More books I've read recently:
The Obscene Bird of Night - José Donoso. Big, dense, suffocating magic realist narrative from various viewpoints (uses 2nd person quite a lot) centring on a mutant scion of a noble clan in rural Chile and the more subtly mutated (but still very strange) people who surround him. Heavy going but it gives you brain-cud for a while afterwards.
Various Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle, Player Piano, Breakfast of Champions. V is a wag but he sometimes comes off unbelievable smug, e.g. Breakfast of Champions where the tone is "I'm Kurt Vonnegut, and I'm a smart guy who knows what's wrong with the world. Because you're reading my book, you must be a smart guy, too, although obviously not as smart as me. But all those other people who don't read my books, they're the problem. Not only are they not as smart as me and you, but because they're not reading my books they're not going to get any smarter. And those people are what my books are about." I preferred Player Piano (and Slaughterhouse Five) where it wasn't all about the author. His short stories are supposed to be good so I'll be turning to them shortly.
The Bostonians - Henry James. The blurb said it was James's "lightest" novel, or something to that effect, but sometimes his prose becomes ridiculous, e.g. James describing a young gent assisting a woman to board a streetcar: "he was helping again to insert her into the oblong receptacle". He loves the words 'interlocutor' and even 'interlocutress', and people don't add comments, they subjoin them. Quite interesting on feminism in 1870's (?) New England though; James is obviously pretty conservative but he takes care not to make either side too sympathetic.
The Atrocity Exhibition - Ballard. Someone on PG mentioned this ages ago and I'm 60% through it, it's my toilet reading due to its episodic structure, and because it's so awful it really does make me want to shit, but then I've never liked pop art and found the cultural masturbation of the 60's boomers nauseating.
Underground - Murakami. Famous Japanese novelist interviews survivors of the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack and a few once and current members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult what done it. Amazing matter-of-fact tales of commuters inhaling sarin then carrying on to work regardless. Murakami makes a thing out of letting the interviewees speak for themselves but as a disinterested reader I found the accounts slightly repetitive by the end. Still, recommended for anyone heading for Japan.
A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court - Twain. Almost finished this one. Stereotypical libertarian yankee is transported to Arthurian spacetime and sets about remedying the manifold problems in society. Twain is a genius and I'm going to be reading a lot more by him.
Any thoughts?
More books
Fair enough that you don't like pop art -- I'll only let it pass if it's done well.
For the rest though, you've caught me out. I haven't read any of them, and only have a small knowledge of James.
Might as well join in (although I've mostly been reading poetry books recently):
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Warm, friendly, affectionate and serious. A real treasure of a novel. Even if it seemed to trail off near the end, this was one of the wisest accounts of a racist southern town I've read. However, Lee managed to get away with too much because her narrators were children -- in other words, she hammer her point again and again under the shallow excuse that they are 'learning'.
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy. Tat. Movie script action, shallow, pragmatic prose. And hilariously awkward 'literary' dialogue obviously chucked in there because he had to keep up his notoriously difficult reputation somehow. Especially funny to watch him develop his undeveloped themes.
Wuthering Heights. One of those books you tell yourself to read for ages before getting round to. I'm half way through this at the moment, but am very impressed. The most surprising bit about it is that, even though this was written in the time of repressed prose, it is incredibly dysfunctional. It's rare for a novel to kick me into moral awkwardness.
White Noise - Don DeLillo. Unimpressive. What he has in arrestingly 'observed' sentences about society, he lacks in characterisation and originality. The way he says things is original, but it's very annoying reading a book that, for 400 pages, bangs on about the same condition. A novel of examples strung together into a pretty flimsy plot. It had me going for the first 200 pages too, until I realised he couldn't really think of anything else. Should've been shorter.
Again, not much because I've been reading much more poetry.
Fun
Dave
For the rest though, you've caught me out. I haven't read any of them, and only have a small knowledge of James.
Might as well join in (although I've mostly been reading poetry books recently):
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Warm, friendly, affectionate and serious. A real treasure of a novel. Even if it seemed to trail off near the end, this was one of the wisest accounts of a racist southern town I've read. However, Lee managed to get away with too much because her narrators were children -- in other words, she hammer her point again and again under the shallow excuse that they are 'learning'.
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy. Tat. Movie script action, shallow, pragmatic prose. And hilariously awkward 'literary' dialogue obviously chucked in there because he had to keep up his notoriously difficult reputation somehow. Especially funny to watch him develop his undeveloped themes.
Wuthering Heights. One of those books you tell yourself to read for ages before getting round to. I'm half way through this at the moment, but am very impressed. The most surprising bit about it is that, even though this was written in the time of repressed prose, it is incredibly dysfunctional. It's rare for a novel to kick me into moral awkwardness.
White Noise - Don DeLillo. Unimpressive. What he has in arrestingly 'observed' sentences about society, he lacks in characterisation and originality. The way he says things is original, but it's very annoying reading a book that, for 400 pages, bangs on about the same condition. A novel of examples strung together into a pretty flimsy plot. It had me going for the first 200 pages too, until I realised he couldn't really think of anything else. Should've been shorter.
Again, not much because I've been reading much more poetry.
Fun
Dave
Read To Kill a Mockingbird at school and from what I remember it was more like a kids' (or "young adult") novel than a proper grown-up one, which may be harsh. Did Harper Lee write anything else? If so, does anyone read it?
Glad to see you railing against McCarthy. He seems to be the American McEwan in that he's the "literary" bestseller it's hip to be seen reading. I haven't read anything by him yet but especially since The Road was featured by Oprah he's everywhere, like Pokemon or something.
Wuthering Heights I've avoided mainly due to a silly aversion to all things Yorkshire (and Kate Bush), but the more I hear about it the better it sounds.
White Noise I got for xmas this year from the in-laws and is waiting for me in my bookcase. I didn't realise it was that long.
Finished Twain's Connecticut Yankee last night. Hilarious and increasingly strange story. Best bit was the running parody of Arthurian romance (a la Morte d'Arthur, which apparently Twain first read immediately before writing this). Over-the-top carnage at the end where 25,000 knights are electrocuted, bombed and machine-gunned left a curious hollow feeling in the gut. Amazing book.
Glad to see you railing against McCarthy. He seems to be the American McEwan in that he's the "literary" bestseller it's hip to be seen reading. I haven't read anything by him yet but especially since The Road was featured by Oprah he's everywhere, like Pokemon or something.
Wuthering Heights I've avoided mainly due to a silly aversion to all things Yorkshire (and Kate Bush), but the more I hear about it the better it sounds.
White Noise I got for xmas this year from the in-laws and is waiting for me in my bookcase. I didn't realise it was that long.
Finished Twain's Connecticut Yankee last night. Hilarious and increasingly strange story. Best bit was the running parody of Arthurian romance (a la Morte d'Arthur, which apparently Twain first read immediately before writing this). Over-the-top carnage at the end where 25,000 knights are electrocuted, bombed and machine-gunned left a curious hollow feeling in the gut. Amazing book.
fine words butter no parsnips
I'm not going to be that harsh to McCarthy just yet because I've heard Blood Meridian is one of the only recent American novels to reach the sort of biblical and utterly over the top cadences one can find in Faulkner. It's just that he's toned down loads recently (apparently).
No, Lee hasn't written anything else. And I wouldn't say her novel is a kid's book. It's deadly subtle, especially in the first half. I would suggest giving it another go. It's sort of like Dickens: appears simple, but if you pry hard enough there's a goldmine.
Twain sounds mad. I hear more and more about him but haven't touched any of his writing yet. Will have to at some point.
Dave
No, Lee hasn't written anything else. And I wouldn't say her novel is a kid's book. It's deadly subtle, especially in the first half. I would suggest giving it another go. It's sort of like Dickens: appears simple, but if you pry hard enough there's a goldmine.
Twain sounds mad. I hear more and more about him but haven't touched any of his writing yet. Will have to at some point.
Dave
Just finished Wuthering Heights. Don't let the squeaky Bush or Yorkshire put you off since I can contentedly claim it to be up there in my favourite 10 novels. I find it so rare to find a literary work that can be read entirely and unashamedly for the story, but with this I was just indulgently happy to switch off and be taken in. Utterly, utterly brilliant. And it doesn't slow down for a second. Imagine a Mayor of Casterbridge, but much better.
Now for the toss-up: Against the Day or Something Happened. hmmm
Now for the toss-up: Against the Day or Something Happened. hmmm
Dave, I read Something Happened when it first came out. As an avid - and immature - fan of Catch 22, I couldn't wait for it. Well, no doubt I was too young for it - a mere callow 18, I think - but my recollection of it is that you shouldn't bother with it. Still, I might think differently now.
I've heard so many bad things about Something Happens that I'm tempted to read it - it can't be that bad!
Still, I'd choose Against the Day. Though from what I've read it's strangely unappealing to me.
I'll read Wuthering Heights sometime this year.
Recently read:
The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist - funny little heroless story about evil and morailty.
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro - an incredible novel, one of the best I've ever read. Long but fully justified; when you finish it suddenly hits you, whoof, like a backdraft - and hilarious in places, too. I think there are three or four main ideas in here, but I've probably missed at least as many.
A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and other stories by Victor Pelevin - mixed bag of short stories, best was the title story, the one about solipsism where Vera the toilet cleaner creates a world, and "Prince of Gosplan", an actualisation of the video game "Prince of Persia" (among others) in the midst of the Russian bureaucracy. And the one where the distinction between sleep and wakefulness disappears. Worth reading.
Sheepshagger by Niall Giffiths - long lyrical passages which, although sometimes overwrought, capture the mid / west-Wales environment perfectly. Bursts of razor sharp vernacular dialogue. On Wales, this novel is near-perfect. But the drawing of the central character seems simplistic, psychologically. It's a fun read but not a lot of nuance, in the end.
And Where Were You, Adam? by Heinrich Böll - a series of linked vignettes with a central character, set at various points in the German retreat at the end of WWII. Böll's even-handed style and clarity of phrase throws a stark light on the chaos rippling under the facade of military and societal order.
Now on The Clown by Böll, which I'm really enjoying. This guy is a great writer - calm, sharp, zesty - check him out.
Still, I'd choose Against the Day. Though from what I've read it's strangely unappealing to me.
I'll read Wuthering Heights sometime this year.
Recently read:
The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist - funny little heroless story about evil and morailty.
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro - an incredible novel, one of the best I've ever read. Long but fully justified; when you finish it suddenly hits you, whoof, like a backdraft - and hilarious in places, too. I think there are three or four main ideas in here, but I've probably missed at least as many.
A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and other stories by Victor Pelevin - mixed bag of short stories, best was the title story, the one about solipsism where Vera the toilet cleaner creates a world, and "Prince of Gosplan", an actualisation of the video game "Prince of Persia" (among others) in the midst of the Russian bureaucracy. And the one where the distinction between sleep and wakefulness disappears. Worth reading.
Sheepshagger by Niall Giffiths - long lyrical passages which, although sometimes overwrought, capture the mid / west-Wales environment perfectly. Bursts of razor sharp vernacular dialogue. On Wales, this novel is near-perfect. But the drawing of the central character seems simplistic, psychologically. It's a fun read but not a lot of nuance, in the end.
And Where Were You, Adam? by Heinrich Böll - a series of linked vignettes with a central character, set at various points in the German retreat at the end of WWII. Böll's even-handed style and clarity of phrase throws a stark light on the chaos rippling under the facade of military and societal order.
Now on The Clown by Böll, which I'm really enjoying. This guy is a great writer - calm, sharp, zesty - check him out.
fine words butter no parsnips