Mal: There's plenty orders of mine that she didn't obey. Wash: Name one! Mal: She married you!

'War Stories'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Sophia Brooks - May 15, 2006 9:23:02 am PDT #481 of 28095
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here

But... it is a good note!


erikaj - May 15, 2006 9:24:18 am PDT #482 of 28095
Always Anti-fascist!

I would care a lot less if he didn't write so *much* every time, Corwood. Irving novels are commitments. Of course, the argument could be made I've gone slumming and ruined my attention span.


beth b - May 15, 2006 9:24:50 am PDT #483 of 28095
oh joy! Oh Rapture ! I have a brain!

Interesting I have read two books on that list Winter's Tale

and parts of

The Things They Carried

I love the pictures created in the first. I've read a number of times, and don't ever seem to keep a handle on the action. It is a very viseral reaction. Ditto the secondToo intense for me too read all at once, but really godd and true.

I might have finished on of the Rabbit books, but it didn't stick. ditto DeLillo. and there are others I started, but never got very far.

But I am always surprised and pleased when something that is in the cannon is liked by me.


Sophia Brooks - May 15, 2006 9:32:50 am PDT #484 of 28095
Cats to become a rabbit should gather immediately now here

Irving novels are commitments.

It is funny how different people are, because the Roth/Updike novels feel like a slog for me, while Irving just flies by.


DavidS - May 15, 2006 9:35:16 am PDT #485 of 28095
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

This is a phrase that will never win me over, I fear. There's only so much that clever wording can do to hide a great gaping lack of anything happening. It's very difficult for me to get into certain types of writing, because the writers don't give a shit about anything happening in their fiction, and it is very hard to get past the lack of anything happening. Things happening is pretty much how I understand the concept of fiction.

To be fair, plenty of things happen in Confederacy of Dunces and it does have a plot. I just thought Matt's plot description missed the appeal of O'Toole's writing.


DavidS - May 15, 2006 9:36:22 am PDT #486 of 28095
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

while Irving just flies by.

I find Irving very easy to read also. But then I feel that way about Roth. And there are certainly other novelists (like Pynchon) that I find to be sloggy.

In Jesse's provocatively equable maxim: Different people like different shit.


Strega - May 15, 2006 9:38:43 am PDT #487 of 28095

I think I got about halfway through Confederacy of Dunces and then got distracted and never felt like giving it another try.

I liked the first Irving I read, felt meh about the second, and after the third I hated him violently because I felt like it was the same damn thing every time.

And to echo Corwood, I think there's a difference between "the action is internal" and "nothing happens." But YThingsHappenMV.


Hayden - May 15, 2006 9:43:01 am PDT #488 of 28095
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

I don't know why I don't care more for Irving. There's other novelists who have as few notes in their repertoire that really work for me, like, well, I can't think of any American minimalist novelists I like (short stories are another matter, though), but there's Jose Saramago and Beckett from the European side.


Hayden - May 15, 2006 9:44:31 am PDT #489 of 28095
aka "The artist formerly known as Corwood Industries."

Different people like different shit.

True and poetic.


DavidS - May 15, 2006 9:49:17 am PDT #490 of 28095
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

True and poetic.

It makes me laugh at myself every time I think of Jesse's maxim because in the face of such wisdom I still instinctively rail, "Nuh uh! The shit I like is the BEST!"