ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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I just finished Jacob de Zoet and was left mostly nonplussed. Reading it after Cloud Atlas which has such a strong central theme it is really odd to read a book that, while touching on many aspects of human life, doesn't really have a central message, and

just killes off a PoV character

halfway through. I'd say Cloud Atlas is conceptually and structurally more interesting, while De Zoet is more pleasant to read and doesn't have the 'too clever for its own good' problems that occasionally dogged Cloud Atlas.

 

I definitely enjoyed reading it, the writing is strong and the situation and characters are fascinating. I was just expecting a bit more after the praise in this thread I guess.

 

Also, his book is incredibly weird to read as a Dutch person because at a certain point there are people translating Dutch into English in English. Also, Mitchell actually makes some puns/connections in the translation scenes which just plain wouldn't be possible in Dutch. I know the book has been translated into Dutch, I'm actually tempted to track down a copy to compare/contrast those passages to see what the translator did with it.

 

 

 


I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami today since I enjoyed one of his short story collections quite a bit. 

I for the life of me cannot enjoy Murakami's work. He's just too much of a show-off with his 'look how erudite I am' stuff, and a lot of it just seems to lack a point to me. Kafka on the Shore was especially egregious in this sense.

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It's a shame you didn't get more enjoyment out of Jacob DeZoet. It's true that it doesn't deal in the same grand themes that Cloud Atlas touches on, but I appreciated the kind of small-scale, detailed depiction it gives. If you're looking for more Mitchell to read, I'd try Ghostwritten, it's his first novel and is much more similar in scope to Cloud Atlas (albeit less deftly handled). The Dutch to English to English translation is yet another example of how insane the idea of translating a book can get, and I'd be interested to know how the Dutch-translation handles the deficiencies in the English version.

 

For those of you interested in literary gossip: Hilary Mantel, the author of April's (?) book club pick Wolf Hall, is getting a lot of flack from the British press for supposedly criticizing Kate Middleton in a speech she gave for the London Review of Books. You can read the text of the speech here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies Mantel spends most of the speech talking about her research into Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII and only devotes a few sentences to Middleton (where she is very clearly not criticizing her, but criticizing the media's obsession with her physical appearance), but no media outlet has ever turned down the chance to buildup a fight between two woman--whether it be real or imagined. Even though this whole thing is dumb, it's apparently boosting Mantel's sales in the UK, so this whole imbroglio isn't completely useless.

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It's a shame you didn't get more enjoyment out of Jacob DeZoet.

Oh, I got more than my share of enjoyment from it, I thought it was a great read. It's just that I entered it with incorrect expectations and exited it feeling that I had missed something. But it definitely was an excellent read, and it made me reflect a lot on things like the proper exercise of power in society, feminism, and growing old and children. So well worth it.

 

e: what a lovely speech you linked there by the way, thanks. It made me excited to read Wolf Hall.

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I for the life of me cannot enjoy Murakami's work. He's just too much of a show-off with his 'look how erudite I am' stuff, and a lot of it just seems to lack a point to me. Kafka on the Shore was especially egregious in this sense.

 

I haven't opened it yet, so I can't really say if I like it one way or the other. From what I understand he intentionally phased out a lot of his pop culture references in this book which seemed to be one thing people really disliked about Murakami. I'm generally pretty easy to please though.

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Just started The Recognitions by William Gaddis. Every time I start to read it, all I want to do is that 'fake staircase behind the couch' move and then just sit on the floor and try not to die.

 

It's an incredible book, but goddamn. I can see why David Foster Wallace acknowledge it so much, but it makes Infinite Jest look so simple and digestible. 

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I finished Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel today.

I'm a fan of historical fiction, the recreation of Tudor England and the politics is really interesting.

It's good, with reservations. I'm doing some reading up about it now, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only person to have problems with Mantel's style and use of pronouns. It's written in third person present tense but she generally refers to Cromwell as 'he' often without distinguishing between him and other men in the book - also referred to as 'he' - making it difficult sometimes to tell who's saying what.

Combined with all the politics, it makes the book hard going at times. Ultimately I enjoyed it, so I'm glad I persevered.

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I finished Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel today.

I'm a fan of historical fiction, the recreation of Tudor England and the politics is really interesting.

It's good, with reservations. I'm doing some reading up about it now, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only person to have problems with Mantel's style and use of pronouns. It's written in third person present tense but she generally refers to Cromwell as 'he' often without distinguishing between him and other men in the book - also referred to as 'he' - making it difficult sometimes to tell who's saying what.

Combined with all the politics, it makes the book hard going at times. Ultimately I enjoyed it, so I'm glad I persevered.

The pronoun usage in Wolf Hall was something that I also struggled with when I initially started reading, sometimes it was difficult to immediately discern who exactly was speaking. Mantel fixes this in the sequel, because Bring up the Bodies is much clearer with its pronouns.

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I loved Mantel's usage of pronouns--I didn't consider it a flaw or weakness. It forced really close reading and lent an aura of soft omniscience to Cromwell that I thought worked well.

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I agree that it's not a weakness, but I do think Mantel applied it better in the second book than she did in the first.

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I loved Mantel's usage of pronouns--I didn't consider it a flaw or weakness. It forced really close reading and lent an aura of soft omniscience to Cromwell that I thought worked well.

 

Yeah, there's this vague sense that she's "he" to refer to Cromwell the same way she'd use "I" if the book was first-person. So not only is there an omniscience, like you said, that Cromwell always seems to be vaguely present, but there's an intimacy in its use, because there's no urgency in the text to signpost the viewpoint character's presence in a scene. Once I figured it out and got past my initial distaste over it being different, I've grown quite fond of it.

 

I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami today since I enjoyed one of his short story collections quite a bit. 

 

I keep having other media tell me I need to read Murakami. I've been a big fan of the anime & manga Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, the creator of which references and parodies Murakami, with character names like Fuura Kafuka, almost as much as he does Dazai Osamu and Japanese parliamentary corruption. Then last week I watched Haibane Renmei and loved it, only to discover it's a loose but thorough adaptation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Would the latter title be a good starting point, does anyone think?

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I just finished Ham on Rye, and I thought it was an affecting story of abuse and loneliness. However, the prose was impotent and failed to fully carry the weight of Bukowski's themes. I don't mind Charles Bukowski particularly, but people who try to write like Charles Bukowski are often awful.

 

Also, I reread The Road, and that is still an incredibly powerful novel. However, even when reading it this second time, the end still feels like a total punk-out, and remains an annoying blemish on an otherwise phenomenal work.

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I just finished Ham on Rye, and I thought it was an affecting story of abuse and loneliness. However, the prose was impotent and failed to fully carry the weight of Bukowski's themes. I don't mind Charles Bukowski particularly, but people who try to write like Charles Bukowski are often awful.

 

Also, I reread The Road, and that is still an incredibly powerful novel. However, even when reading it this second time, the end still feels like a total punk-out, and remains an annoying blemish on an otherwise phenomenal work.

 

Wow, I couldn't disagree more. The ending of The Road was perfect; exactly what it needed to be for the type of story McCarthy was trying to tell.

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Wow, I couldn't disagree more. The ending of The Road was perfect; exactly what it needed to be for the type of story McCarthy was trying to tell.

I thought the boy finding the man was too optimistic. Everything that the book had been driving at from page one is basically undone in the last few pages. The father's struggle, knowing that his immanent death will mean no one to look after his son, was what made that book so powerful. We know the son has no chance, his father knows this, but his love for his son means he refuses this reality, and he tries as much as he can to avoid the inevitable. When the father dies, his son will die, and that's what keeps him going. This is a world in which everyone is putting off the inevitable. To have a pseudo-family come in at the last second and save the boy feels really out of step with the rest of the novel. This is world without second chances, it is as harsh as a environment that lacks any sort of forgiveness or charity. To have somebody come in and replace the father seems to break the laws of the novel. Ending on an optimistic note doesn't sit right with me.

 

I understand that The Road is ultimately about human goodness, as opposed to the Blood Meridian which was about human evil, but I always thought the goodness portrayed was out of sentiment and naivety. The son wants to believe in good, and be good, because he cannot comprehend his surroundings without the solace of the 'good guys'. The 'good guys', as the boy puts them, are only a general idea to counterbalance the atrocities around the father and son. It bugs me that actual good guys show up like guardian angels in the last 5 pages of book.

 

If you have time and the inclination, I would love to hear why you liked the ending, particularly because I want to love this book without any reservation.

.

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Did you mean to type immanent there? It could fit but probably not. It would be interesting if it was on purpose.

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I thought the boy finding the man was too optimistic. Everything that the book had been driving at from page one is basically undone in the last few pages. The father's struggle, knowing that his immanent death will mean no one to look after his son, was what made that book so powerful. We know the son has no chance, his father knows this, but his love for his son means he refuses this reality, and he tries as much as he can to avoid the inevitable. When the father dies, his son will die, and that's what keeps him going. This is a world in which everyone is putting off the inevitable. To have a pseudo-family come in at the last second and save the boy feels really out of step with the rest of the novel. This is world without second chances, it is as harsh as a environment that lacks any sort of forgiveness or charity. To have somebody come in and replace the father seems to break the laws of the novel. Ending on an optimistic note doesn't sit right with me.

 

I understand that The Road is ultimately about human goodness, as opposed to the Blood Meridian which was about human evil, but I always thought the goodness portrayed was out of sentiment and naivety. The son wants to believe in good, and be good, because he cannot comprehend his surroundings without the solace of the 'good guys'. The 'good guys', as the boy puts them, are only a general idea to counterbalance the atrocities around the father and son. It bugs me that actual good guys show up like guardian angels in the last 5 pages of book.

 

If you have time and the inclination, I would love to hear why you liked the ending, particularly because I want to love this book without any reservation.

.

For me, The Road was all about the relationship between a father and his son, and the natural fear that a parent feels, especially an older parent (for context, McCarthy has a very young son), knowing that at some point you will die and your child will be expected to continue life without you. The Road takes that very real fear and puts it into an extreme environment, but that's still the core of the story: a father trying to protect his son from the harsh realities of the world and ultimately realizing that no matter how desperately you want to keep your child safe, you will inevitably fail because you will die.

 

I don't really read the ending as optimistic, but more of a resignation to the realities of the world. The boy will carry 'the flame' that his father passed down to him, just like all of us will continue to carry the lessons our parents passed down long after they are dead. It's a very harsh lesson to accept, for both parents and their children, which is why I think the ending tonally fits with the rest of the book.

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See, I really like your reading, but I don't quite think it redeems the novel. The problem is, at a certain point, we aren't the only thing keeping our children alive. A parent, usually, does not die with the knowledge that their death means that their child will almost immediately perish. As the book sets up the world, there should have been no chance that the son could have had the chance to use the knowledge of his father. His father was his life support, the world and its few inhabitants are out to get him, he was doomed. The father knew this, he tried not to think about it. He would constantly tell himself off for contemplating how his son will die. The book is about the irrationality of love. He knew that surviving was futile, but he had to try. But more importantly, unlike the world we live in, when the father dies, he does so expecting his son to die soon after.

 

The lessons you describe, to me, don't hold under the weight of the text's setting. I feel the death of the father in this text is very different to the death of a parent in our world.

 

Unless you subscribe to the idea that the novel is set in a post-rapture world, because the 'good guys' motif takes a whole new meaning, as does the white knight savior at the end.

 

Also, to be clear, I loved the book. Blood Meridian is still my favourite McCarthy novel, but The Road is a close second. I just thought the end was a cop-out.

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Kind of tangential but I just want to say how lovely it is to have/read such pleasant discourse about books on a vidyagame forum.

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In the run up to the PBS documentary about Philip Roth's writing career, NY Mag polled 30 (mostly male) authors on their opinion of Roth. There were some amazing responses (all handily tabulated in chart form) http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/philip-roth-literati-poll.html

 

This was my favorite quote, on whether or not Roth is a misogynist or if his writing is sexist: "Did Roth hate women? What does that mean? If you hated women, why would you spend all your time thinking about fucking them?..." Keith Gessen

 

Personally, I feel the same way about Roth as I feel about Updike or Mailer: I admire their writing talent, but do not really enjoy the actual writing. Especially in the case of Roth--whose work I've read more of than Updike/Mailer--he clearly is a very gifted, intelligent human being, but his writing and much of the gender relations it contains was very much limited by the society he grew up in. He's relevant for his place in American literary history, but that doesn't mean I actually like what he's written.

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As someone who has read a bit of Philip Roth, and is currently reading Sabbath's Theater  I can say without any hesitation that every criticism against the guy is pretty spot on. He is the centerpiece for the 'great male narcissist' school of authors, and if you are looking for an author that tries to empathize with characters directly out of his focused world view, you are looking at the wrong guy. Often (but not without exceptions), women are not portrayed fairly, everyone is wrong but the protagonist (i.e. Roth), and his humor is often marred by sentiment. This, from the chart you linked, sums it up well:

 

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However, he is really good at his craft. His prose is phenomenal, each sentences flows neatly into the next-  his word choice is extensive and exact. More importantly, what I love about his writing is that every character is an exploration in the the mystery and humility of relationships. Not only does each character constantly inaccurately assess each other, but also themselves. The management of personalities, through lying, rationalizations and privacy, is what makes Roth's work so compelling. He sums it up so perfectly in American Pastoral:

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.

 

I would argue that to criticize Sabbath's Theater as being depraved is exactly the point. It's the exploration of the depraved. It is going to go to places you aren't comfortable. It is a book that tries to test you in a very particular way, to feel the worst in people and the reverberations of their selfishness. I agree with Jonathan Franzen, in that I feel that it is a very brave book.

 

P.S. He is probably a jerk and he doesn't try very hard to disguise this in his works.

 

P.S. I hate that James Franco is listed in this. I've read your work, I've seen your art, you seem like a swell guy, but acting is your craft and you might want to stick to that.

 

P.P.S. Also, Alice Munroe is the greatest living writer. Sorry, dudes.

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I reading the complete works of Flann O Brien. Read At-Swim-Two-Birds and the 3rd poilceman and I am currently on the poor mouth which is a pretty spot on piss take/satire of myths about this country that used to be more popular before we got rich. This guy was a genius of messing with what you expect from a story with At-Swim and 3rd. I remember some saying once that the best artists are those who write something and after you read you just sit there wondering what was going through their mind.

 

I prefer the 3rd policeman to At-Swin mostly cause it packs so many weird ideas (human-bicycle hybrids being the best, De Selby and his weird ideas and all the stuff about the people writing about De Selby) although At-Swim idea of having characters torturing their author for enslaving them is really interesting and possibly where Grant Morrison picked up the idea to be used in Doom Patrol. The 3rd policeman reminds me of Lovecraft in parts with the narrartor feeling this great unexplained horror for reasons they don't understand. Also how can I not like a novel that has a character complaining about the County Council.

 

It does make me wonder what is up with this country and writers who like messing with expectations with novels with Joyce, O Brien and Sterne(Tristan Shandy).

 

Still making my way through Moby Dick, still enjoying it and learning all about whaling on the 1800's which is more interesting then I thought it would be. Also reading  Dreams of the Red chamber which is one of the 4 classics of Chinese Lit -  all the names are kinda intimidating but  I am working my though the book although from what I have read I am still have been introduced to the main characters.

 

Started Barbarossa derailed volume 1 by David Glantz who is extensively quoted on quarter to three when even they look at Eastern front games cause it was $3 on kindle this week. This books covers 4 months but has about as many pages as other books I have read covering the whole of the Eastern front from Barbarossa to Berlin.

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Then last week I watched Haibane Renmei and loved it, only to discover it's a loose but thorough adaptation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Would the latter title be a good starting point, does anyone think?

Hard-Boiled is a great book, in my opinion, but I'm not sure if it's a great starter since it's also his most "sci-fi" book (if only loosely), and plot-driven so it might give you the wrong idea of his style.  I'd suggest reading it if you're interested though.  If you like it, Wild Sheep Chase, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Dance, Dance, Dance are the most similar in style.  Well, technically 1Q84 might be the most similar, but personally that book fell flat for me.

edit: I suck at quoting

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