misc book thread

Started by jenkins, August 13, 2013, 02:18:30 PM

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jenkins

gif book is happening:



QuoteDennis Cooper's tenth novel bears all of the earmarks of his legendary and controversial work — intricate formal and stylistic play, disturbing content, an exploration of the borderline between fantasy and reality, concern for the emotions and dilemmas of youth, etc. — but it is both something unique in his body of writing and possibly something of a world's first in the novel genre itself.

Instead of gathering materials from language, sentences, and the developmental character and narrative possibilities allowed and restricted by written fiction, Cooper has turned his characteristic inventiveness on the animated gif, employing gifs' tightly wound, looping visual possibilities, nervous rhythms, tiny storylines, and their status as dismembered, twitching eye candy to compose a short novel of unexpected complexity, strangeness, poetry, and comedy.

"Zac's Haunted House" is as fun and eerie to explore as its namesake attraction, and, the more closely one searches and decodes its carefully detailed sequences and construction, a deep and fraught fiction puzzle.

"Zac's Haunted House" will be available as a free download or to view online from January 15, 2015.

http://www.kiddiepunk.com/zacs_haunted_house.htm

jenkins

when i get excited about a new literature essay book i get so excited

the new hot one now is


after sampling bastard out of carolina, loving it, buying it, beginning to read it, and after thinking i'd right now want to read a murakami book i've never read, sampling after dark and sputnik sweetheart, adoring both of them with equal intensity, unable to decide on one, then remembering how i already bought-to-read bastard out of carolina and deciding not to buy a murakami, but getting myself all revved up on books again while feeling distant from real people who always seem to hurt me though not many people say they want to hurt people so that's mysterious, while feeling withdrawn, scared of life temporarily, i made my way back to books and their pretend people and their fascinating ideas and discussions and word orders, all us readers all of us want the world to be like our books, we wish it, we do, that's why we keep reading, anyway during all of this while i'm getting excited about books and reading again i think about the book i've always wanted to write, you know, the book i've said for all these years i'll write, which promise of a book has through my life taken various shapes and forms that haven't yet amounted to a finished book, while the thought of what my book might be was in my head i sampled the unspeakable, and right there on the first page i read



which aligns with growing thoughts i've had about what book i could finish, an idea for a book that could grow into the size of a book, since well you may not realize it but i'm an extremely emotional person who can't react the same every day since, looking at the world through my emotions, the world looks different to me every damn day, and all these other times i've begun a book in the first-person, how have i expected that to last???, even when i invent a character it doesn't last, because i can't continuously get inside myself or inside a character through the same window, aka my previous book plans haven't overall been realistic i don't think, and by the way i should mention i wouldn't any longer want to put together a collection of short stories, although that's already maybe possible, no, it's a novella i say now, aiming for ~20k words, i can do it, hell i bet i could've done it in the first-person, but my idea for today and i'm excited about it my idea is to begin to talk about myself in the third-person a bit i guess, the plan is to give the narrator one of those tones where they're describing people and what they're doing etc, the third-person omniscient narrator thing, and i think the idea of such a narrator will allow me to bypass the problem i have with regulating my emotions, since the emotions of this narrator exist only in their words and the observations they make, aka the narrator is fashioning it all together as a story but the narrator isn't me the narrator isn't real, the narrator is simply the idea of writing, and idk i'm liking that idea today is what i'm saying, i think i'm going to make a book out of it, although yeah i've said such things before and where's the book

i haven't pinpointed the story yet but i'm not worried about that, it's easy, i look back on my life and there it is. i'd say i'll update on the process but that'll give me stress so i won't say that or do that

Axolotl

Here's Cesar Aira who's one of my personal writing heroes talking about some of the stuff you mentioned. He talks about how prevalent present tense is in fiction these days and connects it with our storytelling mechanisms being developed in childhood through cinema as opposed to story books in earlier times, and he talks about why he doesn't like first person. I half-agree with him on both parts. I don't think most people who write in first-person are good enough to write in first person and present tense can be a really lazy choice. Of course none of that matters if you're good, some of the GBOATs have been written in first person and present tense. But it's important to not let yourself fall into those traps for unmotivated reasons on your way to getting good. He might legitimately have forgotten how well he used first person in "How I Became a Nun" (it's right there in the title!) because he's written 3917 books. I think what Aira calls the "free indirect style" in Varamo is really the most exhilarating way to write these days. It's third person omniscient with the narrator able to do wild cosmic-scale perspective shifts instantaneouly.

Anyway good to read your post and best of luck.

polkablues

I can't think of a single book I've read in present tense that wasn't a hack piece of shit. And first-person POV peaked with "The Things They Carried" and has been all downhill since then.

Enough negativity from me. Kick ass on the book, jenks.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Drenk

One of the best written book in the english language is in the present tense. Gravity's Rainbow. Some writers are just great.
Ascension.

Garam

Most of Trainspotting is, and it's pretty great. James Kelman's novels are good at this. And Alan Sillitoe.

polkablues

So I guess the moral is, I need to read more better books.
My house, my rules, my coffee

03


jenkins

this is the poetry book and what's next is the beginning notes and i don't think you have to wonder if i like this writer and think he sometimes says what i want to say kind of thing:


03

you should definitely talk more like that;;

Drenk

This is not news, but I'm reading Mason & Dixon. Again. And it is wonderful. I'm reaching, but something Mason said made me think of this in The Master : If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first person in the history of the world.

And the words of Pynchon:

« Someone owns you, Sir. He pays for your Meals and Lodging. He lends you out to others. What is that call'd, where you come from?"

"Why, and if you are free of such Arrangements," Mason shrugs, "hurrah thrice over and perhaps one day you may instruct all the rest of us in how, exactly. »

Ascension.

jenkins

i about fell out of my chair when i saw this --



and that's a completely true account of my reaction, except for the chair part. the amount of interest i have in this book does fine on its own but, mmmmmm, with that cover -- that's why bookshelves exist, right, put that fucker face out -- it's holographic (or whatever), if you can't tell -- that cover makes me like the book more because i like the cover

this is my current queue for books i want to read soon:
musical brain (pictured)
the dream of my return -- horacia castellanos moya, march 10 release. translated byyyyyyyy, yup. kat. her. ine. sil. ve. r.
to rewind, chris andrews did the translation for musical brain
to fast forward and rewind, only today did it click for me that of course i've heard of your face tomorrow. but yeah, those 1242 pages have intimidated me. can't find anyone who's read it, but i continue to look forward to and be excited about dark back of time

if soon i seem more poetic and appreciative of life, and even appreciative of its problems, that'll no doubt be because i'll've read these three books by spanish-language writers, who are always my favorite writers, they just always are. in fact two of these writers are already two of my favorite writers

jenkins

yeahbut, this is what happens. this is what happens: currently being enticed by yet another book, and i can't decide the next one i want to read. that's a small potato problem i know, but all the small potato problems together really cramp up my reading plans

look at this fucker:


this is what's been said:
QuoteRodrigo Rey Rosa is the most rigorous writer of my generation, the most transparent, the one that knows best how to weave his stories, and the most luminous of all. —Roberto Bolaño

this is what it's about:
QuoteIn the vein of the writings of Paul Bowles, Paul Theroux, and V. S. Naipaul, The African Shore marks a major new installment in the genre of dystopic travel fiction. Rodrigo Rey Rosa, prominent in today's Guatemalan literary world and an author of growing international reputation, presents a tale of alienation, misrecognition, and intrigue set in and around Tangier. He weaves a double narrative involving a Colombian tourist pleasurably stranded in Morocco and a young shepherd who dreams of migrating to Spain and of "riches to come." At the center of their tale is an owl both treasured and coveted.

The author addresses the anxiety, distrust, and potential for violence that characterize the border of all borders: the strait that divides Africa and Europe, where the waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic meet. His often-remarked prose style, at once rich and spare, endows his work with remarkable elegance. Rey Rosa generates a powerful reality within his imagined world, and he maintains a narrative tension to the haunting conclusion, raising small and large questions that linger in the reader's mind long after the final page.

if you don't want to read it i think you got a personal problem. i do want to read it so i got a personal problem, as described. goddamnit

Axolotl

You can fill a library floor with the writers bolaño has called 'the [insert superlative] writer of my generation.' He's like a 15 year old who recently discovered the term 'GOAT'. I love it.

03

Quote from: jncosbut all the small potato problems together really cramp up my reading plans
woulda been better if you replaced 'plans' with 'pants', which is what i originally read.