Sonic Youth Gossip - What book should I read next?

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A Portrait.

Read what you want, but for the love of God don't read Dracula. That piece of shit was the biggest waste of time. The first 50 pages (Harker's Journal) are ace--essential reading, maybe. Then it's like getting slapped in the face by a frilly diary every single page.

Cthulu might be worth reading first, though, cause it's incredibly short. Unless you're setting aside the whole Penguin "And Other Weird Stories" thing or something, but I wouldn't read more than a few at a time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i voted divine comedy for the simple reason that it's such a cornerstone of western literature that everyone should read & know it.

it's also a bridge between antiquity and modernity: a document of the budding renaissance. sure, some people will say it's still the middle ages, with its fucked theology and geocentric cosmology, but the resurrection of classical antiquity is a renaissance move. this is good shit.

read the inferno, and procure yourself good notes-- the details, the history and the explanation of each character, each myth, each legend, each symbol referenced or created are highly entertaining. his similes are epic-- hailing back to virgil and homer. but way cooler i think. here is where translation fails, especially verse translation-- you'll get better results with a prose translation and a look at the original italian verse.

the purgatory gets a bit dull-- by paradiso, dullness has set in, with all the fucking spinning spheres. but still-- good stuff.

poete maudite malcolm lowry attempted a XX century version of the divine comedy and failed at providing parts 2 & 3, but left us "under the volcano" which was made into an awesome movie by john huston with albert finney as geoffrey firmin-- black magician learning that karma is a bitch.

nietzsche, who saw dante as getting his petty revenge in writing when he couldn't defeat his enemies in real life, called him the hyena who versified among the graves. hyena or not, the man was thoroughly defeated, exiled, heartbroken, frustrated, and took refuge in poetry.

ezra pound makes frequent and constant reference to dante in his cantos.

in the spanish language (perhaps others too) the adjective dantesco is used to describe anything so horrible that defies human imagination, like a concentration camp or a battlefield.

anyway, get that in you and you'll be on solid ground to talk bullshit for many years to come.

the other books you mention are good, but none as essential as this.

Yeah, but I read it in translation--prosaic and poetic translations, with copious notes--and all I ever see are Italian references that I have to have translated/explained anyway. Its kind of a useless read if you don't know Italian, I think, and more tedious in English than is worth the effort.

You'd be better off learning Italian first if you're going to read Cantos. If you're planning on attacking something that intense, you're probably inclined enough to take the time. 'Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.'

Quote:

Originally Posted by acousticrock87

I read 1/4 of A Portrait about 2 years ago as I was trying to read Ulysses the first time, then stopped reading it when I stopped reading Ulysses.

Call of Cthulhu was read in about an hour last week. It was great. I found a 3mb text file of Lovecraft on Project Gutenberg that I will make my way through in due time.

I read 90 pages of Dracula today. As you said, the first bit from Harker's diary is good, but the rest has been meh at best. Lucy and Mina's diaries and letters are boring me to tears.

Quote:

Originally Posted by acousticrock87

The verse translation of Inferno (even with flipping to the explanation pages at least twice per page) is among my top 10 favorite things I've ever read.

I just finished Gene Wilder's book Kiss Me Like A Stranger

i liked it a lot. very interesting read if you're a fan

Quote:

Originally Posted by deflinus

I just finished Gene Wilder's book Kiss Me Like A Stranger

i liked it a lot. very interesting read if you're a fan

Wow, I'll definitely be picking this up. Gene Wilder is probably one of my favorite actors ever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Youth 37

Yeah I've actually never read Portrait because of Ulysses. Still have a good 120 pages to go on that. I'm just assuming. It's the first thing I'm going to pick up when this monster is slain. Well, maybe after Absalom, Absalom--but I might read that before I finish Ulysses, anyway. I just don't want to read Portrait simultaneously. That would be kind of confusing, I think.

Everything by Lovecraft is more-or-less of equal quality. It's good to read a few at a time, though. Savor it throughout your life.

As for Inferno, I dunno. Maybe it's just me. I was really excited the first time I read it and got a nice leather-bound Harvard edition of the Divine Comedy, and I think I did enjoy it, but I was just a little disappointed. I was also just starting to get into literature so I may not have had the patience and training I needed. No doubt, it's one of the greatest works of all time, but from what I've heard from people that read it in the original, it's far more enjoyable untranslated, especially if reading it for the purpose of breaking into Eliot/Pound. I don't think the translation gives you quite the "tools" you need to pick up direct references. Either way, I didn't like it enough to continue to Purgatorio. Maybe I should read a more modern translation. And maybe skim through the first part of Machiavelli's History of Florence so I don't have to consult notes as much.

And Dracula: I kept waiting for it to get better and it never did. There are a few promised scenes, but they're brief and surrounded by boredom. Renfield is the sole reason I kept reading, but I'm not sure whether I'm glad I read it or not. I guess there's merit in reading everything, but it will be tedious.

Portrait is a very different book to Ulysses. I always give portrait to the sorts of people who would hate Joyce because of Finnegans Wake or Ulysses and it's generally well-received.

Part of why I liked the Inferno so much I do believe is that I read it about 6 months before I was going to Florence and the 3 or so days I was there I went Dante crazy. It was just a big thrill for me that I felt I needed to read all the Divine Comedy but lost interest halfway through Purgatory, then picked up Ulysses.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glice

Portrait is a very different book to Ulysses. I always give portrait to the sorts of people who would hate Joyce because of Finnegans Wake or Ulysses and it's generally well-received.

The reason I was reading it at the same time was because the copy of Ulysses I was reading, a previous reader had written a "How to read Ulysses" guide in the front blank pages and they suggested that if it was your first time reading Joyce that you read Portrait first, so I half-followed their anonymous advice and tried to read it at the same time, but graduated before I could make much headway into Ulysses and I had to return it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Youth 37

Wow, I'll definitely be picking this up. Gene Wilder is probably one of my favorite actors ever.

you'll definitely love it, man. im just a big fan of mel brooks, gene wilder, richard pryor. all of those really great comedies. Stir Crazy is seriously one of the most funniest movies i've ever seen. and he does talk about filming it in the book.

he's a really interesting guy. he has class. and he loves women.

"the alchemist" by paulo coehlo
"Illuminatus trilogy" by robert anton wilson

Quote:

Originally Posted by deflinus

I love all those Wilder/Pryor movies (yes, even See No Evil Hear No Evil) and I cannot watch Blazing Saddles while keeping a straight face for more than a few minutes.

Gene seems like a really ace guy. I'll have to make a special effort to get this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sonic Youth 37

a previous reader had written a "How to read Ulysses" guide in the front blank pages and they suggested that if it was your first time reading Joyce that you read Portrait first

Ulysses is a sequel to Portrait.

That's an exceptionally tenuous sense of 'sequal', but not entirely inaccurate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pbradley

I think that is quite ridiculous. Should you be so content to read the footnotes of a book instead the book itself in order to save time?

isn't it hard to type q, a and z with yr pinkie finger up in the air like that?

Quote:

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

isn't it hard to type q, a and z with yr pinkie finger up in the air like that?

You don't seem to have any problems typing with your whole head in a slightly darker place than the air.

lulz

at least my head-space is still dark; yr's seems to be full o' sunshine, stretch.

lawl

The Trial by Franz Kafka....

Dracula is a good one too...

Today's purchases:

Complete Stories and Poems - Poe
The Hound of the Baskervilles - Doyle
The Doom that Came To Sarnath and Other Stories - Lovecraft

That was the only Lovecraft book they had :(