What's a noise dude reading?

haha

reading flannery o'connor short stories for a bit, then planning to dig deep into faulkner.

recently:
harry crews "the knockout artist" (v good, if a slightly unsatisfying conclusion)
"might as well live" a bio of dorothy parker
john fowles "the aristos"

Just finished the Patternmaster quartet (never read Clay's Ark or Mind of My Mind before--those were great!) Starting on either Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence or Pohl's Gateway next.

i couldn't find my copy of sound & the fury so i am reading more harry crews--this time "feast of snakes" and holy shit is it bleak. there is something really distressing every ten pages or so, from a crazy girl rubbing shit in her hair, to brutally training pitbulls, to a guy thinking about concentration camps while he assfucks his travel companion. oh, harry crews, you love to be appalling.

btw ian i just ordered warlock cuz of that cormac thread

oh, warlock is good! it's more of a traditional western than most of the mccarthy i've read, but it's a good book and enjoyable to read.

fine by me! i'm just queuing up a bunch of books for this summer. so far:

against the day
warlock
suttree

this time "feast of snakes" and holy shit is it bleak

eep I almost got that at the library last time. instead I got Cathedral which was pretty fuckin bleak in its own right

have not heard of warlock, I'm interested

this time "feast of snakes" and holy shit is it bleak

an ex gave me this : /

la carre _smiley's people_
atwood _handmaid's tale_
plus, borges short fiction here & there

handmaid's tale was my mom's latest read, she's had 7 boys and is married to a very religious man -- i guess it must have really bothered her because she said she hated it and "don't bother returning it" :\

yo im reading gravitys raindbow--this books is pretty f-in rad

yeah dude its sick. I'll probably re-read it at some point, when I read it the first time a few years ago it took me so long to finish that by the time I got to the end I forgot what happened at the beginning. Against the Day went a lot quicker even though it's more pages (I think because I decided I didn't have to "figure it out" and should just plunge ahead)

bolano's 2666

i keep looking at maybe getting that but it looks like a serious commitment.
Worth it?

yeah, it's good. I was getting bummed by all the people saying books 2 & 3 were not up to snuff, and was anticipating my pace getting slowed down when I hit them, but it didn't happen. the thing's eminently readable.

in some weird way, bolano convinced me novels shouldn't try to be about real life anymore, they should just be navel-gazing meditations on literature. tho he probably felt the opposite way.

oh yeah, 2666 was gonna go on my summer list, but i'll admit to feeling the same way, forks.

someone recommend me some quick stuff.

u read any george saunders? do you like short stories? the leonard michaels story collection that came out 2 years ago was pretty awesome too

i am embarrassed to admit that i've never read any saunders---he's been recommended several times, tho

having the 3 vol paperback ed of 2666 takes the edge off the commitment fears

genius marketing move by FSG imo

yeah all long books need to come in small paperback volumes for easy subway reading

each paperback volume of long books should be written by a different author

fuck long books

someone recommend me some quick stuff

you could take a cue from elmo and hit up some borges

ficciones is the bomb

Carver is quick.

And while on the subject, i think "Cathedral" is maybe his most optimistic/uplifting story; the volume as a whole illustrates a kind of painful, technicolor suburban drama but in a way that is often universally appealing/affirming, rather than totally alienating as in Crews. His (Crews) characters are often much more exaggerated & absurd than what you find in Carver and I think that allows him to take them to further extremes without it seeming forced.

ANYWAY, don't ever suggest "A Feast of Snakes" to anybody--they'll hate you. And I wonder why the fuck an ex would suggest it to Mookieproof! It's almost like saying, "Here, I hope u puke."

also quick:
Asimov "Foundation"
Brautigan "In Watermelon Sugar"

I like Feast of Snakes!

Anyways, I passed on the mammoth 2066 (they were sold out of the tpb) and opted for my first HL Humes book in 'The Underground City'. Saw a dope documentary on this cat and really looking forward to it.

And another pile of graphic novels. I've got a serious addiction.

no, i thought feast of snakes was good, just really difficult to read. people talk about how hard blod meridian is to read, and for whatever reason i found parts of feast of snakes 100x harder to get through.

I think i cauterized part of my brain in college reading the most offensive shit I could get my hands on: books about prison rape, 120 days of sodom, loads of burroughs and crews and bukowski, just any fucked up thing to see how I could handle. Printed word don't freak me out much anymore. DeSade especially was instrumental in that: when you read 100 pages of writing about eating shit, that's around two straight hours of thinking about eating shit. You might as well have eaten shit.

I mean, bully for you if that's your thing. I discovered it really ain't mine.

harry crews is not de sade! i mean, crews is really entertaining and easy to read and funny for the most part.

carver is short & quick/'easy' to read but gets pretty brutal after 5-6 stories--for me at least

read delmore schwartz short stories

although i guess some people might find de sade funny, easy to read, and entertaining as well.

Crews can be sufficiently taxing on occasion.

just read short stories by anyone. they tend to be short.

read posts

like i said on the ilb reading thread, i haven't read crews since the 80's. or since the mulching of america came out. but i still have all my paperbacks and i should re-read one of these days. i wish i had some of the older books. his first books aren't that easy to find. i used to get those out of the library.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n61/n306905.jpg

this is totally a fast read

i wanna read that book! i was just reading about that guy's books.

it's his best, his others are super uneven but gascoyne would probably be the closest runner up

that looks interesting but possibly out of print? might have to track it down.

xp

it just got reissued recently

i bought a bunch of stuff today; local used bookstore got in a big collection of music books.

how to play bluegrass guitar (by my hero HAPPY TRAUM)
outside the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts post-Cage
that greil marcus book abt the basement tapes
a book called "the blues revival" which is alright

and i also got a paul bowles autobio.

carver is short & quick/'easy' to read but gets pretty brutal after 5-6 stories--for me at least

same here; i had to take a break from "will you please be quiet" a couple of days ago; struck a nerve at a certain point

i really need to start reading less depressing shit.. lol "terror and consent" by bobbitt and canetti's "auto da fe" are next in the queue

i wanted to read something non-depressing after a few weeks of crews & flan o'connor, so I am reading the Bob Dylan "Chronicles" book which is a lot better than i thought (only 20, 30 pages in.)

'tooth and claw' by t.c. boyle is good collection of short stories - they're all a little bizarre and they read pretty quickly.

that greil marcus book abt the basement tapes

really enjoyed this, curious what you'll think since you're probably a lot more into some of the music referenced (dock boggs etc.) whereas for me it was an education, hadn't heard any of that stuff at the time (and still not that much of it now)

also that reminds me I borrowed Lipstick Traces off a friend and it's been sitting on my shelf

right now I'm reading this Times reporter's 2007 book abt exploring immigrant neighborhoods in nyc called The World in a City

ian you shd watch I'm not there when you're done w/ Marcus and the Dylan book.

I don't rad many short stories, but I think the great George Saunders one I've read is called "Isabelle," 7 devastating pages.

I'm trying to stop writing and job-hunting so I can start Shusaku Endo's Silence.

(I do find Greil M almost unreadable tho)