derp posted:

Do you also 'watch' movies while browsing facebook on your phone and ask constant questions like 'wait, who is that guy? didn't he die?'

Solitair posted:

This is the version I got on sale. At least this translation is good, according to what SBB told me.

Franchescanado posted:

I have a copy of this and can confirm it rules.

Duck Rodgers posted:

I think Salinger does a good job of making Holden sympathetic, largely by showing the reader that Holden is angsty, self centered, and lacks self awareness. It's clear that the author is aware of those flaws and is showing them to the reader. It makes it okay to dislike those aspects of the character and easier to sympathize with his trauma.

My view of Catcher in the Rye is partly shaped by having read Norwegian Wood right after, and I think that Murakami fails in a lot of places that Salinger didn't. I think the narrator in Norwegian Wood had some of the same flaws as Holden, he's kind of full of himself and thinks he's smarter than other people. But it's not clear to me that Murakami sees those as flaws. It seems like the reader is supposed to accept that the narrator is smarter than other people, does have better taste in books, music etc. Holden's bragging about being good with women always fizzles without anything happening, which makes it clear its the grandstanding of a teenage boy. Whereas Murakami's narrator constantly has women praising him and then sleeping with him. Murakami also constantly inserts sappy sentimental passages in the authors voice, rather than the narrators voice, and it undermines the authenticity of the narrator.

Murakami's narrator is less sympathetic, because it seems like the reader is supposed to sympathize with him as an outcast, but he just seems like a dick. Murakami kills off a bunch of people, but it just seems like a plot device to give meaning to the narrator. Whereas with Holden, the reader sympathizes with him because of his brothers death, and because he doesn't have the emotional maturity and support to deal with it because he's a flawed character.

derp posted:

sorry but i have to quote this from 1q84 whenever anyone mentions murakami

derp posted:

It was really good, and for such a long book I was impressed that it never seemed to lose it's way (even though it went all over the place) and was always densely packed with powerful imagery and ideas that despite how far apart they might seem on the surface, were always closely related. And there was no point (except some brief scenes of extreme violence) where I wanted to stop reading, and no part that felt 'bogged down' or bloated. Very impressive and impact and i'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Conrad_Birdie posted:

Just finished the first part of 2666. I was certainly fascinated at first, mainly because Bolaño’s text was a pleasure to read, but I certainly didn’t expect it to become an existential horror story. I loved that it did, though.

Tim Burns Effect posted:

so is the rest of it!!


Nabokov has a story with almost this exact same premise called "Razor"

The North Tower posted:

Peter Wilson’s The Thirty Years War (nonfiction)

Take the plunge! Okay! posted:

Have you heard of our lord and savior Thomas Bernhard?

e: A medical internship consists of more than spectating at complicated bowel operations, cutting open stomach linings, bracketing off lungs, and sawing off feet; and it doesn't just consist of thumbing closed the eyes of the dead, and hauling babies out into the world either. An internship is not just tossing limbs and parts of limbs over your shoulder into an enamel bucket. Nor does it just consist of trotting along behind the registrar and the assistant and the assistant's assistant, a sort of tail-end Charlie. Nor can an internship be only the putting out of false information; it isn't just saying: "The pus will dissolve in your bloodstream, and you'll soon be restored to perfect health." Or a hundred other such lies. Not just: "It'll get better"—when nothing will. An internship isn't just an academy of scissors and thread, of tying off and pulling through. An internship extends to circumstances and possibilities that have nothing to do with the flesh. My mission to observe the painter Strauch compels me to think about precisely such non-flesh-related circumstances and issues.

Vogler posted:

What does this thread recommend re: horror? I think the genre got great potential but I'm always disappointed in what I read. The only exception in recent years is the terrific Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin.

blue squares posted:

I just started this. I tried to read it once when I was 22 and bounced off it hard. I’m finishing up Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers before I really dive in, but based on this thread and the books presence on so many best of lists that I am definitely looking forward to it

derp posted:

I'd be very interested in this answer as well. So far i've just been doing the 'read lots' strategy. I asked before for any 'books about books' that arent 'hOw tO wRiTe A nOvEl iN tEn mInUtEs!' but the key does seem to be just to read a lot. I would recommend 'how fiction works' by James Wood, though. Very entertaining and educational for a layman like me, and got me lots of ideas of what to read. But pretty much I just read what enough people call 'good' in this thread (or the discord, now) and have been doing that for a few years.

ThePopeOfFun posted:

It's not idiotic. Genre wants to be entertaining first. Lots of tropes. Magic arbitraily grants someone power. The point is to reveal the mystery, kill the big bad, rout the xenos.

Lit wants to do...other things. Sometimes wires cross. Maybe answer "what is it like to ____."

Think Marvel Universe vs. i dunno Moonlight. Dude in Moonlight doesn't have magic or superpowers so he has to solve his problems the human way. And the point of the movie isn't to get to the end of the movie.


Edit: Also, lit cares about how language itself works and tries different stuff with it.

TrixRabbi posted:

I find it's a book that's better as you age cause you have some distance from Holden and therefore can just see he's a kid that suffering. Reading it as an adult I just wanted to give him a hug and tell him it'll be ok.

pepsicake posted:

when people use the term "lapsed catholic" it's short hand for a certain cultural background. we're all atheists that have been through confirmation or communion. it's a trans cultural thing too as i find i share a lot of assumptions etc. with italian even though i'm irish diaspora. i think this only applies to catholics living in majority protestant countries.

LionArcher posted:

In fact it would be very easy to argue that the philosophical complexity of say the entirety of the wheel of time has a far more advanced and morally complex narrative than say a literary Darling’ like Finnigan’s Wake, or a modern example of a hyped up literally novel, the Goldfinch.

LionArcher posted:

Phone posted before and I have to go run errands but then I’ll do a post/examples sure.

Solitair posted:

What does this even mean? I keep hearing this quality discussed among book-readers and I doubt I could recognize it unless someone pointed it out.

lost in postation posted:

As sceptical as I am of the reports of classics being auto-da-fé'd by communist teachers, it should be noted that his guy's project is kind of comically unhistorical garbage, complete with framing Tiresias as neurodivergent and gender-fluid, which sounds like a satirical right-wing canard

Sham bam bamina! posted:

It's also really preoccupied with Twitter drama in a way that's parasocial for the readers but cynical and self-promoting for the authors.

Oxxidation posted:

Mr. Nemo posted:

What? I'm not american. Not sure if you are british or american, but please, don't overestimate how relevant that kind of event is to the rest of the world.

Edit: some quick reading tells me that it was about how the english king should rule. Why would other countries teach it?

I do have the divine comedy coming up next.

Mr. Nemo posted:

Eh, I guess I will disagree, and the local education board body or whatever too.

As i remember it my european history went romans, quick overview of medieval stuff and then french revolution, and that's where we got into monarchy vs republic and it's impact on a global scale. Maybe we covered one of the oter wars with the dutch and spanish involved. I'd make a bet cromwell never came up.

Lex Neville posted:

Unless you're from a place where other, more culturally significant stuff happened - nationally or otherwise - particularly around that time? The English Civil War is not equally significant to every (country's) culture...

Lex Neville posted:

no, it's an anti-anglocentric argument. also, citation needed for that bit between quotation marks.

Mr. Nemo posted:

As i remember it my european history went romans, quick overview of medieval stuff and then french revolution, and that's where we got into monarchy vs republic and it's impact on a global scale. Maybe we covered one of the oter wars with the dutch and spanish involved. I'd make a bet cromwell never came up.

lost in postation posted:

Yeah if you're really hankering for reductive Jungian structuralism you might as well read Campbell directly rather than the guy whose main legacy was being an asbestos truther.

Jrbg posted:

If you keep running into people who hype it up you should look where you're going imo

blue squares posted:

I am really connecting with Catch 22. Not only for the excellent anti-war themes but also due to how I feel about being the only person I know who still wears a mask everywhere in public and actually cares if I get Covid. I feel like Yossarian in which everybody is trying to kill me while also telling me I’m crazy for thinking they’re trying to kill me and also crazy for caring that they are trying to kill me

Anything else good that explores this idea?