What are you currently reading?

[bada]

While you read that book I'll be studying the blade.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[epilogue]

Still reading The Road to Character, nearly finished. The chapter on George Eliot/Mary Anne Evans really hit my in the gut today. Pretty sure I don't deserve me wife.

I've been trying to come up with some sort of really fresh and original suicide pact. Want in?

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[epilogue]

Still reading The Road to Character, nearly finished. The chapter on George Eliot/Mary Anne Evans really hit my in the gut today. Pretty sure I don't deserve me wife.

I've been trying to come up with some sort of really fresh and original suicide pact. Want in?

Let me see where this book takes me before I commit.

Fair enough. Just PM me when you've made your decision. I'm in no rush.

[bune]

Listening to Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace. The first story had me bored to tears but then about a quarter of the way through the first glimmer of "this is not about what you think it's about" hit and it was awesome. Found this analysis of the story and it's pretty much spot-on with what I was thinking.

Got to "Incarnations of Burned Children" and had to stop for the day. Holy hell. You can read the whole thing right here if you want. It's only one page, more or less.

[Simple Torture]

Listening to Oblivion: Stories by David Foster Wallace. The first story had me bored to tears but then about a quarter of the way through the first glimmer of "this is not about what you think it's about" hit and it was awesome. Found this analysis of the story and it's pretty much spot-on with what I was thinking.

Got to "Incarnations of Burned Children" and had to stop for the day. Holy hell. You can read the whole thing right here if you want. It's only one page, more or less.

Keep reading. I've read it a bunch of times, taught it, and written about it, and it's my favorite Wallace short story collection. I want to read it again, but along with the two stories you've mentioned, my other favorite story is "The Soul Is Not A Smithy."

[bune]

Oh I'll keep going, it's just the ending of that short story was so jarring.

when it wouldn't stop and they couldn't make it the child had learned to leave himself and watch the whole rest unfold from a point overhead, and whatever was lost never thenceforth mattered, and the child's body expanded and walked about and drew pay and lived its life untenanted, a thing among things, its self's soul so much vapor aloft, falling as rain and then rising, the sun up and down like a yoyo.

And I was on my way to a therapist no less. Jesus.

And "The Soul Is Not A Smithy" was good, but it was so hard to follow what was happening since it was an audiobook. I put the actual book on hold at the library so I can read what's going on. I have a feeling that DFW's denseness is hard to pull across the spoken word, especially with short stories that end abruptly so you're not even sure you switched stories or perspectives.

[Simple Torture]

You'd probably also be into The Pale King. Lots of it was written about the same time.

[bune]

It's on my list.

I decided that after starting and not being able to finish the first chapter of Infinite Jest I should start with something shorter. So that's this book and then A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, so stories and then essays.

[Simple Torture]

Good, good.

[The Argonaut]

I really don't want to read the last chapter of Swamplandia. Please don't make me.

[epilogue]

I really don't want to read the last chapter of Swamplandia. Please don't make me.

NO YOU MUST FINISH

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[epilogue]

For some reason that's absurdly funny to me. Like, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were a joke account, trag. That's awesome.

How is that book, though?

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[Simple Torture]

I really don't want to read the last chapter of Swamplandia. Please don't make me.

NO YOU MUST FINISH

I've only read the novel once, but I've read the short story version so many times that I forget how the novel ends.

[The Argonaut]

I really don't want to read the last chapter of Swamplandia. Please don't make me.

NO YOU MUST FINISH

I've only read the novel once, but I've read the short story version so many times that I forget how the novel ends.

Spoiler: show

It wasn't what I was expecting after all.

[bada]

Is Swamplandia worth reading? I feel like I've heard of it before.

[The Argonaut]

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Solid five out of seven