ITT: 20th century masterpieces you've never seen discussed on Veeky Forums

What is this?

Reminds me of a friend that I've had for a decade who is drinking himself to death: going to dangerous bars and driving drunk. He refuses to say he has a problem so this book means something to me. I've been there myself, too, but got my shit under control now.

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Looks interesting

goodreads.com/topic/show/1263469-gil-orlovitz

Praise kek

Kek be praised

Never heard of these two.

Pic related used to be talked about and recommended. Not for a while now.

A 20th century masterpieces I've never seen discussed on Veeky Forums

/s It's a fairly obscure work so I'd suggest starting here goodreads.com/book/show/16079778-milkbottle-h, or with the thread someone else posted about Gil. It's not an easy read at all, but it's very rewarding. The style is completely on its own and the pictures it conjures are vivid and dreamlike. It also has one of the deftest treatments of the Holocaust I've ever seen in literature buried deep within (the subtle and disciplined nature of it is what constitutes the deftness). I read it as a novel about escapism, but it could easily be about a lot of other things.

It's fairly hard to get a copy right now but mine was around $10 and I only bought it about a year ago--copies of a similar price pop up here and there. I used bookfinder.com to get a copy.

It's definitely worth a shot if you can stomach experimental poetic prose and aren't afraid to roll your sleeves up a bit when it comes to unearthing narrative and character (as with all good writers, it has more to do with what Orlovitz doesn't say, than what he does).

I really dug The Lime Twig (which has a similarly fog-like quality to its plot) when I read it but I haven't delved any further into Hawkes since. Any recommendations?

Bump

I've posted it several times too. It's well-known 20th century classic and you aren't special for liking it

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my diary desu

I've been quietly shilling pic related and Take Five by D Keith Mano for a few months now, both have incredible meme potential and are actually good books

>you've never seen discussed on Veeky Forums

Some guy tried to meme this heavy a year or two ago

let's see some then

>introduction by Joshua Cohen

doubt.jpg

:( mano died the day I got my take 5

Power's Morte D'Urban
Exley's A Fan's Note
M.F.K. Fisher and Penelope Fitzgerald, in general.

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> Can't find it on library genesis
> Can't find it on torrents
> Can't find it on emule
> The only used copies I can find on Amazon or on any online store that ships to my country have obscene prices

I'm really angry at you right now

This one was pretty funny, but i wonder if it has become very dated, with all the 90's jokes.

At least Mendoza is popular here in Spain, last year he won the Cervantes Award.

Any Zebald, but especially Rings of Saturn. Once I posted it in a thread and someone said "Zebald is pretty based" but that's it.

i'm entry level but this book seems like it should be memed on Veeky Forums a lot more. simple language, easy but powerful themes.

i really like the scene with the main character's dad walking outside after he slips on the steps

That book is a meme in itself, I had to read it senior year of high school

Get outta here boy

He's terrible, and his intro is an embarrassment. It's clear that he took the intro as a personal challenge to show how clever he is, Cohen's inferiority complex really shows when placed next to Newman. The book is fantastic though, and it has a legitimate preface which accomplishes what Cohen's intro does not.

I was sad to hear he died but also slightly happy because it means a small boost in public interest in his work.

Gary Lutz

bump

I did some work in this author's apartment. He had some interesting items in his bedroom like nipple clamps and poppers and shit. I stole some of his weed

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This is a good one, if not for all the Americana and politics Coover would probably be meme status

>go to look up excerpt on amazon and it's only cohen's intro

fucking christ

If this thread is still up I'll post some excerpts when I get back to my dorm tonight. It's got a Gass quote on the back which counters Cohen slightly.

This is literally on the 2016 Veeky Forums top 100.

What's meme about it? I thought it was good

i would appreciate that, thank you

Yeah, he's a bit of a faggot, wrote a book called The Joys of Gay Sex. What kind of work did you do?

It's an excellent novel though, would highly recommend

The Esteemed Traveler may have noticed that known artistes often resort to introducing just such little choruses of chromatic chums who are mostly empty canvas, whose sidereal appearance illuminates a larger theme, amplifies a point, or assists in pulling through a packthread of some secret motive. But truth be told, there are no minor characters in Cannonia, everyone gets their aria as well as their comeuppance. And in my experience, it is best to keep such folk on the same page, because if they begin to wander aimlessly, like electrons or deviations from a tonic chord, nothing good can come of it. There is nothing more dangerous than a person who wants to become a character in a novel. So when one of these little black keys is sounded, never put the other two out of mind. Their tempos are set well beyond our egos, and if they do not strictly belong to a given key, each character constructs its own society. Whether embracing, confronting, echoing, fracturing, or inverting one another, they are simultaneously all melody and all accompaniment, and as such are difficult to kick out of the composition. And What's most interesting about such people is not the freshness of their entrances, but how, one by one, they disappear. (P. 162)

I opened to this passage at random. The book has these little Musil-esque musings throughout but they are grounded in a narrator who is at the center of the story, and as such is playing a Nabokovian narration game with the audience that is much more nuanced than the average "unreliable narrator". In spite of the high metaphor, erudite prose, and formal experimentation, the story still manages to achieve sincerity in its content. In fact the core of the story is a simple discussion on the values of friendship as explored by two (very different) intellectuals attempting to tame a series of unruly dogs. This book is truly unlike any other, it's clear in its inspirations and reflections but the final product takes on a configuration of style, content, form, and technique that I had not seen before and have not since. To quote Gass, "you are parachuting into the four paws of a dog. And into one of the most intriguingly original fictions ever."

this book literally convinced me to stop drinking

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bump

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Infinite Jest

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Middlebury student?

I'm taking the semester off, thank god I wasn't there

But then again I don't spend that much time on Veeky Forums

sorry m8 this is posted all the time

Bump

thanks, i liked this a lot. i'll add it to my list

No problem dude, glad you liked it

>2666
>not often posted

It's ok, the fact that you don't know that probably makes you better than me. I've become part of the ship down here

bump

Nothing else???

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Use bookfinder. There're a couple at reasonable prices. (Somehow I scored mine for $3).
Good luck with Ice Never F though.

He's fantastic, and RoS is in my Top 5, but it's no surprise that he's not popular with Veeky Forums; the wandering walls of digressions and references make him pretty hard to get into.

FUCK YEAH GARY LUTZ
I just finished Divorcer a couple of days ago and was just blown the fuck away. Legitimately has some of the best and tightest sentences I think I've ever read - or at least that I've read this year...
Can't wait to get my hands on Partial List of People to Bleach.

Also, I forgot to throw Evan Dara in here as my contribution.

have you actually read dara or are you memeing? plz b hnst

>Only fiction.

>this fucking guy again

can you tell us more about the obscure and outdated economic texts you read or would you rather talk about conics again?

someone is hella f*cking mad...

Reflex & Bone Structure by Clarence Major
Tales of Neveryon by Samuel R. Delany
Black Sunlight by Dambudzo Marechera
Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness by Bob Kaufman
Erasure by Pervical Everett
The Wig by Charles Wright

>Keynesian economics
Not even once

Yesterday Will Make You Cry by Chester Himes
The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim by Iceberg Slim
Freelance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed
Guide by Dennis Cooper
The Tenant by Roland Topor
The Farm by Clarence Cooper Jr.
Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya

If I wanted to be memeing, I would've said DFW.

I've had this for a long time on my shelf on a Veeky Forums recommendation from five years ago. Glad to see it again. I hope it's worth it. What is it like?

That cover makes it look like the name of the book is The Universal Basketball Association, Inc. and then some faggot signed his name on the corner.

And then there's this one which is one of my favourite covers, ever.

Has anyone here read this book? (Pay no heed to the retarded cover, I can't find the original.) I've been looking for it for a long time.

yes, I don't remember much of it but I do remember it being good. planning to reread it soon.

Do you have it as an ebook maybe?

>simple language, easy but powerful themes.

this is why Ishiguro is not memed more you goob. No matter what you think of then, the meme trilogy are the meme trilogy because of their complexity and inaccessibility. I'm yet to read Remains of the Day but as far as Never Let Me Go Is Concerned the guy sure can write a page turner but it didn't exactly leave me with a newfound appreciation for literature.

no, paperback.

M-E-T-A-F-I-C-T-I-O-N

This one's pretty crazy. I read the first of the four. I have no idea what it's about but I liked it.

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Don't mind me, just the best German-language pomo shit

Anyone read this?

bump

Wie Deutsch ist Es by Walter Abish

Yi Mun-yol - Our twisted Hero.
A story about authoritarianism in school - and beyond.

so is dara as good as people say? Are the gaddis comparisons apt?

>pomo shit
You got that right, pomo is certainly shit.

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The recognitions by william gaddis

/lit: wouldnt get it tho... le sigh

Yes! Such a funny and totally excellent book. Much too subtle for Veeky Forums's taste.

Dropping by to say I've recommended this a few times as well as the author in general, but I've never seen a discussion either

I think calling it a "pageturner" is a little disingenuous. It's certainly more literary than like, DaVinci Code, which is what I think of when I hear page turner. It's kind of in that David Mitchell spot between genre fiction and literary fiction. I most enjoy reading things from that spot though

It's pretty good isn't it?

Don't know why it isn't more popular, especially in queer fiction

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Beautigan's brought up every now and then, he should be discussed more though.

Anyone like this?