Aint No Right

nausearockpig wrote:

Adurentibus Spina wrote:

nausearockpig wrote:

I'm reading a book by a guy named Steven Nadler.

SR wrote:That is some serious writing yourself bc.

August 12, 2011
A Good Man Is Impossible to Find
By JOSH RITTER
THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME
By Donald Ray Pollock
261 pp. Doubleday. $26.95.
From the opening sentences of Donald Ray Pollock’s violence-­soaked first novel, “The Devil All the Time,” it’s clear that blood will out. The West Virginia and southern Ohio landscapes of this book seem riven by one long, coal-smeared and hell-­harrowed gash in the earth, and the stories that vent from it file past in a crimson procession of evils so brutally creative, and so exactingly and lovingly detailed by Pollock, that over the course of the novel it becomes unclear whether they’ve been spawned for the purposes of plot or purely for atavistic pleasure.

Adurentibus Spina wrote:

SR wrote:That is some serious writing yourself bc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books ... d=all&_r=0

August 12, 2011
A Good Man Is Impossible to Find
By JOSH RITTER
THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME
By Donald Ray Pollock
261 pp. Doubleday. $26.95.
From the opening sentences of Donald Ray Pollock’s violence-­soaked first novel, “The Devil All the Time,” it’s clear that blood will out. The West Virginia and southern Ohio landscapes of this book seem riven by one long, coal-smeared and hell-­harrowed gash in the earth, and the stories that vent from it file past in a crimson procession of evils so brutally creative, and so exactingly and lovingly detailed by Pollock, that over the course of the novel it becomes unclear whether they’ve been spawned for the purposes of plot or purely for atavistic pleasure.

It's probably good that the NYT wrote those words, since I was going to say they're a bit cloying and doggerel for my taste.

The book, on the other hand, looks pretty good.

SR wrote:Lolita-Nabokov. Fairly low expectations after Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy', but it's a long overdue introduction.

SR wrote:Well, it was his first novel penned in English, but his English was learned at a very early age. In any event, I'm confused. Is your point stating the complications in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are diluted because of translation and that Lolita is not the work it could have been because it was penned in his second language?

I've always been impressed with Conrad's mastery of English. His was a radical transition, and his mastery is one of very few that can be honestly compared to Shakespeare.

chaos wrote:I read Lolita twenty years ago and enjoyed it. The narrator conveys his dilemma in a humorous, self-mocking way and the reader sympathizes (at times) with his agonies; considering the subject matter, this is a testament to Nabokov's skill with language. While you may laugh out loud throughout the novel, it will be one of the saddest novels you read.

chaos wrote:I read Lolita twenty years ago and enjoyed it. The narrator conveys his dilemma in a humorous, self-mocking way and the reader sympathizes (at times) with his agonies; considering the subject matter, this is a testament to Nabokov's skill with language. While you may laugh out loud throughout the novel, it will be one of the saddest novels you read.

He’s Back: Hitler Satire Tops Germany’s Best-Seller List

By Kharunya Paramaguru Feb. 10, 2013

What would happen if Adolf Hitler woke up in modern-day Berlin to find that it was not occupied by Russian soldiers but instead by a vibrant, multicultural citizenry? This is the premise of the debut novel by German journalist Timur Vermes, Er Ist Wieder Da (He’s Back), which has topped Germany’s best-seller list.

Narrated in the first-person by Hitler, the story follows the Führer as he awakens from a 66-year sleep in his bunker beneath Berlin to find an entirely changed Germany. In the celebrity-obsessed modern-day city, everyone assumes the fulminating leader of the Nazi party is a comedian in character — and soon he becomes a celebrity with a guest slot on a Turkish-born comedian’s TV show. His bigoted rants are interpreted as a satirical exposure of prejudice, leading him to decide to start his own political party.

The book, which has already sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is being translated into several other languages, including English, has unsurprisingly sparked debate in a country that has grappled for decades with Hitler’s unconscionable legacy.

Critics are ambivalent about the book. The newsweekly Stern described it as the “latest outgrowth of a Hitler commercialization machine that breaks all taboos to make money,” while a critic at the Hamburger Abendblatt saw it as a “successful if unsettling satire of a mass murderer and the mass media.”

Vermes appears happy to be stoking the debate. “[Hitler] is always the monster, and we can be comforted by the fact that we’re different from him,” he told German media. “But in reality, he continues to spark real fascination in people, just as he did back then when people liked him enough to help him commit crimes.”

At age six, Rodney Mullen was the family misfit who had to wear braces to straighten out his pigeon-toed feet. But by age fourteen, he was a world-champion skateboarder -- and for the next decade lost only one contest. Now, for the first time, Rodney tells the incredible story of his ascent to fame as the number one nerd in a sport where anarchy is often encouraged. Rodney learned to skate by himself on the family farm, his only company the wandering cows. As a teenager he traveled the world for demonstrations, invented the flatground ollie -- a trick that laid the foundation for modern street skating -- and in ten years garnered thirty-five world skating titles. While acing skateboard contests Rodney also earned straight A's in school, but his father forced him to abandon his fame and the fortune he could make from the sport he loved. Rodney was unable to stop for very long though, even after freestyle skating went out of fashion and the skateboarding world abandoned him. He adapted to street skating and eventually became one of the most innovative and influential skaters of all time. It's all here: everything from his eating and sleeping disorders to his comical experiences with loan sharks, occult-obsessed relatives, and the FBI. The Mutt is a look at Rodney's strange journey from penniless skateboarder to millionaire.