[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

I'd have to say Borges short stories, Ficciones, maybe Naked Lunch or Soft Machine, certainly some Coetzee ( I really like Life and Times of Michael K and Foe), Robbe-Grillet's The Voyeur or In the Labyrinth, and I really like Bolano, esp Nazi Literature in the Americas, absolutely one of my favorite authors is Michael Brodsky, especially Detour (expanded 2003 version), ***, and Xman.

just sayin'

there's a LOT of good lit out there. Holy Moly!:

borges never wrote novels! i love borges and so did ggm (borges is melquíades), i find child rapist burroughs one of the most overrated writers ever-- not saying he's terrible, just overrated by a certain generation of english speakers-- bolaño is great, sure, but he wasn't a cataclysm. he's a good heir though. robbe-grillet has always left me cold.

i guess im confusing shit because first i said "best of the XX century" and then i said "last 50 years"

but anyway, everyone has their own biases. for latin america the guy was a fucking deluge-- there was a before and there was an after. he got a lot of hate eventually but it was mostly envy by minors that couldn't match him. still most people want to write LIKE HIM or AGAINST HIM. there are no neutrals.

he did for me what reading kafka did for him-- blew my fucking mind and it was never the same after. i've read it 3 or 4 times at different ages (first i must have been 12). i get why an irish would prefer ulysses, but if i had to reread i'd take the shit that's ON FIRE over the obscure and intellectual mass of references-- plus parnell wasn't my king so i don't feel him.

i suppose i relate to this novel in a much more carnal way than a north american or french reader-- for me to read him is not an intellectual exercise or a distant observation but I'M THERE with those characters. and i used to loooove love borges since i was 12 or 13 also, but delighted as i was, and as grateful, once you get the trick of it you can leave his stories rest, because you got the idea and that idea is what the story was about. and sure as the original pataphysical author (he would have never name himself that) he was also totally transformative so much respect for that. and yet-- his work was pretty limited when you think about it.

few people have shaken or changed literature like borges or garcia marquez-- kafka fuck yes, joyce fuck yes, cervantes fuck yes, pynchon even though i don't like him fuck yes, burroughs i don't think his cutups changed shit, but a lot of people are just doing long-form journalism and calling it novels, meh