book club

[martino]

it's autumn once again, you people over there can't even waste away your time smoking in bars any more, so it is a good time to read some good books.

i propose we continue on with tommy's excellent idea of a book club (even though some of you bums couldn't be bothered the first round). any suggestions?

[TragicPixie]

hmm I'm currently reading The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald - but I can't wait to start Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams a collection of the short stories and such of Sylvia Plath and Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes (they were b-day pressies)
if you're into that sort of thing - they both look deliciously good.

[Tommy Martyn]

Er, Pixie my dear. You should be reading your history books. Screw Ted and Sylvia. Get your degree sorted first.

God struth. I am starting to sound like my old man.

Martino. You suggested it. You should pick it. The only rule I know of is that the book should be available in paperback.

[TragicPixie]

but I do read the history books... and the latin chapters and the english selections and the theology chapters and the bible for fucksake and the psych chapters... the problem lying in that I can't seem to make myself go to class or get out of bed these days or ... give a damn to do anything about a lot of things I really, really ought to.

Hopefully I won't acedemically screw myself too terribly badly and can un-sober up and fix this rather quickly.

[martino]

thanks tommy but it is not for me to select a book. we need something that we can all subscribe to so that participation will be good.

what i can do is make suggestions:


Chang-Rae Lee: Aloft
i haven't read this one but I have seen rave reviews. for some time now lee has been called one of the best authors under 40.

Amis: Yellow Dog
reviews are mixed but I like to read every new amis that comes along, if only because his style is way up there above us all. even if the book has flaws i think it would be fun to compare notes with y'all. Perhaps yellow dog is not yet in paperback but i think getting a second-hand copy should be easy.

Elfriede Jelinek: Wonderful, Wonderful Times
she got the nobel prize. some people over here say, not without reason, that she is one of the dumbest women in western europe. i dislike her implied literary epistemology, whereas the inner truth of society can be found in its characteristic examples of violence and hysteria. on the other hand i know some really cool people who think she is great. i am willing to give her one last try, even though you people would be reading her in english and me in german. in paperback.

WG Sebald: Austerlitz
this is a wonderful book you will never forget if you can manage to read it. it is difficult but worthy of your attention. available in english, in paperback.

Thomas Frank: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatism Won the Hearts of America
do we read non-fiction? i don't think so. but if we do, this might be it.

Thor Kunkel: Final Stage
this guy got himself into a fine mess by writing a novel about third-reich nazis who finance their crimes by making porn movies. after controversy in politically correct germany, the book was retracted. can you get it in the US? i think it would be great fun to do this one with you people.


any other suggestions? let's collect some and then vote!

[Tommy Martyn]

If I can throw in an opinion. I could do without Martin Amis. The, "What's wrong with Kansas?" might be a case of preaching to the converted. Reviews made it sound like a very long Lewis Lapham editorial. I dearly love Lewis Lapham. I'm not sure I want to read this for a couple of hundred pages.

Currently I am tackling the massive, "Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrel." It is a laugh and a change from the usual. While we were moving I got into the habit of reading whatever fell out of an open box. Often it would be something from Mrs Tommy's science fiction collection. I read a couple of Neil Gaiman books. They were fun. The missus keeps trying to push me toward some of the work of Gene Wolff. I don't go much for the sci fi fantasy stuff but even the NYT book review had it down as a work of genius. These tales of other worlds (I always think of Dune) I usually dismiss in this house, under the heading of "Egg whisk of destiny novels." Anybody out there like this Stuff?

[mccutcheon]

I say The Captain and the Enemy by Mr. GG. He is a master story teller. The book is a thin novel, almost a novella, so even if you get it at Strand or 1/2 Price Books it should still be cheap and best of all I'm reading it now. Ha! Selfish bastard I am. And did I mention it is short, so even Slothy can finish it.

[martino]

tommy, i am a practically a fan of ursula k leguin, as i have said elsewhere on this bb, so that kind of material would not be too foreign to me. even though i like to say that sci fi is too often neither fi nor sci (is that a cliché already?) however: i think something else would resonate better on this board.

getting back to pixes, i know the appeal of dysfunctional- relationship stories such as those documented by zelda&f.scott, but this subject matter is just too close to my recent life, so i couldn't stomach it.

what we should be looking for is not the Perfect
Book to read, but a good book to read and write about, mutually. participation is more important than enlightenment. so an easy classic might be fine for now. which is why i second mc's motion to do a GG.

[mccutcheon]

I thought to get us started. a short, cheap 'very good' book everyone will be able to find. or we could have Tommy tell us why it sucks.


The Captain and the Enemy
20th-century Classic
Graham Greene - Author

$13.00 add to cart view cart

Book: Paperback | 5.15 x 7.75in | 192 pages | ISBN 014018855X | Mar 1999 | Penguin Classic

Victor Baxter was only twelve years old when the Captain took him away from school to live with Liza, his girlfriend. He claimed that Victor, now reborn as Jim Smith, had been won from his father at a game of backgammon or was it chess? Adventurer, robber and thief, the Captain is always on the move, while Jim grows up, locked in loveless relationships. Having reached his twenties, Jim, a hack journalist and unwitting Judas, attempts to piece together the Captain's story.

‘Greene wastes not a word in distilling the fictional preoccupations of a lifetime … The narrative runs fast and true across that bleak and poignant emotional landscape that is uniquely, immortally his' – Time

‘There is no shortage of novels whose theme is the destructiveness of an inability to love, but few have laid it bare so openly as this one, few signposted the loveless road with such devastating plainness' – Ruth Rendell in the Sunday Telegraph

‘It is undoubtedly a triumph … deliriously, wickedly enjoyable' – Auberon Waugh in the Independent

[Sloth]

I've always wanted to read some Graham Greene since my Lit professor told us he was an unimportant, mainstream writer with no artistic sense.And this was just after the guy guy died (Graham Greene not the Lit professor).

Count me in!

[Maverick]

I liked Dune, since it has sociopolitiacal themes as well as good sci-fi/fantasy, but I realize thatyou'll all probably dismiss this opinion since I also like Sting...although he's starting to get old., but that's another story

I don't really have any suggestions, but I just ask that wwe stay away from pulitzer prize winners, because I almost always hate anything by a P prize winning author.

[marky]

Sadly the only thing I'll be reading are textbooks...

[sara]

yesterday I purchased The light in the Attic --with the cd. It was what my book collection has been missing. Shel is perfect for any time of the year, and it's wonderful to be able to hear his voice even though the cancer monster got him. I listened to it all the way home from the Matisse Picasso exhibit -- at which I also purchased a coloring book of Matisse's.

Mark it sucks that you have to read textbooks, or maybe it doesn't -- but you can squeeze in A Wonderful Day with Matisse; there's also a Wonderful Day with Van Gogh, I'm not sure if I'm getting these titles right, parents, you may already have these for your kiddos -- they are four or five bucks -- board books, I think they're called.

Tragic, I was super-motivated in college -- it's not all that it's cracked up to be. If I had it to do over, I'd get out of bed less, and go to the used book store more, but that's what I do now to make up for not doing it in college. Oh, Sylvia -- and Ted. Sylvia killed herself -- great art or not, it's not a fun read. If I taught a lit course I would definitely have more Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and Erica Jong -- these are women who are just women and tough and honest. Nikki also has a hell of a sense of humor and righteous indignation -- both go a long, long way.

So what is it that the bb is going to read? I'd like to recommend something -- how about one of Sloth or MC's -- I've not read either one of them in a while.

[Tom]

CLOSE TO THE KNIVES-A MEMOIR OF DISINTEGRATION
David Wojnarowicz

From Publishers Weekly
The New York-based visual artist whose work has been targeted by Jesse Helms and the Rev. Donald Wildmon as obscene debuts here with a collection of writings marked by stunning originality and sharp polemics. The alternation of poetic observations of a desolate, at times dissolute life on the road and in squalid urban settings with indictments of a homophobic "establishment" might at first appear ill-advised; soon, however, it becomes clear that Wojnarowicz's visual and verbal gifts are inextricably bound to his experience as a homosexual in an American underclass. In images, rhythms and verbal textures that often seem like written analogues to his paintings, Wojnarowicz displays an ability to capture the insensate beauty of much of the American landscape, and light it with a burning human hunger: "Down along the service road the prehistoric silhouettes of sixteen-wheel rigs ground their gears in the blackness. . . . As each cab swung by me there was a video blaze of tiny green and red ornamental cab lights framing the darkened windows containing a momentary fractured bare arm or dim face filled with the stony gaze of road life." In the course of this memoir, the author cooly sketches the outlines of a troubled adolescence--parental kidnapping, drug use, prostitution--making survival alone seem miraculous. What Kerouac was to a generation of alienated youth, what Genet was to the gay demimonde in postwar Europe, Wojnarowicz may well be to a new cadre of artists compelled by circumstance to speak out in behalf of personal freedom. This is a book sublime in poetry, fierce in outrage.

[martino]

but in case anybody is still interested in a non-fiction suggestion, here is a special book i have been meaning to read for some time now:

How to Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?
by Hiroyuki Nishigaki

"I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out."