― akm (akmonday), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 09:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Modal Fugue (Modal Fugue), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 09:47 (seventeen years ago) link
― r.dot, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 12:45 (seventeen years ago) link
― r.dot, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 12:49 (seventeen years ago) link
― r.cummings, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 12:51 (seventeen years ago) link
http://www.time.com/time/nation/printout/0,8816,1546275,00.html
His prose style is pretty awkward and amateurish when you strip away the schtick:
He first pushes the coffee table closer to the entertainment center, reducing the space between the three objects: me, the table, and the shelving. Now he drags a chair from the kitchen. He places this near my head. From the couch he brings one of the three large cushions that sit upright. He stands the cushion up against the seat of the chair. Bringing another chair from the kitchen, he places it, with a couch cushion soon resting against it, at my feet. He has effectively eliminated me from his view. My view is now limited to the ceiling above me, and the little I can see between the windows of the coffee table. I lie, finding myself impressed with his architectural vision, until he surprises me with the blanket. The bedspread from my room is carefully spread over the couch cushions until it forms a tent over me, and this is too much. Michael, I have little patience left for you. I am finished with you, and wish you could have seen what I saw. Be grateful, TV Boy. Have respect. Have you seen the beginning of a war? Picture your neighborhood, and now see the women screaming, the babies tossed into wells. Watch your brothers explode. I want you there with me.
Ugh.
― Hurting (A-Ron Hubbard), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 14:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link
― cws, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― Hurting (A-Ron Hubbard), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:09 (seventeen years ago) link
Through the doorway I saw a kind of airplane, coming low over the village. It was a fascinating kind of plane, black everywhere and dull, unreflective. The planes I had seen before resembled birds in a rudimentary way, with noses and wings and chests, but this machine looked like nothing so much as a cricket. I watched it as it flew over the village. The sound was rich and black, louder than anything I had ever known, the vibrations shaking my ribs, pulling me apart.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:17 (seventeen years ago) link
He has the capacity to write well but he always seems in need of a better editor.
― Hurting (A-Ron Hubbard), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:21 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:21 (seventeen years ago) link
Yeah. This is my biggest problem with him. He like, re-released YSKOV with a new title and 50 extra pages or something and called it Sacrament? Dude, get thee to a fuckin editor.
jaymc, you should submit that to McSweeneys' Convergences Contest.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:25 (seventeen years ago) link
― akm (akmonday), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― Hurting (A-Ron Hubbard), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:37 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:37 (seventeen years ago) link
You mean within the last four months?
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:41 (seventeen years ago) link
― Hurting (A-Ron Hubbard), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:42 (seventeen years ago) link
How about this para:But it was strange. Adults were running from the machines, falling, screaming. I looked at the people running, though I was too dazed to move. The volume of the machines held me still. I felt tired in some new way, as I watched mothers grab their young sons and bring them back into their huts. I watched men run into the high grass and throw themselves to the ground. I watched as one of the crickets flew over the soccer field, flying lower than the other machines; I watched as the twenty young men playing on the field ran toward the school, screaming. Then a new sound pumped through the air. It was like the cutting and dividing of the machine, but it was not that.
Why is there the semicolon that late in the game? I assume its to accelerate the rhythm, but it just sticks out. Why did they run "toward the school, screaming" instead of saying they "ran, screaming, toward the school". Why does he need to keep mentioning he watched. Why can't the parallelism just be with "as" or even better yet, fade away. How does a sound pump through the air? Like a sump pump? Things don't even pump themselves through anything! They need to pump something else? What exactly is it that the sound is pumping through the air then?
The last sentence of the preceding para is: "I saw other boys in the village staring up as I was, some of them jumping, laughing and pointing to the crickets with the chopping sound." So where's the "it" that was strange? There is not "it" -- just more filler. He already established that it was an airplane that looked like a cricket -- the character doesn't need to keep calling it a cricket, either -- that's what people do when they don't know what it is, not when they just are reminded of something else. If he was staring up, then how did he see the other boys, by the way? Wouldn't they have been, y'know, level? Did the crickets have the chopping sound or the boys? Just the jumping ones, or all the ones?
Ok, enough, you see the problem here.
― sterlclover, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:45 (seventeen years ago) link
It's just kind of funny. I mean, I think the dude is a douchebag and a terrible writer, but I solve this by not reading his stuff anymore, but there are just some people who HATE him and look for any reason to start a Eggers jihad.
― Allyzay knows where the interfacing goes., Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:47 (seventeen years ago) link
So also it feels like an American actor slipping in and out of a poor, say, Scottish accent.
― sterlclover, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:49 (seventeen years ago) link
― sterlclover, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:50 (seventeen years ago) link
I think it's an effective use of the parallel, it's a poetic image.Other than that, yeah I agree with everything you said just about. Except for the pumping. And I think the "it" refers to the situation.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:52 (seventeen years ago) link
http://rakesprogress.typepad.com/
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:53 (seventeen years ago) link
These words actually cause me more pain than anything else on the thread. (Not because of 'oh how the time has gone' nonsense but because the concept is annoying.)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:53 (seventeen years ago) link
xpost: Seriously? Infinite Jest is mind blowingly awesome and I will buy you a copy for you to read, if you will agree to try to read it.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:01 (seventeen years ago) link
― sterlclover, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:04 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr.Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:05 (seventeen years ago) link
― Allyzay "Doris Lessing" Eisenschefter, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:13 (seventeen years ago) link
― grady (grady), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:14 (seventeen years ago) link
It took me two times, too. The first time was when it first came out, I gave up after 25 pages. Then I tried it like 5 years later when I had very little else to do and it kicked my ass. I've been thinking about big books a lot lately, you have to put up with a LOT of bullshit (boring sections that would go on for a page at the most in a normal size book stretch on for 10 pages in big books) but in the end it is soooooo worth it. But if you don't want to put up with the footnotes and stuff I can see where it's offputting and annoying.
Seriously it's a really really awesome, hilarious (very very very funny) book.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:14 (seventeen years ago) link
Okay, I missed the nickname at first there. (Am I the only one to have read all the books in the Canopus in Argos series?)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:16 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:17 (seventeen years ago) link
xposts
― grbchv! (gbx), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:18 (seventeen years ago) link
― molly (molly d), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:19 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― Allyzay is a town of people, people who DIED, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:21 (seventeen years ago) link
The first 100 pages are rough(the Canadian spies bored me senseless). But now I can't stop reading it, to be honest.
― molly (molly d), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett is doing a little practice firing at the clouds (Ned), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:23 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:23 (seventeen years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:24 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:24 (seventeen years ago) link
waht
― grbchv! (gbx), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:25 (seventeen years ago) link
xpost- As for footnotes, the Filmography of James O. Incandenza is the best thing ever.
― molly (molly d), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:26 (seventeen years ago) link
yeah jaymc, I hear you. Poor Nicholson Baker.
― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:26 (seventeen years ago) link
I was going to say. (The desk is right behind me to the left.)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 29 November 2006 22:28 (seventeen years ago) link
― sterlclover, Thursday, 30 November 2006 03:41 (seventeen years ago) link
― akm (akmonday), Thursday, 30 November 2006 03:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― hank s1ockli (hanks1ockli), Thursday, 30 November 2006 04:29 (seventeen years ago) link
maria has. like ten times. but she's a freak. she tried to get me to read them and i looked at her like she was made out of the funny papers.
― scott seward (121212), Thursday, 30 November 2006 04:36 (seventeen years ago) link
Ten times, I'm impressed. There are passages I still remember from when I read them as a teen.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 30 November 2006 04:37 (seventeen years ago) link