[!@#$%!]

i think my challenge is to either find characters i care about or to learn something i don't know. the former is hard to do with first-world problems (not to say it doesn't happen, but it's hard); the latter i get more from how-to books than from fiction these days. e.g, i'm bent on exhausting the literature about cob house building.

right now i want to vegetate and read all day and i'm thinking i should read some fiction but instead i keep thinking about building directly on bedrock without a foundation. have i gone nuts? yes. yes i have.

==


okay here's question for all: who are your favorite characters in fiction?

[evollove]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i think my challenge is to either find characters i care about or to learn something i don't know. the former is hard to do with first-world problems

I am increasingly finding this to be bullshit. Why is the emotional/spiritual/social etc life-experience of a "first world" human less valid than others? And do you really understand everything about your own existence at your specific location and time, or can fiction that takes place in contemporary America perhaps illuminate some aspect of such an existence you hadn't previously considered?

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

okay here's question for all: who are your favorite characters in fiction?

Leo Bloom was the first to pop into my head.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by evollove

I am increasingly finding this to be bullshit. Why is the emotional/spiritual/social etc life-experience of a "first world" human less valid than others? And do you really understand everything about your own existence at your specific location and time, or can fiction that takes place in contemporary America perhaps illuminate some aspect of such an existence you hadn't previously considered?

i don't know. when i first came to the us i had this classmate who swore revenge upon the world because he had grown up poor. he declared, with tears in his eyes, that they had an old car!

having come from a country full of starved people and having to ride tuberculous minibuses all my life i laughed to his face at that sort of spoiled shit. like the world owed him.

now don't get me wrong-- it's not that i can't empathize with the pain of social shame, however artificial. and it's not that i cannot empathize with a bourgeois or even an aristocratic character. of course i can. since the beginning of time we've read about heroes and princesses and that sort of shit.

what i'm actually refering to is a notion so nebulous that i have to keep writing about it until i can put my finger on it and find out what i'm thinking. because really i don't know what i'm thinking until i can ramble about it for a while. so thanks for the excuse but sorry i can't explain right now.

but fuck, i'm just having a really hard time empathizing with the characters of contemporary american fiction. and it's a gut feeling and i'll have to figure out why. i begin and i want to kick them in the ass.

[!@#$%!]

anyway, favorite characters, randomly:

the real ulysses -- and athena in the oddisey

sancho panza

lázaro (from lazarillo de tormes)

henderson

the tomboy one from little women

c. auguste dupin

huck finn

melquíades

bras cubas

molly aka molly millions from william gibson's various stories

fronesis from lezama's paradiso

dante in the divine comedy (i don't like the ideology of that book but i like the character)

nick adams

la fanfarlo

la marquise de merteuil + le vimcomte de valmont (horrible but fascinating people)

the man from the underground

macandal from el reino de este mundo

[Rob Instigator]

fave fiction characters

Henry Chinaski
Billy Pilgrim
Ahab

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Reading Parfum.again because I simply adore this book. It is the most remarkable fiction I've ever read, and I feel the same rapture every.single time I read it, indeed its the only novel ive ever been able to enjoy several times through like a favorite film.

 

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

My all time favorite character from a book is the fucking Count of Monte Cristo.. that dude is a.straight G

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

My all time favorite character from a book is the fucking Count of Monte Cristo.. that dude is a.straight G

oh, fucking a right!

[dead_battery]

Originally Posted by lucyrulesok

INFINITE JEST

is the joke on me?????????

yes, it is!

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/1...infinite-jest/

really interesting review of infinite jest which explains why you and symbol mans first reaction might be the most sensible one.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

yes, it is!

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/1...infinite-jest/

really interesting review of infinite jest which explains why you and symbol mans first reaction might be the most sensible one.

reading that article i realized the "first world problems" thing. I AM NOT THE IN-GROUP. and when they don't transcend their in-group, or just rehash the same ideologies, i am out.

in this case, while i live in america, i do not share the preoccupations or cultural touchstones of the american middle class.

so, i can only connect w/ the stuff that reaches beyond those confines.

anyway i tried again w/ infinite jest and went 2 pages more w/ the hal incandenza interview.

as a consolation i went to my storage and dug out some old books. i might reread "lazarillo de tormes" just for shits & giggles. that book is such a classic-- nearly 500 years old and it will still give me belly laughs.

[lucyrulesok]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

yes, it is!

http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2011/1...infinite-jest/

really interesting review of infinite jest which explains why you and symbol mans first reaction might be the most sensible one.

thanks for linking this - an interesting read (though i stopped a little before the end as i haven't quite finished reading the book yet...!)

comparisons to mein kampf put me off the argument slightly...?! unnecessary & incendiary (lots of other examples would have sufficed instead without the same hysteria attached).

i do agree with this stuff about snobbery in literature. like i referred to 'emperor's new clothes' in an earlier post. but i think the review misses something that i find enjoyable (perhaps not enjoyable but engaging) in the utter mundanity of the characters' lives. that's what i find to be the human element of the book even in the most absurd moments i still recognise something base and mundane that i can relate to.

[lucyrulesok]

and also

fave charaters in literature (not necessarily most likeable, just characters i have enjoyed i guess?):

Sophocles' Oedipus (CLASSIC)

Actually lots of classical characters purely cause i'm a classics nerd and love the stories and also because so many of them are just amazingly crafted.

Mercutio (badass)

Santiago

Dionisio Vivo (a childhood fave)

Patrick Bateman (LOL)

Gloria Gilbert (bitch)

Harriet Cleve Dufresnes

&c.

[evollove]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

reading that article i realized the "first world problems" thing. I AM NOT THE IN-GROUP. and when they don't transcend their in-group, or just rehash the same ideologies, i am out.

in this case, while i live in america, i do not share the preoccupations or cultural touchstones of the american middle class.

so, i can only connect w/ the stuff that reaches beyond those confines.

Because you're working through an issue, I won't give you too much shit. But this doesn't make sense to me.

You only read about your own group? How boring. Anyway, what group might that be? Personally, I'm white, American, on the lower end of middle-class. Yet before all that I identify as Jewish (less than 2% of the US population) or even vegetarian (about 6% I think). Am I in or out? Especially at CHRISTmas time, I feel a bit out.

But the real answer is there is some unsettled tension. Hey, drama! (See Philip Roth's short story "Defender of the Faith")

You also haven't explained why one sort of human pain is more legitimate than another. If the love of your life to whom you have been married for 20 years decides they want to leave you forever, this is no less devastating just because you have a belly full of McDonald's.

(And on a personal level, you're saying any pain I might experience "doesn't count" just because I am not hungry and politically oppressed. Yeah, the kid who didn't get what he wanted for Christmas can go fuck himself, but anyone who dismisses anything I felt after the sudden death of my father, for example, can go fuck themselves as well. )

As far as rehashing ideologies, I don't see this happening much in serious literature. The point, often, is to critique. Anyway, this isn't simply a contemporary American issue. Perhaps you've noticed there are virtually no Sovet-era Russian novels worth reading?

I read short stories almost exclusively, and the great advantage of that is variety.

I take your point to the extent that after ten stories in a row set in American suburbs, I get restless. I want to read about other people and places. Then, eventually, I think to myself, "If I read one more story about some docile Asian chick from a harsh patriarchal culture who learns to self-actualize, I'm gonna join the KKK," and I thirst for a story about a wealthy college graduate who, darn it, just doesn't know what she wants. Then I'll get tired of that and read some Nadine Gordimer stories about South African aparthiet. Get tired. Move on. Etc.

[lucyrulesok]

maybe i misunderstood but i thought !@#$%!'s post was saying that literature should be able to appeal to people both outside and inside the 'in group'. i.e. that it should be able to appeal on some basic level to lots of different groups of people, and that if it can't then it's rubbish. so not saying that middle class american literature CAN'T do this but that it's a bit crap because it often doesn't.

i agree with you that pain is relative. suffering isn't some kind of competition and i think at the heart of it we suffer over essentially the same things, just on a different scale.

but i do wonder why we always think suffering is the root of good art/literature??????? this is something that has always stumped me. not that i necessarily don't think that, but i certainly don't understand it.

[evollove]

Originally Posted by lucyrulesok

but i do wonder why we always think suffering is the root of good art/literature???????

Someone wants something, can't get it=drama

Someone is happy=boring

[lucyrulesok]

I meant more suffering on the part of the author? this idea of the tortured artist.

plus i always think characters and stories that are so black and white are too artificial - you need a bit of both.

[ilduclo]

about 50 pp into this

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by evollove

Because you're working through an issue, I won't give you too much shit. But this doesn't make sense to me.

yeah! you tell him!

 

Originally Posted by lucyrulesok

maybe i misunderstood but i thought !@#$%!'s post was saying that literature should be able to appeal to people both outside and inside the 'in group'. i.e. that it should be able to appeal on some basic level to lots of different groups of people, and that if it can't then it's rubbish. so not saying that middle class american literature CAN'T do this but that it's a bit crap because it often doesn't.

you didn't misunderstand. thank you for reading for comprehension. you're wonderful.

[evollove]

Dodge all you want. You, sir, have a prejudice.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by evollove

Dodge all you want. You, sir, have a prejudice.

i said exactly the opposite of what you're fighting about and i'm not in the mood to argue silliness. really, i just woke up and i have bigger problems than this today.

ps- maybe you didn't read db's link to the criticism of infinite jest ("alas, poor wallace"), which is what provides context for the discussion of writing only for the in-group. whether this is true or not of DFW, that's the framework i was using to (maybe) understand.