Donnerstag, 28. Juni 2007
Anne Rice and other dishes
I woke up this morning to an amazingly lurid sunrise. androkles got up and took a photo. Check it out.To my shame I have succumbed to the temptation of taking out of the library another book in the fast-read franchise that is Anne Rice. This one is called “Blackwater Farm”.The Usual Suspects, the usual formula, I have composed a doggerel, herewith:Vice, Anne RiceIs all very nice,But your character, LestatIs a twat.His addictionTo pederastyLeaves the kiddiesFeeling pastyThe godlike powers Conferred by his fallSeem devoted to purposesRather banal.As a penance, I have taken out the rather formidable looking “Mason & Dixon” by Thomas Pynchon. That’ll teach me! I read “Gravity’s Rainbow” about thirty years ago but I confess I have no memory of the book except that it was rather difficult, and I have the vague image of the very tip of a WMD rocket about to fall on the top of someone’s head. I have just seen the first episode of the American series of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. I know it’s set in the States but in what century? Just as well all us gay guys are wealthy. It gives us so much freedom with image management.I’m slowly getting better, but the trouble with any other illness for a diabetic is that it throws your control regime all over the place.
Abonnieren
Kommentare zum Post (Atom)
29 Kommentare:
Just as well all us gay guys are wealthy. Ha, I'm so glad I don't watch TV.
I flirted with reading Pynchon when I was younger and more adventurous, but just never felt up to the challenge. Fortunately, Laurie Anderson summarised Gravity's rainbow for me in a hip, fun, sing-along ditty that I'll still remember long after you've forgotten even that bit about rockets:Send it offWatch it riseSee it fall--gravity's rainbow.Send it offWatch it rise and fall--gravity's angel.
I flirted with reading Pynchon when I was younger and more adventurous, but just never felt up to the challenge. Fortunately, Laurie Anderson summarised Gravity's rainbow for me in a hip, fun, sing-along ditty that I'll still remember long after you've forgotten even that bit about rockets:Send it offWatch it riseSee it fall--gravity's rainbow.Send it offWatch it rise and fall--gravity's angel.
What we need is a "Rich Eye For the Poor Guy" to tell me how to get that excess income to use in making over my lifestyle!
i read three anne rice.... the first three. after the third, i couldn't read any more, it was like torture!i must admit though, i don't mind a few trashy novels when i'm holidaying.... or like you, not feeling too well. it's kind of comforting, like watching tv in the daytime wrapped up in a rug with a mug of cocoa.as long as you are getting better it's good. xxxx
i read three anne rice.... the first three. after the third, i couldn't read any more, it was like torture!i must admit though, i don't mind a few trashy novels when i'm holidaying.... or like you, not feeling too well. it's kind of comforting, like watching tv in the daytime wrapped up in a rug with a mug of cocoa.as long as you are getting better it's good. xxxx
oh, did you receive the currawong picture email?
I envisage a new version where Fidel, Yassar, Ossie, Kim and "Crazy Katy" Khatami do an extreme makeover of President Bush for his appearance at the Republican Convention. Everyone is stunned when George opens the beautifully gift-wrapped parcel presented by the talented team from"Revolutionary Eye for the Conservative Guy"
When I was younger, I would have gritted my teeth and ploughed on no matter how tortuous the reading experience. In my twenties I even read "Finnegans' Wake" (though I won't claim to have comprehended most of it ) . Now I realise that time's too short.Laurie Anderson is unique, which these days, is saying something
I own Finnegan's wake and dip into every once in a great while. (I knew enough about it before I bought it to realise reading it cover to cover would be a pointless exercise.) The language is fantastic--in fact, the plot moves forward by language alone--even when obscure. But, yeah, it's not pleasure reading.I try to have two books going at once, one escapist and one more difficult (i.e. non-English, epic poetry, mediaeval, etc.). That way, when the hard one makes my brain hurt, I can always put it away and pull out the easy one. Of course, more and more I tend to bypass the hard one entirely.I need to catch up on Laurie's recent work. I don't listen to anything more recent than Bright Red.
My appetite for limited doses of real trash brings me so much perverse pleasure. It is something Ian just cannot understand. He is really only interested in the "aristos", the excellent. I, like many others apparently, find something warm, funny and human in the occassional slice of dreadful crap. The pressure for creative people to" keep doing it, keep producing" , whether it be books, movies or TV, long past the point where money, art or prestige can motivate creativity, is one of the principal causes of crap overload.How much greater is the man or woman who has one really good book in him or her and produces only one good book.I truly believe this, yet paradoxically, still love my little dose of tripe.
We got the currawong pics thanks and I'll make Bill an icon soon as I get a moment. Thankyou!
oh, i think it makes the really excellent much more savory. i like an occasional Taco Bell™ taco for the same reason. then wheni make a 'real' one, it's that much better. ofcourse i don't read as much as i used to, buteven now i keep about 6 going at once. all theway from crap to LEAVES OF GRASS. i helps mymental balance, i think.~paul
Can't be objective about Pynchon. For a long time I had all 5 Proverbs for Paranoids from GR written large in black magic marker across one entire wall of my bedroom. Seemed far more effective than "Now I lay me down to sleep..."
I was too young and too undeveloped for GR when I attempted it. When I finish M&D I'll have to revisit it. Proverbs for paranoids sound perfect for me.
We are fortunate here that we don't have Whitman shoved down our throats (hmmm) at high school. As a result, when you discover him at university or chance across him in your personal reading, it is so much more pleasurable.I think he's a very variable poet and a wonderful human bean.I think crap lit. is like "Vegemite", our national spread. It should be spread thinly as a condiment. Spread too thickly it can completely overpower you.Re "Vegemite": do not try to obtain or consume this product, it is only for Australians.
Hey what's this about me being an elitist - what nonsense. You know I enjoy my artistic junkfood from time to time - it's just that I haven't your appetite for it.
i've seen it,(and smelt it,too,btw) Bill, and you're right. i didn't have a lot of Whitman shoved down my throat, soi appreciate him differently than most, i think.he is variable, but enjoyable in small increments. ~paul
skip this if fan rants aren't to your liking*****I think it makes a huge difference to read his books in order of publication. V and The Crying of Lot 49 are very fine in themselves and are part of the same increasingly obsessed and urgent meditation as GR. The 1st 2 books fill in a lot of perceived blanks in GR. It also helps to be familiar with how Pynchon structures and fragments his material and why/how he always refuses to make certain kinds of authorial decisions. *deep breath*Sorry. I've got it out of my system now.
FW was a bit rich for my blood, but I do remeber enjoying several "riffs". One I remember dimly as the"Gracehoper and the Ondt" section. I also lked "Anna Livia Plurabelle" and the opening/closing circle game. I went to it with no knowledge of Bruno or Vico or any of that stuff. I don't know what seeped into my head except that it sounded funny and sort of poetic. I have the recording of Joyce performing ALP. It is lovely.
I enjoy your rants enormously!I think I attempted "V" as well and my memories of it are, unfortunately, just as vague. It's set in Velatta isn't it? I was too young, undereducated, scared and excited after being sent to outback NSW for four years at one day's notice at the start of my teaching career to make a go of GR. . Apart from "Ulysees", the books I read then are lost in a blur of other stimuli. You have suggested to me a project for my twilight years. What are your other favourite books?
Yes, but I also know what you consider junk. The only real junk I've seen you with lately is that silly book by your e-friend, the fashionista.
ALP does seem to be the most accessible section. When I was in Freiburg im Breisgau, the local theatre even mounted an adaptation of it. Sadly, I was too lame to get tickets and check it out, so I don't even know if it was in the original or one of the attempted translations.
One of the strongest impressions I've gotten from The Wake is how it completely restructures the reading process. The printed text never fades into background awareness, even the letters in nearly every word remain in the foreground and I'm very aware of how my eyes move to scan the lines. I can think of no text that so completely remains a physical object and seemed so less intended to resolve through reading into a single voice in my head.If Joyce was comfortable reciting ALP then maybe all the above is just an artifact of how inadaquate I am to the material. Beckett often pushes the reading of the text to the foreground and obsesses about the voice of the text and I figured he got that from The Wake.
It is a very beautiful reading and should, I think be available somewhere on the net.One of the best things I've seen on the idiot box this year is the complete Beckett stage works produced for Irish Television and starring every good actor on Earth: Alan Rickman; John Hurt; Michael Gambon, Julianne Moore etc, etc. Definitive, painfully funny and moving productions all. If they ever come your way, visit someone with a TV for a week or so.Tristram Shandy has something of the same effect of pushing the text to the fore.If we want to go way back, how about "Gargantua and Pantagruel" ? James Ellroy's latest book "the Deep Six-Thousand" is a very strange piece of work indeed. It is language stripped bare of description and seems to be made up entirely of verbal phrases. Though no FW, the text does stay in the forefront and does at least seem very ambitious for a crime-thriller.
I think text for Sterne, Rabelais and Joyce was a wonderful inflatable surface capable of expanding beyond genre constraints. For Beckett text is an impenetrable barrier. I don't think it's anacronistic to attibute many structuralist and post structuralist concerns to why Becket wrote (after he switched to French) as he did. I've heard that the IT productions are going to be available on DVD. I plan to wait till I then so I can watch them at home without anyone making fun of my reactions. Will keep an eye out for Deep Six-Thousand.
I'm sure ou realised that the last post was from me and not from Ian. Still getting used to this login thing.
I should at least have given AR the courtesy of getting her title right, it is "Blackwood Farm".
Oh you love "Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames" too. I suppose you're familiar with Chequespierre as well.
Kommentar veröffentlichen