[evnvnv]

just chiming in to recommend olaf stapledon to everybody, i'm sure i've mentioned this in another thread but he is a really great UK sci-fi writer active (i believe?) mostly in post-WWII era. for some reason (ie not sure if this is his idea or his publishers) his novel(las) are collected two to a volume, arranged kind of thematically. i've just finished reading "Odd John" and "Sirius" (together in the same book) and they are absolutely worth reading for anyone interested in science fiction, and may be fun (or irritating?) to people who like philosophy, esp. nietzsche. The first is about an abnormally intelligent young man named John--kind of a boring premise but the actual point of the book is hard to get into without explaining the whole plot. It's really interesting and though it is full of 'philosophical' ideas they are always presented in the context of the characters in the book, so you don't feel like the author is shoving a (flawed) perspective down your throat. The other is about a dog that is engineered to have human-level intelligence, and is a little bit weirder to take seriously but equally entertaining. In some parts it is kind of a prototype for Philip Jose Farmer-esque 'weird romance' stories, but the human dog relationship that develops is platonic (in both the traditional sense and the modern usage, the dog sirius develops a kind of weird concept of spiritual life and his relationship with the human female figures pretty directly into this). Stapledon's other major works are 'future histories,' "Last and First Men" and "Star Maker," but I haven't read either of these.

I'm really enjoying this era of sci-fi/weird fiction. Does anyone have any recommendations...? I'm especially interested in things written during the inter-war period, or written during or immediately after the war but taking place before it. I guess I don't need to go into the reasons why right now, but any advice would be appreciated...

also chiming in on the earlier stephenson question i haven't read any of his more recent novels but i thought "The Diamond Age" was really exciting and imaginative. I'd much rather read that kind of novel (with just the right amount of obsessive-compulsive historical detail and description) than the two ton elephants he produced later...
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Renfrew]

So I'm reading Snow Crash now. It really makes me wish I had read it when I was 15.
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[Renfrew]

Earlier today I got to the part about Sumerian myths and how they relate to the Hebrew myths. All this stuff is fascinating. I guess I better go read some Joseph Campbell now.
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[Winona Ghost Ryder]

The first review of The Original of Laura
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6673934.html

[Dracko]

Why have I only just heard of The Complete Smiley radio-plays?

And of related interest...

[kyle]

i'm reading Frisk by dennis cooper and it's a pretty big step up from Closer by dennis cooper, which is to say it is fantastic. i will be through the George Miles Cycle in no time flat.

[Dracko]

No prizes for guessing which author is most easily found in second-hand bookshops.

P.S. evnvnv, read The Night Land.

[Renfrew]

I read Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar a while back and loved it. I was really brought in to the world and hung on every word. I tried Trout Fishing in America and it was like I was constantly trying to get a hold of it. I just couldn't get in to it.

On Sunday I read Gilgamesh. I especially liked the parts where Gilgamesh was traveling to the survivor of the flood.

After I finished Gilgamesh I started on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Despite it being a huge text chock full of strange names, I find myself completely engaged each every moment my eyes are on the words. I think it might have something to do with how the book is basically a summary. Almost everything it talks about is either political intrigue or battles, and even those descriptions don't last very long and mainly give the basic idea of the battle. I don't think I've seen any really down time. This is a story with all the fat cut away, leaving only the juicy bits.

[Adilegian]

I'm starting to read H. G. Wells' Outline of History, volume I. Last time I tried reading it, I remember some awesome stuff in there about gigantic South American armadillos, so this should be pretty sweet.
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[Ebrey]

[Renfrew]

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

I've just read the novella Ice by Anna Kavan, and am convinced that it is the greatest post-apocalyptic work of literature in modern times. I eagerly await to check out the rest of her literary body.

[evnvnv]

[Dracko]

Ballardian's first in a series of interviews around the notorious Savoy Books.

With a related microfiction competition to win rare Savoy titles!

[108]

[shrugtheironteacup]

I appreciate Hard Target because JCVD will shoot someone fifteen time in the chest with his beretta and then decide that it's still necessary to spin-kick them in the face.

Just to be sure.

He does this multiple times.

There's a work print floating about the internet that's longer and may have even more exposition, possibly more mayhem too idk I never had the patience.

Hey guys I'm rereading Sutree.
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[Adilegian]

I'm reading selections of Meister Eckhart's sermons and commentaries in translation. There's a world of difference between the Latin tracts and the German sermons, both in terms of accessibility and pleasurability. The Latin stuff has all the trappings of technical form, being written by clergy for clergy within the Augustinian rote of logic, but the sermons are great due the the fact that he had to turn it into something that people would want to hear.

I mean, this is gold.

[108]

for example: reading philosophy always felt like Life Spoilers, to me :-/
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[Adilegian]

[Boston]

rereading american psycho over here. ellis created a truly amazing and hilariously conflicted character with pat bateman, one that the movie version portrayal doesn't even begin to scratch. i consider myself pretty desensitized to violence (videogames lol), but some of the murderous descriptions towards the end of the book are so gnarly i momentarily felt like i should be reading them. but it's simultaneously one of the funniest books i've ever read; the way bateman absolutely freaks out over the most insignificant details, his obsession with donald trump, the glee he feels over blowing off girlfriends he's supposed to take to dinner, this book had me literally cackling about 10 different times.

i also think ellis nailed it with his social commentary of the era: the vapid, hyper-materialistic greed, the fact that all of the characters look alike and are beacons of human fitness, the fact that because everyone looks alike they're constantly calling each other by the wrong name, and it doesn't seem to bother them, the issue of homelessness and the inability of the rich to comprehend that level of suffering, etc. he makes the yuppie 80s look retarded without ever having the characters ever realize it.

anyone else read this? the only other person i know who did missed the point completely and was hung up on the gore.
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[Lynchburg]

[Adilegian]

I'm reading Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd and Sixty Poems by Charles Simic.
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[Adilegian]

This is incredible.

"A Book Full of Pictures" (Charles Simic)

Father studied theology through the mail
And this was exam time.
Mother knitted. I sat quietly with a book
Full of pictures. Night fell.
My hands grew cold touching the faces
Of dead kings and queens.

There was a black raincoat
in the upstairs bedroom
Swaying from the ceiling,
But what was it doing there?
Mother's long needles made quick crosses.
They were black
Like the inside of my head just then.

The pages I turned sounded like wings.
"The soul is a bird," he once said.
In my book full of pictures
A battle raged: lances and swords
Made a kind of wintry forest
With my heart spiked and bleeding in its branches.
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[Dracko]

Man, I forgot The Original of Laura was out this week.

Gonna be all over this.

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

[Dracko]

Is there a point to that? Do they get in the way of the reading?
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[Winona Ghost Ryder]

They're exact copies of Nabokov's note cards, with even the x'd backs in color. It would probably look neat as a stack. I'm going to read it via the pages though, because the printed text on each page is more legible than the handwritten cards.

[negativedge]

The Guardian demolishes it with a fervor that makes one quaintly understand a piece of the apparently torturous decision making process that has underscored the whole event-narrative behind the publication.

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

[negativedge]

the only thing I can muster in response is the most genuine rofl of my e-life

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

Yes, the work is not even remotely finished, what i've read so far (almost done) won't make it stand on the top of Nabokov's oeuvre, yet i'm glad to have read it. It's understandable why Nabokov wouldn't want it to be published, but as a reader I care more about the work, than the author's personal intents (as inseparable, as they may be), right or wrong. Imagine a world where Kafka's novels (all unfinished) were destroyed in accordance with his will, or a world where the sequel to Dead Souls wasn't burned. It's too much of a loss. The Original of Laura could have been feces slapped on a page, and regardless of critical consensus, i'd doubt it would destroy Nabokov's reputation. Lolita, Pale Fire, they still stand. Plus I guess it's kind of fun for readers, scholars, whatever to examine disowned, minor, unfinished, and unpublished works, to see the evolution of a writer, debate where a work could have possibly lead, literary and personal links, etc.

And fuck Martin Amis, I thought that article would be a simple attack on Dmitri disobeying his father (an understandable argument) and perhaps on The Original of Laura not being up to snuff, but it's really much more of a hit job on a large portion of Vladimir's work, pure opportunism. Ada is one of my favorite novels by Nabokov and to see Amis dismissing it as unreadable is beyond ironic, when you consider the fact that Amis wrote Yellow Dog, what was considered one of the most unreadable books of the decade. To be fair the only Amis book i've finished is London Fields, which I really didn't care for, so it's best for me not to comment, but still fuck him. That book I posted on top (yes that's the same Martin Amis) is probably his best.

[negativedge]

I want to read it just for the insights into the creative process, creepy as the voyeurism of a dying man might be.

but hey, art knows no bounds - Nabokov lived the phrase more than most; I guess it's fitting he die it as well.

[Dracko]

[Adilegian]

So Sarah Palin's book came out today.

"Real America" reads and loves this book SB.
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[shrugtheironteacup]

When I was at the family Thanksgiving in Pierce, Idaho last year everyone was talking about how, if Palin were too run for president, they would vote for her.
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[Adilegian]

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

How many people bought The Original of Laura compared to Going Rogue (both came out on the same day!) at your Barnes & Noble, Adilegian. I'm guessing none on the former and a fuckton for the later ;_;

[Winona Ghost Ryder]

The Original of Laura, sent to die again.

[Adilegian]

[shrugtheironteacup]

Hey Louis L'Amour is big in northern Idaho too maybe there is an inexplicable family reunion all the way in Texas that I wasn't told about.
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[Adilegian]