A list

[*o*]

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[Ellimist]

ha, I have read two of those and want to read others...

HoL and Ulysses...

I really want to read Gravity's Rainbow...

[sutrix]

I've only read the King book, of which The Body ranks up with some of the best stories I've read.

Thanks, though. :-)

[fearful_syzygy]

Um, you do realise that the SK was a joke entry in that list, right?

[sutrix]

Um, you do realise that the SK was a joke entry in that list, right?

Yup. I <strike>guessed</strike> know that. :-)

But I can't deny that I liked the story I mentioned.

[Farehamer]

Just finished a book by James Frey called A Million Little Pieces. It's an autobiography about a guy going through rehab. Sounds a bit depressing, but it's so well written and honest, it's well worth a go. I was drawn to it by a Bret Easton Ellis thumbs up on the front, and it's proved spot on. I can recommend you guys check it out.

[sutrix]

I do not believe this!

Just went to the local bookstore and found Infinite Jest! Just like that. Right next to a stupid Swords and Sorcery compilation.

Tell me, is David Foster Wallace a popular author (more so than Danielewski)? Because finding a book like Infinite Jest over here is exactly like finding the proverbial oasis.

The price? 180 Rupees. That's about 4 US Dollars (roughly).

Now if only I could find HOL this way. :cry:

Never mind. I'm starting Infinite Jest right now.

[*o*]

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[fearful_syzygy]

I really don't see what's so "tough" about Infinite Jest; I mean I'm finding it quite readable.

I suppose it's tough in the sense that you'd have a job trying to tear it in half.

[Raminagrobis]

I can't see how American Psycho fits on that list. Sure, it's 'tough' in that it's written in a mind-numbingly tedious style, but it could hardly be accused of being challenging in a 'literary' way? Could it? Or did I miss something?

[*o*]

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[Raminagrobis]

No. :oops:

[John B.]

Have you read the comments written by the guy who did the list ?

This is apropos of Blood Meridian as well: as straightforward a chronological narrative as one could hope for, but there are a couple of moments in it that, I'm sorry I'm such a wimp, but I just have to kinda glide over as opposed to read them. And, as a critic once wrote of it, it's "not a novel for the squeamish--least of all the philosophically-squeamish." Difficulty can be measured in terms of more than one scale.

I also concur with Mr. Syzygy's assessment of Infinite Jest. I think it's its physical bulk that's truly daunting more than anything textual we find inside it.

Seeing not one but TWO Gaddis novels on the list makes me think that an appropriate addition to the list would beJoseph McElroy's novel Women and Men (http://www.centerforbookculture.org/dalkey/backlist/mcelroy.html). Yet another on my I've-Started-But-Not-Finished-It List. Beautiful, complex prose--and a damned big book besides.

[modiFIed]

Pynchon's Mason and Dixon should be on there.

Fascinating, artful, epic...and brain-killing.

I'll finish it one day.

And Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury .

[*o*]

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[zakalwe]

How about the Bible? Ever tried to read it cover to cover? My Christian friend did; gave up somewhere in Proverbs I think.



I can't see how American Psycho fits on that list. Sure, it's 'tough' in that it's written in a mind-numbingly tedious style, but it could hardly be accused of being challenging in a 'literary' way? Could it? Or did I miss something?

It's a much mis-represented book, notorious for its violence and under-appreciated for its genuine literary merits. There's certainly some intellectual challenge to interrogating Bateman's status as a narrator, the reliability of what he tells us and whether certain characters even exist. I wrote about AP and Gulliver's Travels for the Novel paper at uni; there are some interesting comparisons to be made. However I will not do so here as it would probably be extremely boring.

So anyway...not the pulpy thriller some may have condemned it as.

[Raminagrobis]

I have read American Psycho, so I wasn't basing my opinion on its notoriety, and I don't condemn it for being a 'pulpy thriller': I condemn it for being the work of a Not-Particularly-Good-Writer having a Reasonably-Interesting-Idea, but overreaching himself in the execution of it. I didn't mention the use of violence, just that I found it almost unbearably tedious to read (interminable descriptions of products and brand names, a technique that perhaps owes something to the experiments of Robbe-Grillet et al. in the 50s/60s but it's done here in a much less interesting way). The use of the unreliable narrator device in AP adds nothing much of interest in my opinion, beyond a rather superficial engagement with the question of the obscene fantasy that is the necessary but disavowed fantasmic support for civilized/capitalist society. I seem to remember 'My Idea of Fun' by Will Self doing this much more effectively.

EDIT: Said 'My kind of fun', meant 'My idea of fun.'

[zakalwe]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you had based your opinion on hearsay; I know you're not the sort to do that. Certainly your objections are valid; I'd offer in defence the notion that the violence , the 'listing', and the unreliable narrator trope are inter-related and necessary. Bateman's blank recitations certainly situate him-like Gulliver- in the role of negative cultural ambassador, demonstrating by what he chooses to describe the inherent flaws in his world view. I think the violence is part of this- to him it's just another aesthetic to be enumerated, like a designer suit or the problems with too-brittle pizza. This 'listing', and the book's somewhat meandering plot, are part of an overall design that aims to capture the listlessness and repetitious nature of the society Ellis describes.

Now you're perfectly justified in arguing that this can make for a somewhat tedious read- I certainly skipped a few of the longer lists- but to me, because Ellis gives Bateman that caustic, often slightly surreal humour, it's part of the strategy of co-opting the reader into an uncomfortable alliance with the narrator against the characters described. I found myslef laughing at many of his grim jokes. The unreliable narrator trope explores in part the notion of the obscene fantasy as support for this society, but as means of escape from it- the 'God, one day I'm gonna do x to y' office reverie...

Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well. It's certainly not one of my favourite books, but worth defending I think. Tedious lists aside, how did you react to Bateman's humour (I can only recall his interior monologue in which his girlfriend is constantly referred to as "restaurant whore" while on the outside he converses with her quite normally), and the quite lyrical passages that trade lunatic enumeration for simplicity? (A particularly breathless chapter suddenly ends with a fantasy- "we go to the park. We buy balloons, we let them go."-that is the antithesis of endorsement for the capitalist machine).


BTW just realised this post makes me look like some sort of madman, or Ellis' lawyer. I've just not been able to talk about books with anyone who speaks English lately...

[elmago]

I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow now. The first two hundred pages are hard; you hardly understand anything besides the main plot (if at that). Then it gets really funny and a lot easier. So I guess It's kind of an initiation, if you show enough patience to get two the second part you're in.

American Psycho wasn't my cup of tea; I fell asleep after the first 50 pages. Maybe it was the translation that was bad (Spain-made translations usually are). Do you think the original is worth reading?

And Absalom, Absalom, my favourite Faulkner book . Altough I think the family trees and chronolgy are in detriment to the effect of the novel. Best begining for a novel ever (in my view).

[Raminagrobis]

Thanks for the reply, zakalwe. The points you raise are certainly interesting, and I don't deny that Ellis does some things well in the book, but for me it didn't habg together well.

I mean, is AP merely a satire of the 80s culture of greed and conspicuous consumption? Does everything lead back to that? If so, I'd say there was no need for such a satire to be written, a decade or so after the fact, when there are enough cultural artefacts dating from that period that do the job quite comprehensively (Wall Street and Bonfire of the Vanities to name a couple). If it's a satire, it's a toothless one; it reads more like a pastiche of a satire, if such a thing were possible. But then we're layering on the irony so thick that nothing means anything anymore: it's ultimately nihilistic, in the worst sense of the word. Perhaps that is to its credit? But I'd say, if you're going to write a nihilistic irony-fest, fair enough, but at least throw us a bone somewhere along the line; otherwise we're just left with a headache and a nasty taste in the mouth.

PS: I must admit I don't recall the 'lyrical' passages you mentioned, but then I did read the book a good few years ago.

[fearful_syzygy]

...a decade or so after the fact...
It was written in 1989, wasn't it? And published in 1991.

[Raminagrobis]

It was written in 1989, wasn't it? And published in 1991.

I should like to instruct the jury to disregard the testimony of fearful_syzygy.




Shit.

[OriginalIdea]

Um, you do realise that the SK was a joke entry in that list, right?Honest question: Does this mean you think his work isn't worth reading?

I've heard of several of the books on that list, but will just have to put them in with the list of books (in my head) that I've already got.

If my reaction to any of them is at all the same as it was for House of Leaves, then it's going to take me quite a while to get through them all.

It would also seem that, but for Stephen King's book, all of those are the same kinds of books that we, when encouraged as Johnny encouraged us for what to do with House of Leaves, should dismiss for being, as he said and the way I make this sentence—which, as it turns out is the third or fourth edit of this post—is just a little bit (an understatement) over-complicated.

Hmmm... And actually, I've thought of an analogy: The entire book is an example of one of Johnny's footnotes.

[fearful_syzygy]

Honest question: Does this mean you think his work isn't worth reading?
I read more than my fair share of King novels between the ages of twelve and fourteen. I enjoyed them at the time, but I wouldn't read anything by him now. So to answer your question, it's not necessarily that I think his writing is bad or anything (my literary sensibilities have certainly evolved over the past decade, but I haven't read any King in ages and couldn't really tell you what I thought of his style now), it's more a kind of been there done that feeling.

[OriginalIdea]

Fair enough.