{"id":22,"date":"2003-04-06T00:03:00","date_gmt":"2003-04-06T05:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=22"},"modified":"2005-12-04T07:29:54","modified_gmt":"2005-12-04T12:29:54","slug":"will-these-goddamn-books-never-leave-me-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/will-these-goddamn-books-never-leave-me-alone","title":{"rendered":"Will These Goddamn Books Never Leave Me Alone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to surrender. Recent visits to the Strand<\/a> (plus that outlet mall from the Hugo Boss entry<\/a>) has added way too many titles to my “to read” pile under the hall table. New titles:<\/p>\n

Max Perkins: Editor of Genius<\/b><\/a> \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Scott Berg
Delirious New York<\/b><\/a> \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Rem Koolhaas
Essays of EB White<\/b><\/a>
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men<\/b><\/a> \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 James Agee and Walker Evans
7 Types of Ambiguity<\/b><\/a> \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Wiliam Empson
Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don”t Care”<\/b><\/a> \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Lee Server <\/p>\n

The only things I’ve read, which will hardly help shrink the stack, are Daniel Czuchlewski’s terrible novel, The Muse Asylum<\/b>, and Tom Stoppard’s recent Coast of Utopia<\/i> trilogy of plays, Voyage, Shipwreck,<\/i> and Salvage<\/i>. I’m reserving judgment on the latter till I see it staged. My initial response was of such absolute bewilderment that I have to assume that I’m just missing something that’ll make more sense<\/a> on stage.<\/p>\n

So, in an effort to clear out a little space under the hall table, I am going to admit defeat: I’ve read 90 pages of Underworld<\/b>, and I’m flummoxed. It’s just a terrible book. The baseball section that gets such praise is so poorly written, filled with such ridiculous pronunciamentos about the nature of the game, that I had to struggle to keep going. But that only led to some sort of idiotic performance art exhibition in the desert. The writing is just lifeless, and filled with inanities passed off as profundities. A buddy of mine once commented, “People like DeLillo for the same reason that kids liked Youngblood<\/i><\/a> back in the 1990s: they feel like it’s not far beyond their own capabilities. It also explains the popularity of Tom Wolfe<\/a> (the one in the white suit).”<\/p>\n

Or, as my senior thesis advisor once put it, when I asked him if he’d read White Noise<\/b><\/a>: “No. Well, I read a few pages of it, but it felt like it was the novel that a lot of professors want to write. That’s not a book I’m very interested in reading.”<\/p>\n

So Don DeLillo can kiss my ass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to surrender. Recent visits to the Strand (plus that outlet mall from the Hugo Boss entry) has added way too many titles to my “to read” pile under the hall table. New titles: Max Perkins: Editor of Genius \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Scott BergDelirious New York \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Rem KoolhaasEssays of EB WhiteLet Us Now Praise Famous … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Will These Goddamn Books Never Leave Me Alone?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-m","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1403,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lynch-mob","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":0},"title":"Lynch Mob","author":"Gil","date":"March 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I was grooving through Guy Rundle's review of Steven Soderbergh's recent film noir, The Good German, for a while. I thought the writer did a good job of explaining why the film is not the experimental triumph some critics have lauded it as, but rather a nice little mannerist exercise:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1041,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/free-market-dance-dance","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":1},"title":"Free Market Dance Dance","author":"Gil","date":"July 21, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"BizWeek offers an essay on how failed videogame platforms are good for the business: Of course, whereas a market leader's role is to provide stability, there is a difference between stability and stasis. 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