Brian’s Comments (group member since Mar 02, 2009)

Brian’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

I'm bringing this over from my currently reading status to ask if anyone thinks this is as ridiculous as I see it to be.

I'm reading Pamuk, an early one called The New Life and I have a gripe with the cover... not the artwork which is superb, but with the blurbs, the accolades.

"Think Kafka with a light touch" Chicago Tribune

"...lyricism reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez" Wall Street Journal

"...fusion literary elegance and incisive political commentary... comparisons to Salman Rushdie and Don DiLillo..." Publishers Weekly

"...slight of hand of a Borges" Newsday

"...suggests Proust" John Updike, The New Yorker

"...as erudite as Nabokov and as chillingly prophetic as J. G. Ballard." general blurb on back cover.

"...romance reminiscent of Leeanne Marie Stephenson" Brian Dork

I'm disappointed that no connection to Albert Camus has been drawn. In world lit, every writer is a country's Camus.

Pamuk is a great writer and needs none of the above accolades. I think they were said before he won the Nobel sticker and he was still relatively unknown, but still... I do find these kinds (and quantities) of comparisons just stupid. Compare a writer to one, maybe two greats and leave it at that. But to mention all of the great modern writers? If I didn't know Pamuk's style I would have probably passed on this book.

damn. you people are lucky with dentists like that. here they just yank out your tooth and tell you about it after you stop screaming. and we pay for that!

and happy birthday mo! :D

Patty wrote: "one cool thing about goodreads is that we can move things around later. so for instance if this were the times before harry potter, and some twenty or thirty harry potter threads popped up, we cou..."

so we let it 'clutter' up a bit more before bringing in another filing cabinet? i'm good at procrastinating so that sounds good to me.

Esther wrote: "Oh...and I can't believe you guys don't love me for my love of romance novels! OMG! *cuddles on her bed with the latest Danielle Steele novel and cries*"

sounds like you may need a PFL for that satirical remark! hope you're in the queue though i expect that copy may have since been tainted. hope the pages aren't sticking. JE?

it makes sense. I don't think we can create sub-folders. it would be great if we could (suggestion to the goodreads gods?). a 'book' folder with author:title thread title structure sounds like the best solution for now.

should i still plant a tree?

Abi wrote: "Looked it up on urbandictionary.com and it isn't just my friends. Jamazing has unofficially entered the English language.

"

i guess i'm officially speaking and writing the old language now, circa '70's, and it freaks me out.

well, you know, i thought you couldn't separate an author from his works... but it looks like you can. i agree patty and i'm thinking the solution is creating a book folder. sometimes i do prefer reading discussions about a particular book accompanied with selected passages. whether said author had/has a tendency to sleep with sheep is no concern of mine.

but saying that, it would be nice to keep a discussion on say the sound and the fury under the faulkner heading.

there does seem to be a tendency to discuss the author's biographical info and as an introduction to the author's thread i think it's great. but then the books are not being discussed.

i seem to like authors that no one reads or likes so my threads die quickly. but i'll resurrect them when i read a new work by them by placing a book review in that thread.

good lord... i'm just rambling with no direction. i'm clueless on how to organize the likes of a topic like this. can i just plant some trees that we can all sit under and discuss the possibilities? i'll even add a small waterfeature for soothing sounds.

directions? left? right?

Jonathan wrote: " . . . lovely passage, but how exactly does one smell the curves of a river? . . . does a river smell different at a bend? and if so, can one smell multiple curves at a great distance? . . . and wh..."

where the river curves sand and sediment is deposited on the outside bend along with anything else that may be freeloading along the river's ride. the smell of this river beach would be distinct. i smelled it along the mississippi. it's an earthy smell, not like the smell of a forest or even the aroma of freshly upturned dirt because this earthy smell is mixed with the smell of river water, not surface water, but the deep water churned up by the currents in the bend. and if a dead cow or such happened to wash up on that beach i'm sure it would be possible to smell multiple curves in the distance.

faulkner did good with that passage.

i read my first faulkner last year and kind of regretted my first 47 years of living.

You've brought this up at an interesting time in my reading. I just read a book whose cover overflows with accolades. William S. Burroughs states, "Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer." The book is considered literature. I consider it rubbish. The book is My Loose Thread.

It covers shocking subjects in graphic and shocking language. Basically the mindset of teenagers of the likes of Dylon Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine shooters, with a little incestuous gayness thrown in for added measure.

I could easily write a line or two of shocking substance that would have many people talking, lines that could stay in the reader's head for a long time, but out of a sense of decency I wouldn't do it. What would be the point except to piss people off? That to me isn't good writing but clever exploitation. But if I did write such a shocking line, would it make me a great writer? Hell no. I feel that because this guy wrote such 'dangerous' words the critics with their little blurbs all feel a need to write great things about him. It's just stupid. I thought the writing was clumsy... First person point-of-view from an idiot who can't even think one coherent thought. And though I expect 'the story' to resonate long after I throw the book in the back of my shelf, it will resonate for the wrong reasons. It just pissed me off. Maybe the fact that such a book evoked such strong feelings in a reader elevates it to greatness. I don't know.

But it's called literature.

This doesn't answer your question because I'm also struggling with the same question.

lotsa of dfw stuff here: http://public.me.com/brian_doucet

i always found the word nectar very sensual but then i eat bugs what do i know?

i oft times wonder why some words are just so appropriate. vomit is one such word. it just sounds disgusting. 'om' by itself is ok, such as in the word bomb. i think it's the harsh ending of 'it' that gives it its (ha) nastiness because the word Amish sounds cool to me. the 'sh' sound tones it down... but shit, i'm just thinking out loud.

cheese is another... it's the perfect sound for a waxy protein mass made from animal secretions.

There's no better time than now for literature to link up with the chewy goodness of Tootsie Rolls. A classic like, say, War & Peace, could be serialized. Just think how enriched our lives would be.

Chocolove is a selection of distinctly flavored chocolate bars made with all-natural ingredients and the classic techniques of Europe's finest chocolatiers. The package design would resemble a love letter sent from a distant land, and inside each wrapper - a classic romantic poem.



But they are not truly publishers...

Can I submit poetry to Chocolove?

We do not take poetry submissions but we appreciate your interest. Our poetry has to be in the public domain, which is free and clear of any rights. We have fairly narrow parameters for what we print and we do not use any modern day poetry.

Over in the Short Story Group reads members are immersed in a little O. Henry which made me make the juvenile link to this...



... which of course is not related to the O. Henry writer dude because his O. stands for William Sydney Porter (well not really... he just liked the letter O apparently) and the Oh in the candy bar according to legend is an exclamation the girls made while making the candy and fighting off a horny little flirtatious boy... though another legend says it was indeed a homage to the O. writer guy.

Anyway my juvenile response was countered with a reply of a different candy preference, specifically Kit Kat (which I believe is not technically a bar but a wafer, or multiple wafers). So because I'm a busy guy, I of course had to look up the correlation between Kit Kat's and Literature and found the following:

Recently in Japan, Kit Kats have come packaged with CD singles and a special limited edition double pack of Kit Kat Crispy Monogatari came bundled with a mini book featuring six short stories, one of which is written by Koji Suzuki, author of the Ring cycle series of books.

Now what I find amusing about this is I was just holding the second and third book of the Ring series by Suzuki. The bookshop didn't have the first, Ring, so I put the siblings back on the shelf. A lover of both contemporary and classical Japanese literature, this series has me intrigued. I did enjoy the movie.

So egged on with the promise of some Snickerdoodle crumbs (which I guess is made with Snickers candy bars), I've started this thread for the serious research into candy/literature crossovers. Candy named after authors? Giving out books with candy? The chewy goodness of literature?

I'm not sure where to begin but as I sit back and look at Alexandre Dumas'...



... I'm hoping maybe someone (Mo?) can help with this serious project.

with the possibility of a movie coming out i bet a can of ubik would sell like crazy... little cans of ubik air fresheners. mcdonalds would package it in their kids meal.

i think said book has been deleted by said rabblerouser. thanks lovely lady.

Maureen wrote: "Brian wrote: "

why don't we just eat one and discuss its chewy goodness?"

i am not a big fan of the bar. i do like a kit kat though. are there any kit kat related authors? "

"Recently in Japan, Kit Kats have come packaged with CD singles and a special limited edition double pack of Kit Kat Crispy Monogatari came bundled with a mini book featuring six short stories, one of which is written by Koji Suzuki, author of the Ring cycle series of books."... damn! i'll have to look this baby up! i almost bought the ring trilogy but they were missing the first book.

And Shel... I'm terribly sorry for contributing these empty calorie posts. Now back to O Henry, the writer dude.

why don't we just eat one and discuss its chewy goodness?

we need leeanne...

Matt wrote: "what this seems to be is a continuation of the larger social phenomenon of being (overly)protective of our children

..."

parents don't let their kids eat dirt anymore. now they all grow up with sensitive stomachs. times have change. there's this huge dirt field where the kids play football. my kid used to get down and dirty in it making mud castles and mud cakes. when the other kids went to join her their parents all screamed to stay away from the dirt. pussies... all of them will grow up to be pussies with sensitive stomachs.