Does TNL count?
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Does TNL count?
I hate Commies.
I don't think you read his post very carefully, Stone.
Me, I'm reading Christopher Durang Explains It All, a compendium of Durang plays.
Ahahah, you're right. I like taking shots at Zinn, heheh, sue me. What sort of stuff does Durang write? I don't really read any modern (?) drama at all, kind of deficient in that area.
reading Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis... It's okay right now, but I hope it picks up like Glamourama did, or i'll be dissapointed
... Still waiting for Lullaby on paperback :rolleyes:
The Hook, a novel by Donald E. Westlake.
Writer A has a $1.1 million advance for his next novel, but his deadline was last year. He has horrendous writer's block, and is being bled dry by his wife, who he's in the process of divorcing. Writer B is a career mid-level author who's working under yet another pen name, and is seriously considering a new career and uprooting his family, much to his and his wife's chagrin.
Writer A meets up with Writer B, and says, "I've got an idea - why don't you give me your next manuscript, in secret? I put my name on it, send it to my publisher, and we split the advance - whaddya say?"
Writer B: "Hm. What's the catch?"
Writer A: "I want you to kill my wife."
Things proceed from there in very interesting fashion.
I picked this up immediately after finishing Westlake's The Ax , in which a white-collar guy gets fired from his job. Worried about the competition for his next interview, he creates a fake ad for his ideal job in the Classifieds, and kills everyone who applies.
Westlake is loads and loads of fun, one of the best pure entertainment writers I've read. Carl Hiaasen is good fun in that area, too. I haven't read either of them in a long time, but I used to really like it before I became too good for that sort of book.
Have a Nice Day is one of my favorite books. I read it constantly. I just picked up the sequel tonight.Quote:
Originally posted by 88mph
Mick Foley's Autobiography (again).
Has anyone here read The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? I'm thinking of starting that after exams.
I dunno about his books, but I like him on Page 2.Quote:
Originally posted by Ichabod
Last book read: Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.
Thompson finding his voice as a writer. Excellent. I love the chapter devoted to tracing the lineage of the Hell's Angels back to the Linkhorns.
My current obsession with The Ring led me to Lullaby - I'm thinking of picking that up too. Speaking of The Ring, I would read the original novel if I didn't pick up so much of the story online and read chunks of it in the store.Quote:
Originally posted by Rick
The latter has become my second favorite by Palhuinuk besides Lullaby, with probably the best protaginist out of all his novels.
It's just "Infinite Jest" - yeah, I read it, as much as you can read a book like that. It's interesting in parts, stultifyingly boring in others. You'll get tired of checking footnotes really quickly, and now, what, 7 years after its release, the writing style is almost self-parodying. Like most of the literature in the genre (other than Eggers'), a lot of the jokes are pretty bad - stuff like calling a newly developed NAFTA analogue the "Organization of North American Nations" (oh hohoho, O.N.A.N., yes, politics is masturbation, very good David).
There's a book in there that's actually worth really going through - the thing is, there are too many other books that offer similar rewards for less work. Saul Bellow said something about how he was going to wait until he's in a retirement home before he tries to read "Finnegan's Wake", and "Infinite Jest" should probably be in that category, too.
Still, it's probably worth half-reading the entire book just for the injokes with other people who have 'read' it. Wistfully making fun of guys like Wallace seems to have become a sub-genre of hip literary conversation. Still, it's probably even better, now, to say "I don't have time for stuff like that" or something else along those lines.
It is one of the few pieces of literature that I think resonates with people our age, sort of a touchstone. "A Heartbreaking Work of Genius" is another.
Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated is funnier, and it's got more emotion (the raw clumsy attempts to actually say something, cloaked in layers and layers of everything else, are what make these novels worth reading). Pynchon's Pynchon, hm, I dunno what else. I have a hard time reading modern fiction without feeling like I'm not ready for it, that I ought to reread Shakespeare or the Bible or finish reading all of Richardson or Fielding or whatever.
What do you mean by that?Quote:
Originally posted by Stone
I became too good for that sort of book.