[timo_nyc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bLue_oNioN Something most similar to Anna or Radetzky would be best =)

Radetsky? Get a hold of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities and prepared to be blown away.

No question.

 

[timo_nyc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrypt The Saragossa Manuscript, by Jan Potocki.

God I loved that book.

 

[Jahn]

Based on your previously enjoyed novels, I also recommend The Brothers Karamozov (sp). You can't miss the (one-sided for the most part) dialogue between the Spanish Inquisitor and Jesus. That's a keeper.

 

[zowie]

My Year of Meats , Ruth Ozecki

(actually a pretty funny book)

 

[locust star]

I second Minya's recommendation for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. It's the best novel I've ever read. Over 1,000 pages and I didn't want it to end.

If you want cyberpunk, I'd suggest Richard K Morgan's Altered Carbon.

I'd never heard of The Saragossa Manuscript. I'll have to check it out.

 

[DanG]

How about Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer? There's plenty discussion of meat in that one.

 

[sleepkyng]

Quote:

Originally Posted by minya Anything by David Foster Wallace -- I suppose "meaty" would mean I should suggest "Infinite Jest," since it's about 1,000 pages long.

that book has to be the most prententious piece of trash i have ever read.

I actually cannot think of a book that I was more dissapointed and disgusted by.

J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" is plenty meaty and it's only 180 pages.

 

[scrypt]

I give Wallace props for what he tried to do with Infinite Jest. After enjoying success with his own kind of brat-pack minimalism (best represented by The Girl with Curious Hair), he attempted to usher in an age of maximalist prose. He did this using opaque syntax, an expanded vocabulary and a tone which another novelist friend calls "post-ironic."

Sadly, others have pulled it off better than Wallace (any novel by John Hawkes is a case in point). Still, the man deserves credit for all his serious effort. Prior to Jest, Wallace was known for his lucid and simple prose style. He'd drunk so much clear water that he thirsted for anise.

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[Edit:]

Quote:

Originally Posted by VicAjax also, paul auster writes in the same spirit, if not on the same intellectual plane, as calvino...

Yes, I know of Paul Auster. Though I can respect his fiction, I recall him most fondly as the editor of the best anthology of twentieth-century French poetry I've ever read. He was also the editor of a magazine called This Living Hand (tellingly titled after Auster's favorite Keats poem), which contained his expert translations of George Bataille.

Quote:

another excellent recommendation. i imagine you've also enjoyed umberto eco and nikolai gogol?

Yes, and I especially love Gogol. How can anyone who claims to worship grotesque beauty not have studied the master of the realm? There would be no Nabokov, no Introduction to a Beheading, without The Nose.

It was the Mario Bava's fascination with Gogol that interested me initially in B's first two films (Black Sunday and Black Sabbath, respectively).

 

[phoenix808]

As an extension of "Great Gatsby" (and like the previous "Atlas Shrugged" suggestion)...Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" is equally as enjoyable.

 

[bLue_oNioN]

Wow, my goodness, I never expect so many replies!

Thank you everyone for taking the time to consider my options -- I'm going down to the library in a few hours to pick up what I can, the rest (like the more specific Pevear translations) I have already ordered from Amazon.com

This should definitely last me a long, long while =)

Thanks again so much for the time you all took to make suggestions!

 

[minya]

Wallace's writing can indeed devolve into pretentious, overwrought trash. When he uses his sizable vocabulary as a means in itself, rather than a means to an end, is when he becomes unreadable. But when he's on, he's on. I really enjoyed "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." I'm only 20 pages into Infinite Jest (gee only got another 980 some to go) but I don't think I'm going to bother reading much more of it.

 

[VicAjax]

Quote:

Originally Posted by minya I'm only 20 pages into Infinite Jest (gee only got another 980 some to go) but I don't think I'm going to bother reading much more of it.

Infinite Jest left me underwhelmed. i felt like i had slogged through a 1,000 page joke only to reach a lame punchline at the end. parts of it were entertaining to read, parts of it were

... ultimately dissatisfying.

for a more hilarious, hyperactive, disciplined (keeping in mind that discipline is relative) and effective destruction of traditional narrative form... i'd recommend Mark Leyner -- The Tetherballs of Bougainville and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist are my personal favorites.

 

[sleepkyng]

apparently my strong feelings about a book are not allowed on headfi

i agree with scrypt about borges, though the english translations, especially the new one is horrible.

Dylan Thomas' Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is everything Post modern literature never was.

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sleepkyng apparently my strong feelings about a book are not allowed on headfi

I'm surprised you took it that way. What I read was your harsh (but tolerated) opinion, followed by the qualifications of others who expressed reservations about the same book.

Quote:

i agree with scrypt about borges, though the english translations, especially the new one is horrible.

I tend to prefer older translations generally, insofar as newer translations, which are hyped as being more accurate, often dumb down the syntax and vocabulary of the original writer. Not always true, of course, but true far too often.

Quote:

Dylan Thomas' Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog is everything Post modern literature never was.

It sounds as if you're saying postmodernism sucks. While I concur that pomo is often used as an excuse for bad pastiche, to dismiss all pomo lit as bad sounds a tad myopic -- wouldn't you agree? Hawkes is considered a pomo writer, for example, as are more pomo-identified writers like Robert Coover, Don Delillo and William Gibson. I'm not saying you should necessarily read and like any of those writers (though if you like Thomas, you might like Hawkes), but at least recognize how different they are from one another.

Growing up, I used to enjoy reading Dylan Thomas's prose, particularly Adventures in the Skin Trade. Thomas mastered the ornateness Wallace was reaching for but kept the modernist poet's virtue of compression. No mean feat.

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by minya Wallace's writing can indeed devolve into pretentious, overwrought trash. When he uses his sizable vocabulary as a means in itself, rather than a means to an end, is when he becomes unreadable. But when he's on, he's on. I really enjoyed "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." I'm only 20 pages into Infinite Jest (gee only got another 980 some to go) but I don't think I'm going to bother reading much more of it.

In my view, the problem with Infinite Jest is that it's underwrought. The issue isn't diction but verbosity: he's trying too hard to be expansive. Vast tomes are difficult enough to bring off consistently when you're writing in a practiced style. They're especially thorny when you're finding a new style and are less sure of your choices.

If I were trying on an unfamiliar texture, I'd have taken the opposite approach: crafted small books carefully, then moved on to the magnum opus.

I agree with you that Wallace is a gifted writer. His essays on music are especially good.