Nathan "N.R."’s Comments (group member since Sep 17, 2012)

Nathan "N.R."’s comments from the Completists' Club group.

My Score

Bishop's Progress
Horn
War is Heaven
The Death and Life of Harry Goth
The Proselytizer
The Bridge
Take Five
Topless
The Fergus Dialogues: A Meditation on the Gender of Christ

Anybody?

Novels
Bishop's Progress
Horn
War is Heaven
The Death and Life of Harry Goth
The Proselytizer
The Bridge
Take Five
Topless
The Fergus Dialogues: A Meditation on the Gender of Christ

None of his copious journalism and editorial pieces have been bookified, and likely never will be. Meanwhile, dig out those old Playboys.

I lack yet:
Collected Poems (Dec 2014)
Three Wogs
The Wragby Cars (which I believe was published in a periodical, not as a book, but otherwise I know nothing about it) (for the moment, this does not exist)
The Lollipop Trollops
Primary Colors
Secondary Colors
The Grammar of Rock: Art and Artlessness

Again, I'm sure I'm alone on this one.

Novels
Three Wogs (1972)
Darconville's Cat (1981)
An Adultery (1987)
Laura Warholic or, The Sexual Intellectual (2007)

Fables
The Schinocephalic Waif
The Wragby Cars (1974) (non-existent or not a book)
The Great Wheadle Tragedy
Master Snickup's Cloak

Poetry
The Lollipop Trollops (1992)
Collected Poems (Dec 2014)

Non Fiction
The Primary Colors (1994)
The Secondary Colors (1996)
The Strange Case of Edward Gorey (2000) (revised, updated edition 2011)
The Enigma of Al Capp (1999)
Estonia: A Ramble Through the Periphery (2011)
The Grammar of Rock: Art and Artlessness (2013)

Full bibliography:
http://www.stevenmoore.info/theroux/t...

Nearing completion.

Yet To Read
The Tidewater Tales
The Development
Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons

Read
Everything else, three essay volumes inclusive. Or is there some odd Dutch-language only collection I don't know about?

Brian wrote: "Have read everything except "Let's Play Doctor"; TSFN was a let-down. My fave collection is still MC,MG.

Nathan - does any particular story or novel stand out for you?"

I think Et Tu, Babe would be my favorite. I like the Nutsack a lot, but I'm prone to digging over-the-top ridiculous stupid things.

I've read all the fiction and seen the canonical film, War, Inc. The three doctor books sit on my shelf following a failed attempt to make of them an Xmas present for a young relative. But I'm not overeager to get to them, but inevitably I will one day.

Novels
Et Tu, Babe (1992)
The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1998)
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack (2012)

Short story collections
I Smell Esther Williams and Other Stories (1983)
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990)
Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog (1996)

Non-fiction
Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini (2005)
Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour (2006)
Let's Play Doctor: The Instant Guide to Walking, Talking, and Probing like a Real M.D. (2008)

Patty wrote: "I would totally be willing to read all of Gaddis's advertising work. Please point me to it!"

There's a bit of it in The Rush for Second Place: Essays and Occasional Writings.

MJ wrote: "Blue Pastoral is on the newly conceived "to-reconsider" pile."

Just go back reading only his wonderfulwonderful lists. I confess, the book is "uneven." "Uneven"? Well, . . . . you'll hate me even more when you revisit this. It's a terrible book. The Jabberwocky chapter? And yes'um, I'd say much more the whole thing on the side of Finn than the side of the Oxen. And for Christsake, skip that horrendously translated inserted novella. And what about the Theft of Black Flowers? Or the one on the Colorful Riot? Or being Petrified by Awe?

That's all I've got. Teacher took away my cudgel.

Traveller wrote: " That person who starts a certain thread, needs to define the boundaries for that author... what do you think? "

Yep. That's precisely, exactly the kind of sort of thing I had in mind. I wish we could get the machine to give us a %%% bar to keep track--with a reading list customized by members of this group with our own varying policies about what to include and not include. But in the case of Kafka, I think I'd include the grocery lists. I hope nobody ever excavates all of Gaddis's advertising work and insist that it be also canonized.

Kris wrote: "I have longer to go, Nathan, but a number of his books, including Blue Pastoral,"

Every time you say "Sorrentino" you must also say "Blue Pastoral." This will go on until MJ relents or six other goodreaders (smart ones) cudgel my relention out of me. [Right, like as if Gil could write a "two-starable" book.]

Traveller wrote: "I'd like to propose a vote that all who start a new thread, must list all the author's works by post 3 or 4. That would add immense value to such a thread. "

Hear! Hear!

I apologize for wiki-ing you, but Kurt's got quite a pile of stuff. Completionism of his novels, short stories, and essays is reasonable. Beyond that? But here's the biblio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Von...

William T Vollmann, goes something like this:

Have Read
You Bright and Risen Angels
The Ice-Shirt
An Afghanistan Picture Show
Whores for Gloria
The Rainbow Stories
The Royal Family
Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs
Riding Toward Everywhere
Butterfly Stories
Expelled From Eden (A Reader, containing otherwise unpublished material)
Fathers and Crows
Rising Up Rising Down (unabridged)
Argall
The Book of Dolores
The Rifles
Poor People
The Atlas
Kissing the Mask
Last Stories
Europe Central
Imperial
Imperial (photos)
Uncentering the Earth
The Dying Grass

Will Have Read
Into the Forbidden Zone (ebook only, therefore don't count -- I anticipate its inclusion in his current coal/nuclear project, and therefore, 'forthcoming')



What am I missing?

Fiction
The Floating Opera (1956)
The End of the Road (1958)
The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
Giles Goat-Boy, or, The Revised New Syllabus (1966)
Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (stories) (1968)
Chimera (three linked novellas) (1972)
LETTERS (1979)
Sabbatical: A Romance (1982)
The Tidewater Tales (1987)
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991)
Once upon a Time: A Floating Opera (memoirish novel) (1994)
On with the Story (stories) (1996)
Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative (2001)
The Book of Ten Nights and a Night: Eleven Stories (2004)
Where Three Roads Meet (three linked novellas) (2005)
The Development (2008)
Every Third Thought: A Novel in Five Seasons (2011)

Nonfiction
The Friday Book (1984)
Further Fridays (1995)
Final Fridays (2012)

Mike, the Enabler. See, I've not read word one from Marías but I suspect I've already found him among my completist itinerary.

Chiming in. I believe I accomplished all Vonnegut up to and including Timequake. I know that includes Wanda June and probably Timbuktu, the autobiographical stuff probably; his thing with Mark maybe. I don't recall with precision. I've not felt the compulsion to read the post-Quake stuff, which is, what? a dozen plus volumes of mostly barrel scraping and a few diamonds perhaps? But I was quite happy to spend half each of the '80's and '90's vonnegutting the snot out of my brain.

Jonathan wrote: "I got a signed hardcover (though it wasn't labelled as signed, I guess that went unnoticed or uncared about by the Atlanta Book Company) of Women and Men for three dollars and eleven cents on June ..."

!!!!

Similar here, sans inscription, I got mine for $13.95US in Jan(?) of this year. I passed up buying a second copy in pb last Spring for $8.95. Damn!

I will continue with a speculation that libraries may begin to dump their 25 year old, unread copies in the near future, if they haven't already.

Nick wrote: "I'd love to read just Women and Men but it is so impossible to find without breaking the bank."

Please accept my apologies. I feel like I'm in part to blame. In turn, I blame Dalkey Archive for inexplicably letting this drop from their catalog. Paperbacks are now list on amazon for $150+. Stupidly insane. Fortunately we'll at least soon have an ebook from Dzanc.

Aloha wrote: "The way you organized it, Nathan, made me realize I need to go back to the two threads I started and list out their books. "

If this group is to become *useful* it will need some kind of organizing principle. There could be some tech means to do this, with %%% progress bar/status update type thing, but would probably require the participation of the goodreads tech staff. For now, this clumsy prose style catalog will have to do.

I've heard great things about Night Soul, and the handful of his short stories I've read are magnificent. Letter is seemingly atypical, but great. Women and Men has magnum opus all over it. I'm really looking forward to getting into Plus and Lookout Cartridge.