35 replies to this topic

[ZachTavlin]

Has anyone read this behemoth? I started and can't put it down. It's stunningly good.

[rossie6782]

Has anyone read this behemoth? I started and can't put it down. It's stunningly good.

zach?
do i know this person?

[metzol]

Ha! Nigel just told me he was going on vacation. What a coincidence.

[metzol]

I just did a little research on it and it looks extremely interesting. Quite possibly will be my summer reading kickoff book.
Keep us posted.

[ZachTavlin]

I just did a little research on it and it looks extremely interesting. Quite possibly will be my summer reading kickoff book.
Keep us posted.

It will probably just end up being your summer reading book. I'll try to keep you posted, but if any plot deserves the "Too Complicated" tag, it's this one.

[metzol]

Just ordered it.

[metzol]

Just ordered it.

Just received it. Man is it huge.

[DW]

Just received it. Man is it huge.

That's what she said.

[metzol]

That's what she said.

Yes, yes she did.

[metzol]

Never have I felt so intimidated to start a book and still the book laughs at me without mercy like a sex goddess laughing at Woody Allen in boxers.

[metzol]

It is begun.
Last night I got into bed, opened the book and began reading. I finished a whole half of a page before falling asleep. Not because it was boring, but because I was exhausted.

Anyway, only 1,087.5 pages to go. At this rate I'll be finished in six years.

[mikevailrules]

alas, poor Yorick- i knew him well..........

[DW]

David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home Friday night, apparent suicide. I just recognized his name from this thread, but RIP nonetheless.
http://www.yahoo.com/s/953324

[metzol]

David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home Friday night, apparent suicide. I just recognized his name from this thread, but RIP nonetheless.
http://www.yahoo.com/s/953324

Damn

From the article...
In a kind of aesthetic manifesto, he once wrote that irony and ridicule had become “agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture” and mourned the loss of engagement with deep moral issues that animated the work of the great 19th-century novelists.

[5 aggregates]

David Foster Wallace was found dead in his California home Friday night, apparent suicide. I just recognized his name from this thread, but RIP nonetheless.
http://www.yahoo.com/s/953324

Damn

From the article...
In a kind of aesthetic manifesto, he once wrote that irony and ridicule had become “agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture” and mourned the loss of engagement with deep moral issues that animated the work of the great 19th-century novelists.

I've read none of Wallace's work, but the Times article immediately evoked two memories, one distant and one recent.

When I was a young boy (about 8 or 9 years old), my father took me to see Bob and Ray on stage. One of the skits involved Bob playing a reporter "analyzing" a painfully self evident resignation speech from a politician. One sentence of the analysis featured both the word "threnody" and the word "jeremiad". Since that time, I've been wary of both words. The Times article features the word "threnody" (which may, in fact, be apropos, but sets off alarms for me nonetheless).

The second memory was a recent conversation with Deborah about aging which really caught me by surprise. I'm not inclined to discuss the details, but she's much more a Roman at heart than I realized.

A thread on suicide might be interesting, but I suspect that there may be a good bit of wariness about it.

Another thought would be a thread on the putative "sanctity of life", a subject that has wrought the bulk of the hypocrisy that I've witnessed in my lifetime.

On second thought, perhaps not, as any subject that might veer towards anything dubbed "political" is verboten here.

5

[mikevailrules]

A thread on suicide might be interesting, but I suspect that there may be a good bit of wariness about it.

Another thought would be a thread on the putative "sanctity of life", a subject that has wrought the bulk of the hypocrisy that I've witnessed in my lifetime.

On second thought, perhaps not, as any subject that might veer towards anything dubbed "political" is verboten here.

5

i'll start it.....no one likes me anyway

i think we are all mature adults here- and I'd enjoy something with some teeth in it as would others

[5 aggregates]

... I'd enjoy something with some teeth in it as would others...

I appreciate that. Just don't go all Marv Albert on me.

5

[metzol]

i'll start it.....no one likes me anyway

i think we are all mature adults here- and I'd enjoy something with some teeth in it as would others

Everyone loves a POTM winner.

[mikevailrules]

It is begun.
Last night I got into bed, opened the book and began reading. I finished a whole half of a page before falling asleep. Not because it was boring, but because I was exhausted.

Anyway, only 1,087.5 pages to go. At this rate I'll be finished in six years.

did ya get through it?

[metzol]

did ya get through it?

Still on page 1.