quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: Some TMOers recommended Ali Smith, whose short stores I thoroughly enjoyed. Which is the best of her novels?
I've just finished Hotel World and whilst I enjoyed the writing I think I wanted it to be more of a 'traditional' novel rather than having interrelated different voices to whom more or less inconsequential things happen. If you're going to be reading it more for the prose than the plot, though, that might make more sense -I might look into her short stories and see if I prefer those.
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quote:Originally posted by Jack Vincennes: whilst I enjoyed the writing I think I wanted it to be more of a 'traditional' novel rather than having interrelated different voices to whom more or less inconsequential things happen
I'm completely losing it, I think I need to have an asprin and go to bed now. Next thing I know I'll be saying it's not a proper bloomin' poem if it doesn't ryhme and scan, is it?. Urgh.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: interesting how both ben and london hardly post these days. Is this it then? Make or break? Does a thumbs down for Murakami mean that it's time for me to think about moving to new internet chatboard?
I wouldn't think too hard about that, Doctor B. Murakami's shaping up incredibly well at the moment - I'm really really enjoying it. It's really crisp and sweet and funny. I love it.
After that, Black Mask is in the dock again with Sandman, by Miles Gibson, which arrived yesterday. It's looking promising though - being a serial killer book published by the Do Not Press.
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I read that book as an undergraduate, way back when, and enjoyed it. I don't know if that's a slight on the novel in any way.
I was newly impressed by Amis' Success this week. It really is a tremendous manipulation in its structure of reversal -- it would be one thing to have two foster-brothers whose fortunes neatly rise and fall in ironic tandem, another to make this a metaphor for the emergence of a new working-class money-made-man (and with hindsight a draft for John Self in Money) while the old money of the landed families declines (in a way, again, this is a swan song for Charles Highway's type, from The Rachel Papers). The discrepancy, slowly and pleasurably emerging, between the two brothers' versions of events -- Terry's stolid self-deprecation vs Gregory's fey swanning -- is constantly tangy relish. It's a neat trick that you want to keep reading and believing Gregory's story, his superior flitting, even after he's started to give up on it himself, to stop lying and speak in a plainer, stripped-down style... a sorrowful naked prose.
But Amis also subtly nudges and moulds the reader's perceptions so that after the mid-point you begin to sympathise with the hateful Gregory, something you wouldn't have thought possible at the start, and feel scared and sorry for him at the end, while starting to despise the once-pitiful, now newly-brutal and sadistic Terry, who has found that his class can, bolstered with money, command power. This is a plunging into the meat of character, like the author's hands working right in the gunky, tearful centre of the people he's created, to change them... it's a brave and poignant effect and unexpected from a writer who, now at least, is accused of being pure style, riff and language.
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Thorn, I'm now reading Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and Jim Dixon also reminds me of you, though inevitably constrained in his behaviour and his reporting of that behaviour by 1950s manners & convention. Maybe I've found the key trait that unites the prose of Amis father and son: both of them write characters like Thorn Davis at various points in the 20th century (Thorn visits the 1970s; What If -- Thorn was working in the 1950s)
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Why can't the Amis family just leave me alone? Like my life isn't miserable enough, already and now every time I turn around one of them has found a new way to eviscerate me in fiction. Martin's got a couple of kids hasn't he? Why not get them to put the boot in, too? Get it over with.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Black Mask is in the dock again with Sandman, by Miles Gibson, which arrived yesterday. It's looking promising though - being a serial killer book published by the Do Not Press.
Good for you! I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Breaking news! I've just read the first issue of Brian Azzarello's new comic book, the Western Loveless... it's looking good. Very good.
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I received that Captain Britain you recommended today, BM. I've also been enjoying, and recommend to all superhero fans, The New Frontier, a fabulous retelling of the DC Silver Age in the context of American 1950s politics, all drawn in a gorgeous period pastiche like the credits of Bewitched or contemporary advertisements for brand new cookers and washing-machines.
Unfortunately I also received a mail today telling me that my friend whose wife had a novel published recently has just had his novel read with interest by Orion, and recommended by them to an agent at Curtis Brown just because he met people at a party with his newly-successful writer-wife. Beneath the congratulations in my reply churned an undercurrent of sick, bilious jealousy.
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heh. I get that, too. I even got it a bit whilst reading your post, and I don't even know the guy. I hate successful people.
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I dont have any aspirations... I just float along through life on a little cloud dealing with each mini triumph/major blow as it comes...
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I know, I was thinking that he was now my own best shot of success as I held back the spew of "but you know my writing's better than yours! how can you ethically take this offer when you know I deserve it more, and you're just jammy?"
I wonder if he detected the wormy desperation behind my gritted-teeth, fake-smiley closing line "don't forget your mates now you're a big-shot, will you".
And the painful sincerity behind my earlier, breezily bright "I suppose you're my best contact in the industry now!"
quote:Originally posted by kovacs: I know, I was thinking that he was now my own best shot of success as I held back the spew of "but you know my writing's better than yours! how can you ethically take this offer when you know I deserve it more, and you're just jammy?"
I wonder if he detected the wormy desperation behind my gritted-teeth, fake-smiley closing line "don't forget your mates now you're a big-shot, will you".
And the painful sincerity behind my earlier, breezily bright "I suppose you're my best contact in the industry now!"
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I just had one of those unnerving time-perspective revelations, like when you realise your first girlfriend is more than half your life away.
The novel The Rachel Papers was published in 1973. The apparently-awful film adaptation with Dexter Fletcher was released what seemed ages later, in 1989. But actually that's the mid-point between now and the novel's appearance -- 16 years each way.
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Jeez, your friends' dreams coming true can be such a nightmare. That pal of mine greeted me this morning with another email -- his missus' novel has just won the most prestigious genre prize and they're fielding calls from film companies.
You would laugh to see how many times I tweaked my mail to take out all the references to luck and right place right time, along with phrases like sure she probably deserved it, she has some talent after all, and filthy rotten unfairness of things.
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take that bile choke it down, and then sell them out to the tabloids."famous author wouldn't suck my cock when i was snorting coke off her husbands jaw" or something.
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You are, however, providing terrific advertising through the medium of pain and jealousy. I'm really curious to know the name of yr mate's wife's book now...
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It's called Running Hot. See, I am making up for my jealous spleen (now, that's jealousy... that's me being jealous, and that's something to be jealous of. What I feel about Vikram's world-wandering is nothing remotely similar) by promoting her work.
It's not really what I'd choose to read for pleasure, as it's steeped in Black British experience and my tastes in novels are so awfully narrow (almost entirely books by and about white Anglo-American men, 1950 onwards) -- but it has a very striking and original "voice" and prose style, so I can see why it would grab attention in a genre where perhaps the tone and milieu is very samey and, well, white.
Stepping dangerously outside my comfort zone, I read The Cave of the Cyclops this morning, by "Homer". What a rip off Joyce's Ulysses!
I see my pal has sent me a mail this morning entitled "More Good News". I may have to get stinking drunk before reading it.
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To be fair, he is a really humble and likeable guy who has been toiling away at his writing since I've known him (from our 3 years on a fiction evening course at Goldsmiths, 1991-4) ... it's not his fault he's doing so well suddenly. The little shit. The fuck.
quote:Originally posted by Dr. Benway: interesting how both ben and london hardly post these days. Is this it then? Make or break? Does a thumbs down for Murakami mean that it's time for me to think about moving to new internet chatboard?
Bneweigh, I finished Norweigian Wood yesterday, and really thought it was quite something. Then I read the translators note in the back and the gist of it was "this is the Murakami book that all the plebs like", which made me feel like a thickie.
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That Jonathan Safran Foer (sp) Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning was pretty good. It mostly contains extracts from his book Unbelievably Loud and Incredibly Close (sp). I think of him very much in the same way as Dave Eggers, ie. annoyance probably tinged with more jealousy about "young" new talents, mixed with grudging enjoyment. However, for a young man he does seem, dare I say it, tediously unable to get away from the shadow of the Holocaust that took place many decades before his birth.
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Today I read some of "Idiot Nation" by Michael Moore. It is like a bad student essay: a bunch of stats marshalled clumsily into supporting blusters of crude personal opinion that contradicts itself within a chapter.
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Wow, a post in Media that isn't on that stupid zombie game thread!
I have just finished Iron Council, which I enjoyed. It took a while for me to get into it- although you are thrown into the action straightaway, I wasn't quite sure exactly what was going on and who to root for, given the author's habit of killing characters off so casually. "The Perpetual Train" section is the stand-out part of the book- really gripping. Although everything came together in the end, it felt a little disjointed and unsure of its direction in places. But still very very good.
I've also finished Norwegian Wood. Although Murakami is clearly a skillful writer, I didn't honestly find the book that exciting, I'm afraid people reminiscing about boyfwends and girlfwends doesn't really hold my interest. So I've read one of his novels and a short story collection and the verdict is: good, but not quite sure what all the fuss is about.
I'm just starting Book 6 of 100 Bullets which is rocking along nicely.
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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I am at the section in Iron Council where the iron council forms, so I look forward to discussing this novel further in a week or so. I was just thinking it's a shame we had a whole lengthy thread called "Bas-Lag Confidential" for the previous two books, and nothing on this one.
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I just picked up The Zombie Survival Guide : Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks. It's a nice diversion from all the urbandead stuff going on here at the moment.
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