Weak in Comparison to Dreams – James Elkins
WEAK IN COMPARISON TO DREAMS [may] look like a recovery narrative, but it’s actually a re-cover-up story.
The Maladaptation of White Noise
Perhaps there is a tablet, a Dylar that actually works, that would make me forget Baumbach’s movie as the Gladneys wanted to forget death.
The author could be working safely at their desk or drowsing in bed, and remember some improbable situation or weak sentence, and the presumed-dead book feels somehow still half-alive…
Coover, Vollmann, Wallace, and Gayl Jones — I believe these big, wide-ranging books are postmodernism’s best, for the Bullshitters engage more directly and profoundly than the Artistes with significant cultural subjects.
Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention – David Shields
If actual [David] Shields were really serious about ending the oligarchy, he’d have written a different book.
I submit that playing along once in a while with games like Olafsson’s, games about the game of fiction, can be a useful reminder of how fiction works on us.
The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner
It appears that Kushner wants readers to believe — and feel — that the book is transparent, almost literally true.
The Overstory – Richard Powers
What if a hundred thousand humans dressed as trees and migrated to Washington? How about a “War on Christmas (Trees)”? Fleet-footed activists come out at night and spray the trees for sale on city streets with orange paint, recalling Agent Orange and disrupting wasteful tree farms.
Some reviewers in Great Britain have criticized Self’s trilogy for being too diffuse, too difficult. I found PHONE not diffuse enough.
On reading and writing books in two centuries.