Read Some Real Literature: Anyway hail satantango

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Read Some Real Literature: Anyway hail satantango

PlushCow: Oct 19, 2005; The cow eats the grass

Smoking Crow posted:

Seriously. Almost every thread in this place is for genre novels. As Stephen King said, his novels are the literary version of a Big Mac and fries. Is this all you people read? Do you eat only fast food and hate to talk about filet mignon as well? Seriously, try to read something good for a loving change. You're not in high school anymore, read some loving real works of art.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 00:30

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 11:52

PlushCow: Oct 19, 2005; The cow eats the grass

Smoking Crow posted:

What do you think would happen if I went to tbb and opened a thread called "quit being loving children and read some actual literature"

# ¿ Jun 18, 2014 02:35

PlushCow: Oct 19, 2005; The cow eats the grass

Lobster Henry posted:

I read Human Acts by Han kang, like someone else in this thread I think, I didn�t know anything about the historical events this novel is based on, and I found it very moving, frightening, and humbling to think about them. However as a novel I thought this was a complete slog. I really couldn�t get on with it at all. The place, the situation, the people � none of them were evoked in a way that brought them to life for me. Oh well.

I also read warlock by Oakley hall, which is a western that is available in a NYRB edition and was named one of the great American books by Thomas Pynchon, so it has Literary Cred. And it rules. It delivers all the Western goods (outlaws, showdowns, etc) but it has excellent lucid style and it�s structured as a complicated series of interlocking moral quandaries. There�s a big cast of characters and everybody gets compromised or stuck in agonising ways. Very well done imo.

I also recently read welcome to hard times by EL Doctorow which is another literary western. And obviously there�s cormac McCarthy. If anybody�s got more, let me know!

I love Warlock, I need to read it again. Have you read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry? Also maybe check out The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, and though likely familiar from the movies, True Grit by Charles Portis is worth a read.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2023 16:45

PlushCow: Oct 19, 2005; The cow eats the grass

Proust Malone posted:

I read lonesome dove and maybe I didn�t get it. It seemed to me like perhaps it was a significant departure from the form of the western back when it was written but it didn�t strike me at all.

I think I get what you're saying, the novel isn't hugely different in expressing the american mythological west you'd see in any Louis L'Amour novel and the like; but it does it far better, it's the quintessential cowboy novel.

I remember McMurtry saying, I believe in a foreword he wrote for Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, that novel did what he was trying to do with Lonesome Dove.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2023 23:43

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Read Some Real Literature: Anyway hail satantango