Hey i forgot to mention...have you read the review by tanstaafl of "The Book of Mormon"? 41 freaking people as of tonight have clicked on it as a review they've liked (incredible!)...it is, an incredible review...HYSTERICAL!!! Highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 1:42 am (EST) Jul 19, 2008

Am well over 400 pgs. into GR. One day behind, but can make that up this weekend. Loving it! You lucky dog, off to vacation & check out NASU (rep. as a party school, just like San Diego State) hope you can focus if you choose to matriculate. Enjoy your travels!

Oh, wait, what about Ronald Sukenick? Have you read him? He's half beat/half pomo. His novel, 98.6, is right up your alley I believe. Btw, the last 2/3 of IJ is superior to the first third. Once you understand the year scheme, what year = 2002, 03, 04, etc., the book makes a whole lot more sense. I think around page 210 or so DFW delineates what year = what. The beginning of the novel is really the end (or at least tells you how two of the preeminent characters turned out. Pretty sad, actually.

Saw the remake of Casino Royale recently...awesome cinematic experience! Saw recently at B&N that all of Ian Flemings novels have been re-released...very cool covers...may have to purchase eventually. Enjoy the Painted Desert, my friend, Sedona, Jerome, GC, Havasupai, Flagstaff...I love Arizona!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 1:26 am (EST) Jul 19, 2008

Hey! RE: Jeter. If you like Cyberpunk then you definitely should give him a go. Personally, I would start with Farewell Horizontal. James Patrick Kelly is also fabulous. I would highly recommend Think Like a Dinosaur and Wildlife.
Have a great day!

Lähettänyt: VictoriaPL 8:15 am (EST) Jul 12, 2008

Greetings from Chino,

Tell me you're at least 250 pages into IJ...I'm 250 into GR (one day ahead of schedule) and the going has been surprisingly smooth; no readers guides, no online notes, no nothing but my eyes & what's left of my brain. I almost puked though when one of the characters literally ate his lover's (I think it was his dominatrix's actually, tough to tell) logs (3 of 'em) of defecation. Something about him "mashing the shit" through his teeth was tough to visualize (my wife & I, if you'll pardon the overly personal tmi, do not, thank God, possess that peculiar type of sexual proclivity, so I could not relate), and it reminded me of the voluminous scatological gross outs replete in Vollmann's, The Royal Family, which, admittedly, were not as shocking as Pynchon's shit incident. But other than that, I'm loving GR! I think I might actually finish it by July 31st as vowed. It's reputation is well deserved.

Oh, and speaking of shit, I had to cancel my second profile, "shitlit" since it was overlapping with my main page, in case you had responded to it & weren't getting a response back.

You mentioned Antrim last time and I failed to comment...I've read his most recent novel, The Verificationist, and liked it. A group of college professor shrinks sit around philosophizing at a pancake house while the narrator seated there with them (forget if he's a shrink or grad student) undergoes some type of dissociation or out of body experience, and the novel digresses and weaves in and out of the pancake house from there. There's one great line I remember from it w/out going and grabbing it: "everybody needs someone to fuck". So true.

I have obtained a copy of RAW & Shea's Illuminatus Trilogy, so relax okay, it's all right now.

Have you read/heard of Kathy Acker? I'm looking for something by her, anything really. She's notorious in avant-garde/experimentalist circles for such titles as Blood & Guts in High School; Pussy, The Pirate King; Hannibal Lecter, my Father; My Mother: Demonology. She, uh, probably had some issues as a kid. I'm curious. If you were say to happen upon her during one of your binges, I would gladly pay you a little extra beyond the associated costs for buying & shipping for your time & trouble.

Enjoy your travels, you lucky sumbitch, galavantin' across this great American nation like some boozed up itinerant poet/beatnik, like some kooky Kerouac character, some desolation angel, dharma bum, Gonzo lush, philandering Slothrop. (Hey I mean that as a compliment.)

Adios

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 8:22 pm (EST) Jul 10, 2008

Dropped by after reading your intelligent comments at the Freeque's. Wasn't disappointed!

Lähettänyt: slickdpdx 11:01 pm (EST) Jul 8, 2008

Yo, I've verbalized my new commitment to GR (see profile page).

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 7:29 pm (EST) Jun 25, 2008

*waves* Hey! I finally found someone else who has a 'top 50' tag! None of my top 50 books match yours, but that's okay, to each his own. Have a wonderful day.

Lähettänyt: VictoriaPL 3:59 pm (EST) Jun 25, 2008

You've inspired me to retackle GR. I'm going to do it, and I'm going to finish it. I enjoyed what I read, I just got bogged down and sort of lost. There's an online reader's guide I'm going to print out this time to get me through the confusing spots, though maybe now as I've aged and read other "difficult" stuff, it won't seem as hard. You're the second person I've heard who says that GR, once the characters & stage has been set in the first third of the novel, really picks up after that. So I already know I can read the first third...

Just after I had told you I couldn't locate any Barthelme, lo and behold out of nowhere I've landed me three of his works: DF (which I've just read/reviewed), Come Back, Dr. Caligari, and a posthumous collection of his uncollected stories & tidbits of stuff with a cool intro by Pynchon called The Teachings of Don B. Appreciate the offer of finding & sending to me...I may take you up on that someday.

If you seriously read Ulysses in high school and liked it, then maybe you are a genious and are just to humble to admit it! If you are smarter than everybody else, it's okay to say so. I quit Ulysses pretty early on, though I would like to retackle it with the help of a good reader's guide. Forget about Finnegan's Wake, though, that's what I've come to term ShitLit. In fact, I'm formulating an idea of beginning a reader's group here called ShitLit101 (or something satiricly syllabi-ish like that), where we can rag on all the so called high brow "works of art" that are truly shit, as well the Danielle Steele's of this world, or even something like "Toilet Training in Less Than A Day" could be construed as ShitLit...at least in my humble estimation. I would include Danielewski's "Only Revolutions" & J.G. Ballard's "Crash" in that fetid mix as well. What do you think? Would you be interested in joining a group like that? I think the tangents and possibilities we could go off on are endless...might be fun...

Speaking of which, have a blast on your train ride. AZ is awesome. I've hiked large segments of the Grand Canyon, spent a lot of time in Prescott, Jerome, Sedona. Have a bud who lives in Prescott Valley. Beautiful area. Enjoy your travels...

Oh, and like your new top 50. Which one will you replace with IJ once you read it? I'm going to post my progression with GR on my profile page...

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 2:06 pm (EST) Jun 25, 2008

Dude, you're awesome. I love your library.

Just wanted to pass that on.

Lähettänyt: bardsfingertips 5:26 pm (EST) Jun 19, 2008

OMG, you've found me out! I'm a hippo-critter, a veritable bass turd for having only "partially read" so many wonderful works. I admit it (please don't hate me) I have never completed a single Pynchon. Not one. Not even his second skinny one which, in my defense, I don't own yet. Let me explain with a simple cliche'd refrain...so many books, so little time. Just as I get started on a book, about a week later I'll think of another book, and begin reading it, and then a week later, start a third, and so on, to where I'll have a pile on my night stand and since I'm a neat freak I must do something about the pile eventually or I'll go stark raving mad so I'll put all but one back in the bookshelf and then start the whole neurotic/psychotic pile on the night stand process all over again. I will finish a Pynchon someday. There's a review of GR in which the reviewer says it took him 30 years to complete GR. What I've read, though, the first 200 or so pages, I greatly admire: the language, word play, absurdities & character quirks & dialogue, but you must admit, Pynchon is a damn challenging read any book you choose. And hey now hey now (as you like to say) at least I was honest and actually admitted to having only partially read a lot of texts. I could've lied and gone the super-pretentious route (which, admittedly, is a lot of fun too!) and pretended to be a Pynchon expert...and I must admit also, I not only like Pynchon, but I also like the idea of liking Pynchon, so I guess I am pretentious in that regard.

You must know, though, I have completed every single sentence of Infinite Jest, while you...you...oh you...how dare you!...continue putting it off till tomorrow...so sad...

You, my friend, are way ahead of me in this pomo world. I didn't enter it until reading IJ in 2002, at the old age of 34. DWF opened my eyes to a deeper, more complex, richer and rewarding reading experience. Until then, I was obsessed with Frank Herbert (not just the Dune books but his vast amount of obsure stuff too) as well as Asimov and Clarke.

After DWFs IJ, I began researching and compiling DWFs influences, which naturally led me to the Pynchon's, Gaddis', Barth's, Coover's, & Delillo's, as well as many of his contemporaries like Franzen, Eugenides, Vollmann, A.M. Homes, and Antrim. Deeper research of course led me Sorrentino, Alexander Theroux, Hawkes, McElroy, Markson, Gass, and host of others, most of which I'd say I've sampled but not fully read. I enjoy the hunt of finding an obscure text -- take Paul Metcalf's "Genoa" for example -- but don't enjoy eating what I've caught as much, unless it tastes really, really good, and isn't too damn difficult to swallow, which would = my tag "read".

What I've sampled of Hawkes is excellent. I believe I've "partially read" Second Skin and enjoyed the experience. See, for me, since my time is so limited, "partially reading" allows me to become familiar with a lot more works than I would otherwise if I took the time to finish them, which, eventually, I hope to do someday. I rarely put a book down half way because I don't like it but because I'm anxious to get on to the next discovery.

I loved, for instance, the first 60 pages of Farina's debut, but then immediately thereafter obtained a copy of Vasily Grossman's Russian epic, "Life & Fate," and was equally engrossed. So many books, so little time! It's a cliche but it's also true! I'm afraid I'll die before sampling all of them (I know I'll never be able to complete them all) but maybe, just maybe, I can get a bite out of each one, like oeur'dvres (spelling?) and so satiate my literary/language appetite that way.

You know, dude, I've been looking for Barthelme like forever, in particular, 60 Stories...but alas, believe it or not, with all my searching in used bookstores for literally years, never encountered it. I could buy The Dead Father over at Barnes & Noble, but prefer to wait until I find it the way I wish to find it -- used, cheap -- on MY terms.

Definitely heard of RAW, and based on your recommendation and your recommendation alone, I just may go use my $40 gift card I got from Borders this morning for Father's Day and go get me some RAW, yeah, or maybe Rohinton Mistry's "A Fine Balance" eh, or Mann's first novel and the last victorian novel, "Buddenbrooks," or perhaps the second installment of Robert Musil's "A Man Without Qualities," or maybe to rid myself of that stinking filthy rotted partially read albatross weighing down my neck, go purchase "The Crying of Lot 49" and actually read all 100 or so pages in one sitting, just to prove to you and the entire world out there that yes, yes it's true, EnriqueFreeque is smart to enough to finish a Pynchon. Hey, that could be a poem or something: "Finishing Pynchon".

Now, my friend, since you've so challenged me, may I challenge you....Mix in reading a women writer from time to time. I believe I saw you'd obtained some Flannery O'Connor recently?? (one of DWFs influences, btw). Read her. I've actually read 90% of her published short stories and her first novel, "Wise Blood". WB was okay, but her short stories are par excellance. Impactful, powerful, oftentimes shockingly violent stuff. Great talking so freely to ya. Adios.

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 2:03 pm (EST) Jun 15, 2008

You just reply whenever you damn well please (no justification necessary for not replying) and you do so whether you've read your assigned reading or not ya hear? You'd still show up to class even if you hadn't read what you darn well knew that professor was going to be discussing when you strutted on in to class right. I don't care if you've read the Brunists or IJ...Robert Coover and DWF should never stand like a Berlin Wall between our bibliophilish communicating over obscure tomes and rare discoveries unearthed beneath the dust of secondhand aisles & shelves. Here's another writer I'm looking for but ain't been able to find: Terry Southern. He wrote a book back I think in the 60s called the The Magic Christian about a billionaire who hires inappropriate, unqualified people to run to businesses as practical jokes. If you get yer paws on him before I do I'll scream and send you a nasty response. The Lakers blew a 24 pt lead against Satan's Celtics and I'm bit perturbed at the moment...pardon me.

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 12:23 pm (EST) Jun 13, 2008

nice new photo...GR, Poe, Proust...yeaahhhh! Enjoy your Ian Fleming reviews, though I've never read the Bond novels...I recently found a copy of Farina's debut novel (noticed he is one of your favorites) and am enthralled. Did not know that Pynchon and he were college classmates. Fascinating intro by Pynchon. What if Farina had lived, huh?

So what are you doing with yourself this summer? Don't be a stranger and keep writing your reviews!

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 8:28 pm (EST) Jun 12, 2008

Good morning to ya. You know I dabbled myself in poetry in my teens/twenties. I went through a beats period myself, though have since moved away from that genre, though I did just finish "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" --loved it-- which I think was kind of on the outskirts or aftermath of the Beat Generation. You mention Timothy Leary...have you checked out "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe? I haven't myself, but hear its the best chronicle (non-fiction-wise) of that whole acid/Haight Asbury/DeadHead/tune in turn on drop out generation. My favorite poem from that era was Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California" where, as you probably know, the narrator speaks to Walt Whitman.

What I recall of the Brunists I remember liking. That cult it reminded me of was that LDS cult out in the boonies of Texas recently in the news where the Texas Rangers came in and took away all the children. The way those women looked, dressed and hairdo'd all old fashioned, Little House on the Prairieish, reminded me a lot of the cult -- "the Brunists" -- depicted in Coover's novel. It was a compelling read, involving a mining disaster and the resulting founding of a weird cult...lots of religious social commentary and such.

It looks like your top 25 has changed. No more "Lost in the Funhouse" there. Why you gotta be like that professor you mentioned and ignore such a seminal work? Hey, why not do a top 50 or a top 100? Once you get around to IJ you're gonna have to kick another book out anyway. You've inspired me, I think I'll do my own top...however many...on my profile.

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 11:47 am (EST) May 10, 2008

No worries re. delay. I thought maybe my wordiness scared you off but I think we both like pretentious wordiness, so here's some more!....

Ferlinghetti does indeed spend time at City Lights. Two years ago the National Book Award nominees were announced at City Lights, hosted by Ferlinghetti. You very well could run into him if you stopped by. Have you seen "The Last Waltz"? Ferlinghetti has a cameo in it where he reads his subversive, satiric take of the Lord's Prayer. Pretty cool stuff. Though I think my own parody, "The Drug Lord's Prayer," is actually better if I immodestly say so myself.

Are you an aspiring poet yourself? Very few non-poets read poetry these days, unfortunately. I don't read it as much as I once did in school. Back in the day my faves were Rimbaud, Mark Strand, Plath, and Langston Hughes. I had a professor, Terri Brint Joseph, herself a well-known poet among the poetry crowd, who was a preeminent scholar on Ezra Pound. I'd like to tackle The Cantos someday. Seems like the Ulysses of poetry. I've never read Dickey's poetry, but based on the imagery/language in Deliverance imagine it must be excellent.

You'll have to educate me as to what a "pantoum" is. I'm curious.

I am a published writer, but if I revealed how little I've published and how little moulah I've actually made, you'd laugh your head off at me for referring to myself as a "published writer", so forgive me if I don't elaborate. I'm more of a dabbler/hobbyist when it comes to writing, rather than a bonafide, confront-the-blank-page-everyday-no-matt... full time kind of committed writer.

Going Native is probably worth a look. I gave it 3 1/2 stars here at LT. It's hard to know if the character who "goes native" at the beginning, is really the same character you're reading about all the way through. It reads disjointedly. Which might make sense if it's more a collection of mildly related short stories, as a reviewer here at LT has suggested. The writing, though, is top tier and worth checking out. It's definitely enjoyably dark and disturbing.

Korea sounds great! Get out there and experience the world, although don't be like the protagonist (forget his name) in Richard Powers' "Plowing The Dark" who teachesEnglish to kids in the middle east and makes a joke which isn't understood to be a joke but is taken literally and so he soon finds himself held prisoner by terrorists.

I've read Coover's 1st novel, the one about the Brunists, which kind of reminds me a lot of that wacky looking cult ya'll got going out there in Texas. Coover is good. I haven't gotten to The Public Burning which DWF mentions in interviews as being an important link in pomo-ism.

You are right, so many books, so little time. Now is there something out there that I'm missing (I'm sure there is)? What would you recommend? Until next time...

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 6:38 pm (EST) May 2, 2008

Dude (I am a SoCal native so please pardon the stereotypical lingo), you are an interesting person, and we got lots in common beside books. Check this out: I proposed to my wife at sunset ON a fire lookout atop the summit of Vetter Mountain in the San Gabriel Mountains, elev. 5,908, to be exact. It's still a working fire lookout, staffed now by forest volunteers during daylight hours. On weekends it's staffed overnight. There's a lot of operating fire lookouts here in S. Cal. what with all the constant fire danger. I did a 16 mile round trip solo hike last Sept. to Tahquitz Peak Fire Lookout (elev. 8,800+) out of Palm Springs in the San Jacinto Mtns (took the famous aerial tram). At some of the fire lookouts, the public can rent them for the weekend--just hike in with your gear and camp. Head for Appalachia...no, scratch that; head out west for the Rocky's or Sierras (I'd hate to think of you running into some of them backwards "Deliverance" wantin'-you-to-oink-like-a-pig fellers ((great great book btw!--as good if not better than the film)), I'm sure you could grab a position somewhere).

Yes, I think a career in English is obviously your calling, so go for it! Get those "On The Road" free-spirited life experiences while you can, just don't do it as extreme as in "Going Native" or you might get in some trouble. But some trouble is good, I suppose.

Gaddis is god (I mean good!) Gaddis is good, repeat after me, Gaddis is good. Like GR, the Recognitions is worth the effort involved. Yes, there's allusions up the yingyang, but it's a highly satisfying experience sifting your way through. There's even an online page by page guide to help--wouldn't have enjoyed or understood it as much without that aid. JR, while "only" 700+ pages, because it has zilch chapter breaks, reads a lot like a 1000 pager. It's difficulty lies mainly in that Gaddis never specifies who's speaking. He forces you to know the characters so well that you can intuitively infer who's speaking. It's a lot funnier than Recog., but lacks the spiritual depth. Recommend both.

Now, you want ME??? to suggest some titles for YOU??? Huh? Dude, I'm like so salivating as I've perused your shelves. You've got stuff by Coover I've never even seen no matter how many years of searching dusty used bookshelves: "Pricksongs & Descants," to name but one, which is arguably, I've read, more influential than Barth's Funhouse or Barthelme's, 60 Stories. But even so, as long as we understand that your lit. library is more complete than mine, I think there are some writers you'd be interested in reading, based on what you already own. They are as follows...

William T. Vollmann: Get yer paws on a copy of "The Royal Family" and be divinely disturbed as he dives his brave readers into the bleak, rancid, fetid inferno's of SFs Tenderloin District's malaise of pimps & prostitutes & miscellany of society's dregs. The book is a visceral assault on mores & taboos, yet also deeply humane in it's all too real depictions of street life. Vollmann, in an interview, admitted to smoking crack with a prostitute so he could develop street-cred in their underworld while doing "research" for the book.

Paul Metcalf: "Genoa." I wrote a review as best I could for it. Very complex work, by the great-great grandson of Melville. Hard to find but worth the effort.

Grace Paley. Phillip Roth blurb on the back of "The Little Disturbances of Man" says it all: "At last a woman writer who isn't bitchy or precious or honey-and-roses, or all recollections of a gay fetching girlhood...she displays an understanding of loneliness, lust, selfishness, and fatigue that is splendidly comic & unladylike."

Russell Hoban: "Riddley Walker". Critics call it LOR meets A Clockwork Orange. Best read aloud with its invented language. It's the best example, I've encountered, of sci-fi/fantasy meeting pomo.

Georges Perec: "Life: A User's Manual," the most structured experimental work in history (pardon the hyperbole) out there. Each chapter corresponds to the present or past resident of a particular room in a single apartment house composed of 29 residences, office, boiler room, cellars, stairs; complete with map showing who lived where and when. A singular work. Calvino called it the last great expansion of the novel back in '78 when it came out. Calvino knows a thing or two.

Joseph McElroy: an under-appreciated, poor man's Pynchon? Perhaps. Try "Lookout Cartridge" if you're into indie-70s-film/pomo mystery, or "Women & Men", another apartment-like novel similar to Perec's above, though twice as long and leaning more toward philosophy than history/anecdotes.

Forgive my wordiness. Hard to stop once you start. What are you reading now?

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 4:02 pm (EST) Apr 19, 2008

Oh no, no punkishness inflicted. If anyone's been a punk, it's probably me. I'm not sure how to tell you this, but, biologically speaking, I'm a...I'm a MAN -- gasp! -- (and not a woman). Far be it from me to go on deceiving a fellow postmodern/metafictionist family memberlike that, when our family is so relatively diminutive to begin with. I'm going to try and trick instead some Danielle Steele fans! I'm 39, married (wife says I'm weird, rightly so) with four kids (one of which does indeed have Down's). I like mixing a little truth in with my fantasy -- helps me cope! -- which is probably why the pomo writers we read appeal to me so much: the way they brilliantly blur the lines between reality/fantasy in order to comment on and/or satirize the absurdities & injustices so often ruling reality.

Have enjoyed our recent conversations. I fully understand the Broom issue. How could it not be a anticlimactic read after reading IJ? It would be like reading Gravity's Rainbow and then expecting V to be as satisfying & rich -- just setting yourself up for a letdown. What are you studying?

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 12:32 pm (EST) Apr 17, 2008

I'm flattered! Thanks for the compliment. I'm sure you'll be pleased to know I'm presently reading Giles Goat Boy. Love it so far. I'm surprised you would list DFWs first novel on your top 25 over Infinite Jest. Granted, I've yet to read the Broom...but am curious that you'd rank it so highly nonetheless. Enjoy your library. Hope you'll soon input the balance (even if you haven't read them all). We obviously have similar highbrow literary tastes. Are you a weightlifter?

Lähettänyt: EnriqueFreeque 8:10 pm (EST) Apr 16, 2008

"Metal jams" is a term I find very suspect.

Lähettänyt: Awqakuq 11:08 am (EST) Apr 9, 2008

Why do you hate metal? :'(

Lähettänyt: Awqakuq 7:32 pm (EST) Apr 2, 2008

indeed, metal will be the law in the new world. get with it or get wasted by it

Lähettänyt: esdargan 12:01 am (EST) Mar 31, 2008

I'm still laughing at your review of "Goodbye to a River". Good stuff, funny point-of-view. Cheers.

Lähettänyt: dchaikin 11:47 pm (EST) Aug 29, 2007

You have some fine taste there yourself, my friend!

Lähettänyt: squeakjones 2:36 pm (EST) Mar 12, 2007