Search results for query: *

Hmmm, I read Seymour: An Introduction last year because it was the only one of the Glass ones I hadn't read [I read the others when I was in my early 20s, and uh]. Hard writer to read when you're a bit older, and you develop a sense of humour as regards the world. Ahem. It's all very precious -...

Great film. Holy shit. Emotionally, temporally complex stuff and not a single wasted shot. Aesthetic to the hilt. Holy cow, good mother. Funny too, a lot of painful laughs. The Danish woman is phenomenal. Cannot believe she is Danish. It turned me on but I didn't get an erection - what does that...

Wait a New York Minute! Who says I like Joyce? I've read two chapters of Ulysses, and all of Dubliners. That's it. I would like to read more Ulysses though. The Barthelme quote is merely an attitude that I agree with - i.e we may read these things, we may not read these things, we may try to...

I'm all over the place. I have a hungering for William Faulkner at the minute. Give me ten years and if I'm still alive I'll give The Tunnel ago. Jr by Gaddis is my big book for this year. Last big book was Gravity's Rainbow which remains unfinished but I aim to get back to it. Shit like...

I just died a little reading these two quotes. Love this book. Love his rage as a writer. Closest thing to him in formal dazzle would be the American poet John Ashbery. That is a lovely looking edition. As are all NYBR editions. I have the Dalkey one myself - also lovely. His essay on Robert...

Yeah, it's a strange one. My feelings exactly. I had read The Hunters (his first, I think) before which is an awesome, beautifully written book about masculinity, competition and failure. (I'll save you a plot synopsis because it'll sound like Top Gun). Been looking for a secondhand copy of...

Just flew through The Rotter's Club by Jonathan Coe. It's an engrossing historical novel that takes in England in the 1970s. Some of the prose is horrid, though the characters really drew me in. Questionable structure, but better than a straight narrative. Now back, to Proust...

White Noise is a good starting point. It's more comic or conspicuously humane than his normal style... I read Endzone first, then Americana - I think - and maybe part of why I rate them so highly. Endzone is shorter and better controlled. Americana kind of gets away from itself (memory does not...

Well, he's quit making films now. Maybe it was your walk out that did it.

Satantango bloke? Wow, dissing Bela Tarr. I haven't seen that one. But in general I like his more recent stuff like Werckmeister Harmonies as opposed to the almost unbearably oppressive Damnation. Satantango is one of the few film experiences that everyone should see. There's a really neat...

Wait, your dad called you by your thumped name? Forty Stories is meant to be far weaker than Sixty Stories - Raymond Carver's review savaged it. Carver seemed to suggest it reads like a pastiche of Barthelme, which seems like a strange comment. I haven't read it though. Just past the half-way...

Just finished Pnin by Nabokov. Hmmm, pretty enjoyable, over-reaching at times expressively; ultimately, a little quaint. I can see the influence on Updike (who I much prefer), expressional wise. A little awkward at times, but much glorious poetics to bask in. Will give Laughter in the Dark a...

Finished The Moviegoer. A beguiling, unresolved, frequently intoxicating read. Some of the most beautiful descriptive prose I've read in a while. I reckon I will have to return to this at a later stage. Definitely has a powerful trance-like quality that you get with "Southern" literature. Also...

Just started The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. I have a really good feeling about this, despite my initial unsure reaction of its blatant Camus/The Outsider tonal influence.

That's pretty good. It's quite sobering. Bummer classic. I just finished The Men's Club by Leonard Michaels. The best American novel I've read lately. Nicely absurdist, giddily nihilistic, yet bitterly real. I don't think there was a bad sentence in it. Before that I read Fight Club for...

Fucking love those stories. So damn perfect. Far more consistency than Cheever. Anyway I'm almost finished reading Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton for college. Boozy, desperate, awkward. Odd juts of humour and a truly despicable femme fatale. Handles theme of madness originally within the...

I think I've got more reading done in the Christmas period than ever before. Rabbit is Rich by John Updike - This might be the best of the Rabbit novels. They're all flawed though they all have something to offer. He really punches out the interior and you can almost taste it. Once again...

I read that during the summer. Some of it was really intrigueing (particularly the "creation" of David Ferrie) and some of it really rankled me (probably any parts involving Oswald's mother). Recommendations wise: End Zone is the most consistent, followed by Americana. White Noise loses...

Just started Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - so far, so what? I hope things start to deepen. I finished The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers yesterday - beautifully written book, even if the context is quite dated. I've put on hold The Rest is Noise for the time being - there's no...

William Styron, I thought? Anyway, I finished The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick which is the next best one of his I have read after Do Androids Dream.... Completely uneven (the narrative and characterization are all over the shop, however this is probably to its...