless you (and your mother) have a serious floppy fringe thing.

I reckon Clive is very jealous of Maurice stealing his gamekeeper. His doctor should prescribe him a month in San Fran to sort himself out.

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Thu Jul 29, 2004 2:13 pm

I just finished "Mailman" by J Robert Lennon. I picked this one up in the airport, partly because of it's cover. It was a great surprise, funny and depressing at the same time. It reminded me, in various spots, of Richard Yates, John K O'Toole and John Fante. It deals to a large extent with mental illness, incestual thoughts and the American experience.

Anyone else here read this?

johnfoyle · Post by **johnfoyle** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 4:29 am

I recently wrote here about Ann Patchett's thought provoking , powerful new book , Truth and Beauty . Written about the death of a friend , it has received a hostile reaction from the friends sister in todays Guardian-

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments ... 40,00.html

I think Ann defends herself well here -

http://www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/patchett.html -

costellopunk · Post by **costellopunk** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 4:49 pm

just finished john fante's full of life and hunter s. thompson's kingdom of fear and i'm about to start dos passos's 42nd parallel. i don't have a computer or cable in my new apartment so i'm reading more than ever...i think that's a good thing.

ice nine · Post by **ice nine** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 6:54 pm

I just picked up, on the board's recommendations, Gravity's Rainbow. From the looks of it it should take me a good year to finsh it.

Good to hear from you Costellopunk. I see you're still a punk

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Sat Aug 07, 2004 7:09 pm

Ah, the marvelous world of Tyrone Slothrop. 'A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.'

Along with Ulysses, GR is the university fave I most want to re-read and somehow feel I will never do because, as you say, Ice Nine, it would take a year. Stick with it, though, cos it's great fun. Hugely inventive, terribly clever, often very moving. I went through a lovely student phase where I read all of Pynchon back to back and found myself thinking in his voice.

And my party piece was to read the shit-eating scene to people. It was great fun seeing how they'd react. Excellent reading for the closet...

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 8:57 am

Goodness gracious, I hated Gravity's Rainbow. I was in Berlin, and the woman whose apartment I was staying at had a huge library of English-language classics; I spent the summer working through them. After I read V., I decided Pynchon wasn't my bag, that he invented characters as pegs to hang ideas upon. Then I met this hot German guy in a club who loved Pynchon, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and read GR, which was also in my apartment. Pointless linguistic pyrotechnics, no real emotion or depth. All head, no heart. Apparently it led to everything that I think is wrong with literature today.

As for Ann Patchett, I think she is a tremendously gifted writer. I just finished Bel Canto after reading it in snatches at my local coffee shop, and it made me cry into my blended hazelnut Italian soda. Though I'm sure I'd feel the same way as Lucy Grealy's sister if someone wrote anything unflattering about anyone in my family, I think her grasp on the relationship between life and art is a bit tenuous, and given that Lucy had already written a memoir, she should have known that there's always a risk you run. If she felt that strongly about it, she should not have released Lucy's letters or helped Patchett in any way. To help her out and then write an article full of self-pity and poor-me afterwards just smacks of avoiding responsibility for her actions.

To continue on my critical streak: I just read The Sheltering Sky. I didn't like any of the characters; I was guiltily happy when the husband died and I didn't have to read about their marriage anymore.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Mon Aug 09, 2004 6:50 pm

I knew you'd say that as well I recall your earlier dismissal of Pynchon. I can see why someone might say that, but I'd just like to record that I disagree immensely about the 'no depth, no heart' persepctive. What I love about Pynchon is his fondness for his characters. His recurring theme is figures in a quest scenario where the inanimate and the dark forces collectively known as Them are out to get you, but he is firmly in a sympathetic Us camp, so there's a powerful sense of identification and a current of warmth. And often there are emotionally charged and very powerful scenes. To me it's a sense of warmth in the comic tradition of Ulysses or Beckett. It's moved on from Forsterian flat and round characters, for sure, but 'pegs to hang ideas on' is no more the case than in Austen, Shakespearer, Chekhov or whoever. GR is for me an absolute 20th century post-war classic. The fusion of the cold war themes of the threat of absolute zero, the holy grail of destruction, and the jumbled high and low culture riffs of the jazz age and beyond is brilliant. It's immensely entertaining, frequently hilarious, and its cleverness is always to some point. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a Big Book. I love the sense of ambition, the intention to push literature beyond, to open up new possibilities.

The 'apparently it led to...' sentence is odd. I'm not sure if this is a different use of 'apparently' to here. For us it means 'I have it on good authority that', implying that some other source has validated this. Do you mean more 'It appears to be the case that...' without an indication of another agent? If not, apparently according to whom? According to me it led to everything that is good in modern culture!

These accusations are very similar to those often levelled at Martin Amis (is he in your camp of 'everything that is wrong'?), though I would agree more in this case. Very often it's his inability to be brilliant beyond the level of the sentence or the paragraph that frustrates me, that what it adds up to can be gleaned from a few pages. The lack of narrative development in his books can be tiresome, and can lead to that sense of 'linguistic pyrotechnics' as an end in itself. At the same time, he has created a unique comic vision which, again, speaks of its time very powerfully and is invariably thrilling to read as a result. I recall a critic in about 1990 comparing Amis with Costello who said that it's all clever wordsmithery without heart and as 'neither of them can do women properly', this showed up their underlying misogyny. Very shallow and trite, if you ask me. Linguistic inventiveness leading to a disenchanted yet often comic view of the world, to me it's a wonderful formula. Reading the world in new and different ways that makes you sit up and take notice, isn't this what good kulchir is all about?

How perfect to discover Gravity's Rainbow in Berlin! I wish I'd been able to do that.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 8:17 am

Oh, Otis, you're just as cute as the German guy, and even more convincing. But I still don't like Pynchon. When I say "apparently," I don't necessarily mean "on good authority," nor "according to me and my imaginary friend over here." I mean that I've read several reviews and articles tracing a direct path from Pynchon and Don DeLillo (also hated White Noise, though I read it with the openest of minds, I swear) to people like Dave Eggers, and the whole faux-pomo "maximalist" novel. Dave Eggers is a spectacularly self-indulgent writer; I could barely make it through Heartbreaking Work... because I kept wanting to throw the book across the room. (Though I'm not exactly in the Dale Peck camp.) And it's funny, because Infinite Jest is one of my favorite books, but I think everything that David Foster Wallace has written since then totally lacks soul or warmth. I've never read any Martin Amis, and I don't really know what his deal is, so I can't tell you what I think of him. I guess I'm looking for someone that can engage my intellect while making me care what happens next. Salman Rushdie could do that for a while...

Currently re-reading The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I would highly recommend it; it's like nothing else I've ever read. Reading it is like having a dream, and it's a beautifully written piece of work.

marblefaun · Post by **marblefaun** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 10:31 am

....go!

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Tue Aug 10, 2004 5:50 pm

Go where? Go read The Unconsoled? That being your 'favourite book of all time', MF (no offence intended!)? I read all of Ishiguro up to Remains of the Day and then nothing after, which I guess means Unconsoled and When We Were Orphans. He's a fine writer.

MBA: that's very sweet of you, but I wasn't expecting you to change your opinion. I just wanted to defend my beloved Toz from the calumny, and put forward an opposing view to the 'pegs for characters, pointless wordmithery' one.

I hate never having the time to read enough. It ain't easy with three kids and a day mainly spent staring at screens and paper (and often an evening spent staring at screens too!). I'm dying to read De Lillo's Underworld, which sounds just like my sort of thing, and had even forgotten I had an unread White Noise on the shelf. Sure enough, the jacket says 'It has the mad wilfulness of another great american satirist, Thomas Pynchon.' Must read it. I haven't bothered with Eggers. What's 'pomo' and who's Dale Peck?

Post by **BlueChair** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 8:57 am

I'm reading Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Excellent and hillarious so far.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:53 pm

Actually, it's Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Sorry, couldn't resist it! Is it big there? It's been HUGE here. How I love the pedantry of punctuation. Long live the apostrophe in all its accurate forms.

Has anyone read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy? I've read Northern Lights and am now reading The Subtle Knife. Superb stuff. An awesome storyteller with a brilliant imagination. My 11 year old lad is reading NL now too. Great to have a writer so nourishing for his generation and all older ones at the same time.

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 11:11 pm

Wow, this is a thread I have sadly neglected. Well no time to catch-up now so I shall just dive in head first.

Miss.Buenos Aires. Your dissection of Pynchon et al brought back memories of reading The Runaway Soul by Harold Brodkey. A much anticipated publication, but what a turgid read. The experience was much like long distance running. Nothing you see along the journey makes any imapct at all. Everything is focused on crossing the finish line. And I made it through all 800+ self-indulgent pages.

Though tracing a path from Pynchon or DeLillo to Eggers & co seems to be drawing a very long bow. Similar attempts in music to lay the whole god-awful goth scene at the feet of Joy Division etc only make me sigh.

In particular Pynchon throws down so many possible paths, that you could condemn him for triggering any number of shamful imitators. I wouldn't have thought all head & no heart was among his sins.

Though that is more an indication of my taste in literature. Georges Perec could certainly be acccused of linguistic pyrotechnics, but hardly pointless & with more heart than many who wear their's on their sleeve.

Anyway these musings aside, I wanted to say I enjoy reading your thoughts & will start to peruse this particular thread more frequently.

Otis. I loved Underworld. I look forward to seeing your thoughts whenever you get to it.

The first section at a famous 1950s baseball game is stunning.

Anyway as this is a thread about what we are reading, I'll add that I just finished Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I loved it.

El Vez · Post by **El Vez** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 11:49 pm

Kavalier & Klay is such a wonderful book. I need to reread it because it's been three years since I poured through it on a cross-country trip. Did you know that there is now an Escapist comic book with Chabon's name attached to it? I'm not sure what his level of involvement is but that's pretty cool.

The other day I picked up a copy of The I Hate Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld & Condeleeza Rice Reader. It goes well with a viewing of Outfoxed and a couple of beers.

Richard · Post by **Richard** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:08 am

El Vez - The comic companion to Kavalier is fun. It recreates the stories of the Escapist, Luna Moth etc. as they were described in the novel. Tries to continue the conceit that Kavalier & lay did exist.

The highpoints are a 1 pager by the great Chris Ware & the origin story by Chabon. The rest would have been better if they had attempted to recreate the style of the 30s & 40s, instead you get the glossy 90s & 00s.

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