summer reading: recommend JBR some books you think she'd like

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Fiction that reads like nonfiction, nonfiction that reads like magical realism, literature that reads like philosophy, philosophy that reads like philosophy and not pop-psych, sociology ditto, journalism that straddles the line between tawdry crimebeat hack and scintillating Pulitzer genius, characters that aren't people so much as they are ideas (or chess pieces), characters that are people but totally dysfunctional as "people" and who aren't nauseatingly quirky or charming in that filed-down smoothed-out display-rack-ready Tom Robbins/Iowa Writers' Workshop sorta way that makes my blood boil, good meaty wordy squalid stuff, '60s nu-journo/gonzo/sf, Yippie propaganda, the apocalypse, madness, blindness, tuberculosis, venereal disease, humorless wild-eyed Eastern European crackpots who look like John Turturro in Barton Fink, language-shattering pigfuck-manifesto modernists, smelly downtrodden French (or Asian, or Latin) perverts, sense of place, sense of pregnant poetics that's ornate and slightly in-the-red but just misses that level of laughably purple Brent D image-vomit BY A NOSEHAIR...

go to town.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:09 (twenty-three years ago)

a bible.

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Also: is Jim Knipfel's new book any good?

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Passion Victims.

Or you can have my new copy of CTCL which is a grainy grasped approximation of your paragraph.

I would recommend "Everything you Need" by AL Kennedy, personally. 500 page novel about writers who have absconded to a remote Scottish island gradually nudging towards death in some event to grasp the sublime and thus perfect writing. Suicide attempts, a publisher who is so sozzled he now requires alcohol enemas and has to pay in the only currency his operator values: teeth, stunted emotions, tween gay uncles, blind incest, and at the center a father who has a nerve complaining and who loves it, nurtures that, fosters it, all hurt and lack and death and whatever you do don't eat vegetables made by Linda - she uses them suspiciously.

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:22 (twenty-three years ago)

The thre mark kurlansky books; Cod, The Basque History of the world and Salt

― Ed (dali), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Joseph Mitchell, _Up in the Old Hotel_. You will understand what so much that's come after him has been palely imitating.

As far as "nonfiction that reads like magical realism": how about Ryszard Kapuscinski's _The Emperor_, an incredible little oral history of the collapse of Haile Selassie's reign in Ethiopia?

― Douglas (Douglas), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:25 (twenty-three years ago)

An excerpt of above recommended book.

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Have you read Ryu Murakami's _Coin Locker Babies_? One of my personal favorites, and seems gritty/abrasive/nuanced enough to fit your criteria.

― JS Williams (js williams), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Also Natural Capitalism

― Ed (dali), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:30 (twenty-three years ago)

I couldn't agree with Cozen more. I read Everything You Need a few weeks ago and it absolutely floored me.

― RickyT (RickyT), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Frank Owen, Clubland, will satisfy all your squalid needs handily

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:37 (twenty-three years ago)

and whatever you do don't eat vegetables made by Linda - she uses them suspiciously.

Is it Linda McCartney?

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes. Yes it is.

― Cozen (Cozen), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:44 (twenty-three years ago)

AL Kennedy is a weirdo who has made up half the 'stupid' press quotes on her website.

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 7 July 2003 20:47 (twenty-three years ago)

(Your opening statement on here is magnificent, Jody!)

As ever, I recommend the dazzling Steve Erickson, maybe my favourite writer, an extraordinary blend of history and SF, politics and madness, very anti-realist and regularly utterly breathtaking. I like Arc d'X best. If you want summer fun reading, there is nothing more enjoyable than Wodehouse. If you want something big and wonderful for holidays, go for the 1001 Nights, as much of a cornucopia of delights as you can imagine.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Jody if you haven't read Joseph Mitchell you really should do that before you read anything else - right up your alley

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:07 (twenty-three years ago)

You guys are all OTM so far. Steve Erickson is one of the writers I had in mind.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:08 (twenty-three years ago)

These may be old hat, but in case you've never read them:

Philip Roth - Portnoy's Complaint - should be good on the "dysfunctional" character front and also for the "meaty wordy squalid stuff"

Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March - "pregnant poetics" as well as "characters that are people" and "literature that reads like philosophy", it's all here

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:19 (twenty-three years ago)

big ditto to Bellow

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:23 (twenty-three years ago)

45 by bill drummond
rings of saturn by w.g. sebald

― robin (robin), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Three Blondes and Death by Yuriy Tarnawsky
Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin

― Prude (Prude), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:28 (twenty-three years ago)

http://www.ralphmag.org/AN/war-gone-by312x471.gif

― stevo (stevo), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:52 (twenty-three years ago)

TR Pearson - A Short History of a Small Place

― luna (luna.c), Monday, 7 July 2003 21:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Clubland will also interest you for its portrait of the boroughs, particularly Staten Island, where a lot of the organized criminals who inhabit the book come from originally

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 7 July 2003 22:14 (twenty-three years ago)

'the man without qualities' = fiction that reads like non-fiction, philosophy that reads like literature

― Josh (Josh), Monday, 7 July 2003 22:40 (twenty-three years ago)

I just read a book by Andrew Vachss. It was pretty good.

― That Girl (thatgirl), Monday, 7 July 2003 22:50 (twenty-three years ago)

I pretty much recommend Douglas Hofstadter to everyone, despite his trendiness, but I really can't imagine anyone not liking Godel Escher Bach or Metamagical Themas (nonfiction that's written like philosophy that reads like literature, I guess you'd say, or jumble any of those about).

JBR, I'm sure you've seen Murakami recommendations all over ILE, and have maybe read him already, but since you like Erickson I have to bring him up again anyway -- especially Dance Dance Dance (Sputnik Sweetheart is also very Ericksonian, I just don't like it as much).

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 7 July 2003 23:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I just found a copy of Zhores A. Medvedev's The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko at the used bookstore for a dollar.

(Murakami's great, but I've only read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Do I go for Dance Dance Dance next?)

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 7 July 2003 23:59 (twenty-three years ago)

Jody Beth, please read Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds so I can talk about it with you. Simply the funniest single book I have ever read.

Other ideas: Sozaboy by Ken Saro-Wiwa; Monster by Walter Dean Myers; Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith; Dhalgren by Samuel Delany (all Delany really, even his memoirs); John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar; Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami (way his best, roolz on Wind-up Bird, the only book that makes me cry every single time I finish it); and Julio Cortazar's Cronopios y Famas and Around the Day in Eighty Worlds. Also The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner and Cat's Eye by M.Atwood and Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper and [rest of post excised due to excessive length --mod.]

― Neudonym, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 00:05 (twenty-three years ago)

fuckin' moderator.

― Neudonym, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 00:06 (twenty-three years ago)

Dance Dance Dance is the sequel to Wild Sheep Chase, but frankly, I haven't read the latter and Dance Dance Dance is still my favorite (the others I've read: Wind-Up Bird, Sputnik Sweetheart, South of the Border West of the Sun). Dance Dance Dance is one of those books I'm going to buy and mark up with highlighters and stuff.

Oh -- Jonathan Carroll. Especially The Marriage of Sticks and The Wooden Sea.

And my book, obv! (No, not really.)

― Tep (ktepi), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 00:34 (twenty-three years ago)

Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds

I see this title getting kicked around a lot in lit circles. Never read it. The Third Policeman was a cool little book, tho.

The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner

This guy's funny for like half a page and then I wanna shoot him.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't listen to the academes, but Flann O'Brien, for the course of ASTB, is the best there ever was.

And I like Leyner BECAUSE I wanna shoot him. I think he'd shoot me first. In Tetherballs (his best and funniest) he comes up with a videogame called "Gianni Isotope" where part of the game is to collect rumors about Clarence Thomas, get away from him on a jet-ski, and publish them before the other tabloids do. The final stage of the game is rescuing musicians from aliens, including Tony Araya, Dave Mustaine, Rivers Cuomo, Terence Trent D'Arby, and, "inexplicably, Val Kilmer."

― Neudonym, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 01:23 (twenty-three years ago)

JBR's Leyner precis spot-on

― M Matos (M Matos), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 01:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Leynerhate rox. More please.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 01:32 (twenty-three years ago)

oh, fuck it, not only do you all hate fun and well-muscled-yet-tiny New Jersey writers, but this is Shit On Me Day for real now. fine, I'm outa here with my copy of I Smell Esther Williams.

― Neudonym, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 01:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant by Lydia Davis (and pretty much everything else by her as well). And if you're reading Mitchell (and please do!) you might as well go on to read everything by A. J. Liebling as well (start with The Earl of Louisiana).

― Uncle (Methuselah), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 03:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, and Jim Knipfel's new book is pretty sorry, alas. Tries for Pynchon Lite, ends up as Robert Anton Wilson on the back of a cereal box.

― Uncle (Methuselah), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 03:48 (twenty-three years ago)

read the aghora trilogy, as a foil towards fake tantraism its jaw-droppingly informative; as a hyperbolic chronicle of sorcery its vivdly terrifying told as it is with such a personal/emotional voice and much of it is beyond the realm of what one would consign to earthly "possibility," so its (literally and metaphorically) magical, realism or not

― Vic (Vic), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 03:56 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, and Jim Knipfel's new book is pretty sorry, alas

That's the impression I got from the reviews. I hope his next one's nonfiction.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 03:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Joseph Mitchell I couldn't reccomend highly enough. Happy to see Augie March, one of my favourite books, reccomended as well, and Man Without Qualities, though I'm sort of trapped in Book II right now.

Read WG Sebald! Rings of Saturn or The Emigrants.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 04:01 (twenty-three years ago)

humorless wild-eyed Eastern European crackpots who look like John Turturro in Barton Fink

that sounds like me when i wake up in the morning ... but i've never written a book!

someone already mentioned robert musil, which seems to fit. another good choice in a similar vein would be bruno schultz.

― Tad (llamasfur), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 05:37 (twenty-three years ago)

I was gonna say!

― s1utsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 05:45 (twenty-three years ago)

oooh, I second At Swim-Two-Birds.

You would like it JBR :)

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 05:57 (twenty-three years ago)

I was gonna say!

about bruno schultz, or you looking like john turturro when you wake up in the morning? :-)

more about schultz: he was an interwar polish-jewish writer, often compared to kafka (and who translated kafka's the trial into polish!) schultz wrote only 2 novels -- cinnamon stories and the sanitarium under the sign of the hourglass. his most famous story is "street of crocodiles." czeslaw milosz considers him to be one of the best 20th century polish writers.

― Tad (llamasfur), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 06:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Martin and JBR and the other Ericksonophiles: were you aware that Erickson has a new book forthcoming, entitled 'Our Ecstatic Days'? He's also going to be the editor of a new littawawy magazine, published by the California Institute of the Arts, called 'Black Clock'. And there's a big piece about him in the current issue of the McSweeney's spin-off 'The Believer'.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 08:32 (twenty-three years ago)

iain sinclair - radon daughters. london

donald antrim - the verificationist. new york

nicola barker - wide open. sheppey.

victor pelevin - buddahs little finger/homo zapiens. russia

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 08:57 (twenty-three years ago)

JBR- tackle something that you found 'difficult' but always wanted to read. Something that perplexed you (in a good way) but that you couldn't finish.

I really enjoyed erickson's 'rubicon beach'.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 09:11 (twenty-three years ago)

buddahs little finger - clay machine gun

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 09:24 (twenty-three years ago)

(I'm also assuming that JBR found a book 'diificult': that might be wrong, of course)

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 09:27 (twenty-three years ago)

as much as I pretend to hate talking about Pelevin, surely Babylon is yr poison?

― etc, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 09:49 (twenty-three years ago)

yea, babylon is good (thats the one thats titled homo zapiens in the states though?)

― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 10:22 (twenty-three years ago)

actually everyone in this thread should read some eduard limonov.

― etc, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 10:26 (twenty-three years ago)

preceded by : yr absolutely right, gareth; apologies.

― etc, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 10:26 (twenty-three years ago)

charles portis secretly fufills all of jbr's criteria.

― etc, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 10:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Jeff Noon, Falling out of cars - it's his best by far, far less cyperpulp than the previous lot and gorgeously written.

― cis (cis), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 10:27 (twenty-three years ago)

clay machine gun is a way better title. Better than the russian one IIRC. Who has my copy of this book? It has been on eternal loan since I finished it?

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 8 July 2003 10:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Has anyone mentioned Proust yet?

Cruel summer.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 14:11 (twenty-three years ago)

http://freespace.virgin.net/clive.goddard/Resources/op-proust.jpg

― Dada, Tuesday, 8 July 2003 14:13 (twenty-three years ago)

BUMP! (this thread got lost in all of today's ILXOR posting madness and i'm being nice. plus i'm keen on JBR checking out Bruno Schultz!)

― Tad (llamasfur), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 06:02 (twenty-three years ago)

A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu really is as good as its rep - I really loved it, and found it a smooth and compelling and brilliant read. I read it, as I've said here before, as a treat after finishing my first year of university. It took me ten days, during which time I didn't do much else. I can recommend only the Scott Moncrieff translation, though it's often said that the more recent Penguin one is more accurate.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 19:21 (twenty-three years ago)

You read the whole thing in ten days?

― s1utsky (slutsky), Wednesday, 9 July 2003 20:17 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Thomas Bernhard might fit yr criteria, 'The Loser' is great, it's about a suicidal friend/rival of Glen Gould.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Thursday, 10 July 2003 10:16 (twenty-three years ago)

I am quite a fast reader, and did little else those days, as I recall.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 10 July 2003 16:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm impressed. And I thought I was a fast reader.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Thursday, 10 July 2003 16:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Well it's not a competitive thing, unless I've missed it on Grandstand. I have been reading much, much more slowly of late - my eyesight deteriorated dramatically on June 26th, and is only slowly getting back to normal. For a while I was down to 10-20% my normal reading speed, and that was really hard work. I'm not often above 70-80% normal now. I have no explanation for this.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 10 July 2003 20:15 (twenty-three years ago)

No explanation for why your eyesight deteriorated so dramatically on that particular date? Did something happen? That's very unusual.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Thursday, 10 July 2003 21:37 (twenty-three years ago)

No explanation at all - though it was a hectic and stressful (though highly successful) day at work.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 11 July 2003 10:37 (twenty-three years ago)

Huh. Did you see an optometrist?

― s1utsky (slutsky), Friday, 11 July 2003 15:40 (twenty-three years ago)

JBR, this might be off-base, but based on your personal history I think you might get a big jolt out a light read called The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night Time, by Mark Haddon. On one hand it's a very breezy and often funny novel narrated by a teenage autistic/savant. On the other hand, it gets -- sort of cheesily, and yet sort of powerfully -- at all the fractures and devastations of a family trying to cope with him. It's odd: sometimes it seems almost naively straightforward about such things, and yet it still manages to hit quite a bit.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 11 July 2003 16:13 (twenty-three years ago)

My friend just started reading this (& I'm next on the list to borrow it). Looks good.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Friday, 11 July 2003 16:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, it looks like you got your summer reading set. But if you're still casting around, some of the most recent books I read and thoroughly enjoyed -- and would recommend w/o reservation -- were

Henry Miller: "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare", and its follow-up, "Remember to Remember" (great wild-eyed road-trip essays on and rants about America from the forties);

"Gaudy Night" by Dorothy L. Sayers, simultaneously one of the most beautiful books and greatest mystery stories I've ever read, by one of the most interesting women in literature;

"The Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan, a light but interesting look at various aspects of four plants and their effects on human affairs/desires (apple, tulip, marijuana, potato);

and, well...The Federalist Papers, which I swear is a really good read right now -- it gets the blood boiling, but in a good way.

― Hurlothrumbo (hurlothrumbo), Friday, 11 July 2003 16:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I didn't see anyone about my eyesight, and it is still improving back towards normal, I think.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 11 July 2003 16:51 (twenty-three years ago)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0393057658.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

― gygax! (gygax!), Friday, 11 July 2003 17:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Dammit, I thought that said "Monkeyball -- the art of...etc", and I was all excited. Thought maybe it was a "Ball Four" kind of thing...

― Hurlothrumbo (hurlothrumbo), Friday, 11 July 2003 17:19 (twenty-three years ago)

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