baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
That's meant to be phenomenal.
I saw him being interviewed by Kirsty Wark the other day about his daily routine. Quite touching, really.
what are you reading now?
That's meant to be phenomenal.
I saw him being interviewed by Kirsty Wark the other day about his daily routine. Quite touching, really.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Just (sort of accidentally 'cause it got packed in my bag by mistake instead of going back to the owner) read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by DWF - started pretty funny but I found the over-mannered and over-analysed style repetitive and annoying by the end - I know it's a joke that it's like that and it's entirely in keeping with the characters in the book and it deliberately anticipates that criticism and... well it still had me reading the last few chapters super quick so I could start on something else.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
I just read 'Playing the Enemy'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/books/review/Keller-t.html
which is a book about how Nelson Mandela united South Africa through the Rugby World Cup. The review explains it better than I did. It's a real tear-jerker, and no surprise that there's a film of it coming. I was in floods of tears - joy tears - at a few points. It explains South Africa really well as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/books/review/Keller-t.html
which is a book about how Nelson Mandela united South Africa through the Rugby World Cup. The review explains it better than I did. It's a real tear-jerker, and no surprise that there's a film of it coming. I was in floods of tears - joy tears - at a few points. It explains South Africa really well as well.
Ness Rowlah
Norwegian Wood
Diana Athill, "Somewhere towards the end"
Finished the second Alan Warner book, thought it was a bit too mythical/quasi-biblical and it did not really grip me like Morvern Callar did.
Now on to Diana Athill, "Somewhere towards the end" - I rarely read memoirs but even the late Simon Gray liked this one. All the reviews seems to mention clarity and judging by the two chapters read so far it seems like an effortless lesson in how to write fluent clear prose (with humour, seriousness and intelligence).
Think I will enjoy this one (if nothing else for a lesson in how to write, even negative reviews on Amazon praises the writing itself, if not the content).
Finished the second Alan Warner book, thought it was a bit too mythical/quasi-biblical and it did not really grip me like Morvern Callar did.
Now on to Diana Athill, "Somewhere towards the end" - I rarely read memoirs but even the late Simon Gray liked this one. All the reviews seems to mention clarity and judging by the two chapters read so far it seems like an effortless lesson in how to write fluent clear prose (with humour, seriousness and intelligence).
Think I will enjoy this one (if nothing else for a lesson in how to write, even negative reviews on Amazon praises the writing itself, if not the content).
I'm always finishing some trashy sci-fi. The latest, some short stories by Cordwainer Smith. Better than many of his era (early 1960s)--and it is nice that he admits to a lack of originality, stealing his plots from Ali Baba, Joan of Arc, Dante...
Also on the desk:
Matthew Arnold - Essays on Life and Literature. i will say, it is absolutely refreshing to read Arnold's essays on literary criticism--clear writing and a definite project. when I first read Culture and Anarchy and The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, i had been reading post-structural criticism for several years and Arnold seemed naive. reading more of him now (and rereading The Function...), i am impressed by the continued relevance of the topics discussed. over a century later and critics are still babbling about the same old tripe.
Edmund Leach (ed) - The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism
Contains Levi-Strauss' analysis of a myth recorded by Franz Boaz, followed by essays refining structural anthropology or rejecting it. Edmund Leach is one of the few non-structuralists with an understanding of Levi-Strauss; I highly recommend people turn to Leach's writings instead of Derrida or (god forbid) Judith Butler for their criticism of Levi-Strauss. Leach collects quality essays; there are references to the anthropological tradition (Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown), the sociological tradition (Durkheim and Mauss), and the philosophical tradition (from Hegel to Ricoeur). Got it at a thrift store awhile back, finally broke it out with other works by Levi-Strauss after hearing about his death.
...and, like a number of others, a fat stack of papers/pdfs...
Also on the desk:
Matthew Arnold - Essays on Life and Literature. i will say, it is absolutely refreshing to read Arnold's essays on literary criticism--clear writing and a definite project. when I first read Culture and Anarchy and The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, i had been reading post-structural criticism for several years and Arnold seemed naive. reading more of him now (and rereading The Function...), i am impressed by the continued relevance of the topics discussed. over a century later and critics are still babbling about the same old tripe.
Edmund Leach (ed) - The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism
Contains Levi-Strauss' analysis of a myth recorded by Franz Boaz, followed by essays refining structural anthropology or rejecting it. Edmund Leach is one of the few non-structuralists with an understanding of Levi-Strauss; I highly recommend people turn to Leach's writings instead of Derrida or (god forbid) Judith Butler for their criticism of Levi-Strauss. Leach collects quality essays; there are references to the anthropological tradition (Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown), the sociological tradition (Durkheim and Mauss), and the philosophical tradition (from Hegel to Ricoeur). Got it at a thrift store awhile back, finally broke it out with other works by Levi-Strauss after hearing about his death.
...and, like a number of others, a fat stack of papers/pdfs...
don_quixote
Trent End
what are the david peace japanese books like?
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Ubik by Philip K Dick, halfway through.
Really enjoying it but sometimes, by god, he's such a terrible writer. He veers between brilliance and outright clunkiness on virtually every page.
I found this with the other two or three PKD books ive read too. Can't think of a writer quite like him in this respect, just the sheer range of quality levels within one book.
Really enjoying it but sometimes, by god, he's such a terrible writer. He veers between brilliance and outright clunkiness on virtually every page.
I found this with the other two or three PKD books ive read too. Can't think of a writer quite like him in this respect, just the sheer range of quality levels within one book.
i've read a lot of dick--five anthologies of short stories and at least ten novels, mainly earlier stuff.
i'll agree with you on his clunkiness. i think part of it can be explained as simply his progression as a writer. if you want some real clunkers, try "The Defenders" or Vulcan's Hammer, both from the mid-50s. Many of the ideas Dick uses in short stories take much more polished forms in his novels. I think the novel The Penultimate Truth came out of "The Defenders", but that really isn't all that polished or brilliant. Certainly came out better than the story.
there are several works that describe plastic dolls and accessories that adults waste all their time on. Dick gets a lot of mileage out of this device. In one story the dolls are used for escapism on colony planets, in another the dolls become used in competitions between survivors of a horrific war--the adults spend all their time making dolls and accesories in an attempt to recapture the homeworld/the past while the children can't understand the adults' obsession with dolls. i would swear that in both a story and a novel, he describes people linking up to their "Perky Pat" dolls, having marital affairs in a little drug/tech-induced virtual world and such....In The 3 Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, the whole Perky Pat plot is pretty ominous and much darker than the weird diversion/ritual it was in the post-nuclear war short story.
To survive, Dick was pressed to publish, especially short stories for the science fiction magaize market. the longer he spent with some ideas, they usually evolved. on at least one occasion, he threw a bunch of shit from short stories into a novel and it turned out the worse for it (Deus Irae, written with Roger Zelazny).
That only explains why there is more brilliance in later novels, it does not explain why a single novel will have trashy and great passages side by side. my answer to this: drugs. he was on speed for all his novels before 1970 and A Scanner Darkly in the late 70s was his first book written while sober (makes sense when you read the author's note at the end). i think i read that he did not read The 3 Stigmata after writing it because the writing terrified him--even mentions some bizarre halucination (stephen king has admitted to not reading or even remembering some of his writings because of drug use).
stanislaw lem said dick was the only american sf author writing anything worthwhile. philip k dick said that stanislaw lem was not a real author, but a conglomerate of soviet authors disseminating communist propaganda in the form of science fiction.
anyhow, enjoy ubik. check out three stigmata for something dark; the zap gun for something funny; man in the high castle for something good.
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Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Good post, cheers.
Yeah this makes sense. He was an extremely paranoid man wasn't he? 3 Stigmata is next on my list I think.
matt b
Indexing all opinion
very good.
he goes a bit mental at the end of the second one, but that didn't dim my enjoyment too much
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
i read 1977 recently. nasty, dirty, ugly, godless...it was great.
The black mamba... the arab bumming barges... good clean fun.
The third part of the trilogy is to be their trip to the moon, so remains unwritten.
i'm sorry to keep droning about philip dick...the last i swear.
i'd certainly say he was paranoid benny. here is a letter he wrote to the FBI in the 70s, warning them about dangerous Marxists like Stanislaw Lem's western agent and Frederic Jameson:
http://www.lem.pl/english/faq#P.K.Dick
A master of rhetoric that drug-addled PKD:
i'd certainly say he was paranoid benny. here is a letter he wrote to the FBI in the 70s, warning them about dangerous Marxists like Stanislaw Lem's western agent and Frederic Jameson:
http://www.lem.pl/english/faq#P.K.Dick
A master of rhetoric that drug-addled PKD:
matt b
Indexing all opinion
Without a doubt. Impressive workrate too.
Has anyone heard owt about David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) recently? I want another book by him to read.
