#Collected Stories William Faulkner

[thejewofkansas]

The Monthly Gravette #16

The Monthly Gravette #16

As 2022 draws to a close, I’ll start by shouting out my boys Ben and Nate and their podcast, Words About Books. If you’re so inclined, consider supporting them on Patreon – I do, now that I’ve finished paying off my car. Next, I’ll mention the latest additions to my library, two of which were gifts! The first, from my friend Maggie (who encouraged me to start this blog in the first place), is…

[grandhotelabyss]

Advice/hard truths for writers?

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

[batboyblog]

Public Domain Notice!

Happy Public Domain Day here in the USA!

today, January 1st 2023 marks the day all works published in the year 1927 enter the public domain! This includes books, movies and music.

Here are a few of the most famous and important works entering public domain today:

The final two Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. You likely have heard something about this, while the character of Sherlock Holmes has been public domain for many years a handful of stories in Conan Doyle's last collection of Holmes stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1927 remained under copy right. The famously litigious Conan Doyle Estate Ltd has used it's control of these copyrights to pressure movie, TV, and even authors to pay them when using the public domain character of Sherlock Holmes or adaptations of public domain stories. Well finally the last of their copyrights have finally run out and you can publish a collection of all 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories (and 4 novels) if you want, or use elements from these final stories in your own Sherlock Holmes story and the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd can finally go fuck itself.

speaking of detectives, the first 3 Hardy Boys novels, The Tower Treasure, The House on the Cliff, and The Secret of the Old Mill are also entering public domain, as such you are free to include Frank and Joe Hardy in your own work of fictions, but be careful to stick to their characterization from these first 3 books.

other exciting books entering the public domain today are, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Men Without Women (a short story collection) by Ernest Hemingway, The Big Four by Agatha Christie (big year for detectives huh?) Mosquitoes by William Faulkner, Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton, The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, Amerika by Franz Kafka

in terms of movies one of the most famous silent films ever made and one of the most visually iconic, Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang will reenter the Public Domain, The American copyright lapsed in 1953 making the film widely available and allowing for versions with material that had been cut from the 1927 version to be published in the 1970s and 80s. However under an international copyright agreement the film was returned to copyrighted status in 1996. But Today it's back back back again in the Public Domain!

Other exciting films entering the public domain are The Jazz Singer the very first "Talkie", Wings the very first Academy Award for best picture (or "outstanding picture" as it was then) The King of Kings directed by Cecil B. DeMille, Sunrise directed by F.W. Murnau (his first American film!) and The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog first first thriller directed by legendary director Alfred Hitchcock

the musical Show Boat by Oscar Hammerstein II will also enter the public domain with songs like Ol’ Man River, the musical Funny Face, and Good News with songs like Funny Face and The Best Things in Life Are Free, stand alone songs (I Scream You Scream, We All Scream for) Ice Cream, Puttin’ on the Ritz, Potato Head Blues, Gully Low Blues, East St. Louis Toodle-O, and Mississippi Mud will all be free to the public today

Finally a piece of Disney history is entering the public domain. Oswald The Lucky Rabbit first appeared in 1927 and will be free to appear in works of fiction this year, a year ahead of his younger brother Mickey Mouse

[friendofcars]

@grieving4theliving thank you for tagging me and happy new year!

here are some favorites from 2023:

movies: i'm so serious when i say i think i only watched a couple new-to-me movies this year. the only two i can recall right now are

little shop of horrors (1986)

romeo + juliet (1996)

i enjoyed both! in 2024 i am going to watch movies.

books, in no particular order:

the night watchman by louise erdich

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by gabrielle zevin

entangled life by merlin sheldrake

wuthering heights by emily bronte

crush by richard siken (i haven't finished this yet bc i am savoring it)

to make up for the lack of movies, my favorite re-reads this year (aside from trc/td3) were in the dream house by carmen maria machado and as i lay dying by william faulkner. i also just started ted chiang's short story collection exhalation for the first time and it's stellar so far.

music: i never posted my spotify wrapped so i'll let that answer for me!

tagging anyone who wants to answer (and i love to read these so please tag me if you do post!)

[glowing-disciple]

Reading List - 2024

Currently Reading:

The Cairngorms by Patrick Baker

Champions of the Rosary by Donald H. Calloway

The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Books Read:

101 Famous Poems by Various Authors

The Abraham Lincoln Joke Book by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers

The Art of Computer Designing by Osamu Sato

The Broken Dice, and Other Mathematical Tales of Chance by Ivar Ekeland

The Codebreaker's Handbook by Herbie Brennan

The Complete Book of Kitchen Collecting by Barbera E. Mauzy

Dreaming the Biosphere by Rebecca Reider

Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel

Funny Number Tricks by Rose Wyler

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis

I don't care by JoAnn Nelson

Jaws by Peter Benchley

Jungian Archetypes: Jung, Gödel, and the History of Archetypes by Robin Robertson

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis

Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks

Reflections on Evolution by Fredrick Sproull

Roadie: My Life on the Road with Coldplay by Matt McGinn

Time for Bed, Sleepyheads by Normand Chartier

Future Reading:

A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

Adventures in Cryptozoology Vol. 1 by Richard Freeman

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Always Running by Luis J. Rodriguez

Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions by Philip S. Callahan

The Anti-Mary Exposed by Carrie Gress

The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L'Engle

The Art Nouveau Style by Stephan Tschudi Madsen

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Call of the Wild by Jack London

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Cubism by Guillaume Apollinaire

Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

Evolution by Nowell Stebbing

Expressionism by Ashley Bassie

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by Hal Johnson

Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland

Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

Freckles by Gene Stratton-Porter

Fundamentals of Character Design by Various Authors

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miquel de Cervantes Saavedra

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Humorous Ghost Stories by Various Authors

Illuminated Manuscripts by Tamara Woronowa

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

Joan Miro by Joan Miro

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter

Light of the Western Stars by Zane Grey

Living by the Sword by Eric Demski

The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard DiLello

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Otis Spofford by Beverly Clearly

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Silmarillion by J R R Tolkien

Strange Love by Ann Aguirre

Sweet Sweet Revenge LTD by Jonas Jonasson

The River by Gary Paulsen

Things My Son Needs to Know About the World by Fredrik Backman

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories by C. Robert Cargill

The Weiser Field Guide to Cryptozoology by Deena West Budd

The White Mountains by John Christopher

[emberfrostlovesloki]

Books Aaron Has Read and Enjoyed [a ramble]

Photo credits: Left (mine) Center (@hotch-girl) Right (@lone-nyctophile)

So deep down I think Aaron loves to read. Not all the time, because there isn’t time for it often. But every now and then he’ll pick up a book for one reason or another. Because of this, I’ve compiled a list of six books that I think Aaron has read, why he read it, and what his favorite line of the book was and why. I think this list might prove Aaron is a romantic, even if he doesn’t think so. Enjoy all of that below the cut. Sending my love to you all this Saturday evening - Levi 

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbra Kingsolver 

When and why he read it - Aaron had to take an America Novel class his sophomore year. 

Why he likes it - Aaron really wasn’t a fan of the book at the beginning. It was the longest book on the reading list, and even though he is a fast reader, he found it tedious at the beginning. However as the story progresses and he saw Mr. Price spiral out of control and eventually succumbs to his mania, Hotch feels a connection to the man and his own father. He felt a sick sort of satisfaction as Mr. Price was burned alive due to his madness. This is a book Aaron wouldn’t reread, but he remembers it well. 

His favorite quote from the text - “Don’t try and make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still get lucky” (Kingsolver). 

King Lear by William Sheakspeare

When and why he read it - Aaron read this in high school when he was starting to fall in love with Hailey. He joined the theater club and went as far as reading King Lear because Hailey loved it and was writing a paper about it. 

Why he likes it - He likes it because it brings him fond memories of Hailey and their very early relationship. He has reread the play a few times though he has no idea where his original copy is. He went looking through a few boxes in the attic once with no success. 

His favorite quote from the text - “In jest, there is truth” (Shakespeare). 

The Sound and the Fury by Willaim Faulkner 

When and why he read it - This is one that Aaron picked up for himself. He’d been told it was a classic so many times, and he figured he would see what all the fuss was about. He read this over a quiet weekend when the team was having a break. 

Why he likes it - Aaron enjoys the second and fourth sections the most. The stream-of-consciousness style in Quetinen Compson’s section was a nice change from the first. Aaron wouldn’t say it aloud, but it had been a challenging read for him. He shudders at the thought of reading something like Infinite Jest, another book that he had been told that he just must read in his lifetime. 

His favorite quote from the text - “I give you mausoleums of all hope and desire… I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools” (Faulkner). 

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  

When and why he read it - During a few cases in the winter when Aaron felt that he wasn’t his sharpest, he had complained to Rossi about questioning his abilities to profile and lead the team. That Christmas Dave had given him this collection and a note on the inside read: “If you’re doubting yourself, why don’t you read about a real profiler?” The note had been a joke, but one day he decided, ‘What the hell? Let’s see how wrong Doyle got the science.’ 

Why he likes it - Aaron didn’t expect to like the character of Sherlock as much as he had. The Britishisms and Holmes's dry humor made him chuckle. The science was very wrong. 

His favorite quote from the text - “As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). 

The Brothers Karimozov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When and why he read it - This was a gift for his forty-seventh birthday from you (the reader). It’s their favorite book, and they thought he might like the themes of family, atheism, and loss of faith. 

Why he likes it - He found reading this both easier and more challenging than The Poisonwood Bible. He was much older, but the depth of the story and the ideas brought up challenged him to introspect in a way that he hadn’t in a long time. After he finished he felt a bit cathartic and he had to call you to give some thoughts. 

His favorite quote from the text - “I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrications of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justified all that has happened” (Dostoyevsky). - Aaron isn’t sure if this is his favorite because he likes it, or because it’s your favorite line. When you tried to explain why, you cried, and he held you close. Aaron’s not sure he believes everything said here. He’s not sure he’s earned a spot for that type of bliss when he goes. But he wants it for you and for Jack and Hailey too. And for him, that’s good enough. 

On Beautry by Zadie Smith 

When and why he read it - This was a gift from Emily after her first month on the team. She was just so grateful that she was with the BAU. It felt like home to her. 

Why he likes it - Aaron likes satire. The biting and witty phrases of Smith make him smile. He may not understand that it's a spoof of Howard’s End, but it doesn’t really matter for his understanding of the text. The last line, his favorite, also reminds him of Hailey and it makes him a bit sad, but not in a heartbreaking kind of way. More that there was hope. Hope for broken people, and he wanted to believe in that. 

His favorite quote from the text - “Though her hands were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on paint and rolled with the brush, the rest of her skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety -- chalky whites, and lively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever-present human hint of yellow, imitations of what is to come” (Smith)

[neurosses]

do you have any book recs? :)

Oh! This list is not exhaustive but the books that are on my mind right now:

The Song of Achilles & Circe by Madeline Miller — gorgeous, achingly rendered prose, with "Circe" as the perfect companion novel to The Odyssey. Both are so good! Such deeply developed protagonists!

The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson — a lyrical masterpiece. Odysseus as hero, Odysseus as tyrant. I'm excited to read her translation of The Iliad!

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (not finished) — the totalizing dread... being doomed by the narrative... the brutal & tragic love story at the heart of it...

Salvage the Bones & Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward — both works are really extraordinary explorations of familial dynamics, and the connections that the characters have to their environment especially intrigue me.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang (not finished this short story collection) — Ted Chiang's sci-fi just hits different! Each story is a total sucker punch! I feel like I learn something about myself each time I complete a short story.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner — the atmospheric dread; the ghost at the center of the story; the devastating poison running through all their veins...!! Gorgeous turns of phrase that take my breath away.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin — such an amazing, immersive narrative that's deeply human and deeply horrifying and deeply imaginative. The structure of the novel is so clever and the twists really got me.

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin — after reading this I immediately bought Left Hand of Darkness (haven't read it yet)! She's the master of her craft. So philosophical and intelligent and curious and profound.

[tanadrin]

I enjoyed listening to SHWEP and am checking out Perdido Street Station thanks to your posts. Would you mind sharing some more of your favourite media?

this is kind of a grab bag but here ya go: lord of the rings, the silmarillion, the children of hurin, anything by kazuo ishiguro, anything by haruki murakami, 100 years of solitude, love in the time of cholera, anything by jorge luis borges, terry pratchett's discworld series, neil gaiman's sandman series, njal's saga, egil's saga, the saga of hervor and heidrek, the rediscovery of man by cordwainer smith, anything by raymond chandler, anything by iain banks, the city and the city by china mieville, plus the two sequels to perdido street station, the inverted world by christopher priest, a canticle for liebowitz by walter miller, anything by octavia butler, anything by ursula le guin, anything by jane austen, gawain and the green knight, pearl (the middle english poem, not the steinbeck novel), as i lay dying by william faulkner, anything by kurt vonnegut, rice boy by evan dahm and its follow up vattu (both available in their entirety online), fine structure by qntm (also online), "the man who ate michael rockefeller" by christopher stokes, tooth and claw (the story collection) by t.c. boyle, frankenstein, hyperion by dan simmons and its sequels, house of leaves, waterland, the making of the atomic bomb by richard rhodes, anything by roger zelazny, edgar rice burroughs' barsoom series, ray bradbury's short fiction, dune, hart's hope by orson scott card (and his collected fiction, maps in a mirror), paradise lost, the andrew george translation of the epic of gilgamesh

(books i wouldn't recommend, exactly, but which had a formative effect on my taste include hart's hope by orson scott card, his short fiction omnibus maps in a mirror, dune, paradise lost, and the work of james joyce)

if you like scripted and informative podcasts, i will never stop recommending mike duncan's history of rome or revolutions, both of which are terrific. there's also a history of byzantium podcast that picks up where mike duncan left off with rome that is quite good, though i haven't listened to all of it.

[sidicecheilibri]

I libri nominati da Rory Gilmore

1 – 1984, George Orwell

2 – Le Avventure di Huckelberry Finn, Mark Twain

3 – Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie, Lewis Carrol

4 – Le Fantastiche Avventure di Kavalier e Clay, Michael Chabon

5 – Una Tragedia Americana, Theodore Dreiser

6 – Le Ceneri di Angela, Frank McCourt

7 – Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoj

8 – Il Diario di Anna Frank

9 – La Guerra Archidamica, Donald Kagan

10 – L’Arte del Romanzo, Henry James

11 – L’Arte della Guerra, Sun Tzu

12 – Mentre Morivo, William Faulkner

13 – Espiazione, Ian McEvan

14 – Autobiografia di un Volto, Lucy Grealy

15 – Il Risveglio, Kate Chopin

16 – Babe, Dick King-Smith

17 – Contrattacco. La Guerra non Dichiarata Contro le Donne, Susan Faludi

18 – Balzac e la Piccola Sarta Cinese, Dai Sijie

19 – Bel Canto, Anne Pachett

20 – La Campana di Vetro, Sylvia Plath

21 – Amatissima, Toni Morrison

22 – Beowulf: una Nuova Traduzione, Seamus Heaney

23 – La Bhagavad Gita

24 – Il Piccolo Villaggio dei Sopravvissuti, Peter Duffy

25 – Bitch Rules. Consigli di Comune Buonsenso per donne Fuori dal Comune, Elizabeth Wurtzel

26 – Un Fulmine a Ciel Sereno ed altri Saggi, Mary McCarthy

27 – Il Mondo Nuovo, Adolf Huxley

28 – Brick Lane, Monica Ali

29 – Brigadoon, Alan Jay Lerner

30 – Candido, Voltaire

31 – I Racconti di Canterbury, Geoffrey Chaucer

32 – Carrie, Stephen King

33 – Catch-22, Joseph Heller

34 – Il Giovane Holden, J.D.Salinger

35 – La Tela di Carlotta, E.B.White

36 – Quelle Due, Lillian Hellman

37 – Christine, Stephen King

38 – Il Canto di Natale, Charles Dickens

39 – Arancia Meccanica, Anthony Burgess

40 – Il Codice dei Wooster, P.G.Wodehouse

41 – The Collected Stories, Eudora Welty

42 – La Commedia degli Errori, William Shakespeare

43 – Novelle, Dawn Powell

44 – Tutte le Poesie, Anne Sexton

45 – Racconti, Dorothy Parker

46 – Una Banda di Idioti, John Kennedy Toole

47 – Il03 al 09/03 Conte di Montecristo, Alexandre Dumas

48 – La Cugina Bette, Honore de Balzac

49 – Delitto e Castigo, Fedor Dostoevskij

50 – Il Petalo Cremisi e il Bianco, Michel Faber

51 – Il Crogiuolo, Arthur Miller

52 – Cujo, Stephen King

53 – Il Curioso Caso del Cane Ucciso a Mezzanotte, Mark Haddon

54 – La Figlia della Fortuna, Isabel Allende

55 – David e Lisa, Dr.Theodore Issac Rubin M.D

56 – David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

57 – Il Codice Da Vinci, Dan Brown

58 – Le Anime Morte, Nikolaj Gogol

59 – I Demoni, Fedor Dostoevskij

60 – Morte di un Commesso Viaggiatore, Arthur Miller

61 – Deenie, Judy Blume

62 – La Città Bianca e il Diavolo, Erik Larson

63 – The Dirt. Confessioni della Band più Oltraggiosa del Rock, Tommy Lee – Vince Neil – Mick Mars – Nikki Sixx

64 – La Divina Commedia, Dante Alighieri

65 – I Sublimi Segreti delle Ya-Ya Sisters, Rebecca Wells

66 – Don Chischiotte, Miguel de Cervantes

67 – A Spasso con Daisy, Alfred Uhvr

68 – Dr. Jeckill e Mr.Hide, Robert Louis Stevenson

69 – Tutti i Racconti e le Poesie, Edgar Allan Poe

70 – Eleanor Roosevelt, Blanche Wiesen Cook

71 – Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe

72 – Lettere, Mark Dunn

73 – Eloise, Kay Thompson

74 – Emily The Strange, Roger Reger

75 – Emma, Jane Austen

76 – Il Declino dell’Impero Whiting, Richard Russo

77 – Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective, Donald J.Sobol

78 – Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

79 – Etica, Spinoza

80 – Europe Through the back door, 2003, Rick Steves

81 – Eva Luna, Isabel Allende

82 – Ogni cosa è Illuminata, Jonathan Safran Foer

83 – Stravaganza, Gary Krist

84 – Farhenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

85 – Farhenheit 9/11, Michael Moore

86 – La Caduta dell’Impero di Atene, Donald Kagan

87 – Fat Land, il Paese dei Ciccioni, Greg Critser

88 – Paura e Delirio a Las Vegas, Hunter S.Thompson

89 – La Compagnia dell’Anello, J.R.R.Tolkien

90 – Il Violinista sul Tetto, Joseph Stein

91 – Le Cinque Persone che Incontri in Cielo, Mitch Albom

92 – Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce

93 – Fletch, Gregory McDonald

94 – Fiori per Algernon, Daniel Keyes

95 – La Fortezza della Solitudine, Jonathan Lethem

96 – La Fonte Meravigliosa, Ayn Rand

97 – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

98 – Franny e Zooeey, J.D.Salinger

99 – Quel Pazzo Venerdì, Mary Rodgers

100 – Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut

101 – Questioni di Genere, Judith Butler

102 – George W.Bushism: The Slate Book of Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President, Jacob Weisberg

103 – Gidget, Fredrick Kohner

104 – Ragazze Interrotte, Susanna Kaysen

105 – The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels

106 – Il Padrino, Parte I, Mario Puzo

107 – Il Dio delle Piccole Cose, Arundhati Roy

108 – La Storia dei Tre Orsi, Alvin Granowsky

109 – Via Col Vento, Margaret Mitchell

110 – Il Buon Soldato, Ford Maddox Ford

111 – Il Gospel secondo Judy Bloom

112 – Il Laureato, Charles Webb

113 – Furore, John Steinbeck

114 – Il Grande Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald

115 – Grandi Speranze, Charles Dickens

116 – Il Gruppo, Mary McCarthy

117 – Amleto, William Shakespeare

118 – Harry Potter e il Calice di Fuoco, J.K.Rowling

119 – Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale, J.K.Rowling

120 – L’Opera Struggente di un Formidabile Genio, Dave Eggers

121 – Cuore di Tenebra, Joseph Conrad

122 – Helter Skelter: La vera storia del Caso Charles Manson, Vincent Bugliosi e Curt Gentry

123 – Enrico IV, Parte Prima, William Shakespeare

124 – Enrico IV, Parte Seconda, William Shakespeare

125 – Enrico V, William Shakespeare

126 – Alta Fedeltà, Nick Hornby

127 – La Storia del Declino e della Caduta dell’Impero Romano, Edward Gibbon

128 – Holidays on Ice: Storie, David Sedaris

129 – The Holy Barbarians, Lawrence Lipton

130 – La Casa di Sabbia e Nebbia, Andre Dubus III

131 – La Casa degli Spiriti, Isabel Allende

132 – Come Respirare Sott’acqua, Julie Orringer

133 – Come il Grinch Rubò il Natale, Dr.Seuss

134 – How the Light Gets In, M.J.Hyland

135 – Urlo, Allen Ginsberg

136 – Il Gobbo di Notre Dame, Victor Hugo

137 – Iliade, Omero

138 – Sono con la Band, Pamela des Barres

139 – A Sangue Freddo, Truman Capote

140 – Inferno, Dante

141 – …e l’Uomo Creò Satana, Jerome Lawrence e Robert E.Lee

142 – Ironweed, William J.Kennedy

143 – It takes a Village, Hilary Clinton

144 – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

145 – Il Circolo della Fortuna e della Felicità, Amy tan

146 – Giulio Cesare, William Shakespeare

147 – Il Celebre Ranocchio Saltatore della Contea di Calaveras, Mark Twain

148 – La Giungla, Upton Sinclair

149 – Just a Couple of Days, Tony Vigorito

150 – The Kitchen Boy, Robert Alexander

151 – Kitchen Confidential: Avventure Gastronomiche a New York, Anthony Bourdain

152 – Il Cacciatore di Aquiloni, Khaled Hosseini

153 – L’amante di Lady Chatterley, D.H.Lawrence

154 – L’Ultimo Impero: Saggi 1992-2000, Gore Vidal

155 – Foglie d’Erba, Walt Whitman

156 – La Leggenda di Bagger Vance, Steven Pressfield

157 – Meno di Zero, Bret Easton Ellis

158 – Lettere a un Giovane Poeta, Rainer Maria Rilke

159 – Balle! E tutti i Ballisti che Ce Le Stanno Raccontando, Al Franken

160 – Vita di Pi, Yann Martell

161 – La piccola Dorrit, Charles Dickens

162 – The little Locksmith, Katharine Butler Hathaway

163 – La piccola fiammiferaia, Hans Christian Andersen

164 – Piccole Donne, Louisa May Alcott

165 – Living History, Hilary Clinton

166 – Il signore delle Mosche, William Golding

167 – La Lotteria, ed altre storie, Shirley Jackson

168 – Amabili Resti, Alice Sebold

169 – Love Story, Eric Segal

170 – Macbeth, William Shakespeare

171 – Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

172 – The Manticore, Robertson Davies

173 – Marathon Man, William Goldman

174 – Il Maestro e Margherita, Michail Bulgakov

175 – Memorie di una figlia per bene, Simone de Beauvoir

176 – Memorie del Generale W.T. Sherman, William Tecumseh Sherman

177 – L’uomo più divertente del mondo, David Sedaris

178 – The meaning of Consuelo, Judith Ortiz Cofer

179 – Mencken’s Chrestomathy, H.R. Mencken

180 – Le Allegre Comari di Windsor, William Shakespeare

181 – La Metamorfosi, Franz Kafka

182 – Middlesex, Jeoffrey Eugenides

183 – Anna dei Miracoli, William Gibson

184 – Moby Dick, Hermann Melville

185 – The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion, Jim Irvin

186 – Moliere: la biografia, Hobart Chatfield Taylor

187 – A monetary history of the United States, Milton Friedman

188 – Monsieur Proust, Celeste Albaret

189 – A Month of Sundays: searching for the spirit and my sister, Julie Mars

190 – Festa Mobile, Ernest Hemingway

191 – Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

192 – Gli ammutinati del Bounty, Charles Nordhoff e James Norman Hall

193 – My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath, Seymour M.Hersh

194 – My Life as Author and Editor, H.R.Mencken

195 – My life in orange: growing up with the guru, Tim Guest

196 – Myra Waldo’s Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, 1978, Myra Waldo

197 – La custode di mia sorella, Jodi Picoult

198 – Il Nudo e il Morto, Norman Mailer

199 – Il Nome della Rosa, Umberto Eco

200 – The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

201 – Il Diario di una Tata, Emma McLaughlin

202 – Nervous System: Or, Losing my Mind in Literature, Jan Lars Jensen

203 – Nuove Poesie, Emily Dickinson

204 – The New Way Things Work, David Macaulay

205 – Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich

206 – Notte, Elie Wiesel

207 – Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen

208 – The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, William E.Cain, Laurie A.Finke, Barbara E.Johnson, John P.McGowan

209 – Racconti 1930-1942, Dawn Powell

210 – Taccuino di un Vecchio Porco, Charles Bukowski

211 – Uomini e Topi, John Steinbeck

212 – Old School, Tobias Wolff

213 – Sulla Strada, Jack Kerouac

214 – Qualcuno Volò sul Nido del Cuculo, Ken Kesey

215 – Cent’Anni di Solitudine, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

216 – The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, Amy Tan

217 – La Notte dell’Oracolo, Paul Auster

218 – L’Ultimo degli Uomini, Margaret Atwood

219 – Otello, William Shakespeare

220 – Il Nostro Comune Amico, Charles Dickens

221 – The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Donald Kagan

222 – La Mia Africa, Karen Blixen

223 – The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton

224 – Passaggio in India, E.M.Forster

225 – The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, Donald Kagan

226 – Noi Siamo Infinito, Stephen Chbosky

227 – Peyton Place, Grace Metalious

228 – Il Ritratto di Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

229 – Pigs at the Trough, Arianna Huffington

230 – Le Avventure di Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi

231 – Please Kill Me: Il Punk nelle Parole dei Suoi Protagonisti, Legs McNeil e Gillian McCain

232 – Una Vita da Lettore, Nick Hornby

233 – The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker

234 – The Portable Nietzche, Fredrich Nietzche

235 – The Price of Loyalty: George W.Bush, the White House, and the Education on Paul O’Neil, Ron Suskind

236 – Orgoglio e Pregiudizio, Jane Austen

237 – Property, Valerie Martin

238 – Pushkin, La Biografia, T.J.Binyon

239 – Pigmallione, G.B.Shaw

240 – Quattrocento, James Mckean

241 – A Quiet Storm, Rachel Howzell Hall

242 – Rapunzel, I Fratelli Grimm

243 – Il Corvo ed Altre Poesie, Edgar Allan Poe

244 – Il Filo del Rasoio, W.Somerset Maugham

245 – Leggere Lolita a Teheran, Azar Nafisi

246 – Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

247 – Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin

248 – The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

[radicalitch]

gyns, here’s the recommended reading list I promised. not radfem related, just writers, books, and poetry I enjoyed.

- “ceremony” by leslie marmon silko (novel)

- “fleurs du mal” by charles baudelaire (poetry)

- “slaughterhouse five” by kurt vonnegut (novel)

- “as i lay dying” by william faulkner (novel)

- “she had some horses” by joy harjo (poetry)

- “beloved” by toni morrison (novel)

- “brave new world” by aldous huxley (novel)

- “jane eyre” by charlotte brontë (novel)

- “their eyes were watching god” by zora neale hurston (novel)

- “just kids” by patti smith (memoir)

- “carmilla” by j. sheridan le fanu (novella)

- “colossus and other poems” by sylvia plath (poetry)

- “the blithedale romance” by nathaniel hawthorne (novel)

- “where are you going, where have you been?” and “the (other) you” by joyce carol oates (short story collections)

- “occult america” by mitch horowitz (nonfiction/history)

if I think of more I’ll add them later, but these are the ones that I can think of now.

[adz]

Hi... so, I've been wondering, what are your favorite books/authors? Or books you wish more people would read? Your writing rocks.

aw thanks!! i read voraciously for like 20 years but slowed down in college, and now i've got this massive stack of stuff i want to read... so i am probably not the best person to go to for contemporary book recs. when I was 18 i wouldve had a bunch of suggestions for you, and now i'm like... how many years can i go back lol T-T

I did recently finish William Gibson's "Burning Chrome," a collection of short stories, and absolutely loved it. the science fiction genre is replete with visionaries but not so much with artists, and Gibson is rare in that his writing has a beautiful literary quality - his metaphors are so tangible and carefully crafted that they place you on the ground in whatever world he's created instead of merely describing it. as someone who finds it easier to fall into technical description in my writing, i find his work inspirational.

as far as books I wish more people would read... i don't want to recommend anything lengthy that i read when i was younger, because i think our brains have been altered to make things like that a slog now. Sebald's "Rings of Saturn" is maybe my favorite novel. early Coupland is really fun (Microserfs is my fave) but his work is so of-the-moment that it reads like a time capsule; a quality i enjoy but others won't.

i like comics by @michaeldeforge, @patrickkyle, @connorwillumsen, and @samaldencomics. Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" is readable and energizing. i like "Hard To Be A God," I like some of Lydia Davis's microfiction stories. i think writers should read less hemingway, eggers, franzen, ellis, murakami, & PKD and more le guin, faulkner, nabokov, guibert, porpentine, carson

[byneddiedingo]

Tim Blake Nelson in the title segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

James Franco in the "Near Algodones" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Liam Neeson in the "Meal Ticket" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Tom Waits in the "All Gold Canyon" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Grainger Hines in "The Gal Who Got Rattled" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Jonjo O'Neill and Brendan Gleeson in "The Mortal Remains" segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2018)

Cast: Tim Blake Nelson, Willie Watson, Clancy Brown, Danny McCarthy, David Krumholtz, James Franco, Stephen Root, Ralph Ineson, Jesse Luken, Liam Neeson, Harry Melling,  Jiji Hise, Paul Rae, Tom Waits, Sam Dillon, Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan, Grainger Hines, Jefferson Mays, Jonjo O'Neill, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, Tyne Daly, Chelcie Ross. Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, "All Gold Canyon" segment based on a story by Jack London, "The Gal Who Got Rattled" segment based on a story by Stewart Edward White. Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel. Production design: Jess Gonchor. Film editing: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music: Carter Burwell. The six short films collected into The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are set in the central period of the American myth, the Old West, and they evoke major American writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner, as well as the two chroniclers of the vanishing American wilderness cited as sources for the segments "All Gold Canyon" and "The Gal Who Got Rattled," Jack London and Stewart Edward White. It's a very "literary" film whose characters often don't just talk, they orate, in florid 19th-century diction. And it's a film based in that American folk genre, the tall tale. Those who task the Coens with cynicism and coldness will find ammunition in all of these short films for their argument: Every good deed or noble intention in these stories gets thwarted or maimed. There's probably no crueler story on film than the "Meal Ticket" segment. And yet, we treasure Poe and Twain and Faulkner for their frequent heartlessness, praising their ironic vision. Is it that we expect more warmth from our movies than from our literature? As a genre, the anthology film has gone out of favor, largely because so many of them are uneven in quality, and while it's easy to rank the segments of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs -- I would put "The Gal Who Got Rattled" at the top and "Near Algodones" at the bottom -- the Coens have a unifying vision that makes each segment play off of the others, the way short stories in an anthology by Alice Munro or George Saunders set up reverberations among themselves.

[renatarenatah]

Eu li todos livros que Rory leu!

Por acaso, eu leio muito rápido e terminei esses livros por dias e semanas. Amei esses livros! Rory é estudiosa, tem boas escolhas para ler.

Listona com os 339 livros que Rory leu em ‘Gilmore Girls’:

1. 1 984 – George Orwell

2. As Aventuras de Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain

3. Alice no País das Maravilhas – Lewis Carroll

4. As Incríveis Aventuras de Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon

5. Uma Tragédia Americana – Theodore Dreiser

6. As Cinzas de Ângela – Frank McCourt

7. Anna Karenina – Leon Tolstoy

8. O Diário de Anne Frank – Anne Frank

9. The Archidamian War – Donald Kagan

10. A Arte da Ficção – Henry James

11. A Arte da Guerra – Sun Tzu

12. Enquanto Agonizo – William Faulkner

13. Reparação – Ian McEwan

14. Autobiography of a Face – Lucy Grealy

15. The Awakening – Kate Chopin

16. Babe – Dick King-Smith

17. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women – Susan Faludi

18. Balzac e a Costureirinha Chinesa – Dai Sijie

19. Bel Canto – Ann Patchett

20. A Redoma de Vidro – Sylvia Plath

21. Amada – Toni Morrison

22. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation – Seamus Heaney

23. Bagavadguitá

24. Os Irmãos Bielski – Peter Duffy

25. Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women – Elizabeth Wurtzel

26. A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays – Mary McCarthy

27. Admirável Mundo Novo – Aldous Huxley

28. Um Lugar Chamado Brick Lane – Monica Ali

29. Brigadoon – Alan Jay Lerner

30. Cândido – Voltaire

31. Os Cantos de Cantuária – Chaucer

32. Carrie, A Estranha – Stephen King

33. Ardil 22 – Joseph Heller

34. O Apanhador no Campo de Centeio – J. D. Salinger

35. A Teia de Charlotte – E. B. White

36. The Children’s Hour – Lillian Hellman

37. Christine – Stephen King

38. Um Conto de Natal – Charles Dickens

39. Laranja Mecânica – Anthony Burgess

40. The Code of the Woosters – P.G. Wodehouse

41. The Collected Stories – Eudora Welty

42. A Comédia dos Erros – William Shakespeare

43. Complete Novels – Dawn Powell

44. The Complete Poems – Anne Sexton

45. Complete Stories – Dorothy Parker

46. Uma Confraria de Tolos – John Kennedy Toole

47. O Conde de Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

48. A Vingança de Bette – Honoré de Balzac

49. Crime e Castigo – Fiodor Dostoievski

50. Pétala Escarlate, Flor Branca – Michel Faber

51. As Bruxas de Salém – Arthur Miller

52. Cão Raivoso – Stephen King

53. O Estranho Caso do Cão Morto – Mark Haddon

54. Filha da Fortuna – Isabel Allende

55. David e Lisa – Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D

56. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

57. O Código da Vinci – Dan Brown

58. Almas Mortas – Nikolai Gogol

59. Os Demônios – Fiodor Dostoievski

60. A Morte de Um Caixeiro-Viajante – Arthur Miller

61. Deenie – Judy Blume

62. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America – Erik Larson

63. The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band – Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars e Nikki Sixx

64. A Divina Comédia – Dante Alighieri

65. Divinos Segredos – Rebecca Wells

66. Dom Quixote de La Mancha – Miguel Cervantes

67. Conduzindo Miss Daisy – Alfred Uhry

68. O Médico e o Monstro – Robert Louis Stevenson

69. Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems – Edgar Allan Poe

70. Eleanor Roosevelt – Blanche Wiesen Cook

71. O Teste do Ácido do Refresco Elétrico – Tom Wolfe

72. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters – Mark Dunn

73. Eloise – Kay Thompson

74. Emily, the Strange: Os Dias Perdidos – Roger Reger

75. Emma – Jane Austen

76. Empire Falls – Richard Russo

77. Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective – Donald J. Sobol

78. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton

79. Ética – Spinoza

80. Europe through the Back Door, 2003 – Rick Steves

81. Eva Luna – Isabel Allende

82. Tudo se Ilumina – Jonathan Safran Foer

83. Extravagance – Gary Krist

84. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

85. Fahrenheit 9/11 – Michael Moore

86. The Fall of the Athenian Empire – Donald Kagan

87. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World – Greg Critser

88. Medo e Delírio em Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

89. A Sociedade do Anel – J. R. R. Tolkien

90. Um Violinista no Telhado – Joseph Stein

91. As Cinco Pessoas que Você Encontra no Céu – Mitch Albom

92. Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce

93. Fletch Venceu – Gregory McDonald

94. Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes

95. The Fortress of Solitude – Jonathan Lethem

96. A Nascente – Ayn Rand

97. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley

98. Franny e Zooey – J. D. Salinger

99. Sexta-Feira Muito Louca – Mary Rodgers

100. Galápagos – Kurt Vonnegut

101. Gender Trouble – Judith Butler

102. George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President – Jacob Weisberg

103. Gidget – Frederick Kohner

104. Garota, Interrompida – Susanna Kaysen

105. Os Evangelhos Gnósticos – Elaine Pagels

106. O Poderoso Chefão: Livro 1 – Mario Puzo

107. O Deus das Pequenas Coisas – Arundhati Roy

108. Cachinhos Dourados e os Três Ursos – Alvin Granowsky

109. E o Vento Levou – Margaret Mitchell

110. O Bom Soldado – Ford Maddox Ford

111. The Gospel According to Judy Bloom – Judy Bloom

112. A Primeira Noite de um Homem – Charles Webb

113. As Vinhas da Ira – John Steinbeck

114. O Grande Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

115. Grandes Esperanças – Charles Dickens

116. O Grupo – Mary McCarthy

117. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

118. Harry Potter e o Cálice de Fogo – J. K. Rowling

119. Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal – J. K. Rowling

120. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

121. O Coração das Trevas – Joseph Conrad

122. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders – Vincent Bugliosi e Curt Gentry

123. Henry IV, parte I – William Shakespeare

124. Henry IV, parte II – William Shakespeare

125. Henry V – William Shakespeare

126. Alta Fidelidade – Nick Hornby

127. A História do Declínio e Queda do Império Romano – Edward Gibbon

128. Holidays on Ice: Stories – David Sedaris

129. The Holy Barbarians – Lawrence Lipton

130. Casa de Areia e Névoa – Andre Dubus III

131. A Casa dos Espíritos – Isabel Allende

132. Como Respirar Debaixo D’Água – Julie Orringer

133. Como o Grinch Roubou o Natal – Dr. Seuss

134. How the Light Gets In – M. J. Hyland

135. Uivo – Allen Ginsberg

136. O Corcunda de Notre Dame – Victor Hugo

137. A Ilíada – Homero

138. Confissões de uma Groupie: I’m With the Band – Pamela des Barres

139. A Sangue Frio – Truman Capote

140. Inferno – Dante Alighieri

141. O Vento Será tua Herança – Jerome Lawrence e Robert E. Lee

142. Ironweed – William J. Kennedy

143. It Takes a Village – Hillary Rodham Clinton

144. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

145. O Clube da Sorte da Alegria – Amy Tan

146. Júlio César – William Shakespeare

147. A Célebre Rã Saltadora do Condado de Cavaleras – Mark Twain

148. A Selva – Upton Sinclair

149. Just a Couple of Days – Tony Vigorito

150. Os Últimos Dias dos Romanov – Robert Alexander

[weaselandfriends]

What are your favorite books, and which books do you feel have been the most influential on your work? Do you read much non-fiction?

I watched all of School Days because of you. What do you like about it? How ironic is your enjoyment?

I am loving CQ thus far.

When I was very young, the books I read and reread again and again and which certainly had some formative impact on me as a writer were Loser by Jerry Spinelli and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, but I think the most clearly influential books on my writing today are Franz Kafka's novels, The Castle and The Trial, as well as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I first read all three of these novels as a teenager and they really unlocked the world of literature for me. All three depict ordinary landscapes as surreal nightmares, the way I would go on to depict the locations in Modern Cannibals and Cockatiel x Chameleon. Another work I read as a teen and which surely influenced me was King Lear by William Shakespeare. I've always been a fan of the bleak and tragic.

Other favorite literary works of mine include (in no particular order):

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

VALIS by Philip K. Dick

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Ulysses by James Joyce

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Grendel by John Gardner

Paradise Lost by John Milton

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

As you can see, my reading is on the European and especially Anglo-centric side, which is probably to be expected given I primarily speak English myself. I'm always reading new stuff and try to branch out into time periods and locations outside of Western canon, especially given I've read most of the Western canon by now anyway.

I'm not a large reader of nonfiction. Fiction has always been my passion, since I was very young.

As for School Days, I want to stress that my enjoyment of it is in no way ironic. People ask me this all the time, but I legitimately just think School Days is excellent on its own merits. School Days is a detailed, complex psychological drama in which characters are pushed or push themselves into increasingly uglier directions based on initially small flaws or miscommunications that they are unable to overcome or grapple with. There's very little fat or filler in School Days, it is a lean work in which nearly every conversation has some kind of psychological subtext or is deepened by its context, and the pacing consistently pushes the story toward its explosive, tragic end. I recently watched Breaking Bad (also excellent) and found it similar in how an initially neutral or merely flawed protagonist gradually devolves into outright villainy on account of those flaws; other comparable works would be Nightcrawler, Taxi Driver, the aforementioned Wide Sargasso Sea, or Shakespeare's play Macbeth.

I think the overwhelming backlash about School Days is a byproduct of the Western anime culture back when it aired in 2007. This was just about when the internet was coming to prominence and Western viewers were able to access seasonal anime for the first time via fan subs and dubs; before this, anime watching in the West was either hack-n-slash dubs of kid's shows like Sailor Moon or Pokemon or isolated to a few select (and often Western-influenced) shows like Cowboy Bebop on late-night programs such as Adult Swim. Because of this, the Western anime community was fairly embryonic in 2007, comprised mainly of younger people, and almost entirely male. I don't think this audience collectively had the patience and comprehension skills to appreciate a dialogue-based psychological drama, and especially not one primarily concerned with digging into and exposing what we might nowadays call "toxic masculinity."

2007 was a year where "There are no women on the internet" was taken as an absolute truth, a pre-GamerGate era before even tepid incipient criticisms of sexism in gaming were being made by the likes of Extra Credits or Anita Sarkeesian. School Days, depicting a seeming everyman whose casual objectification of women transforms him into a callous monster, was simply not something this anime community was ready for. And so it was raked over the coals, memed on, and generally held up as "one of the worst anime ever made" (around the same time the anime community thought mind-boggling dreck like Elfen Lied was "mature" art). You would see School Days on Worst Anime of All Time lists right next to Mars of Destruction. I think even if you're only lukewarm on School Days you can see how that level of excoriation is utterly unwarranted.

The community, and the internet in general, and popular media criticism, has changed a lot since then, and I think the current zeitgeist is one that would be far more willing to accept School Days and realize its virtues, but its reputation precedes it and few are willing to watch "The Room of anime" with any amount of good faith. Certainly not enough good faith to pick up on its subtle and psychological writing. I think it's no longer as frequently held up as one of the worst anime of all time, but it's still generally despised (usually by people who haven't even seen it).

So, that's why I do my part to try and change the perspective on School Days.

[rhetoricandlogic]

The King in Yellow - Robert Chambers

Along the shore the cloud waves break, The twin suns sink beneath the lake, The shadows lengthen In Carcosa. Strange is the night where black stars rise, And strange moons circle through the skies But stranger still is Lost Carcosa. Songs that the Hyades shall sing, Where flap the tatters of the King, Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead; Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed Shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa. Cassilda's Song in "The King in Yellow," Act I, Scene 2

(I probably shouldn't open a review with lines from a play that has such ill effects on people, but the excerpts from the play were my favorite parts.)

I have done homework for this review, which I now share with you: In about 1887, Gustave Nadaud writes a poem called "Carcassonne" (available online here) about a man dying before he sets eyes on the city of his heart's desire. This inspires Lord Dunsany to write a short story of the same name (included in A Dreamer's Tales), William Faulkner to write a short story of the same name (available in These Thirteen), and, apparently, Ambrose Bierce to write a short story called "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (available in Can Such Things Be?).

Bierce's story in turn inspires Robert W. Chambers to write a collection of short stories called A King in Yellow (a review of which you are now reading), in which the first four interlocking stories follow the repercussions of a fictional play also called A King in Yellow set in the theoretically still fictional Carcosa. Which in turn inspired H.P. Lovecraft to do something I haven't finished researching yet. Which has apparently spawned a whole cottage industry of books about the king in yellow and Carcosa (just judging by what I'm seeing on Amazon, here). So this is a literary iceberg we're standing on.

The Repairer of Reputations The first story stars a Mr. Hildred Castaigne, convalescing from a concussion, poor man. The story shines in the first part for the sheer 'what on earth am I reading?' reaction it provokes, but half that reaction comes from the fact that the book was written in 1895 and describes a utopia (complete with a nasty little bit of racism) imagined in 1920. The other half comes from Mr. Castaigne, (view spoiler). The Mask The second story stars a character mentioned briefly in the first story, Boris Yvain, and narrator Alec. I think of this one as a retelling (view spoiler). I rather enjoyed this one. In the Court of the Dragon This one stars an unnamed narrator and only names a Monseigneur C____. It is therefore difficult to say the exact links, but I have my suspicions. The Yellow Sign The fourth story stars Jack Scott (from the second story), an organist who may or may not be from the third story, as well as (view spoiler), and references the events of the first story. This is the most horrific story of the quartet. The Demoiselle D'ys Starring Philip and Jean D'ys. No links to other stories, but a pretty tragedy. The Prophets' Paradise A little bit of experimental fiction that didn't really work for me, although the words were strung together nicely enough; it might be better understood as poetry. The Street of the Four Winds The last four stories also form a quartet, but they have nothing to do with Carcosa or the horror genre. This first of the four stars Severn and Sylvia Elven. I kind of this one, because Severn is the kind of man who will feed a hungry cat better than he feeds himself. The Street of the First Shell This one also has a Sylvia, and a Jack Trent? Annoyed. Long war story. Skipped. The Street of Our Lady of the Fields Americans studying in Paris. Romance. Officially bored now. Barely skimmed. Rue Barree Same Americans (different set), still a romance. Skimmed.

Overall, this was really a 2.5 for me (as a 200 page book that took me over a week to read). But I'm glad I read it for the sake of all the allusions I'm sure I've been missing and will now be able to understand. So it's got that going for it. And looking back I really did like the first four stories and a couple of the later ones, for all that the book was a slog. Rounding up.

[calculatedliterature]

Writing an essay on William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and working through some thoughts...

We'll never get away from Faulkner, even as we begin to address the controversy of whether or not we should be reading him. My university recently replaced a literature course on Faulkner with a course on disabled voices in the field of literature. I'm happy to see the inclusion of diversity, but since I'm reading his works in my class on modernism, I actually think there's a lot to be learned from his collection. In my class, we're reading his short story alongside works like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright, so I recognize the difference between exclusively reading Faulkner and reading Faulkner alongside black voices. One glorifies him, and one acknowledges his influence in the literary canon as well as analyzes his failings.

The issue is that Faulkner is a white man who writes about white people. There is only so much he says, or can say, about slavery without explicitly writing about black characters, something he mostly avoids doing. I think the best way to read Faulkner is not on its own but as one of many in the canon of literature written about the post-Antebellum South.

The thesis of my essay (if y'all can pray that I get a good grade please) is that Faulkner sets out to criticize the South for the Lost Cause narrative that painted the Civil War as a great tragedy for the South and glossed over the horrors of slavery, but also that in doing so, he falls victim to his own criticisms. Because his stories are about white people and how slavery was like some sort of poison root causing the demise of the white Antebellum South, he ends up actually whitewashing the South. His argument is supposed to be that slavery undermined the South's success, but he kind of forgets that there are black people in the South whose success was also undermined by slavery, and just talks about white people interacting with white people. So his criticism is that white people are whitewashing the Civil War, but he ends up whitewashing his stories. And so on.

Probably not new thoughts for anyone who has studied Faulkner before, but something I wanted to hash out anyway.