misc book thread

[jenkins]

Kazuo Ishiguro Is Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature

[Robyn]

he's good? (i mean oblivious, but what do you think?)

[polkablues]

All I've read of his work is "Never Let Me Go," but based on that alone I'm comfortable classifying him as one of the greats. Simple prose, a poetic ear, and humanity in spades.

[jenkins]

in my dreams i'm the one who wrote this

[polkablues]

I find the exclamation point very confrontational.

[lorenscope]

I'm a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro's work and Kenzaburo Oe and right now I'm planning to purchase 4 paperbacks of Haruki Murakami novels (Kafka On The Shore, Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart, and South Of The Border West Of The Sun) after I'm done with replacing my old tires with nitto and front wheel alignment.

[wilder]

jenkins [16|Jan 07:55 PM]:   I blew her a kiss and it shattered the window and exploded her head and went through the wall behind her, through the entire building and everything else in its path into the sky, moving so fast it didn't ever disrupt clouds, up and up, halving an airplane as it continued into space, crushing meteoroids such that they smothered and killed stars, piercing and assassinating the sun, eventually reaching the end of everything and opening a hole in the lining, deflating it and carrying it off like a popped balloon.
jenkins [16|Jan 07:58 PM]:   that's the final line to The Garbage Times, which is 1/2 novellas that comes in one volume bounded in tete-bech (there is no back cover: there are two front covers and the text is flipped)
jenkins [16|Jan 07:59 PM]:   you guys sometimes the kids are so good seriously. that's Sam Pink. and really he writes in this like normal-people prose, like a refreshed version of Bukowski perhaps, like that, he hang out with the homeless, all the time, he's a security guard in a bar in this book, and that's his fucking final line. it's like omg

[wilder]

Kier-La Janisse (author of House of Psychotic Women) is working on a book about Robert Downey Sr.


Call for Proposals: "Truth and Soul: The Films of Robert Downey Sr."
via Spectacular Optical



Spectacular Optical Publications (www.spectacularoptical.ca) is a small-press publisher of cult film and pop culture books based in Canada. Following our earlier anthologies KID POWER! (2014), SATANIC PANIC: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015), LOST GIRLS: The Phantasmagorical Cinema of Jean Rollin (2017) and YULETIDE TERROR: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017), we are accepting proposals for essays and interviews for our sixth book (and fifth anthology project), tentatively titled “Truth and Soul: The Films of Robert Downey, Sr.” to be curated by Kier-La Janisse and Clint Enns.

Guidelines for Proposals:

We are accepting proposals for essays or interviews of 3000-5000 words relating to the work of Robert Downey, Sr. Essays can focus on a specific film, offer a comparative study of several films, or offer overarching analyses reflecting upon the social or political themes found in the films. We are looking for unique readings of Downey’s films that explore the historical context in which they were made, the legacy and influence of his work both in the mainstream and avant-garde, analysis of the race, class, and gender politics found therein (especially in relation to Downey’s subversive humour) and more. We are looking for writing that provides other Downey enthusiasts with new ways of thinking about his work.

The writing and tone of Spectacular Optical books aims to live in that space between academic and pop cultural (less formal than academic writing but not as colloquial as pop cultural writing), with all pieces rigorously researched to support a central thesis and offering new insight that will stand up to peer review. We are not looking for reviews or excessive plot synopses, but analysis that approaches the films from a unique or surprising angle.

First-hand research in the form of interviews with actors and other artists who have worked with Downey are also welcomed. Priority will be given to proposals that demonstrate existing access to the intended interviewees.

Each accepted piece shall comprise a chapter of the book, which aims to provide a vibrant and informative overview of Downey’s body of work.

++++

All proposals are due by April 1, 2018.

More info on submitting proposals here

[jenkins]

i admire this guy from afar. i mean we're fb friends and we've messaged but i don't really know him and we don't commonly engage in conversation. i just like his whole style. he's a 3xl who lives in the south and as far as i can tell he's simply making his way through life. he recently put out these four chapbooks and has made comments about it seeming odd for him to put out chapbooks at this point but he did it anyway. i'm into writers who don't write to earn a living but write to live.

[Drenk]

It's a short piece of writing:

74 Facts and One Lie

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=39996

[Just Withnail]

I HIGHLY recommend The Garbage Times (and a big thanks to jenks for the recommendation and a copy to read).

[jenkins]

xx.

spontaneous mentioning to Just Withnail: i'm starting this short that i expect to be over 24 pages and not too many pages. it has to be over 24 to publish it, and i want to write it as its own thing. it's going to be a prose adaptation of a previous script, coming from a combination of this idea having been sitting in my thoughts for a while now, and a final push from Gogol's The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories. that's like, i read that and i'm like, okay seriously, you know, i'm like, Gogol is a classic, and he gets to have that much fun. basically it's rather hard to envy someone's misery and quite easy to envy their fun, so i'm feeling like i want to have that much fun. i've dabbled in this as prose before, in Cosmic Robotics for example, and i've read it in contemporary terms through Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys. a goal here is to disengage from reality ("Logic is the laziest form of magic") and enter a purified narrative state with subterranean human condition elements. it's another way to write and whenever i do it it still ends up darker than i had anticipated, but this one has the light and shadows in its recipe: it's the cannibal love story i've mentioned and written about before. it'll be a love story in that he'll love being eaten by her. i have previous material to refer back to, an established narrative framework (it has a good narrative concept, i was more into formal ideas back then actually), and some idea about how i plan to write this out.

i'd adore hearing about your script when/if you want to chat about it.

[Something Spanish]

sorry, finished reading Gravity's Rainbow last week and....holy shit did that get deep in me. Pynchon is not human. getting through it at times was laborious, at times the epitome of literary pleasure, all in all an experience i'll cherish in this life. wanted to read it since about summer 2017, but never thought I'd have the mental wherewithal or literary endurance to reach the last page. last year I got to about page 30 before giving up, until giving it another go two months ago. was definitely hopping on google nonstop during the first section for reference comprehension, quickly abandoned that pattern thereafter since it was diminishing the experience (not to mention time consuming), and started plowing through it with minimal pauses for brief researches. There's a lot of technical rocket engineering passages that can be a slog to read through, but if I could register most of the info most likely an average reader can too. It's only in the last year+ that i began reading frequently, definitely never attempted to tackle a book this challenging and supposedly impenetrable. if anything it has made me a much more confident reader, ready to take down those difficult Joyce novels and maybe even some Nabakov. excited to get through the rest of pynchon's stuff.

[eward]

Go with Mason & Dixon or Against the Day next!

[jenkins]

best to you and your endeavors whatever they become, control your own destiny, we're in a friend zone

i'd like to discourage becoming a fan of a writer over exploring the concept of novels in their entirety. from Gravrity's Rainbow if you want to reach into history there's The Recognitions--this keeps within the idea of running with the big-idea writers--and forward, do it if you haven't done it, Infinite Jest you know it. if you already did those you already did them and i wasn't sure. but what i'm saying is you can keep the bar Pynchon-high but move in lateral directions, which makes you more of an interesting person at parties, from a certain perspective i'm mentioning because of philosophical impulses.