••♥••♥••♥••AlL tImE oFfIcIaL i LoVe CrIcKeT bOoKs ThReAd••♥••♥••♥••♥••

books i read while on vacation

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this books is wicked gnarly, i wrote a blog about it

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while i am a derrida stan this book did not satisfy my cravings, also, 90s/2000s derrida is sort of 'california' in a way that makes me feel embarrassed to read

http://www.avclub.com/content/files/images/Braindead-Megaphone.jpg
george saunders is frequently hilarious but sometimes is a little bit too self-conscious for me to handle, still an alltimer for me, even if nothing in this book is as consistently hilar as the sarah palin thing from the new yorker

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/14530000/14539714.JPG
i would straight up marry lorrie moore sight unseen but this book is not as good as her stories

my "get through the rest of winter" project is to read as much of the new translation of Proust as I can. we'll see how long this will last. hopefully i will not start really obsessing and just stick to the novel and not read any LOL bios.

finished this the other night, last 5-10 pages so awesome:

http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n152/miss_unsquiggle/booklist/classic/swanns_way.jpg

this one's pretty sweet so far

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0143039075.01._SX140_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

i would straight up marry lydia davis too

i could not get into that george saunders the way i can his fiction - i think i got like one page in to it - i do hav 2 copies of it tho if anyone wants one or two

feeling this one max : D

hey ice cr???m wat do you think of this book:

http://www.writersblock.ca/images/toothpicks.gif

i dunno ive never read a design book

i have and its that one i read on your blog about layppl becoming faux experts in font selection and it reminded of this book - i read it a few years ago and thought it was an interesting history of design and how it works sort of thing and it made me remember how much more aware i became about the shape of our french press and it what it said about modern america

sorry to be insufferable :_:

we are all insufferable these days - its because of the internet

and also design

and restaurants

let's not forget the real enemies: chicken and bacon

and lunch

new business plan: internet restaurants serving well-designed lunches of chicken and bacon

^^^ should go here: official i love cricket ten-point plan for rehabilitating new york city

http://ileso.bookaffinity.com/wp-content/the-brief-wonderous-life-of-oscar-wao.jpg

i just finished this, i dunno if its up the alley of the ilc cohort but i thot it was pretty gnarly, diaz is really good at writing in this casual splanglish (Fyi thats spanish + slang + english) w/out it ever getting too cute, packs nerd culture refs in like 2 per sentence, and not just some 'lord of the rings is cool' bullshit but clearly dude has been there, in the trenches, reading the silmarillion and shit, and his characters are right on and he just knows how to tell a story. it will take you about an afternoon to finish which is just right. sort of reminds me of a dominican 'middlesex' if u will.

been meaning to check that out - i dug his short story collection Drown mainly cos of that super understated colloq. style

yeah i dont know that its understated, but hes good at pulling it off w/out making it come across as super-contrived cutesy shit

the real enemy is tipping btw.

i liked drown much better than wondrous life. idk if the short stories were "understated" but they were maybe emotionally reserved in a way that made them more powerful. honestly thought the characters in wondrous life were kinda flat

now reading:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n53/n265255.jpg

is it good? secret confession: i kind of dug prep.

yah def vibing it but not as much as prep... is it lame to have liked that? most of the ppl i know do. lol showing my hand there, i guess.

haha i dunno i bought it at an airport and when i told my girlfriend i read it she gave me this look

and then i didnt tell anyone else that i read it

except for the internet

ha was just coming to say that

didn't read prep but i like this one by her

http://www.mississippireview.com/1999/0199sittenfeld.htm

i think shes a good storyteller. prep is maybe just a little too, i dunno. i can see why ppl would judge it.

but like i said, i dug it.

did u go to prep school? i think thats why i never thought about it being obvious that is kinda... yeah.

she is a good storyteller and insightful too altho sometimes pretty heavy-handed. some of the passages about the husband in american wife are just like, okay we get it.

pretty excited got back from a trip and found a package waiting for me:

beijing coma
atmospheric disturbances
finder
a mercy

so much new books 2 read :))

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44635000/jpg/_44635368_beijing_coma300.jpg

fyi started reading this ^^ and then saw this article in the times v. interesting i think

http://media.us.macmillan.com/jackets/258H/9780374299491.jpg

this was a weird book like it suffered that tom clancy disconnect between not making any kind of plausible sense but also containing v realistic seeming information on e.g. how to construct an artificial run on a publicly-traded stock which those in the know call a "lift". it was all 2D and short chapters and i vibed it on a like bad boys 2 level but it also had kind of smart and sort of beautiful moments like when the gorgeous internist wife of the corrupt pharmaceutical exec gets expansive about the deadening algorithmic nature of corporate thinking that were genuinely insightful and wise.

anyway i would recommend this book for ppl who care deeply about brooklyn real estate and international finance but also like gunfights and breasts solid b+

reading this right now http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G8ss-WJIL._SL500_.jpg crazy irl tales of bad ass mexicans - fascinating!

http://www.softskull.com/coverimages/Tintin300.gif

just finished this book. i got it for xmas and sort of expected it to be the tintin version of "the science of star trek" or "the philosophy of harry potter" aka bullshit useless tie-in--but it turned out to be fun & smart & i thought it was really pretty terrific for what it was. mccarthy is clearly a smart dude & has some really excellent ideas about tintin. recommended for tintin fans, precocious high schoolers looking for an introduction to lit theory, people with an afternoon to kill.

ill open this up to discussion--which is your favorite tintin book

i have never read a tintin book

i read a bunch of them but i dont remember

just read this:
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This guy I just made up, he was SUCH a genius. And he did what HAD TO BE DONE

still working on In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower and it's great, super terrific, etc. but thinking about maybe reading this after i finish Vol 2 of the Proust and before i start Vol 3. Anyone read it? I loved Mason and Dixon, thought Gravity's Rainbow was ok, not too crazy about his other stuff. but everything i hear about this is, it's awful etc etc

http://noisetosignal.org/images/posts/vinelandcover.jpg

http://macroevolution.narod.ru/medawar_advice/cover.jpg

Advice to a Young Scientist is awesome because it's like 90 pages. I love books like that. There's a few very dated bits (like the attack on Oxbridge's snobbery about doing a doctorate being working class or how even if you're Hungarian or Jewish you should be a scientist -- especially if you're Hungarian or Jewish, those guys are smart!), but it have got like 290 pearls of wisdom from this bitch.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/Tintin_cover_-_The_Castafiore_Emerald.JPG

read this again on the train today--HIGHLY recommended--esp. for fans of beckett... i am currently developing in my head extensive essay on this comic. soundtracked by scales, anchored by the repeated fall of characters on a single broken step, climaxing with a beautiful & trippy sequence where they try to watch a color tv broadcast that distorts & discolors (and then they all cry!), comic is a beautiful mediation on repetition, craft, mimicry, artistry. so much going on in this and they never even leave the house. answers question: what is art? resoundingly. with silence! lol. and darkness--tintin opens window on blankness, sees nothing, not even the viewer. really everything you need to know is on the cover. shh.

for fans of beckett.

i cant tell if your joking or? haha vibe yr post either way but more if you arent i was thinking because of the 100 worst thread how seriously but inadequately i read i never think of or relate to books in a HRO:BotM airquote way i guess i'm saying i would read tintin earnestly if i was going to read him at all

this started as qualified rec for that pynchon book btw

nah dude 100% srs. i mean look--i dig on ppl who are all 'hey its just a comic' or whatever, im not trying to force my tintin standom on anyone else, or my lit theory standom for that matter, the book just resonated w/ me in a super immediate way. but ya there is def a beckett thing on, maybe a stoppard thing too, but its all close quarters, constant repetition, every five pages you go 'o wait that thing, that i thought was the plot, thats not the plot at all'

this was my least fave tintin book as a kid--no adventure or anything. and i fuck w/ all the tintins and i think they all do and say valuable things. but rereading this one was just crazy.

my favorite panel:

http://madinkbeard.com/blog/wp-content/images/tintin-nothing.jpg

study question: in this panel is tintin nietzsche opening the window onto the abyss, OR is he plato looking out from the good to the darkness of perceived reality, OR is he democritus & the window-opening is the clinamen

EXTRA CREDIT: is tintin looking into your soul in this panel or what? do u think he sees u and hes fronting on castafiore (c.f. the cover of the comic)?

http://english.fsu.edu/jobs/num08/CoverNo8.jpg

tried to find an img of the cover to this edition of endgame that my parents have that haunted me as a kid this was the closest i could come. i think i posted about endgame before on ilx and what an important book it was for me lol @ u mostly describing it except about a tintin book not a zing or w/e just lol

When I was young I read Beckett's Endgame and it terrified me. I used to pick books out of our library based on their cover and the edition my parents have has this really creepy picture of Hamm on the cover in what looked to me like an electric chair. I was thoroughly unprepared for the play, in fact I didn't even know it was a play or what to make of the stage directions. But the story left me sad and scared and thrilled: I didn't quite know what to make of it but the ideas in the story seemed wise and immense and true.

A few years later my mother took me to see Endgame performed during the Beckett Festival and I was completely disappointed. Seeing the play performed robbed the words of their immensity and left them cramped and small. So while I do love seeing plays performed live my favourite plays are always better in my head.

― Lamp, Friday, April 25, 2008 10:33 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

one of my first posts on ilx i think???

ha! i mean dunno dude--for all i know tintin might be the kind of thing u have to have fallen in love with as a kid so it adds that extra emotional resonance. and i wont front its a belgian kids comic from the 70s so its corny as all get out & maybe not as funny as beckett (like i said maybe more like stoppard sometimes).

but this one story is just so obstinately weird and ill fitting for the franchise and it climaxes with this:

http://madinkbeard.com/blog/wp-content/images/tintintv1.jpg
http://madinkbeard.com/blog/wp-content/images/tintintv2.jpg
http://madinkbeard.com/blog/wp-content/images/tintintv3.jpg
http://madinkbeard.com/blog/wp-content/images/tintintv4.jpg

actually the last 4 books are so are fucking crazy--for me starting maybe with the calculus affair herge gets deep into politics and finishes off the most famous french language comics franchise in history with 1) a story about an opera singer living in tintins house where no one leaves 2) a story about aliens visiting prehistoric tribes where tintins memory is erased at the end 3) a story about a south american coup (the last ever completed panel in the tintin series btw is tintin flying in a jet over a deeply impoverished slum in a made up south american country)

i know lj or caek or some brit has read all these and is feeling me on this

i have read a lot of them!

i have read pretty much all of them but not for maybe 20 years, so i can neither confirm or deny what you are saying. in my middle school we had a book day where everyone had to come as a character from a book and i came as tintin. i was certainly a fan.

how do people feel about that cricket brooklyn 9/11 book that's doing the rounds?

(netherland)

those are three words i did not expect to encounter, in that order, referring to a book

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22083

the other book shes reviewing is written by the same guy who wrote my tintin book

cool. maybe we should have an ILC 9/11 Brooklyn book club about that other one.

forget it, it's staten island not brooklyn

i seen cricket played in brooklyn just fyi

when i live there ILC will have a team

we already do have a team

its called, this board

here is cricket, bristol style:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/81090025.jpg

here is me at this game, ILC style:

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/81090024.jpg

very drunk and four years ago btw

how do people feel about that cricket brooklyn 9/11 book that's doing the rounds?

it was the best new book i read last year i posted pretty effusively about it back in the spring. they play in (on?) staten island btw although the book takes place mostly in manhattan

its kinda hard for me to write about netherland w/o sounding retarded it was the sort of book that, when i finished reading it, i was tempted to just start back at the beginning and read right through again.

i am a little skeptical because (a) it's become kind of oprah's book club over here and (b) my flatmate recommends it and he is a moron, but really I should read definitely read it.

james wood (lol) had a really excellent review in the new yorker if that helps:

“Netherland” has an ideological intricacy, a deep human wisdom, and prose grand enough to dare the comparison

Finished Joseph O'Neil's Netherland yesterday. I wanted to start a thread called "'We courted in the style preferred by the English: alcoholically' Joseph O'Neil's Netherland" but was afraid no one cares/has the read the book/would post.

I loved it so much I'm reticent to give form or shape to my enthusiasm because I'm not sure I can describe the why w/o falling into hyperbole and/or incoherence. A big part of the pleasure in reading, for me, is stumbling on moments where an author makes explicable thoughts and feelings that I've had but have never been able to formulate and Netherland is filled w/those moments. When he's describing the formation of players on a cricket field, or applying for a driver's license or the drunken logic which dictates a boozy night out, O'Neill's prose is perfect. I just loved this novel so much.

FWIW, re: Woolf I felt the same about Mrs. Dalloway the first time I read it, that feeling of having a writer both describe life as I know it and sharply illuminating things I'd never thought to articulate. Nothing else she's written has come close to that, for me.

― Lamp, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:57 PM (8 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thanks. wonder how lj feels about it, since he has book smarts.

(not that you don't!)

btw i read 3 more tintin books on the train today & was actually sort of blown away. sometimes it reminds me of pkd in that, like, parts of it are just terrible from a technical/stylistic point of view or something, like the pacing is way off, and the plots satisfy themselves in the most bizarre way--but theres something so incredible about all of them. the art in the first half of the shooting star (not to mention the trippy giant spider & boiling water and all that [too bad about the terrible jewish villain]), shadow after shadow, tintin dealing w/ the end of the world and what does he do? feeds his dog water and calls the automated clock?!? and the funny brochure in the middle of king ottokars sceptre with the miniature & the illumination (there is something funny going on w/borders in that book but dont ask me what it is).

dude quit getting me really really interested in reading all of the tintin books

could you make them sound worse?

haha sometimes when i write about them i feel like i am playing a big prank, like making shit up that never happens in the book, but i swear to god, the shooting star opens with a sequence abt tintin thinking the world is going to end, and its basically him walking around on these empty streets with long shadows, feeding his dog some water, visited by a crazy guy, and then when the minute starts coming he calls the automated clock and listens to it count down. like, um, existentialism? or something? plus david lynch?

isn't there going to a movie?

yeah i am thinking i should read them again.

ILC EERINESS--I NOW LIVE BUT A BLOCK AWAY FROM THE LIBRARY WHERE I FIRST ENCOUNTERED THIS "TINTIN" PERHAPS THEY STILL HAVE THEM IN THEIR COLLECTION

yeah, spielberg to direct. i think hell do a great job, though--probably wont bring out the books inherent weirdness, but will be able to handle the comedy-adventure & fun goofy characters v. well.

i woulda gone w/live action

I've read most of the tintin books but the dude was always kind of a bland character to me, when I was a kid I liked asterix more cuz everyone was more deranged and had funnier names

max/caek I have read all the tintin books and loved them. the worst one is tintin in america because his life is saved by completely implausible coincidence/snowy tipping a vase onto someone's head like 15 times over the course of 62 pages. the best one is the one out of the "weird last 4" that you didn't mention max - The Castafiore Emerald. it's like some kind of beckett/moiliere hybrid play writ in glorious eccentric comic-strip technicolour

cricket brooklyn book i have to get hold of

like i mean a lady stops the train coz she saw a puma chasing a deer/the dumbbells are made of wood = contrived bullshit that Herge grew out of

tintin saved from being ground to a pulp because of a well-timed wildcat strike

tintin and snowy caught by tree while falling off cliff

xxxp, yeah, i was really an asterix kid

these should be polled tbh, along with the haystack fall in king ottokar's sceptre and other such "you cannot be SRS" moments

asterix is fucking brilliance, and is way funnier than if not quite as gripping as tintin

the best one is the one out of the "weird last 4" that you didn't mention max - The Castafiore Emerald. it's like some kind of beckett/moiliere hybrid play writ in glorious eccentric comic-strip technicolour

um. louis. did u read my post.

oh wait max you just said the same thing as i did loooooooooooooooooool in fact i probably based what i said on having seen you write about it in such a way on a specific tintin thread

you INFLUENCE me max

like i mean a lady stops the train coz she saw a puma chasing a deer/the dumbbells are made of wood = contrived bullshit that Herge grew out of

― Robin van Injury (country matters), Friday, February 6, 2009 1:38 PM (3 minutes ago) [IP: 86.131.23.100] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tintin saved from being ground to a pulp because of a well-timed wildcat strike

― Robin van Injury (country matters), Friday, February 6, 2009 1:38 PM (3 minutes ago) [IP: 86.131.23.100] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tintin and snowy caught by tree while falling off cliff

― Robin van Injury (country matters), Friday, February 6, 2009 1:38 PM (2 minutes ago) [IP: 86.131.23.100] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

disagree w/ u here--herge continued doing this all the time, up thru tibet/714/picaros

true dude but in TIA there really was a profusion of not even witty coincidence - just sheer implausible madness - so much so that i think perhaps he might have been satirising contemporary American comics?

tibet is overrated fwiw

Is it "The Broken Ear" where Captain Haddock is marching while drunk, and has a terrifying psychedelic vision involving chess pieces? That's my favourite bit of a Tintin novel.

no haddocks not in broken ear. it might be calculus affair.

herges dream sequences are always a trip & a half--

• shooting star: tintin falls asleep in chair, dreams that insane prophet has visited him with blueprint for spider
• cigars of pharaoh: tintin dreams he becomes a baby, everyone is dressed in robes of ancient egyptians lighting cigars
• prisoners of the sun: flower pot grows skulls on stems, haddock dressed as inca on stage, incan mummy

Broken Ear has that scene in hell at the end lolz

It might even be Picaros. Think it's one of those ones with the angry South American general (temp. forgotten name)

absolutely love flight 714 and basically anything involving rastapopulous btw

you guys stop making me like tintin

xpost. the man's name is General Alcazar, lj!

that's the one

btw Max I was saying this years ago:

dammit ilx i thought i'd be the only one whose favourite was 'the castafiore emerald' but it seems that most of us are that way inclined.

i think it's because it feels like the most relaxed, modern and uncontrived of all the books. its plot doesn't take any massive turns, but it amuses and intrigues throughout (although virtually everything that ACTUALLY happens is almost completely trivial). compare it to, say, 'tintin in america', where I counted roughly 16 instances where Tintin escapes death via either outrageous fluke or canine intelligence, it's thrilling, but it defies belief, and loses its potency when reviewed in adulthood.

― Just got offed, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 13:17 (1 year ago) Bookmark

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7a/Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub_book_cover.jpg/200px-Memoirs_Found_in_a_Bathtub_book_cover.jpg

this book rules, skip the first 13 pages

http://www.popserious.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/atmosphericdisturbances.jpg

finished this on the train this morning. i've been on this kick recently of fiction written by doctors, of which there's a surprising amount, and this was unique among much of what i read for abstaining from the ususal methaphors and themes of cutting and bleeding that i've been reading. its maybe a book in terror of the physical which is weird for someone that makes her living putting her hands in ppl but its pretty powerful all the same.

times critic called it cold but theres a bunch of really good jokes including one about boys reading borges and its about someone in love with love what's warmer than that?

^^^ good rec, will look into it

i reread castafiore emerald a couple months ago too and was suprised by how good it was since i thought it was one of the less remarkable ones when i was a kid

i think red rackham's treasure still stands as my favorite tintin book, but i have to reread flight 714 now since i recall that one being bizarre as fuck

ilc tintin club

flight 714 is still bizarre & probably my least favorite of the non-unredeemably-racist books

i dunno how challops to be about secret of the unicorn versus red rackham's treasure, but destination moon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> explorers on the moon

oh duh thats a no brainer

lol "the red sea sharks" is the REALLY racist one

I'm now trying to formulate a T/S between the two books with "Gold" in their titles...will have to return to them both, but I recall them as being highly enjoyable

you guys, seriously, i am not reading tintin

acting the goat

might as well kill urself then "lamp"

look what the goat made!

might as well kill urself then "lamp"

????

http://i44.tinypic.com/1sjrsy.jpg
http://i42.tinypic.com/73gz0k.jpg

took a Proust break and started Vineland, totally goofy Northern California stoner fun. . .

now if one was to read tintin where would one start

sorry i was being "IRONIC"

seriously tho read tintin

yeah you fukkin homo

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/19790000/19791249.JPG

rereading this its in my classic for all-time read once a year pile and never fails to make feel a little bit better about myself

UNRELATED: max did u read the foster wallace piece in the newyorker???

not yet waiting to read it in the actual magazine

pretty psyched 2 read it tho!

haha i feel like a mug for subscribing sometimes because i still end up reading a bunch of things on-line if for no other reason than i like the podcasts/blogs and end up there a couple times of week anyway

btw i am reading this book: http://www.paper-pills.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/my-name-is-red.jpg

and finding it 100% rad--havent had a a lot of reading time recently but still loving it. recommended for fans of borges, calvino, eco, "postmodernsim," the problem of representation & reality, turkey (the country), questions of theology, period romances

haha i feel like a mug for subscribing sometimes because i still end up reading a bunch of things on-line if for no other reason than i like the podcasts/blogs and end up there a couple times of week anyway

― Lamp, Tuesday, March 3, 2009 2:55 PM (2 minutes ago) [IP: 198.178.234.30] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol, i try to avoid reading things online bc then i have nothing to read on the subway

i end up reading it online also. why cant they just get the issue to us at the same time it goes online jeez

also havent read any robertson davies - shld i start w that cornish trilogy?

no. i mean if i had done a recommended for tag it would have said "all humans and also maybe robots with feelings" but if yr going to start with davies both the salterton and deptford trilogies are better intros

thnx

nyer still mostly not online u guys - dfw piece was sad - craziness coopted all his good intentions

troo which is why i still pay hard-currency reserves for it on a near-weekly basis

the dfw piece was sad but i thought his conception of the novel/art was fantastic and i just got submerged in this sense of yearning when reading the peace idk lyfe is a struggle and is v. sad sometimes its good to talk about it

did u dudes see the rolling stone thing abt dfw? think it might be online now, also good

his urge to portray and engender genuine meaningful humanity is quite good - but u dont get there though spazzing which is the clueless insane part - the image of him desperately watching golf hoping for some breakthrough was just so pitiful and tragic

UNRELATED: max did u read the foster wallace piece in the newyorker???

― Lamp, Tuesday, March 3, 2009 2:52 PM (2 days ago) [IP: 198.178.234.30] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya so i finally read this--some unreconstructed thots--

1) lol @ the nyer style guide spelling it "bandanna"

2) whatever else u want to say about this dude he seems sort of unquestionably huge--like maybe hes the guy who proved once and for all that you actually can keep writing novels after "postmodernism" and that maybe there is something that lays "beyond" "postmodernism"--or maybe he was just asking questions like the rest of us but he seemed to be asking the RIGHT questions--and the fact that he was so agonized about it is telling and its so tempting to turn his suicide into some larger metaphorical thing like this is what happens when u fuck with art & self awareness, like what they did w/ ntz's madness--and im sure that his depression & anxiety were deeply intertwined w/ his enormous intellect & his writing--but this is straight-up tragic and in the end more than anything it seems like an argument for medication

the article made me super sad (and headachey, i was reading it online, lol couldn't wait) then i took a break and read the fiction piece and got fucking totally excited for the new novel, no matter what form it takes.

i should read this 'article'

i really <3'd dfw :(

well i hear its available online gbx

i tht idk but what i tht was that it wasnt so much abt looking beyond but maybe looking inward and dealing with the fucked-up rag-ends of humanism and maybe grasping something workable from that

i always want to do this but i was def thinking of it in context of davies and the kind of weathered striving he holds up as not an antidote to scepticism/postmodernism but a refuge? or maybe a philosophy is a better word

the stuff abt the medication its just sad but im not as +ve its the answer totally

i dunno i do not suggest reading it online--it's super long. plus the fiction is mostly one long paragraph. unless you're into that sort of thing

beyond, inward, whatever, imo he came across like a dude who was actually willing to wrestle with the problems of being a human in 1999 or whenever in a sincere & thoughtful way w/o resorting to naive bret easton ellis nihilism or head-in-the-sand raymond carver realism or boxes w/in boxes calvino obscurantism. like he was really trying to construct a new language of possibility (i think i picked that phrase up somewhere) and figure out how to BE and how to be a WRITER after we just spent the last three thousand years taking writing & being apart.

u know who he really reminded me of actually? thoreau, in that kind of obsession with dignity & mindfulness & yeah striving, trying to maintain an 'authentic' or 'unalienated' relationship to life & the world. i have a lot of sympathy for that.

as far as the medication goes, who knows

yah i agree 100% w/yr 1st paragraph

btw i really like carver and calvino and i basically like ellis so thats not to knock on them i just think homebody was serious about taking on all sort of heideggerian problematics in a really fascinating way

beyond, inward, whatever, imo he came across like a dude who was actually willing to wrestle with the problems of being a human in 1999 or whenever in a sincere & thoughtful way w/o resorting to naive bret easton ellis nihilism or head-in-the-sand raymond carver realism or boxes w/in boxes calvino obscurantism. like he was really trying to construct a new language of possibility (i think i picked that phrase up somewhere) and figure out how to BE and how to be a WRITER after we just spent the last three thousand years taking writing & being apart.

u know who he really reminded me of actually? thoreau, in that kind of obsession with dignity & mindfulness & yeah striving, trying to maintain an 'authentic' or 'unalienated' relationship to life & the world. i have a lot of sympathy for that.

― rip dom passantino 3/5/09 never forget (max), Thursday, March 5, 2009 4:57 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

<3 <3 <3

i like him for the heat of his obv huge intellect talent and neurosis more than any profundity - cause while wondering how to live yr life in a dignified compassionate manner is sort of the ultimate question fascination with the trappings of a particular time or snazzy writing mode in that context is generally just entertainment or distraction - he seemed to really believe in all this shit like 500% which is sort of an insane tension for a situation thats better suited to relaxation and levity - the mix produced great art but was probably not the best for the guy in the long run

cause while wondering how to live yr life in a dignified compassionate manner is sort of the ultimate question fascination with the trappings of a particular time or snazzy writing mode in that context is generally just entertainment or distraction

its not really that hes wondering in this one crazy style or another, its that the crazy style is the wondering, or the opening of a place from which the wondering can happen

sort of a cart before the horse type situation imo

ur not french enuf to understand i dont think

like maybe what i mean is that before u can ask the question u gotta learn or maybe write the language in which the question can even be asked

maybe

i feel like this would be the perfect time for some sort of zen asshole style expression where is hoos

fascination with the trappings of a particular time or snazzy writing mode in that context is generally just entertainment or distraction

i get the feeling that dfw felt the same tbh why else the new obsession with boredom but the continued hunt for clarity and 'realism' of not just telling but showing and finding meaning for yrself and others. and there's arrogance in that too and that can be toxic in its own right but its more than just entertainment

also i have to admit imo the stories in oblivion are probably the best things hes done

maybe entertainment is sort of a trite way to put it and obv theres a lot of bewilderment for anyone looking at life in a deep way but sort of the question is are you trying to get to some sort of bore meditative state because you basically cant deal or what

check out the age of wire and string by ben marcus

life is bewilderment

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61u1kLhivNL.jpg

life is bewilderment

so if someone wants to explain this book to me thatd be pretty cool

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c2/c12245.jpg

reading this at the moment, lorrie moore is so rad (everyone knows that right?)

xpost

hey lamp are you using the gaddis annotations to help you out--I would do that and also read the synopsis (synopses?) if you're not already

http://www.williamgaddis.org/recognitions/preface.shtml

hey i am reading that exact copy of the Gaddis.

probably not, unless u and lamp are sharing it

lol is that where it went??

damn.

i like the cover tho.

read agape agape
its pretty much a short version of all of his books

im looking inside this book

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BCR90ADPL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

fucking great book, seriously^^^

yeah its super wonderful

UPDATE: i finished w. gaddis novel recognitions feel kind of wrung out by my inabilities tbh its pretty interesting but still idk i dont even have any new books 2 read wonderin what i should read next

ps plz do not recommend something taxing

i wld read this it will not tax u

http://www.mpbonline.org/television/series/writers/201-FirstNovels/Books/Pendarvis/Awesome.jpg

whenever i am tired of books i read jeeves and wooster

ps plz do not recommend something taxing

― Lamp, Friday, April 17, 2009 11:58 AM (14 minutes ago) [IP: 198.178.234.30] Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this a subtle msg of support for "teabag" ceremonies

"subtle"

caek tom--i mean caek otm

http://robertkent.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/bookreviews/confederacyofduncescover.jpg

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c2/c12198.jpg

both rereads im sure many of the literally six ppl that read this thread have already read them but i just wanted to remind ppl that these fine books exist and deserve to be read

btw i have "thoughts" on both of these books the dubus esp the short story "rose" is so wonderful in this kind of old-fashioned way? like its very clear in whats its doing and how it wants u to feel even w/ the language which is less "natural" in a like irl i talk like that way but more in im telling a story and this how'd i'd tell it way its really powerful imo

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_o-Q2I9Pzsms/SZIUmxRUjWI/AAAAAAAAAtg/Aj8RhZVYbyM/s320/9781400077540.jpg

Man, this guy. I think I like the way he handles thought and consciousness, way better than stream of consciousness does. Sentences that move forward and then fold back on themselves. Thoughts that dissapear for a few sentences or pages and then return. Plus it's funny, and has a great ending.

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/14560000/14566828.JPG

Long slog but worth it. Fucking awesome ending.

have been strugglin to read, lately :(

lol in ur spot i probably wouldnt even look @ a book until july

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/Vn/everything-ravaged-0309-lg.jpg

Great stuff, even though the narrators for these stories all share similar tones and styles, really digging this. Only about four stories in but this guy is fun and funny. Hopefully he'll stick around.

is that the lol vikings short story collection? - wanted to read that - the ny times informed me that dude has a v nice apt and is working on a novel

http://i43.tower.com/images/mm112315331/jeff-in-venice-death-varanasi-not-available-hardcover-cover-art.jpg

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/05/05/john_wray_lowboy.jpg

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0575080272.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

took me 4ever to finish jeff in sped through the venice chapters and then kept losing interest in the 2nd half maybe because the word "sated" kept coming up. recommended though esp for old ppl and cokeheads.

the other two are really excellent the other day someone on ilx talked about reading critically vs. enjoying the novel as immersion in another world and ill cop to vibing the identification and excitement in ninth circle great scenario something to day dream tiresome meetings away. lowboy is sad and wonderful but maybe a bit much, wish anyone i know would read it. both recommended to ppl wearing neckties to work or sandals to the beach.

i am still reading gravitys rainbow fwiw on week like 8 still not quite halfway thru

i got lowboy on reserve @ the library--psyched to read it

totally amazing rad book w/ at least one drop-dead gorgeous sentence on every page but its too heavy to bring on the subway which is where i get like 85% of reading done.

gr that is

really? seems like it would be the ideal subway book

i'm rereading Moby Dick after bailing on Bleak House and Netherland, i needed something I know I would dig

nah its rad to read on the subway its just too heavy 4 my weak desk job arms--plus i am half asleep in the mornings & generally not awake enuf to vibe with pynchon in all his ocd balls-trippin litwaddery

one time i ran into a professor of mine on bart when i was reading bleak house and she sd it was her favorite dickens and i sd me too at least so far and then she sd she loved silas mariner and i sd that it sucked and then she was like "..." and i only got an a- in her course.

true story. also i hope u like lowboy its not v. much like moby dick at all

did u finish bleak house? i got like 400 pages in and i was all fuck these people. i liked it a lot but i wanted something new

man reading is difficult because i am way slow but I am trying to read this:
http://rgr-static1.tangentlabs.co.uk/media/9780415325059/history-of-western-philosophy.jpg
even though it is too long and all these greek guys names sound the same
and actually reading this:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n58/n291014.jpg
except mine has a more awesome cover that I can't find online
also, isn't that rockaby in the beckett cover and not endgame

also want to read this because it sounds awesome bad
it is secretly about jeff koons
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3354/3543421668_082c4635eb.jpg

chick was his assistant for 4 yrs

que i did finish bleak house! really liked it! will never read it again! it is really long i have a pretty good knack for picking up and dropping books w/o losing the plot so to speak so i just wore away at it. im glad i guess ive read a lot of that stuff - eliot and dickens and thackeray - but other than trollope i dont have the patience for it anymore

books i read while sitting outside

http://theforestbeyond.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/book-of-lost-things.jpg

fun! i guess its for kids but its both graphic and strangely coy for something meant for children. gay knights are a +

http://www.relishmagazine.com/website/images/books/feb05/runaway.jpg

~*wonderful*~ obv. reread it after realizing i hadnt read it since it came out "passion" has to be one of the greatest short stories ever written?

munro is awesome, remind which story passion is

passion is the one about the young girl working as a waitress who meets an engineer and falls in love with his family more than him - theyre these comfortable, smart umc ppl and shes facing what seems like a pretty bleak future and they all kind of adopt her but she ends up sleeping with her fiancees alcoholic brother or brother-in-law (cant remember now) and just really fucking up. the end has a scene where the father comes to visit her at the restaurant where she was working at the start of the story thats so deft and heartbreaking and its like a paragraph.

o yeah man i totally remember that one - the family playing charades, the mother befriending her, that guy taking her on a driving lesson - so good.

everytime i read alice munro im reminded of how much i love her

new one comin out next month btw

hey max -

have u read rebecca mead's piece in the 10/19 nyer abt alloy? if y what did u think if n wld u like to?

I'll read it when I get home but first I'll embarrass myself by saying I have no clue what alloy is

its a media company responsible for among other things gossip girl pretty interesting piece on their publishing process - made me think of u not sure y curious what u tht i guess

oh u though of me cuZ I AM gossip girl

that makes sense now that u mention it xox bro

not books but well you know

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/shot0002.png

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, guys.

also am reading that currently

i just read The Fountainhead. i have no idea why, i just saw it and bought it. i thought it was absolutely excellent, but also genuinely terrible, and that is quite a combination to pull off. i think maybe there was a thrill of the unknown in finding out how such alien, unrealistic characters would act that appealed. i am tempted to try Atlas Shrugged but i understand that that has less of the excellent and a lot more of the terrible. if someone who knows could make the decision for me i would appreciate it.

i am also reading the Thomas Cahill "Hinges of History" series, which i guess is similar in as much as it is fairly poor history done in an extremely engaging, idiosyncratic style. i would recommend to anyone who would appreciate a slightly different take on the story of western civilization, as long as you don't assume that anything he states as fact is necessarily so.

also, if you haven't read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. yes i'm talking to you, non-specific second person.

you should ditch the Ayn Rand and read Gordon Lish

maybe i will, but if i do it won't be because you told me to, i'm my own man.

g2h that the ask is a good read i have it on order. mq have u read the privileges? think its p great probably the best new book ive read in some time

^^^I am planning on reading this but am currently reading lolRoth.

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, guys

having a hard time w/ this btw - so despairing & at times glibly banal tyrna ruthlessly shatter yr delusions or w/e

idk mb just not "in the right space" for another 150 pgs of h8ful humanity 'surely, sugary-ly' careening into the depths

'surely, sugary-ly'

?

still need to read the privleges

its one of the main characters inward-spiraling lingual tricks that particularly bugged me

like hed start out describing smthn - a soft drink or a restaurant - and end up at some loathing-filled pun or quip or metaphor or w/e that played off that thing

~~that was part of the delight for me in reading it~~

haha yah i was half-thinking that as i was reading it - the structure & use of metaphor in this is really adept but @ some pt ive become a partisan for really pale almost invisible prose & this is certainly writing that calls attention to itself.

i know what you mean. other writers can be that way for me, but the book was just so funny, especially the scenes with the kid and the Iraq vet that it didn't bother me.