what are you reading? - Page 271

Severian · 02.12.2019, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

My gf recently started reading a copy of William S. Burroughs' Junkie which a friend at work loaned her.

Guess she didnt realize I had a copy alongside both Queer and Naked Lunch sitting on the bookshelf in my basement. I've read both Junkie and Naked Lunch, but dont remember much.

Am I wrong in thinking that Burroughs is overrated? Like "ooo look at me I can rearrange sentences in nonsensical orders and I'm hooked on drugs and also gay woohoo"

Compared to like Vonnegut or someone, isnt Burroughs mostly read by pretentious twits?

What about Pynchon? Is he in the same boat or is Gravity's Rainbow actually enlightening? Was Burroughs' Naked Lunch even all that good? I'm certain the majority of it went over my head when I was like 17.

*continues making his way through Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind*

Name of the Wind is a great book!

So is the sequel, “The Wise Man’s Fear.”

Still waiting for that third one.

Nice choice. I bought NOTW based on cover alone around the time it came out, and I was in a really big “literary fantasy” phase, and boy did it hit the spot.

!@#$%! · 02.12.2019, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I've never read Pynchon .

pynchon is a postmodern postjoycean american who stuffs his meandering tales with erudite references of the popular kind. popxerudite. thurns and taxis.

very 60s

i can’t really connect with the guy, he puts me to sleep, but the movie that was made about his novel was good and hilarious and watch it

INHERENT VICE

some things are better in translation. especially after some things are lost in it. like 500 pages maybe.

Dr. Eugene Felikson · 02.12.2019, 10:04 PM

I found a copy of Inherent Vice at the dollar store once. Had to buy it out of principle tbh. It sits on my shelf unread still

I'm not very well read. It's a rather large chip on my shoulder. Still, I read more than most friends. Will keep an eye out for anything by Chandler, Bukowski, and Selby i can add to my personal library.

I'm also going through a "literary fantasy" phase atm, Severian

Severian · 02.12.2019, 10:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

I found a copy of Inherent Vice at the dollar store once. Had to buy it out of principle tbh. It sits on my shelf unread still

I'm not very well read. It's a rather large chip on my shoulder. Still, I read more than most friends. Will keep an eye out for anything by Chandler, Bukowski, and Selby i can add to my personal library.

I'm also going through a "literary fantasy" phase atm, Severian

You read any Gene Wolfe?

Shit will knock your socks off. Rob couldn’t hack it. Pick up “Shadow of the Torturer” someday. Way different kind of deal than NOTW, but great. Throws you right into a world that feels both antique and post-apocalyptic... Dickensian shit. Asks a lot of the reader, but it’s worth it.

tw2113 · 02.12.2019, 10:24 PM

Definitely slowed down all in all with my reading pace in 2019, though I also started with a larger item. Almost through The Shining, and technically started it at the tail end of 2018.

Pretty sure by this time in 2018, I was already through The Hobbit and the first Lord of the Rings. Alas, this is also intentional

!@#$%! · 02.12.2019, 10:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

I'm not very well read. It's a rather large chip on my shoulder.

don’t!

if you let your tastes guide you, you’ll pile up a large mountain by old age, without even trying

but let your tastes guide you! don’t feel obligated to finish a book just because you opened it or because someone said so or because some snob raised an eyebrow

by all mean check out interesting suggestions but you don’t owe anything to anyone. know what i mean?

(this is why i love the library... no cost to browse)

demonrail666 · 02.13.2019, 02:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

pynchon is a postmodern postjoycean american who stuffs his meandering tales with erudite references of the popular kind. popxerudite. thurns and taxis.

very 60s

i can’t really connect with the guy, he puts me to sleep, but the movie that was made about his novel was good and hilarious and watch it

INHERENT VICE

some things are better in translation. especially after some things are lost in it. like 500 pages maybe.

I saw the film and remember enjoying it but it wasn't really my thing.

Rob Instigator · 02.13.2019, 08:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I've never read Pynchon so can't compare them but, out of interest, do you like writers like Chandler or Dashiel Hammett, or even James Ellroy? I'm only talking in terms of their prose style (rather than subject matter) cos I get the feeling people who like that super hardboiled-style have a natural affinity with Burroughs. But as much as I'm a fan of it, I know that not everyone clicks with it.

I also find Chandler and Hammett dull. I do not read much crime fiction, or fiction for that matter. Never read Elroy. I find Cormac McCarthy boring too.

Rob Instigator · 02.13.2019, 08:42 AM

Inherent Vice was the worst fucking thing in the past 2 years I suffered my eyes and mind and ears to sit through before walking out after 30 minutes......and I sat through all 5 hours of Che'.

ilduclo · 02.13.2019, 09:31 AM

Burroughs was great. In the pantheon with Melville and Faulkner.

!@#$%! · 02.13.2019, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Inherent Vice was the worst fucking thing in the past 2 years I suffered my eyes and mind and ears to sit through before walking out after 30 minutes......and I sat through all 5 hours of Che'.

haaa haaa haaaaa!

that’s a funny comparison

i think i sat through che as well, and liked it, with ideological reservations, but it was in parts, no?

i remember inherent vice as a hilarious romp. can’t tell you much more about it. but for me it was fun.

and... what happened?

cant remember but i’d watch again to find out hahaha

Rob Instigator · 02.13.2019, 09:40 AM

Inherent Vice, the film (have not read the book) was like a very humorless mashup of Fletch and Big Lebowski. Fucking SLOG

!@#$%! · 02.13.2019, 09:42 AM

i saw it more as a fear and loathing thing sorta

what is fletch? nm i’ll google.

!@#$%! · 02.13.2019, 11:18 AM

haaa haaaa haaa! just read about fletch. a lot of similarities!

pynchon plagiarized some of it maybe? hahaha.

holy fuck....

he ripped off gregory mcdonald...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Mcdonald

!@#$%! · 02.13.2019, 11:38 AM

(because i got obsessed now)

The private eye form provides Pynchon with a vehicle for investigating the question of who lost, or stole, or killed, or brainwashed, or denatured the Sixties—never mind that no satisfying answer could conceivably be forthcoming. Pynchon seems to have ingested an entire archive of genre variations, ranging from the classic forms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald to every subspecies of pastiche and burlesque: Roger L. Simon’s pot-smoking detective Moses Wine, Gregory MacDonald’s Fletch, the Coen Brothers’ Dude in The Big Lebowski, a hundred TV spinoffs. It’s not a question of homage but of throwing absolutely everything into the mix for processing, every stray particle of a commonly shared culture—every joke good or bad that you ever heard, every commercial you couldn’t escape from, every sex fantasy or tabloid crime story that inhabited your dreams, every tag line dredged up from ancient comic strips or pulp stories. This is a book that derives a good part of its narrative arc from an investigation into the cryptic message: “Beware the Golden Fang.”

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/0...inherent-vice/

Rob Instigator · 02.13.2019, 01:14 PM

Makes sense.

Shame the film was humorless....and I have sat through The Master!!!!

!@#$%! · 02.13.2019, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Makes sense.

Shame the film was humorless....and I have sat through The Master!!!!

was it humorless?

i remember laughing and laughing

maybe i dreamed it...

Severian · 02.13.2019, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Inherent Vice, the film (have not read the book) was like a very humorless mashup of Fletch and Big Lebowski. Fucking SLOG

It was a shit film. I’m a fan of the book, but the movie was garbage. It didn’t need to be, either. It had all the right parts. They just formed mush when put together. Fucking mush.

I turned it off ¾ of the way through and never started it again.

Dr. Eugene Felikson · 02.13.2019, 03:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

Oh great, she's in "the pose". Excuse me while I wank it for an hour.

Severian · 02.13.2019, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr. Eugene Felikson

Oh great, she's in "the pose". Excuse me while I wank it for an hour.

What’s the deal with your Moon Knight avatar?

02.12.2019, 10:04 PM	#5403
Dr. Eugene Felikson invito al cielo Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 7,571	I found a copy of Inherent Vice at the dollar store once. Had to buy it out of principle tbh. It sits on my shelf unread still I'm not very well read. It's a rather large chip on my shoulder. Still, I read more than most friends. Will keep an eye out for anything by Chandler, Bukowski, and Selby i can add to my personal library. I'm also going through a "literary fantasy" phase atm, Severian
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.12.2019, 10:24 PM	#5405
tw2113 expwy. to yr skull Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: South Dakota Posts: 2,147	Definitely slowed down all in all with my reading pace in 2019, though I also started with a larger item. Almost through The Shining, and technically started it at the tail end of 2018. Pretty sure by this time in 2018, I was already through The Hobbit and the first Lord of the Rings. Alas, this is also intentional __________________ Shake shake
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 08:42 AM	#5409
Rob Instigator invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: In the land of the Instigator Posts: 27,961	Inherent Vice was the worst fucking thing in the past 2 years I suffered my eyes and mind and ears to sit through before walking out after 30 minutes......and I sat through all 5 hours of Che'. __________________ RXTT's Intellectual Journey - my new blog where I talk about all the books I read.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 09:31 AM	#5410
ilduclo invito al cielo Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 3,305	Burroughs was great. In the pantheon with Melville and Faulkner.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 09:40 AM	#5412
Rob Instigator invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: In the land of the Instigator Posts: 27,961	Inherent Vice, the film (have not read the book) was like a very humorless mashup of Fletch and Big Lebowski. Fucking SLOG __________________ RXTT's Intellectual Journey - my new blog where I talk about all the books I read.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 09:42 AM	#5413
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,548	i saw it more as a fear and loathing thing sorta what is fletch? nm i’ll google.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 11:18 AM	#5414
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,548	haaa haaaa haaa! just read about fletch. a lot of similarities! pynchon plagiarized some of it maybe? hahaha. holy fuck.... he ripped off gregory mcdonald... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Mcdonald
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 11:38 AM	#5415
!@#$%! invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: mars attacks Posts: 42,548	(because i got obsessed now) The private eye form provides Pynchon with a vehicle for investigating the question of who lost, or stole, or killed, or brainwashed, or denatured the Sixties—never mind that no satisfying answer could conceivably be forthcoming. Pynchon seems to have ingested an entire archive of genre variations, ranging from the classic forms of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald to every subspecies of pastiche and burlesque: Roger L. Simon’s pot-smoking detective Moses Wine, Gregory MacDonald’s Fletch, the Coen Brothers’ Dude in The Big Lebowski, a hundred TV spinoffs. It’s not a question of homage but of throwing absolutely everything into the mix for processing, every stray particle of a commonly shared culture—every joke good or bad that you ever heard, every commercial you couldn’t escape from, every sex fantasy or tabloid crime story that inhabited your dreams, every tag line dredged up from ancient comic strips or pulp stories. This is a book that derives a good part of its narrative arc from an investigation into the cryptic message: “Beware the Golden Fang.” https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/0...inherent-vice/
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|

02.13.2019, 01:14 PM	#5416
Rob Instigator invito al cielo Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: In the land of the Instigator Posts: 27,961	Makes sense. Shame the film was humorless....and I have sat through The Master!!!! __________________ RXTT's Intellectual Journey - my new blog where I talk about all the books I read.
	\|QUOTE AND REPLY\|