What are we reading?

[Drenk]

I understand the crushing disappointment, and this seems certainly unfair to compare you with scholars uniquely because you are white (I don't know your sociological background, but that's enough information to sense some gap in access to publication) but in no way does the article seek to destruct your work personally. It does precise, also, that translation is difficult, and that being a woman doesn't necessarily gives you more qualification to write and/or translate.

That may sound harsh to be reduced to data, but that means you were read and studied and incorporated, fairly or not, into a corpus. You exist.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n19/emily-wilson/ah-how-miserable

[polkablues]

Thanks to Drenk and Alma for making the points I wanted to make in much more calm and compassionate tones than I would have taken (the phrase "for fuck's sake" definitely would have come up).

Bleep, I get it. Bad reviews suck. They feel unfair. But your translation didn't get reviewed badly because you're a white male. It got reviewed badly for all the reasons that the reviewer went on to elucidate in very specific detail. I'm sure it was painful for you to read! But it will be more painful to continue to live with your head up your ass, so I suggest you extract it and move on. This review will not define the course of your life, but how you choose to react to it might. Choose better.

[WorldForgot]

Only just began it but I find this an interesting case of public domain. Quite cool.
THE MARVEL UNIVERSE: origin stories

[Alethia]

I just started it too!!! Really digging it so far. Big Bruce Wagner fan. His most recent interview on BEE and the one he did five years ago are both well worth checking out.

The story behind his ultimately deciding to go public domain with this one is its own very current brand of maddening.

[jenkins]

you know I began reading ballard's Crash, which has precedence in Naked Lunch, and subsequence in Palahniuk, it's so specifically sensationalized but there's a um hollow center. I get into it when I concentrate on its concentration, which yeah that is what reading is like, and I switched to



semiotext(e), transgender writer, heard about her through semiotext(e) but she also has this wonderful Maggie Nelson blurb

In a happy paradox common to great literature, it's a book about not belonging that made me feel deeply less alone.

and here's a quote from The Freezer Door

Loyalty to scene masquerading as critical engagement--somehow this never fails to demoralize me. The hierarchies are different, yes, but they're still hierarchies.

[whateverman]

Currently reading Corrigans A short guide to writing about film and Barbers Using film as a source. I read them before when doing film studies but Corrigans is a must in this course of scriptwriting we are doing. So freshening up I suppose. Dryyyyyy, but isn't all researched based shit that?
I might also have ordered a few gems for myself. Milk and Honey by Kaur being one of them and Nauseau by Sartre. Was gonna order The second sex but turns out my mother has a copy I can borrow. The joy of being the child of a book hoarder/journalist/writer :D

[Something Spanish]

I have 350 pages left on Against the Day.
read I'm Thinking of Ending Things in a day before that, hated it. Loved the movie.

[wilberfan]

It's not fabulous--he wastes a lot of page space describing scenes from the film--but it's my current selection in the Porcelain Wing of the library, and it's perfect for that.

[WorldForgot]

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/romanticunderground.htm

[jenkins]

New Yorker has a thing about Confederacy of Dunces

Early in the novel, Ignatius tells us, "I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it." In 1968, Toole's hero mystified one of the country's finest editors of fiction. In 1980, he seemed harmless. Forty years later, this red-pilled malcontent calling for a theofascist revival seems something else entirely. Ignatius J. Reilly—the godfather of the Internet troll, the Abraham of neckbeards, the 4chan edgelord to rule them all—was no anachronism. He was a prediction.

a perspective indebted to our time

[putneyswipe]

I just finished Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. I feel like this is one of those books people know about but isn't spoken about enough. Cosmic scale city type narratives are my favorite things.

I've read 3 or 4 Ballard novels since Covid hit and the best thus far is The Unlimited Dream Company - a suburban psychogenic fugue-state fable about a guy crashlanding into the Shepperton studios.

[putneyswipe]

the best book I've read in a while. Started a few days ago and couldn't put it down. A fascinating cultural/economic history of Los Angeles written in the early 90s, reminiscent of Thom Andersen's doc but way more expansive. Probably the best non-fiction book about LA I've read aside from Reyner Banham's 'Architecture of Four Ecologies' (which is like the sunny, more optimistic version). Slightly dated, but still relevant and beautifully written. A must for my fellow LA xixax-ers, assuming you guys haven't already gotten around to it.

[jenkins]

Respect to it but I'm stuck on the mantra that journalism is for theater kids who can't sing and my bare minimum is that the la times headquarters has transitioned from a downtown stone inscription to el sugundo efficiency though a south african chinese doctor billionaire. the simple truth, as oscar wilde said, is that life imitates art not nice versa

[jenkins]

I do want to know everything in the book btw

[putneyswipe]

It starts out with some cultural history, then goes into the political history, who owned what, power struggles, etc. The last section details the story of Fontana's founding and development, which plays out like a dark noir. I think it is the strongest part of the book.

I should also note that forum subject of interest Joel Wachs is a character in this - PTA has def read this at some point