what are you reading now?

[luka]

He's my favourite political thinker too.

 

[version]

He once described himself as a "Tory mystic".

 

[luka]

I can't endorse his values but it's a very accurate picture of how the world works. I always dreamed of him doing an Iran Contra book and for years assumed he would as a matter of course. Then I saw an interview where someone finally had the wit to ask him and he said he couldn't cos he respected Reagan too much.

That is artistic cowardice and that retreat cursed his career. He's awful now.

 

[version]

What do you make of all the slurs in the narration? I get it coming from the characters and the narrator does seem to inhabit the same world, but it strikes me as really pushing it. It wouldn't hamper the books to leave it out and, whichever way you slice it, he's using racist, sexist, homophobic etc terms without the "excuse" of writing in a period where he might not be fully aware of the problem with using them.

 

[luka]

It makes the books awkward to read on public transport

 

[luka]

Even today everyone uses homophobic and sexist slurs every day although racial slurs are less common.

 

[borzoi]

It makes the books awkward to read on public transport

i read american tabloid on the nyc subway and had to keep turning it this way and that to avoid prying eyes. one day some wild-eyed guy came up to me and went on and on about how much he loved pete bondurant. very fitting experience.

 

[borzoi]

if i could finance anything in hollywood it would be a 6 season huge budget hbo show of all the LA->Underworld USA books.

 

[Corpsey]

I didn't think much of The Black Dahlia, is that one of his best?

 

[luka]

I didn't think much of The Black Dahlia, is that one of his best?

No.

 

[luka]

He hasn't quite found his style yet. It clicks into place a bit later. You wouldn't like it though, it's too intellectual, you have to be really clever to understand it,

 

[Mr. Tea]

I've returned to A Glastonbury Romance after taking a break to read a bunch of non-fiction I got for my birthday recently. It's just struck me that the rich industrialist, Philip Crow, who wants to turn Wookey Hole into a tin mine, is actually Hades, in his guise as Plouton, the god not only of the underworld but also of wealth, and specifically underground mineral wealth. Because of course the married woman he's having an affair with, whom he periodically 'abducts' from her husband, is called Persephone.

 

[luka]

Very good work Tea. I didn't twig.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Very good work Tea. I didn't twig.

I WIN! I WIN! I SPOTTED AN ALLEGORY THAT LUKA DIDN'T! HURRAH FOR ME!!!

 

[luka]

I'm not very good at that. You're much better,

 

[version]

Can't believe you're reading that rural rubbish instead of finishing Gravity's Rainbow.

 

[luka]

He's read GR before

 

[version]

I know, but he was rereading it then stopped to read this Michael Eavis memoir you keep touting.

 

[borzoi]

i'm reading crime and punishment. i thought it would be all stodgy and moralistic but it's really intense and exciting. funny too.

 

[linebaugh]

I started The Brothers Karamzov awhile ago but dropped it, wasn't exactly what I was in the mood for. I have trouble with books that use an intentionally bad prose style a la catcher in the rye. Is Crime and Punishment different in that way?