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[felis_ultharus]

So Green Grass, Running Water was great, though a little confusing for the obscure references. If you got them, they were very funny, but you need a course on Herman Melville, at least (or at least you have to read "Bartleby the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno", and Moby Dick.

Still, having a completely clueless "Sue Moodie" (obviously our Samurai Susanna) show up at the Dead Dog Restaurant was hilarious.

Now I've started the next book on the course, Famous Last Words I worry because Timothy Findley is one of the most-hyped writers in Canadian fiction, and as this is my first Findley I'm worried it could only disappoint. So far, it hasn't. The man is a master of brief but brilliant descriptions. He throws in just a handful of little details that make a scene seem more realistic that pages of description could.

He does seem a little obsessed about Ezra Pound (this novel and one of his plays are about Pound). I find that even more baffling than Margaret Atwood's obsession with Susanna Moodie. Ezra Pound strikes me as a cross between a crazed Montana militiaman, and than truly obnoxious professor I once had who claimed that Finnegan's Wake had to be a brilliant novel because no one ever finished reading it.

Truly a disturbing combination.

Other than that, it has been good. I missed the deadline for the CBC short story contest, but my novel is proceeding apace at a rate 5 pages a day. And we had a wonderful rit for Samhain last Monday :)

Comments

[jenjoou.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on Finnigan's Wake. I actually do like James Joyce a lot; as proof I read all of Ulysses with enough attention to actually understand what's going on. But in FW Joyce takes his "look how smart I am" tendencies way too far. It's painful from the first page. I do not believe that literature needs to be painfully difficult to be good. Maybe I'm crazy.

The rit was great... and so is your novel progress. Which I could say my writing was going that well. Well, at least I can look forward to buying one of your books sometime in the near future. ;)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Well, hopefully, I'll have something finished soon. I'm pretty laborious with my writing.

NaNo month was an odd experience for me -- everyone else suddenly talking about their writing. It's like being a habitual jogger suddenly overtaken by an unexpected marathon 0_o

I have to say I'm not a fan of Joyce. The Dubliners wasn't painful in any way, but it didn't grab me. Finnegan's Wake and even Ulysses to a lesser degree were a bit painful for me. But to each their own.

[montrealais.livejournal.com]

My grasp of what he wrote and meant
Was only five or six %.
The rest was only words and sound--
My reference is to Ezra £.

- Flann O'Brien

[sugar-spun.livejournal.com]

This is my problem with academia in general. If something is obscure enough everyone thinks it's fantastic, and so torrents of bilge are pouring into our ideas of classic work simply because we've no idea what it's about. If you put in a request for funding that nobody can read then they fling money at you like monkey flinging faeces. If you simply say, Hey I had this idea and I think it's interesting and you should pay me to work on it some more then they laugh at you and make paper aeroplanes out of your request form.

Finnegans Wake isn't a great book. Ulysses is positively dull. Portrait of the Artist I quite enjoyed. But it's this insistence that just because it's complex it's great that inflicted Silas Marner upon generations of schoolkids. We're a sick sick species, always looking at the unattainable as an ideal. It's the literary equivalent of sticking your hand in the fire because someone said it was cool to do that, only they said they heard it was cool from someone who once read a maleficarum.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. I do know people who like James Joyce, and that's fine. No problem with that. It's when you have to like an artist because they're "difficult" that I get annoyed.

It is an awful lot like high school.