@Ocaml I would be interested in hearing your take on that. After my impassioned defense of +/- "contemporary" work I have to admit not liking that particular book much at all. I didn't like it in the same way I didn't like Camus' The Stranger....just too much distasteful people doing distasteful things for bad reasons.
no it doesn't, and honestly i don't even like it that much but The Myth of Sisyphus is super important to me and I think a lot of people write off Camus as a whole because they assume that Mersault was written to represent his philosophy when his philosophy is actually about finding happiness in the face of existential dread
I feel like it must be one of the most profoundly misunderstood stories of all time, seeing as it took camus an entire treatise to explain the same idea he tries to cover with the stranger in the form of novella
Also the details are what sold it for me, the fact that that the narrator isnt even paying attention when he hears his verdict, or when he decided seeing his lawyer's different tie choices each day give him the same amount of pleasure he used to get from seeing his loved ones... theres so much in such a small book
@boobert From my experience, Inherent Vice is easier to comprehend than Crying of Lot 49. I'm reading it at the moment and would definitely recommend it.
ignatious as a bombastic internet troll before the internet. the description of what he does in his room is totally just hermetic social-internet without a computer
@Ocaml I get it, I did have to think about the gg for a hot second I'll admit. Thanks for the clarifying remark . I think I read this pre-internet (not to date myself or anything)...
Anyone read any J.M. coetzee? Just bought the life & times of Michael k, as it was the only English language book they had which I hadn't read and was at a reasonable price. I've heard good things about coetzee so hopefully he delivers.
Speaking of reading multiple books, the secret book club book is cool I'm about half way thru, but I just read the first few chapters of Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille... lol I read it because Of Montreal references it in The Past is a Grotesque Animal, would recommend to anyone super duper fucked up
About two pages in the two main characters murder someone and find themselves aroused by the corpse's severed head, and it all goes downhill from there
I've been starting to read David Foster Wallace's essays, "The Depressed Person" is particularly...is uncomfortable the right word? I've never seen a writer expose and wring out his psyche in such a naked, violent way
Comments
Poe's Law:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
I read it because Of Montreal references it in The Past is a Grotesque Animal, would recommend to anyone super duper fucked up