What are you reading?

[Rayuela]

No fuck you this thread is not going to page 2



Also Robert Walser's Jakob Von Gunten.

[galia]

Loves that book. Movie's quite good too

[thehouseofdis]

Been reading some since moving to New York:

Roberto Bolaño - Antwerp
Albert Camus - The Stranger
Don Delillo - White Noise
George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying

and just finishing

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground

[Faust]

Loves that book. Movie's quite good too

I thought it was weak. But who am I to judge, I never got to the end. But only because it was so weak.

[galia]

Weak? I'll admit, as a fan of the Quay's work, I may not be 100% objctive, but I don't see what's weak about it. Boring yes, but that's not weak. It's slow and dreamy in a way that I find quite unheimlich (although perhaps sometimes too purposefully so, I'll give you that). Anyway, I still warmly recommend it

[Faust]

Who the fuck is Quay?

The book is simply boring and badly written. That is weak. The Road, that was a book and a half. This was trite.

[thehouseofdis]

Who the fuck is Quay?

The Quay Brothers?

[AKA*NYC]

Who the fuck is Quay?

sig-worthy

[Rayuela]

Who the fuck is McCarthy

That was fun.

@Galia wasn't aware it had been filmed (two versions according to wikipedia but you're talking about the Quay Brothers, guess I'll try and find a copy if you recommend it).

@Faust Walser is a delight. The Slynx I've just begun, it has mixed reviews, I'm not expecting much of anything. Perhaps on completion I'll report back.

[Mail-Moth]

Walser, weak ? Well, yes. As much as Madame Bovary is boring. Jacob von Gunten and The Tanners are all about weakness, aren't they ? Or indecision. Or the obtuse will not to belong to anything. And curiously enough, those are amongst the strongest works I've ever read - the deepest, and the most comforting.

The Quay version has some good scenes. I remember compulsively watching the moment when the pupils are chanting and swinging softly in front of their helpless teacher.

[Rayuela]

Mail-Moth you've compelled me to post the end of J.M. Coetzee's essay on Walser:

Was Walser a great writer? If one is reluctant to call him great, said Canetti, that is only because nothing could be more alien to him than greatness. In a late poem Walser wrote:

I would wish it on no one to be me.
Only I am capable of bearing myself.
To know so much, to have seen so much, and
To say nothing, just about nothing.

Link

[thee_vultures _actress]

John Niven - Kill Your Friends

...great fun to read

[Faust]

galia is talking about jakob von gunten by robert walser/institute benjamenta by the brothers quay. faust is talking about the other book in rayuela's post, i guess.

faust, you should give walser a shot some day.

Oh, now I see the confusion. Yeah, didn't realize there was another book. I was talking about Slynx.

[Tyler]

currently reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in preparation for the Fincher movie remakes this winter. after watching the Swedish movies on a whim i was hooked.

after seeing and hearing about those books all the time i was kinda sick of them before ever reading them. pretty glad i got around to them.

[Mail-Moth]

Just to talk a bit more about Walser, he deserves it so much.

although i understood the initial confusion between the posts, it was indeed amusing that faust's comment involved the idea of weakness ... a subject walser mastered better than just about anyone who was not henri michaux (yes, i will always be very biased).

You know how much I love Michaux, but Walser will always mean a bit more for me, and because of one thing : the utter nonchalance of his characters, and of his writing in general.

To me, and strangely enough, Michaux has a lot to do with the tradition of french moralists, especially in his latest works. He's a patient builder, always busy thinking things up, cherishing his own schemes - projets, plans, départs... - even when he's speaking of detachment or sloth. Words cost him dearly - "Aucun mot ne m'a été donné " : I don't remember where he wrote that, or something among those lines, but it sounds so true reading him.

On the other hand, Walser's protagonists never give a damn about what they just did or said, no matter how deep, sublime, odd or turgid it sounded. They constantly move on to something else. And when they complain about being weak, they seem so proud of it at the same time that in the end, it has as much value as every other thing they say - they're just playing with the idea, even staging it. It is just about killing time or filling the blank page, and once it is done, it doesn't matter anymore.
I would say that as he's writing, Walser is just displaying shiny things and sweeping them off the table right after. Having nothing, wishing he had something, or the very contrary, or none of both, constantly. Genuinely caring, and at the same time not at all. Can one go further in weakness ?