version

Well-known member
“I long for the days of spunk. I want them back, the days when I was alive on the earth, rippling in the quick of my skin, heedless and real. I was dumb-muscled and angry and real. This is what I long for, the breach of peace, the days of disarray when I wanked in real streets and did things slap-bang and felt angry and ready all the time, a danger to others and a distant mystery to myself.”

-- Underworld, Jack Law.
 

version

Well-known member
"I found this insufferable for the same reason I find most Delillo insufferable, his language is just too incantatory and too bloatedly self-important to really take seriously. He wants to attach profundity and portentousness to everything in sight. Baseball, Nuclear War, J Edgar Hoover, Peter Brughel, Frank Sinatra... everything becomes a part of this giant, humorously ritualized mythos, which would be fine, but unfortunately fiction needs to have more to it than the atmosphere of a catholic mass in old latin to really function (or at least is does for me). Delillo wants so desperately to be taken seriously, but his vague invocations make it obvious that he doesn't really even know what exactly he wants to be serious about. It seems like he wants to be a prophet of dread, anxiety, paranoia, really of modernity itself. Maybe instead of trying to be important he should just try to be a good fiction writer."

-- Luke Davis.
 

luka

Well-known member
Jan 17, 2013Jeremy rated it did not like it
Shelves: american-fiction
I found this insufferable for the same reason I find most Delillo insufferable, his language is just too incantatory and too bloatedly self-important to really take seriously. He wants to attach profundity and portentousness to everything in sight. Baseball, Nuclear War, J Edgar Hoover, Peter Brughel, Frank Sinatra... everything becomes a part of this giant, humorously ritualized mythos, which would be fine, but unfortunately fiction needs to have more to it than the atmosphere of a catholic mass in old latin to really function (or at least is does for me). Delillo wants so desperately to be taken seriously, but his vague invocations make it obvious that he doesn't really even know what exactly he wants to be serious about. It seems like he wants to be a prophet of dread, anxiety, paranoia, really of modernity itself. Maybe instead of trying to be important he should just try to be a good fiction writer. (less)
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catalog

Well-known member
I nominate Corpsey to rewrite Underworld inserting "spunk" at least once into every sentence. It'll provide mission & purpose, his life's work. And at the end of the tunnel—tail.
Reminds me of fiona banners art, where she writes out in block capitals the plot of various war films. But then she did a porno film. Corpsey could move it on a bit

fiona-banner-62189a1d-7a06-4162-b85e-a86a3dea1c8-resize-750.jpeg
 

version

Well-known member
"The way I always think of DeLillo's work--and he has described almost exactly like this at some point--is that he is a modernist writing about postmodernism, and I think a big part of that is that he clearly is a theory nut who then filters that stuff through a more mystic/Jesuit/modernist lens."
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
is there a post modernist fiction writer that hasn't either claimed or been described as that exact sentiment? its like a prerequisite for the title.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I dont really have a way of fact checking myself here but I feel these guys are always rejecting the post modernist label and instead aligning themselves with their modernist influences. Gass' 'decayed modernism' comes to mind
 
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