Authors I should like & don't (1 Viewer)

zoom man

zoom man

Founding member
Burroughs (I don't get it)
Hunter S Thompson (sorry)
Kerouac (though I really dig his more obscure stuff....)
Pynchon (too much work)

And as an aside, because I shouldn't like him,
And I still don't,
Faulkner.
Egads, talk about too much work.
Trudging through his stuff only makes me appreciated Buk more.....

Did Buk ever say anything about Dear Mr Faulkner?
 
Lawrence F of that book store in San Fran :> .

I can't get into his shit,

And that 'other' cool dude that I bet everyone here likes,
I don't get his pooh either.
 
yeah, Kerouac - I tried 'On the road', but wasn't able to work through. (a BIG yawn!)
Salinger - equally boring. A wannabe.
Kafka - what's the use of having the 'right' problems but being only able to write about them like they don't really touch you?
Dosto - usually takes 3-4 times longer than necessary. (only exception: 'Dream of a ridiculous man'. That's to the point.)
 
roni!!
you don't like Salinger?? have you tried "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenter"
or "Franny & Zooey"? i shouldn't preach...i bought a copy of "Crime and Punishment" ages ago, after being hounded by a friend. i've attempted to read it multiple times and haven't gotten very far. it just doesn't pull me in.
 
Most of the Beat writers in hindsight were just stoned fools...I mean what is their legacy....Get High! Get Fucked Up! Go travel around your Country! Drop out and achieve nothing! Write in comprehensible gibberish! Write standard issue prose explosions and drink yourself dead...!

hmmm....

zoomman, there is no obligation to prefer any of these writers!

Some people Might find Kafka or Faulkner more to the point than Bukowski or someone else...it's a mixed bag...
 
Rubyred said:
roni!!
you don't like Salinger?? have you tried "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenter"
or "Franny & Zooey"? i shouldn't preach...i bought a copy of "Crime and Punishment" ages ago, after being hounded by a friend. i've attempted to read it multiple times and haven't gotten very far. it just doesn't pull me in.
Click to expand...

Ruby, if you recommend these books, I'll give them a try. I was only trying the 'catcher' (2 or 3 times) but couldn't do it. I thought the language was so much FORCED to sound young and rebellious. But I'd always follow your advice my love! So Sally is on the list.
 
This is much better than picking who we like.

I like most of the writers mentioned but never enjoyed Kafka and only like Burroughs when he's coherent (hee hee).

Who it seems everybody loves here who I thought was just ok was Fante, though I think his son is tops.
 
roni said:
Ruby, if you recommend these books, I'll give them a try. I was only trying the 'catcher' (2 or 3 times) but couldn't do it. I thought the language was so much FORCED to sound young and rebellious. But I'd always follow your advice my love! So Sally is on the list.
Click to expand...

I read maybe two chapters of Catcher. What utter shit.

Tried to read Crime and Punishment. Couldn't.
Tried to read As I Lay Dying. Couldn't.
Tried to read Scarlet Letter. Couldn't.
Tried to read Great Expectations. Couldn't.

I don't know if I SHOULD like him, but I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and most recently started Diamond Age. He's "postcyberpunk" I guess. I'm not crazy about his writing.
 
rjwink666 said:
Nietzche
Click to expand...

I can See the probs with Nietzsche!

Know a LOT of people (germans - Native speakers that is!), who simply started with the WRONG book - and thus DISLIKE him!
(it's a little like starting Buk with 'The fiend' or 'Swastica' or 'Fuck Machine' and thinking, this is Him or representative in Any way!)

- and in SOME way it's even harder with Nietzsche, bc you can NEVER understand him without at least Some knowledge about his biography AND the times he lived in.
This would, of/c., make a NEW thread, but I'd be PLEASED - if requested - to introduce to Nietzsche a little.
(last year I held an address at the Schopenhauer-society about parallels between Buk/Schop/Nietzsch, so maybe I'm not TOTALLY uninformed.)

 
slimedog, i read a few stories from "The Big Hunger" and just thought they were ok, but i LOVED "Spitting Off Tall Buildings".

i think i read "Catcher in the Rye" when i was about 12 and i totally loved it. i thought the characterisation of Holden Caulfield was brilliant.

but i guess there's no accounting for taste...

i'm actually about to start reading "Snow Crash" for an english lit paper on relationship between literature and new media.
 
:)
slimedog said:
This is much better than picking who we like.
Click to expand...

Yes!,
A whole hearted toast to that....
And BTW-->
I don't like ____________,
Egads!,
Yes,
I know,
Blasphemous,
But I dont.....

Yikes,
Is my despised above listed as an underline?!?!
_______
 
Interesting thread
I stole the entire Nietzche collection from my school library when I left.

I thought it was an excellent display of Will to Power at the time, turns out it was more about will to be an asshole.

I can't read any science fiction Tolkien anmy of them (I don't care enough to find the proper spelling) Middle earth deserves the middle finger.

Re: German authors I was always disappointed Buk didn't like Hesse as much as I did/do.
 
Reading "Naked Lunch" from Burroughs is total fucking pain for me.
I tried also "Beat Hotel" from Harold Norse but it's also written in that
confusing cut up style.
 
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Rubyred said:
slimedog, i read a few stories from "The Big Hunger" and just thought they were ok, but i LOVED "Spitting Off Tall Buildings".

i think i read "Catcher in the Rye" when i was about 12 and i totally loved it. i thought the characterisation of Holden Caulfield was brilliant.

but i guess there's no accounting for taste...

i'm actually about to start reading "Snow Crash" for an english lit paper on relationship between literature and new media.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with The Big Hunger but if you LOVED Spitting you'll love Chump Change and Mooch, that's what I've read by him anyways.

Give Crime and Punishment another go when you have the time. Keeping track of the Russian names was my hardest task.
 
I enjoyed 'Catcher on the rye' - it was nothing spectacular but good characterisation, a lot of angst confusion and despair which was quite dark and untapped, but it was also a strange kind of mundane that I liked, and being scottish, the language did appeal to me:

'I came in when the goddamn stageshow was on....'

I read most of 'Crime and Punishment' but it got quite stuffy and terse. I'm going to give it another try. But I'm fearing reading - 'The Brothers Karamazov'.

'The Tin Drum' by Gunter Grass is Quality Strangeness and look at Germany and German family during WW2. Oskar is perhaps one of the strangest, darkest, most curious characters I have ever read. But I couldn't finish section three. One day I might...

I suggest Alasdair Gray to anyone particularly '1982, Janine'.
 
as a child, i always thought it better to be seen with a big book so as to appear intelligent and deep. the books i carried with me (and never made it through...)
- david copperfield by dickens
- gone with the wind by margaret mitchell
- anna karinina by tolstoy
- anything by the bronte sisters and jane austen
however, i have to grin when i see an 8th grade girl stroll by my room with a copy of "war and peace"...i figure someday, those big books will guide her to something deep and meaningful, much like they did me. it is the books that are painful for us to get through that help us better understand what it is we are seeking in the words.
 
While I was getting my degree in Lit I was always being force-fed Hawthorne. Cannot and will not stand him.
James Fenmore Cooper is a bore.
Henry James was a hack.
I agree with Girl, anything by Jane Austen and the Pretentious Brontes is enough to make me grab my shotgun.
Huh. Good thread. I could go on but I fear the purging will continue uninterrupted ... perhaps later.
 
" A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read".....Mark Twain
 
hobart said:
I could go on but I fear the purging will continue uninterrupted ... perhaps later.
Click to expand...

Later is now...
This does feel good, doesn't it?

I never read Moby Dick,
And tried Finnegans Wake...
Couldn't do it.

Someone said they were intimidated by Dos's Brothers K....
Don't be.
One of my all time favs
(though don't know what made me pick up that title and not the whale tale...
p.s.-> give familiar names to those russian characters and wow!... what a story!).

I'll purge up more
("Lord forgive me for I have sinned->
I just don't like this book!)

dolittle
 
James Joyce
Sherwood Anderson
Irvine Welsh
Chuck Palahniuk
Shakespeare
WS Burroughs
Bret Easton Ellis

I open their books and just don't care. Can't be bothered. Funny thing, that. Seems to be a component of destiny.

I remain the golden needle in the haystack.
 
Kerouac: I tried to read Dharma Bums once and couldn't do it.
Vonnegut: Breakfast of champions did nothing for me.
Orwell: I put down 1984 3 times and haven't been back.
 
Kerouac: Desolation Angels was surprisingly good. Quite alot of philobabble and not bad, either. On The Road was a good road novel. I've tried to read most of his others (including Dharma) and couldn't care less.

Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions will be lost on anyone who hasn't redd most of the books preceding it. Lots of "in jokes", references to or appearances by characters from the preceding books. He struggled hard with Slaughterhouse-5 and vowed his next book would be just for fun, and that's what Breakfast is. I thoroughly enjoyed it and consider it his last great work.

I remain...
 
roni said:
This would, of/c., make a NEW thread, but I'd be PLEASED - if requested - to introduce to Nietzsche a little.
(last year I held an address at the Schopenhauer-society about parallels between Buk/Schop/Nietzsch, so maybe I'm not TOTALLY uninformed.)
Click to expand...

i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on nietzsche, schopenhauer, and the parallels between them and bukowski. a new thread is in order. maybe you cld post the address you gave to the schopenhauer society. schop was one cranky, fascinating individual!
 
I could post the address, sure, but it's in German.
Gimme some days to make an abstract in English out of it.
Ain't sure what to do with all the quotes I used from Nietzsch+Schop. Translate them in my own mediocre English? Are there any reliable online-resources of their texts translated, I could use?

btw. your last remark gives the first obvious parallel:
all three were "cranky, fascinating individuals".
 
i don't know of any online texts off-hand. maybe someone here does. it hadn't dawned on me until after i'd posted that your text would be in german!
 
Great thread you guys have here... there are so many authors that we're taught, "oh he/she is just brilliant," and then I read a page or two and all the steam goes out of my cylinders.

I've tried Faulkner a few times, was like trying to swim thru peanut butter. Vonnegut as well, but in a different way. General rule: I don't have much use for authors whose primary purpose is to prove how clever they are. If they wanna do that, let 'em play chess, and leave me out of it. Just my 2cents.

-Charlie
 
Burrows 'Junky' was great!
Eric Bogosian 'Stories from the underground' likewise...

'On the road' was good but not what they make out to be.

Capote's 'In cold blood' was FANTASTIC!
 
1984, is SHITHOT!

EVERYONE should read it. It's not the greatest of Stories, but it is such a powerful, relevant, text on politics and political power, you'd be a fool to over look its importance.

It reads more like political theory, so it can be quite dull, quite dry, unemotive, but it is interspersed with a fictional account of living under those political conditions.

Nowhere is 1984's message more important than in America, and just about anywhere: if you think political power has been taken over by the bad folk, or if you think he new world order is a real entity, or if you just think people are dumb and easily controlled by the mediated world. YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!

Excellent comment on: Media, Censorship, Language, Mind Control, Ideology, Class Structure, Nationalism, and stupidity.
 
Olaf, you forgot to mention the author of 1984, George Orwell! I seem to remember that Buk liked another of Orwell's books, Down And Out In Paris And London. Like Factotum it's about a man drifting from job to job. Another great book by Orwell is Homeage To Catalonia, about Orwell's participation in the Spanish civil war...
 
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Olaf said:
1984, is SHITHOT!

EVERYONE should read it. It's not the greatest of Stories... It reads more like political theory, so it can be quite dull, quite dry, unemotive, but it is interspersed with a fictional account of living under those political conditions.
Click to expand...

That's like saying, "Here, try these brownies. They are delicious. I only put a small amount of dog shit in them. You can hardly taste it!"

For what it's worth, I did get a kick out of Animal Farm.
 
I read Olafs spiel as "It's dry and academic at times, but it's a book that's too important not to read.

It should be required reading in US schools in my opinion.

Homeland Security, my ass!
 
It's on and off the syllabus over the years. I'd say most high school kids get to read it in their 6 year stint, yes.
But I'm old now. God knows what theye are teaching now days. Maybe even that horible Bukowski man?!
 
Bukowski in schools? The US, is way too conservative . I haven't met enyone who has heard of Bukowski, never mind read him!

Even in his home town, in 1997 he was known ony as the 'poet.'
 
Rob: That's like saying, "Here, try these brownies. They are delicious. I only put a small amount of dog shit in them. You can hardly taste it!"
Click to expand...

No, robbie, that bares no relation to anything I said about 1984! None what so ever!

1984 is fucking crazy: a brutal realisation of what can and will happen, if the people are put to sleep, and the political system, controls our lives, unimpeded. More and more revelant in these times of globalisation, never more so in America, and Europe.

Get reading! Or, you can go back to eating your brownies laced with shit if you prefer.
 

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