Yes, this is silly.

You keep running to books that are written by the in-group for the in-group to make the in-group feel good.

Off the top of my head I can't think of a single example of such a book.

So, we're reading different things apparently.

Meanwhile, I can count on one hand the number of disappointing books I read in 2014 and you seem to have trouble finding things that don't suck.

BTW, clicked link, read two or three very stupid things, didn't finish.

i promise to argue with you on a less shitty day for me, but this morning i've checked out of internet conflict

Man. I didn't mean to contribute to anyone's shitty day. I fucking hate the internet.

it's certainly not your fault im having a shitty morning, it's some asshole from a different part of my life renting space in my head right now, so i'm sticking to play on the internets as a form of relief.

honest, i love a good argument most days, we've had them before, and you've seen me have them, but today my conflict quota is consumed with Real Rage™.

hey, cousin, you wanna stick it to the man on xxxmas morning? let's argue this shit out then, from the internet of some chinese restaurant. (i lie. there's no chinese restaurants worth visiting around here, but if you have nothing to do... i certainly will be trying very intently to do nothing).

the issues have been solved on the other end of things so all my rage is available to counter your unfair accusations and mischaracterizations. ha ha ha!

okay, completely seriously now, i started reading some sumerian hymns and letters yesterday. they're so modern it cracks me up. checkit:

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/etcslbycat.php

here a sample:

Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Urac! Mistress of heaven, with the great diadem, who loves the good headdress befitting the office of en priestess, who has seized all seven of its divine powers! My lady, you are the guardian of the great divine powers! You have taken up the divine powers, you have hung the divine powers from your hand. You have gathered up the divine powers, you have clasped the divine powers to your breast. Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the foreign lands. When like Ickur you roar at the earth, no vegetation can stand up to you. As a flood descending upon (?) those foreign lands, powerful one of heaven and earth, you are their Inana.
13-19. Raining blazing fire down upon the Land, endowed with divine powers by An, lady who rides upon a beast, whose words are spoken at the holy command of An! The great rites are yours: who can fathom them? Destroyer of the foreign lands, you confer strength on the storm. Beloved of Enlil, you have made awesome terror weigh upon the Land. You stand at the service of An's commands.
20-33. At your battle-cry, my lady, the foreign lands bow low. When humanity comes before you in awed silence at the terrifying radiance and tempest, you grasp the most terrible of all the divine powers. Because of you, the threshold of tears is opened, and people walk along the path of the house of great lamentations. In the van of battle, all is struck down before you. With your strength, my lady, teeth can crush flint. You charge forward like a charging storm. You roar with the roaring storm, you continually thunder with Ickur. You spread exhaustion with the stormwinds, while your own feet remain tireless. With the lamenting balaj drum a lament is struck up.

fun stuff! i've always been in awe of Inana.

Destroyer of the foreign lands, you confer strength on the storm. Beloved of Enlil, you have made awesome terror weigh upon the Land.

Enlil loves the US military?


----

So the shitiness passed? He/she/them/the situation was fucked and you didn't deserve to deal with that.

---

Remember this? Right on the cusp of being a really fun thread.

http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=87866

Anyway, I direct your attention to your first post, the second in the thread.

Regarding Cheever's short story "The Swimmer:" i read this in college. i wasn't very highly impressed but then again i was coming from latin america so i didn't really care much for first world problems at the time (i've gone rotten since then).

But now you think...

Well, it doesn't matter. It seems you haven't developed and cemented a fixed position, which is great. Who says we're supposed to have everything settled in our heads? I don't trust anyone who has a strong point of view on everything.

So, at first I was reacting to the general dismissal of "first world problems" in contemporary discourse. I get it: one can always say, "Who cares about X when there are starving Africans" and that's certainly true. What can I say?

(Although it's worth pointing out that neither of us are going to work with lepers or sign up for the Peace Corp anytime soon.)

Then you contextualized it through an essay I found ridiculous.

I tend to find two types of book-chat essays online: those that claim literature will bring about world peace and clear up acne, and those that claim literary culture is a big con and you're a sucker. This essay belongs to the latter.

If his whole point is that INFINITE JEST was written by the in-group for the in-group to reaffirm the in-group's belief system or whatever, I can't really respond because I haven't read it. If his point is larger, that this is an epidemic, then I find it annoying he'd use Wallace as an example. I think he's going after a sacred cow to ruffle feathers and garner more attention for his ideas. It's cheap.

But in either case I would ask: how the fuck does he know how "outsiders" read the book, or books in general? Did he interview anyone who doesn't belong to the in-group to work out how little they got from the book? Maybe that bit comes at the end. Seriously, I'm not reading this whole thing.

It smacks of a certain type of arrogance. He's figured out who reads what and how and why, and I'm saying, "Bullshit. Show me some research."

That bit about blurbs was what made me loose all interest in the piece. He doesn't give examples, but I suppose he means if I go into a bookstore and read a blurb on the back of a book by an "establishment" figure and I then buy that book, I've just fallen into a trap. Maybe this works for some people. For me, not really. If I read a blurb by someone who I like--let's say Philip Roth--why wouldn't I take their opinion into consideration? I know he declines blurb offers, so when he takes one and says something kind, I weigh that when deciding what to read. And there are some establishment figures--Dave Eggers, for example--who I don't really care about, so their blurb doesn't really move me. Am I the exception? Or are there other readers out there who can, you know, think?

What really bothers me is that literary journals are very receptive to "outsider" voices. If I work up the energy, I'll go through the most recent issues of Ploughshares or AGNI or Gettysburg Review or maybe just the most recent Best American Short Story volume and I'm sure I'll find a wide variety of voices and experiences. Yes, I'll find some "first-world" stories as well, but to me that just rounds things out since I am able to take the problems and pains of a millionaire seriously (at least in fiction).

---

Now, if your whole point is you keep running into fiction that is hermetically sealed from your life experience and anything you might be interested in, then what can I say? I don't think you're lying. So maybe that ends things right here.

I will say I am a very generous reader. I am on the lookout for reasons to like what I'm reading. I think you're a bit more critical and on the lookout for reasons to bail from a piece of fiction.

It could be I'm just more gullible. So I swallow fiction easily. And maybe Literary Culture has taken over my mind and I'm hopelessly deluded. Whatever. Life's short and I have many more satisfying reading experiences than miserable ones, so I'm not bothered.

---

The only good thing about Christmas: a whole year until the next fucking one.

mang, you sure are an early riser-- or wait, you're on east coast time.

i'll start from the end: yes! ixxxmass is awful but if you use it to your own ends it can be a good time because nobody writes or calls about work. i have an excuse to stay in bed all day-- like an extra sunday. also, one (not me) can get a paid holiday and dedicate it to worshipping the devil, for example-- i'm all about cultural appropiation. take their holiday and turn it into whatever you want.



and yes thanks the existential turd has been flushed so i'm way way less stressed and can have play fights again.

anyway, as for the generous/critical-- you are absolutely right. i am a burned out reader. i was forced to read too many things i didn't like, and now i bore very quickly. i'm like a tired and jaded old whore who has seen it all and chews gum while servicing the johns.

if you want to preserve your love of reading, don't turn it into a job by things like attending grad school. (my love of film, by the way, exploded in grad school-- it was a way to get stories and shirk my duty.)

but reading was my first love, so i continue to look for something that will make me feel something, anything, in spite of my cosmic ennui. i fail most times, but i keep digging. so i'm not ungenerous in that sense-- i haven't dismissed writing.

now i'm hungry and i need coffee and some food and i'll return to pester you with a response to this whole "first world problem" thing, which is not really about first world problems i think, but maybe more to do with various provincialisms... but COFFEE FIRST, DAMMIT. it's barely 9am here.

meanwhile, i leave you with this...



haaa haa haaaaa
haaa haaa haaa haaaa

(i'm sorry)

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Three stars for reality
By thisnameisalive on 9 Mar 2012
Format: Paperback
Out in the world I noticed that the resolution seemed to be much higher than 1080p and that I could actually walk around. My studio monitors are pretty good but even though the sounds out there in the streets were discordant and scattered scraps, their fidelity still managed to impress. Rather than emerging from two speakers sound travelled towards me from all over the place. Each leaf on each tree that I passed seemed to have its own speaker and each spot up to the horizon also seemed to have its own speaker system, creating a remarkable feeling of immersion. I could also feel the wind on my face and I think that this had something to do with the sense of touch that I had heard about. I wasn't as impressed by this feature and considered asking for my money back but I hadn't paid any and besides I wasn't sure which company was providing this sensation. In terms of audio visual quality the world out there superseded even the most expensive high definition equipment. The software didn't seem to be much good though and I'm not even sure if there was any running. The programme seemed to involve people walking around and lots of cars driving about. It was a bit like GTA4 but without any explosions, gunfire or action of any sort. If the programmers rustle something up I might try 'the world out there' again. I'm sure that they will ask for a fee once reality has a killer app but hopefully there will be an option to pay as you go. I also sensed a rasping emptiness threatening to draw us all down into its acidic embrace but the manual didn't make mention of this so maybe I had received a defective batch of reality. I have half a mind to contact trading standards about this fault because it was mildly terrifying. I noticed that Amazon have a good deal on mass psychosis at the moment and so I would suggest giving delusions of grandeur a whirl instead because the 'world out there' is having a few teething troubles.
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Hilarious. Although the user might have had a better experience if he took full advantage of the marijuana accessory. Some say it interferes with reality's functionality, but others report the THC option is an enhancement and some say it's a vast improvement.

---

Symbols, man. Christ and KFC? What a thoughtful gift.

colonel sanders is THE main figure of japanese christmas. wasn't i just talking about cultural appropriation?

the manger scene... just for laughs (it gives me laughs. so corny.)

anyway it's another early morning here (9am).

how was yesterday's ma po tofu? good?

and will you stick around a bit or no?

I finally picked up J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories. After all these years, I'm finally getting around to this one.

Christmas had pleasant weather so I did yard work most of the day. Had Indian for dinner actually.

Anyway...

I went to college for almost a year and left, and when returned a few years later I thought I had read it all. So I focused on critical theory. I consider this to be an utter waste of time and money and I feel sick thinking about it. Which is why I can't really participate in any critical theory discussion around here however interesting or illuminating. I studied it formally and that killed it.

But the return to fiction was and continues to be a source of great pleasure.

Is this close to the flip-side of your experience?

Full disclosure: I haven't really read anything in months. That part of my brain hasn't really been firing too well lately or something.

yes, it's the opposite-- i had massive reading lists for my comprehensive exams. fortunately my department was slightly backwards and the faculty was populated by poets & novelists & original thinkers, but the rest were silly eggheads i tried to avoid whenever possible. actually i shouldn't say eggheads--they were posers, quoting fashionable critics they didn't even understand, always rushing to publish or perish, true products of the MLA and the American academic system (what a horror). But regardless, it was thousands of pages of reading due every week, plus the research, plus the philosophy, plus plus plus. indigestion.

so i quit reading for years and devoured movies instead. last i was there was 2004.

funny enough though, maybe thanks to this discussion, i went to my storage and uncrated books which i'm now sorting on shelves. maybe i am recovering from all that PTSD. i got my stendhals back. i dug out my quijote. i fished out some balzac novels. i think i'm going to reread the quijote, such a funny book.

and those online sumerian texts are pretty cool-- the correspondence is some of the most surprising. reads like office emails between some branch manager the corporate office.

but anyway, that article you so hated-- i didn't embrace the whole thing and every point he makes. but his thing about communities of readers/writers resonated with me and provoked some other thoughts. again it's not that i agree with the thing about blurbs, etc-- it's just that the idea unstucked my head.

i'd bring it to the old discussion of the universality of art. things that can reach everyone. for example, i am not an old russian member of the nobility but i can enjoy tolstoy. i am not a dead bronze-age grek but i enjoy the illiad and the odissey (parts of them anyway, some of the lists in the illiad can be zzzzzzzz). i am not an israelite from 2500 years ago and i am antirreligious person but the book of job is a total mindfuck. and then there's shit written yesterday that does nothing for me.

some old-fashioned postmoderns might say that these books are considered great because the empire imposes them upon us blah blah. but that is some bullshit.

so i suppose that my "problem" (it's not a problem really) reading the vast expanse of modern american fiction has more to do with the fact that it's still unsorted-- it's a local conversation, in the local code, with local assumptions, and some may be the next odisseys and the next brothers karamazov, but most will be a flash in the pan soon rendered irrelevant. so when confronted with the large mass of modern publishing it's hard to sort things. not that i don't enjoy the occasional flash in the pan-- some are quite good. but one has to connect with them.

by the way, speaking of minorities or whatever-- i find this "minority" genre to be highly annoying. the only "minority" writer i have ever liked so far is jhumpa lahiri. the latinos (i'm supposed to "relate" to them i guess) are thoroughly eclipsed by their counterparts south of the border. okay maybe except francisco goldman-- "the long night of the white chickens" was a beautiful novel. but see, he doesn't write "look at me vato, i'm such a latino, tacos, abuelitas"-- he just writes a novel about some shit going down in boston & guatemala. so i don't think about him that way.

i don't know really-- i'm tired and bitter and ungenerous. don't blame the authors for my shortcomings. at the same time, i'm not saying my crippled perspective in not valid-- it's valid to me anyway-- but it's definitely crippled and damaged and overly demanding.

anyway, here's to mental rehabilitation. i might read regularly again some day and grow kinder in my old age.

As long as you're honest and self aware thats what's important

or i might grow more cranky and impatient. ha!

That is what pot is for yo

Right now? this thread.

The contemporary is always about sorting through. That's its problem and its excitement, depending on you. The past comes pre-filtered. Imagine how many crap novels Russians had to wade through in the 19th C before discovering a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky, or even a Turgenev or a Gogol. The past is settled for us, just as, I imagine, our contemporary will be for future generations. Lit studies will run their 'millennial fiction' courses (or whatever they decide to call our cultural age) and speak only about Cormac McCarthy and Don DeLillo and a handful of others, blissfully unaware (hopefully) of names like Michael Cunningham and all those other flash-in-the-pans that we've had to deal with.

My ex-English major mind tends to distinguish between "classic" novels and contemporary. These are rough categories that don't mean much; not sure where to put modernists, for example.

But those clearly "classic" novels are just so damn satisfying. There's something about that genre--the "well-made" novel--that pleases, even if the book isn't so great. I mean, Hardy isn't an especially good writer, but his novels are good because of the genre.

I can see how one can burn out on this stuff. The classic novel has its own conventions and cliches which can get wearisome. I can't imagine reading all of Dickens in a row, but reading Great Expectations, especially after a long dry spell, would be . . . I keep returning to that word "satisfying."




I get what you're saying, but I think there's a difference of FORM between the classic and contemporary. No one writes like Jane Austen anymore (and I'm not sure they should), so formally speaking it does something that the contemporary doesn't.

The difference between Austen and Delillo formally is so immense, they sort of have to be read differently, don't you think?

---

Come to think of it, it's been years since I read a "classic" novel.

I never read RED AND THE BLACK, and I've been thinking about it. But for some reason Flaubert's SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION seems to be calling out to me from the bookshelf. I dunno. I'd like to read something where at the end, I sigh and pat my belly.

Honestly sometimes i think they need to make an English translation of Dickens yo

that's a pretty good analysis there. One of the nice things about new literature is the discovery factor. One of the nice things about the classics is realizing just how good lit can be.

the thing is though i enjoy some flashes in the pan. who here remembers "slaves of new york"? a hugely dated book of late-80s short stories but i liked some of them. haven't heard about tama janowitz since then-- she still writes though. i also semi-recently read arthur nersesian's "the fuckup" which is about a kid in the east village in the early 90s. nothing glorious, but a really fun read.

the problem is that the sorting is too laborious-- and if you think about it these are provincial examples i'm mentioning there. just because it's new york it doesn't mean it can't be provincial.

and that's what i meant to mention earlier. contemporary american writing is going to be overwhelmingly provincial until it's sorted and exported. and as an immigrant, i'm not fully culturally integrated to it. e.g., when i think of "classic" novels the first names in my mind are not dickens or hardy--i'd think of victor hugo or dumas or tolstoy first.

i don't come from an anglophone tradition, and latin america is a bit more eclectic because we know we're not the center of the world-- so we'll read the french and the russians and the germans and british and americans and everyone we can get our hands on ha ha ha. i suppose that is where i see the american scene as more provincial--more closed unto itself. most "big" national cultures are that way. the french for example quote themselves endlessly. same with the spanish, or the british. but latin americans will steal from everyone. vivan los clusterfucks!

this is not to say there is not a provincial latin american scene. of course there is. there are ongoing national and continental dialogues that have little to do with the rest of the world. questions of national identity and regional politics and even sheer local gossip. for example, there's this great chilean writer, pedro lemebel, brilliant and superfunny, which i wish i could recommend to everyone here, but i think he's not going to make it in translation. i like him a lot better than bolaño, for example. but there are too many in-group codes and local assumptions to make something like this translatable without extensive footnotes that would destroy the humor with explanations http://www.letras.s5.com/lemebel221102.htm

at the same time, i no longer live in latin america, so if i were to parachute into a bookstore in mexico city or buenos aires right now, i'd be overwhelmed by all the new names and ideological and literary disputes of which i'm not longer a part.

all this is to say-- i'm in a weird spot where i'm an outsider everywhere. and i have no real problem with that--that's the lot of all nomads. but when it comes to exploring the large mass of unsorted stuff, my ideal browsing bookstore would probably be like those markets where you can buy jamaican soda next to korean pepper paste right by the bags of injera along the swedish fishpastes in a tube-- not the latest features from the new york review of books.

The form has changed, obviously, and there's no point looking for a 2015 War & Peace. Tom Wolfe sort of tries and gets a critical pounding for his trouble (even though I've liked most of his novels quite a bit). To be honest, in contemporary fiction, I'm less and less interested in the 'literature' stuff - for many of the reasons El Symbols points out. It is a bit of a club, written by and for the same kinds of people, expressing a similar world-view over and over again. I'm more interested in genre fiction now (genre in the commercial sense rather than what you mean - although it's not that far removed, formally). And some of it's extremely well written, especially the likes of James Lee Burke - who I'm currently a huge fan of. There's a genuine intelligence there, not the posturing I find with so many 'cleverer' writers. And because of the serial nature of his books (there's about 25 of his Dave Robicheaux novels) he's able to really develop his ideas in the same way that a multi-season HBO series can, compared with a feature film. And while more a straight stylist, history will surely declare James Ellroy as one of the greatest American writers of the last 30 years, even if his tone and subject-matter aren't for everyone.

So I'm not suggesting we should all ditch the lit and move to detective novels but I do think a lot of people who find something lacking in the more high brow stuff might be surprised by writers like Burke, Daniel Woodrell, and a few others, who are writing some really good books atm, imo, and are willing to tackle some big themes head on and from a multitude of positions.

But I agree about the enduring appeal of the 'classic' 19th C novel. It simply works. And while I understand the reluctance among contemporary critics to promote any kind of revival, I think readers miss out when writers like Wolfe are dismissed just because they're trying to saying something big and looking to writers like Thackeray for their inspiration, rather than someone more philosophically 'relevant'.

Oh, and my favourite character from a novel is Dickens' Mrs Gamp, in Martin Chuzzlewit

i blame the rise of the MFA degree and the emergence of the university as the main patron of the arts.

used to be literary fiction writing was the province of enlightened lawyers, doctors, pirates, adventurers, shut-ins, and various charlatans of the wilderness-- a fertile ground.

nowadays it's either journalists (squares) or MFA graduates who learned writing from other MFA graduates and teach writing to future MFA graduates, all of them publishing and reading themselves in their journals.

anyway, i should continue with the sumerians today. after that i'll go look for some pedro lemebel books and chronicles i haven't read yet.

Well said.

i like delillo a lot but imo he wont be remembered as the best of our era. his stuff does not shine a particularly bright light on the present - its recognizable to us but it wont tell the future much about us.

Other than Wallace, Murakami and McCarthy I can't think of many more writers who'll still be read in a hundred years time. Rowling? Will bloody Self? Stephen King, I suspect, will do.

borges and garcía márquez will definitely still be read, on a global scale, in 100 years, just like we still read kafka. by the way murakami is nice but i don't find him so original in the light of the people i just mentioned (especially kafka).

people who are alive who will be read... to find out how we live today? like, realist writers? people will probably watch our documentaries more like. as for fiction...

i'm thinking, i'm thinking...!

harry potter?

but anyway, in english, mccarthy is the one i think writes like nobody else--i can't read him and say "oh i've seen this shit before." he defeats me, repeatedly, but not from any sense of banality or irrelevancy. also, unlikely to age poorly.

If he is remembered it'll be because he couldn't have come from any other time. I'd say his style and themes are very contemporary, but perhaps too self-consciously so. Reading him I always think he's trying a bit too hard to nail the 'now'. He's all sleek surfaces and numb detachment, without the depth of insight of someone like say Ballard.




Yes, absolutely.


He's interesting cos on one level he's very derivative of that whole Southern Gothic thing but he takes it into weird territory that's entirely his own. Blood Meridian doesn't necessarily feel overly contemporary (in the way DeLillo always does, even when his subject isn't) but it does feel utterly unique. Although I think The Road will be the more studied, just because it's more accessible in its style and taps into more recognisable contemporary anxieties. Blood Meridian is one of the best things I've ever read, period, but it's almost impossible to put it into any really meaningful cultural category or context.

I think true literature is rare even before our contemporary descent into soulless fiction. Im not sure ratio of truly good "classics" to the shit of their era is any different than the ratio of quality to shit in ours..

Also who knows what 21st century crap future generations will value as classic. These things are fickle and much of what classics we value as epochal today weren't all necessarily well received in their time.

i am quite sure baudrillard will be remembered as a very important philosopher from this era, whereas now he is either slandered or not mentioned whatsoever. many of the people doing the slagging will most certainly not mean shit to the future.

also, some works which are BIG in our time but are ignored since they are firmly in the "genre/trash" section, at least in the minds of the literati, will be remembered.

You're so far stuck up your own arse you can't acknowledge there isn't a single society that misses any philosophers. Artists, yes, not some deluded intellectual. They come and go and are as relevant as Pitchfork hacks. Nobody loves them, nobody cares.

i feel a bit sorry for you sometimes but im afraid youre going back on ignore permanently this time.

I'm somewhat interested in starting Denis Johnson's new spy novel. Has anyone looked at it? The book store owner I know says it is a good read.

Henry James, Washington Square

i read that many years ago and i remember the main lines of the story but not much else. well written and all but a bit depressing-- which in retrospective is not wrong but i was in a different, less pessimistic (more deluded?) place at the time. has parallels to daisy miller, i thought. (being purposefully vague here to avoid spoilers).

i think his conservatism turned me off to further readings. was i wrong? (probably.)

==


reading right now: various translations of the tao te ching (and comparing them) (i don't read chinese though). also planning to go back to those sumerian texts and cull some proverbs-- city life is city life now or 5000 years ago.

Has anyone tried to tackle James' late works (Wings, Bowl, Ambassadors)?

I have never managed to get more than 75 pages or so into any Henry James work. I just don't give a shit about his characters or writing style.