Did the memes get me me? Is this gonna be worse than taipei?

Yeah, I made the one in that post. It really sucks that he's so underread. He's easily one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century. I understand why his style makes him inaccessible, but it's still a crime, how underappreciated he is.
It's probably just hard to find and isn't one of his more famous books. He wrote like 15 books or so in total and you'd be lucky to see even one or two in most stores.

I think they had seven or eight of them at the store I was at. I only knew The Lime Twig so the second selection was more random.

>It's probably just hard to find and isn't one of his more famous books. He wrote like 15 books or so in total and you'd be lucky to see even one or two in most stores.
Yes, and I believe there are only 8 titles still in print. He's like McElroy, half of all his work is available on amazon, and the other half is just gone off the face of the earth.

what store?? used? new?

Used but all except for one were in like new condition. Bookmans.

Is whistlejacket one of the hard to find ones? I got that, the frog, sweet William, and Adventures in the Alaskan skin trade at the strand last week. Everything but whistlejacket was a hardcover.

No and no. Hawkes is worthy of every bit of praise Gaddis gets, and was as important to the development of the novel as him too.

Amen. He was instrumental to the development of postmodern fiction, maybe even more than Gaddis actually.

All of those are fairly hard to find, though they're usually cheap as softcovers on abebooks or wherever else. As hardcovers especially, that's a real get

They were all pretty cheap too. The most expensive one was Adventures, which ran for 9 bucks despite the "list price" being some crazy shit like $167. The whistlejacket paperback was like $3.50.

its bretty good
ending is incredible

I was planning to start a thread for this question but this one seems a good place to ask:
I have the collection in op's pic and I've read the lime twig and travesty so far. While I liked them fine I definitely didn't see the greatness other people (incl authors like gass who I love) see in him. Could someone try and explain to me what about his writing makes him so important?
I just finished travesty this afternoon and felt like I was coming close to that appreciation.

The thing about Travesty is that it's actually the capstone of a "sex trilogy" with the first two entries being The Blood Oranges and Death Sleep and the Traveler. It brings all the themes he first explored in those two books to a violent, orgasmic climax.

What makes Hawkes unique and important is that he was one of the first authors to (paraphrasing his own words) treat plot, characters, setting, and themes as the enemy of the novel and focus on trying to capture a singular vision instead of emphasizing any of those things. Whether or not he succeeded at this is debatable, but the results are absolutely fascinating if you're interested in writing as an artform above anything else it can be. You have to "click" with his sensibility to really enjoy him at his most esoteric, but as an artist he was never afraid to go to places no one else would touch in their writing, and bring them out in all their splendor, spleen, and squalor. I honestly love the man and his work because I've yet to read anyone else who approached fiction in such an intense, intimate way.

I don't at all consider myself qualified to talk about this, but I can say that I think he's the bravest writer of all time. That's something that attracts me to him very strongly. I also see his books as an example of the kind of raw and brilliant formal postmodernism that's opposite to works like Infinite Jest, Taipei et al. that are incredibly bogged down in layers of irony and meta-satire and excessive self-consciousness of the author. Hawkes is just pure genius, a huge amount of talent and– again– the extremely brave goal of challenge the nature language and the novel and everything to do with it. And this is as early as 1949 and onwards, of course, which makes him all the more incredible. I also feel drawn to all the chaos and masochism and violence. It's riveting and horrifying and excessive in just the right kind of way.
Maybe what I'm saying is that he's postmodernism minus all the problems that come with irony and maximalism. I like irony and maximalism all the same, but there's something really pure about Hawkes and his genius.

A HAWKES THREAD?1?1

Anybody read Lunar Landscapes? A Little Bit of Old Slap and Tickle is one of my favorite short stories.

I mean, there are a lot of things to like about him--his prose, which is always interesting and well-done; his ability to unsettle the reader, which he does in the first few pages of everything I've read by him; his mature and subtle way of portraying sex and violence, which never seem forced or out of place--but, as points out, what really makes him important to the development of literature was his disregard for the traditional conventions of the novel, such as plot, theme, setting--everything that, before him, made a novel a novel--in favor of pure, unrestricted, unadulterated expression. And though a very similar thing was done by Gil Orlovitz, who is, in his own right, just as genius, Hawkes did it in such a sensible, subtle way that rarely sacrifices readability.

Thanks for responding, I'll try to bear all this in mind when I read second skin. And I'm probably gonna seek out the cannibal and his other major ones

No, but I would like to hear what it is about.

I really need to get my hands on a copy. It's one of the few pieces of his oeuvre that I'm still missing at the moment.

I wish. Can't find it anywhere. Too suspicious of quality to but it on abebooks or amazon marketplace

Collection of shorter works from the first half of his career. Several stories, two short novels (The Owl/The Goose on the Grave), and one novella (Charivari, his first)

Fucking New Directions needs to pull its head out of its ass and print more copies. He's probably the most important author whose works they have so many of and they've done a terrible job of getting the word out about him.

It's brilliant. As is often the case with the works of Hawkes, it's difficult to succinctly describe. The story I've mentioned in particular is a memory partially reconstructed. I think it may be found online.
I got mine at an antiquarian bookstore for a few dollars. I lucked out

I've got lunar landscapes and lime twig first editions...so count us three.

Make that 4.

What are your favourite books of his? The Beetle Leg is mine, and really my favourite novel in general as well.

I really liked The Beetle Leg too, but, of everything I've read by him, I think I enjoyed The Lime Twig the most.

I can't say yet --- going to begin lime twig tonight perhaps. Ulysses has been slow going and I need a short respite.

I went to a different location today and found all of these. I bought all the out of print ones.

It's hard to choose. My gut reaction would be The Blood Oranges, Death Sleep and The Traveler, and Travesty taken as a single work, but that's a bit of a sentimental answer because those three were my introduction to him.

The Beetle Leg does grow on you after you've read it and had some time to mull it over. And Second Skin really gets you at the end.

If I had to pick one and only one, actually thinking about it, I'd say The Cannibal, but not by much more than most of his others that I've read so far.