JUNEPOLL: VOTE YOUR BOOKS OFF

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > JUNEPOLL: VOTE YOUR BOOKS OFF

choooooose This poll is closed.
*The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test* by Tom Wolfe	5	22.73%
*Warlock* by Oakley Hall	9	40.91%
*Portnoy's Complaint* by Philip Roth	5	22.73%
*Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking* by Samin Nosrat	3	13.64%
Total:	15 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Ok, nominees for next mont's BOTM:

1) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

quote:

The seminal 1968 chronicle of the counterculture is Wolfe�s account of living and traveling with the writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, in a day-glo bus equipped with loads of LSD. In today�s Los Angeles, 50 years after the book was published, that metaphorical bus is still rolling, but it looks very different: corporate-sponsored music festivals, luxury cannabis dispensaries, micro-dosing as a productivity hack, Goop-endorsed crystal healing, and the artfully staged Instagrams of #vanlife.

Wolfe made the case that the Acid Tests�LSD-laden parties with trip-enhancing experimental live music by the Grateful Dead, art nouveau visuals, black lights, and multi-color projections�laid the foundation for psychedelic style. And he anticipated, correctly, that the Merry Pranksters legacy would be idealized and imitated far beyond that moment:

https://quartzy.qz.com/1279051/tom-wolfes-electric-kool-aid-acid-test-still-holds-up-50-years-after-its-publication/

Tom Wolfe just died, so worth revisiting his corpus. This is probably his greatest work, and an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the 1960's hippie movement, cult movements generally, or who's ever been a Grateful Dead fan (they got their start playing Kesey's Acid Tests).

2) Warlock by Oakley Hall

quote:

Warlock is a western novel by American author Oakley Hall, first published in 1958. The story is set in the early 1880s, in a fictional southwestern mining town called Warlock and its vicinity. The novel's characters and many elements of its plot are loosely based on actual people and events from Tombstone, Arizona during the same time period, including Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.[1]

Hall's most famous novel, Warlock was a finalist for the 1958 Pulitzer Prize, and has since been hailed as a classic of American West literature.[2][3][4] Writers Thomas Pynchon and Richard Fari�a were especially fond of the novel, even dedicating what Pynchon called a "micro-cult" to it while students at Cornell University.[2] Pynchon praised it for restoring "to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity", and for showing "that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels."[5]

[quote]
"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with--the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power--the collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." --Thomas Pynchon

3) Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

quote:

If Goodbye, Columbus established Roth as an emerging writer to watch, it wasn�t until a decade later that he became a literary sensation (though, again, a controversial one) with the publication of Portnoy�s Complaint, a tour-de-force monologue from one Alexander Portnoy, a neurotic young Jew obsessed with his own sexual perversions and their relation to his feelings about his mother. The novel takes the form of a session of psychoanalysis, ostensibly making Portnoy�s words all the more confessional and unfiltered, and the title comes from the disorder the analyst names after his patient, �in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature.� It�s a very funny work, though much of its outrageousness has obviously been tempered by time. What�s notable about Portnoy�s Complaint is the voice, the popping, dancing, rhythmic bounce of Roth�s prose, a breakthrough for Roth as a literary artist and important milestone in fictional technique. As Claudia Roth Pierpont so succinctly put it, �If Holden Caulfield ever behaved like this, he didn�t tell us about it.� (1969)

4) Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

quote:

Samin Nosrat has become known as the chef who taught Michael Pollan to cook, after the famed food writer featured her in his book Cooked and his Netflix show of the same name.

Now, she's sharing her wisdom with the masses in her new, illustrated cookbook called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. The key to good cooking, she says, is learning to balance those elements and trust your instincts, rather than just follow recipes.

wild card!

# ? May 29, 2018 15:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 06:06

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Goddamnit if you all don't vote Portnoy's Complaint I don't even

# ? May 31, 2018 05:42

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Given the responses above, my current plan is Electric Kool Aid this month and Warlock next month.

# ? Jun 2, 2018 23:15

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Given the responses above, my current plan is Electric Kool Aid this month and Warlock next month.

tl;dr: they do acid, listen to the Grateful Dead, and drive a bus around wondering just wtf Cassidy is up to.

The end.

# ? Jun 3, 2018 06:51

Chamberk: Jan 11, 2004; when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire

I'm too late for the poll, but Warlock is super loving good.

Then again, Acid Test is also very good.

You can't lose with those two, I guess.

# ? Jun 4, 2018 05:04

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

_{Where's the Acid Test thread?}

# ? Jun 5, 2018 17:50

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Franchescanado posted:

_{Where's the Acid Test thread?}

sorry I've been practicing

It'll get up soonish

# ? Jun 5, 2018 19:58

Guy A. Person: May 23, 2003

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Given the responses above, my current plan is Electric Kool Aid this month and Warlock next month.

I swear there's another Chicago library user(s) who's also doing these because this went from available the other day when I was looking through the list to checked out when I remembered today with the thread up. If you're committing to Warlock now tho I will put in a hold in the next week so I have it ready for next month.

# ? Jun 6, 2018 22:05

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Guy A. Person posted:

I swear there's another Chicago library user(s) who's also doing these because this went from available the other day when I was looking through the list to checked out when I remembered today with the thread up. If you're committing to Warlock now tho I will put in a hold in the next week so I have it ready for next month.

Yeah, it will be Warlock unless something extraordinary happens (I get demodded, Scrooge McDuck discovers a new Shakespeare play, etc)

# ? Jun 6, 2018 22:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 27, 2024 06:06

MockingQuantum: Jan 20, 2012

Yeah I suspect there's another goon near me too since the BotM books always come up as a transit request when I look them up in my library's system, which means they were requested in the last day or so.

# ? Jun 8, 2018 03:36

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > JUNEPOLL: VOTE YOUR BOOKS OFF