You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books, you're very well read...
 

...it's well known.

But what else have you read since American Lit 101?

Today I picked up Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1982 by Simon Reynolds. Looks fairly interesting.

Ballad of a Thin Man. Great song.

"Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr Jones?"

I've recently discovered Evelyn Waugh. I never took English 101 though. I'm a bum like that. Is Fitzgerald really all that impressive though? I've yet to make up my mind. I've also been reading through some Wordsworth and Whitman. Waugh, Wordsworth, Whitman. Heh.

I hope this thread wasn't specifically directed at American literature, like it appears to have been in hindsight. What a jackass this man is.

I love Fitzgerald's writing. To me, it doesn't really get a whole lot better....he really does have an impressive "way with words." Check out some of his short stories....they can be pretty cracked out. Wordsworth and Whitman rule too. Whitman's honesty is always refreshing.

I want to get The Great Gastby by Fitzgerald, but never do when I am in the bookstore.

I am looking at everybody talking about about 'Fitzgerald' and imagining they mean me, not F. Scott.

A man can dream..

I like Gatsby. Tender is the Night also is not bad.

I'm finding Simon Reynolds' book fairly interesting so far. He does on in about the last 1/3 of the book a bit too long about what he calls the New Pop of the early 80s, something that doesn't interest me particularly. But he writes well about the early postpunk/art-punk bands like PiL, Wire, Mission of Burma, et al.

Someday I intend to read Ulysses. My college prof only required us to read the first 100 pages or so and the last chapter, and said that was all we really needed to know about the book for his class!

Would you care to expand on that statement?

Excellent choice,Andrew.I used to correspond with him regularly at the time he was writing it .Smashing chap and excellent writer.His views on Sonic Youth(even though i thoughraly disagree with them) amuse me no end.

I wouldn't dismiss Simon Reynolds' book on the basis of a synopsis written by someone at his publishing company. To a person who is already very familiar with the post-punk era the book does contain a lot of old material, but to someone coming at it anew it is a fantastic resource.

Oh yes, the faults in American hardcore are well known. But Simon Reynolds does have the advantage of having been part of the post-punk "scene" at the time it was happening, and is writing with a good deal of authority. I'm not saying the book is perfect, it's pretty heavy going at times, but it's not the work of a person who's seen a gap in the market, done some research and thrown a book together. Simon Reynolds' research was being done as the "scene" was happening, and his writing at that time was pretty revelatory.

Okay. My knowledge of hardcore is pretty much limited to Black Flag and Minor Threat, and I've only ever seen reviews of that book, so I'm not going to say anything about its merits or otherwise, but I will say that I found Rip It Up... to be an excellent way of filling in gaps in my knowledge of an era that I caught wind of just as it was running out of steam.

I find that he's one of the more articulate rock writers I've read.

Not only he is very articulate but his torrential writing is never any less than colloquial in tone,which makes it easy to appreciate and absorb.He also seems like a very humble chap,all considering.I wont divulge on the content of said corrispondence but all i'll say is that from Lester Bangs to Italian Communism he seems to have a very clear and concise opinion about everything you ask him.

Here's his blog.
http://blissout.blogspot.com/2006_12...t_archive.html

Just read the Odyssey! It's better.

Actually, that's a stupid thing for me to say because I haven't actually read Ulysses. But, I get the feeling he just wrote a long and incomprehensible book just so that for the rest of time people would talk about it. cf. Lord of the Rings.

(Please don't shoot me)

Out of curiosity,have you read both books or you are saying things just for the sake of saying them?

Yep. Very easy to read, but never condescending or dumbed down.

The Dead Boys were from Ohio.

But yes, NYC "punk" was pretty damn wide-ranging in sound and style.

Yes, early punk rock groups were more different from one another than the general public gives them credit for. But I don't think punk was as wide-ranging as post- or art-punk.

Yes.Why?

Also true.
PiL had about a thousand times more musical depth than the Sex Pistols, that's for sure.

People, people, people, can we get back on track? Books.

Take ESG to name one.

I like Richard Brautigan and HP Lovecraft, and have tried to get all the way through Pierre Guyotat's "Eden Eden Eden" several times, but still haven't been able to finish. I like his experimental style, but it takes a while to get into the thick of it, and the imagery is so intense that I can only take so much.

A bit of a specialist book, but I'm enjoying it.

I keep returning to books I've already read. Is this unusual? Some people have told me it is, but I can also see the same movie many times if it's a favorite.

i have read swathes of ulysses but not the whole thing, and yes, i have read lord of the rings cover to cover.

i was only being silly though, there are many great long books... and depending on your taste these two could be part of that set.

Guyotat is heavy reading. I think Joyce was pretty open about his intentions with Ulysses, as far as writing a (nearly) unreadable book. At the same time he was trying to re-write the odyssey, outdo Shakespeare, and celebrate the absolutely mundane. It's the aesthetics of masturbation, piss, shit, and kidney pies. Now most people fall into the love-Joyce or hate-Joyce camp with neither side seeing room for an in between, but I've always been a fan of breaking convention. I think next on my list are Faulkner and O'Connor. I need to get in touch with my southern roots.

Speaking of Flannery O'Connor, here's a nice little story:
One of my favorite spots in Savannah is a cigar bar called Stogies. Interesting faces always passing through: businessmen, bartenders and waitresses, students, and random vagabonds. One night one of these businessmen and I were waxing celebratory about southern lit, and one of said vagabonds chimed in with some very insightful contributions that suprised the shit out of businessman and me both. Well this guy was very shy, disheveled, and soft spoken so it became hard to understand what he was saying as he poured Budweiser after Budweiser down his gorge and proceeded to tell us a story. His grandmother went to school with Flannery O'Connor, I got that much from the beginning, but the middle was completely lost behind his mumbly accent. I did manage to make out his last sentence which was: "Flannery O'Connor taught the chicken how to dance backwards." Needless to say, the whole crowd erupted into awesome laughter after hearing that.

Okay...

i haven't reall all of fitzgerald's books yo, just gatsby.

but most recently i reread pk dick's "ubik", which is great.

i also had a go at american psycho after that, but it bored me a little, and i had much work to do.

most recently i've been reading this



furreal...

Scurrry.