Stephen King, Joyland

Marketed as a hardboiled crime novel but wouldn't feel out of place beside his more recent horror books like Revival. Great stuff.

First time through the Potter books?

I read the first two when they came out, but good God they’re simple. Simply written, I mean. They’re expertly crafted children's/YA books — classy and colorful and they paint a lovely picture — but goddammit I just don’t have it in me.
I started going with movies only after the second book. The movies get the point across and are quite fun.

I’ve thought about reading Rowling’s adult book, “A Casual Vacancy,” but ... not too hard.

Casual Vacancy was a good TV program

Really? They TV’d that shit already?

Goddamn. Technology amirite?

second read through, 3rd if you count audiobooks.


Definitely agree with you regarding the first couple, and probably even the third one can be included, but as you move along, it does get better. I can think of at least one subtle masturbation joke in the 4th book, and as you've seen with the movies, the subject matter gets more complex.

I just started a new Ian Rankin book. It's not a Detective Rebus, but I'll give it a go.

I couldn't stop the Potter-thon, and dove right into book 5. Sorry, not sorry :D

Finished David Skrbina's Panpsychism In The West. https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2018/...existence.html

Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte I'm fascinated by authors who wrote a novel that has over time become a classic but it was the writer's only novel. Even more so when the novel is surrounded by controversy such as this one or Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Ooo. Got me researching on "only novel"s. (I skipped the "controversy" part to make it easier, although I agree that's a fascinating element)

The bulk seem to be 18th and 19th century works by people no one's heard of. (Trust me) Nothing else to do back then, I guess.

But among the might've heard of and obvious:

Oliver Goldsmith - Stoops to Conquer
Muriel Rukeyser - Savage Coast (Mostly known as a poet)
Plath- Bell Jar (I feel there are a probably host of single novels by poets)
Lee- Mockingbird
Katherine Anne Porter - Ship of Fools
Chekhov- The Shooting Party
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard (yes, the one turned into Visconti's film)
Margaret Mitchell - Gone w Wind
Does Catcher in the Rye count?
Need more.

And here's a whole article about celebrities who have written a novel:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalind...jdv#.pwXE5oWaq

i don’t know about others, but i don’t know who would survive writing wuthering heights.

after you’re done lemme highly recommend georges bataille’s “literature and evil”. his reading on wuthering height is... wow.

Finished J.B.S. Haldane's DAEDALUS: or Science & The Future http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2018/0...at-future.html

i tried to read a couple of ursula leguin books from the 60s/70s... failed to stay awake

i tried reading a book of (previously) unpublished elmore leonard short stories... now i know why they were unpublished. i did like how one of them was written (“one, horizontal”) but while entertainingly told, it was a bit inconsequential.

then finally got started on moby dick...

you know how everybody talks about moby dick like this ponderous brick of old testament struggle?

it’s probably because they’re just repeating what evrybody else said haaa haaa haaa

why nobody talks about melville’s witty and hilarious prose?

i know i know im only one chapter in, but every sentence was packed with meaning, every sentence carried an actual thought, and many of those thoughts were funny as fuck, so i was laughing every paragraph.

i’m hooked (for now anyway) and will report when i get a chance.

Started reading "Song of Kali" by Dan Simmons

e.g., this little bit of practical metaphysics (yes, ive advanced further but im also closely rereading chapter 1 with delight)


What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.

that short, sweet, funny, wise bit about resignation to universal suffering and the need for compassion/solidarity is immediately followed by this bit of smartass hilarity:

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

this guy... no, he is too much.

First 150 pages or so are fantastic. Then it gets a bit dull and difficult. Let me know if/when you get there.

Tried and failed to read it since high school, but it finally hit me a few years ago. Still a few dead spots, but it really is a masterpiece. Just not for everyone.

After one gets through it, it becomes a GREAT book to pick up and read any random chapter when you have a few minutes to kill. I think you've already discovered that. Most quotable American novel?

Ursella K. Leguin called Gene Wolf the Melville of fringe speculative literary fiction. :D

my favorite novel. what you say is true.

the parts people find difficult and tedious are the chapters on cetology, new hampshire history, whale ships, etc... I LOVE THOSE CHAPTERS

^ !!!

After several attempts to read Moby Dick, I assumed it was a mostly boring, unreadable book.

One day a few years ago, I wanted to read something boring. I wanted to know what made something boring.

So I picked up Moby Dick and flipped to a chapter on the lines used on ships. Figured it didn't get more boring than that. It was brilliant.

That's when I flipped to the front, read from start to finish and fell in love.

im reading slowly and enjoying it tons

he really makes you (makes me anyway) dream up the journey

why is it that some writers literally transport you while with others you get stuck in words?

good question.


the best writers capture the reality of their topic so well that one is immersed, and Moby Dick does that to me so much.

true but that happens even with unreality

take “dune”. completely fantastic made up shit alluding to oil in the middle east (dont think the guy ever went there)

and i read it and reread it and i am CAUGHT in it

im thinking it’s more a matter of style

but which style? how does it operate?

"reality of their topic" applies to fantasy as well.



style is everything. Tolkien's worlds are rich, but his writing is dogshit.

yeah ive never managed to read tolkien ha ha ha

my wife read it as a kid and is a fan. but that might have more to do with wizards and magical elves and shit.

—

i think for me the style that lets me enter is the one that gets to the point right away. by which i dont mean short length and concise sentences. it’s just that every word has to count for something.

not just colors and shapes and smells and shit like that but—ideas, a vision of the world, a point of view, that sort of thing.

this is why hemingway can start with the weather and take you there ha ha ha. his weather is not just “weather”.

and again is not just shortness. melville can ramble on and perorate but it’s all highly engaging.

Kathy Acker - Blood and Guts in High School

I read this in the 80s when I felt obliged to like it. Re-reading it now it's at best an interesting (and mercifully short) museum piece.

wat. i read it recently and loooooooved it and laffed so hard

—

eta i should add that when i first looked at it back in the 90s i said “this is is fucking crap” and threw it away. but seriously, in retrospect, i was asking of it what it didnt have and missing the delicious anarchy it offered. well sometimes not so delicious ha haaa haaa. but yes, i liked it tons this time around.

The anarchy you talk about is fine and obviously evident, but as with a lot of books like that, I found that it ends up making its point in the 1st few pages to the point where I could've probably stopped about a quarter of the way in without feeling I'd missed anything.

funny thing the parts i liked the most come later, like her job at the muffin shop, which reminds me a lot of the shit work i had to do back in the.. wait... it’s still happening!

of course im not saying that she offered anything in terms of a sensible reform or revolutionary program, which means she would have had to grow up, and herself become the oppressor, but in terms of sheer criticism of the... let’s call it the cultural unconscious (or whatever), she’s pretty accurate and went to places others have to catch up with. not just with the gender relations business that the book starts with but economics, the construction of the self, the unending pain of poverty, the emptiness of violence, language, myths, on and on she burns through all.

anarchy aside she’s highly literary, and her quotations, allusions and targets are more rarefied than it appears at first impression. there is a serious background behind the unserious attitude. i should look at it again & fish out some interesting bits. dammit, this is making me wanna read it again.

also loved that she was raw and unashamed and put it all out there, from her venereal diseases to her addictions to her narcissism and ridiculousness, true or imaginary, doesnt matter, janey is one of the great doomed rebels of our time ha ha ha

I agree but I'm generally not a fan of that whole pomo '[de]construction of the self', 'language is a virus' strain of identity politics that she obviously helped establish/define.

Oh yeah i agree on the language bit. I'm generally a Chomskian. Sapir-Whorf is an unscientific delusion perpetuated by interested parties.

The social construction of the self on the other hand interests me very much. I don't think that we can pinpoint to an essential self that is not constructed, and even if there was one, that self would always be in conflict with various societal pressures attempting to induce conformities through rewards and punishments.

This is of course where rebellion comes in, whether it's the child's rebellion against parental authority (or growing up at all), adult rebellion against the social, political and economic order (or against forces trying to change it, because the self is attached to it), and ultimately everyone’s rebellion against old age, illness, suffering, and death.

So on that end I sympathize/empathize/identify a lot with a character up in arms, and find the odissey thrilling.
__

Fuck it's very hard to type on a tiny phone

my substitute for cap and ball.

I’m about halfway through Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories. I cannot believe I’ve gone this long in my life without this. Every story I can feel in my chest. I’ll articulate more when I’ve finished all of them but for now I’ll say I love how there feels to be a greater force permeating what’s on the page. Almost as if these characters are redeeming humanity for me.

Last book I read was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. That book made me feel good about living and even though the setting was barren and hopeless I felt like I wanted to spend another day with Ivan after finishing it.

Re all the Melville talk: I too had the experience of hearing how boring Moby Dick is but was shocked to find how funny and full of life it is. The digression about the classification of whales seemed very ‘‘modern” to me. Actually, Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize speech made me want to pick it up. He made it sound like one of his songs. I love his short stories too, especially Bartleby.

Wise Blood is fantastic!

Have your read the Piazza or Confidence Man?

After A Good Man.. I’m going to get Wise Blood. Then watch the John Huston film.

I’ve never read those two. Honestly, from Melville, only Bartleby and Billy Budd. I have a collection from him and it’s sitting on my night stand waiting for me to finish O’connor.

In high school I had an English teacher who I would consider the best teacher I ever had. That’s where I read Bartleby. I had a huuuge crush on her. After a test one day I opened up Vonnegut’s Bluebeard in an attempt to impress her. She was happy a student was reading extra and came over to me and smiled and peaked at the cover of the book and looked at me. I tried to be sly and wink at her but she rolled her eyes and went back to her desk.

Lesson learned.

What's the lesson. Ass-grab instead?


I've been meaning to read Confidence Man for years. For some reason, I have it in my head that it's a super-proto noir thing, but I'm sure it really isn't. How many stars would you give it out of ten?

--

"She could have been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been someone there to shoot her every minute of her life."

Maybe one of my favorite lines in fiction.

Looking back that was probably it. For me it was more of a “Im an miserable, invisible boy no one could love”