Member: dutts

Apologies for the incredibly late reply -- I don't check in here very often. I have not yet read it but will be happy to try to have a look through this week.

posted by Holzfallen at 12:45 am (EST) on Jul 31, 2012

in San Francisco...overstock NYRB books for 7-8 dollars everywhere. Is there some secret place in LA that also does this?

posted by socialradnar at 10:07 pm (EST) on Dec 25, 2011

I feel like there's about three types of confession or realness or sincerity in novels. Here are examples from books I've read recently:
There's the James Ellroy one which in its sheer bravado and fecklessness reeks of Alcoholics Anonymous and reminds me a little of when someone you don't know tells you something "they never tell anyone" i.e. that you have to watch out when someone confesses to something monstrous because there's probably something worse underneath
There's the Stephen Elliot one which can be read mostly as a sort of masochism, like I'm going to tell all of these things about myself to interrupt my chronic depression with a healthy sense of shame and hopefully someone will someday love me anyways. I feel, and this is sort of grasping, that a lot of minimalism falls into this. In a lot of ways this seems like the more intimate (although maybe not the more real) kind because it makes you feel very close to the writer, like the same kitkat wrappers are in his trash box as are in yours.
Then there's the brutal Wallace one where everything is second-guessed in this almost Cartesian attempt to anticipate opponent's or critic's contentions by bringing them up first- a lot of metafiction falls into this category. I think this is the sort of truth told by someone who thinks they're a liar.
Now I don't know how Ellroy feels about editing, but I know Stephen Elliot edits the shit out of his stuff and that Wallace hardly edits at all and sends really nasty letters to his publishing company when they try to edit for him (which makes sense with the whole aversity-to-criticism thing). Dennis Cooper's comment about being calculating while simultaneously creating trust in the reader reminded me a lot of Elliot, and whose to say that first thought equals best thought or most florid equals most honest (and if you think metafiction and "tittypinching" in literature is the best way than read Sorrentino or any of the 50's postmodernists and tell me that's not a little bit bogus). I mean, in my own writing, I feel like the unedited manuscript is this series of defense mechanisms and lies, and that its only with editing and being "calculating" or introspective or whatever that I come to any degree of self-understanding.
So you were the one other person that was sitting down in the little cluster and didn't know everyone there. The guy with the moleskine and the swoopy haircut got really huffy with me when I didn't move out of the way with his chair, but he seemed like the only other person who got there early and didn't actually know Cooper. Did you understand what that one guy who used the adjective Personian and talked at the beginning said at all? Also, what do you think was going on between him and that one guy who he like suddenly recognized when he asked him how long it took him to write Marbled Swarm? I actually thought a lot about your comment. I mean, if transgression is something that's inscribed into the rule of the law (Foucault, "Society deserves its criminals"), than the only truly transgressive thing would be something like an Act in Badiou's sense, like a thing that defies interpretation. Since, as Cooper himself related, there's been a whole genre of transgressive literature, I think I can agree with you on how outdated the term is. Its not "gross" or "evil" anymore, its Rabelasian or Sadean (which sort of destroys the whole point). Also, maybe it never existed...I mean God there's no more boring a book than 120 days of Sodom (and I don't think its just aged). I mean, not that I really like his stuff, but isn't that what Bret Easton Ellis is all about? I don't want to just say we're jaded, so I'll say instead that maybe boredom has replaced our sense of the transgressive or perverse- that we only confront the yawning emptiness that heresy or whatever used to produce when we don't have an IPod or a cellphone to distract us from the very absence of the dominant narratives transgression used to call into question.
I am totally embarassed at how long this post is so in conclusion i haven't read Period, I thought the Sluts was just silly and I agree didn't have the same umph of his other books, and really like Fassbinder but haven't seen Year of 13 Moons. Also, its funny that you mention Zizek because I just realized how badly I copied his method in the whole 180 degree turn in my comment about genre-hah also Cooper's anecdote at the beginning really reminded me of him.

posted by socialradnar at 3:01 am (EST) on Nov 20, 2011

I really loved what he said at the end about trying to be sincere and how its difficult to be sincere when you're so calculating. The whole thing almost had the form of one of his short stories. It left me wondering whether or not he's telling sad stories about teenagers about to be ruined by adulthood or love or bad families, or exploded love into these extreme situations to analyze all its pieces, or like the artist in Closer making characters so evil the author looks good by comparison.
I really liked what he said about genre and how in Europe because of a legacy of transgressive (a word everyone seemed uncomfortable using) literature people can see what he's doing beyond his subject matter, but how in America everyone just compares him to Burroughs. I think it pointed out a funny thing about how by adhering to an established genre or tradition, an author can more clearly assert their personality because the audience isn't getting distracted by smoke and mirrors.
I always felt his books were a little bit like ghost stories with all of these terrible things happening to people on the brink of destruction or already destroyed, but then afterward everything being really sweet and sad.
What do you think of the Marbled Swarm so far?

posted by socialradnar at 11:29 pm (EST) on Nov 18, 2011

I was pleasantly surprised by how nice and funny and earnest he was. Were you there?

posted by socialradnar at 9:02 pm (EST) on Nov 18, 2011

dennis cooper's doing a reading at skylight on the 17th

posted by socialradnar at 4:40 pm (EST) on Oct 28, 2011

I don't know if its unnerving or comforting to see someone with such similar tastes. I saw "The Buddhist" on Dennis Cooper's blog and librarything just told me you read it and I was considering checking it out. Is it worth it? I'm hoping her or Edouard Levee keep me occupied until 2012, which with Krasznahorkai's books and "The Third Reich" is promising to be a pretty good year.
Also, have you read anything by Barry Gifford? It seems like someone with a taste in adventure, pulp, and weird like yourself would enjoy him. I'm pretty sure no one bridges the gap between excellent economy of prose and Faulkner-in-a-strip-mall texturing like he does. Every sentence is like the opening lines of "The Last Good Kiss".

posted by socialradnar at 4:45 pm (EST) on Oct 17, 2011

greadation

posted by jannon at 3:50 pm (EST) on Mar 9, 2010

yeah, that's how I found you here--was looking at who else has the little pink book.

posted by jannon at 12:47 pm (EST) on Mar 8, 2010

oh no, now you can see my pedestrian reading history.

posted by jannon at 2:24 am (EST) on Mar 6, 2010

hi!! hahaha.

posted by jannon at 2:22 am (EST) on Mar 6, 2010

We do, we really do.
Surprised me too when I checked out your library.
I'll definitely keep an eye on what comes your way, especially what you rate as favorable.

posted by ScanningDarkly at 1:06 am (EST) on Oct 18, 2009