What are you currently reading?

[Simple Torture]

Reading and being haunted by this at the moment.

Yeah, this includes one of the saddest lines I've ever read in literature. Have fun!

[Mickey]

Yeah great book.

[washing machine]

What line is that, st?

[Simple Torture]

What line is that, st?

I'll look it up when you're done.

[washing machine]

What line is that, st?

I'll look it up when you're done.

despondency deferred

[dad]

my only experience/knowledge of Denis Johnson is on the new yorker's fiction podcast. Tobias Wolff read something from Jesus' Son.

what's the best place to start with Johnson?

[Mickey]

Jesus' Son is a brilliant collection, that's most people's starting point. Train Dreams is a quick and beautiful read though maybe a little slow. I know multiple people who have put down Tree of Smoke so probably don't start there.

[dad]

Jesus' Son is a brilliant collection, that's most people's starting point. Train Dreams is a quick and beautiful read though maybe a little slow. I know multiple people who have put down Tree of Smoke so probably don't start there.

thanks!

[Simple Torture]

Jesus' Son is a brilliant collection, that's most people's starting point. Train Dreams is a quick and beautiful read though maybe a little slow. I know multiple people who have put down Tree of Smoke so probably don't start there.

Agree with all of this. I liked Tree of Smoke but it's not a good entry point. The Name of the World was good, too, and is also short.

[washing machine]

I liked this passage in train dreams quite a bit. It, like a lot of other vignettes I've encountered in the novella so far, could be a story on its own. Something about it reminds me of Murray's speech in White Noise about the most photographed barn in America. The novelty of seeing things for what they represent and not what they really are. In this case, the strange attraction of weird Americana. Atlas Obscura type stuff. Really interesting connection between conflating the celebrity of a morbidly obese man and the celebrity of an iconic heartthrob. That we, the reader, know how Elvis ended up, is just...*chef's kiss*

Some years earlier, in the mid-1950s, Grainier had paid ten cents to view the World's Fattest Man, who rested on a divan in a trailer that took him from town to town. To get the World's Fattest Man onto this divan they'd had to take the trailer's roof off and lower him down with a crane. He weighed in at just over a thousand pounds. There he sat, immense and dripping sweat, with a mustache and goatee and one gold earring like a pirate's, wearing shiny gold short pants and nothing else, his flesh rolling out on either side of him from one end of the divan to the other and spilling over and dangling toward the floor like an arrested waterfall, while out of this big pile of himself poked his head and arms and legs. People waited in line to stand at the open doorway and look in. He told each one to buy a picture of him from a stack by the window there for a dime.

Later in his long life Grainier confused the chronology of the past and felt certain that the day he'd viewed The World's Fattest Man-that evening-was the very same day he stood on Fourth Street in Troy, Montana, twenty-six miles east of the bridge, and looked at a railway car carrying the strange young hillbilly entertainer Elvis Presley. Presley's private train had stopped for some reason, maybe for repairs, here in this little town that didn't even merit its own station. The famous youth had appeared in a window briefly and raised his hand in greeting, but Grainier had come out of the
barbershop across the street too late to see this. He'd only had it told to him by the townspeople standing in the late dusk, strung along the street beside the deep bass of the idling diesel, speaking very low if speaking at all, staring into the mystery and grandeur of a boy so high and solitary.

Grainier had also once seen a wonder horse, and a wolf-boy, and he'd flown in the air in a biplane in 1927. He'd started his life story on a train ride he couldn't remember, and ended up standing around outside a train with Elvis Presley in it.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

finally finished kavalier and clay

will revisit empire falls next...looks like i was almost halfway through when i put it down last year

[epilogue]

Have any of you read any Richard Price novels?

[Simple Torture]

Have any of you read any Richard Price novels?

No, but I've heard Lush Life is good. The guys on The Watch podcast love him. Great TV writer, too.

[epilogue]

Have any of you read any Richard Price novels?

No, but I've heard Lush Life is good. The guys on The Watch podcast love him. Great TV writer, too.

I recently had someone in my writer's group recommend him to me because of a short I wrote. Just curious where I should start. I'm told It's really loved his stuff.

[Simple Torture]

my writer's group

Hey, everybody, Joey lives in New York City!

[lennytheweedwhacker]

my writer's group

Hey, everybody, Joey lives in New York City!

I'm told It's really loved his stuff.

[Simple Torture]

my writer's group

Hey, everybody, Joey lives in New York City!

I'm told It's really loved his stuff.

I didn't even catch this; I'm getting rusty!

[epilogue]

my writer's group

Hey, everybody, Joey lives in New York City!

[blueviper]

Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell

[epilogue]

Utopia Avenue - David Mitchell

On my list as well. How is it so far?