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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Jun 15, 2023 17:09:38 GMT -5
My Day Beats Your Year, a collection of interviews with Lou Reed—it’s a great title but the book doesn’t hold up. I think either rights issues or a desire to go for ones that were actually a bit informative got in the way. It’s hard not to side with Lou in most of these interviews, though—music journalists are real dumbasses, aren’t they?
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Post by LazBro on Jun 16, 2023 7:59:00 GMT -5
I've got a cruise and a couple longs flights coming up, so I'm hopping back onto a couple projects I've been working on: Discworld and The Expanse.
I've hopped around Discworld. On my phone for the trip is Men at Arms and Moving Pictures. I loved Guards! Guards! so am looking forward to another Watch book.
And I'd only previously stopped reading The Expanse, because I only had the first two books. But somebody just left Abaddon's Gate sitting there on the internet and I politely picked it up and asked around, but nobody claimed it.
Also bringing along my physical copy of Mary Roach's latest, Fuzz.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jun 16, 2023 22:14:30 GMT -5
I read the 2023 book Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor.
This is a big gangster epic set mainly in Dehli about an Indian crime family. Though, it is primarily about the main gangster's son, a woman he is dating, and his bodyguard. The book is told from the differing perspectives of those characters. It goes back and forth in time.
Essentially Kapoor is showing the readers how these three pathetically weak and feckless characters ruin their own lives due to their addiction to the comforts of money and power. These are all people who constantly talk about wanting to be different, but none of them have the strength to change. And they just allow terrible things to happen to themselves and other people, because none of them have the moral clarity to recognize their own culpability, nor the willpower to get out.
The author clearly recognizes that these are weak, pathetic people. She makes it clear to the reader what is going on. But she doesn't give any of these characters enough self-awareness to see any of this.
And the book is kinda structured like a thriller in classic gangster story style, where there is increasing pressure on the son from the older generation, and there is a gangster family feud that the feckless son is caught in the middle of, etc, etc
And, of course, since you know these are all weak people, you know they won't be able to stop what is happening. So, the actual fun of the book comes from watching the misery the author inflicts on the characters caused by their own weakness and inaction. I'm saying the book is actually pretty fun to read in a typical gangster style of story. It's all money, sex, excess, violence, etc.
The first half of the book is much stronger than the back half. The last 25%, or so, gets really bloated with unnecessary scenes. There's a long flashback/story told by another gangster that serves no real purpose, because the one important thing that comes from this can be deduced by the reader based on earlier scenes. I get the feeling that the author didn't trust that the readers could pick up on the family feud playing out in the background, because the father and uncle weren't really focal characters in the son's story. But, this is not at all hard to pick up, so there is just a lot of wasted page space near the end to suddenly make sure the reader has this info.
According to several reviews I read, this is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy. I'm honestly not sure I'd want to read any more about any of these people. I think the author made her point pretty strongly in showing all these people wanting something different, being too weak to get it, and then getting pretty well punished for their weakness at the end. It doesn't bother me that none of them achieved what they wanted, since the author's point seemed to be making sure they ended up miserable due to their inaction.
If the author can somehow make the gangster son a person who can take control of his life, rediscover morality and make a change, then maybe I'd be interested? But this book gives no indication that this character is capable of this level of self-awareness and moral clarity.
Anyway, I rate this 3.5/5
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jun 17, 2023 7:37:53 GMT -5
Just After Sunset, Stephen KingAfter enjoying Skeleton Crew recently, I thought I'd dig out this latter-day collection from 2008. I, of course, read it when it came out, and some of the stories more than once since, but overall it's been relatively neglected. Looking through the contents, a few of the titles called nothing to mind at all. It's fine, pretty good in parts, and worth your time. In the intro, King says the bulk of them were written in the two years prior to publication*, a gratifying burst of inspiration following a period of believing he'd lost the short story knack. This lends them a unity of sorts, with themes surfacing here and there: survival of death, ageing, grieving, health issues. The main out-and-out horror story is N, blending Arthur Machen with Lovecraft. There are a couple of goofy ones that you can tell King enjoyed writing, but these could've done with a severe edit. I liked the short and brutal Graduation Day** best. This was published between Duma Key and Under The Dome, not two of his successes if you ask me. One day I'll make a list of what I consider to be the dispensable books in his oeuvre, if I can be arsed. *One holdout is The Cat From Hell, dating back to his early 70s magazine publishing days; it's nice, but not a highlight. ** A girl from a poor background goes to her rich student boyfriend's graduation party just outside of New York, where she faces a few classist micro-aggressions and wonders if their relationship has much of a future. It doesn't, as it turns out: the party is just getting going when a nuclear blast obliterates Manhattan, as the guests watch and wait for the storm to hit them.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jun 17, 2023 19:56:31 GMT -5
Picked up at the library today Malcom Harris's Palo Alto, A History of California, Capitalism, and The World. This came out a few months ago.
When WaPo reviewed it, they said it had a similar feel to Mike Davis's "City of Quartz". Someone here (don't remember who, sorry) linked a pdf of that a few years ago, and I really liked it. So I am giving this a try.
The Kirkus starred review that is blurbed on the back cover reads: "A searching history of California and its role in predatory, extractive capitalism". So, this sounds... fun?
It is around 630 pages, not including endnotes. Hoping to finish it this week.
I also picked up Alice Feeney's Daisy Darker on the recommendation of Liz n Dick in her "Books I'm Reading Aloud" thread. Figured a silly Agatha Christie homage would be good to read after the above.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jun 18, 2023 15:44:32 GMT -5
Picked up at the library today Malcom Harris's Palo Alto, A History of California, Capitalism, and The World. This came out a few months ago.
The Kirkus starred review that is blurbed on the back cover reads: "A searching history of California and its role in predatory, extractive capitalism". So, this sounds... fun?
Update: LOL, Kirkus isn't kidding around. The first chapter can be summed up as "Here's all the horrifying shit white capitalists did in California in the 19th century". Oh! And also, "Did you know they also exported this horrifying shit around the world?!"
I did know that, Mr. Harris, but thanks for condensing this horrifying 50 year history into about 30 pages of straight "genocide! rape! slavery! environmental destruction!" Like, my dude... you still have 600 pages to go!
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Post by sarapen on Jun 21, 2023 18:47:00 GMT -5
Just finished The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick. It's about a family exiled from a parallel dimension who end up as refugees in post-9/11 Nevada. The blurb on Amazon compares it to Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, but I think that's going a tad too far. Frankly, the science fiction aspect doesn't figure that strongly into the story and it could be more easily classified in the fantasy genre since ghosts and reincarnation figure very prominently in it. To be honest, the alternate dimension thing could have been cut out completely and it would have worked out just as well by being a magical realist story about refugees from like Afghanistan or Somalia. But doing the story that way requires a lot more research to get the culture right and I can't help thinking that was the main reason the family came from a made-up country. If you've read immigrant stories before then a lot of this book will be familiar - it's got migrants going through the everyday trauma of navigating a foreign culture, aching and unquenchable yearning for a lost home, clashes between tradition and American modernity, that kind of thing. I feel like there's a Salman Rushdie novel in here struggling to break through.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jun 24, 2023 6:01:29 GMT -5
The Sea-Wolf, Jack London
In which our bookish, scholarly, pampered narrator - nicely named Humphrey - is shipwrecked, and ends up on The Ghost, a vessel heading for Siberian waters to club seals to death for their fashionable skins. This is skippered by big fella Wolf Larsen, a man of great brutality and some Darwinian learning about might is right and so on. Humphrey, somewhat like Buck in The Call of the Wild, is forced to degenerate and face trials of strength as he clashes with Larsen and the shipmates. Then a woman is rescued ...
I find London a likeable writer, boyishly eager to please, heaping up lots of adventure. I think I prefer him over 80 pages, though, and not 330. This huffed and puffed here and there.
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Post by Dellarigg on Jun 26, 2023 4:21:11 GMT -5
No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthyA reread of this, after the recent demise, and also after a rewatch of the film. It's quite a slim book - I was through it in about a day and a half. It's very good, of course, and the film is largely faithful. There's a few things they slimmed down or cut out altogether*, but a lot of the dialogue is verbatim. The prose isn't McCarthy at full tilt, but this is a more propulsive story than he usually tells, so that's to be expected. Not much more to say than that, really. * the Sheriff has a secret about his part in WWII; Moss picks up a young lady hitchhiker for long pseudo-philosophical talks on fate as he heads towards his terminal moment; and we get to see Chigurgh actually returning the case full of money, and going on to negotiate a better role for himself in such endeavours.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jun 26, 2023 6:40:15 GMT -5
No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthyA reread of this, after the recent demise, and also after a rewatch of the film. It's quite a slim book - I was through it in about a day and a half. It's very good, of course, and the film is largely faithful. There's a few things they slimmed down or cut out altogether*, but a lot of the dialogue is verbatim. The prose isn't McCarthy at full tilt, but this is a more propulsive story than he usually tells, so that's to be expected. Not much more to say than that, really. * the Sheriff has a secret about his part in WWII; Moss picks up a young lady hitchhiker for long pseudo-philosophical talks on fate as he heads towards his terminal moment; and we get to see Chigurgh actually returning the case full of money, and going on to negotiate a better role for himself in such endeavours. Do you view the old guys grousing about kids with blue hair and nose piercings and abortions as reflective of McCarthy’s own views on the subject as some people apparently do? I feel like the WWII subplot (as well as, like, you know, the fact that this is the same guy who wrote Blood Meridian)pretty well establishes that their complaints that ours is a uniquely immoral and depraved and violent time is meant to be seen as a load of bullshit.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jun 26, 2023 7:14:09 GMT -5
No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthyA reread of this, after the recent demise, and also after a rewatch of the film. It's quite a slim book - I was through it in about a day and a half. It's very good, of course, and the film is largely faithful. There's a few things they slimmed down or cut out altogether*, but a lot of the dialogue is verbatim. The prose isn't McCarthy at full tilt, but this is a more propulsive story than he usually tells, so that's to be expected. Not much more to say than that, really. * the Sheriff has a secret about his part in WWII; Moss picks up a young lady hitchhiker for long pseudo-philosophical talks on fate as he heads towards his terminal moment; and we get to see Chigurgh actually returning the case full of money, and going on to negotiate a better role for himself in such endeavours. Do you view the old guys grousing about kids with blue hair and nose piercings and abortions as reflective of McCarthy’s own views on the subject as some people apparently do? I feel like the WWII subplot (as well as, like, you know, the fact that this is the same guy who wrote Blood Meridian)pretty well establishes that their complaints that ours is a uniquely immoral and depraved and violent time is meant to be seen as a load of bullshit. I expect McCarthy knows it's bullshit. The novel is set in 1980, but was published in 2007, so that's another generation added. It's interesting, though, that the Sheriff has no real impact on the action of the book that I can see (he's always playing catch-up) and his thematic significance is rebutted. This must be what it feels like to be old: nothing you say, do, or think matters much.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Jun 26, 2023 21:25:11 GMT -5
It's interesting, though, that the Sheriff has no real impact on the action of the book that I can see (he's always playing catch-up) and his thematic significance is rebutted. This must be what it feels like to be old: nothing you say, do, or think matters much. I always thought that was one of McCarthy's points. That no matter what the Sheriff does, he's totally out of touch, and therefore nothing he does or says actually matters.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 2, 2023 9:08:12 GMT -5
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, Salman Rushdie
This is probably at the bottom of the pile of Rushdie novels I've read (though I haven't tackled his disowned first effort Grimus yet), so I won't spend much time on it.
Action-wise, it's broadly about the unknowing descendants of djinn being called upon to fight in a war between good and bad djinn. They are granted superpowers. Please don't think this is anything like as interesting as it sounds. At under 300 pages in hardback, this isn't given anywhere near enough time to breathe and develop. There's a terrible tangle in the middle, after which things could hardly be more perfunctory. The title adds up to 1001 nights. Thematically, it's about rationality and unreason, but also the human need to dream mad shit. I think.
Who knows what went wrong here. I wonder if he didn't want a quick novella, saw there was room for more, but still kept reining it in when it should've been 100 pages longer than it is. It's a not uncommon trait with Rushdie: the long books could be shorter and the short books could be longer. He'll get it right one day.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 6, 2023 10:44:20 GMT -5
Signifying Rappers, David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello
A bit of a curio for your correspondent, this one - the only DFW book I couldn't get my hands on back when I was reading everything by him, as it wasn't published over here. Not that I tried very hard, not that bothered US Amazon looking for it, rap being a big old blank spot in my musical tastes. However, I found a 2013 reprint in a charity shop the other day, so got it for completion's sake.
Not sure what to make of it, as I expected. It's a fairly diligent look (as far as I can tell) at the phenomenon from a late 80s viewpoint, taking about sampling, the subject matter, the history of black activism, some old US sitcoms (for whatever reason), and the embrace of white audiences. The Beastie Boys come in for a few swipes. The authors contribute chapters each, with DFW seeming to get most of the pages (and yep, there are footnotes). We're done in 150 pages.
It was nice to encounter some prose of his I hadn't consumed before, but really, this is not aimed at me.
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 12, 2023 16:09:53 GMT -5
Lake Success, Gary Shtyengart (2018)
Writerly Russian ex-pat with a watch fetish writes a contemporary novel about the dawn of the Trump years and related schizoid state of the Nation. I like Shtyengart's writing. It reminds me of some other artist whose work I enjoy, but I cannot remember who. Anyhow, NY hedge fund manager takes the trip of a lifetime in current era USA. Also, the has-done-well-but-likes-fucking-it-up pro-ant-agonist has a serious watch problem. His time is up!
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Post by sarapen on Jul 12, 2023 20:38:31 GMT -5
I just read my first Liu Cixin, his short story collection To Hold Up The Sky. I tried reading The Three-Body Problem before but quit in the prologue. It's because like many other sci-fi writers, Liu is not good at social realism, and the prologue of Three-Body Problem really just could not grab me with its depiction of the Cultural Reovlution. But thankfully I could skip the stories in this collection that showcased too much of the weaknesses of Liu's writing and go with his real strength - the sci-fi crap. He's very old school in that way.
For instance, the first story in the book is about a teacher in a dirt-poor mountain village and it was a struggle for me to keep reading until aliens finally showed up. I also completely skimmed the story about coal miners which had nothing science fictional until the really short epilogue with schoolkids in the future learning about why coalmining was dumb. But the neat speculative stuff worked for me. A finance guy embezzling money to pay for life extension treatments? A quantum computer that allows perfect simulation of the universe and therefore perfect vision of all events past and present? Cryogenically-frozen refugees going further and further into the future to find a time that will take them in? All of that was my jam. Although the story about a near-future war between an invading NATO and the heroes of a Russia newly-returned to communism is kind of odd to read today until you realize it was published in 2001, when Russia had spent over a decade being carved up like a Christmas turkey by American consultants.
So yeah, Liu Cixin is a decent read if you're aware that he's very much into sci-fi being the genre of ideas and not the genre of well-written characters or compelling human drama.
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Post by repulsionist on Jul 19, 2023 15:56:01 GMT -5
Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller, Cookie Mueller (1996)
If you have a squiz at this book on Amazon, you would likely have a start. I just did and rolled my eyes, knowing that the slim volume is in my sister-in-law's collection near Seattle, WA. Did I willingly give her the book? Do I treat books like a cultural currency that trades at high value for every one given out of a paltry, pitiable pile of books I own? Rhetorically: YES!
Probably my tenth read-through of these folksy underground essays and belle lettres from a helluva lady. The imprint High Risk Books from UK publisher Serpent's Tail put out a heap of interesting titles in the 1990s. They're worth seeking out. It is likely they are all worth wonga.
EDIT:
The claim that many High Risk Books are worth money was incorrect. Only the Cookie Mueller book comes in at $300 - $1200.
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Post by Mrs David Tennant on Jul 19, 2023 17:54:36 GMT -5
I'm reading a book where the main characters are scientists working at UT Dallas, which is where I got my BA and where I worked for almost 5 years. I'm not sure why someone who wasn't familiar with UTD would use that in his book but he referred to the local police as Dallas police. UT Dallas is not in Dallas! (It's in Richardson.) I haven't noticed anything else egregious though, so I guess I can forgive one slip.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 20, 2023 8:34:40 GMT -5
I'm reading a book where the main characters are scientists working at UT Dallas, which is where I got my BA and where I worked for almost 5 years. I'm not sure why someone who wasn't familiar with UTD would use that in his book but he referred to the local police as Dallas police. UT Dallas is not in Dallas! (It's in Richardson.) I haven't noticed anything else egregious though, so I guess I can forgive one slip. MDT, what would your reaction be if, in the second half of the book, the action shifted to North Carolina, and the characters were regularly talking about all the locations they were visiting in “the single hyphenate city of Raleigh-Durham”?
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Post by Mrs David Tennant on Jul 20, 2023 11:50:26 GMT -5
I'm reading a book where the main characters are scientists working at UT Dallas, which is where I got my BA and where I worked for almost 5 years. I'm not sure why someone who wasn't familiar with UTD would use that in his book but he referred to the local police as Dallas police. UT Dallas is not in Dallas! (It's in Richardson.) I haven't noticed anything else egregious though, so I guess I can forgive one slip. MDT, what would your reaction be if, in the second half of the book, the action shifted to North Carolina, and the characters were regularly talking about all the locations they were visiting in “the single hyphenate city of Raleigh-Durham”? Grrrrr.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 21, 2023 7:06:06 GMT -5
MDT, what would your reaction be if, in the second half of the book, the action shifted to North Carolina, and the characters were regularly talking about all the locations they were visiting in “the single hyphenate city of Raleigh-Durham”? Grrrrr. ”’Hi Jim,” said Susan, as she answered her phone, “I can’t talk now. As you know, I’m back in my home state of NC, so at last you’re talking to me while I’m geographically located in my area code, as I’ve had this 984 number since graduating from college in the late 1990s. But I have to hang up now, because I’m at the Dean Dome watching the UNC Tar Heels women’s collegiate basketball team play a home game, but after that, I’ll take the Raleigh-Durham subway and meet up with you and Persephone at the Governor’s mansion on Capital Blvd.” “Oh, so you’ll be traveling west to reach my niece and I?” inquired Jim. “Yes, that’s a factually correct statement about the direction I must go in order to get from the Dean Dome to the Governor’s mansion,” replied Susan.”
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Post by Powerthirteen on Jul 26, 2023 10:48:13 GMT -5
Roy Batty's Pet Dove pursuant to previous conversations I thought you might be interested to know that my dad’s bookshelf features the following Gene Wolfe books: - There Are Doors - The Wizard - Castleview - The Claw of the Conciliator - The Sword of the Lictor - The Shadow of the Torturer - The Citadel of the Autarch - Free Live Free
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Jul 26, 2023 12:14:26 GMT -5
Roy Batty's Pet Dove pursuant to previous conversations I thought you might be interested to know that my dad’s bookshelf features the following Gene Wolfe books: - There Are Doors - The Wizard - Castleview - The Claw of the Conciliator - The Sword of the Lictor - The Shadow of the Torturer - The Citadel of the Autarch - Free Live Free Neat, yeah, so the entirety of The Book of the New Sun, and some other non-Solar Cycle stuff. But yeah, I don’t know about his other books there, but The Book of the New Sun is very strange and digressive (probably maddeningly so to many), so yeah, Wolfe’s definitely not for everyone. Also, if anyone else reading this is at all interested in Wolfe and wants a good place to start, I would go with The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which was recently republished by I wanna say Tor, is much less of an undertaking, and far less digressive, but also still very formally weird for speculative fiction (in all seriousness, I think this book would be a good choice for one of Dellarigg’s periodic excursions into science fiction). Also, come to think of it, I believe my dad has some sort of omnibus collection of science fiction from the 80s that may well contain a story by Gene Wolfe, though I’m sure he has no idea who Gene Wolfe is, given that he recently said that he didn’t know who George R.R. Martin, an author I know is in that collection, is.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Jul 27, 2023 4:36:30 GMT -5
The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer
Back when I was an earnest young pup, in my teens and looking for literary self-improvement (with literally no friends or family who could be the slightest help in that regard), I made the jump first from Stephen King and Harold Robbins to Catch-22 and John Irving. All well and good; but Norman Mailer's name kept cropping up, and since I liked reading about serial killers and whatnot, I thought this might be another push forward: 1000 pages of novelletish non-fiction on a single murder case. I read it, I recall, without too much strain, though in a blaze of self-consciousness and self-congratulation. I decided to reread it recently after a few decades away, to see how we're both holding up.
(It could be that the subject of the book, Gary Gilmore, is forgotten now, so in summary he was a habitual criminal from Utah who spent more than half his life in prison. He got out in his mid-30s, made an abortive attempt to go straight, and entered into a relationship with a young mother that he wasn't able to cope with at all. He shot two men in two separate stick-ups, and was sentenced to death at a time (late 70s) when the death penalty hadn't been exercised for about a decade - but Gilmore insisted it be carried out. After a few months of legal and media kerfuffle, it was. Death by firing squad. He had his eyes, and other organs, donated, hence a punk song of the time.)
Having read a lot of Mailer since, and been presented with his occasional fiascos, I'm happy to say that this stands up as his best work. Apart from being an amazing feat of research and assembly, the voice he adopts - presumably a flat mid-west tone, not fancy but extremely supple and evocative - is perfect, and perfectly sustained, allowing him to slip from journalistic rigour into the odd moment of poetry. He's also hugely empathetic toward the christless mess some people (not just Gilmore) get their lives into. The first third is the best, following Gilmore as he tries to hold down a job, keep up payments on a car, not steal a six pack of beer every single day, and keep his head straight when he falls in love. He was a big believer in reincarnation, and was convinced he'd been guillotined in a previous life; there's a hint that this is his main motivation to face the shotguns, and not his protestations that he deserved to die and couldn't stand the rest of his life in prison. (His mother, incidentally, thought the house he grew up in was haunted. His younger brother, Mikal, became a fairly big name journalist for Rolling Stone.) There's a danger matters could get bogged down when we reach the hundreds and hundreds of pages given over to the legal manipulations and media deals (the latter introducing the other main character of the book, Larry Schiller, a photographer with his eye to the main chance, but at least some qualms about it all: toward the end, he's regularly afflicted with diarrhoea. Geraldo Riviera is also sniffing around). The execution, and the detailed autopsy description, are also thunderously powerful sections of writing. The autopsy was the bit I remembered best, in fact.
Anyway, great book, and maybe I can be allowed a little pride in getting to it so young. Fat lot of good it did me, but never mind.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Jul 31, 2023 13:20:50 GMT -5
I'm not usually a contributor to this thread - maybe I should be - but today I'm going to be a little obnoxious and promote a friend of ours. Tomorrow is pub day for My Name is Iris by Brando Skyhorse. He's married to my husband's best friend and a friend of ours in his own right, not to mention a professor at IU and a PEN/Hemingway Award winning author.
His newest novel is a satirical look at what it means to be a white-passing person of color in America. And if you're curious about how he got his name, well... you can google him but you can also read his memoir, Take This Man.
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Dellarigg
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Post by Dellarigg on Aug 3, 2023 7:09:35 GMT -5
Narziss and Goldmund, Hermann Hesse
I didn't know what to expect from this, and picked it up warily. I tried Steppenwolf in my younger and less patient days, and didn't get far into it, finding it all philosophising and no action, which isn't really my bag. Even Nabokov has a fair amount of things happening.
I'm happy to say this isn't quite like that. It's set in medieval Germany, where Narziss is a teacher at a monastery school, happy with the life of the scholarly mind. Goldmund is a bright young pupil sent to study at the 'cloister' by his father, and who adapts well. However, after probing into his past and finding the boy has a wayward, witchy, and now exiled mother, Narziss decrees that Goldmund is not suited for the quiet life; and indeed, the lad has felt the first carnal stings of puberty while out with the other boys on an illicit adventure to see a maid. In short, it's agreed that he should go out into the world and get his fuck on. This he does, with many a picaresque adventure, in a landscape involving comely lasses, robbers, and plague. Eventually, after working for a while as a carver of statues, he's able to find a compromise between the two lives: he'll be an artist, in thrall to the lost mother figure.
That's more or less it. Seems that it's symbolically autobiographical on Hesse's part. The prose/translation has a very nice flow to it, carrying us along lightly over what could've been ponderous material. Not sure I'll return to Steppenwolf any time soon, but you never know.
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Post by Dellarigg on Aug 14, 2023 5:03:51 GMT -5
Once ..., James Herbert
I had a reread of Ted Hughes's insane book on Shakespeare, which attentive readers will remember I abandoned about eighteen months ago. Well, I abandoned it again at about the same spot, but I definitely had a better grip on his theories this time round. I needed something light as air after it, and this charity shop purchase (£1.59!) was just the thing.
I've mentioned before that Herbert went toe-to-toe with Stephen King over here in the 70s and 80s, despite being by far the worse writer. They're pretty trashy, his 20-odd novels, with loads of gore and chapter-long sex scenes. Time isn't being any kinder to him: this one was published in 2001 but feels as creaky and clumsy as anything Dennis Wheatley put out in the 1950s. The prose is that inexcusable kind of bad that actually thinks it's good, as evidenced by the use of 'for' instead of 'as' or 'because' or 'since' on just about every page.
It's about a young stroke victim who comes back to the country estate he grew up on, his now dead mother being the tutor of the lord of the manor's son. Strange goings on point to the world of fairies, elves, and witches, coupled to the slightly more bathetic plot of inheritance chicanery. The drawn-out action takes place over a week, which takes Herbert 470 pages to get through. It doesn't amount to much, for all the huffing and puffing of the drama at the end. There isn't much gore, but there's a lot of sex.
I can't recommend it, but I also can't say I didn't enjoy it on some level. I just don't like to think about that level very much.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Aug 14, 2023 7:03:08 GMT -5
Once ..., James HerbertI had a reread of Ted Hughes's insane book on Shakespeare, which attentive readers will remember I abandoned about eighteen months ago. Well, I abandoned it again at about the same spot, but I definitely had a better grip on his theories this time round. I needed something light as air after it, and this charity shop purchase (£1.59!) was just the thing. I've mentioned before that Herbert went toe-to-toe with Stephen King over here in the 70s and 80s, despite being by far the worse writer. They're pretty trashy, his 20-odd novels, with loads of gore and chapter-long sex scenes. Time isn't being any kinder to him: this one was published in 2001 but feels as creaky and clumsy as anything Dennis Wheatley put out in the 1950s. The prose is that inexcusable kind of bad that actually thinks it's good, as evidenced by the use of 'for' instead of 'as' or 'because' or 'since' on just about every page. It's about a young stroke victim who comes back to the country estate he grew up on, his now dead mother being the tutor of the lord of the manor's son. Strange goings on point to the world of fairies, elves, and witches, coupled to the slightly more bathetic plot of inheritance chicanery. The drawn-out action takes place over a week, which takes Herbert 470 pages to get through. It doesn't amount to much, for all the huffing and puffing of the drama at the end. There isn't much gore, but there's a lot of sex. I can't recommend it, but I also can't say I didn't enjoy it on some level. I just don't like to think about that level very much. Is James Herbert basically the guy that Garth Marenghi is modeled after on Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace?
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,504
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Post by Dellarigg on Aug 14, 2023 7:26:42 GMT -5
Once ..., James HerbertI had a reread of Ted Hughes's insane book on Shakespeare, which attentive readers will remember I abandoned about eighteen months ago. Well, I abandoned it again at about the same spot, but I definitely had a better grip on his theories this time round. I needed something light as air after it, and this charity shop purchase (£1.59!) was just the thing. I've mentioned before that Herbert went toe-to-toe with Stephen King over here in the 70s and 80s, despite being by far the worse writer. They're pretty trashy, his 20-odd novels, with loads of gore and chapter-long sex scenes. Time isn't being any kinder to him: this one was published in 2001 but feels as creaky and clumsy as anything Dennis Wheatley put out in the 1950s. The prose is that inexcusable kind of bad that actually thinks it's good, as evidenced by the use of 'for' instead of 'as' or 'because' or 'since' on just about every page. It's about a young stroke victim who comes back to the country estate he grew up on, his now dead mother being the tutor of the lord of the manor's son. Strange goings on point to the world of fairies, elves, and witches, coupled to the slightly more bathetic plot of inheritance chicanery. The drawn-out action takes place over a week, which takes Herbert 470 pages to get through. It doesn't amount to much, for all the huffing and puffing of the drama at the end. There isn't much gore, but there's a lot of sex. I can't recommend it, but I also can't say I didn't enjoy it on some level. I just don't like to think about that level very much. Is James Herbert basically the guy that Garth Marenghi is modeled after on Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace? I don't think so - Herbert seems to've been a decent sort of bloke, pretty down to earth and without many illusions, nothing much like the character. And while his work is not exactly Joycean-Nabokovian, he was a large step up from Shaun Hutson and Guy N. Smith, who seem to be the more likely candidates.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 14, 2023 7:51:33 GMT -5
I'm not usually a contributor to this thread - maybe I should be - but today I'm going to be a little obnoxious and promote a friend of ours. Tomorrow is pub day for My Name is Iris by Brando Skyhorse. He's married to my husband's best friend and a friend of ours in his own right, not to mention a professor at IU and a PEN/Hemingway Award winning author. His newest novel is a satirical look at what it means to be a white-passing person of color in America. And if you're curious about how he got his name, well... you can google him but you can also read his memoir, Take This Man. So, I finished this (like 10 days ago but never mind that) and it's good, very thought-provoking and definitely trying to say something. I have read a few minor critiques and I can understand them. It's weird knowing the author because I feel both more and less able to be critical of certain things. The main character is a woman, and a parent, and Brando is neither - but he does have a lot of women in his life. I listened to an NPR interview he did and the host asked him about writing women, and he gave this sort of meandering answer about his mom and grandmother who raised him. It wasn't a bad answer per se, but it didn't really answer the question, and I would have suggested he just focus more on "I was raised by strong women, I have a lot of strong women in my life, and I have listened to them as best I can over the years and tried to really hear what they think and feel" - something like that, I dunno. Anyway. All that aside. it really seems aimed primarily at the Latine community in the US, for better or worse, but I think there's good stuff for people of any background. I do recommend it and not just cause I know the guy.
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