Seven of the top ten books of all time are by Ayn Rand or L. Ron Hubbard... who knew?

chiasaur11

Poorochondriac wrote: »

chiasaur11 wrote: »

Damn you all. "Herculean will" and "Impossible" are the exact words that make me want to do something I'll regret. I can see myself a few months from now, Ulysses finished, knee deep in gibbering madness, and the only person I'll hate more than Sarukun will be myself.

I'd just like to apologize in advance for any attempts to light anyone on fire as a consequence.

Thinking of similar decisions I don't regret, though?

You know who rules?

Tolstoy.

I mean, I don't think there's anyone else like him. Every other classic novel I've read past a certain length, it's filled with cruft. Good cruft, sometimes. Like, Dostoyevsky? The man could write cruft that's better than the centerpiece of some pretty good books. But he still tangented. Like crazy.

War and Peace? It was focused. This was a novel that earned every sentence of its length.

Well worth the effort.

Bro you are conflating plot with the "point" of a book, which is stone-cold silly.

In Brothers Karamazov, the plot is the "cruft." Wide-scoped conversations about faith, good, evil, nature, nurture, life, death, greed, lust, love? THOSE are the point.

Humanity ain't got focus, and Dostoevsky's goal was (often) to capture humanity in all its unfocused, messy glory, and try to fix it.

I'm phrasing it wrong.

Done this before.

What I mean is, hmm. How to put it.

Yes. In Brothers K the not plot stuff IS the focus. The examination of the concept of God and the relevance to morality, the problem of evil, all that, it's what the book is about. But that means there's a certain meandering quality. In lesser books, it's irritating. Here, (Or in Moby Dick, or what have you) it's part of the point of the novel. It needs to be so long so it can go on tangents, so that it can examine the ideas of the novel from fresh angles. But War and Peace shocked me with how direct it was. It's one of the longest novels published, but none of it feels like a side passage. It all feels like the core. Like, Crime and Punishment has the story, examination of the story, side story that comments and compliments the story, all that. This just felt like The Story, which happens to be very big. It's not a difference in quality, but in tone.

Still probably not communicating my meaning very well, but hopefully, this makes me look like slightly less of a Dostoyevsky insulting asshole. (Because, again. Dostoyevsky is really good.)

Bucketman

I have a list of books recommended to by people on here, but I think I need to read more Vonnegut, he's got a good style that I enjoy.

Also maybe tonight I'll post some poetry and short stories in the writers block

Pharezon

A Grain of Wheat is a good book about Kenya's State of Emergency and the poisonous legacy of Colonialism/Imperialism. A great reminder that empire is awful and Great Britain was terrible.

sarukun

chiasaur11 wrote: »

Damn you all. "Herculean will" and "Impossible" are the exact words that make me want to do something I'll regret. I can see myself a few months from now, Ulysses finished, knee deep in gibbering madness, and the only person I'll hate more than Sarukun will be myself.

I'd just like to apologize in advance for any attempts to light anyone on fire as a consequence.

Thinking of similar decisions I don't regret, though?

You know who rules?

Tolstoy.

I mean, I don't think there's anyone else like him. Every other classic novel I've read past a certain length, it's filled with cruft. Good cruft, sometimes. Like, Dostoyevsky? The man could write cruft that's better than the centerpiece of some pretty good books. But he still tangented. Like crazy.

War and Peace? It was focused. This was a novel that earned every sentence of its length.

Well worth the effort.

Don't get me wrong, I had fun with it.

But fuck if I remember any of it.

"Man, read three pages of Ulysses or play XCom for four hours."

Easy choice unless you got a quiz for that shit tomorrow.

I have never read War and Peace.

I feel like I should finish reading Dante's Inferno before I buy War and Peace.

sarukun

Bucketman wrote: »

sarukun wrote: »

Having said that, since one of you is actually wrapping up Ulysses, I just started taking a class on Greek and Roman Mythology and am going through the Odyssey again, and I had something pointed out to me that made me feel like a fucking boss.

When I took my course on Ulysses, I wrote my final paper/presentation on a couple of different techniques that I found used throughout; one of them was an effect I called "time dilation". There is this thing that happens all over in Ulysses where you get bombarded with description of various things... it's kind of like the literary equivalent of bullet time, you fly around through these different scenes and get closeups of this that or the other, and then you take a step back and realize that a fraction of a second, or a handful of seconds have passed in the book, while you've read 3-5 pages of material.

Well, it turns out this is a thing that actually happens in the motherfucking Odyssey. It's no where near as pronounced or protracted as it is in Ulysses, but you do have moments where a character will arrive somewhere and you get sort of a birds eye veiw that goes on for stanzas, telling you all about this place before the narrative loops back around to whomever it started the description with; the professor called it "ring composition".

I just thought it was pretty incredible that Joyce would go so far as to incorporate literary techniques so specific to the Odyssey in Ulysses; so much was made in that class of plot points that correspond to plot points in the Odyssey, characters that correspond to characters, and a lot of the physical make-up of the poem, but nobody talked about anything in terms of technique and devices. Kind of makes me wish I wasn't separated from my first reading of the Odyssey by four years when I took that Ulysses class, I could have written a much more directed and focused paper. =P




Jesus, I'm a nerd.

Yes, one of my my mythology classes we discussed this at length, and literary bullet time is a great way to describe it. A few other books do it, but I think more should. It's like a Zac Morris time out and I feel it's a good representation of the millions of things that go through your head at any given time. But you have to be careful, to much of it and your just rambling on about crap

Right, exactly, it's a super useful but kind of dangerous technique, you over-do it and your shit becomes impenetrable.

(I feel like Joyce over-did it on purpose.


His shit is impenetrable for a bunch of other reasons, too.)

sarukun

Poorochondriac wrote: »

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

Maybe after my current book I will make a "Let's Read Ulysses" thread where we read, say, a chapter per week and discuss it as we go.

Would this be something people would be interested in?

I'd be way into that

You fucker.



I will totally start strong and peter out like three weeks into this.

sarukun

Bucketman wrote: »

Langly wrote: »

godmode wrote: »

I don't understand why so many people get a hard-on for Faulkner. I tried to read The Sound and the Fury a few years back and I could barely understand the language...and it was in English.

I heard similar ravings about Ulysses and it may have had potential, but I remember that one being difficult to stick to as well.

being personally unable to understand the book isn't really a strike against the book itself.

People jump on Faulkner's dick because his phonetic dialect is perfect, his ability to voice characters is perfect, and his complex stories are infinitely re-readable. They have true depth in their ability to show new things every time you go back to them.

The craft of Ulysses is undeniable, Joyce's intense genius makes it basically inaccessible. He's making allusion after allusion to all different sorts of things, sometimes in different languages, all in stream of consciousness, that pretty much no one is going to keep up with him. The only way to actually appreciate that book is to study it and have someone walk you through the narrative, slowly.

You are truly a joy sir. I agree fully.


Like in high-school I had a hard time with Grapes Of Wrath and a tale of two cities. Looking back,I enjoyed both books, but man were they hard to read at first.

Now Catcher in the Rye, I dunno, I just hate Holden so much

I am pretty sure you are supposed to hate Holden.

Holden is the product of his shitty, shitty world that he doesn't fit in enough to step back and look at how shitty it is while still organically being shitty as hell because of it.

Salinger hates civilization.

Poorochondriac

sarukun wrote: »

Bucketman wrote: »

sarukun wrote: »

Having said that, since one of you is actually wrapping up Ulysses, I just started taking a class on Greek and Roman Mythology and am going through the Odyssey again, and I had something pointed out to me that made me feel like a fucking boss.

When I took my course on Ulysses, I wrote my final paper/presentation on a couple of different techniques that I found used throughout; one of them was an effect I called "time dilation". There is this thing that happens all over in Ulysses where you get bombarded with description of various things... it's kind of like the literary equivalent of bullet time, you fly around through these different scenes and get closeups of this that or the other, and then you take a step back and realize that a fraction of a second, or a handful of seconds have passed in the book, while you've read 3-5 pages of material.

Well, it turns out this is a thing that actually happens in the motherfucking Odyssey. It's no where near as pronounced or protracted as it is in Ulysses, but you do have moments where a character will arrive somewhere and you get sort of a birds eye veiw that goes on for stanzas, telling you all about this place before the narrative loops back around to whomever it started the description with; the professor called it "ring composition".

I just thought it was pretty incredible that Joyce would go so far as to incorporate literary techniques so specific to the Odyssey in Ulysses; so much was made in that class of plot points that correspond to plot points in the Odyssey, characters that correspond to characters, and a lot of the physical make-up of the poem, but nobody talked about anything in terms of technique and devices. Kind of makes me wish I wasn't separated from my first reading of the Odyssey by four years when I took that Ulysses class, I could have written a much more directed and focused paper. =P




Jesus, I'm a nerd.

Yes, one of my my mythology classes we discussed this at length, and literary bullet time is a great way to describe it. A few other books do it, but I think more should. It's like a Zac Morris time out and I feel it's a good representation of the millions of things that go through your head at any given time. But you have to be careful, to much of it and your just rambling on about crap

Right, exactly, it's a super useful but kind of dangerous technique, you over-do it and your shit becomes impenetrable.

(I feel like Joyce over-did it on purpose.


His shit is impenetrable for a bunch of other reasons, too.)

One of my favorite examples of it is, SURPRISE SURPRISE, David Foster Wallace. In "Forever Overhead" he uses it to not only convey the maelstrom of thoughts in a moment of panic, but to allow a watershed moment to serve as a metaphor for the transition from youth to adulthood (whatever "adulthood" means) by exploding out the length of said moment. Exploring the weight of the transition by giving that weight to this one moment, perched on a diving board, forever overhead.

http://welcometotheloonybin.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/forever-overhead/

Mr Fuzzbutt

sarukun wrote: »

Poorochondriac wrote: »

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

Maybe after my current book I will make a "Let's Read Ulysses" thread where we read, say, a chapter per week and discuss it as we go.

Would this be something people would be interested in?

I'd be way into that

You fucker.



I will totally start strong and peter out like three weeks into this.

I haven't read it before. Is a week per chapter too long? Too short?

Dichotomy

well you'll also have to complete a set of questions and be able to participate in the seminar discussion

2and2is5

I remember parts of Ulysses almost as if I dreamed them, which is probably a combination of the book itself and the fact that I read it almost 3 years ago now. Same thing with To the Lighthouse.

Anyway, the U.S.A trilogy. Read it.

trif

laughingfuzzball wrote: »

WotanAnubis wrote: »

You know, I can understand why Scientologists would vote en masse for their beloved Hubbard because they're a cult and all.

But aren't Objectivists supposed to believe in the Invisible Hand of the Free Market? To let the great consuming masses reward the worthy and punish the unworthy with their wallets? Or internet poll votes?

Not that I'm surprised Objectivists are hypocrites, but how do they deal with the cognitive dissonance?

Any Objectivists I've met aren't self-aware enough to even notice any contradiction there

But in reality they'd probably just see it as a "the masses have spoken" event.

I think there is a group of people who like the idea of being an asshole in their day to day life. Ayn Rand gives them an excuse to do that. I don't think that they fully embrace the tenets of Objectivism, just the bit about rational self interest. Self awareness can rot as far as they are concerned.

Those people are just assholes. They're not really dangerous. The dangerous ones are the ones that actually follow Rand's thought processes to it's extremes.

Poorochondriac

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our-daughter-isnt-a-selfish-brat-your-son-just-hasnt-read-atlas-shrugged

trif

Poorochondriac wrote: »

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/our-daughter-isnt-a-selfish-brat-your-son-just-hasnt-read-atlas-shrugged

Oh, that's good. McSweeneys does fine sarcasm. Thanks for that!

Crimson King

oh my god can we please have a weekly Ulysses book club, i would get so into that

i really like the first three chapters and have never got around to reading any further in

Mr Fuzzbutt

Crimson King wrote: »

oh my god can we please have a weekly Ulysses book club, i would get so into that

i really like the first three chapters and have never got around to reading any further in

Should we let people finish their current books first?

I am about halfway through Hyperion and it is really good so I don't want to start something else yet.

Poorochondriac

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

Crimson King wrote: »

oh my god can we please have a weekly Ulysses book club, i would get so into that

i really like the first three chapters and have never got around to reading any further in

Should we let people finish their current books first?

I am about halfway through Hyperion and it is really good so I don't want to start something else yet.

I'm fine either way. My current book is a collection of shorts, so I can put the pause on it basically whenever.

Crimson King

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

Crimson King wrote: »

oh my god can we please have a weekly Ulysses book club, i would get so into that

i really like the first three chapters and have never got around to reading any further in

Should we let people finish their current books first?

I am about halfway through Hyperion and it is really good so I don't want to start something else yet.

well, how many other people would actually be interested?

personally i'm ready to go whenever you are

jgeis

A week per episode for Ulysses should be good. Some of the episodes won't take people that long to read because they are "less" complicated, others will be a struggle.

Part of why Joyce is so hard to read is that he actively tries to prevent mysticism and meaning from being extracted from his work, in order to preserve a certain kind of experience for his readers.

Fencingsax

once was enough for Ulysses, on my part.

trif

On the subject of difficult to read text, I give you: Amanda McKittrick Ros.

Her work was so bad and awkward to read that she became an ironic cause célèbre among the cultural luminaries of her time

Totally different to Joyce, but interesting how the two ends of the spectrum can seem to converge, to the uninitiated observer?

Sassori

I'll have to find my book first. It's in a box somewhere now that I'm out of my apartment.

jgeis

Ulysses is available online for free through Project Gutenberg, if you're so inclined. There is also a great searchable version hosted by Imperial University London. I used that one to write a paper on the use of the word "anyway" in the novel, another person in the class used it to write one on urine, and our professor is using it to write an essay on pins.

Poorochondriac

I would start to feel real suspicious of my education's price tag if I found myself spending hours writing about urine in a book

Big Red Tie

i am writing a paper on joyce's use of stream of consciousness in his short story araby right now

Sassori

Poorochondriac wrote: »

I would start to feel real suspicious of my education's price tag if I found myself spending hours writing about urine in a book

Oh god.

So that reminds me of the thesis defense I went to the other night. One girl decided to talk about Christianity and Harry Potter and she had no real grasp on what the word "pagan" could mean. She mentioned from the very beginning that she was using it as an umbrella term and someone asked her to clarify and she was like "Oh...You know...Pagans is for...neo-pagans...and....pagans...You know."

I thought the Religious Studies professor was going to throw something at her during the presentation.

JoeUser

Dumbledore died for our sins?

Poorochondriac

Lotta parallels when you think about it. Beard, robes, magic powers, sage advice, secretly gay

Binary Squid

Poorochondriac wrote: »

I would start to feel real suspicious of my education's price tag if I found myself spending hours writing about urine in a book

I guess it depends on whether the person has enough money to spend on esoteric education.

If urine the money already it's not so big a deal.

ChicoBlue

That's the sort of subject that I would peeter out on pretty quickly.

Big Red Tie

Binary Squid wrote: »

Poorochondriac wrote: »

I would start to feel real suspicious of my education's price tag if I found myself spending hours writing about urine in a book

If urine the money already it's not so big a deal.

is this

Sassori

Basically that Snape, Dumbledore, and Harry can all be used to describe the inner fights of good vs. evil in each of us.

Oh and Harry came back to life. Jesus.

Big Red Tie

it is

Poorochondriac

I guess it's all worth it when you get to graduation, the band starts up, and the chimes of Pomp and Circumstance start to tinkle

FAQ

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

Maybe after my current book I will make a "Let's Read Ulysses" thread where we read, say, a chapter per week and discuss it as we go.

Would this be something people would be interested in?

that would be brilliant, soon as I finish with my thesis thing and 12 hour day buzz I got a bunch of books I never finished.

Also a film club thread could be kind of cool too as it's more of my bag

jgeis

Poorochondriac wrote: »

I would start to feel real suspicious of my education's price tag if I found myself spending hours writing about urine in a book

You could write a lengthy book on just the secretions of the characters in Ulysses. I'm sure somebody has.

It's some serious shit.

Big Red Tie

rainymood is seriously great

Bucketman

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

Crimson King wrote: »

oh my god can we please have a weekly Ulysses book club, i would get so into that

i really like the first three chapters and have never got around to reading any further in

Should we let people finish their current books first?

I am about halfway through Hyperion and it is really good so I don't want to start something else yet.

Hyperion was suggested to me on this forum and I loved it and the other books in the series are on my stack right now

laughingfuzzball

Sassori wrote: »

Poorochondriac wrote: »

I would start to feel real suspicious of my education's price tag if I found myself spending hours writing about urine in a book

Oh god.

So that reminds me of the thesis defense I went to the other night. One girl decided to talk about Christianity and Harry Potter and she had no real grasp on what the word "pagan" could mean. She mentioned from the very beginning that she was using it as an umbrella term and someone asked her to clarify and she was like "Oh...You know...Pagans is for...neo-pagans...and....pagans...You know."

I thought the Religious Studies professor was going to throw something at her during the presentation.

I run into that a lot.

Same thing with "Satanism". Not only is the term so broad that it's basically useless without qualification, the meaning most people seem to imply isn't actually a thing.

Bucketman

Also I would be down for Ulysses book club.