ah yes. books. i'm sniffing around a volume of chekhov's stories.

Smoked some killer hash ten minutes ago.

But what the hell.


I understand, and I love the canon without apology.

All I mean is when lists like this are made, it all seems to be the same names.

Great names.

Names that should not be forgotten.

But names that perhaps I see a little too much. That's all. A bit of tedium on my part.

---

Really, I was just foolin' around with the charge of being politically incorrect.

Trust me, if I read one more story about some docile Asian women who somehow finds her true self in the course of the story, I'll pull my hair out.

---

Barnes' non-fiction meditation on death Nothing to be Afraid Of might tickle some pickles.

I defend it against those countless 'people's choice' lists done by the likes of GoodReads or Amazon, chock full of Ayn Rand, J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling, but its very existence goes against pretty much everything that this current generation of intellectuals and academics charged with maintaining it appears to stand for.

The BBC faces a similar problem right now. It's attempting to redo its Civillisation series that came out in the 60s. The original is seen as one of the great achievements in tv but critics have obviously pointed to its underlying prejudices, asumptions, etc. So how do you make a programme like that now without turning it into the equivalent of a GoodReads list, and at the same time avoiding the charges levelled at the original?

you just get some good contemporary historians involved.

writing is no longer the dominant means of cultural transmission, which funnels talent away from words alone to media such as tv/movies/games

documentary makers replacing non-fiction authors

etc.

we should probably be talking about tv writers. sad but true.

Ha! After all this talk of style, you end up with an author who is known to not have any sort of particular style. Flourishes of syntax and diction were among the last things of Anton's mind.



Well, move the goalposts in that direction and I'm loyal to your side. Graham Greene's most sensational entertainment still holds more literary weight than the truly awful Ayn Rand, etc.

But I suppose I get the BBC's dilemma: how much time is appropriate to spend on the Harry Potter books?




I guess. Maybe. But, you know, it's not like 100 years ago Henry James novels were flying off the shelves.

Indeed, I was shocked to look at the bestseller list of the 20th century. It was page after page of "Who the hell are these people?" Turns out they were massively famous people for a few years, then resigned to the oblivion of history because the books weren't very good. Meanwhile, names we take for granted as "great" were usually nowhere to be found. A few exceptions.



I was thinking last night how I've never finished a Rushdie novel. I've tried 3 or four, just can't get past page 50.

I wouldn't say he writes badly, just that I can't stand it.



I've been meaning to read WIDE SARGASSO SEA for awhile now, unless someone can recommend a superior Rhys.

Otherwise, sorry, I erected a border that prevents Mexican books from crossing into my bookshelf because they take away jobs from American books.

ha ha ha. wide sargasso sea is the most famous for "theory" people (colonization! hybridity! wimmins!) and they made some crap movie out of it too. but i'd recommend her paris novels. e.g., after leaving mr. mckenzie, or good morning midnight (she has 4 of those total).

xix century novels were published in newspapers!! and everyone who could read read them-- there was no tv news, no radio, just the newspapers. they published poems too. now we have rap: bitchez & money. i'm not saying anything mcluhan didn't say already though. but i'm sure henry james helped sell plenty newspapers.

chekhov: i don't read russian so i can't know shit about his style but a couple of little stories i just read were awesome and hilarious and i want to read more. he saw people. the translations seem decent enought, it's a volume edited by richard ford ('merica! right?)

i'd start going off on how lispector was a jew just like joo but i'm not fond of literary nationalisms.

http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/ New blog of mine where I review/summarize the books I read. Working in a Library rules. Just added 6 books, but have 25 reviewed and will be adding those soon.

this deserved another napoleon dynamite "luckee" picture but it would be repetitive

let me emphasize


i am very rarely jealous of people's "jobs," but in this case i am

congrats of finding the best possible way of feeding your addictions

ps- i laughed reading that andré breton wrote a boring book! i've never been a fan. i wish you had quoted some boring samples, for corroboration.

I cold have quoted anything from that Breton book and it would have bored you to death!!!!

i believe you. he was more ideologue than actual artist.

I always thinking getting kicked out of the surrealists by Breton was a badge of honor: Dali, Gysin off the top of my head

Reading is fun.

Right now I am reading this book that was "channeled" through an older retired British guy called A New Understanding of Life, by Ralph A. Steadman (NOT the artist I adore who drew for Hunter Thompson)




It is cool stuff, real mindfuck. It describes the nature of existance, and a million other things that people like Blatavsky and Gurdhieff and Swedenborg have tried to share but they couched their shit in esoteric lingo. this is plain spoken and very very in-depth.

just started Fire on the Mountain by Edward Abbey

just finished Northern Borders by Howard Frank Mosher, also a story told from a child's viewpoint about his grandfather, both old curmudgeons in both novels...

i am reading this rn (probably gonna finish before morning). it's very sad but let me quote symbols ...

i am not reading as much as i want to...

getting paid in the mid-october though.

watch out you guys, watch out.

right now i am re-reading the short stories of lorrie moore and lydia davis cause i am a poor lil girl

Lot of books

waiting to get a charles portis book called masters of atlantis

anyone read siri hustvedt? can someone point me to her best work? hoping i'll get into a class about her next semester and i want to prepare!

^ I read Summer Without Men. At less that 200 pgs, it might be a good way to be introduced.

There's an entire class about her?