[evnvnv]

not sure if this counts as 'literature' but i got the red book for x-mas and it blows my mind every time i open it. so amazing, so intimidating. i never really gave jung any serious thought until i heard this was being published; now i kind of want to stop everything i'm doing just to pour over this thing for the next 6 months, concluding by reading everything else he ever wrote... is that a good idea select button?
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The text will not live forever. The cup are small

[Ebrey]

evnvnv I got a little red book at Christmas on the streets of Shanghai.

Anyway, has anyone here read any Mishima? The Paul Schrader movie Mishima is one of my favorite movies, and it makes him look like a genius and a martyr for art. I just finished my first book of his, an early novel called "Thirst for Love" that has a very minimal Japanese household drama plot, like something out of an Ozu movie. But its mostly about the psyche of it's incredibly fucked up protagonist, a really miserable woman whose goal for most of the book is to achieve perfect suffering. She wavers from this occasionally - sometimes she can't take the pain and does something to alleviate it, and sometimes she delights in making other people suffer. I can't quite decide whether I liked it.

The novel that looked the most interesting in the movie Mishima was Kyoko's house, an S & M gangster love story. Too bad it's the only one not available in English!

[shrugtheironteacup]

I like The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea. It reflects interestingly on the absurd contrivance of his life and character.

I tend to have a copy of Sun and Steel around. It's a little embarrassing.
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[Dracko]

Why embarrassing?
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[Dracko]

We're getting a complete Titus Awakes next year, courtesy of Mervyn Peake's widow Maeve Gilmore.

[Renfrew]

I've been trying to go back and finish A Confederacy of Dunces. I have a hard time maintaining interest when Ignatius isn't front and center, but when he is, I'm generally enthralled.
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[Dracko]

ATTN: extrabastardformula and other Bill Burroughs fans
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[internisus]

[internisus]

[negativedge]

Jung is pretty interesting but he's got a nasty habit of taking things a little too far, realizing he's done so, and then screaming for a couple pages that he's a fucking scientist god fucking damn it in response. also doing things like differentiating the qualities of his various archetypes is a little daunting. his answer is basically "don't worry about it dude"

[Dracko]

Supervert's new book is out.

[falsedan]

Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang

[diplo]

finished john mcwhorter's our magnificent bastard tongue. short, and the first thing i've read concerning a history of english, so i have nothing to compare it to. a lot of its time is spent arguing for celtic influence, which is an apparently unpopular perspective. also finished jacob needleman's what is god? my increasing disinterest with it, i think, had less to do with a lack of personal belief and more to do with the book's increasingly vague leaps from one experience or brief idea to the next (after a wonderful opening chapter). needleman builds up to points that last a paragraph, a sentence, and moves on to the next chapter, devoting the last to the title's subject after namedropping gurdjieff for a long while. it feels like a longer work pushed into an unfairly small body. i'm now in the middle of jeff sharlet's the family and edward wilson's consilience.

[Adilegian]

I'm really enjoying Middlemarch.
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[CubaLibre]

Everyone is an Eliot man or an Austen man. Sophisticated men choose Eliot.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Adilegian]

[Adilegian]

This might be old, but here's apparently a nasty ending to one of the children from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Dahl had nipped from the final copy.
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[boojiboy7]

I only like Austen if I think she hates her characters. I kinda think she does.

Overall though, I am not so much a fan of 19th Century British novels though.

[Adilegian]

[boojiboy7]

it's ok, dog. I'm not talking them down or nothing, just acknowledging they aren't my thing, from my limited experience. Reading Emma while looking for clues as to how much Austen hated Emma herself was fun though.

[Intentionally Wrong]

[rabite gets whacked!]

[wolf roboblitzer]

[Adilegian]

[boojiboy7]

[rabite gets whacked!]

[CubaLibre]

booji, you should read Middlemarch.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[diplo]

i think i'll visit a bookstore/library tomorrow to try and find olaf stapledon's last and first men and star maker. has anyone else read these?

[evnvnv]

[diplo]

oh, i must've missed that post. yeah, the seeming obscurity of the books is what the library would be for. i've just never heard anyone, outside of the internet, mention stapledon. i'm (sort of) hoping the narrative is not delivered in the way an author like lovecraft delivers it. i often have trouble following fiction when there's a lack of dialogue -- not sure if i've been conditioned to expect conversation, or what. but, if the material's interesting enough, who knows. the summarizations on wikipedia are already pretty seductive.

[Tulpa]

Loved Odd John.
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[Adilegian]

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[internisus]

[Anonymous]

Buying just The Waste Land is a waste (lolgetit) of time. Might as well buy Eliot's complete works or something. The bells and whistles in Norton stuff is pretty nice, but if the choice is between Actual Literature and commentary on literature, it shouldn't be much of a choice at all.

[internisus]

Yes, I suppose you are right. I'll choose a different collection, maybe with Prufock and The Tea Party or whatever it is I may be remembering.

[amadeus3000]

Since I have finished The Human Stain by Philip Roth a few weeks ago, I was wondering if the book, besides the obvious things Amy Hungerford had to say about it – mainly man fantasies, generation conflict, race issues and censorship, actually depicts the famed 'American soul'? Especially in the beginning, with its comments about Clinton, football, etc. and later on the things about a medium-sized American town – do they resonate within the Americans? I just want to know if my impression is right, that Roth manages on relatively few pages (compared to the rest of the novel) to accurately describe the United States before 9/11.


Another topic: Has anyone of you read Thomas Bernhard? From the English section of my bookstore I gathered that his translated works are quite popular. If that's the case, what do you think about the most-hated Austrian writer?

[Adilegian]

[boojiboy7]

[shrugtheironteacup]

Hello selectfuton.

I have very slow internet for up to five minutes.

Here:

-Richard K. Morgan likes adverbs too much, could use to be more comfortable with being trash

-The Invention of Morel reminds me of the twenty-seven year-old virgin I live/work with who won't stop watching the Disney channel (as did Last Year at Marienbad go figure)

-I want to read some of the gay shit from The Wild Boys at open mic night at a local bar and see how long it takes before mountain guides and/or train employees drag me away from the mic

-the guy I work with that used to work with my grandparents/uncle at the mill was reading The Killer Angels and of-a-sudden shouted FUCK THIS FLOWERY SHIT and threw the book across the kitchen; approved of a vietnam war memoir because the author describes killing a man by tearing off his testicles

Yours,

Shrug
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[psiga]

SB's anus gapes longingly for you, oh dearest shrug. Lacunae.

Lacunae.
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[Winona Ghost Ryder]

HOLY SHIT!