Brain Pain discussion

Jim wrote: "Two ideas for themed-reads keep popping up in my thoughts. One about mental illness, and one about addiction/substances. I think they’re residual thoughts from reading Infinite Jest.

"Literature o..."

Seems like Memoirs of My Nervous Illness would fit right into this theme.

Aubrey wrote: "Seems like Memoirs of My Nervous Illness would fit right into this theme..."

I think so too. Great suggestion!

Jim wrote: "Zadignose wrote: "He's also not the kind of author who often raises his head in the literary company of the Brain Pain group, so perhaps it would be good to introduce him just because it's a challe..."

Haha. Bukowski looked a lot more like the Mickey Rourke of today than the late 80s. He made Vollmann look like a prom king. I do enjoy his writing, although I think he would be considered difficult for the blunt way he deals with his subject matter rather than difficulty of style or narrative.

James wrote: "I do enjoy his writing, although I think he would be considered difficult for the blunt way he deals with his subject matter rather than difficulty of style or narrative..."

That can work for us too. Difficult theme can be as interesting as difficult form.

It's true what you say about Rourke - he looks like shit!

Bukowski is in fact worth it. He's easy to put down as a writer (or a human), but like Hunter S. Thompson you can mow through pages of ordinary narration only to stumble on a few lines of amazing. Will every phrase turn your head? Nope. Will there be occasional nuggets of brilliance? Yup, as long as you don't give up or flinch. Also, his works are usually VERY short, so it's an easy side read to jam in between larger things. His is a legacy which will eventually be wrested from the weak and anemic grasp of scarf-wearing hipsters and grow in strength with every day he isn't alive to barf on it's shoes.

my suggestions with no special order or theme, though most are supposedly challenging or unconventional:
Hunger
Elizabeth Costello or ANY J.M. Coetzee I esp. love Slow Man which while being a small book, shows that Coetzee has amazing technique, and presents some narrative challenges that really threw people for a loop in a group I was in that did it, though I personally think that if you relax, they'd have enjoyed it more. I very much suspect this group is a lot more skilled at reading challenging material though.
City of Glass
Riders in the Chariot
Jakob von Gunten
Palace of the Peacock
The Inverted World
Sweet Dreams

However, I'm sure whatever you choose will be excellent, as always!

Oh, and The Pale King was mentioned. Anytime somebody mentions that, I'll say, 'Yes, Please!" It doesn't even have to make sense or be appropriate, so... Yes Please!

Will wrote: "Oh, and The Pale King was mentioned. Anytime somebody mentions that, I'll say, 'Yes, Please!" It doesn't even have to make sense or be appropriate, so... Yes Please!"

Great suggestions Will - keep'em coming!

Yes, The Pale King should definitely be part of our 2014 schedule. The buzz will have settled completely by then and we can read it in our own time. Of course, we'll have to start it on April 15th... which reminds me, where's that 1099 I need?

I noticed we suggested The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Is there a consensus "best" edition out there? I want to get it on my wish list.

James wrote: "I noticed we suggested The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Is there a consensus "best" edition out there? I want to get it on my wish list."

For canonical works like this, I sometimes prefer the Norton Critical Edition so I can read criticism from the time of the original work, plus later criticism.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35...

I haven't looked yet, but I'm sure Project Gutenberg and others have early editions of the work available for free download.

While preparing our suggestions for 2013, a few members pointed out the gender imbalance in our reading selections. I wouldn't want to propose a Title IX type situation for Brain Pain, but I would like to include more books by women in 2014.

Some suggestions:

The Selected Writings - I'm definitely curious about Pizan's work. I think this selection might be a good intro to her work

Anna Kavan is another writer I'm interested in exploring. Ice is her most popular work, but she has several novels we could look at.

Please add your suggestions for challenging works by women authors.

First thing that comes to mind (might be because I just bought the book) is Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans. Also, if it hasn't been read yet (and as an aside, a suggestion: how about a list of works already read in this group in an easily accessible place? For newcomers at least it's quite hard to find out whether one is suggesting something that has already been done) Nightwood by Djuna Barnes? Or establish a tradition of reading one book by Virginia Woolf every year and continue with Mrs. Dalloway? Something by Elfriede Jelinek, for example The Piano Teacher? Or Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina? Something by Marguerite Duras or Nathalie Sarraute? Edith Wharton or Emily Dickinson or Sylvia Plath?

Larou wrote: "Also, if it hasn't been read yet (and as an aside, a suggestion: how about a list of works already read in this group in an easily accessible place? For newcomers at least it's quite hard to find out whether one is suggesting something that has already been done) Nightwood by Djuna Barnes? Or establish a tradition of reading one book by Virginia Woolf every year and continue with Mrs. Dalloway?..."

There are two bookshelves labeled "bp-2012" and "bp-2013" which show all the books that have been read and/or will be read. Some of the books do not have beginning and ending dates either because they were added as reference reads (and so no set schedule), or in the case of the Nabokov books, they haven't been officially scheduled yet.

Luckily, Nightwood is scheduled to begin on April 29th.

The three main projects for this year: "Magic Realism", "Faust thru the centuries" and "The Spine 2013" each have their own folders which include a description and schedule. There is also a folder for "The Vollmann Project", a new folder just getting underway for Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project, and in a few weeks, I will be posting the schedule for the "Spotlight on Nabokov" project. There are a number of new members, so I will send a group message in a day or two to help orient everyone to what's going on around here. It's complicated...

Re: Virginia Woolf. We broke our collective cherry on the shores of her excellent book The Waves, so I think beginning each new year with one of her novels is an excellent tradition!

Also, thank you for your other suggestions. Will add them into the mix. I've thought about Dickinson before, but I'm not sure exactly how to discuss the work, given the brevity of each poem and the large number of poems available to discuss. I suppose we could talk about her work in general, but I'm not sure how to talk about specific poems. I'm open to suggestion about how to approach her oeuvre.

Jim wrote: "There are two bookshelves labeled "bp-2012" and "bp-2013" which show all the books that have been read and/or will be read."

Oops, I'm sorry - sometimes I'm really great at overlooking the obvious - had not even noticed there was such a thing a bookshelves. Hopefully I'll manage to remember that it's there...

Also, I wonder whether Wuthering Heights would be considered challenging? I know some people do find it a difficult, if only for the Yorkshire dialect.

Larou wrote: "Also, I wonder whether Wuthering Heights would be considered challenging? I know some people do find it a difficult, if only for the Yorkshire dialect..."

Wuthering Heights is a favorite of mine, so why not put it in the running? As things develop over the year, possible themes and groupings will emerge. Then we'll run some polls in October for our 2014 reads.

Ok, I've never understood the distinction that must be made, as I don't care if the writer is even human, I just want a great book, but going through my large to-read list, I've culled some candidates, trying to leave out poetry and many short story collections, and tried to use authors overlooked, or those that really shouldn't be.

Considering it's recent celebrated re-publication, we cannot ignore Speedboat. The already mentioned Ice is also on my list. I would think if we're addressing female authors, the Nobel prize winning author of The Land of Green Plums or The Appointment deserves consideration then..

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Sexing the Cherry
The Golden Notebook
White Teeth - it's recent-ish, I know, but really an author who writes so passionately about the future of the novel can't be ignored.
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
The Hour of the Star
All Men are Mortal - one of my fav books, though I'd be hard pressed to explain why.
The Slynx
The Quest for Christa T.
That's just looking at a small % of my list, there's probably twice as many I didn't think of.

And finally, it's by a male author, but another book: The 42nd Parallel

Will wrote: "Ok, I've never understood the distinction that must be made, as I don't care if the writer is even human, I just want a great book, but going through my large to-read list, I've culled some candida..."

Well, without getting too in to it, there are differences in voice and perspective that are evident in books like To the Lighthouse and Pilgrimage: Volume 1. Great books speak in many voices and from many perspectives and the goal is to make sure we explore female voices more frequently. Nuff said.

Good suggestions. I've been a Winterson fan since she first started publishing.

No I just mean I've never found myself reading more males than females or vice versa. It's usually been 50/50, and there's actually more female authors on my mental fav list than male.

I think this book by Gérard de Nerval would work well with the "literature of melancholy" idea:

Aurélia and Other Writings

Anyone familiar with his work?

I read (and loved) his Journey to the Orient which is probably one of the best and certainly one of the most fascinating (if somewhat idiosyncratic - but those really go hand in hand) travel narratives ever. I haven't read anything else by him, although I always meant to - he's a bit like a French version of De Quincey, who is one of my all time favourite authors, so I'd definitely be interested in adding him to the 2014 reading list.

Larou wrote: "I read (and loved) his Journey to the Orient which is probably one of the best and certainly one of the most fascinating (if somewhat idiosyncratic - but those really go hand in hand) travel narrat..."

That one sounds good. It appears to be out of print. I wonder if there is an English translation available electronically?

Not as far as I can see. Of course it's easily available in French... :P

Jim wrote: "Mekki wrote: "how about:

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The Double
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Baltasar and Blimunda
The History of the Siege of Lisbon


From author José Saramago...."

Jim wrote: "Mekki wrote: "how about:

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The Double
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Baltasar and Blimunda
The History of the Siege of Lisbon


From author José Saramago...."

I believe Blindness is his most famous work. so you may want to start there. Its the only one i read so far.

Blindness is by far his most famous work. It has a sequel, Seeing. The translator of that latter work, Margaret Jull Costa has translated many of his works, (though not Blindness) and has won awards for it. His writing involves repetition, use of lists, and what I'd think of as sort-of-semi-stream-of-consciousness run-on sentences. I read The Cave, --which takes it's name from Plato's allegory, and you could say expands upon it-- with a group a little under a year ago, and it was somewhat well-received, though I can't personally say I loved it. I do have friends whom I think highly of who did love it, though. Blindness was also made into a decent movie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindne...) in 2008, though it received a lot of criticism as well.

I will say that Margaret Jull Costa seems a brilliant translator, no question in my mind.

Will wrote: "Blindness is by far his most famous work. It has a sequel, Seeing. The translator of that latter work, Margaret Jull Costa has translated many of his works, (though not Blindness) and has won award..."

Thanks Will!

Let me add to your plethora of piñatas.

Potential theme: Hoax novels.

Potential list items: Okay, I can only think of one now. The Nun by Denis Diderot.

Zadignose wrote: "Potential theme: Hoax novels."

Would that include novels purporting to print a found manuscript? In which case there's The Manuscript Found in Saragossa which is very much worth reading and fit the group's theme, I think.

And there's the hoax novel to end all hoax novels but that's already going to be read this year - Pale Fire.

Also, several fake confessions published during the last few decades come to mind, but I'm not sure any of those would be worth wasting valuable reading time on.

Zadignose wrote: "Let me add to your plethora of piñatas.

Potential theme: Hoax novels.

Potential list items: Okay, I can only think of one now. The Nun by Denis Diderot."

Sounds like a good idea! Keep searching for examples and we'll see if we can build a reading list for the idea.

Hmmm... strangely, looking for Hoax novels, I came across ANOTHER French book which purported to be original letters from a Nun: The Letters of a Portuguese Nun. What's especially strange is that it wasn't until the 20th century that the book was determined to be a hoax (and some still contest the question of whether it is authentic), so Denis Diderot could not have known this when he was concocting his own hoax novel about a nun... hmmm....

Anyway, the Diderot book is good. I haven't read The Portuguese Nun, and it may be hard to come across an English translation.

Also, I remembered that Alladin and Ali Baba could be regarded as hoaxes, though their status is unclear. The Hussain Haddawy translation of The Arabian Nights (which is excellent, by the way) states unambiguously that the Frenchman Antoine Galland, who first translated the Nights into a European language, wrote both Alladin and Ali Baba himself, and then created false "original" Arabic versions as his supposed source.

Wikipedia more conservatively states "some scholars ... conclude that Galland invented them himself and the Arabic versions are merely later renderings of his original French."

In any case, there are no extant Arabic originals that predate Galland.

And, one more, maybe: Hocus Bogus, a book written by Romain Gary, under the pseudonym of Emile Ajar, in which the author "admits" to being Gary's cousin's son Paul Pawlovitch, a (supposed) psychotic in a mental institution. Within the text he cruelly parodies and insults himself (Gary) in order to persuade critics that he (Gary) couldn't possibly have written such a book himself, and apparently the hoax was maintained until after the author's death.

Apparently the French are good at both hoaxing and falling for hoaxes.

I guess there's also that article designed to destroy the dignity of postmodern critics, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" by Alan Sokal. An exercise in intentional nonsense.

In that vein (but wouldn't that be outright forgery rather than hoax?) there is of course also James McPherson's Ossianic poems that where ostensibly written by a Celtic bard and only found by McPherson. They were hugely popular in the latter of the eighteenth century until they turned out to have been forged by McPherson. They certainly would fit, but again - does one really want to read them (as I don't think they're very good)?

Zadignose wrote: "Let me add to your plethora of piñatas.

Potential theme: Hoax novels."

Great theme. The only ones coming to mind that haven't been mentioned are Venus on the Half-Shell (which I'm sad to see no longer has the cover attributing it to Kilgore Trout), and Necronomicon. Neither one is exactly typical Brain Pain fare. Could we put House of Leaves in this category?

On a related note, if anyone hasn't seen The Invisible Library, it's a compendium of fictional books and their sources: The Invisible Library. Lots of fun.

Whitney wrote: "Zadignose wrote: "Let me add to your plethora of piñatas.

Potential theme: Hoax novels."

Great theme. The only ones coming to mind that haven't been mentioned are Venus on the Half-Shell (which I..."

House of Leaves certainly seems like it would fit with the idea. We read it last year, but it could be ripe for a reread in '14.

I think 'hoax' is a limiting word. What else might we label this kind of work?

Zadignose wrote: "Let me add to your plethora of piñatas.

Potential theme: Hoax novels."

With a sound track provided by The Rutles and Spinal Tap. And a complementary showing of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" in the gift shop.

Mekki wrote: "I believe Blindness is his most famous work. so you may want to start there. Its the only one i read so far..."

The town I live in has several drop-boxes where people leave books and videos they're finished with. I made a serendipitous find of a DVD of Blindness, so maybe it's a sign we should read some of his work next year...

I received my copy this morning of William Gass's new novel, Middle C. If members are curious about this author, we could read this one next year.

BTW, we read his earlier novel Omensetter's Luck last year.

Jim wrote: "Mekki wrote: "I believe Blindness is his most famous work. so you may want to start there. Its the only one i read so far..."

The town I live in has several drop-boxes where people leave books and..."
I was hoping we would do The Tunnel next year. It is both longer and seems to be considered a challenging read. Middle C is a great book though.

James wrote: "I was hoping we would do The Tunnel next year. It is both longer and seems to be considered a challenging read. Middle C is a great book though..."

I had The Tunnel penciled in for 2012, but went with Omensetter's Luck. I'd actually like to go for The Tunnel next year too.

Gass has been on my "Needs urgently to be read" list for ages now, so I'm very much in favour, would also prefer going for The Tunnel first, though, as that seems to be generally considered (by those who consider him at all, that is) his chef d'oeuvre.

Larou wrote: "Gass has been on my "Needs urgently to be read" list for ages now, so I'm very much in favour, would also prefer going for The Tunnel first, though, as that seems to be generally considered (by tho..."

Omensetter's Luck is also a good entree for Gass. We read it last year. You can find the description and discussions here:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/9...

If you decide to read OL, feel free to revive the discussions.

Middle Cwas my first real taste of Gass and it confirmed my suspicion that I was really going to like Gass. I wouldn't be afraid to start there either. His fiction output is pretty small given the length of his career, so I'm hoping I can get it all done in the next few years. My only problem is no access to In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories. It would be nice to see someone pick that up and reprint it.

Larou wrote: "Gass has been on my "Needs urgently to be read" list for ages now, so I'm very much in favour, would also prefer going for The Tunnel first, though, as that seems to be generally considered (by tho..."

I recently read In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories, in a Nonpareil edition. This is my first Gass, read earlier this year and it floored me. It consists of one novella The Pedersen Kid and four shorter pieces. I highly recommend it as an introduction. That edition also features an extremely candid introductory essay by Gass himself about his beginnings and founderings as a writer.

I had a mis-start with Omensetter's Luck a few years back and will probably read that next.

The Tunnel is probably a far way off in my own Gass schedule...

Although, I like the sound of this new one.

Two suggestions from member Tine:

I love your ambitious choices in books, and all you great people, who contribute with your inspiring thoughts.
- And I will offer you my inspiration with a couple of my most wonderful and challenging recent reads for your future reading plan:
Anne Carson: "Eros, the bittersweet" - and
Sjön: "From the Mouth of the Whale".

Suggestion for 2014: J.M. Coetzee. I am reading Diary of a Bad Year now but would love to re-read it with the group. Also:

Waiting for the Barbarians
The Master of Petersburg
Slow Man
The Childhood of Jesus (new this year)

Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and I've always wanted to read more of him.

one of my favorite authors. I probably should have suggested him when the subject of unreliable narrators came up. Slow Man breaks fictive walls.

Jt wrote: "Suggestion for 2014: J.M. Coetzee. I am reading Diary of a Bad Year now but would love to re-read it with the group. Also:

Waiting for the Barbarians
The Master of Petersburg
Slow Man
The Childhoo..."

Good suggestions! Slow Man looks intriguing. We'll have to include him in the polls for sure.

I'm proposing that we read some Steven Moore in 2014. Now he's famous for his Gaddis book but that would serve as supplementary material if we are reading anything by Gaddis but we are mainly reading fiction here on BP so having recourse to the vast knowledge that Moore has compiled therein for our benefit would be of tremendous help,esp. when debating matters relating to fiction ( now you know why NR is formidable in debates!).

In case we agree to this,Jim will have to do some immaculate schedule planning & picking & choosing specific topics cause the first book covers multicultural,multiliteral universe & the second book will be out in October 2013. Both are 700pages long so perhaps one book per year will be suitable.
Here are the links to these two volumes:

The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600 by Steven Moore -

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77...

The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 by Steven Moore

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...

& also the link that NR provided:

Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset Management System - Universal PDF® Viewer
http://cipg.codemantra.us/UI_TRANSACT...

Mala wrote: "I'm proposing that we read some Steven Moore in 2014. Now he's famous for his Gaddis book but that would serve as supplementary material if we are reading anything by Gaddis but we are mainly readi..."

First question that arises - do we just read and discuss this as lit crit/theory? Or do we try to incorporate some of the texts discussed?

I ordered a copy this afternoon, so I'll peruse and see what ideas emerge.

There is no such thing as "immaculate" schedule planning. "Spots" are a fact of life. :-)

Bill wrote: "There is no such thing as "immaculate" schedule planning. "Spots" are a fact of life. :-)"

Isn't that an advertisement for a dishwasher detergent?

Bill, trust me when I say this- when it comes to writing summaries & planning schedules,there's no one to beat Jim!
He's one of the best moderators you'll see around here.period.