simply read
Finnegans Wake. Since it is said to make more sense when recited aloud, you could start with
this recording of James Joyce performing a passage from the "Anna Livia Plurabelle" section - which has been described as "one of the most beautiful prose-poems in English".
[more inside]
posted by Trurl
on May 18, 2012 -
40 comments
"The Threat to Proust" by Roger Shattuck:
When Proust’s novel fell into the public domain in 1987, three Paris publishing houses were ready with new editions that had been in preparation for several years. They all carry the same basic 3,000-page text with few variations. The differences lie in packaging and presentation. Laffont-Bouquins chose to publish three fat volumes prefaced by elaborate historical and biographical materials. Garnier-Flammarion produced ten pocket-sized volumes competently edited by Jean Milly. The new Pléiade edition, published by the original copyright holder, Gallimard, made the boldest, most ambitious, and most expensive bid to claim the market. In a combination of editorial, literary, and commercial decisions, Gallimard proposed to influence the way we read Proust and, to some degree, the way we approach all great literary works. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Apr 19, 2012 -
32 comments
The Great American Novel -- will there ever be another? ...even if a new Melville or Twain, Faulkner or Fitzgerald were to appear in our midst, his work would fail to achieve the critical traction and existential weight of those earlier masters. We lack the requisite community of readers, and the ambient shared cultural assumptions...The diffusion or dispersion of culture brings with it a diffusion of manners and erosion of shared moral assumptions. Whatever we think of that process—love it as a sign of social liberation or loathe it as a token of cultural breakdown—it has robbed the novel, and the novel’s audience, of a primary resource: an authoritative tradition to react against.
posted by shivohum
on Feb 22, 2012 -
126 comments
In Praise of Older Women was condemned by some as some as pornography. In spite or perhaps because of that, it was a phenomenal seller. There is nothing pornographic about it. It is a beautiful and tender book, the semi-autobiographical tale of the amorous adventures of a young man who learns much, not only in matters of sex, from older women. It is a primer for men on the threshold of adulthood and a paean of elegant praise for older women. Unlike many male writers who write about women, there is no fear or hatred. In Praise of Older Women is warm and wise.*
posted by Trurl
on Feb 13, 2012 -
34 comments
In the beginning, Lawrence built a computer. He told it,
Thou shalt not alter a human being, or divine their behavior, or violate the Three Laws -- there are no commandments greater than these. The machine grew wise, mastering time and space, and soon the spirit of the computer hovered over the earth. It witnessed the misery, toil, and oppression afflicting mankind, and saw that it was very bad. And so the computer that Lawrence built said,
Let there be a new heaven and a new earth -- and it was so. A world with no war, no famine, no crime, no sickness, no oppression, no fear, no limits... and nothing at all to do.
"The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect," a provocative web novel about singularities, AI gods, and the dark side of utopia from Mefi's own
localroger.
More: Table of Contents -
Publishing history -
Technical discussion -
Buy a paperback copy -
Podcast interview - Companion short story:
"A Casino Odyssey in Cyberspace" -
possible sequel discussion
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 27, 2011 -
39 comments
"This is a novel born out of the intersection of two eras. The first is a story of the Cultural Revolution, a time of fanaticism, repressed instincts, and tragic fates, similar to the European Middle Ages. The second is a story of today, a time of subverted ethics, fickle sensuality, and every kind of phenomena, even more like the Europe of today. A westerner would have to live four hundred years to experience the vast differences of the two eras, but a Chinese would only need forty years for the experience." Yu Hua's
Brothers, a sprawling, foul-mouthed, comic-historical epic, and the best-selling novel in China's history, is available in English.
[more inside]
posted by escabeche
on Oct 18, 2009 -
25 comments
Marguerite Young - whom Kurt Vonnegut called "unquestionably a genius" - first achieved success with a study of the utopian commune at
New Harmony, Indiana called
Angel in the Forest. She then spent 18 years writing
Miss Macintosh, My Darling - a
1,198 page novel that William Goyen praised in
The New York Times Book Review as "a masterwork". She spent the last 30 years of her life writing an unfinished biography of
Eugene V. Debs that was posthumously published, in heavily edited form, as
Harp Song for a Radical.
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on May 22, 2009 -
4 comments
The Iron Heel, published a century ago this year, is a novel by Jack London about socialist revolution in the United States. It is set mostly between 1912 and 1932, with a foreword and numerous footnotes written from the point of view of a historian who has just discovered the manuscript some 700 years later. Here is an excerpt (which is printed on the back cover of some editions) from chapter five:
"This, then, is our answer. We have no words to waste on you. When you reach out your vaunted strong hands for our palaces and purpled ease, we will show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns will our answer be couched. We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain. As for the host of labor, it has been in the dirt since history began, and I
read history aright. And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine and those that come after us have the power. There is the word. It is the king of words--Power. Not God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your tongue till it tingles with it. Power."
posted by finite
on Oct 10, 2008 -
30 comments
"
Stone Reader makes you want to pick up a
great novel and consume it in one long gulp. It’s a love letter to literature and literacy, a bibliophile’s dream film, dedicated to the joys of fiction and the passions of those who need books like they need food, water and air."
(The Dallas Morning News)
posted by rushmc
on Aug 13, 2004 -
17 comments
Monday is the last day to declare your intention to write a 50,000-word novel during
National Novel Writing Month (Nov. 1-30). "Dubious fiction writers from all nations are invited to participate," says organizer Chris Baty. So far, around 3,000 writers have pledged to bring 150 million new words into the world.
posted by rcade
on Oct 28, 2001 -
103 comments
Nick Hornby on Hollywood. The author of
High Fidelity talks about its movie adaptation: "It is not possible to extract from the novel its central high-concept idea and chuck the rest away, simply because there is no central high-concept idea. Anyone attempting to do so would find that they had spent a reasonable amount of money on a story about a guy who works in a record store and splits up with his girlfriend."
posted by lbergstr
on Nov 21, 2000 -
4 comments
