Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1973

Been meaning to get into Moacryr Scliar but, due to brexit or pandemic who knows, the online Portuguese bookshop I use has stopped shipping to the UK

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson
Crash by J.G. Ballard
Sula by Toni Morrison
Red Shift by Alan Garner

All good. Only Crash makes me pause, but it's comfortably GR.

Love to read Soyinka and Sembene (the film is all-time)

Lots of blanks here for me. I'll go for Ballard though I do love Red Shift.

Was waiting to see if anything on this list would draw me away from GR. It hasn't

Not included for obvious reasons:

The Camp of the Saints (French: Le Camp des Saints) is a 1973 French dystopian fiction novel by author and explorer Jean Raspail.[1][2][3] A speculative fictional account, it depicts the destruction of Western civilization through Third World mass immigration to France and the West. Almost forty years after its initial publication, the novel returned to the bestseller list in 2011.[4]

On its publication, the book received praise from some prominent French literary figures,[5][6] but has since then been dismissed by both French- and English-language commentators for conveying themes of racism,[2][7][8][9] xenophobia, nativism, monoculturalism, and anti-immigration content.[1][2][10][11] The novel is popular within far-right and white nationalist circles.[3][12][13]

If his professon was "explorer" then he presumably spent the majority of his career entering other countries, the prick.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Great American Novel by Philip Roth

this is a hilarious juxtaposition imo

anyway, happy to contribute to the blowout

Had to vote Crash for no other reason than that Vaughan died yesterday in his last car crash, but Red Shift ran it close. Garner's in that weird position of largely being thought of as a writer for younger readers, but most everything he did after 1970 or so was distinctly non-YA.

Red Shift is difficult - almost modernist in its elisions and weird temporal structure.

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson

For some reason this is the only own of his novels I haven't read. A bit like ignoring the hit and concentrating on the deep cuts.

I found Red Shift almost totally incomprehensible the first time I read it; I don't think I was expecting to have to pay so much attention to it. Then my brother explained what was going on with Jan's train and the streaks of blue and silver that people kept seeing, and in a sudden flash of illumination I went "Oh, it's 'When the train left the station it had two lights on behind/ the blue light was my baby and the red light was my mind,'" and after that I reread the book and it made much more sense.

I had no idea I know what you did last summer was a book, let alone a 70s book!

Write-in for Réjean Ducharme's L'Hiver de force, another Québécois lit classic.

I went through a phase of reading all the Lois Duncan books in the library when I was 10 or so, there were only four or five books, the best one was Locked In Time. Pretty sure they were not suitable for a 10-year-old, especially Killing Mr Griffin.

Re-read Rendezvous With Rama a few years ago, it's certainly a page-turner but bloody hell can't ACC give his characters even a little hint of personality? Also the attempts to sex things up here and there are excruciating. I guess this was his (very successful) go at a ready-made blockbuster, hence the never-fails BDO* plot premise.

(*Big Dumb Object, for those not privy to genre terminology)

Write-in for Réjean Ducharme's _L'Hiver de force_, another Québécois lit classic.

I've read a few of these: "Gravity's Rainbow", "Fear of Flying", "Breakfast of Champions". Also pretty sure I've read "A Wind in the Door" and "Rendezvous with Rama" but I don't remember them well. I'd be tempted to write in "Siege of Krishnapur" by J.G. Farrell, but probably it's "GR" for me.

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson

For some reason this is the only own of his novels I haven't read. A bit like ignoring the hit and concentrating on the deep cuts.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.)

Ha, I have a bit of bitterness re Christie Malry because it is the hit and there are a good couple of his novels that are way better, but I'm still voting for it. It is super sharp and expertly constructed.

Loved Crash and Breakfast of Champions when I read them, didn't get through Gravity's Rainbow but it seemed good from the bit I did read - always intended to make time for it but these days my concentration span is so poor I'm not sure if that will ever happen.

The TV adaptation of Red Shift is a great piece of work, but I never read the book, sorry Alan.

rendezvous with rama is a fun read.
haven't read anything else here.

Big Ballard fan, Crash gets my vote

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson

For some reason this is the only own of his novels I haven't read. A bit like ignoring the hit and concentrating on the deep cuts.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Friday, 4 June 2021 14:22 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i've had the (not worthless) movie on DVD for year and still haven't got round to reading it

I'd love to vote for the Scliar, which I know I liked, but I remember nothing about it, so I'm going with The Great American Novel, the highlight of Roth's mostly ignored/forgotten boffo comedy period.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The Great American Novel, the highlight of Roth's mostly ignored/forgotten boffo comedy period. Intriguing!
I love of some of GR, a few parts, and some of the rest works fairly well, but not enough for me to vote for it. Instead, will go for Great Jones Street: like Americana it's funny, eerie, thoughtful, mobile, and too talky, as the author seems to realize, considering the ending, which kinda works, and the monologues, individually, are pretty good, also conversations. The narrator is an Iggy Dylan, who likes to run around the atage naked, and writes pretty good lyrics. He has a British colleague who specializes in "bitckpicking": fussing with one sweater-pill of the song 'til the whole thing comes unraveled, in a gloriously maddening way. ID goes away, to ponder things, in a walk-up on early 70s Great Jones St. Meets some tawwwky bastards, also his girlfriend visits. Imperfect, but I'm going with it.

oh, how is The Rachel Papers?? Have read that MA's early novels actually don't suck.

Think he had a good run up until Money and then maybe London Fields. *ducks*

In my early twenties I read Slaugherhouse Five, thought it was fine; read Cat's Cradle, thought it was ok; read Breakfast of Champions, thought it was a laugh riot. Of course I don't remember a thing about it now.

The main thing I remember about it is the naughty doodles.

The asshole

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wherein We Elect Our Favourite Novels of 1974