Meant to say, one of the worst, most overwritten books I have EVER had to plod through. As pleased with itself as a Frank Zappa album.
yeah, agreed, but the good bits are GREAT. They're what's keeping me going.
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Meant to say, one of the worst, most overwritten books I have EVER had to plod through. As pleased with itself as a Frank Zappa album.
The Blurb said:In Argall, the newest novel in his Seven Dreams series, William T. Vollmann alternates between extravagant Elizabethan language and gritty realism in an attempt to dig beneath the legend surrounding Pocahontas, John Smith, and the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia-as well as the betrayals, disappointments, and atrocities behind it. With the same panoramic vision, mythic sensibility, and stylistic daring that he brought to the previous novels in the Seven Dreams series-hailed upon its inception as "the most important literary project of the '90s" (The Washington Post)-Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Native Americans and Europeans in the New World. In reconstructing America's past as tragedy, nightmare, and bloody spectacle, Vollmann does nothing less than reinvent the American novel
also reading
about 2/3s the way through. Its hilarious, boring, infuriating, and excellent, in equal measures.
I can totally see what all the fuss is about.
NO IT'S TERRIBLE. YOU ARE TERRIBLE.finally finished this last night. Its absolutely wonderful. It goes all 'East of Eden' in the last part where you feel it might start rambling on and on about generations and generations of the main family, but it ties everything up really nicely.
So yes, its overwritten in parts, a chore in parts, but ultimately I can totally see what all the fuss is about.
It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred.
A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right--with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself.
Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
An interesting story but way too drawn out and related by an absurdly hysterical drama queen of a narrator who is supposedly a fine, bright young star of the military. A bit of a drag, this one.
Agostino by Alberto Moravia.
Freud looms large over this coming of age tale of a young lad on holidays by the beach with his mom. Mom finds new boyfriend on the beach, young lad gets jealous and angsty. Not bad, a short east read.
The Visitor by Maeve Brennan.
Another short easy read, bitter people living joyless lives in Dublin, probably in the first half of the 20th century. Excellent.
The first two there are translations. I'm getting a bit confused with translations, I don't know what to make of them anymore. Some of the writing in the Zweig is so dull that I think it must be the translator's fault. I dunno.
Shame about the Zweig, I've been meaning to read him, but might put him on the back burner again.
Utter Madness.reading this. Serious nostalgiafest.
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