Now Reading

Sourdough was breezy and fun.

Reading Woman in the Dunes now and it's OK. Waiting for some shit to happen but maybe it'll just be all dreamlike the whole time.

A fkn speeding ticket

  On 4/10/2019 at 2:52 PM, Lewps said:

Just finished Tess of the D'Urbervilles, holy shit that ended up getting crazy towards the end

 

For the most part the story is relentlessly tragic which made me think of Grapes of Wrath (which I hated for that reason) but the sense of closure and of reprieve for the lovers towards the end of the book was beautiful.

 

Also beautiful descriptive imagery of the English countryside through the changes of season

Yeah, my 19th century lit. professor in university called Hardy a sadist for what he made Tess go through.

Hardy also did quite a number on Jude the Obscure as well, by the way. Equally good, I’d say, if not more so.

I'll look into it, thanks 

http://www.rudyrucker.com/lifebox/html/

Great cover

Just finished Knut Hamsun’s “Hunger”. 250 pages about a guy going, wait for it, hungry.

Not a pleasant read, as you can imagine, but very good.

That book is so special to me. I bought it when I was about 13/14yrs old because the cover haunted me. I was not ready for any sort of 'literature' at all, I mainly read Clive Barker and Stephen King. That Book did something to me that is beyond description

  On 4/13/2019 at 11:31 AM, hello spiral said:

That book is so special to me. I bought it when I was about 13/14yrs old because the cover haunted me. I was not ready for any sort of 'literature' at all, I mainly read Clive Barker and Stephen King. That Book did something to me that is beyond description

I can imagine. While reading it I felt a bit sorry I hadn’t picked it up 25 years ago. It would’ve made much more impact then.

Youth is wasted on the young, but a certain class of books is definitely also wasted on the middle aged.

  On 4/13/2019 at 4:52 PM, rhmilo said:

 

  On 4/13/2019 at 11:31 AM, hello spiral said:

That book is so special to me. I bought it when I was about 13/14yrs old because the cover haunted me. I was not ready for any sort of 'literature' at all, I mainly read Clive Barker and Stephen King. That Book did something to me that is beyond description

I can imagine. While reading it I felt a bit sorry I hadn’t picked it up 25 years ago. It would’ve made much more impact then.

 

Youth is wasted on the young, but a certain class of books is definitely also wasted on the middle aged.

 

def. It was this cover btw

Was in a second hand book shop I used to browse in for hours. The cover disturbed me and gave me that weird deja vu feeling of half remembering a dream.

  On 4/13/2019 at 4:52 PM, rhmilo said:

 

  On 4/13/2019 at 11:31 AM, hello spiral said:

That book is so special to me. I bought it when I was about 13/14yrs old because the cover haunted me. I was not ready for any sort of 'literature' at all, I mainly read Clive Barker and Stephen King. That Book did something to me that is beyond description

I can imagine. While reading it I felt a bit sorry I hadn’t picked it up 25 years ago. It would’ve made much more impact then.

 

Youth is wasted on the young, but a certain class of books is definitely also wasted on the middle aged.

I felt a bit like this when I read ‘On The Road’ in my twenties. If I had been a teenager it probably would have blew my mind.

On the other hand, I thought Jane Austen was really boring in my teens and twenties.

even though i feel too old (i.e. not a teenager anymore) to be enticed by romantisation of poverty á hamsun's hunger or a beat lifestyle (read quite a few beat/counterculture works; fariñas been down so long is a personal favourite) there's still something extremely appealing/fascinating about those books. to my slight shame i can't get over it or make up my mind about whether it's just a privileged middle class trip. they're always about lonely men, too. i think watching into the wild in my teens was a really formative experience lol

Not sure I'd characterize Hamsun as romantization, but as far as the Beats are concerned I get your point.

fair enough. hamsun aint necessarily romanticising poverty but i'd still contend there's something in my (our?) reaction that counts as such. am i making sense? for some reason his arguably shitty life at the same time has some appeal. maybe in its simplicity

  On 4/15/2019 at 9:43 AM, flexbert said:

even though i feel too old (i.e. not a teenager anymore) to be enticed by romantisation of poverty á hamsun's hunger or a beat lifestyle (read quite a few beat/counterculture works; fariñas been down so long is a personal favourite) there's still something extremely appealing/fascinating about those books. to my slight shame i can't get over it or make up my mind about whether it's just a privileged middle class trip. they're always about lonely men, too. i think watching into the wild in my teens was a really formative experience lol

That’s fine, I kind of envy that as I wish I felt similar. I read Drop City by TC Boyle in my teens instead which sadly may have made me more of a cynical prick.

i sincerely hope hope i didnt come across as derogatory, cause that wasn't my intention at all. am very much a cynical prick myself; trying to work on that.

and speaking of formative experiences, my belief is that whatever art that leaves teenagers with a sense of something having hit close to home or having taught them life lessons, has more to do with it rhyming with their actual formative childhood experiences and personalities than insights from the piece of work itself.

'hsin hsin ming' by sosan

& osho commentary                               

i dont think I 'got' 2666. Been trying to find good texts elaborating on its supposed greatness but couldnt find any, though i'm sure there must be and i haven't looked in the right places

“A Farewell to Arms”. Manly men doing manly things. But fuck me Hemingway can write. It’s like the third time I’ve read this and his descriptions of places and people still give me thought boners.

Hegel's Philosophy of Mind.

Edit: I can see why he's not popular.

  On 4/15/2019 at 10:49 PM, prdctvsm said:

'hsin hsin ming' by sosan

 

                          

Thanks prdctvsm, I had not read that before:)

Started my HP Lovecraft book.

He seems like my kind of lunatic.

I'd not grant him legitimate crazy status; more like highly self aware paranoiac with a vivid imagination & a keen feel for style. Much like Poe, he's mostly really good, & very much single-minded in terms of subject matter—but you can tell he's hamming it up quite deliberately. (And, fair enough—the man had bills to pay—but it's far from the genuine "outsider art" of a truly crazy writer just scribbling his/her hallucinations or whatever.)

^well put doorjamb, Lovecraft was surely no loon.

Slightly related, reading Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud. Short story collection, good so far. First two stories were very nice.