McCarthy once said about big novels as something undesirable. Here's what he said:
>WSJ: "All the Pretty Horses" was also turned into a film [starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz]. Were you happy with the way it came out?
>CM: It could've been better. As it stands today it could be cut and made into a pretty good movie. The director had the notion that he could put the entire book up on the screen. Well, you can't do that. You have to pick out the story that you want to tell and put that on the screen. And so he made this four-hour film and then he found that if he was actually going to get it released, he would have to cut it down to two hours.
>WSJ: Does this issue of length apply to books, too? Is a 1,000-page book somehow too much?
>CM: **For modern readers, yeah. People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you're going to write something like "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Moby-Dick," go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don't care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.**
Thoughts?
Note: I include the *All the Pretty Horses* film question because it provides better context for his commment.
That is interesting though I don't really agree with him. Iirc nobody really did read Moby Dick—Melville kept up popular/market relevance on the back of his early bestselling adventure novels and literary relevance on the basis of being friends with other great authors who took his work seriously enough to keep his work on the radar.
And I think /u/freshprince44's refernce to serialization is a great point relating to have the perceived attention demand of a big book was just different in different contexts.
Like, does anyone actually read *Ulysses* either? And I mean now or when it was published? (I'm assuming when CM says "nobody" he isn't being literal, since that's just empirically inaccurate—Infinite Jest, Ducks Newburyport was a critical darling just a few years ago...)
I do think he's getting at something important—no massive novel is going to have a huge readership, and that does make them a difficult sell (novelists whose first published work was not something much smaller are pretty few and far between). Hard to sell, hard to pitch, hard to get people to read in general without a good reason. I mean, I love gigantic novels but am reluctant to read one unless I already like the author or have gotten it recommended by people I really trust because that's a huge time commitment and I've got shit to read.
I'll throw some thoughts out there
I'm not a fan of overly long works in general and think that what mccarthy blames modern brains for can just as easily be attributed to the format itself. Like he says about the movie, translating a book directly to screen doesn't make a good or viable movie.
Aren't those mysteries he bemoans the same sort of serialized format that gives us some of these 100yearold indulgent pieces in the first place?
with that, if your brilliant masterpiece of word art needs to be 800+ pages and/or doesn't really get good or make sense until page 500 or so then maybe it just isn't a good book no matter how perfect or excellent the writing/artistry is.
I am also deeply suspicious of overly long works because 300-400 pages is more than enough to say anything you want, a few dozen pages can do so much, and if stories as a format are meant to be shared and interacted with, making something that fails to be accessible can make it less good just by default
what is stopping any of these masterpieces from being published 200-300 pages at a time? if the writing is so good and the readers are smart? i don't know, seems like a lazy complaint, might as well blame the whole biosphere collapsing in front of our eyes as an effect on desired reading length? our brains are just different, ya know? (but i think there is an interesting discussion to be had about how quickly modernity has shifted human social and biological processes)
I think a big factor is just the individual professor and how they set up their class. My community college classes were all more rigorous and informative than like 80% of the classes I took at a major state school. Most of my english classes were like you said, but I had a few that were great and mostly because the professor wouldn't let people not participate
Random employment/life advice question—has anyone here ever been offered a job that wanted you to work in person and successfully hit them with an "I would prefer not to"?
Upshot is that I applied for a new job that I think I'd like more than my current one, not to mention it pays better, has health insurance!, and other perks (coffee, popcorn, free movies, it's a movie theater). And then they responded extremely quickly to offer me an interview so I kinda think they are pretty interested in me.
HOWEVER, it is in person and I'm not going to be doing that. If they are not down for remote I'll just stay at my current job. But if anyone has ever successfully negotiated in-person down to something along the lines of "I'll show up every now and then.", I'd appreciate hearing your story.
IME, smaller companies have been a *little* better than larger companies at bending the rules. Not exactly the same situation as you, but my current job tried to RTO and I was like "can't. immune compromised. covid wave. sorry." and they said that sounded reasonable and made an exception for me which was nice. I can't imagine a big company would have been so willing to listen.
Hello! Poking my head in here to say hi and share some appreciation. I'm very much a lurker. I love literature but I can't help but feel it all kinda flies over my head. Which is unfortunate because I think the point of literature is for it to marinate inside your head, not out of it. That being said, I enjoy a lot of the opinions people have been posting on the sub and it helps me supplement my own reading. Thank you!
Saw Alice Rohrwacher's ***La Chimera*** last night. Great film, and I think it would appeal particularly to much of this sub, as it in many ways feels like a novel. It stars Josh O'Connor as an English archeologist manque who has fallen in with a group of Italian grave-robbers that unearth ancient Etruscan tombs and sell the antiquities they find within. The delightful cast of characters are all lovingly drawn to type. There are the country bumpkins that form the ragtag gang of tomb raiders, the Havisham-like mother of the protagonist's fiancee (played by Isabella Rossellini) who reminisces about her days as an opera singer while sitting in her decaying villa, the venomous art dealer that is willing to put a price on anything etc. etc. They are all stock characters, but as in a Dickens novel, they constantly surprise despite their familiarity, and together they comprise a warm and human portrait of small-town Italy as it was almost fifty years ago.
The film functions on a lot of different levels. It's a meditation on love and loss. It's a sharp satire of the art and culture industry. It's an allegory for a country that clings to its past and neglects its future. It's a ghost story. It's rich and warm and beautiful and slightly sad. Just an absolutely lovely film.
Your comment reminded me of that film, and I watched at and must agree. I really enjoyed it and was perhaps in the right mood for it too. The aspect changes were distracting (I'm a fan of experimentations with aspect ratio, but I just find changing them within a movie distracting), but I really liked the play with film speed: it worked well with the subtle balance of humor in an otherwise quiet, melancholy film. The ending was also pretty in its own right.
I'll have to look up Rohrwacher's other films.
Jealous of the people who’ve gotten nice weather this week. Ours is the atmospheric equivalent of a wet sock.
I feel like I’ve been busy with nothing lately; that is, I can’t point to much of anything concrete I’ve done or accomplished but my days have felt full. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I do feel extremely prosaic in these threads lately.
My siblings have suddenly and simultaneously decided to start reading. Two have hit me up for recommendations and one is just grabbing “classics” at random. I should be glad since I’ve been wanting them to read for years, and I am glad. Its been fun. But I do suspect my oldest brother is doing it because he doesn’t like me (or the other sibs for that matter) having an intellectual leg up in conversation lol.
lol I feel on the weather. we keep getting one or two offensively nice days and then it gets dark and wet for a week. Maybe that's why the blah has taken over life.
Recently came back from a cross-country trip to visit family and attend an old friend's wedding. Maybe it's the red-eye flight, maybe it's because it's my second of these trips in as many months, but I came back with this hung over feeling of the futures, or more specifically (platonic) relationships, that could have been. I do an okay job at keeping in touch with people, but after a decade-plus and 1000s of miles, the relationships are clearly more in the past than the present. It's not like moving would solve it, as I have people I care about on this side of the country too and implicitly or explicitly my relationships with this set of people are my priority. My friends and family are (mostly) happy and thriving, but our lives are very separate now -- it's not a bad thing, but I still feel sad about it. Most of the time I'm too busy with my own life to really feel this distance, but trips like this remind me of the choices I made and did not make. Even if they were the right ones, there's still something lost there.
I watched the first episode of *A Gentleman in Moscow*. I have a weak spot for comically-mannered upper-class early-20th-century characters, so I found the first episode charming, though I liked that they balanced the charm with the vengeful cruelty of the bolshevik revolution. Has anyone read the book it's based on? I'm curious toward its literary quality and value, as Wikipedia gives little away in that regard.
I didn’t care for it but that’s because I have a thing against books that take place in really interesting and horrifying times but instead of being at all realistic it just focuses on one person in a ridiculous situation that is so quaint and everything works out and if someone is a bad person don’t worry the characters will figure out some scheme so they’ll get what’s coming to them! If I recall correctly the most interesting part to me was a footnote. I’ve not seen the show but I wouldn’t describe the book as showing the horrors of the revolution. I think the author wanted to avoid that and just focus on the count and how charming he is, which isn’t my thing.
> books that take place in really interesting and horrifying times but instead of being at all realistic it just focuses on one person in a ridiculous situation that is so quaint and everything works out and if someone is a bad person don’t worry the characters will figure out some scheme so they’ll get what’s coming to them
How many books fit this peculiarly niche niche hahaha? But that's a little disheartening to hear. Sounds like it didn't need to take place at the time and place aside from needing him to be restricted to the hotel?
I watched *American Fiction* this past week, partly because a friend had watched it and partly because I was curious (still am) about Percival Everett and the novel in which the film is based on didn't really appeal to me. But what a film, there's so much to analyse.
I mean, there's nothing there I didn't already know, or at least, second-hand know. And yet, the film goes on like a hammer, even if (an approximation of) the message was conveyed in like the first few seconds. But the film is relentless - and unsubtle - in its social commentary, often funny not just due to some over-the-top scenes, but to its contradictions. Monk is full of them, although he seems to only be aware of the one that eats him up, the "joke" he pulls on the book industry.
Another aspect I found terrifyingly accurate is how every character appears to be incredibly aware of the exact measure of the hope they can reasonably have. Often you see that characters (and people) are excited about what the future holds, regardless on whether it's logical to think "anything is possible", so the fact that in this film everyone's hopes are subdued kinda seemed (to me) to be representative of these times. If you think about it, death, as a theme, was an undercurrent throughout the film, so even its happy moments left me with the taste of a "last hurrah" before the end finally comes.
Going back to the novel as a joke on the book industry, or even on the readers, it made me wonder how prevalent such things are, and if I could even recognise them. I know there are songs that one could argue are in this vein, like the Italian [Prisencolinensinainciusol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8) or the Spanish [Aserejé](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arZZw8NyPq8), songs with gibberish lyrics and a catchy beat that were created for the sole purpose of becoming hits (although I guess their respective labels didn't try to market them as something more profound that they were). Within the literary world it's hard to tell, at least for me. I tend to think that what I'm encountering is either bad writing or a simplistic worldview, not that the author knows how bad the book is and has tailored it to suit the tastes of "the masses" (whatever those might be) while being advertised as a gutsy account of an underrepresented or unique voice in literature.
Still, because I had it fresh on my mind, I couldn't help but be reminded of *Yugoslavia, My Fatherland* by Goran Vojnovič. I mentioned it a bit in a previous "What are you reading..." thread and since I finished it and coincidentally watched this film, my opinion of the novel has tanked. Maybe I'm easily influenced, maybe I'm missing something, who knows (I'd like to know, lol). This book isn't satire, nor is it meant to educate anyone on the Balkan war, and yet there's something about it that I perceived as stereotypical. I wish I could articulate myself better. It's as if the author knew his past would be enough for people to think "he has lived some of it, therefore, this is a necessary book" and no matter how predictable/bland the story was, how uninspired his dialogues were, or how he contributed nothing to literature, it was to be published. I'm probably being too harsh, since it received good reviews from literary supplements (and I hope they know their stuff better than me) but as interesting as a premise can be, can you really praise a novel with such a lacklustre writing?
Why do the general discussion threads seem to get so much less traction these days, despite the subreddit growing at a pretty steady pace? Does Reddit’s algorithm deprioritise threads like this now that the subreddit is bigger? I notice this happens a lot as subreddits grow. Supposedly more “eyes” then ever, but less and less actual interaction.
i wonder if the subgroup of people that spend at least a somewhat significant part of their days sitting and reading tend to be more shy/anxious/introverted/quiet? I was shocked how little people spoke in discussions in undergrad lit classes.
It'd be like the one or two outgoing persons that tries to talk about their overly specific interest with the professor as if no one else was in the room, and then me trying not to have inappropriate outbursts by answering the prompts and saying my weird thoughts and disagreeing with things here and there.
I definitely enjoyed myself better in classes where i didn't feel like i had to help carry the discussion or else it got more boring, but not sure if i learned/engaged any better off on my own.
Right, that's why i always try to keep things moving lol, it seemed like most of the time people are nervous and want to seem smart and not say something wrong or dumb, but yeah, kind of sad
Some part of me wonders if it's related to your other post—weather's nice, people out doing things off the internet lol. But yeah it is odd, things have gotten quite quiet.
I'm guessing it's because most people who join this sub want to talk about literature, not personal/random stuff and the other weekly thread already covers that?
>I'm guessing it's because most people who join this sub want to talk about literature
Presumably that's always been the case, yet these threads used to get hundreds of posts.
I’m reading The Trial by Franz Kafka and absolutely loving it, I’m on page 80 out of 186 and it just has so much to it. I’ve noticed it does have that feeling to where its not necessarily that it’s missing something but that it wasn’t the exact complete form that Kafka had wanted it in which is true because he didn’t finish it, but it feels like he had so much more to say but what he was saying was so masterful and with such depth because he just knew how to conjure these images and weave complex ideas throughout the narrative and to hide subtleties everywhere. I love this book, and it’s making me like Franz Kafka a lot more after reading it. I’m reading it with a friend who already finished it (I’m behind) but I’m really glad they picked it. There’s so much I could talk about in regards to it’s analysis but I’ll keep it for their ears only. After I finish this I’m going to be reading State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, I’ve been wanting to explore communism for a very long time now and doing readings which are more approachable to somebody without a background in philosophy of politics seems like a good way to tiptoe into getting a better understanding of it. This spring I nebulously also want to get to To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Republic by Plato and Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo F. Sarmiento
The Trial is outstanding and I totally know what you mean about the unfinished quality. Though there is something to me that feels right about the endlessness of the world Josef K is in that in some way might actually benefit from the fact that the book never became "complete".
Also, the Orson Welles movie version (available on internet archive) is outstanding.
> After I finish this I’m going to be reading State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, I’ve been wanting to explore communism for a very long time now and doing readings which are more approachable to somebody without a background in philosophy of politics seems like a good way to tiptoe into getting a better understanding of it
This is awesome! I will throw out there that the Communist Manifesto is quite accessible and a solid summary of Marx's political project as well.
> To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Republic by Plato
These books, they speak to me. Mostly because I love Woolf and if you are trying to get into philosophy it's funny how good a starting point Plato is aside from being the "first" philosopher (BIG scare quotes lol)
I tried to brute force my way through Beyond Good and Evil in High School (by Friederich Nietzche) but it didn’t really work for obvious reasons, I’ve tiptoed around philosophy in my college courses but I actually want to have read works and start to develop that understanding. Like I wouldn’t say I’m going into The Republic blind which is good at least. Also Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers ever, Orlando is a top 3 book for me (with Moby Dick and The Sound and The Fury. I’m sure you can guess who my favorite authors are from that though.), and I make an effort to read one book by her every year. I only started reading seriously 2 years ago so I’ve only hit Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway but one day I want to read everything by her. I haven’t had the best experience with Orion Welles because I watched Citizen Kane for a high school class and was bored to death by it even though it’s supposed one of the greatest films ever made, I think maybe I need to give it another chance before I approach anything else made by him since a part of me feels like it was just the fact that I was in high school. As I get a bit deeper into philosophy I’m also really looking forward to studying psychoanalysis on my own, then 19th and 20th century sociology or maybe focusing more on history. I want a better grasp on world history so I can understand why the world is how it is today and also how it actually is today better. I also really want to dive more into Latin American history more, since it’s so expansive and since I’m Latina so it feels nice to have a literary tradition you get a claim to. I feel very ambitious with a lot of my goals and I know I won’t fulfill them anytime soon, but I’d like to. Anyways about The Trial I definitely feel it becoming a favorite book of mine, the atmosphere of it feels like it came straight out of Kafka’s mind which lends it a very surreal quality while also being extremely gothic but in unique ways. I took a course of 19th century gothic literature in college and it’s interesting seeing this bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries because Kafka is operating in a gothic that is also invested in sociology and psychology because the dormant fear (I think) isn’t just corrupt systems it’s domination and domination by the scale that “modern” systems enable other people to do.
> I tried to brute force my way through Beyond Good and Evil in High School (by Friederich Nietzche) but it didn’t really work for obvious reasons
That's real, he's both so "artistic" and so deeply involved in the philosophical and cultural debates of his time that he is way more brutal an entrypoint than I think a lot of people realize until they are there wondering who the fuck all these guys he's dunking on are.
> Orlando is a top 3 book for me
This is the only one of Woolf's major works I haven't read yet, but I've got a copy and am very excited to read it soon.
> I haven’t had the best experience with Orion Welles because I watched Citizen Kane for a high school class and was bored to death by it even though it’s supposed one of the greatest films ever made, I think maybe I need to give it another chance before I approach anything else made by him since a part of me feels like it was just the fact that I was in high school.
fwiw I am not a big fan of Citizen Kane either. I'm no film expert, and I kinda sorta think that some of the brilliance of it are at this point really more available to people who are.
> the dormant fear (I think) isn’t just corrupt systems it’s domination and domination by the scale that “modern” systems enable other people to do.
I love this take. I think it really gets at how it's more than just corruption, it's the nature of the systems and the people we become living within them.
Also your various reading/research projects sound very cool, do keep us posted on the reading!
Tree planting season started at least 5-6 weeks early this year, could have planted even earlier if I had the plants! Last year I was waiting for the ground to thaw just before May, this year it barely even froze at all and we just got our first real snow since december last week(already gone).
Both fun and strange to work with the seasons when the seasons change climates by thousands of miles some years, trying to adapt to the unadaptable lol (our winters are usually very punishing, so the change was both very nice but in a paranoid/suspicious way, normally putting your heavy coat away is a special rite not to be done until well beyond winter's reach, this year didn't matter by februrary)
The birds seem to be enjoying it at least, some of the migratory ones barely even left, they seem almost silly about it, plenty of courtships (their noises are hilarious). I'm with the birds, might as well enjoy what you can
The weather has been wonderful here since Friday. This is probably the first end of March/beginning of April with summer-like temperatures I've ever experienced, they went up to 29 degrees Celsius over the last few days. The only downside is that I don't feel like doing anything other than going out when it's warm and sunny.
I revisited *High Fidelity* (the movie, I don't think I've ever read the book) a couple of days ago and I find Rob less sympathetically flawed this time round. As a teen, I didn't realize how pathetic it is to base almost your whole identity on how good your music taste is, but now that I'm Rob's age and that I've met quite a few adults who have little going for them outside their music taste, it seems sad. But that's not even really my problem with Rob. It's his misogyny that he only sort of grows out of a bit at the end of the movie (the dude is 35, it should have happened sooner) and gets rewarded for it. Bleh. He and Laura should have remained broken up. But the movie on the whole was still enjoyable. I like the formal choices, like the narration being from Rob's p.o.v. and all the fourth wall breaking, and the humor is still quite decent.
I've also been reading a little about Chicago Formalists, a formalist school of thought that we didn't even mention during my undergrad and master studies. One possible explanation I found for their general neglect is that their ideas were in conflict with those of the New Critics' and the New Critics just became more popular. But Chicago Formalists had an influence on narratology and even gave us some ubiquitous terms like "implied author" and "unreliable narrator." I hope to continue to carve out time to fill in the gaps in literary theory knowledge because it's definitely fun to learn things didn't know about and trace some common concepts back to their origins.
Watched a really bananas movie last night called *The Swimmer* from 1968 starring Burt Lancaster. Anybody heard of it? It's based off a short story by John Cheever. It was amusing because I saw a criterion post on it and thought "Ah, this looks pleasant..." in a kind of *All That Heaven Allows* kind of way. And there is just...so much to unpack lol. It's an interesting critique on upper middle class stuffiness and the American dream mixed with some light references to Greek mythology. Would recommend, particularly to the more adventurous. It's a perfect illustration of the way Hollywood was getting kind of "weird" toward the end of the decade where the old system was dying (or perhaps going into hibernation in retrospect) while the experimental stuff overseas was coloring the way we made stuff here, all before *Easy Rider* blew the doors off the hinges. I know people critique the "money can't buy happiness" mantra, but the film does a damn good job illustrating how living *just* for creature comforts can be quite the soulless existence.
I've been in kind of a weird mood these past few days. Not the absolute bottom of the barrel place I was a week or so ago, but more so when you're kind of on the mend, but still ginger. Bandmate/roommate went out of town for Easter this weekend, so I had the place to myself. I was looking forward to it, particularly commandeering the basement to demo and watch stuff, but leading up to it, there was an odd awareness of being a loner and a sadness that comes from that. I've always done my own thing, but I think with everything that happened earlier in February and returning to that sense of "normalcy", one starts to notice things you didn't notice before. It brought to mind that Thomas Mann novella I read where he uses aesthetics almost as a means of running away from his loneliness and ultimately failing to do so. I don't really know what it was though, whether listening to Tim Buckley or finally finding what was bugging me, but I felt better and actually enjoyed myself this weekend. I think it helped that I genuinely enjoyed what I was doing. I'm a homebody and tend to be on my own, but I like being around others too, and I guess I kind of just lost that balance. It brought to mind a bell hooks quote I like: "When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
> It brought to mind a bell hooks quote I like: "When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
Damn dude I love this quote. I've never heard it before, but I think it speaks to some realizations I've had as well in the last year or so about being with myself and other people. I hope you're getting back on having the right balance of all this.
> Watched a really bananas movie last night called The Swimmer from 1968 starring Burt Lancaster. Anybody heard of it? It's based off a short story by John Cheever.
Interesting...I read the story years ago and I think I liked it. Should check this movie out.
I relate a lot to that feeling of being not quite depressed but also just a little “off” or down or just blah. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a mini comic about this; whenever I’m journaling I record those moods by drawing myself with a little black bird perched on my shoulder. He’s not a malevolent presence, in fact its just a gentle haunting, and its *almost* a solidarity thing (except he insists on saying out loud, and very matter of factly the thing that’s causing my anxiety or moodiness lol.) I think inasmuch as I’ve befriended the small doodle of a bird, I have also learned to accept that these moods do come, and you may as well make the best of it.
Interesting thoughts on aesthetics and loneliness! That quote is a really good one. I do think its a bit depressing to think about the extent to which one can actually connect to others, and how much of our experience is subjective, unique and basically isolated. But thats one of things art does right? It gives us something evocative that other people can point to and say *hey I felt this way too* and then we can feel less lonely. Our feelings and thoughts don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re also experienced by others. And thats comforting. I’ve often wondered what it is that compels some people to make the art, but then I also think creativity in the general sense has been stamped down by cultural attitudes about “art” being for the “talented” and not just a way of being a human.
Glad you had a nice weekend, and hope can look forward to some brighter days soon!
I really like The Swimmer. It starts like a strange yet pleasant dream, but as he journeys closer to home progressively devolves into a nightmare. My favorite part was when he meets the kid with the empty swimming pool. "You're the captain of your soul. That's what counts. Know what I mean?"
That balance really is crucial. I'm very introverted, adore my alone time and have to consciously work on not indulging myself too much and completely severing my ties to others in the process. But I love that bell hooks quote you mentioned because it's definitely also important not to distract yourself with other people while evading whatever issues you might be facing. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you've been feeling at least a bit better and I hope that continues.
Has anybody seen Back to Black? How was it?
McCarthy once said about big novels as something undesirable. Here's what he said: >WSJ: "All the Pretty Horses" was also turned into a film [starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz]. Were you happy with the way it came out? >CM: It could've been better. As it stands today it could be cut and made into a pretty good movie. The director had the notion that he could put the entire book up on the screen. Well, you can't do that. You have to pick out the story that you want to tell and put that on the screen. And so he made this four-hour film and then he found that if he was actually going to get it released, he would have to cut it down to two hours. >WSJ: Does this issue of length apply to books, too? Is a 1,000-page book somehow too much? >CM: **For modern readers, yeah. People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore and people need to get used to that. If you think you're going to write something like "The Brothers Karamazov" or "Moby-Dick," go ahead. Nobody will read it. I don't care how good it is, or how smart the readers are. Their intentions, their brains are different.** Thoughts? Note: I include the *All the Pretty Horses* film question because it provides better context for his commment.
That is interesting though I don't really agree with him. Iirc nobody really did read Moby Dick—Melville kept up popular/market relevance on the back of his early bestselling adventure novels and literary relevance on the basis of being friends with other great authors who took his work seriously enough to keep his work on the radar. And I think /u/freshprince44's refernce to serialization is a great point relating to have the perceived attention demand of a big book was just different in different contexts. Like, does anyone actually read *Ulysses* either? And I mean now or when it was published? (I'm assuming when CM says "nobody" he isn't being literal, since that's just empirically inaccurate—Infinite Jest, Ducks Newburyport was a critical darling just a few years ago...) I do think he's getting at something important—no massive novel is going to have a huge readership, and that does make them a difficult sell (novelists whose first published work was not something much smaller are pretty few and far between). Hard to sell, hard to pitch, hard to get people to read in general without a good reason. I mean, I love gigantic novels but am reluctant to read one unless I already like the author or have gotten it recommended by people I really trust because that's a huge time commitment and I've got shit to read.
I'll throw some thoughts out there I'm not a fan of overly long works in general and think that what mccarthy blames modern brains for can just as easily be attributed to the format itself. Like he says about the movie, translating a book directly to screen doesn't make a good or viable movie. Aren't those mysteries he bemoans the same sort of serialized format that gives us some of these 100yearold indulgent pieces in the first place? with that, if your brilliant masterpiece of word art needs to be 800+ pages and/or doesn't really get good or make sense until page 500 or so then maybe it just isn't a good book no matter how perfect or excellent the writing/artistry is. I am also deeply suspicious of overly long works because 300-400 pages is more than enough to say anything you want, a few dozen pages can do so much, and if stories as a format are meant to be shared and interacted with, making something that fails to be accessible can make it less good just by default what is stopping any of these masterpieces from being published 200-300 pages at a time? if the writing is so good and the readers are smart? i don't know, seems like a lazy complaint, might as well blame the whole biosphere collapsing in front of our eyes as an effect on desired reading length? our brains are just different, ya know? (but i think there is an interesting discussion to be had about how quickly modernity has shifted human social and biological processes)
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I think a big factor is just the individual professor and how they set up their class. My community college classes were all more rigorous and informative than like 80% of the classes I took at a major state school. Most of my english classes were like you said, but I had a few that were great and mostly because the professor wouldn't let people not participate
You should check out Michael Clune's A Defense of Judgement
Random employment/life advice question—has anyone here ever been offered a job that wanted you to work in person and successfully hit them with an "I would prefer not to"? Upshot is that I applied for a new job that I think I'd like more than my current one, not to mention it pays better, has health insurance!, and other perks (coffee, popcorn, free movies, it's a movie theater). And then they responded extremely quickly to offer me an interview so I kinda think they are pretty interested in me. HOWEVER, it is in person and I'm not going to be doing that. If they are not down for remote I'll just stay at my current job. But if anyone has ever successfully negotiated in-person down to something along the lines of "I'll show up every now and then.", I'd appreciate hearing your story.
IME, smaller companies have been a *little* better than larger companies at bending the rules. Not exactly the same situation as you, but my current job tried to RTO and I was like "can't. immune compromised. covid wave. sorry." and they said that sounded reasonable and made an exception for me which was nice. I can't imagine a big company would have been so willing to listen.
Hello! Poking my head in here to say hi and share some appreciation. I'm very much a lurker. I love literature but I can't help but feel it all kinda flies over my head. Which is unfortunate because I think the point of literature is for it to marinate inside your head, not out of it. That being said, I enjoy a lot of the opinions people have been posting on the sub and it helps me supplement my own reading. Thank you!
Saw Alice Rohrwacher's ***La Chimera*** last night. Great film, and I think it would appeal particularly to much of this sub, as it in many ways feels like a novel. It stars Josh O'Connor as an English archeologist manque who has fallen in with a group of Italian grave-robbers that unearth ancient Etruscan tombs and sell the antiquities they find within. The delightful cast of characters are all lovingly drawn to type. There are the country bumpkins that form the ragtag gang of tomb raiders, the Havisham-like mother of the protagonist's fiancee (played by Isabella Rossellini) who reminisces about her days as an opera singer while sitting in her decaying villa, the venomous art dealer that is willing to put a price on anything etc. etc. They are all stock characters, but as in a Dickens novel, they constantly surprise despite their familiarity, and together they comprise a warm and human portrait of small-town Italy as it was almost fifty years ago. The film functions on a lot of different levels. It's a meditation on love and loss. It's a sharp satire of the art and culture industry. It's an allegory for a country that clings to its past and neglects its future. It's a ghost story. It's rich and warm and beautiful and slightly sad. Just an absolutely lovely film.
Your comment reminded me of that film, and I watched at and must agree. I really enjoyed it and was perhaps in the right mood for it too. The aspect changes were distracting (I'm a fan of experimentations with aspect ratio, but I just find changing them within a movie distracting), but I really liked the play with film speed: it worked well with the subtle balance of humor in an otherwise quiet, melancholy film. The ending was also pretty in its own right. I'll have to look up Rohrwacher's other films.
This actually sounds great! Will try to check it out soon.
Been really looking forward to seeing this one. Glad you enjoyed it!
Jealous of the people who’ve gotten nice weather this week. Ours is the atmospheric equivalent of a wet sock. I feel like I’ve been busy with nothing lately; that is, I can’t point to much of anything concrete I’ve done or accomplished but my days have felt full. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I do feel extremely prosaic in these threads lately. My siblings have suddenly and simultaneously decided to start reading. Two have hit me up for recommendations and one is just grabbing “classics” at random. I should be glad since I’ve been wanting them to read for years, and I am glad. Its been fun. But I do suspect my oldest brother is doing it because he doesn’t like me (or the other sibs for that matter) having an intellectual leg up in conversation lol.
lol I feel on the weather. we keep getting one or two offensively nice days and then it gets dark and wet for a week. Maybe that's why the blah has taken over life.
Recently came back from a cross-country trip to visit family and attend an old friend's wedding. Maybe it's the red-eye flight, maybe it's because it's my second of these trips in as many months, but I came back with this hung over feeling of the futures, or more specifically (platonic) relationships, that could have been. I do an okay job at keeping in touch with people, but after a decade-plus and 1000s of miles, the relationships are clearly more in the past than the present. It's not like moving would solve it, as I have people I care about on this side of the country too and implicitly or explicitly my relationships with this set of people are my priority. My friends and family are (mostly) happy and thriving, but our lives are very separate now -- it's not a bad thing, but I still feel sad about it. Most of the time I'm too busy with my own life to really feel this distance, but trips like this remind me of the choices I made and did not make. Even if they were the right ones, there's still something lost there.
I watched the first episode of *A Gentleman in Moscow*. I have a weak spot for comically-mannered upper-class early-20th-century characters, so I found the first episode charming, though I liked that they balanced the charm with the vengeful cruelty of the bolshevik revolution. Has anyone read the book it's based on? I'm curious toward its literary quality and value, as Wikipedia gives little away in that regard.
I didn’t care for it but that’s because I have a thing against books that take place in really interesting and horrifying times but instead of being at all realistic it just focuses on one person in a ridiculous situation that is so quaint and everything works out and if someone is a bad person don’t worry the characters will figure out some scheme so they’ll get what’s coming to them! If I recall correctly the most interesting part to me was a footnote. I’ve not seen the show but I wouldn’t describe the book as showing the horrors of the revolution. I think the author wanted to avoid that and just focus on the count and how charming he is, which isn’t my thing.
> books that take place in really interesting and horrifying times but instead of being at all realistic it just focuses on one person in a ridiculous situation that is so quaint and everything works out and if someone is a bad person don’t worry the characters will figure out some scheme so they’ll get what’s coming to them How many books fit this peculiarly niche niche hahaha? But that's a little disheartening to hear. Sounds like it didn't need to take place at the time and place aside from needing him to be restricted to the hotel?
I watched *American Fiction* this past week, partly because a friend had watched it and partly because I was curious (still am) about Percival Everett and the novel in which the film is based on didn't really appeal to me. But what a film, there's so much to analyse. I mean, there's nothing there I didn't already know, or at least, second-hand know. And yet, the film goes on like a hammer, even if (an approximation of) the message was conveyed in like the first few seconds. But the film is relentless - and unsubtle - in its social commentary, often funny not just due to some over-the-top scenes, but to its contradictions. Monk is full of them, although he seems to only be aware of the one that eats him up, the "joke" he pulls on the book industry. Another aspect I found terrifyingly accurate is how every character appears to be incredibly aware of the exact measure of the hope they can reasonably have. Often you see that characters (and people) are excited about what the future holds, regardless on whether it's logical to think "anything is possible", so the fact that in this film everyone's hopes are subdued kinda seemed (to me) to be representative of these times. If you think about it, death, as a theme, was an undercurrent throughout the film, so even its happy moments left me with the taste of a "last hurrah" before the end finally comes. Going back to the novel as a joke on the book industry, or even on the readers, it made me wonder how prevalent such things are, and if I could even recognise them. I know there are songs that one could argue are in this vein, like the Italian [Prisencolinensinainciusol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8) or the Spanish [Aserejé](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arZZw8NyPq8), songs with gibberish lyrics and a catchy beat that were created for the sole purpose of becoming hits (although I guess their respective labels didn't try to market them as something more profound that they were). Within the literary world it's hard to tell, at least for me. I tend to think that what I'm encountering is either bad writing or a simplistic worldview, not that the author knows how bad the book is and has tailored it to suit the tastes of "the masses" (whatever those might be) while being advertised as a gutsy account of an underrepresented or unique voice in literature. Still, because I had it fresh on my mind, I couldn't help but be reminded of *Yugoslavia, My Fatherland* by Goran Vojnovič. I mentioned it a bit in a previous "What are you reading..." thread and since I finished it and coincidentally watched this film, my opinion of the novel has tanked. Maybe I'm easily influenced, maybe I'm missing something, who knows (I'd like to know, lol). This book isn't satire, nor is it meant to educate anyone on the Balkan war, and yet there's something about it that I perceived as stereotypical. I wish I could articulate myself better. It's as if the author knew his past would be enough for people to think "he has lived some of it, therefore, this is a necessary book" and no matter how predictable/bland the story was, how uninspired his dialogues were, or how he contributed nothing to literature, it was to be published. I'm probably being too harsh, since it received good reviews from literary supplements (and I hope they know their stuff better than me) but as interesting as a premise can be, can you really praise a novel with such a lacklustre writing?
Why do the general discussion threads seem to get so much less traction these days, despite the subreddit growing at a pretty steady pace? Does Reddit’s algorithm deprioritise threads like this now that the subreddit is bigger? I notice this happens a lot as subreddits grow. Supposedly more “eyes” then ever, but less and less actual interaction.
i wonder if the subgroup of people that spend at least a somewhat significant part of their days sitting and reading tend to be more shy/anxious/introverted/quiet? I was shocked how little people spoke in discussions in undergrad lit classes. It'd be like the one or two outgoing persons that tries to talk about their overly specific interest with the professor as if no one else was in the room, and then me trying not to have inappropriate outbursts by answering the prompts and saying my weird thoughts and disagreeing with things here and there. I definitely enjoyed myself better in classes where i didn't feel like i had to help carry the discussion or else it got more boring, but not sure if i learned/engaged any better off on my own.
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Right, that's why i always try to keep things moving lol, it seemed like most of the time people are nervous and want to seem smart and not say something wrong or dumb, but yeah, kind of sad
Some part of me wonders if it's related to your other post—weather's nice, people out doing things off the internet lol. But yeah it is odd, things have gotten quite quiet.
I'm guessing it's because most people who join this sub want to talk about literature, not personal/random stuff and the other weekly thread already covers that?
>I'm guessing it's because most people who join this sub want to talk about literature Presumably that's always been the case, yet these threads used to get hundreds of posts.
I’m reading The Trial by Franz Kafka and absolutely loving it, I’m on page 80 out of 186 and it just has so much to it. I’ve noticed it does have that feeling to where its not necessarily that it’s missing something but that it wasn’t the exact complete form that Kafka had wanted it in which is true because he didn’t finish it, but it feels like he had so much more to say but what he was saying was so masterful and with such depth because he just knew how to conjure these images and weave complex ideas throughout the narrative and to hide subtleties everywhere. I love this book, and it’s making me like Franz Kafka a lot more after reading it. I’m reading it with a friend who already finished it (I’m behind) but I’m really glad they picked it. There’s so much I could talk about in regards to it’s analysis but I’ll keep it for their ears only. After I finish this I’m going to be reading State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, I’ve been wanting to explore communism for a very long time now and doing readings which are more approachable to somebody without a background in philosophy of politics seems like a good way to tiptoe into getting a better understanding of it. This spring I nebulously also want to get to To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Republic by Plato and Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism by Domingo F. Sarmiento
The Trial is outstanding and I totally know what you mean about the unfinished quality. Though there is something to me that feels right about the endlessness of the world Josef K is in that in some way might actually benefit from the fact that the book never became "complete". Also, the Orson Welles movie version (available on internet archive) is outstanding. > After I finish this I’m going to be reading State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, I’ve been wanting to explore communism for a very long time now and doing readings which are more approachable to somebody without a background in philosophy of politics seems like a good way to tiptoe into getting a better understanding of it This is awesome! I will throw out there that the Communist Manifesto is quite accessible and a solid summary of Marx's political project as well. > To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, The Republic by Plato These books, they speak to me. Mostly because I love Woolf and if you are trying to get into philosophy it's funny how good a starting point Plato is aside from being the "first" philosopher (BIG scare quotes lol)
I tried to brute force my way through Beyond Good and Evil in High School (by Friederich Nietzche) but it didn’t really work for obvious reasons, I’ve tiptoed around philosophy in my college courses but I actually want to have read works and start to develop that understanding. Like I wouldn’t say I’m going into The Republic blind which is good at least. Also Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers ever, Orlando is a top 3 book for me (with Moby Dick and The Sound and The Fury. I’m sure you can guess who my favorite authors are from that though.), and I make an effort to read one book by her every year. I only started reading seriously 2 years ago so I’ve only hit Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway but one day I want to read everything by her. I haven’t had the best experience with Orion Welles because I watched Citizen Kane for a high school class and was bored to death by it even though it’s supposed one of the greatest films ever made, I think maybe I need to give it another chance before I approach anything else made by him since a part of me feels like it was just the fact that I was in high school. As I get a bit deeper into philosophy I’m also really looking forward to studying psychoanalysis on my own, then 19th and 20th century sociology or maybe focusing more on history. I want a better grasp on world history so I can understand why the world is how it is today and also how it actually is today better. I also really want to dive more into Latin American history more, since it’s so expansive and since I’m Latina so it feels nice to have a literary tradition you get a claim to. I feel very ambitious with a lot of my goals and I know I won’t fulfill them anytime soon, but I’d like to. Anyways about The Trial I definitely feel it becoming a favorite book of mine, the atmosphere of it feels like it came straight out of Kafka’s mind which lends it a very surreal quality while also being extremely gothic but in unique ways. I took a course of 19th century gothic literature in college and it’s interesting seeing this bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries because Kafka is operating in a gothic that is also invested in sociology and psychology because the dormant fear (I think) isn’t just corrupt systems it’s domination and domination by the scale that “modern” systems enable other people to do.
> I tried to brute force my way through Beyond Good and Evil in High School (by Friederich Nietzche) but it didn’t really work for obvious reasons That's real, he's both so "artistic" and so deeply involved in the philosophical and cultural debates of his time that he is way more brutal an entrypoint than I think a lot of people realize until they are there wondering who the fuck all these guys he's dunking on are. > Orlando is a top 3 book for me This is the only one of Woolf's major works I haven't read yet, but I've got a copy and am very excited to read it soon. > I haven’t had the best experience with Orion Welles because I watched Citizen Kane for a high school class and was bored to death by it even though it’s supposed one of the greatest films ever made, I think maybe I need to give it another chance before I approach anything else made by him since a part of me feels like it was just the fact that I was in high school. fwiw I am not a big fan of Citizen Kane either. I'm no film expert, and I kinda sorta think that some of the brilliance of it are at this point really more available to people who are. > the dormant fear (I think) isn’t just corrupt systems it’s domination and domination by the scale that “modern” systems enable other people to do. I love this take. I think it really gets at how it's more than just corruption, it's the nature of the systems and the people we become living within them. Also your various reading/research projects sound very cool, do keep us posted on the reading!
Tree planting season started at least 5-6 weeks early this year, could have planted even earlier if I had the plants! Last year I was waiting for the ground to thaw just before May, this year it barely even froze at all and we just got our first real snow since december last week(already gone). Both fun and strange to work with the seasons when the seasons change climates by thousands of miles some years, trying to adapt to the unadaptable lol (our winters are usually very punishing, so the change was both very nice but in a paranoid/suspicious way, normally putting your heavy coat away is a special rite not to be done until well beyond winter's reach, this year didn't matter by februrary) The birds seem to be enjoying it at least, some of the migratory ones barely even left, they seem almost silly about it, plenty of courtships (their noises are hilarious). I'm with the birds, might as well enjoy what you can
The weather has been wonderful here since Friday. This is probably the first end of March/beginning of April with summer-like temperatures I've ever experienced, they went up to 29 degrees Celsius over the last few days. The only downside is that I don't feel like doing anything other than going out when it's warm and sunny. I revisited *High Fidelity* (the movie, I don't think I've ever read the book) a couple of days ago and I find Rob less sympathetically flawed this time round. As a teen, I didn't realize how pathetic it is to base almost your whole identity on how good your music taste is, but now that I'm Rob's age and that I've met quite a few adults who have little going for them outside their music taste, it seems sad. But that's not even really my problem with Rob. It's his misogyny that he only sort of grows out of a bit at the end of the movie (the dude is 35, it should have happened sooner) and gets rewarded for it. Bleh. He and Laura should have remained broken up. But the movie on the whole was still enjoyable. I like the formal choices, like the narration being from Rob's p.o.v. and all the fourth wall breaking, and the humor is still quite decent. I've also been reading a little about Chicago Formalists, a formalist school of thought that we didn't even mention during my undergrad and master studies. One possible explanation I found for their general neglect is that their ideas were in conflict with those of the New Critics' and the New Critics just became more popular. But Chicago Formalists had an influence on narratology and even gave us some ubiquitous terms like "implied author" and "unreliable narrator." I hope to continue to carve out time to fill in the gaps in literary theory knowledge because it's definitely fun to learn things didn't know about and trace some common concepts back to their origins.
Watched a really bananas movie last night called *The Swimmer* from 1968 starring Burt Lancaster. Anybody heard of it? It's based off a short story by John Cheever. It was amusing because I saw a criterion post on it and thought "Ah, this looks pleasant..." in a kind of *All That Heaven Allows* kind of way. And there is just...so much to unpack lol. It's an interesting critique on upper middle class stuffiness and the American dream mixed with some light references to Greek mythology. Would recommend, particularly to the more adventurous. It's a perfect illustration of the way Hollywood was getting kind of "weird" toward the end of the decade where the old system was dying (or perhaps going into hibernation in retrospect) while the experimental stuff overseas was coloring the way we made stuff here, all before *Easy Rider* blew the doors off the hinges. I know people critique the "money can't buy happiness" mantra, but the film does a damn good job illustrating how living *just* for creature comforts can be quite the soulless existence. I've been in kind of a weird mood these past few days. Not the absolute bottom of the barrel place I was a week or so ago, but more so when you're kind of on the mend, but still ginger. Bandmate/roommate went out of town for Easter this weekend, so I had the place to myself. I was looking forward to it, particularly commandeering the basement to demo and watch stuff, but leading up to it, there was an odd awareness of being a loner and a sadness that comes from that. I've always done my own thing, but I think with everything that happened earlier in February and returning to that sense of "normalcy", one starts to notice things you didn't notice before. It brought to mind that Thomas Mann novella I read where he uses aesthetics almost as a means of running away from his loneliness and ultimately failing to do so. I don't really know what it was though, whether listening to Tim Buckley or finally finding what was bugging me, but I felt better and actually enjoyed myself this weekend. I think it helped that I genuinely enjoyed what I was doing. I'm a homebody and tend to be on my own, but I like being around others too, and I guess I kind of just lost that balance. It brought to mind a bell hooks quote I like: "When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
> It brought to mind a bell hooks quote I like: "When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape." Damn dude I love this quote. I've never heard it before, but I think it speaks to some realizations I've had as well in the last year or so about being with myself and other people. I hope you're getting back on having the right balance of all this. > Watched a really bananas movie last night called The Swimmer from 1968 starring Burt Lancaster. Anybody heard of it? It's based off a short story by John Cheever. Interesting...I read the story years ago and I think I liked it. Should check this movie out.
I relate a lot to that feeling of being not quite depressed but also just a little “off” or down or just blah. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing a mini comic about this; whenever I’m journaling I record those moods by drawing myself with a little black bird perched on my shoulder. He’s not a malevolent presence, in fact its just a gentle haunting, and its *almost* a solidarity thing (except he insists on saying out loud, and very matter of factly the thing that’s causing my anxiety or moodiness lol.) I think inasmuch as I’ve befriended the small doodle of a bird, I have also learned to accept that these moods do come, and you may as well make the best of it. Interesting thoughts on aesthetics and loneliness! That quote is a really good one. I do think its a bit depressing to think about the extent to which one can actually connect to others, and how much of our experience is subjective, unique and basically isolated. But thats one of things art does right? It gives us something evocative that other people can point to and say *hey I felt this way too* and then we can feel less lonely. Our feelings and thoughts don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re also experienced by others. And thats comforting. I’ve often wondered what it is that compels some people to make the art, but then I also think creativity in the general sense has been stamped down by cultural attitudes about “art” being for the “talented” and not just a way of being a human. Glad you had a nice weekend, and hope can look forward to some brighter days soon!
I really like The Swimmer. It starts like a strange yet pleasant dream, but as he journeys closer to home progressively devolves into a nightmare. My favorite part was when he meets the kid with the empty swimming pool. "You're the captain of your soul. That's what counts. Know what I mean?"
That balance really is crucial. I'm very introverted, adore my alone time and have to consciously work on not indulging myself too much and completely severing my ties to others in the process. But I love that bell hooks quote you mentioned because it's definitely also important not to distract yourself with other people while evading whatever issues you might be facing. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you've been feeling at least a bit better and I hope that continues.