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Books I've read recently
Feb. 17th, 2006 | 11:59 pm
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song: Super Furry Animals - "The Door to This House Remains Open"
John Fowles - The Magus
A fascinating mystery that adds up to nothing much at all. Still, it was fun to read and try and puzzle out. Certainly not a Great Novel.
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
This, however, is. As famous for its length (956 pages) as for its difficulty, this is one of the huge, important, canonical texts of post 1950 literature. The prose is beautiful, the characters interesting, and the plot twisty and fairly compelling. It's certainly hard to follow, but three sections of the book (the opening chapter detailing Wyatt's childhood, the chapter showing what happened after Reverend Gwyon went away, and Wyatt's adventures in Italy with Frank Sinisterra posing as Mr. Yak) are some of the best I've ever read. It was tough to get through, but weeks after reading it, I still think about it. Took me about a month to read, but it was time well spent.
Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March
Okay. A big, long, picaresque novel, this was fascinating in parts, but a lot of it was digressions into nowhere. Still, a very optimistic and life-affirming book. Basically, the complete opposite of the next one.
Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust
This book is fucking depressing. Basically, a book about Hollywood circa 1932 and all of the depressing grotesques who linger around movie sets like parasites, relying in vain on "talent" that they don't possess. The depression never ends--a meek set designer lives his life through detailed rape fantasies and paintings in which people he knows die horribly, a middle-aged man acts pathetic and useless which makes people hate him more, and a former vaudeville clown continues to perform his pathetic act long into old age because he has no other life and "people usually don't go out of their way to punish a clown." Don't read if you're feeling bad--in fact, my reading of this book probably had a little bit to do with my previous LJ post.
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
A stunning book. How in God's name can people find this boring? This is probably one of the most important books ever written--the ideas contained within it are still frightening today. This is incredibly reductive, but what I took from it was "White people aren't as great as they think they are." Kurtz goes to the jungle to "educate" the natives, only to turn into a madman and killer.
Richard Wright - Native Son
Man, Wright had some balls writing this book! I'm not going to say anything about what it's about, but what I admired most was how the plot seemed to follow an inexorable course--every new, horrifying development grew logically out of the one before. As Bigger Thomas falls deeper and deeper, we can't look away. This book is 430 pages, and I read it in one day. That's how good it is.
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Ooooh, this is tough to rate. The prose is absolutely motherfucking beautiful in this book. I could listen to McCarthy describing those surrealistic desert landscapes for thousands of pages and not get tired of it. But the plot is thin and the characterization nonexistent. Still, this is the only book I've ever read where the hero comes across a tree covered with dead babies. That's got to be worth....something? Some kind of singular achievement; it's like nothing else you'll ever read. I hate sentences like this, but it's basically William Faulkner writing Dante's Inferno.
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections
A wonderful, grand, social novel. A beautiful compromise between entertainment and art. Some kind of masterpiece, probably. Funny as hell in parts, too--I liked how one angry husband was described as "Lithuanian, and a slapper."
A fascinating mystery that adds up to nothing much at all. Still, it was fun to read and try and puzzle out. Certainly not a Great Novel.
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
This, however, is. As famous for its length (956 pages) as for its difficulty, this is one of the huge, important, canonical texts of post 1950 literature. The prose is beautiful, the characters interesting, and the plot twisty and fairly compelling. It's certainly hard to follow, but three sections of the book (the opening chapter detailing Wyatt's childhood, the chapter showing what happened after Reverend Gwyon went away, and Wyatt's adventures in Italy with Frank Sinisterra posing as Mr. Yak) are some of the best I've ever read. It was tough to get through, but weeks after reading it, I still think about it. Took me about a month to read, but it was time well spent.
Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March
Okay. A big, long, picaresque novel, this was fascinating in parts, but a lot of it was digressions into nowhere. Still, a very optimistic and life-affirming book. Basically, the complete opposite of the next one.
Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust
This book is fucking depressing. Basically, a book about Hollywood circa 1932 and all of the depressing grotesques who linger around movie sets like parasites, relying in vain on "talent" that they don't possess. The depression never ends--a meek set designer lives his life through detailed rape fantasies and paintings in which people he knows die horribly, a middle-aged man acts pathetic and useless which makes people hate him more, and a former vaudeville clown continues to perform his pathetic act long into old age because he has no other life and "people usually don't go out of their way to punish a clown." Don't read if you're feeling bad--in fact, my reading of this book probably had a little bit to do with my previous LJ post.
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
A stunning book. How in God's name can people find this boring? This is probably one of the most important books ever written--the ideas contained within it are still frightening today. This is incredibly reductive, but what I took from it was "White people aren't as great as they think they are." Kurtz goes to the jungle to "educate" the natives, only to turn into a madman and killer.
Richard Wright - Native Son
Man, Wright had some balls writing this book! I'm not going to say anything about what it's about, but what I admired most was how the plot seemed to follow an inexorable course--every new, horrifying development grew logically out of the one before. As Bigger Thomas falls deeper and deeper, we can't look away. This book is 430 pages, and I read it in one day. That's how good it is.
Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Ooooh, this is tough to rate. The prose is absolutely motherfucking beautiful in this book. I could listen to McCarthy describing those surrealistic desert landscapes for thousands of pages and not get tired of it. But the plot is thin and the characterization nonexistent. Still, this is the only book I've ever read where the hero comes across a tree covered with dead babies. That's got to be worth....something? Some kind of singular achievement; it's like nothing else you'll ever read. I hate sentences like this, but it's basically William Faulkner writing Dante's Inferno.
Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections
A wonderful, grand, social novel. A beautiful compromise between entertainment and art. Some kind of masterpiece, probably. Funny as hell in parts, too--I liked how one angry husband was described as "Lithuanian, and a slapper."