Latest Gene Wolfe book you read (1-10 scale)

[Mr. Budd]

On the last chapter of Proust now.

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

A stunning work of compiled thought. I'm not sure I know any historical figure better than Proust because nobody has so exhaustively expressed himself. Although I wonder what I would feel after reading Darger's entire manuscripts which dwarf Proust in size totalling 30,000 compiled pages. I will read it again later when my children are old enough to read it with me. I would not suggest this book to anyone that bores easy or isn't already reading at a fairly high level - it's not easy at all - but nowhere near as complex as some Ezra Pound or even Krasnahorkai. "How Proust Can Change Your Life" was the best secondary read - as it really highlights the most relevant parts of the book without the academic suffocation of Shattuck's tome. Prior to Proust - you should read Benjamin essay on Proust and his piece on Baudelaire "The Task of the Translator". Some Nerval probably wouldn't hurt either.

Instead of being exhausted - I am really motivated by this book to keep reading and have a long list ready to tackle next thanks to Umesh and others. I have a lot to read before Satantango hits next spring. I'm looking forward to Irimias and Petrina blowing Gilberte and Albertine out of my mind for a while.

I do have one significant problem with Proust - why is the Marcel of the Search heterosexual and so appaled those that are not? It seems like a cop-out but I'm certain the answers lies on the social acceptance of the time.

[caldwell.the.great]

Someone might have brought this up already. I didn't search for it, but a repost couldn't hurt too much, right?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/books ... l?_r=2&hpw

POINT REYES STATION, Calif. — Half a century later, Anne R. Dick still remembers the sunny October day she met a clean-shaven 29-year-old Berkeley exile who had just moved to this rural enclave in west Marin County, thick with eucalyptus trees and brooding owls.

The science-fiction novelist Philip K. Dick was standing with his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, rocking on his heels, and gazing at the floor of his house. In his flannel shirt and heavy army boots, he looked, she writes in a new book about him, “graceful and attractive — like someone wearing a disguise.”

She had gone that day in 1958 to introduce herself to Dick, her neighbor, who had moved to west Marin with his second wife, Kleo. Less than a year later, he and his wife split. And Anne Rubenstein, as she was then called, a skinny blond widow, and Dick, a struggling writer, were married. Five years later, they too divorced. In the meantime they had a daughter, and Ms. Dick ran a jewelry business; Dick grew a beard and wrote some of the novels that would eventually get him hailed as a West Coast Calvino or Borges. (The Library of America began issuing his novels in 2007.) Ms. Dick, now 83, would spend the ensuing years seeking the man behind the disguise.

That inquiry is the subject of “The Search for Philip K. Dick,” a biography dressed like a memoir, which was published this month by the San Francisco press Tachyon.

more in the link

[riley-o]

kafka - the trial 9/10

[Fuck...I'm Dave]

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 8/10

just got The Girl Who Played With Fire from my parents, going to start it tomorrow.

[ibn Horowitz]

Travels with my Aunt - Graham Greene - 7/10
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion - 8/10
this one was a bummer

[father of lies]

Camus - The Plague - 9.5

I bet this was more of a bummer than Play It As It Lays.

[Mr. Budd]

Proust done. 10/10 Exhaustive in every detail.

[ibn Horowitz]

Camus - The Plague - 9.5

I bet this was more of a bummer than Play It As It Lays.

probably not. at least that guy was happy counting his peas. at least there was one isolated instance of happiness in the plague

[father of lies]

Fair enough. Rieux and Tarrou had their little male bonding moment, too. That's like five happy pages!

[Frickin' Slayer]

The Night Stalker - about richard ramirez (a february pisces) written by phillip carlo
10/10
i read about the first 400 pages,and then skipped to the end,and read the epilogue. toward the middle of the book there was like 300 pages of describing his trial, and what hapened n court,wich wuz very tedious and overly detailed, so i skipped that part. great book though overall, n e of u guys ever read it?

[Bored001]

The Night Stalker - about richard ramirez (a february pisces) written by phillip carlo
10/10
i read about the first 400 pages,and then skipped to the end,and read the epilogue. toward the middle of the book there was like 300 pages of describing his trial, and what hapened n court,wich wuz very tedious and overly detailed. great book though overall, n e of u guys ever read it?

Yeah, I read it a number of months ago...you're right, way too much detail in there. But it was very interesting, I liked it.

I read all of Philip Carlo's "killer" books, one after another. I was kind of in a weird place after that for a few weeks.

[Mr. Budd]

Jarry's Love and Flaubert's Temptation. Perfect synthesis. Foucault's intro is perfection.

Thanks Umesh so much.

[Bored001]

[neckbeard]

rereading Time Enough For Love off and one. just stopping in to give the tale of the adopted daughter a 10

[ibn Horowitz]

hey bored, where would you say to start with foucault? Power and knowledge? Discipline and punish?

i know you talked about this a few pages back, or possibly in another thread

[Bored001]

hey bored, where would you say to start with foucault? Power and knowledge? Discipline and punish?

i know you talked about this a few pages back, or possibly in another thread

Yeah, the main works in this order:

Discipline & Punish
Madness and Civilization
The History of Sexuality
The Order of Things (very intense/dense at times but I consider this the center of his work + the first chapter is fucking amazing)
Birth of the Clinic
The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language (not many people can get into this, it's his "method")
The various lecture notes/books that are now out there, you can see him working out his ideas with his students
The interviews, debates (Power/Knowledge, etc)

Also helpful are the various biographies...

Discipline & Punish is the one that always sucks people in...especially that first chapter. Foucault knew how to begin books...

After you read Madness and Civilization (which we get in English only in its abridged form) read Derrida's essay "Cogito and the History of Madness" (in the Writing and Difference volume), which takes it apart...and which totally pissed Foucault off...

[Bored001]

The Man Who was Thursday, Chesterton - 7.75/10

One of the strangest, funniest, wittiest books I've ever read...but great, very entertaining. Like a mixture of Conrad, Ian Fleming, AC Doyle, Machen, Lewis Carroll and Oscar Wilde...maybe? My second time through it...but I remember absolutely nothing from the first time. Blame alcohol?

Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Seifer - 7.1/10

I'm guessing most people here know all about Tesla...but what can I say? He's my hero. Also: fuck Thomas Edison, etc. I know it's a cliche to say so...but fuck him anyway.

[ibn Horowitz]

The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe - 7/10
The Crystal World - JG Ballard - 6/10

[Foot Foot]

10/10.

seriously one of the best books i've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/Shoemaker-Psychot ... 0671226525

[Mr. Budd]

Best printing of Ulysses and secondary sources please?

[Mr. Budd]

Temptation of St. Anthony - Flaubert - An exhaustive parade of false idols and temptations. Erudite and exhaustive though brief. What I got from this is what I thought I would get from Dante. This is Ensor's religious occupations in text.

[Bored001]

Yeah, I think I told you about Flaubert's "Salammbô"...if you haven't looked through that yet check it out. It's completely different from the rest of his work...extremely "exotic" (well, to Europeans), it reeks of incense and opium...kind of like Beckford's "Vathek." A lot of really beautiful imagery, sensuality, etc.

[Mr. Budd]

Nobody has read Ulysses? That can't be.

Turgenev - Fathers and Sons now - he was a better writer than both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

[Bored001]

Nobody has read Ulysses? That can't be.

Turgenev - Fathers and Sons now - he was a better writer than both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Hahaha...he wasn't, and if you're going to buy a cool version of Ulysses get the edition they banned...Modern Library?

I can't stand JJ, personally...well, his short stories are often nice...but if you're wading into that modernist shit at least come up for air every now and then...

[Mr. Budd]

Dostoyevsky's characters don't compare in depth to Turgenev's. Turgenev writes like the Russian James T. Farrell and I LOVES ME SOME JAMES T FARRELL.