the more i think about it, the more insane murakami seems a pick. his protagonists are mostly slacker everymen who get dragged into a world of sexuality and the unconscious, only to return from it mostly unchanged: a little humbler in some ways, maybe, but in a more important sense more self-assured. this is the same as judd apatow movies.
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 01:34 (nine years ago) link
In truth, the most insane pick on that list would be Svetlana Aleksijevitj, at least from a historical standpoint. The only two solely nonfiction writers the award has ever gone to have been Winston Churchill and Theodor Mommsen (the second ever winner of the award). Would be nice to see them expand their horizons though.
― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, 9 October 2014 01:48 (nine years ago) link
awards are terrible why do we do this to ourselves
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 01:52 (nine years ago) link
xp to myself, wind up bird chronicle is the same as this in every respect but integrating the stuff about the japanese occupation of china has interesting consequences. you discover that the placelessness of murakami's books, where most of the cultural reference points are american and characters all speak in the same inflectionless faux-naive manner, is a thin facade concealing a history that has been violently repressed. japanese identity is what the narrator is looking for in the well, i think, but he doesn't find it and eventually he stops looking. this solution to japan's national shame might be unsatisfying but it seems preferable to mishima's fate. although, murakami wouldn't be murakami if he was capable of the sort of un-ironic, literal commitment to an ideology that undid mishima in the end.
it's interesting to me that america hasn't had to reckon with its atrocities in the same way. i mean, in the wind up bird chronicle it seems that both the violence in nanking and the shame of the atom bombs are too traumatic to integrate into a coherent national identity. better to be global citizens. why isn't slavery like this? why aren't the atom bombs like this from our end? are we just assholes or do history's victors just never have to explain themselves?
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 01:56 (nine years ago) link
also he goes into a well and then the book is over or something
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 01:59 (nine years ago) link
plus he has to kill his brother-in-law in a dream in order to fulfill an oedipal fantasy that will bring his wife back to him and also kill this brother-in-law in real life.
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:01 (nine years ago) link
yeah i dont really get/remember that part
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:02 (nine years ago) link
treesh u are reminding me why i read so few novels
― the final twilight of all evaluative standpoints (nakhchivan), Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:02 (nine years ago) link
i liked when the one guy was skinned alive and then the other guy went in the well tho
they had to kill all the zoo animals by firing squad
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:05 (nine years ago) link
Bob Dylan can fuck off too
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:28 (nine years ago) link
bob dylans book is pretty good tbh
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:30 (nine years ago) link
bob dylans book is pretty very good tbh
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:40 (nine years ago) link
With (Roy Orbison), it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:43 (nine years ago) link
bob dylans book is pretty very good the best book that has been or will ever be written tbh
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:44 (nine years ago) link
“When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.
i could read 10,000 pages of this kind of prose
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:45 (nine years ago) link
ya he shd do another one
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:48 (nine years ago) link
He sang like a professional criminal
this is the line that always made me laugh
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:50 (nine years ago) link
“I really was never any more than what I was -a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.”
these kinds of lines are really funny to me too. his transparently disingenuous "golly gee" mode
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:51 (nine years ago) link
kinda mad that Marias isn't more highly favored
― The Complainte of Ray Tabano, Thursday, 9 October 2014 02:59 (nine years ago) link
in re: Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature
This man has sold a gazillion units of vinyl, CD and downloadable whatnot. It's like he hit an oil well that never stops pumping money. The committee that awards the prize kind of regards that kind of commercial success as too crass to deserve Nobel recognition. Modest plaudits among the public at large, complemented by a high esteem within academia, seems to be the best way to punch your ticket.
― Aimless, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:15 (nine years ago) link
dude lives on a tour bus 11 months out of the year
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:26 (nine years ago) link
dude could buy his own fleet of Lear jets if he wanted to
― Aimless, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:30 (nine years ago) link
ITT -_------->>> pictures of william t vollmann (no shops allowed)
― dylannn, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:32 (nine years ago) link
if Dylan bought a fleet of Lear jets it would bankrupt him tbrr
― The Complainte of Ray Tabano, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:35 (nine years ago) link
i don't think he should win the prize, but if the issue is him being "compromised" by corporate success i don't think it's applicable in his situation. he was destined to spend his life trying to expand the possibilities of the folk song whether it led him to fame or poverty. this is what i think based on everything i know about him.
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:38 (nine years ago) link
his success seems coincidental and sort of arbitrary to the music he creates. not totally arbitrary obviously, but relatively so. much as could reasonably be expected
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:39 (nine years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/HYksNIp.png
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:40 (nine years ago) link
this thread went in a great direction
― ≖_≖ (Lamp), Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:52 (nine years ago) link
now i am wondering what would happen if lagoon revealed that i was worth 180 million dollars. would ilxors resent this? would they opportunistically try to become closer to me? or, a third option, would they treat me exactly the same?
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:55 (nine years ago) link
i actually sincerely think the third option is what would happen, and that is why ilx is superior to the nobel prize selection committee
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:57 (nine years ago) link
can i have like a million dollars
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:57 (nine years ago) link
just interjecting to say nobody who has done a chrysler commercial should win the Nobel prize for literature
― i'd rather be arrested by you folks than by anybody i know (art), Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:58 (nine years ago) link
well aren't you just blah blah blah and et cetera
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 03:59 (nine years ago) link
sorry i need to go to sleep
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 04:00 (nine years ago) link
i live by a simple code
― i'd rather be arrested by you folks than by anybody i know (art), Thursday, 9 October 2014 04:00 (nine years ago) link
I don't especially care that Mr. Zimmerman has a vast net worth derived from his artistic endeavors. I've always enjoyed a large fraction of his output. But I suspect a certain gaggle of self-important Swedes would never see him as a worthy recipient, so I'd never risk a penny betting on him getting it.
― Aimless, Thursday, 9 October 2014 04:13 (nine years ago) link
lol peace activist
― j., Thursday, 9 October 2014 04:24 (nine years ago) link
tbf, they list it after disc jockey
― Treeship, Thursday, 9 October 2014 04:31 (nine years ago) link
he makes money at that one!
― j., Thursday, 9 October 2014 04:32 (nine years ago) link
paul muldoon >>>> bob dylan
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 9 October 2014 05:25 (nine years ago) link
Bob Dylan should get the peace prize
― lool at the herrlich (wins), Thursday, 9 October 2014 05:55 (nine years ago) link
He seems peaceful enough
― lool at the herrlich (wins), Thursday, 9 October 2014 05:56 (nine years ago) link
"All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell."
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 9 October 2014 07:56 (nine years ago) link
The odds make little or no sense, but that's novelty odds I guess
get the sense that Murakami's chances are increasing year by year, but I think it's dumb money that really pushes him to favourite (the heuristic seems to be something like "is non-anglophone, have heard of, is literary/rated").
I'm a bit surprised that Kundera's down with the long shots (20/1 and longer, say), but then no-one seems to talk about him now. Did people just switch off when he moved into French?
Don Paterson being on the list at all is quite odd. Maybe ppl thought a Scot would get it if they voted yes?
Handke at 12/1 seems v short, given the fuss over the Ibsen award.
― woof, Thursday, 9 October 2014 10:09 (nine years ago) link
japanese identity is what the narrator is looking for in the well, i think, but he doesn't find it and eventually he stops looking. this solution to japan's national shame might be unsatisfying but it seems preferable to mishima's fate.
I think you are reaching. iirc Murakami isn't that preoccupied with Japanese identity as much as Mishima or Kawabata.
Murakami seems a bit light for the Nobel, but the Nobel is always good at confusing people - some years its 'political' on the left, then right, then something else.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 October 2014 10:13 (nine years ago) link
In terms of people you (or the bookies) never heard of she might be good:
http://www.seagullindia.com/books/md.asp?cbosearch=category&txtkeyword=Selected%20Works%20of%20Mahasweta Devi
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 October 2014 10:15 (nine years ago) link
Learjet 85's private, high-tech luxury to cost a mere Learjet 85's private, high-tech luxury to cost a mere $20.8M0.8M
Dylan can only afford eight lear jets before he's toast
that's not even enough to fly the band and road crew let alone the caterers
― The Complainte of Ray Tabano, Thursday, 9 October 2014 10:21 (nine years ago) link
https://twitter.com/lrb currently running through archive articles on the favourites
― woof, Thursday, 9 October 2014 10:28 (nine years ago) link
Patrick Modiano won
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, 9 October 2014 11:03 (nine years ago) link