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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2015 2:04:29 GMT
Update on fucking Blood Meridian.... I've written a lot of book reviews, and a lot of the time, when I read a book that would be worth reviewing, I can't help thinking about the paper I'd write. In this case.... McCarthy's working within a very specific American tradition here, and I don't mean "the western". There's a very long and very strong tradition of the grotesque in American writing, and one of the sources from which a lot of it derives is the tradition of humour writing in the southwest, particularly from around the time that Blood Meridian represents. Writers like Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, George Washington Harris and Johnson Jones Hooper wrote tall tales of outsized Western characters and their exaggerated feats/behaviour. There's a lot of ridiculous hunts, violence, racism, violence, etc. and certain "types" recur (similar to the kid, the judge, the VanDiemenlander). One of the characteristic "grotesque" elements of that fiction is how often it plays the destruction of the human body for laughs - camp fights, hunts etc. Life is cheap and catastrophic injuries and damage to the body plays like watching a machine break down - there's a conflict between the humour of the story and the horror of what's supposed to be happening to the people involved that is characteristically "grotesque". Twain, Faulkner, Crews and a lot of others draw on that tradition, but the other lineage I see in the book is less obviously in that line, and it's Melville's last novel, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade. It's a completely different take in that most of the "action" is characters - again, types and representatives of certain kinds of idea current in Melville's America, including mouthpieces for Thoreau and Emerson - talking about ideas. The Melville book is really about two conflicting values: living by the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity vs. living with an American skepticism and not getting fleeced. Essentially, encounters with avatars of "The" confidence man throw a series of characters into one of three categories - those who truly believe in what they say they believe, but who slip because they're fallible and human; those who are hypocrites and may believe what they say, but don't act on their beliefs; and those who are predators, exploiting belief for their own gain. Charity is sort of the touchstone - if you give money to the confidence man because you believe in being charitable, and it turns out he's richer than you and duped you out of your money, what do you do the next time someone asks for alms? But the book runs a lot of other pieces of American thought through the same sort of wringer. All of this takes place on a steamboat journey through the south and it draws a lot on the character types of the southwestern grotesque tall tales. Which brings me back to Blood Meridian. The same sort of narrative economy seems to be operating as in Melville, but at the opposite end of the moral scale and operating only - or almost only - through action as a marker of internal character. Similar typology of characters with personae like the judge and Glanton being drawn from similar cloth as Melville's characters, but with less statment of belief. Anyway...the point here is it's kind of interesting to see what McCarthy does with stuff that's closer in era to the world he's describing than the world he's writing out of. The Confidence Man was an unfinished novel, and by most evaluations not a great one, but that's comparing it to Moby Dick and if you liked Moby Dick, maybe you don't think Confidence Man is as interesting. I saw it the other way around - more to think about. But that unfinished-ness also has me wondering about where McCarthy's going to go - will the book have an ending or just a last page? I sincerely hope you wrote this for some other audience and then just copied and pasted it here with a "what the hell" shrug. I just don't have the background knowledge in this subject matter to comment on your review, but I was thinking of reading the book based on the attention it's getting here. Should I read Blood Meridian? Yes/No? P.S. Did I tell you that I grew up 5 minutes from Arrowhead? That should give me some book cred... I'd pick up "All the Pretty Horses" "No Country for Old Men" or "The Road" first. If you like his writing style, by all means go after "Blood Meridian." But pre-"All the Pretty Horses," which spawned "The Horse Whisperer" and that joke of a Billy Bob Thornton adaptation, CMCs previous five novels sold less than 5k a piece copies in hardcover. Unless, by some chance, you're a Christian who regularly reads the Bible, or a closet Faulkner fan. Those are close comparables for how he writes.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2015 2:19:34 GMT
All of this takes place on a steamboat journey through the south and it draws a lot on the character types of the southwestern grotesque tall tales. Nice review- Funny you mention the Melville book, it almost reminds me of "Suttree" where the main character lives on a houseboat docked on a river surrounded by a camp of "grotesques." I like reading books of this caliber about western settings and themes, crime, etc. I finished "The Sportswriter" and I'm onto "Cities of the Plain." I'm very happy read to quality writing besides the Pastoral type novels about white men depressed as hell to be middle class Americans! (As good and well written as Revolutionary Road, Ford, Rabbit Run are). Not a bad list of books on deck: "All the King's Men" Robert Penn Warren "Get Shorty" Elmore Leonard (both of these cost me 4$ at the Delray Beach Library; one was a hardcover) "The Simple Art of Murder" Raymond Chandler I've usually got a few craft books kicking around, but they're hit or miss. I'll give a shot to anything but the pseudo-self help books Writer's Digest puts out. I'm on my notice at work, so today I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." I have a cousin out there who translates a lot of the Spanish writers for literary magazine. I wish I could crawl in his head for awhile to figure out how the Spanish speakers put so much rhythm into their writing.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 11, 2015 4:31:04 GMT
All of this takes place on a steamboat journey through the south and it draws a lot on the character types of the southwestern grotesque tall tales. Nice review- Funny you mention the Melville book, it almost reminds me of "Suttree" where the main character lives on a houseboat docked on a river surrounded by a camp of "grotesques." I like reading books of this caliber about western settings and themes, crime, etc. I finished "The Sportswriter" and I'm onto "Cities of the Plain." I'm very happy read to quality writing besides the Pastoral type novels about white men depressed as hell to be middle class Americans! (As good and well written as Revolutionary Road, Ford, Rabbit Run are). Not a bad list of books on deck: "All the King's Men" Robert Penn Warren "Get Shorty" Elmore Leonard (both of these cost me 4$ at the Delray Beach Library; one was a hardcover) "The Simple Art of Murder" Raymond Chandler I've usually got a few craft books kicking around, but they're hit or miss. I'll give a shot to anything but the pseudo-self help books Writer's Digest puts out. I'm on my notice at work, so today I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." I have a cousin out there who translates a lot of the Spanish writers for literary magazine. I wish I could crawl in his head for awhile to figure out how the Spanish speakers put so much rhythm into their writing. Just finished _The Simple Art of Murder_. It was the last Chandler I hadn't read. I'm going to continue in the McCarthy vein and read Child of God, which someone I trust implicitly when it comes to literary taste tells me is the best of McCarthy's books.
From all we've talked about on this thread, I think you'd enjoy the right selection of Mavis Gallant stories. The Moslem Wife. The LateHomecomer. Werewolf. Pegnitz Junction. The Grippes Stories. If you can lay hands on her selected, it's more than worth it. I think she's on par with history: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky-that crowd.
I alternately love and detest magical realism and Marquez in particular. I have to manage my bourbon intake to find the right mood for _Love in the Time of Cholera_.
Re: the bolded. There used to be a site called "Mr Cranky" where a guy posted hilarious, hate-fuelled reviews of movies. One of the things I remember was the line "I would rather smash my penis between two rocks than watch this movie again." That's how I feel about American pastoral - except the Roth novel American Pastoral which is actually haunting for a variety of reasons, not least the daughter of Levov who refuses to kill any living thing.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 11, 2015 4:37:49 GMT
Update on fucking Blood Meridian.... I've written a lot of book reviews, and a lot of the time, when I read a book that would be worth reviewing, I can't help thinking about the paper I'd write. In this case.... McCarthy's working within a very specific American tradition here, and I don't mean "the western". There's a very long and very strong tradition of the grotesque in American writing, and one of the sources from which a lot of it derives is the tradition of humour writing in the southwest, particularly from around the time that Blood Meridian represents. Writers like Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, George Washington Harris and Johnson Jones Hooper wrote tall tales of outsized Western characters and their exaggerated feats/behaviour. There's a lot of ridiculous hunts, violence, racism, violence, etc. and certain "types" recur (similar to the kid, the judge, the VanDiemenlander). One of the characteristic "grotesque" elements of that fiction is how often it plays the destruction of the human body for laughs - camp fights, hunts etc. Life is cheap and catastrophic injuries and damage to the body plays like watching a machine break down - there's a conflict between the humour of the story and the horror of what's supposed to be happening to the people involved that is characteristically "grotesque". Twain, Faulkner, Crews and a lot of others draw on that tradition, but the other lineage I see in the book is less obviously in that line, and it's Melville's last novel, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade. It's a completely different take in that most of the "action" is characters - again, types and representatives of certain kinds of idea current in Melville's America, including mouthpieces for Thoreau and Emerson - talking about ideas. The Melville book is really about two conflicting values: living by the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity vs. living with an American skepticism and not getting fleeced. Essentially, encounters with avatars of "The" confidence man throw a series of characters into one of three categories - those who truly believe in what they say they believe, but who slip because they're fallible and human; those who are hypocrites and may believe what they say, but don't act on their beliefs; and those who are predators, exploiting belief for their own gain. Charity is sort of the touchstone - if you give money to the confidence man because you believe in being charitable, and it turns out he's richer than you and duped you out of your money, what do you do the next time someone asks for alms? But the book runs a lot of other pieces of American thought through the same sort of wringer. All of this takes place on a steamboat journey through the south and it draws a lot on the character types of the southwestern grotesque tall tales. Which brings me back to Blood Meridian. The same sort of narrative economy seems to be operating as in Melville, but at the opposite end of the moral scale and operating only - or almost only - through action as a marker of internal character. Similar typology of characters with personae like the judge and Glanton being drawn from similar cloth as Melville's characters, but with less statment of belief. Anyway...the point here is it's kind of interesting to see what McCarthy does with stuff that's closer in era to the world he's describing than the world he's writing out of. The Confidence Man was an unfinished novel, and by most evaluations not a great one, but that's comparing it to Moby Dick and if you liked Moby Dick, maybe you don't think Confidence Man is as interesting. I saw it the other way around - more to think about. But that unfinished-ness also has me wondering about where McCarthy's going to go - will the book have an ending or just a last page? I sincerely hope you wrote this for some other audience and then just copied and pasted it here with a "what the hell" shrug. I just don't have the background knowledge in this subject matter to comment on your review, but I was thinking of reading the book based on the attention it's getting here. Should I read Blood Meridian? Yes/No? P.S. Did I tell you that I grew up 5 minutes from Arrowhead? That should give me some book cred... Seriously, Fletch - I do this like breathing. It's a reflex. If I actually tried to find a publisher for everything I wrote, I could make a living as a writer - but that is a tenuous, shitty existence, so I do it in my spare time.
I'm about 70% through the book. I would say that it has some really remarkable moments. It also has some stretches where it's a little too reliant on mise en scene. But compared to 99% of what's out there, it's totally worth your time...not least because of its roots in the beginnings of American Lit.
...and I was never an American Lit. Prof. 19th and 20th C Brit and Can/Am Poetry, bitches!
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 11, 2015 4:39:21 GMT
This whole summer I've been reading about a guy named Cody Franson. Did he get shot in the face, and feral dogs lap up his brains while drunken mercenaries cavorted with whores in the light of burning desert towns?
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Post by 50belowzero on Aug 11, 2015 6:15:15 GMT
This whole summer I've been reading about a guy named Cody Franson. Did he get shot in the face, and feral dogs lap up his brains while drunken mercenaries cavorted with whores in the light of burning desert towns? No, that would be Coody Frankensteen.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 11, 2015 20:26:41 GMT
Nice review- Funny you mention the Melville book, it almost reminds me of "Suttree" where the main character lives on a houseboat docked on a river surrounded by a camp of "grotesques." I like reading books of this caliber about western settings and themes, crime, etc. I finished "The Sportswriter" and I'm onto "Cities of the Plain." I'm very happy read to quality writing besides the Pastoral type novels about white men depressed as hell to be middle class Americans! (As good and well written as Revolutionary Road, Ford, Rabbit Run are). Not a bad list of books on deck: "All the King's Men" Robert Penn Warren "Get Shorty" Elmore Leonard (both of these cost me 4$ at the Delray Beach Library; one was a hardcover) "The Simple Art of Murder" Raymond Chandler I've usually got a few craft books kicking around, but they're hit or miss. I'll give a shot to anything but the pseudo-self help books Writer's Digest puts out. I'm on my notice at work, so today I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." I have a cousin out there who translates a lot of the Spanish writers for literary magazine. I wish I could crawl in his head for awhile to figure out how the Spanish speakers put so much rhythm into their writing.
From all we've talked about on this thread, I think you'd enjoy the right selection of Mavis Gallant stories. The Moslem Wife. The LateHomecomer. Werewolf. Pegnitz Junction. The Grippes Stories. If you can lay hands on her selected, it's more than worth it. I think she's on par with history: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky-that crowd.
Re: the bolded. There used to be a site called "Mr Cranky" where a guy posted hilarious, hate-fuelled reviews of movies. One of the things I remember was the line "I would rather smash my penis between two rocks than watch this movie again." That's how I feel about American pastoral - except the Roth novel American Pastoral which is actually haunting for a variety of reasons, not least the daughter of Levov who refuses to kill any living thing.
I'll check her out, if she's a Canadian Flannery O'Connor, I'm in. If she's like Alice Munro, not so much. Or maybe I just read the wrong Alice Munro stories? They seem to be en vogue with the dominant MFA culture; Junot Diaz has a great article out there "MFA vs POC" about how the MFA programs are just too "white" and it makes a lot of sense. Students are being exposed to more or less as set kind of "writerly" literature, and that's what's being reproduced in literary fiction. I saw it over and over again with music school kids, they have their own tastes, and after they leave Berklee, most of them go on and on about Jaco Pastorius and whatever their teacher tells them to listen to.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 11, 2015 20:58:36 GMT
There's definitely some O'Connor, but there aren't a lot of writers who do what she does as well as she does it. She has Ford's ability to write a line that is just murderously good - exhilarating and painful at the time. She has some of Wilde's wit without the camp and posing, some of Hemingway's understanding of ex-pats and outsiders, some of Wolff's ability to seem like she's telling something simply when she's not, etc.
On Munro - the dark Alice is really very good. I think it peaks around her 5th and 6th book, the Moons of Jupiter and the Progress of Love. This is not typically the Alice they teach in MFA programs, though.
I read the Diaz piece with a certain relish. My opinion of MFA programs is a bit mixed. On the one hand, I think you can teach someone to be a good writer. A lot of that is learning how to work, how to apply discipline to what often seems like a chaotic process that we're conditioned to think of as mercurial because it involves unmeasurable things like talent and inspiration. I often think of the scene in Terry Gilliam's horrible Dune film where, before taking the spice, a particular character has some little ritual about this being how he sets his mind in motion. But like any discipline, I think the writing - the being a professional creative writer version of writing - really does depend on the skills you build around the talent and creativity and not those essentials themselves. So I don't have a problem with the idea of the MFA, and in a lot of ways, the version of an MFA that really is about professionalization would have a much better chance of being less "white" and less ... any identity category. Less "male" if the problem is the preponderance of dead white guys as literary touchstones in English. Instead (and you can almost imagine what McCarthy would do with this...), human nature and the nature of an ego that has had success in a creative field kicks in and instead you get "how to write like..." either explicitly or implicitly. It brings a lot of people to a certain level of mediocrity that is, for most of them, a rise in ability but is also, for some, a compromise they'll spend most of their careers trying to outlive and undo. The irony here is that so much of the English literature is the story of an exceptional individual fighting to reach their full potential against an oppressive system....
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2015 14:20:30 GMT
There's definitely some O'Connor, but there aren't a lot of writers who do what she does as well as she does it. She has Ford's ability to write a line that is just murderously good - exhilarating and painful at the time. She has some of Wilde's wit without the camp and posing, some of Hemingway's understanding of ex-pats and outsiders, some of Wolff's ability to seem like she's telling something simply when she's not, etc. On Munro - the dark Alice is really very good. I think it peaks around her 5th and 6th book, the Moons of Jupiter and the Progress of Love. This is not typically the Alice they teach in MFA programs, though. I read the Diaz piece with a certain relish. My opinion of MFA programs is a bit mixed. On the one hand, I think you can teach someone to be a good writer. A lot of that is learning how to work, how to apply discipline to what often seems like a chaotic process that we're conditioned to think of as mercurial because it involves unmeasurable things like talent and inspiration. I often think of the scene in Terry Gilliam's horrible Dune film where, before taking the spice, a particular character has some little ritual about this being how he sets his mind in motion. But like any discipline, I think the writing - the being a professional creative writer version of writing - really does depend on the skills you build around the talent and creativity and not those essentials themselves. So I don't have a problem with the idea of the MFA, and in a lot of ways, the version of an MFA that really is about professionalization would have a much better chance of being less "white" and less ... any identity category. Less "male" if the problem is the preponderance of dead white guys as literary touchstones in English. Instead (and you can almost imagine what McCarthy would do with this...), human nature and the nature of an ego that has had success in a creative field kicks in and instead you get "how to write like..." either explicitly or implicitly. It brings a lot of people to a certain level of mediocrity that is, for most of them, a rise in ability but is also, for some, a compromise they'll spend most of their careers trying to outlive and undo. The irony here is that so much of the English literature is the story of an exceptional individual fighting to reach their full potential against an oppressive system.... That makes sense about Alice Munro, I picked up her latest collection and read a couple stories at the library. They were pretty unremarkable. One was about a babysitter that refused to let any man dance with her at a barn dance and then was run over by a truck. It read like Joyce Carol Oates with a bad hangover! The MFA programs are a product of the modern artistic age. People feel like they need college for everything from 10$ an hour jobs as medical assistants to making the best seller list, so MFAs and music degrees are a product of that thinking. It's natural for people who have the interest and desire to be professional artists to go to school for the training. My concern is the price of MFAs and arts/music degrees. When you add up the monies earned in any of those fields, 95% of these degrees aren't practical for the people earning them. If the predominant path to professional careers in art is going to be a college degree, we have to accept that the arts will soon be diluted by the same gentrification process that's rendered neighborhoods like Cambridge and Greenwich Village to white, white, white, dull, dull, dull.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 12, 2015 15:55:06 GMT
That makes sense about Alice Munro, I picked up her latest collection and read a couple stories at the library. They were pretty unremarkable. One was about a babysitter that refused to let any man dance with her at a barn dance and then was run over by a truck. It read like Joyce Carol Oates with a bad hangover! The MFA programs are a product of the modern artistic age. People feel like they need college for everything from 10$ an hour jobs as medical assistants to making the best seller list, so MFAs and music degrees are a product of that thinking. It's natural for people who have the interest and desire to be professional artists to go to school for the training. My concern is the price of MFAs and arts/music degrees. When you add up the monies earned in any of those fields, 95% of these degrees aren't practical for the people earning them. If the predominant path to professional careers in art is going to be a college degree, we have to accept that the arts will soon be diluted by the same gentrification process that's rendered neighborhoods like Cambridge and Greenwich Village to white, white, white, dull, dull, dull. I worry less about that as a function of the MFA than the market for the arts. In theory, if MFAs aren't giving people what they want, they'll disappear into their own navels. But Marx would have a field day with the modern arts industries and the way they self-perpetuate, particularly in writing. Very few people make a real living on writing alone now - or literary writing (professional writing is a different thing and doesn't come with an advanced degree). We see goofy advances for a few select writers, and six figures for some others, but people don't figure in taxes and agents fees and the fact that that money is pretty much what that writer makes for 2, 3, 5 years unless the book sells so well that they pay out the advance and keep on earning. The vast majority of literary writers make their living teaching, drawing a salary from an institution to be a writer in residence, sometimes collecting additional cash to be a featured reader at a festival. MFA programs have created a demand for writers who can also teach in MFA programs, and they produce writers who know how to be professors in MFA programs. The system almost throws off books like sparks from a forge. And the weight of convention - white white white, dull dull dull (which is a great echo of Elizabeth Bishop's elegy for Robert Lowell - speaking of depressed middle aged white guys: "Nature repeats herself, or almost does: / repeat, repeat, repeat, revise, revise, revise.) - means the books are more and more alike, and more and more judged by publishers and critics (most trained in the MFA system) based on perpetuating a particular view of what literature is rather than any real sensitivity to language and thought. The goal isn't to sell books any more - not when the world's at war over freeware - but to perpetuate the MFA institutions and the jobs and economy they've created. Since you're about to read "The Simple Art of Murder" - the essay is nicely prescient and shows that the pattern isn't dependent on the MFA. Like Chandler, I hold a small kernel of hope in a cynical hand that "real" artists will cut through the crap like a hot knife through butter even if it doesn't help the starving artist. What's good for the art has rarely been good for the artists.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2015 18:08:59 GMT
That makes sense about Alice Munro, I picked up her latest collection and read a couple stories at the library. They were pretty unremarkable. One was about a babysitter that refused to let any man dance with her at a barn dance and then was run over by a truck. It read like Joyce Carol Oates with a bad hangover! The MFA programs are a product of the modern artistic age. People feel like they need college for everything from 10$ an hour jobs as medical assistants to making the best seller list, so MFAs and music degrees are a product of that thinking. It's natural for people who have the interest and desire to be professional artists to go to school for the training. My concern is the price of MFAs and arts/music degrees. When you add up the monies earned in any of those fields, 95% of these degrees aren't practical for the people earning them. If the predominant path to professional careers in art is going to be a college degree, we have to accept that the arts will soon be diluted by the same gentrification process that's rendered neighborhoods like Cambridge and Greenwich Village to white, white, white, dull, dull, dull. The goal isn't to sell books any more - not when the world's at war over freeware - I hope people are enjoying all of these freebies. I was all for SOPA. If you go into a store an steal a book or a CD, the store can press charges. If you steal a book or CD offline, ?
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Post by dezaruchi on Aug 22, 2015 6:10:56 GMT
All of this takes place on a steamboat journey through the south and it draws a lot on the character types of the southwestern grotesque tall tales. Nice review- Funny you mention the Melville book, it almost reminds me of "Suttree" where the main character lives on a houseboat docked on a river surrounded by a camp of "grotesques." I like reading books of this caliber about western settings and themes, crime, etc. I finished "The Sportswriter" and I'm onto "Cities of the Plain." I'm very happy read to quality writing besides the Pastoral type novels about white men depressed as hell to be middle class Americans! (As good and well written as Revolutionary Road, Ford, Rabbit Run are). Not a bad list of books on deck: "All the King's Men" Robert Penn Warren "Get Shorty" Elmore Leonard (both of these cost me 4$ at the Delray Beach Library; one was a hardcover) "The Simple Art of Murder" Raymond Chandler I've usually got a few craft books kicking around, but they're hit or miss. I'll give a shot to anything but the pseudo-self help books Writer's Digest puts out. I'm on my notice at work, so today I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." I have a cousin out there who translates a lot of the Spanish writers for literary magazine. I wish I could crawl in his head for awhile to figure out how the Spanish speakers put so much rhythm into their writing. I've read all of Elmore Leonard's novels. He may not have been the best writer ever but he was certainly my favourite.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Aug 23, 2015 14:28:38 GMT
DIRTY DEEDS: My Life Inside/Outside of AC/DC, by Mark Evans. The first insider account of the classic Bon Scott years of AC/DC.
"Wherever Bon Scott went, so went the good times. Location, obviously, didn’t hold much truck with the singer.
“So Bon and I were on our balcony, sipping away, feeling more than a little pleased with ourselves and our deux filles Parisiennes très attirantes. We were well and truly lit up and savoring a stunning Parisian sunrise. Life was good.
As I was having a serious gloat to Bon, who was somewhat the worse for wear after two days, he stared fixedly at the Eiffel Tower with an odd look on his face.
’What’s up, mate?’ I asked him.
Slowly, Bon turned to me. ’You know,’ he said, ’there’s a tower just like that in Paris.’”
I mean you have to read a book about Bon Scott!
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2015 15:14:01 GMT
Nice review- Funny you mention the Melville book, it almost reminds me of "Suttree" where the main character lives on a houseboat docked on a river surrounded by a camp of "grotesques." I like reading books of this caliber about western settings and themes, crime, etc. I finished "The Sportswriter" and I'm onto "Cities of the Plain." I'm very happy read to quality writing besides the Pastoral type novels about white men depressed as hell to be middle class Americans! (As good and well written as Revolutionary Road, Ford, Rabbit Run are). Not a bad list of books on deck: "All the King's Men" Robert Penn Warren "Get Shorty" Elmore Leonard (both of these cost me 4$ at the Delray Beach Library; one was a hardcover) "The Simple Art of Murder" Raymond Chandler I've usually got a few craft books kicking around, but they're hit or miss. I'll give a shot to anything but the pseudo-self help books Writer's Digest puts out. I'm on my notice at work, so today I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short stories "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." I have a cousin out there who translates a lot of the Spanish writers for literary magazine. I wish I could crawl in his head for awhile to figure out how the Spanish speakers put so much rhythm into their writing. I've read all of Elmore Leonard's novels. He may not have been the best writer ever but he was certainly my favourite. He's awesome. His books have some of the best dialogue I've ever read.
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Post by badhabitude on Aug 23, 2015 15:29:23 GMT
Just finished Lois Potter's - The Life of William Shakespeare - A Critical Biography. Good, not great. I'm watching the movie Dr. Faustus and reading the play simultaneously. I can't help but think of those conspiracy theorists that said that Marlowe wasn't really murdered, but was actually the man who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. I wonder if those people honestly read Marlowe's stuff. Because I'm seeing no similarity in writing style at all, or similarity in the way of plot development although Timon of Athens and maybe Pericles comes closest.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 24, 2015 21:35:39 GMT
Just finished Lois Potter's - The Life of William Shakespeare - A Critical Biography. Good, not great. I'm watching the movie Dr. Faustus and reading the play simultaneously. I can't help but think of those conspiracy theorists that said that Marlowe wasn't really murdered, but was actually the man who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. I wonder if those people honestly read Marlowe's stuff. Because I'm seeing no similarity in writing style at all, or similarity in the way of plot development although Timon of Athens and maybe Pericles comes closest. They are the marcos and Stanleys of the world of philology.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 24, 2015 21:49:16 GMT
DIRTY DEEDS: My Life Inside/Outside of AC/DC, by Mark Evans. The first insider account of the classic Bon Scott years of AC/DC. "Wherever Bon Scott went, so went the good times. Location, obviously, didn’t hold much truck with the singer. “So Bon and I were on our balcony, sipping away, feeling more than a little pleased with ourselves and our deux filles Parisiennes très attirantes. We were well and truly lit up and savoring a stunning Parisian sunrise. Life was good. As I was having a serious gloat to Bon, who was somewhat the worse for wear after two days, he stared fixedly at the Eiffel Tower with an odd look on his face. ’What’s up, mate?’ I asked him. Slowly, Bon turned to me. ’You know,’ he said, ’there’s a tower just like that in Paris.’” I mean you have to read a book about Bon Scott! I wish he'd lived to write an autobiography. As a band, AC/DC really doesn't interest me post Bon Scott. I mean, there's nothing particularly virtuosic about them at any stage, but their early albums about getting laid, being a rock star, and just generally being a bad ass are great for what they are. Reminds me a bit of the space the Beastie Boys came to occupy.
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Post by badhabitude on Aug 26, 2015 0:49:47 GMT
Just finished Lois Potter's - The Life of William Shakespeare - A Critical Biography. Good, not great. I'm watching the movie Dr. Faustus and reading the play simultaneously. I can't help but think of those conspiracy theorists that said that Marlowe wasn't really murdered, but was actually the man who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. I wonder if those people honestly read Marlowe's stuff. Because I'm seeing no similarity in writing style at all, or similarity in the way of plot development although Timon of Athens and maybe Pericles comes closest. They are the marcos and Stanleys of the world of philology. I just plain suffered through Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. I think he sucks honestly. His character development - sucks - Faustus is pretty one dimensional and nobody else comes alive at all, comedy - none (just a tiny bit of comic relief would have gone far), women characters, none. OK, I have a lot of respect that got into a fight in a bar and died by getting stabbed in the head so I will soldier on, but it will be painful. Also started a WW2 book, "Tuesday's Child" about a bomber crew, but it's just too over the top for me, way way too cliche for what I've read. Thinking of putting it down and not picking it up again.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 26, 2015 1:46:47 GMT
I don't mind Marlowe; context is everything, and English drama before Shakespeare can't really be judged through the same lens as English drama after Shakespeare. Some day there will be a reality TV show that will be like 24 and the Wire crossed with the Amazing Race, and that will be the elevation of a genre equivalent to what Dr Faustus is when compared to the stage tradition pre-Shakespeare in England. It's still part of that old world, but a stepping stone to what Shakespeare would do.
'Course, that doesn't make it good beach reading.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 26, 2015 1:49:01 GMT
On the other hand...I'm reading Fleming's Bond novels. Yep. Sure am.
About a decade ago, Penguin Classics gave them the full on literature treatment and I remember reading an "OK, let's take these seriously" review in the London Review of Books. The review was surprisingly positive - though with plenty of reservations. So, here I am.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Aug 26, 2015 3:56:23 GMT
"On Her majesty's secret service" was the only Fleming novel I read before I saw the movie. The movie was the last one I saw of the old era.
Interestung how the movies didn't follow in chrological order as the novels.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 26, 2015 19:06:58 GMT
"On Her majesty's secret service" was the only Fleming novel I read before I saw the movie. The movie was the last one I saw of the old era. Interestung how the movies didn't follow in chrological order as the novels. I think the thing I'm noticing most is that the novels are spy novels, not action/adventure books. There haven't been any knock-down, drag-out hand to hand combat scenes that I remember. There's no goofy gadgets. There's been more emphasis on describing card games and horse races. Not great movie fodder. The funniest thing is the food and drink. I think Bond eats scrambled eggs and bacon, a pint of OJ, and rye toast about three or four times a book. Not the glamour meals you associate with him. Also, the stupid names for the women weren't in the first four novels. Tiffany Case is the first that has that distinctive Bond flavour. If you want a laugh, look up the synopsis of the Casino Royale movie - the original with David Niven as Bond. The first half of the book sounds a lot like the novel - maybe 65-75%? The second half? Well, it's more Austin Powers: "Bond establishes that the casino is located atop a giant underground headquarters run by the evil Dr. Noah; he and Moneypenny travel there to investigate. Dr. Noah turns out to be Sir James's nephew Jimmy Bond, who plans to use biological warfare to make all women beautiful and kill all tall men, leaving him as the "big man" who gets all the girls. The casino is then overrun by secret agents and a battle ensues, but the building explodes, killing all inside." Jimmy Bond? Was that written by a 13 yr old?
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Post by walktheline on Aug 26, 2015 19:25:19 GMT
What, no Alotta Fagina? I've never read Fleming. I think there's a copy of Casino Royale floating around somewhere at home. More likely I'll stick to my Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
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Post by bookboy007 on Aug 26, 2015 21:38:50 GMT
"On Her majesty's secret service" was the only Fleming novel I read before I saw the movie. The movie was the last one I saw of the old era. Interestung how th e movies didn't follow in chrological order as the novels.I'm guessing you know this from the comment, but...in the novels, one case follows the other in pretty rapid succession for the first four or five books (which is as far as I've gotten so far). Casino Royale ends (with Bond getting and not getting the girl, much like the Daniel Craig movie version, and pretty shortly thereafter, with a vendetta against SMERSH now, Bond is sent to America in Live and Let Die (and...wow...the racism in that book...wow...and of the "look how well they're doing!" kind...wow...the attempt to represent "jive talk"...and Fleming spent so much time in Jamaica...). He takes a beating in L&LD, and so he takes a few weeks vacation, and they're remarking on his tan in Moonraker when he first goes in to M's office to see what the assignment is. At the end of Moonraker, he has to go into hiding while things cool down, so he takes off for France...and at the beginning of Diamonds are Forever, M's asking how his holiday in France was. Fleming kind of set himself up with a line about Bond's age. He's mid 30s. Mandatory retirement for a 00 agent is 45. Then they become desk jockeys for the rest of their careers. Bond's thinking about how many more times he has to put his life on the line, take a beating etc. before he gets there - "there are only one or two assignments a year that need his special talents" - and thinks it's a grim calculation. He's not at all "half-amused by Death" but for Fleming, that means he's got no more than 20 missions or so.
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Post by UtahGetMeTwo on Aug 27, 2015 2:04:45 GMT
Broccoli and Saltzman had to do more with a script adaptation. Now way could they stay with the novels. The base of the novels was perfect to work with.
Boy did the producers hit a home run with original casting of the movies.
Ahh Pussy Galore!
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