Not entirely unrelatedly, I discovered the other day that the book i'd just read about 1950s Vietnam (A/The Dragon Apparent, by norman lewis), whilst apparently straight travel journalism supposedly features some made up bits. It's funny, because when i was reading it, I was dubious about how legit one part of it was, but the bit that is supposedly fictionalised was a different part (or rather, Lewis pretended to be at a real event he was not, in fact, present for).

It impacts my evaluation of the book somewhat, although when research I did was pretty inconclusive.

The Holocaust/World War Two is a really contentious subject to falsely claim an autobiographical account of, however. Even if he was claiming only that it was fiction informed by direct experience he didn't have, I'd probably find it distasteful enough to not want to read it.

Still at 16% on Infinite Jest #sadface

After A Heart Blown Open I got distracted reading Hunger Mountain by David Hinton, my favorite translator of Chinese poetry, who eclipses even the great Red Pine.

It is a short book of meditations on Chinese pictographs (i.e. the pictograph for sincerity is a person standing by words (I am a sucker for that stuff)), translation, and the nature of poetry & consciousness.

Hinton's anthologies Classical Chinese Poetry and Mountain Home are indispensable. A sample:

Lament of the Gorges

Triple Gorge one thread of heaven over
ten thousand cascading thongs of water,

slivers of sun and moon sheering away
above, and wild swells walled-in below,

splintered spirits glisten, a few glints
frozen how many hundred years in dark

gorges midday light never finds, gorges
hungry froth fills with peril. Rotting

coffins locked into tree roots, isolate
bones twist and sway, dangling free,

and grieving frost roosts in branches,
keeping lament's dark, distant harmony

fresh. Exile, tattered heart all scattered
away, you'll simmer in seething flame

here, your life like fine-spun thread,
its road a trace of string traveled away.

Offer tears to mourn the water-ghosts,
and water-ghosts take them, glimmering.

Meng Chiao

Thank you, I will give Carver a go. I have a new Kindle and already have downloaded 400 books! Not much showing for Carver yet (Warez-bb) but will keep looking.

Is he similar to Denis Johnson?

I'm not familiar with Denis Johnson so can't say. Raymond Carver is part of a school of writing usually referred to as "minimalism." Sometimes writers like Tobias Wolff and Hemingway are included in the same group.

If you're new to Carver, I recommend starting with the short story collection Cathedral. Sadly, I don't think any of his stuff has been converted to e-format, though you can find some of his work online. Most of his stories are quite short, so you can blaze through several and find out if he immediately appeals to you, though I'll say I didn't like him for a long time. It took me several readings before I caught on to his subtlety and the immense rewards that come from repeat readings.

A few links to help along a potential Carver convert

"Little Things"
"Cathedral"
"A Small, Good Thing"
"Chef's House"

Oh wait, "Jesus' Son" Denis Johnson! D'oh! Yeah, if you like Denis Johnson I'd be very surprised if you didn't like Carver.

Thanks. I imagine it will be worth it when you put it in those terms. We shall see!

I gave up on The Recognitions. Kind of bummed. But the style grew more and more tedious, and the increasing number of cryptic digressions wasn't doing anything for me, and there's an irksome quality to the way Gaddis handles dialogue, and really there's only so much interest I can muster in the obscure minutiae of how varying Christian denominations diverge and the dry-as-parchment "comedy" that ensues when different adherents are thrown together.

So now I'm trying T.C. Boyle's short story collection, After the Plague. The first two tales are ripping good yarns! Third one's a bit sloppy, though. And the fourth is downright silly. If one of your main characters is a graduate student in Literary Theory on the verge of finishing his dissertation, he should almost never sound like this:

Still, I'm doggedly optimistic for the rest.

lagdonk,

You have to forgive the graduate student's dialogue. He would have sounded much better on paper.

Undubitably, my dear Busto.

Johnson is a noir Carver ...

Excellent, he sounds like my cup of tea. Thanks for links and happy new year.

Student on the roof of the MIT Union:

'The PM was moving fast from a chilly noon cloud-cover into blue autumn glory, but in the first set it was still very cold, the sun still pale and seeming to flutter as if poorly wired.'


I think DFW may have done the best similes ever. At least for me.

Amp: The first 16% is by far the hardest [save the open, of course]. Not joking. It's like a cruise ship slowly getting started, navigating ever so slowly out of port. Open seas are ahead.

BUT WOULD YOU RATHER BE THE KILLER OR THE KILLEE

To be fair, I'm more than halfway through the book now, and the guy has delivered more often than not. He's flubbed a few things, and some of his endings are off, but he's mostly quite good at putting you in people's heads and launching these dramatically loaded situations where you're at the edge of your seat the whole time. On top of which is this rich layer of sensory detail and social commentary rendered in solid, occasionally stellar prose.

My trifecta for 2012 is Breaking Bad season 5.1, Killer Joe and A Naked Singularity

Finished This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz.

The last chapter was phenomenal. Loved the book.

Finished Valis

Valis

Loved it. Funny, mad, mind-bending, sad, profound, and much more. I think it will be a good prologue for Exegesis, though I will let this sink in first.

It's funny I just checked where I stopped reading in my latest failed attempt at IJ - and it sits at exactly 16%. The complete lack of narrative momentum has killed me. Now that I'm done with the Caro books I've been searching for my next thing, and it may just be time to give myself another shot at IJ.

Indeed, I may take a run up at The Pale King, not sure how far I am in. Also have IJ on the kindle so....

20% IJ, took a big chunk out of it yesterday

I take it there will be no new narrative voices going forward.

80% of the way through angelmaker and so far i'm liking it better than The gone away world. In large part due to the fact i've only come across one or two humorous aside during action scenes (something along the lines of "Edie briefly considered whether her assailant would be interested in engaging in a conversation about the relative merits of despotic monarchies compared with.... [and on for another 6 lines before resuming the fight scene])

I just finished Angelmaker...what a preposterous, engaging, fun bit of crime-sci-fi-philisophical fiction. It's like if Neal Stephenson had a sense of humor.

Great ripping yarn.

Hitch - 22, the memior of Christopher Hitchens. Great read of a life lived really to the fullest. Would be of interest to anyone who is a liberal, or even a Marxist. Devotee of Leon Trotsky. Has a lot to say about religion, none of it positive. Spent a lifetime inserting himself into dangerous political uprisings. Really enlightening stuff. If you think you're an intellectual, he can sort of lay waste to that in about three pages.

If anyone has an interest there are plenty of u tube bits of him that may confirm or put off reading the memior.

Angelmaker is on my next 3 list, thanks

Read "Money" by Martin Amis. Initially I didn't care for it but once I got used to the narrator's voice it really grew on me. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Speaking of which, Kaizer, I had the mental image of Hitch narrating the damn thing. Also had a lagdonkian feel to it

Then I read The Wolf of Wall Street by Justin Balfort (after hearing about Scorsese making the film with Leo ). I'm pretty sure this book was the basis for Boiler Room. Really terrible and mostly confabulated, exaggerated, or out right made up. Way too many exclamation points. Way too long. Not well written.