If only "The Corrections" were as funny or brilliant as the author thought it was. Man, that's why I hate lists...never meant to slight K&K. I'd put "Fortress of Solitude" right up next to it, too (Climbs up on Roth bench with Hecubus.) You'll have to bring your own liver, boychik. My mama told me not to do that with married guys anymore. I'm sure you understand.

I've always felt I should read A Confederacy of Dunces, but somehow never managed to work up the motivation to actually start reading.

You'll have to bring your own liver, boychik.

I never graduated to organ meat.

I've always felt I should read A Confederacy of Dunces, but somehow never managed to work up the motivation to actually start reading.

It's funny! Not a spinach book.

I really thought it was hilarious, but sometimes the canon thing makes me twitch...trying to decide what America laughs at, or something. Of course, as a writing student, I heard the Toole story as a cautionary tale first.

It's funny! Not a spinach book.

I only made it about 20 pages in. I'm sure it was supposed to be funny, but I just couldn't get into the writing style.

Jess is me.

I read it for A Boy. Good thing I liked the book. I always do that...I think if I read their books I'll know what they're thinking, and...bang. I'm widely read and single at thirty-two. Possibly, next time, tighter blouses instead?

Slacker idealogue raging impotently against the State of Affairs while enduring a surreal job search doesn't appeal to me that much - I had a roommate who lived that story, and it wasn't funny to watch.

but sometimes the canon thing makes me twitch

It never bugs me because I always see it as fluid. A kind of cultural conversation rather than a definitive list. There's no definitive list, but the exercise forces people to think about what they value and why. Who cares what the ranking is? But I love to hear the cases being made and disputed.

Speaking of Zadie Smith, she has an interesting piece on Kafka here.

I'm mulling over her claim here:

All novelists who are worth anything at all resist a version of life as it has been presented to them. What Flaubert meant by bourgeois life is not what his age meant by bourgeois life, and what Austen meant by the word "woman" was subtly at odds with the usage of that word in her time.

Slacker idealogue raging impotently against the State of Affairs while enduring a surreal job search doesn't appeal to me that much

It's not so much about the plot as the tone and the characters and the place.