Books - Page 5

jnew76 · 10-01-2009, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

What's the base of the problem?

Mens inability to separate themselves from their dicks.

OUCH...

Why would any man want to seperate himself from this appendage?

Snorlax1 · 10-01-2009, 03:17 PM

im 12. where am i?

LizardState · 10-07-2009, 11:02 AM

Just finished Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon & Road Dogs by the best writer of pulp detective fiction in my lifetime, Elmore Leonard, & I'm halfway through his 80s novel LaBrava.

Leonard brought back protagonist Jack Foley over a decade later from Out of Sight, Foley is the most famous bank robber in the nation having robbed 127 of them. Gotta love his in-jokes too, in one p/o RDs Foley discusses who would play him in a film version of his life, & he disagrees with the choices, saying he would prefer so-&-so, or "maybe George Clooney." LOL, Who do you think played Foley in the film Out of Sight?

awfullyquiet · 10-07-2009, 11:10 AM

Pynchon is so Legit.

Top 5 20th Century Authors?

I'd venture to put him in there.

LizardState · 10-07-2009, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

Pynchon is so Legit.

Top 5 20th Century Authors?

I'd venture to put him in there.

Still bogged down in Against the Day, about 2/3rds of the way through its overwhelming 1300 or so pgs..... arrrgghh.

I highly recommend Inherent Vice as a neo-noir/hippy detective novel, it's not just for Pynchon fans only. It's very similar to his late 60s Crying of Lot 49 with the same themes, paranoid conspiracies, secret scieties, rampant sex & drug use, etc. Good times

A Perfect Score · 10-07-2009, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

Pynchon is so Legit.

Top 5 20th Century Authors?

I'd venture to put him in there.

Ive never read Pynchon but I heard hes quite tedious to read. I know a friend of mine tried to read Gravity's Rainbow and found it almost intolerable. Of course, Im sure Ill get around to trying to read some of his stuff at some point or another, but I found that a little discouraging.

Snorlax1 · 10-07-2009, 11:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

Pynchon is so Legit.

Top 5 20th Century Authors?

I'd venture to put him in there.

Really going out on a limb there... not.

E-Man · 10-07-2009, 11:53 AM

I'm reading Dean Koontz' novel Cold Fire right now, and it's really hard to put down. It's an engaging read that seems to get better and better.

awfullyquiet · 10-07-2009, 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LizardState

Still bogged down in Against the Day, about 2/3rds of the way through its overwhelming 1300 or so pgs..... arrrgghh.

I highly recommend Inherent Vice as a neo-noir/hippy detective novel, it's not just for Pynchon fans only. It's very similar to his late 60s Crying of Lot 49 with the same themes, paranoid conspiracies, secret scieties, rampant sex & drug use, etc. Good times

And of course, the density makes it go zooooogggg. Pretty much the story of Pynchon, like an action movie, miss a minute, and you can be lost for a long time. Probably on purpose too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snorlax1

Really going out on a limb there... not.

Really. It's difficult.

Only because 20C is bogged down with: Joyce, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Cather, Woolf, Pynchon, Garcia Marquez, McCarthy, Nabokov, Burroughs, Ellison, Kafka (technically? does Conrad's Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness count in 1900 count?), Dos Passos, Hesse and Borges...

Picking a top five out of them... that's painful to me.

1) Joyce
2) Conrad
3) Faulkner
4) Woolf
5) Pynchon
6) McCarthy
7) Nabokov
8) Kafka
9) Borges
10) Cather
11) Hemmingway
12) Hesse
13) GGMarquez
14) Ellison
15) Dos Passos

****. that's rough.

Snorlax1 · 10-07-2009, 12:06 PM

You forgot DFW jerk.

ElectricEye · 10-07-2009, 12:13 PM

I got this as part of an anniversary present from my girlfriend the other day. Seems to be my type of science fiction/fantasy book. I'll give it a read, even though I've been apathetic towards books like this lately.

awfullyquiet · 10-07-2009, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snorlax1

You forgot DFW jerk.

DFW is about equal with Burroughs IMO, and would probably crack the top 25, once you add fitzgerald, steinbeck, williams, beckett, cheever, capote, mailer, o'conner, maugham, plath, rand, henry james, huxley, and updike.

LizardState · 10-07-2009, 12:57 PM

An exclusively American Top 5, here goes, with commentary:

5) Steinbeck -- Not just b/c I live in Northern Calif. where he's a god
4) Mailer -- Great iconic tough guy writer
3) Fitzgerald -- The Last Romantic, everyone should memorize the last sentence in Gatsby
2) Faulkner -- More refs. to th Bible & Shakespeare than anyone since TS Eliot
1) Hemingway -- B/C he started as a journalist, best concise prose ever.

Hon. Mentions to Capote, Burroughs, Ellison, Pynchon, Barth, McMurtry, Ellis, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Vonnegut (used to be a tech writer), John Gardner, Elmore Leonard (used to be a tech writer), Walker Percy, Barry Hannah, a few more.....

awfullyquiet · 10-07-2009, 01:12 PM

Mailer is so underrepresented by people in my generation. It's sad.

Paranoidmoonduck · 10-07-2009, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

Picking a top five out of them... that's painful to me.

1) Joyce
2) Conrad
3) Faulkner
4) Wolff
5) Pynchon
6) McCarthy
7) Nabokov
8) Kafka
9) Borges
10) Cather
11) Hemmingway
12) Hesse
13) GGMarquez
14) Ellison
15) Dos Passos

****. that's rough.

Erm, Vonnegut? Dick? Steinbeck? Mailer? Beckett? Calvino? Mann?

Also, no way does Cormac McCarthy's body of work in the 20th century place him that high (I'm not sure he'd be on the list at all with All The Pretty Horses being his best work from that period).

Snorlax1 · 10-07-2009, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paranoidmoonduck

Erm, Vonnegut? Dick? Steinbeck? Mailer? Beckett? Calvino? Mann?

Also, no way does Cormac McCarthy's body of work in the 20th century place him that high (I'm not sure he'd be on the list at all with All The Pretty Horses being his best work from that period).

This question was answered 2 posts after the original post in which AQ clearly stated most of them would make up the top25.

Paranoidmoonduck · 10-07-2009, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snorlax1

This question was answered 2 posts after the original post in which AQ clearly stated most of them would make up the top25.

I'm not asking where he'd rank them, I'm asking how he could justify not having them in his top 15 (a even not having Dick, Calvino, and Mann in his top 25).

awfullyquiet · 10-07-2009, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paranoidmoonduck

Erm, Vonnegut? Dick? Steinbeck? Mailer? Beckett? Calvino? Mann?

Also, no way does Cormac McCarthy's body of work in the 20th century place him that high (I'm not sure he'd be on the list at all with All The Pretty Horses being his best work from that period).

All The Pretty Horses isn't his best work. That's Suttree, IMO, or Blood Meridian is probably the Quintessential McCarthy. But, All the Pretty Horses is my favorite. I think I mentioned that already.

I also forgot DeLillo too. Don't hate, it was cursorily made!

Vonnegut should be up there too. I'd probably have him leap Dos Passos. I was never entranced with Calvino (probably because I attempted to read the works in Italian instead of English and that didn't work out so well). I forgot Mann (eep). Dick belongs as a notable, but probably not in my top 25. Steinbeck... I can probably say it's just me, as it is with Hemingway as well. That I just do not value him as much as his place. Fitzgerald on the other hand, I'm severely limited in knowledge other than some short stories I read a few years ago which gave me a wonderful view on who he is. I cannot give either their proper dues, unfortunately.

It's really hard to place authors who have one Seminal work, and several other lessor pieces.

Like Ellison who pretty much had ONLY Invisible Man to his name, placing importance on depth of work sucks, or how much stock do you place in just novels? It's rough. You don't like it, come up with one yourself PMD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paranoidmoonduck

I'm not asking where he'd rank them, I'm asking how he could justify not having them in his top 15 (a even not having Dick, Calvino, and Mann in his top 25).

Edit: easy, because i think all these people (with the exception of dos passos being replaced for vonnegut) are better than the aformentioned. I have a hard time replacing one of those... Maybe GGMarquez with DeLillo... But even then, I don't feel it.

1) Joyce
2) Conrad
3) Faulkner
4) Woolf
5) Pynchon
6) McCarthy
7) Nabokov
8) Kafka
9) Borges
10) Cather
11) Hemmingway
12) Hesse
13) DeLillo
14) Ellison
15) Vonnegut

And i'd also like to reiterate

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

Really. It's difficult.

D-Unit · 10-07-2009, 02:54 PM

Roald Dahl needs some love in here!!! :D

Paranoidmoonduck · 10-07-2009, 02:55 PM

I was just surprised by some of the choices and more surprised by some of the omissions. I didn't mean to knock your literary tastes.

A cursory top 10 for the 20th century would look something like this...

1. Jorge Luis Borges
2. James Joyce
3. Franz Kafka
4. Andre Breton
5. Thomas Pynchon
6. Italo Calvino
7. John Steinbeck
8. Thomas Mann
9. Kurt Vonnegut
10a. Samuel Beckett
10b. F. Scott Fitzgerald

But then again, I like surrealist writers.

awfullyquiet · 10-07-2009, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paranoidmoonduck

I was just surprised by some of the choices and more surprised by some of the omissions. I didn't mean to knock your literary tastes..

And i'm sure we can agree on Borges being fantastic.

The Omissions are hard to deal with. It'd be a little easier if we went strictly for post WW1 authors because... well, then you have Conrad dropping out, Kafka dropping out...

I also tend to probably overrate Woolf and Cather, even though, in my mind, it's impossible.

Paranoidmoonduck · 10-08-2009, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awfullyquiet

And i'm sure we can agree on Borges being fantastic.

Most definitely. Oh, and I would really give Calvino another chance. Invisible Cities is, in my opinion, a must read.

ElectricEye · 10-08-2009, 08:57 PM

I've been meaning to read a little Calvino. Invisible Cities might be the next book I buy. That's the only book I've seen by him with a premise that appeals to me.

DoughBoy · 10-08-2009, 10:49 PM

I am impressed with alot of peoples knowledge on authors in here. I try and read a book every two weeks if I can, but there is no way I could name off lists like you guys.

Job · 10-08-2009, 11:28 PM

Here is a little list of interesting authors for those here interested in litterature from the world. List contains a very wide range of different writing styles, perfect for those interested in the art form as much as the story.

Japan - Kenzaburo Oe,Yukio Mishima
Maghreb (Northern Africa) - Tahar Ben Jelloun
France - Philippe Claudel, Romain Gary/Emile Ajar
Poland - Witold Gombrowicz
Czech Republic - Milan Kundera
Egypt - Naguib Mahfouz
Germany - Thomas Mann, Heinrich Böll
Hungary - Agota Kristof
Yugoslavia - Danilo Kis
Quebec - Wajdi Mouawad, Nicolas Dickner, Denis Thériault, Patrick Nicol, Christian Mistral, Normand Chaurette (I'm from there, thus I have a high knowledge of Quebec's litterature)