A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

[theBruiser500]

Everyone I've talked to about this book so far has said it's either good or very good. The first section of the book I thought was very good, and sad. But I got put off during the interview he has with MTV and started trying to get through the book quickly. For instance,

"Who's gorgeous?"
"Not like that. No, I just mean, that it's in bloom. That's what you're all about, right? The showing of raw fruit, correct? Whether that's in videos or on spring break, whatever, the amplifying of youth, the editing and volume magnifying what it means to be right there, at the point when all is allowed and your body wants everything for it, is hungry and taut, churning, an energy vortex, sucking all towards it..."

This just seems like a lot of bullshit to me. At first I thought the author made him talk like this on purpose as a mockery, but the MTV interview just goes on and on forever so maybe this is all supposed to be taken seriously.

And then towards the end,

"Oh but I do this for you. Don't you see I do this for you? I have done this all for you. I pretend that I do not but I do. I eat you to save you. I drink you to make you new. I gorge myself on all of you and I stand, drooping, with fists, with heaving shoulders- I will look stupid, I will crawl, drenched in blood and [censored], I will-"

WTF. It is just too much for me. Opinions on the book?

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
Opinions on the book?

[/ QUOTE ]

Totally self-indulgent.

Think Bukowski, just more ambitious and without being interesting.

Better yet, think Henry Miller, just less ambitious and without being interesting.

[ThePopinjay]

uh what are you talking about? a book?

[MMMMMM]

Better yet, it isn't not interesting, it is BORING, if the excerpt from Amazon.com is any indication:


"Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn't want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty-four, Beth was twenty-three, I was twenty-one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tried already, from that winter. So when something world come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile. But Beth and I...Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere -- we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world-destroyers. We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re-create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time -- all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical. And then, as in Dorothy's dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour. This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea -- I mean, wicca? -- and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper-awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over."


As I posted before: The Decline of Art In The Modern World. You missed the original impromptu mini-essay (lol), Rushmore, as did all posters of this forum format, but the above is a fine example of what is wrong with most art today. It simply sucks.

[theBruiser500]

[ QUOTE ]
Better yet, it isn't not interesting, it is BORING

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with that. What thread was your post in?

[turnipmonster]

I liked the first part a lot but hated the MTV section and skimmed over most of it. the last part was just ok, although anything was going to be good after that MTV part.

off topic, but I am reading "one hundred years of solitude" right now and it's excellent.

--turnipmonster

[Rushmore]

[ QUOTE ]
off topic, but I am reading "one hundred years of solitude" right now and it's excellent.


[/ QUOTE ]

This should be mandatory reading in high school.

Maybe we could do without The Scarlet Letter.

Seems like a great trade to me.

[turnipmonster]

I agree 100%, especially since I had to read the scarlet letter in high school. I wanted to read "100 years" in spanish, but I'm lazy /images/graemlins/frown.gif.

--turnipmonster

[Dominic]

I'm a huge book reader...and a writer, as well...Masters in English....not bragging, just giving my qualifications for berating this masturbatory piece of shite that for some reason has everyone cheering.

This book sucked eggs. Boring, self-involved, twaddle.

Want to read something incredible, try "House of Leaves," by Mark D-something-long-and-Polish.

Mind-bending, tour de force.

[sfer]

I rather liked it, but maybe that's as much nostalgia as anything else. The parts in the Bay Area really did feel exactly like that when I was there in the mid 90s.

[theBruiser500]

Boy how about that turnipmonster! We both have the exact same opinion about the book! Very exciting. I've had "one hundred years of solitude" recommended to me before, at the time I liked the guy recommending it to me but then later I stopped liking him. Since you recommend it too, I will read it now.

[theBruiser500]

Dominic, I am always looking for good book suggestions and haven't read a great fiction book for a long time. Can't even think of the last time I read one actually. Oh, I know, it was Confederacy of Dunces about 8 months ago. Funniest book I've ever read. I just started reading Memoirs of a Geisha, like it a lot so far. So, more book suggestions? Thanks.

[Dominic]

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

Snow Crash and Diamond Age by the same author, as well.

[dr. klopek]

who wrote this book you're talking about? and, have you ever read catch 22? Is it the best writing ever?

[theBruiser500]

I think it was something Toole, or o'Toole. I read catch 22, liked Confederacy of Dunces a lot more.

[MMMMMM]

A thread about 4 or5 years ago maybe, probably long gone

[nothumb]

You are the only person I know with an MA in Lit and a good job. Well played sir.

NT

[pc in NM]

[ QUOTE ]
Dominic, I am always looking for good book suggestions and haven't read a great fiction book for a long time. Can't even think of the last time I read one actually. Oh, I know, it was Confederacy of Dunces about 8 months ago. Funniest book I've ever read. I just started reading Memoirs of a Geisha, like it a lot so far. So, more book suggestions? Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's books I'd recommend to anyone who liked Dunces....

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

The Brothers K - David James Duncan

World's End - T. C. Boyle

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy

The World According to Garp - John Irving

Slaugtherhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
You are the only person I know with an MA in Lit and a good job. Well played sir.

NT

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL...well it was either porn or that job ay Burger King.

[SmileyEH]

I read the book about 5 years ago (Gr. 8 or 9 I think), and I loved it - rather I remember loving it. As it was so long ago I can't really argue its merits or lack thereof but I do remember crying, and laughing til I was crying about a dozen times throughout.

But I'm a physics major so what do I know?

-SmileyEH

[Senor Choppy]

David Eggers = genius

See also Might magazine and http://www.mcsweeneys.net/

[theBruiser500]

"But I'm a physics major so what do I know?"

Right, apparently you don't know much.

[B Dids]

Am I the only person who just loved this book? And isn't the point of if that it's self-involved and long winded?

[SmileyEH]

I do know what self-depracating means though.

-SmileyEH