Literary treats - recommend great reads

Yeah, "Hey chief, big shoot-out here 10 minutes ago, Suspect B is all over the place." And he, like his creator, knows that he can't do his job like he's committed to if he isn't tuned into that human stuff, w/o gettin' snowflake--it's just that M. and S. have seen sooo much of this over the many years: the series is built for that, w/o getting to soap opera heroine w 7 spouses, 10 comas, x number gettin' into trouble for breakin' all the rules, like so many crime series.

I mean usually there's more compartmentalization and repetition of big bravura SFX, none of that here.

But I came here to say that mention of the xpost bite-size Berger reminds me of recently noticing a stand-alone of Michael Herr's "Illumination Rounds," an advance excerpt from Dispatches: got me going in New American Review, the mostly (?) 60s-published mass market paperback lit mag.

seconding early ishmael reed & hard rain falling, will nom joseph mitchell joe gould's secret or even better the collection up in the old hotel - this is a whopper which is against the rules which are made to be broken, but it's a collection of smaller pieces tbf
(and skip the fiction probably)

another whopper the sot-weed factor is pure pleasure

muriel spark

i picked up 'at swim two birds' because of this thread

i lucked out and got this dalkey edition with this quote by dylan thomas on the cover

This is just the book to give your sister if she's a loud, dirty, boozy girl!

https://entertainment.time.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2011/07/t100_novels_atswimtwobirds.jpg?w=258

Forgot about that quote.

Wanna get back into my middle school fave Saki, but library only has Complete Works in one smallish (Modern Library-style) volume: tiny type!! I may read it anyway, 'til eyeballs rebel.

xpost Muriel Spark: o hell yes The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is great gateway, and just the right length for this thread.

up in the old hotel - this is a whopper which is against the rules which are made to be broken, but it's a collection of smaller pieces tbf
(and skip the fiction probably) Did Mitchell write fiction? Would like to check it if so.

There has been some controversy in certain quarters over how much fiction may have crept into Mitchell's nonfiction. IIRC a few of the pieces in "Up in the Old Hotel" are labeled as fiction. Some others may have been "embellished". They are definitely treats though. Of books I've read recently the one that might best meet the criteria laid out for this thread is "Price of Salt" by Patricia Highsmith, i.e. an effortless, engrossing read.

There are all sorts of shades of 'non-fiction', depending on the subject matter and how the author decides to present the material.

Embellishment is intrinsic to any kind of storytelling that pretends to convey a sense of life and action, no matter how strongly it is based in actuality. I guess the phone book (which soon will be completely obsolete as a thing known and familiar) would be a good example of minimally-embellished non-fiction, but even a phone book could be said to impose tiny amounts of imagination and coloration upon the bare facts.

Yeah, but I read (and skip the fiction probably) as distinguishing between two sets of publications, as if the author or someone since had straight-up designated, say, features over here, short storied over there.

justin3 recommended “The Gone World” upthread & i read it last week

holy shit. a horror/scifi that really pushes the boat out. the horror is legit scary af, the scifi is v ambitious, really well written.

it was described as true detective meets inception but inception is wrong. maybe edge of tomorrow?

anyway, get into it, genre-nerds

xp yeah I was referring to the handful of short stories collected in up in the old hotel which were explicitly published as fiction

Thanks! Didn't remember that distinction, will have to re-read with it in mind, though was pretty sure he at least massaged some of his material. (In Joe Gould's Teeth, Jill LePore says that some documents have come to light which Mitchell couldn't have known about, but also 0 indication among his copious papers that he ever responded to several people who offered to be interviewed etc re Gould.)
The Wikipedia article on Mitchell incl. several pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker this century (think it was the most recent one that I read and liked):
Wiki page has links for each, though they're behind account wall; dunno if you can just sign up and view w/o having to pay)
2000–2015
Takes Takes (May 28, 2000)
Street Life Personal History (February 3, 2013)
Days in the Branch Personal History (November 24, 2014)
A Place of Pasts Personal History (February 9, 2015)

xxp i also read 'the gone world' on justin3's recommendation and it was v. good

however

as someone who grew up in southwestern pennsylvania at the same time as the protagonist (I was born a year later), i feel compelled to point out that teenage girls there in 1985 who dressed like madonna or had michael jackson jackets absolutely did *not* listen to AC/DC (especially not powerage, which didn't even have a hit?!)

otoh the author might have simply been heightening the contradictions? get out of my head

I really wish someone would read Keith Maillard, perhaps only to disabuse me of the notion that he’s utterly fabulous. I and about a dozen other people think he’s a treasure - and his books are a treat. Anything, really, but I was knocked out by his latest novel, Twin Studies.

An English Murder, Cyril Hare - Cozy mystery, set at x-mas no less, but with real life 50's politics intruding - aristocratic family includes a cousin who is Chancellor of the Exchequer in the labour govt as well as a son leading a neo-fascist group; the Poirotesque outsider, a Hungarian Jewish academic, is a holocaust survivor. Breezed through it, great stuff.

Sigrid Nunez has been doing it for me lately, The Friend and What Are You Going Through? total gems