whats your favorite dalkey archive book?
hard mode: no o'brien, gaddis, schmidt
whats your favorite dalkey archive book?
hard mode: no o'brien, gaddis, schmidt
Barth's collected.
Witz or the making of Americans. That was easy.
Wittgenstein's mistress
Nightwood is one of their best, objectively
Whatever they have by Ishmael Reed is their worst
this is a good one
didn't know they had that. gotta get
witz is shit, making of americans is good if you read a page or two a day.
what's wrong with Witz? other than the jew writer meme, is there something actually wrong with the writing?
Goytisolo's stuff
gonna drop a plug for Flowers of Grass
It's highly derivative, overly long, the wordplay isn't really that good (kinda pats itself on the back for every weak pun it makes), etc. Honestly, one can tell Cohen is an uncreative person by looking at his Book of Numbers, which seems like 20 or 30 years late given its metafictional techniques and tone. He's just a pomo drone that isn't really worth your time reading.
well said
I posted witz and yeah it's not that good. Those are the only 2 I've read beside the recognitions and j r. Although I think it's worth reading if you read a lot.
read more before posting reee
Is Ishmael Reed supposedly bad only because he is black?
Poor Things was alright. Not better than Third Policeman though.
No. What he attempts to do is kinda be the Ralph Ellison of postmodern literature, a sort of "I'm black, I'm the authority on black experience, but it's a varied and oppressed experience for many subtle reasons. I'll document it using the styles of the time." Except whereas Ralph Ellison captures those subtle reasons with subtle writing and masterful language, Reed goes full voodoo wacko meth-infused blasphemy, the entire opposite direction. If you like that, he's great. But I think it's ridiculous and too reactionary in attitude and style against other black writers like Baldwin and Ellison. Yellow Radio whatever whatever Broke Down was one of my least favorite reads in college (pomo class). Then again, almost every book in that class was either mediocre (Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry, Dictee) or shit, minus White Noise, Lot 49, and some Wallace short stories.
The Sot-Weed Factor
Less popular but also Poor Things and The Engineer of Human Souls
What do you think Toni Morrison?
Is late Celine worth a read? I've only ready Journey to the End of the Night, which I enjoyed but thought it went on too long.
not really. he said it all in journey and death..installment. read professor y if you're curious though
>no mention of phosphor in dreamland
Lads, I....
>no Gaddis
I guess The Tunnel by Gass, then
Honestly? I haven't read her at all yet. From what I've heard she sounds to be a bit between Ellison (great) and Alice Walker (dogshit) in quality. I dunno, again, haven't read so can't pass judgement
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Kis
Sucide/Autoportrait by Leve
Despite her denying being influenced by Faulkner, it's still pretty obvious. She's got great lyrical prose. And for an angry black writer she still manages to be subtle. I mean that in the way her characters complain more about white people than her 3rd person narrators do. She's adequate, I'd say.
Locos by Felipe Alfau is an underrated one. whimsical stories in the vein of Borges, Calvino, Lem, Nabokov, etc. managed to snag a copy for 50 cents recently
Wittgenstein's Mistress
do i have to read wittgenstein to enjoy this book?
No, not really. But the world Kate lives in is a realization of the cold atomized world implied by his tractatus.
Also the role of language plays an important role.
It might be more valuable to know a bit about art history.
No, just make sure not to read Beckett's trilogy before reading it otherwise you'll realize it's not as original as it seems (either that, or you will come to realize Beckett was a genius ahead of his time)
thanks for your response
Depends on your level of interest in World War II. I found his last three books a fascinating look into the decline of Vichy France and Nazi Germany. They're even more chaotic than Journey and plot is essentially nonexistent. It feels like you're sitting in a room with him and he's just rambling off a story to you, jumping off of whatever mental associations he makes into some other little anecdote of bumbling Nazi officials and train rides through bombed out Germany.