Now Reading Thread
- Thread starter derbeder
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Haha. At least from a totally superficial perspective, Olmert appears to be intelligent. However, both are hawkish, prone to corruption and cronyism, with the same foreign policy...
Ah, I meant that the US government is controlled by the interests of the Jews and Israel, etc/
I have also been impoverished by Ayn Rand.
A confession: I used to like Ayn Rand when I was 13. Now I think you can debunk her so easily: if personal achievement is all that matters, why not harm the liberty of others for your own good (for that can be beneficial)?
Patrick Bateman
I like to Dissect Girls
Im currently Working ym way through Micheal Marshal Smiths books. Im about half way through One of us. Incredible author... such inventive plots.
I am interested in the "critical opinion" about these (if someone read them?)
Donald Barthelme - The Dead Father
Saul Bellow - Herzog
William H. Gass - Omensetter's Luck
Thomas Pynchon - V.
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
Donald Barthelme - The Dead Father
Saul Bellow - Herzog
William H. Gass - Omensetter's Luck
Thomas Pynchon - V.
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
I love Saul Bellow, and enjoyed Herzog. I prefer Augie Match though with his wonderful unrestrained Bellowian descriptions and long winded run on sentences, even if it has absolutely ridiculous and juvenile plot turns. Herzog reminds me somewhat of a more subdued, thought-out and mature version of Augie March--being that both are essentially about the same thing: the very philosophical and dare we say Euro-centric mind and character of Saul Bellow adrift and surrounded by crass America and capitalism. So, basically, Herzog is a mature and philosophical novel of the jewish intellectual stuck in America.
Ah, that sounds cool, probably very Nietzschean... Are you familiar with the others? All are supposed to be very good (or, at least, uhm "first rate second rates")
Barthelme yes. I'm not a fan of Pynchon.
I began reading a most wonderful author today: Daniil Kharms. Truly, truly interesting writing. A collection of his works (from short stories, to aphorisms, poems, plays, one line stories) Today I Wrote Nothing was just translated into English this year. Anyway, he's a uniquely absurd futurist Soviet-era Russian writer. Sort of a cross between a Symbolist (Bely, BLok, etc), Gogol and Bulgakov, and say Beckett. Honestly, I've never read anything so wonderfully eccentric and unusual before in my life. He attempted in his poetry to create actual things with his words--to make his writing a reality. I think from a philosophical point of view, any fan of Wittegenstein or Heidegger would love him.
apaintedredlove
Buying Used Souls
What did you think of Barthelme?
I read:
Wuthering Heights - a bit depressing, but very well written. I was sure it was like Jane Austen :Smug:
The Waves - amazing, but I have to re-read that; plus there were no characters as much as there were "impulses" and I was emotionally distant
Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier - Still in the beginning, but I don't really like the style... maybe it gets better later on
I read:
Wuthering Heights - a bit depressing, but very well written. I was sure it was like Jane Austen :Smug:
The Waves - amazing, but I have to re-read that; plus there were no characters as much as there were "impulses" and I was emotionally distant
Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier - Still in the beginning, but I don't really like the style... maybe it gets better later on
How I envy you
Reading this for the first time is so terrifying... A word of advice, though: the murder is not the focus of the story. This book is actually two novels put together, so don't dismiss the other things and just "wait for the action". And pay attention very, very closely to the murder scene because there's something that happens there that's really awesome but really subtleAh and another thing: does anybody know what are considered the best Tolstoy and Dostoevsky translations? (what does Bloom use
)Good to know. I read Maude for Tolstoy and I think they're the best, better than Garnett definitely. They received Tolstoy's approval. Dostoevsky's prose is pretty bad, anyway, so I think translators should take freedom in translating them but these guys are known as pedantic so I'm not sure. Plus it feels wrong to read something recommended by Oprah
EyeballKid
Shyamalan'd
I started to read "The Magic Mountain" yesterday like 150 pages in but it seems like a very boring book. He explicitly states his themes and his symbolism is either embarrassingly obvious (he prefers his grandfather's portrait to his grandfather) or too cryptic, and the characters are carriers of ideologies rather than people. Anyone read it? Does it get better later on ?
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