I get why you would get the impression that Barth is more about language games than narrative, but it’s important to remember that his particular brand of postmodernism is grounded in an obsession with the building blocks of storytelling and narrative rather than an encyclopedic obsession with pop culture or technology a la Pynchon and DFW. Barth’s stuff tends to be hyper narrative-driven because he was constantly reading stuff like the Canterbury Tales, the Decameron, Arabian Nights, The Iliad and the Odyssey, and Tom Jones just to name a few: all stories that are fundamentally about amazing narratives. The Sot-Weed Factor, specifically, has a perfect, compelling, intricate, and hilarious plot that goes all the way to the end without missing a beat. He definitely falters at times, but Barth at his best is easier to read than most of his peers.
Try “Cities of the Red Night” by Burroughs. Great story that is more “accessible” than his earlier works. I love your channel, by the way! Thanks for doing this.
Read Pale Fire, seriously, this book is great. While it's more interesting and enjoyable, it's not like an "actual" book. The cool thing about it is that is a form of meta-fiction, this is, "Pale Fire" is a book published by Kinbote and it's basically an analysis of a poem that his friend Shade wrote. The story itself is pretty much implicit until the end since there is not actual story being told, but you get to know by the analysis of Shade's poem "Pale Fire". There are crossed references across from the analysis to the poem and prologue (also wrote by Kinbote), this makes the book extremely non-linear since it jumps in time from past to present and viceversa in the analysis. It's one of my favorite books of all time, and by far better than Lolita. The latter, as Nabokov told, was written to merely tell a nice story without to much point behind (with the goal of making ti easily adaptable to a movie). In the case of Pale Fire it would be absolutely impossible to make a movie out of it. tl;dr: read it read it read it. And it'd great it you could review it later.
F. D. "Lolita. The latter, as Nabokov told, was written to merely tell a nice story without to much point behind (with the goal of making ti easily adaptable to a movie)." I caught a whiff of Kinbote as I read this.
Lolita is about a lot of things. A parody of travelogues, Henry James, Poe etc. The aesthetics of morality. The collision of modernity with a nascent postmodernity. It’s also a vibrant comic novel, brimming with invention.
I’d say that King is actually not too hard to read, asides from his tendency to over-describe, but it’s also a double edged sword as he’s one of the few who can paint a scene with his words. But what surprised me consistently about The Stand was how accessible it was. It’s like a longer version of Blood Meridian if you asked me (which surprised me that Blood Meridian came out several years after The Stand, and I’d also say Blood Meridian is much bleaker.) But, with that being said, I’d say start with some of his earlier works like Carrie or The Shining or his many short stories.
Proust is amazing. A great corollary for anyone who likes Joyce. The reading level isn't difficult exactly; the real issue is that he writes sentences that sometimes span 2 pages.
I don't know if you're even still checking this account. But if you are, Anthony Burgess - If you thought Burroughs was bad, you're in for a treat. Does Cormac McCarthy not bother you? He doesn't bother me, because I like to see how far I can push my boundaries. Vasilly Grossman's 'The Hell of Treblinka' is probably the most traumatising thing I've read. Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and Franz Kafka always make me reconsider opening their books. But the one author who makes me shake with fear is Thomas Hardy. He is just so boring. I had to read 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' and 'Tess of the Durbevilles' as a 14 year-old for school. I love literature, but making 14 year old boys read about Victorian England is just sadism. Thanks for the reviews.
I personally do love Hardy to bits but I absolutely agree that making high schoolers read works of classic fiction, as a general rule, is absolutely nonsensical and actually very counterproductive.
The first three volumes of Proust were smooth and entertaining reads for me. They didn’t feel long enough it flew by so quick. I think it’s like Kerouac where you can read without constantly rereading every page because the text flows so well, although there’s plenty of passages you may read twice anyways because they’re so enjoyable. One of the most profound reads I’ve had. Looking forward to rereading the entire book.
Stephen King books are difficult for me because his writing style and I just don't mesh. Therefore, a thousand page book of sentences that I personally find clunky, is not an enjoyable experience for me. Obviously, he's a very successful writer, and a pretty cool dude, so it's nothing personal. I just can't really get into his books anymore. When I was in junior high, I read every book of his I could get my hands on, but something happened to my reading preferences at some point because when I go back to read "It" or "The Stand," I just can't hack it anymore.
I like your idea of making a video about writers who scare you. It sounds like the reasons are less to do with their ideas and more because of their po-mo style and weird linguistics. I'm enjoying your reviews, your accent enhances them.
Being 5 years late to this video, I'm sure you've read a lot of these authors since, but if you haven't yet picked up Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading yet, I recommend you do. It was the first of his books I read and I think gave me a really solid, fun intro to his writing. (As a sidenote, I also read it around the same time as The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien which was equally great and seemed to have a lot of similarities). I've yet to read Lolita because frankly I just don't care. From what I've heard I just assume it's nothing like his other books, and I'm so glad it wasn't the first I tried of Nabokov because it probably would've put me off from the rest of his stuff.
@@unknowninfinium4353 Yes, I think it's worth reading, of course. I find Lawrence Durrell's prose beautiful, but more effusive than Nabokov, and less crystalline. I'm not a great novel reader, so I don't have too many suggestions.
I'm sure I'd like it, but when will I find the time! A friend of mine put it brilliantly when he said that he read Proust's Search right after he graduated "because I knew that otherwise I'd have to get a prison sentence to get a chance to read it."
You just have to make the time but it has to be when YOU really want to read it. Maybe try reading it with another book lover like you. Tht would help because then you could discuss it as you read along.
Read the Burroughs.Read the Burroughs. Read the Burroughs. And no, don't close your eyes during the unpleasant bits. Rather, construct a helmet like in Clockwork Orange to keep your lids peeled while you enter the world of his fiction. Contrary to media portrayals of him, (from far more ignorant times, remember) he wasn't dysfunctionally insane, though he did have a number of psychological maladies and in some senses a bleak outlook, peppered with a mordant humour. Start off with Junkie, then try Naked Lunch. The shift from those two works should tap you into his gifts as a writer.
id recommend Barths first three novels but especially sot weed factor. I just finished it and it was a knockout. easily one of the best historical novels i've read. sort of felt like a more grounded (ie less surreal and metafictional aspects) version of pynchon but much more overtly ribald and tragi-comic. the guy has a great talent for characterization and pacing.
I haven't /finished/ In Search of Lost Time, but the first part, Swann's Way, is a great introduction. Gets a little confusing in the last part [Place-Names: The Name, which is completed in the next part with Place-Names: The Place, so it makes a lot more sense if you continue, I assume] but the rest of Swann's Way is gloriously beautiful. The only other author that has made me feel the way Proust did is Virginia Woolf in The Waves [which is also amazing]
Proust is longer than "Ulysses" but in my opinion is a lot easier. I think you should give it a try, at least the first two books (although I think is better to start from the last and go backward). John Barth is one of my favorite writers so again: give it a try. Maybe you can start with End of the Road and "The Floating Opera" (they are not as PoMo as are "Sot-Weed Factor" and "Giles Goat-Boy"), then maybe it's better if you read "Lost in the Funhouse" to get used to his way of writing and its experiments pomo For Nabokov I'm quite with you: I didn't like "Lolita," but I liked very much Pale Fire.
I read V by Thomas Pynchon thinking I would need it in order to be able to tackle Gravity's Rainbow and it only made me more scared to read it lol I've been watching your videos and keep commenting because I am really at the place in my "reading history" where I'm tackling a lot of the types of books you review. You do a great job! As for these authors, here's what I think of them: 5. Stephen King has a habit of going into loooong digressions and back stories. I've probably read 5 or 6 of his books and they are ALL like this. That said, he is a very entertaining writer and his more popular novels are very scary (horror), but very good (the Stand doesn't feel like it is longer than it should be) 4. John Barth... I have Giles Goat Boy, SotWeed Factor and Lost in the funhouse on my shelf. I have not started them because they are either very long or at a glance, look very schizophrenic (lost in the funhouse). I will probably start reading one of them once I am out of my book famine that V caused lol 3. Proust I have no idea about 2. Vladimir Nabokov is kind of strange. Pale Fire is enjoyable, but I agree Lolita actually disgusted me. I knew it wasn't actually from the point of view of Nabokov, but yeah it did shake me a little bit. Reading from the point of view of the pedophile, eww. 1. William Burroughs. I started reading Naked Lunch. It was a bit like Pynchon actually, except it gets very descriptive of uninteresting things or gross out things. I made it about 20 pages in and stopped. I don't plan to go back to it any time soon. I haven't read anything else by him All that said, here would be my list if you care :) 5. Samuel Beckett - the Three Novels 4. Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day 3. John Updike - The Rabbit Angstrom Novels (I read the first, and I hated the main character, but the writing was good) 2. William Gaddis - The Recognitions 1. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
I'm awfully scared of Gaddis and Beckett too! Against the Day and the Don Quixote are very long but not difficult at all actually, they're immensely enjoyable! (Gravity's Rainbow, on the other hand, is kind of an immense pain, no matter how rewarding it gets in the end). And I feel the same with Updike, immensely gifted, I always end up hating his novels. Thanks for the comment man :)
I completed reading The Stand just a few days ago. Yeah, it's long but it does manage to hold your interest. But as you said in your review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Stand is a long book with a linear narrative, so the ending of the book may be a little fucked up, because your liking of the characters may translate not all that well into liking the ending. But hey, it's a great book. You should definitely read it.
Thomas Pynchon = incomprehenisble, dense, too many names lol Cormac McCarthy = bloody depressing Virginia Woolf = no actual plot, stream of consciousness James Joyce = James Joyce Also, I've just subscribed to your channel and on Goodreads, cos we have similar book tastes. :)
Detective667 Because I've read "The Road" twice and saw the film once. The story was bleak and grey with no signs of hope in the foreseeable future. I also saw the film adaptation of "No country for Old Men" and the ending wasn't very hopeful either (that's not the case anyway). BUT nevertheless "NCFOM" is one of my favourite films, and "The Road" was a very enjoyable read, yet depressing, (In my opinion, always).
Risky Oak Lol. That's a bit funny but true; James Joyce's novels are really incomprehensible and obscure, to the point he's the only who can understand those wholly. By the way, Woolf is one of my favorite authors
I read about half, but got scared off. After some comments I read about it recently I wonder if it will ever leave my bookcase again, where it now serves as a solid booksupport.
Also - that review by Dean Goranites completely misses the point and ignores so much of the book. Don't rely on one review, always read/watch several when you're curious about a book. I definitely recommand you read Naked Lunch. In English, not translated. It is, like others suggested, somewhere between prose and poetry. It doens't have a plot in the usual sense, but that doesn't mean it had no plot at all. It's like a chain of little stories, cahracter description, place descriptions, surrealistic exposés on various "political parties" (e.g. the factualists, the liquefactionists, etc) and organizations, and impressionistic vignettes that together portray a world that is 50-50 autobiographical (based on Burroughs experience in Tangiers mainly) and hallucinatory. I'm not saying it's a very clear book but it makes a lot more sense than some people's superfacial/impatient reading will tell you. And even when it doesn't, its style is so fun to read, it has a mixture of poetry, comedy, surrealism and a cool hard-boiled style that's hard to resist.
I read pretty much all of Burroughs in my twenties and just sucked it all up. I re-read Cities of the Red Night last year, thirty years later for me, and found it irritating. But I still feel the Burroughs worldview is incredibly important in terms of perceiving one's and our humanity in a fresh and ultimately more real and objective way. It also really fine-tunes your bullshit detectors when surveying the modern world we have to try and believe we've made some kind of sense of if we're going to try and get out the door in the morning. In art generally I'm a big believer in/admirer of that which highlights the grotesqueness of the human; not because I an a hopeless cynic, full of fear and loathing (although I have to struggle with that as much as anyone), but because I believe it's important to transcend our comfortable anthropocentrism; see ourselves as the truly strange and often scary critters we really are, but then see that we are as beautiful as any other weirdness that nature has cooked up. Burroughs shows us the human race as some kind of alien insect thing with all sorts of weird and superficially disgusting genetic programming, but from there we can look at ourselves as strange natural wonders with an objective fascination. We are walking, talking sacs of shit; full of bile and slime and mucus, but our default wiring is to see ourselves as a relatively tidy and sanitised exterior surface, by which we judge ourselves and each other as more or less beautiful, thoughts about which most of us are obsessed for much of our mental up-time. This perspective is entirely non-objective and Burroughs plumbed his own depths in order to provide us with an antidote to thid delusion. Giger was another one. The Alien was always us. Reading Burroughs; either Naked Lunch and/or Junky while verbally incoherent are the most sharp and precise presentations of the worldview. The other books add details to the same expanding Rorschach blot of weirdness, but each one probably less so.
The_Bookchemist can you expound a little more on your hatred of Kerouac? I'm a fan of his writing and think there are some very beautiful passages in everything I've read by him I guess I understand if you don't like him as a person but the writing I think should because separate thing .
i dont reckon junky to be verbally incoherent its quite straight forward almost like a hard boiled detective novel in some ways ...quite cold n almost objective n stands in sharp relief to Naked Lunch n the cut up (fold in) novels delirious materiality ...but id agree that Burroughs is an impressive ideas man i really like the Job which while maybe slightly tangential as regards fiction n novels its a fascinating snapshot of a quite singular paranoid worldview
naked lunch felt to me like reading a poem in the form of a novel. There are recuent characters and subjects but at the same time it doesn't necessarily tale a lineal story.
Naked Lunch has some incredibly upsetting scenes, but it's weighted with so much layered irony that you are sort of left with the feeling that you're exactly as offended as you're supposed to be and being offended is sort of the point - if that makes sense. It's not unwieldy in it's grossness, however constant it is. The hardest part about Burroughs is the Cut-Up style of writing, but once you're dialed into the rhythm of the book, it becomes easy, like learning a glossary of Nadsat.
Can you do a full review on Underworld? I am thinking of reading it and was wondering if you could fully review it. Also will you be seeing the movie coming out about David Foster Wallace?
Silas Wrisley I might do that, perhaps toward the end of the month when I'll have some spare time, it's one of my favorite books of all times and I've been reading about it recently :) as for the movie, I had no idea it existed until you told me! I'm not sure - I have no idea whether it's well made or not, but it's not exactly my kind of movie. I have studied him extensively but I'm still not sure how I feel toward DFW the man. I might watch it out of sheer curiosity though.
Great list - thanks again! I read The Sotweed Factor a long time ago and found it playful in the way you describe (lots of philosophical/linguistic games), but it also has a strong narrative and enjoyable characters. I think you'd enjoy it for the the literary history context and also because it's fun. I strongly recommend you to persevere with Proust. He's a favourite writer of mine, and in my view wrote the 'definitive' traditional novel. Some of it is complex rather than difficult, but he has four characteristics that I think make the effort of reading him fully rewarded. 1. When he creates an image on the page the effect is like real poetry, the image jumps into the brain and you 'feel' it immediately instead of merely acknowledging its brilliance intellectually. 2. He is ironical and sometimes downright amusing. 3. Yes, the sentences are sometimes extremely long but he structures them to aid the reader's understanding. 3. There is a strong narrative element that critics sometimes neglect to emphasise. 4. Proust's characters are complex, bizarre sometimes, but his psychological insight makes you want to find out what happens to them. 8I know there are various Italian versions on the market - choose wisely!) I agree with you about Lolita. I admire the writing but the book makes me uneasy and I don't see the 'point' of it. I did read The Defence which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I find most of Nabokov unapproachable.
I think you really should give a chance to Proust. I just finished the first volume and I am completely in love with his style! It´s probably going to be one of my favorite books. The only real difficulty in his work is the number of pages. Sure he´s got huge paragraphs but so does Mrs. Dalloway, and that´s not a difficult book, at least for me. The writers that scary me the most are: David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon and Ezra Pound. Loving your videos
The only John Barth I've read is The Sot Weed Factor, and while I admit that the story does sometimes go on too long, it's often hilarious. I don't know whether you read most of these English-language books in Italian or English (I just discovered your channel a couple of days ago), but I'd definitely recommend reading it in the original English; a big part of the book's humour for me is the very lowbrow jokes about farts or penises being told with very highbrow language in the 18th Century English style. Anyway, there's nothing scary about The Sot Weed factor, it's a pleasantly readable and not too conceptually post-modern (except maybe at the very end).
+Adam Robinson Thanks for the suggestion man! I've been meaning to read the Sot Weed factor since ages ago, and it's just my endless reading list that's made it impossible so far. You've made me want to pick it up immediately! And I'll definitely read it in English, I've decided to read English books only in the original a few years ago and it's been one of the wisest choices in my reading career :)
Interesting... I tried reading “Giles Goat-Boy” before finding your video and was immediately put off by the language and the narrator (I have a one-chapter rule: if you lose me by the end of the chapter, I’m done). And the others? Don’t worry. Read what you want. I read the first half of “Lolita” and should finish it. I just avoid Proust, Pynchon, Updike and maybe the rest of Barth... 📚
Interesting video. Some of those authors intimidate me as well: Nabokov (I've had Lolita on my shelves for ages. Christopher Hitchens used to say that Pale Fire was Nabokov's unsung masterpiece) I'm scared of reading Proust as well, he is well known for his difficult writing style and every high school kid here in France dreads to get Proust as an assignment. Have you tackled any of those authors since posting this video?
proust's "recherche" is not so daunting if you regard it as a collection of seven novels of average length, rather than as one massive novel....breaks between volumes to read other things might be the best approach, though by the third or fourth volume, you may become addicted to proust's meandering style and want to read through to the end....
I think that's a strategy more common in Anglo-Saxon countries (where I often find people discussing "Swann's Way" for instance as a stand-alone book), while in my native Italy I almost never hear the book discussed as anything but a single narrative. I might just try your strategy - thanks for the suggestion :)
You have to read Naked Lunch, that's a fact. Every page of it is solid gold. Many of the books you have reviewed owes everything to that book. It can be disturbing but it is extremely enjoyable all the time. Do not be afraid and read it.
Though Naked Lunch is Burroughs' most famous book, I absolutely loved his Nova Express trilogy (Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded). His experimentation with the cut up technique and his ability to absolutely destroy linear narratives is very enjoyable in the trilogy. If you are put off by Naked Lunch's content try Junky or Queer, both are more semi-autobiographical and have linear narratives (also the grotesque factor is at a minimum).
+The_Bookchemist Besides the graphic sex scenes, not so much. With Naked Lunch, at times, I felt like I was witnessing hell. The constant paedophilia, cannibalism, murder, drug use, and psychotic characters (if you ever do read it, watch out for the character Dr. Benway) it was difficult to get through at times. On the other hand, with the trilogy, I found the sex scenes and the characters reminded me of Pynchon, albeit in a very different tone and technique.
Definitely read William S. Burroughs. The content of Burroughs' work is what turns most people off from reading him, but it's way different than the way most people talk about it. I've found most people can't understand the work because it operates on multiple levels. Burroughs is absolutely hysterical and profound. Burroughs has influenced all of modern literature more than is talked about. He paved the way for everyone by pushing the limits of censorship, and his experimentation with magic, drugs, and consciousness greatly expanded the awareness of any who came into contact with his work. He's a heavyweight and game-changer for the 20th Century, don't let anyone downplay him to you. He's someone to be approached curiously and sincerely for his contributions, his work covers a lot of subjects and everyone was either influenced by him, directly or indirectly. Another way of putting it: America was never the same after the Beat Generation. The sexual and psychological revolution of the 60's and 70's were partly because of them and a few other groups; their ideas spread through all levels of society and pop-culture. For example, William Burroughs on the front cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. The review that you talked about from that other UA-camr is completely missing the point, by the way. Naked Lunch is cinematic, poetic vignettes, lots of black humor, toilet humor, etc but the implications are all about the dark side of humanity. Exposing the elite, exposing control in all of its forms, exposing the psychic faculties and inner qualities of man, etc. It's really deep, and it's really really funny. Naked Lunch is one of the only books where I laughed out loud nearly every other page. If you do decide to check him out, you're life would be the better for it. People are too easily shocked anymore and Burroughs' writing is too intelligent for a lot of people, it goes right over their heads.
I finished In search of Lost Time earlier this year, and I have to say... it was a magnificent experience. The prose, the characters, the feel of fin de siecle Paris... I think it was one of the best works I ever read. However, it's quite a chore, especially the first and sixth book. But in the end it was definitely worth it!
The book I liked the most by Burroughs (the only one I could finish) is Cities of the Red Night. You like Ulysses and Infinite Jest, so I think you won't have a problem with this one. But yes, Naked Lunch is heroine juice, don't start there.
Writers that scare me: Pynchon- his books are long and dense as hell. Terry Pratchett- Discworld has over 40 books in the series. Faulkner- long ass stream of consciousness sentences with weird grammar. Herman Melville- I don't really want to read 500 pages of in depth seafaring descriptions. James Joyce- c'mon, do I really even need to say why Joyce scares me?
+Alex Cross Pynchon shouldn't scare people too much, at least not in his easiest books like Inherent Vice - those are a real pleasure! And Terrry Pratchett too is hugely enjoyable, although it's true the Discworld series is infinite :P whereas Faulkner, Melville and Joyce are truly fucking scary, you're right :S
The_Bookchemist What Pynchon book would you suggest I start with? It seems most people start with The Crying of Lot 49 because it's his shortest work, but I hear it's just as confusing as his longer novels. Would Inherent Vice be a better place to start?
+Alex Cross I survived Pynchon with Mason & Dixon. I really was eager to start that book and it took me monthhsss just bc I dreaded picking it up at times. I liked the main characters and their interaction but other parts of the book, the fantasy parts, just made it hard for me to want to continue reading. At the end I just skipped certain parts and was able to finish. I'll probably end up reading Against the Day since I bought it for a bookclub on gr that I got an invite for but man that book is huge so I bought it but haven't read but a couple, and I mean just a couple of pages. They had a talking dog in the first few pages which made me roll my eyes........I guess I have to be in the mood to read certain books.
You may try reading the original released version of The Stand. It's "only" 823 pages while the uncut version is well over 1,000. I've heard some self-proclaimed King aficionados say that they prefer the original, shorter version. Also, don't worry about the plague. *cough cough* The true focus of the book is on the characters and how they must work together to overcome the evil they face.
Lost in the Funhouse is a great place to start on John Barth. It is a short collection of stories which is very representative of his postmodern experimentation while also being very fun.
Naked Lunch is a novel you have to surrender yourself to. You just have to follow the drug logic -- also Burroughs used cut up for this so it jumps around a lot, so you have to be willing to just go with it. It is definitely satire, so that should help frame the novel as well.
The Stand isn't about the plague particularly. It's about the struggle between good and evil that emerges in a now less populous world. I've never been rooting for and against characters more than I have in this book. Read it. You Must!
+HangPotato I really hope I'll be able to read it soon - you're not the first one to underline how I shouldn't be too scared about the whole plague thing! Thanks for the suggestion :)
Naked Lunch is a great read, it's not long (under 200 pages), and most of it is very readable (it loses all structure right near the end). You should read it at least once :-)
I read Burrough's The Ticket that Exploded and I can honestly say I will never willingly pick up another of his books. It was so irritating and mindboggling. This was part of the cut up series, where he literally cut up and scrambled sentences and paragraphs without caring if it made sense to the plot or anything. What a headache!
Haven't read Barth or Proust, though I plan to someday. I think you might be surprised on how easy The Stand is to read. Sure, it has a lot of characters, but King's trademark worldbuilding didn't make it too difficult for me to follow along. Pale Fire is not as disturbing as Lolita - though it still is in its own way - but I'm actually reading it right now and it is a very interesting unfolding of a personality. Burroughs is disturbing, yes. I would advise Naked Lunch over stuff like the Nova Trilogy, since there's more reflection of his own personal disturbing life there than in Naked Lunch. All things considered, Burroughs was very talented, insightful and funny, but he certainly was a piece of shit in real life like many other Beat writers.
With respect to the stand, it's typical Stephen King: it's long but it goes by quick. Not my favorite SK but enjoyable. With respect to John Barth and Proust I'm on the same boat. Sotweed factor has been on my shelf collecting dust for quite some time haha. I've read pale fire but never read Lolita so I can't vouch for that however I found pale fire to be excellent. Burroughs is just bat shit insane, buckle up for the ride if you choose to take it!
Any one know who the real bad ass of Lit , for old men is ?.The best contemporary for me is easily Michell Houellebecq but I feel exhausted by his genius having absorbed the black pill vision . Any ideas ? Gotta be a living author, writing about this century , and Male only and preferably old Who's the real bad ass old man?
Barth is not super intimidating especially if your read Pynchon, Barth feels like Harry Potter in comparison. Sot weed factor is just about perfect. When I think of an author who is super intimidating to me it's definitely Joyce and William gass
Proust's Search has 7 books and you don't really need to read all at once. Book 1 is about a boy's childhood. Book's 2 is mostly about his teen years and a seaside resort trip. Book 3 is about young adulthood and salon life. ..... Take your time. You can just muster strength to read the Childhood book, I think you'll be hooked.
Proust towers above most others. there are dull stretches but more brilliance than anywhere but shakespeare. burroughs a waste of time. try thomas mann too.
Thanks for the suggestions! I did read some Mann a few years ago - Doktor Faustus and Death in Venice; I couldn't quite stomach the latter, while the former was brilliant (though very, very dry in certain passages)! I've been willing to read Buddenbrooks for ages!
Buddenbrooks is a good place to start. Or Felix Krull which is a pretty straightforward read. But Magic Mountain is the mountain, so to speak. Plus Joseph and his Brothers which is ridiculously long but amazing
Ryan Golden I read that one very recently after a few failed attempts and yep, that's majorly disturbing for sure! By far the scariest book I've ever read ;) there's a review on my channel if you'd like to check it out :)
Do you intend to imply Lolita is not an actual book? If you refer to Nabokov as disturbing writer, then in what sense does this bundle of pages and words collected under the title Lolita do not form a disturbing novel? Is there sadness to it? Laughter? Flowing lyricism? Yes, all of these combine to form this masterwork of a novel. To quote Nabokov: "There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm."
juan8777 Most definitely :) I've read all of his fiction but I did it over a period of 4 years, because after a while I had to stop as he spooked me too much :S
The_Bookchemist LOL I hear that. I 'm about half way through "At the mountains of madness" . Every time I stop reading it, I'm always a little apprehensive about picking it up again.
+Detective667 Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't (especially if they're very long), most of the time I do something that no serious reader should do which is reading in fast-forward, the first line of every paragraph or something like that. Some books you can read them like that, some books you just can't, it takes practice to understand the difference and of course, once you read a book like that you haven't read the book at all, not really ;)
Proust's Search has 7 books and you don't really need to read all at once. Book 1 is about a boy's childhood. Book's 2 is mostly about his teen years and a seaside resort trip. Book 3 is about young adult and salon life. ..... Take your time.
I can speak to King and Burroughs having read everything of Kings up to about 1990 and the entire cannon of Burroughs. With King, his two masterpieces are 'The Stand' and 'It', and fans usually fall into one of these two 'novel' camps. The longer version of The Stand is the one to pursue. It's his most literary book in the sense of character depths and general sweep, although I must say 'It' is a scarier book. For Burroughs, one must read him in the same spirit as one would view a slapstick comedy film. His prose, at its best, is truly poetically brilliant despite what its attempting to describe. 'Cities of the Red Night' is better in some ways than Naked Lunch and certainly more accessible and broadly sci-fi...
I get why you would get the impression that Barth is more about language games than narrative, but it’s important to remember that his particular brand of postmodernism is grounded in an obsession with the building blocks of storytelling and narrative rather than an encyclopedic obsession with pop culture or technology a la Pynchon and DFW. Barth’s stuff tends to be hyper narrative-driven because he was constantly reading stuff like the Canterbury Tales, the Decameron, Arabian Nights, The Iliad and the Odyssey, and Tom Jones just to name a few: all stories that are fundamentally about amazing narratives. The Sot-Weed Factor, specifically, has a perfect, compelling, intricate, and hilarious plot that goes all the way to the end without missing a beat. He definitely falters at times, but Barth at his best is easier to read than most of his peers.
I live in John Barth's house. Oddly enough.
Try “Cities of the Red Night” by Burroughs. Great story that is more “accessible” than his earlier works. I love your channel, by the way! Thanks for doing this.
Read Pale Fire, seriously, this book is great. While it's more interesting and enjoyable, it's not like an "actual" book. The cool thing about it is that is a form of meta-fiction, this is, "Pale Fire" is a book published by Kinbote and it's basically an analysis of a poem that his friend Shade wrote. The story itself is pretty much implicit until the end since there is not actual story being told, but you get to know by the analysis of Shade's poem "Pale Fire". There are crossed references across from the analysis to the poem and prologue (also wrote by Kinbote), this makes the book extremely non-linear since it jumps in time from past to present and viceversa in the analysis.
It's one of my favorite books of all time, and by far better than Lolita. The latter, as Nabokov told, was written to merely tell a nice story without to much point behind (with the goal of making ti easily adaptable to a movie). In the case of Pale Fire it would be absolutely impossible to make a movie out of it.
tl;dr: read it read it read it. And it'd great it you could review it later.
D. Løan Thanks a lot, you sound really encouraging! When I finally read it I'll definitely review it here ;)
F. D.
"Lolita. The latter, as Nabokov told, was written to merely tell a nice story without to much point behind (with the goal of making ti easily adaptable to a movie)." I caught a whiff of Kinbote as I read this.
I find both Barth and Burroughs enjoyable reads. Respectively The Sodweed Factor and Western World
Lolita is about a lot of things. A parody of travelogues, Henry James, Poe etc. The aesthetics of morality. The collision of modernity with a nascent postmodernity. It’s also a vibrant comic novel, brimming with invention.
I’d say that King is actually not too hard to read, asides from his tendency to over-describe, but it’s also a double edged sword as he’s one of the few who can paint a scene with his words. But what surprised me consistently about The Stand was how accessible it was. It’s like a longer version of Blood Meridian if you asked me (which surprised me that Blood Meridian came out several years after The Stand, and I’d also say Blood Meridian is much bleaker.)
But, with that being said, I’d say start with some of his earlier works like Carrie or The Shining or his many short stories.
Proust is amazing. A great corollary for anyone who likes Joyce. The reading level isn't difficult exactly; the real issue is that he writes sentences that sometimes span 2 pages.
I don't know if you're even still checking this account. But if you are, Anthony Burgess - If you thought Burroughs was bad, you're in for a treat. Does Cormac McCarthy not bother you? He doesn't bother me, because I like to see how far I can push my boundaries. Vasilly Grossman's 'The Hell of Treblinka' is probably the most traumatising thing I've read. Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and Franz Kafka always make me reconsider opening their books.
But the one author who makes me shake with fear is Thomas Hardy. He is just so boring. I had to read 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' and 'Tess of the Durbevilles' as a 14 year-old for school. I love literature, but making 14 year old boys read about Victorian England is just sadism.
Thanks for the reviews.
I personally do love Hardy to bits but I absolutely agree that making high schoolers read works of classic fiction, as a general rule, is absolutely nonsensical and actually very counterproductive.
The first three volumes of Proust were smooth and entertaining reads for me. They didn’t feel long enough it flew by so quick. I think it’s like Kerouac where you can read without constantly rereading every page because the text flows so well, although there’s plenty of passages you may read twice anyways because they’re so enjoyable. One of the most profound reads I’ve had. Looking forward to rereading the entire book.
Stephen King books are difficult for me because his writing style and I just don't mesh. Therefore, a thousand page book of sentences that I personally find clunky, is not an enjoyable experience for me. Obviously, he's a very successful writer, and a pretty cool dude, so it's nothing personal. I just can't really get into his books anymore. When I was in junior high, I read every book of his I could get my hands on, but something happened to my reading preferences at some point because when I go back to read "It" or "The Stand," I just can't hack it anymore.
I like your idea of making a video about writers who scare you. It sounds like the reasons are less to do with their ideas and more because of their po-mo style and weird linguistics. I'm enjoying your reviews, your accent enhances them.
Being 5 years late to this video, I'm sure you've read a lot of these authors since, but if you haven't yet picked up Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading yet, I recommend you do. It was the first of his books I read and I think gave me a really solid, fun intro to his writing. (As a sidenote, I also read it around the same time as The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien which was equally great and seemed to have a lot of similarities). I've yet to read Lolita because frankly I just don't care. From what I've heard I just assume it's nothing like his other books, and I'm so glad it wasn't the first I tried of Nabokov because it probably would've put me off from the rest of his stuff.
"Pnin" is my favourite Nabokov. It's just a sad and humorous story and hauntingly written.
Without spoilers is it worth reading?
And can you suggest any authors who right so amazingly like Vkadinir minus the controversy.
@@unknowninfinium4353 Yes, I think it's worth reading, of course.
I find Lawrence Durrell's prose beautiful, but more effusive than Nabokov, and less crystalline. I'm not a great novel reader, so I don't have too many suggestions.
@@ferguscullen8451 Thank you though. Will get to reading.
Yes, love it!
You should definitely give Proust a try. Yes it's hard but his work is worth the read. I actually think you'll like it. Burroughs scares me too.
I'm sure I'd like it, but when will I find the time! A friend of mine put it brilliantly when he said that he read Proust's Search right after he graduated "because I knew that otherwise I'd have to get a prison sentence to get a chance to read it."
You just have to make the time but it has to be when YOU really want to read it. Maybe try reading it with another book lover like you. Tht would help because then you could discuss it as you read along.
Read the Burroughs.Read the Burroughs. Read the Burroughs. And no, don't close your eyes during the unpleasant bits. Rather, construct a helmet like in Clockwork Orange to keep your lids peeled while you enter the world of his fiction. Contrary to media portrayals of him, (from far more ignorant times, remember) he wasn't dysfunctionally insane, though he did have a number of psychological maladies and in some senses a bleak outlook, peppered with a mordant humour. Start off with Junkie, then try Naked Lunch. The shift from those two works should tap you into his gifts as a writer.
allaboutdmagic Will do (though I make no promises on "when"), thanks for the suggestion -- you're not the only one to point at Junkie!
Im a little late here but The Wild Boys is... One of the most creative books ever written, in my opinion.
id recommend Barths first three novels but especially sot weed factor. I just finished it and it was a knockout. easily one of the best historical novels i've read. sort of felt like a more grounded (ie less surreal and metafictional aspects) version of pynchon but much more overtly ribald and tragi-comic. the guy has a great talent for characterization and pacing.
I haven't /finished/ In Search of Lost Time, but the first part, Swann's Way, is a great introduction. Gets a little confusing in the last part [Place-Names: The Name, which is completed in the next part with Place-Names: The Place, so it makes a lot more sense if you continue, I assume] but the rest of Swann's Way is gloriously beautiful. The only other author that has made me feel the way Proust did is Virginia Woolf in The Waves [which is also amazing]
Thanks for the suggestion! I really don't know how soon I'll have the time, but I really should read Proust.
Proust is longer than "Ulysses" but in my opinion is a lot easier. I think you should give it a try, at least the first two books (although I think is better to start from the last and go backward). John Barth is one of my favorite writers so again: give it a try. Maybe you can start with End of the Road and "The Floating Opera" (they are not as PoMo as are "Sot-Weed Factor" and "Giles Goat-Boy"), then maybe it's better if you read "Lost in the Funhouse" to get used to his way of writing and its experiments pomo
For Nabokov I'm quite with you: I didn't like "Lolita," but I liked very much Pale Fire.
I'll give you Naked Lunch in two lines:
"No, no!" screams the boy.
"Yes. Yes."
It gets worse.
The Place of Dead Roads by Burroughs. A western novel like no other. Full of great stuff.
Nice name, planning on giving it a try.
I read V by Thomas Pynchon thinking I would need it in order to be able to tackle Gravity's Rainbow and it only made me more scared to read it lol I've been watching your videos and keep commenting because I am really at the place in my "reading history" where I'm tackling a lot of the types of books you review. You do a great job!
As for these authors, here's what I think of them:
5. Stephen King has a habit of going into loooong digressions and back stories. I've probably read 5 or 6 of his books and they are ALL like this. That said, he is a very entertaining writer and his more popular novels are very scary (horror), but very good (the Stand doesn't feel like it is longer than it should be)
4. John Barth... I have Giles Goat Boy, SotWeed Factor and Lost in the funhouse on my shelf. I have not started them because they are either very long or at a glance, look very schizophrenic (lost in the funhouse). I will probably start reading one of them once I am out of my book famine that V caused lol
3. Proust I have no idea about
2. Vladimir Nabokov is kind of strange. Pale Fire is enjoyable, but I agree Lolita actually disgusted me. I knew it wasn't actually from the point of view of Nabokov, but yeah it did shake me a little bit. Reading from the point of view of the pedophile, eww.
1. William Burroughs. I started reading Naked Lunch. It was a bit like Pynchon actually, except it gets very descriptive of uninteresting things or gross out things. I made it about 20 pages in and stopped. I don't plan to go back to it any time soon. I haven't read anything else by him
All that said, here would be my list if you care :)
5. Samuel Beckett - the Three Novels
4. Thomas Pynchon - Gravity's Rainbow, Against the Day
3. John Updike - The Rabbit Angstrom Novels (I read the first, and I hated the main character, but the writing was good)
2. William Gaddis - The Recognitions
1. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote
I'm awfully scared of Gaddis and Beckett too! Against the Day and the Don Quixote are very long but not difficult at all actually, they're immensely enjoyable! (Gravity's Rainbow, on the other hand, is kind of an immense pain, no matter how rewarding it gets in the end). And I feel the same with Updike, immensely gifted, I always end up hating his novels. Thanks for the comment man :)
Were you bothered by Crime and Punishment? Reading from the point of view of an ax murderer etc
I completed reading The Stand just a few days ago. Yeah, it's long but it does manage to hold your interest. But as you said in your review of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Stand is a long book with a linear narrative, so the ending of the book may be a little fucked up, because your liking of the characters may translate not all that well into liking the ending. But hey, it's a great book. You should definitely read it.
Asher Deep Thanks for the suggestion - I think I see what you mean!
Thomas Pynchon = incomprehenisble, dense, too many names lol
Cormac McCarthy = bloody depressing
Virginia Woolf = no actual plot, stream of consciousness
James Joyce = James Joyce
Also, I've just subscribed to your channel and on Goodreads, cos we have similar book tastes. :)
Why should McCarthy be depressing?
Detective667 Because I've read "The Road" twice and saw the film once. The story was bleak and grey with no signs of hope in the foreseeable future. I also saw the film adaptation of "No country for Old Men" and the ending wasn't very hopeful either (that's not the case anyway). BUT nevertheless "NCFOM" is one of my favourite films, and "The Road" was a very enjoyable read, yet depressing, (In my opinion, always).
Risky Oak Lol. That's a bit funny but true; James Joyce's novels are really incomprehensible and obscure, to the point he's the only who can understand those wholly. By the way, Woolf is one of my favorite authors
Have you tried 2666 by Roberto Bolaño?
I read about half, but got scared off. After some comments I read about it recently I wonder if it will ever leave my bookcase again, where it now serves as a solid booksupport.
To tackle Barth you are best starting with the first two novels.
Also - that review by Dean Goranites completely misses the point and ignores so much of the book.
Don't rely on one review, always read/watch several when you're curious about a book.
I definitely recommand you read Naked Lunch. In English, not translated. It is, like others suggested, somewhere between prose and poetry. It doens't have a plot in the usual sense, but that doesn't mean it had no plot at all. It's like a chain of little stories, cahracter description, place descriptions, surrealistic exposés on various "political parties" (e.g. the factualists, the liquefactionists, etc) and organizations, and impressionistic vignettes that together portray a world that is 50-50 autobiographical (based on Burroughs experience in Tangiers mainly) and hallucinatory.
I'm not saying it's a very clear book but it makes a lot more sense than some people's superfacial/impatient reading will tell you. And even when it doesn't, its style is so fun to read, it has a mixture of poetry, comedy, surrealism and a cool hard-boiled style that's hard to resist.
i message dean goranites occasionally to try and get him to come back to youtube but it hasn't worked yet :(
I read pretty much all of Burroughs in my twenties and just sucked it all up. I re-read Cities of the Red Night last year, thirty years later for me, and found it irritating. But I still feel the Burroughs worldview is incredibly important in terms of perceiving one's and our humanity in a fresh and ultimately more real and objective way. It also really fine-tunes your bullshit detectors when surveying the modern world we have to try and believe we've made some kind of sense of if we're going to try and get out the door in the morning. In art generally I'm a big believer in/admirer of that which highlights the grotesqueness of the human; not because I an a hopeless cynic, full of fear and loathing (although I have to struggle with that as much as anyone), but because I believe it's important to transcend our comfortable anthropocentrism; see ourselves as the truly strange and often scary critters we really are, but then see that we are as beautiful as any other weirdness that nature has cooked up. Burroughs shows us the human race as some kind of alien insect thing with all sorts of weird and superficially disgusting genetic programming, but from there we can look at ourselves as strange natural wonders with an objective fascination. We are walking, talking sacs of shit; full of bile and slime and mucus, but our default wiring is to see ourselves as a relatively tidy and sanitised exterior surface, by which we judge ourselves and each other as more or less beautiful, thoughts about which most of us are obsessed for much of our mental up-time. This perspective is entirely non-objective and Burroughs plumbed his own depths in order to provide us with an antidote to thid delusion. Giger was another one. The Alien was always us.
Reading Burroughs; either Naked Lunch and/or Junky while verbally incoherent are the most sharp and precise presentations of the worldview. The other books add details to the same expanding Rorschach blot of weirdness, but each one probably less so.
Thanks for the insight man!
The_Bookchemist can you expound a little more on your hatred of Kerouac? I'm a fan of his writing and think there are some very beautiful passages in everything I've read by him I guess I understand if you don't like him as a person but the writing I think should because separate thing .
i dont reckon junky to be verbally incoherent its quite straight forward almost like a hard boiled detective novel in some ways ...quite cold n almost objective n stands in sharp relief to Naked Lunch n the cut up (fold in) novels delirious materiality ...but id agree that Burroughs is an impressive ideas man i really like the Job which while maybe slightly tangential as regards fiction n novels its a fascinating snapshot of a quite singular paranoid worldview
naked lunch felt to me like reading a poem in the form of a novel. There are recuent characters and subjects but at the same time it doesn't necessarily tale a lineal story.
No one commented about Giles goat boy here!? You mentioned it and I get such a strange mysterious feeling when reading that book.
Naked Lunch has some incredibly upsetting scenes, but it's weighted with so much layered irony that you are sort of left with the feeling that you're exactly as offended as you're supposed to be and being offended is sort of the point - if that makes sense. It's not unwieldy in it's grossness, however constant it is. The hardest part about Burroughs is the Cut-Up style of writing, but once you're dialed into the rhythm of the book, it becomes easy, like learning a glossary of Nadsat.
Can you do a full review on Underworld? I am thinking of reading it and was wondering if you could fully review it. Also will you be seeing the movie coming out about David Foster Wallace?
Silas Wrisley I might do that, perhaps toward the end of the month when I'll have some spare time, it's one of my favorite books of all times and I've been reading about it recently :) as for the movie, I had no idea it existed until you told me! I'm not sure - I have no idea whether it's well made or not, but it's not exactly my kind of movie. I have studied him extensively but I'm still not sure how I feel toward DFW the man. I might watch it out of sheer curiosity though.
I really like your videos man, keep up the good work!
Jack Greendal Thanks for the great feedback ^^!
Great list - thanks again!
I read The Sotweed Factor a long time ago and found it playful in the way you describe (lots of philosophical/linguistic games), but it also has a strong narrative and enjoyable characters. I think you'd enjoy it for the the literary history context and also because it's fun.
I strongly recommend you to persevere with Proust. He's a favourite writer of mine, and in my view wrote the 'definitive' traditional novel. Some of it is complex rather than difficult, but he has four characteristics that I think make the effort of reading him fully rewarded. 1. When he creates an image on the page the effect is like real poetry, the image jumps into the brain and you 'feel' it immediately instead of merely acknowledging its brilliance intellectually. 2. He is ironical and sometimes downright amusing. 3. Yes, the sentences are sometimes extremely long but he structures them to aid the reader's understanding. 3. There is a strong narrative element that critics sometimes neglect to emphasise. 4. Proust's characters are complex, bizarre sometimes, but his psychological insight makes you want to find out what happens to them. 8I know there are various Italian versions on the market - choose wisely!)
I agree with you about Lolita. I admire the writing but the book makes me uneasy and I don't see the 'point' of it. I did read The Defence which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I find most of Nabokov unapproachable.
***** Well you definitely made me wanna read Proust even more :) thank you so much, I'll keep your comment in mind :)!
I think you really should give a chance to Proust. I just finished the first volume and I am completely in love with his style! It´s probably going to be one of my favorite books. The only real difficulty in his work is the number of pages. Sure he´s got huge paragraphs but so does Mrs. Dalloway, and that´s not a difficult book, at least for me.
The writers that scary me the most are: David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon and Ezra Pound. Loving your videos
The only John Barth I've read is The Sot Weed Factor, and while I admit that the story does sometimes go on too long, it's often hilarious. I don't know whether you read most of these English-language books in Italian or English (I just discovered your channel a couple of days ago), but I'd definitely recommend reading it in the original English; a big part of the book's humour for me is the very lowbrow jokes about farts or penises being told with very highbrow language in the 18th Century English style.
Anyway, there's nothing scary about The Sot Weed factor, it's a pleasantly readable and not too conceptually post-modern (except maybe at the very end).
+Adam Robinson Thanks for the suggestion man! I've been meaning to read the Sot Weed factor since ages ago, and it's just my endless reading list that's made it impossible so far. You've made me want to pick it up immediately! And I'll definitely read it in English, I've decided to read English books only in the original a few years ago and it's been one of the wisest choices in my reading career :)
@@TheBookchemist do you read in russian?
Interesting... I tried reading “Giles Goat-Boy” before finding your video and was immediately put off by the language and the narrator (I have a one-chapter rule: if you lose me by the end of the chapter, I’m done).
And the others? Don’t worry. Read what you want. I read the first half of “Lolita” and should finish it.
I just avoid Proust, Pynchon, Updike and maybe the rest of Barth...
📚
Interesting video. Some of those authors intimidate me as well: Nabokov (I've had Lolita on my shelves for ages. Christopher Hitchens used to say that Pale Fire was Nabokov's unsung masterpiece)
I'm scared of reading Proust as well, he is well known for his difficult writing style and every high school kid here in France dreads to get Proust as an assignment. Have you tackled any of those authors since posting this video?
Interestingly, almost none! I did read and appreciate some Barth though, and I absolutely adored Nabokov's Pale Fire last year.
proust's "recherche" is not so daunting if you regard it as a collection of seven novels of average length, rather than as one massive novel....breaks between volumes to read other things might be the best approach, though by the third or fourth volume, you may become addicted to proust's meandering style and want to read through to the end....
I think that's a strategy more common in Anglo-Saxon countries (where I often find people discussing "Swann's Way" for instance as a stand-alone book), while in my native Italy I almost never hear the book discussed as anything but a single narrative. I might just try your strategy - thanks for the suggestion :)
grafplaten I can never find the 7th.
also check out Junkie by William S. Burroughs, also maybe Queer; you might enjoy them
Jack Greendal Will do ;)!
You have to read Naked Lunch, that's a fact. Every page of it is solid gold. Many of the books you have reviewed owes everything to that book. It can be disturbing but it is extremely enjoyable all the time. Do not be afraid and read it.
gaddis gaddis gaddis gaddis
Marcel Proust, William H. Gass, William Gaddis, William T. Vollman, William Faulkner (I guess I must have some bad past experiences with Williams)
Though Naked Lunch is Burroughs' most famous book, I absolutely loved his Nova Express trilogy (Soft Machine, Nova Express, and The Ticket That Exploded). His experimentation with the cut up technique and his ability to absolutely destroy linear narratives is very enjoyable in the trilogy. If you are put off by Naked Lunch's content try Junky or Queer, both are more semi-autobiographical and have linear narratives (also the grotesque factor is at a minimum).
+Mark-Jens Barton Are the books in that trilogy very very disturbing? Like, Naked-Lunchlike disturbing?
+The_Bookchemist Besides the graphic sex scenes, not so much. With Naked Lunch, at times, I felt like I was witnessing hell. The constant paedophilia, cannibalism, murder, drug use, and psychotic characters (if you ever do read it, watch out for the character Dr. Benway) it was difficult to get through at times. On the other hand, with the trilogy, I found the sex scenes and the characters reminded me of Pynchon, albeit in a very different tone and technique.
Definitely read William S. Burroughs. The content of Burroughs' work is what turns most people off from reading him, but it's way different than the way most people talk about it. I've found most people can't understand the work because it operates on multiple levels. Burroughs is absolutely hysterical and profound. Burroughs has influenced all of modern literature more than is talked about. He paved the way for everyone by pushing the limits of censorship, and his experimentation with magic, drugs, and consciousness greatly expanded the awareness of any who came into contact with his work. He's a heavyweight and game-changer for the 20th Century, don't let anyone downplay him to you. He's someone to be approached curiously and sincerely for his contributions, his work covers a lot of subjects and everyone was either influenced by him, directly or indirectly. Another way of putting it: America was never the same after the Beat Generation. The sexual and psychological revolution of the 60's and 70's were partly because of them and a few other groups; their ideas spread through all levels of society and pop-culture. For example, William Burroughs on the front cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. The review that you talked about from that other UA-camr is completely missing the point, by the way. Naked Lunch is cinematic, poetic vignettes, lots of black humor, toilet humor, etc but the implications are all about the dark side of humanity. Exposing the elite, exposing control in all of its forms, exposing the psychic faculties and inner qualities of man, etc. It's really deep, and it's really really funny. Naked Lunch is one of the only books where I laughed out loud nearly every other page. If you do decide to check him out, you're life would be the better for it. People are too easily shocked anymore and Burroughs' writing is too intelligent for a lot of people, it goes right over their heads.
BOHEMIA Well you gave me a lot to chew over - and definitely encouraged me to read Naked Lunch! Thanks a lot :)
I finished In search of Lost Time earlier this year, and I have to say... it was a magnificent experience. The prose, the characters, the feel of fin de siecle Paris... I think it was one of the best works I ever read. However, it's quite a chore, especially the first and sixth book. But in the end it was definitely worth it!
pouwel95 I'm glad to hear it's worth the effort :) thanks!
hi interesting top five scary books i recommend you to read Samuel Beckett plays waiting for godot and endgame
The book I liked the most by Burroughs (the only one I could finish) is Cities of the Red Night. You like Ulysses and Infinite Jest, so I think you won't have a problem with this one.
But yes, Naked Lunch is heroine juice, don't start there.
Nothing to fear with The Stand. It's more about the characters than the end of the world. Definitely a great read.
Keith Witty Thanks for the suggestion ;)!
Writers that scare me:
Pynchon- his books are long and dense as hell.
Terry Pratchett- Discworld has over 40 books in the series.
Faulkner- long ass stream of consciousness sentences with weird grammar.
Herman Melville- I don't really want to read 500 pages of in depth seafaring descriptions.
James Joyce- c'mon, do I really even need to say why Joyce scares me?
+Alex Cross Pynchon shouldn't scare people too much, at least not in his easiest books like Inherent Vice - those are a real pleasure! And Terrry Pratchett too is hugely enjoyable, although it's true the Discworld series is infinite :P whereas Faulkner, Melville and Joyce are truly fucking scary, you're right :S
The_Bookchemist What Pynchon book would you suggest I start with? It seems most people start with The Crying of Lot 49 because it's his shortest work, but I hear it's just as confusing as his longer novels. Would Inherent Vice be a better place to start?
+Alex Cross I survived Pynchon with Mason & Dixon. I really was eager to start that book and it took me monthhsss just bc I dreaded picking it up at times. I liked the main characters and their interaction but other parts of the book, the fantasy parts, just made it hard for me to want to continue reading. At the end I just skipped certain parts and was able to finish. I'll probably end up reading Against the Day since I bought it for a bookclub on gr that I got an invite for but man that book is huge so I bought it but haven't read but a couple, and I mean just a couple of pages. They had a talking dog in the first few pages which made me roll my eyes........I guess I have to be in the mood to read certain books.
"The Defense" by Nabokov is his best book I think.
I only read Junky by Burroughs.
Not at all hard to read, but it was his first novel.
I heard shit gets crazier with each book.
You may try reading the original released version of The Stand. It's "only" 823 pages while the uncut version is well over 1,000. I've heard some self-proclaimed King aficionados say that they prefer the original, shorter version. Also, don't worry about the plague. *cough cough* The true focus of the book is on the characters and how they must work together to overcome the evil they face.
I had no idea there were two versions - damn, now I'm torn!
Lost in the Funhouse is a great place to start on John Barth. It is a short collection of stories which is very representative of his postmodern experimentation while also being very fun.
+Shashank Singh Thanks for the suggestion man! It's high time I read something by him!
Marquis de Sade ??
Naked Lunch is a novel you have to surrender yourself to. You just have to follow the drug logic -- also Burroughs used cut up for this so it jumps around a lot, so you have to be willing to just go with it. It is definitely satire, so that should help frame the novel as well.
The Stand isn't about the plague particularly. It's about the struggle between good and evil that emerges in a now less populous world. I've never been rooting for and against characters more than I have in this book. Read it. You Must!
+HangPotato I really hope I'll be able to read it soon - you're not the first one to underline how I shouldn't be too scared about the whole plague thing! Thanks for the suggestion :)
Naked Lunch is a great read, it's not long (under 200 pages), and most of it is very readable (it loses all structure right near the end). You should read it at least once :-)
If you're going to read some Burroughs Junky would be the place to start.
I just finished naked lunch, it wasn't a fun experience but interesting none the less.
Pale Fire is an absolute masterpiece. You will not regret reading it
The Real Sebastian Knight was a good one by Nabokov
I read Burrough's The Ticket that Exploded and I can honestly say I will never willingly pick up another of his books. It was so irritating and mindboggling. This was part of the cut up series, where he literally cut up and scrambled sentences and paragraphs without caring if it made sense to the plot or anything. What a headache!
Barth playing linguistic games???? This coming from the guy who loves Pynchon?!?!?!?
King is overrated
Agree
Lost In The Funhouse by John Barth is funny and short and great!
Haven't read Barth or Proust, though I plan to someday. I think you might be surprised on how easy The Stand is to read. Sure, it has a lot of characters, but King's trademark worldbuilding didn't make it too difficult for me to follow along. Pale Fire is not as disturbing as Lolita - though it still is in its own way - but I'm actually reading it right now and it is a very interesting unfolding of a personality. Burroughs is disturbing, yes. I would advise Naked Lunch over stuff like the Nova Trilogy, since there's more reflection of his own personal disturbing life there than in Naked Lunch. All things considered, Burroughs was very talented, insightful and funny, but he certainly was a piece of shit in real life like many other Beat writers.
With respect to the stand, it's typical Stephen King: it's long but it goes by quick. Not my favorite SK but enjoyable.
With respect to John Barth and Proust I'm on the same boat. Sotweed factor has been on my shelf collecting dust for quite some time haha.
I've read pale fire but never read Lolita so I can't vouch for that however I found pale fire to be excellent.
Burroughs is just bat shit insane, buckle up for the ride if you choose to take it!
Any one know who the real bad ass of Lit , for old men is ?.The best contemporary for me is easily Michell Houellebecq but I feel exhausted by his genius having absorbed the black pill vision . Any ideas ? Gotta be a living author, writing about this century , and Male only and preferably old Who's the real bad ass old man?
i really recommend the books of DEAN KOONTZ, hope you add on you TBR. thank you
How about Stephen king?
Barth is not super intimidating especially if your read Pynchon, Barth feels like Harry Potter in comparison. Sot weed factor is just about perfect. When I think of an author who is super intimidating to me it's definitely Joyce and William gass
Proust's Search has 7 books and you don't really need to read all at once.
Book 1 is about a boy's childhood. Book's 2 is mostly about his teen years and a seaside resort trip. Book 3 is about young adulthood and salon life. ..... Take your time. You can just muster strength to read the Childhood book, I think you'll be hooked.
The poetry of Jorie Graham. I am not worthy.
Cormac McCarthy scares me.
Fleur Bandito I definitely see why ;) not an easy author for style nor themes
Read 'And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks'.
Proust towers above most others. there are dull stretches but more brilliance than anywhere but shakespeare. burroughs a waste of time. try thomas mann too.
Thanks for the suggestions! I did read some Mann a few years ago - Doktor Faustus and Death in Venice; I couldn't quite stomach the latter, while the former was brilliant (though very, very dry in certain passages)! I've been willing to read Buddenbrooks for ages!
Buddenbrooks is a good place to start. Or Felix Krull which is a pretty straightforward read. But Magic Mountain is the mountain, so to speak. Plus Joseph and his Brothers which is ridiculously long but amazing
Barth is so dense, not scary just dull.
also great taste in books
Check out House of Leaves..
Ryan Golden I read that one very recently after a few failed attempts and yep, that's majorly disturbing for sure! By far the scariest book I've ever read ;) there's a review on my channel if you'd like to check it out :)
chuck palniachek
Do you intend to imply Lolita is not an actual book? If you refer to Nabokov as disturbing writer, then in what sense does this bundle of pages and words collected under the title Lolita do not form a disturbing novel?
Is there sadness to it? Laughter? Flowing lyricism? Yes, all of these combine to form this masterwork of a novel.
To quote Nabokov:
"There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm."
Lovecraft is pretty freaky!
juan8777 Most definitely :) I've read all of his fiction but I did it over a period of 4 years, because after a while I had to stop as he spooked me too much :S
The_Bookchemist LOL I hear that. I 'm about half way through "At the mountains of madness" . Every time I stop reading it, I'm always a little apprehensive about picking it up again.
IT is Stephen King's best big book. The STAND was kind've lame in the way it dragged its feet.
Pale Fire!
I'll actually be reading that at the beginning of next year :)
Do u finish the books when you really don't like them?
+Detective667 Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't (especially if they're very long), most of the time I do something that no serious reader should do which is reading in fast-forward, the first line of every paragraph or something like that. Some books you can read them like that, some books you just can't, it takes practice to understand the difference and of course, once you read a book like that you haven't read the book at all, not really ;)
Proust's Search has 7 books and you don't really need to read all at once.
Book 1 is about a boy's childhood. Book's 2 is mostly about his teen years and a seaside resort trip. Book 3 is about young adult and salon life. ..... Take your time.
I can speak to King and Burroughs having read everything of Kings up to about 1990 and the entire cannon of Burroughs. With King, his two masterpieces are 'The Stand' and 'It', and fans usually fall into one of these two 'novel' camps. The longer version of The Stand is the one to pursue. It's his most literary book in the sense of character depths and general sweep, although I must say 'It' is a scarier book. For Burroughs, one must read him in the same spirit as one would view a slapstick comedy film. His prose, at its best, is truly poetically brilliant despite what its attempting to describe. 'Cities of the Red Night' is better in some ways than Naked Lunch and certainly more accessible and broadly sci-fi...
I think I'll try Cities of the Red Night first then! Thanks for the comment!
mitick
i don't understand how you don't get nabokov.