i don't like pynchon much. but i think severian and/or evollove are fans.

having said that, gravity's rainbow is his most celebrated thick and heavy tome.

there's really no way around that. so i've avoided it. i mean, i tried--and tossed it

sorry

nevertheless, he's important

--

ETA: oh, i'll post you something to read. RIGHT HERE.

one moment...

here you go:

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/...spresent/tense

Not me.

I like Crying well enough and re-read it now and then, but that's the only one I can get through. Made it 90 pages into V and less into Gravity's. I hear Mason and Dixon is good, but it's also a doorstopper.

Finished Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century

http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2017/0...tter-than.html

That sounds good. I will add to my ever-expanding list

Pynchon is boring AF. so is Salinger.

I have tried asnd tried with thopse wto but life is too short.

Re: Vonnegut, I think people mistake simplicity with being juvenile/underdeveloped, when the hardest thing in the fucking world is conveying an idea in the simplest possible way so that it is undiluted. Vonnegut appeals to the cynics, the depressed, the ones who see everything we are supposed to take part in while living (church, politics, war, etc.) as fucking BULLSHIT, and who suffer because of this ambivalence towards what everyone else thinks is important. He was not the greatest prose stylist, but so what? There is more than one way to pluck a guitar string.

His books are funnier, and more of a FUCK YOU to the status quo we all live in, while still maintaining that essential goodness of man that Freethinkers and Unitarians cling to.

crying of lot 49 put me to sleep but i persisted. no prize at the end. still, it was a short book, so i managed.

these days i'm way more ruthless. with death approaching, there's no time to waste trying to prove something to a bunch of strangers.

i toss books a lot.

i'm a big tosser, lolololol

I get this. Sure. Cool.

Again, it's from an SF fan's perspective that I have beef with KVJ. I don't like seeing Slaughterhouse Five on best SF lists, above PKD or Wolfe or Bradbury.

But I like "Long Walk to Forever," so... fuck. The guy did simple well, and it's very true that writing simply and with any degree of eloquence is one of ge great challenges writers face.

Well, yah. Don't do that shit. That's reading for sport, and we've all done it, but it is absolutely a waste of time.

As for Pynchon... I Fucking LOVE Inherent Vice. Hate the movie pretty much. Love the novel. The only other thing I've read is Gravity's Rainbow, long ago. I think it's a great book, but if I hadn't read it in my early 20s, I think I would have missed the moment a bit.

Mason & Dixon was really fun. I'd read all of his earlier output years ago, but then went 10+ years & didn't miss and/or need anything more from him. So, with a lack of something to read & seeing a used MnD for like 3 whole dollars, I gave it a try. Worth every cent...then, having enjoyed that as much as I did, I tried Against the Day. Wow, what a fucking zero that one was...so back to my no Pynchon input needed life....

I haven't read Mason & Dixon, but maybe I'll give it a go after reading this. I saw a copy of it at Goodwill last week. Guessing it's still there.

Regarding other Pynchon... yeah.. again, I loved Inherent Vice and I'm glad I read Gravity's Rainbow, but I don't feel any real desire to dig much deeper.

Currently digging into some short stories lately.. Hemingway is of course the master for me but I'm hoping you folks here could recommend a collection or Anthology for me??

Short stories! Wow, so many good ones. American lit you can't go wrong w/Hawthorne and Melville. Flannery O'Conner, Wm Faulkner. Hmm, Kafka, FM Dostoevsky...

poe did it first id say check him out definitely

maupassant

chekhov was great tho a bit long winder per today's

oh, flannery fucking o'connor hell yeah hell yeah so good. she's just so great

BORGES, for jeeves sakes. it's all he wrote (and poems and essays). his pal bioy casares too. and his semi-disciple julio cortazar. argentina seems to have the top place in latin america when it comes to this genre. oh and roberto arlt. and their neighbor horacio quiroga. must we something in the water of the rio de la plata.

garcia marquez has some good ones too but he was better as a novelist. still, he's got a few classics.

personally i really like this mexican guy juan josé arreola. i read him too old for him to make a bigger impression unfortunately but he was very good. and another guy but hard to find--- jose revueltas ( his brother silvestre was a composer). if you can find "hegel and i"-- o man. oh and juan rulfo! hell yes.

oh, bolaño if you like him has short stories too.

jose maria arguedas has some really nice ones, sad ones if you can find him. also julio ramon ribeyro.

oh, and i really like william gibson's early short stories collected in burning chrome. guess im a fan.

and many many years ago jack vance blew my mind with his science fictions

what else hm.... ... tim obrien in the things they carried. really how he tells all by lists! genius

Duh! raymond carver of course! just saw shortcuts 2 weekends ago and spaced him. and thus drunkard john cheever. and updike

chekhov is really a master but might be a little long winded for our age. if you have the patience though...

who else...

tolstoy had some funny tales

oh, kafka of course! jeez. dat man. of course

soeaking of which people blow a lot of rockets for murakami but i dont find him original in the least. what can i say.

salinger is celebrated but he doesnt do it for me. sorry. but salinger i guess.

anotehr i cant get into is junot diaz, americas favorit his-panic. dont know, maybe some day

oh, joyce! dubliners is a lovely book. really great

okay gotta go zzzzzzz

Jesus fuck dude.

Just get an anthology. There are a fuckton. Easily available at libraries and used book places.

Or give me a few bucks for shipping and I'll hook you up. I have too many.

who fucked jesus?

nah, anthologies often suck, unless you're talking about selected works from a great writer and even then selection is so often weirdly arbitrary

anthologies often lead to nowhere and present things in the wrong context.

here it becomes a matter of finding the right anthologist. often unsung heroes, the poor bastards. it's easier to hunt for a great writer than for a great anthologist.

best to look at complete books by great writers where you can really "get them"

to pare shit down, then i'd say start with fucking POE. that's the epicenter, in more ways than one. get the whole book of everything, with his essays and poems too, then peck around.

otherwise fast forward to FICCIONES which is where borges first found his best form.

???

Practically every short story anthology I can think of from the last twenty years includes at least one story by every writer you mentioned, except for the super specific ones.

Norton anthology of short fiction is great. There are a bunch of volumes to choose from, so if you want a bit more contemporary stuff get a more recent volume. But if you just want to feast on the form, any will do. (And lots of "context," if that's a concern.)

I see the latest is edited by Richard Bausch, who is a fine writer himself.

Honestly symbols, I don't know what you're talking about.

ah, norton. if you wanna sell him the norton anthology just say so.

that's exactly the thing-- what's a good anthology and what's a shitty one.

an anthology of what

borges and bioy casares had this awesome anthology that blew my mind and got me off comics when i was around 12

ANTOLOGIA DE LA LITERATURA FANTASTICA

awesome book gathered fantastic tales from all around the planet and times in history

that's an anthology i'd recommend. chosen by a great and a good writer.

but there are all sort of regional or historical or thematic anthologies-- it all depends on the criterion used for them no?

richard bausch is a nice man.

Did/do you read Poe in a Spanish translation? Just wondering.

first yes of course

later no, of course, reread him en inglés

why. you don't like his old timey sentences?

I appreciate his historical importance, but no. I don't enjoy reading him on a sentence level. And I think his stories are often idiotic. Isn't there a mystery story where the solution is an animal escaped from the zoo and killed the guy?

But it's been awhile.

And when I was a little kid my father read me "Tell-Tale Heart" and I had a nightmare about it.

So I dunno.

you missed the point of the story and spoiled the ending. it was i think the first detective story ever.

sherlock holmes, etc, all came after.

i'm sorry about your dad's unfortunate timing lololololol

how old were you?

Not sure. 10? Anyway, props to a story for giving me nightmares. This is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure it's happened since.

Anthologies are aight. I have a great Borges short story anthology that I swiped from my stepdad so I could talk to Symbols about stuff.

Often, though, I find that anthologies are best for either introductory or mega-fan/completist purposes. I am a big fan of literary SF mindblower Gene Wolfe. After I read all of his novels, I felt like a part of mylife had ended, but my girlfriend bought me a copy of his "Book of Days," a collection of letters, essays, rare or out of print short stories, and poems, and it was like getting a big old dose of methadone in the middle of a heroin withdrawal. Not quite the right medicine, but it helped the symptoms quite a bit. I've been cherry-picking segments from that book and reading one every week or so to extend the "halflife" of the book, as I try to adjust to life without new Gene Wolfe. (He's still writing new stuff every once in a while, but it's been gradually decreasing in quality since the early '00s.)

The Borges anthology served as an excellent introduction though. So, yeah... beginners and experts are best served by the anthology.

Weren't we talking about Hemingway though? I would not start on Hemingway an anthology.

poe gave nightmares to generations to come.

the mask of the red death! the black cat! the pit and the pendulum!

ha ha you know roger corman made these into movies? and the french loved him for it ha ha ha.

poe was an extraordinary writer, was there at the founding of the modern short story genre, introduced america to a bunch of dark shit, got a million kids into cryptography, invented the detective story, was a great poet and critic and literary theorist.

the guy had brains, and more imagination than the whole XX century put together. all we do is refry his shit now and ignore the source.

except for nabokov who did pay homage.

i need to look up poe again. he's become some sort of cultural cartoon figure at this point, only because he was so good this is how people had to exorcise him.

Yeah. Ever seen that movie with John Cusak playing Poe? Portrayed him as a real goon. Also did some pretty wild speculation about his death. Yay Hollywood.

no i didn't. are you joking or "for serious"?

holy shit you're serious! (i just googled)

no idea about that movie.

i don't wanna see it lol

===

as for borges anthologies which ones did you read? and did you know that there's a weird story about the rights to borges translations?

his widow, apparently... oooofff! i'd better not say.

but i'm curious about what you wrote.

i wouldn't recommend borges in an anthology. rather, i'm the anthology, and would say: this book, that book, etc.

The Library where I work gets all the good shit. I am reading Grant Morrison's INVISIBLES Omnibus.

well, an anthology of one author is often OK, but the ones with the editors choice I'm usually appalled at their choices.

same here

Lee K. Abbott
One of Star Wars, One of Doom
Conrad Aiken
Silent Snow, Secret Snow
Dorothy Allison
Jason Who Will Be Famou
Sherwood Anderson
Want to Know Why
Margaret Atwood
Death by Landscape
James Baldwin
Sonny’s Blues
Toni Cade Bambara
Gorilla, My Love
Andrea Barrett
The Littoral Zone
Donald Barthelme
Me and Miss Mandible
Richard Bausch
Letter to the Lady of the House
Charles Baxter
The Disappeared
Ann Beattie
Snow
Madison Smart Bell
Witness
Wendall Berry
A Burden
Ambrose Bierce
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Jorge Luis Borges
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
Ray Bradbury
The Veldt
Frederick Busch
Bread
Truman Capote
Miriam
Raymond Carver
The Student’s Wife
Cathedral
R. V. Cassill
The Rationing of Love
Willa Cather
A Wagner Matinee
Paul’s Case
John Cheever
The Enormous Radio
The Death of Justina
Anton Chekhov
Gusev
Anna on the Neck
Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
The Invalid’s Story
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Julio Cortázar
Letter to a Young Woman in Paris
Stephen Crane
The Open Boat
The Blue Hotel
Edwidge Danticat
A Wall of Fire Rising
Anita Desai
Royalt
James Dickey
There Was an Old Man Over at Choestoe
Isak Dinesen
Sorrow-Acre
Andre Dubus
The Intruder
Stuart Dybek
We Didn’t
Ralph Ellison
King of the Bingo Game
Louise Erdrich
Matchimanito
Percival Everett
The Fix**
William Faulkner
Barn Burning
A Rose for Emily
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Babylon Revisited
Richard Ford
Privacy
Great Falls
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
A New England Nun
Mavis Gallant
The Ice Wagon Coming Down the Street
George Garrett
Feeling Good, Feeling Fine
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper
Nadine Gordimer
A Soldier’s Embrace
Allan Gurganus
Nativity, Caucasian
Barry Hannah
Sick Soldier at Your Door
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown
The Birthmark
Ernest Hemingway
Hills Like White Elephants
Amy Hempel
In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried
Alice Hoffman
The Wedding and Snow and Ice
Zora Neale Hurston
The Conscience of the Court
Shirley Jackson
The Lottery
Henry James
The Real Thing
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Passion
Charles Johnson
Moving Pictures
Edward P. Jones
A New Man
James Joyce
Araby
The Dead
Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
A Hunger Artist
Yasunari Kawabata
The White Horse
A.L. Kennedy
Not Anything To Do With Love
Jamaica Kincaid
Girl
Jhumpa Lahiri
Hell-Heaven
Ring Lardner
Ex Parte
D. H. Lawrence
The Horse Dealer’s Daughter
The Rocking Horse Winner
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Doris Lessing
To Room Nineteen
John L’Heureux
Brief Lives in California
Sandra Tsing Loh
My Father’s Chinese Wives
Bernard Malamud
Angel Levine
Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party
Bobbie Ann Mason
Shiloh
Guy de Maupassant
Boule de Suif
An Adventure in Paris
William Maxwell
The Thistles in Sweden
Jill McCorkle
Intervention
Thomas McGuane
Cowboy
T.M. McNally
Bastogne
James Alan McPherson
Why I Like Country Music
Herman Melville
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Bharati Mukherjee
The Management of Grief
Alice Munro
Royal Beatings
Miles City, Montana
Sabina Murray
Position
Vladimir Nabokov
Signs and Symbols
Joyce Carol Oates
How I Contemplated the World...
Convalescing
Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried
How to Tell a True War Story
Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Good Country People
Frank O’Connor
Guests of the Nation
Tillie Olsen
O Yes
Grace Paley
The Used-Boy Raisers
Jayne Anne Phillips
El Paso
Luigi Pirandello
War
Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Purloined Letter
Katherine Anne Porter
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Flowering Judas
V. S. Pritchett
The Fall
Annie Proulx
What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?
Ron Rash
Their Ancient, Glittering Eyes
Agnes Rossi
Morpheus
Philip Roth
The Conversion of the Jews
George Saunders
Victory Lap
James Salter
Give
Danzy Senna
Admission
Irwin Shaw
The Girls in Their Summer Dresses
Jean Shepherd
Lost at C
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Gimpel the Fool
Jane Smiley
The Life of the Body
Lee Smith
Intensive Care
Elizabeth Spencer
Wisteria
Jean Stafford
In the Zoo
John Steinbeck
The Chrysanthemums
Robert Stone
Under the Pitons
Elizabeth Strout
Pharmacy
Linda Svendsen
Marine Life
Amy Tan
Rules of the Game
Peter Taylor
A Spinster’s Tale
Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilych
William Trevor
Events at Drimaghleen
John Updike
A&P
Brother Grasshopper
Helena María Viramontes
The Moths
Alice Walker
Everyday Use
Robert Penn Warren
Blackberry Winter
Brad Watson
Visitation
Stephanie Powell Watts
Unassigned Territory
Eudora Welty
Why I Live at the P.O.
A Worn Path
Edith Wharton
Xingu
Thomas Williams
Goose Pond
William Carlos Williams
The Use of Force
Tobias Wolff
In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
Bullet in the Brain
Virginia Woolf
Kew Gardens
Richard Wright
The Man Who Was Almost a Man

^^ is dat a copypaste of your norton anthology toc?

see instead of araby and the dead i'd say read all of dubliners

FO SHO

also pierre menard as the choice borges story? lollercoaster

fuck anthologies. they're like a reastaurant with too many dishes.

all you can eat buffet. no.

explore a great author then move on to the next

love, not serial fucking

maybe he should read more hemingway instead of looking for short stories in the arms of another

ha!

I got to meet Area X author Jeff Vandermeer yesterday. He had a talk and reading at the UH Honors college, one of the cool perks to working at a University. He spoke at length about the themes he has been exploring since the writing of area X.

He also showed still images from the upcoming Annhihilation film.

BTW, when I walked up to Vandermeer to intgroduce myself he looked at me and said "Hi! I've seen you on the internet!" and it BLEW MY MIND

here are my reviews of his area x books http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/search...f%20Vandermeer

ha ha ha-- awesome, rob!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT ROB!

How could you not have told me?!

(I got Rob into Jeff Vandermeer :cool: )...

...

Thanks awesome man. Just awesome! What did he say about the film? Based on everything I've heard about the cast (Natalie Portman as Biologist; Jennifer Jason Leigh as Psychologist), the director (dude who did Ex-Machina) -- not to mention the fucking MUSIC by Geoff Barrow of Portishead!! -- it's going to be fucking incredible.

Are they going to do all three, or just ANNIHILATION?

Did you tell him you got into his books through this awesome SY and Kanye fan names Severian who also does journalism-y stuff and should maybe work in publishing? ;)

Seriously.
Answer my question.

he said so on his blog! didn't you see your name there?

"thank you to severino severales" etc etc

quoted

he stated that every woman in the film is 5'2" tall.

Yeah, I did. Hah. I read it. I was just giving him grief. He's repped me a few times on "RXTT's" ... just having a larf.

*larf, larf! Larfened he!* ;)

Hahahaha!!!

Thanks man!! You're the best!

Super cool. I'm happy for you!

I feel like three films would be a challenge based on the way the books play out. They go against the heroe's journey that is so big in trilogies, what with shifting narratives and perspectives and getting weird as all fuck.

But since he first page of ANNIHILATION, I thought it could make an excellent bizarro speculative, philosophical horror piece. That's the best of the books, as I think you agreed back when we were reading them.

I'm so glad something I recommended actually made this big of an impression on you. That just makes me feel useful.

Nice Rob. Nice.