Chivalry is dead because flowers are expensive.
I just bought some flowers. This doesn’t mean I’m not an asshole. I am an asshole, demonstrably so. It’s just that my species has not rendered the human conscience an atavistic nuisance like e.g. the appendix. These flowers are whim-purchased.
Author: Paul Beatty, womb-sharing brother of Pete, from whom I glean this bloggrategy.
Books: White Boy Shuffle.
Times Read: twice, most recently via a nonstop cover to cover session that transpired a week ago while I paced within the small damp cell of consciousness insomnia provided me.
Type of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: weed.
Take on Book: White Boy Shuffle is literature. It is ferociously acerbic and kind of poetic without being Ashberry Berryman lame. It is both a four-on-the-floor, 3-chord punk song and a pair of shoes tied at the laces caught on a line fifteen (15 is chosen arbitrarily here) that overhangs a dusty road in the middle of nowhere. If you prefer straight formal description, it is a Bildungsroman about a black teenage poet cum basketball star cum messianic iconoclast named Gunnar Kaufman. Gunnar is from inner city Los Angeles, but this story is to Finding Forrester as Kool Keith is to Young MC. A chart detailing this book’s themes would do well to include individualism v. collective identity, as well as suicide/negation as a form of self-empowerment.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: Laughing hyena. Which reminds me, doesn’t Allen Iverson sort of realize in adorably human form the non-human characteristics of Mighty Mouse? I think I would get a tattoo of Allen Iverson if I was to get a tattoo of any Illadelph Half-Life icon. On a second sidenote, the room I’m living in now is probably as big as the house my roommate and I shared last year. It is BIG. And I’m paying $117 a month for it. God bless Me.
Author: Ken O'Brien
Title: Buffalo At the Broken Heart
Kind of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: Rubbing alcohol.
Take on Book: This was my SoDak nation book. I decided to see if there were writers from my fair state. There are. Their use-value varies. This book is about a rancher who changes from raising cattle to raising buffalo. This particular rancher likes to read a bit in the summer, and his writing reflects this habit, which is good. Plus I have a predilection of late for big country, and I know the land this guy lives on so it made things a little easier. The story is serviceable, its narrative arc is not the equivalent of a stuttering epileptic, meaning its smooth, and, as I am now firmly ensconced in MT once more, I see lots of cows and buffalo, which increases the book's staying power.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: If indie rock darling Connor Oberst procreated with an albino chameleon, this book would be the literary equivalent of their love child.
Author: Wallace Stegner
Title: Crossing To Safety
Kind of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: Port.
Take on Book: There are some self-conscious semi-pomo moments in this book e.g. the scene in which the narrator, a college professor/writer, responds to his friends' daughter's entreaty to write about her parents by noting that books about regular people and their struggles lack sufficient gravitas to be of interest to modern day readers. Incidentally, the book is about regular people and their struggles, namely the narrator, his wife, and the parents of the inquiring daughter. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I read it in a mood in which standard fare gravitas and verbal precocity did not prove titillating. The narrator's wife does spend time in an iron lung, though, and this episode, while not gripping, catalyzed enough puzzlement for this reader as to compensate for the everyday people stench one finds on every page.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: One of those dogs which lacks back feet and uses a wagon or other wheeled device in its place, but this particular crippled dog - say, a yellow lab/coyote mix - would have some audaciously undoglike skill, such as shuffling cards or juggling.
Title: Oblivion
Author: David Foster Wallace
Kind of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: Grain alcohol.
Take On Book: Who knows? I just took it to cool coffeehouse type places and college libraries as the literary equivalent of taking your sister's baby to Grant Park to grab girls' attention. Ha. I read it. Alone, without proper light, while pummeling myself with a mace. It was hard. But good. Really quite good.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: Ocelot.
Finally I found the post on Iraq’s elections at coggdogg.blogspot.com quite thoughtful and a good read. You should go over there now. Don’t act like you have something else to do. Slacker.
Author: Paul Beatty, womb-sharing brother of Pete, from whom I glean this bloggrategy.
Books: White Boy Shuffle.
Times Read: twice, most recently via a nonstop cover to cover session that transpired a week ago while I paced within the small damp cell of consciousness insomnia provided me.
Type of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: weed.
Take on Book: White Boy Shuffle is literature. It is ferociously acerbic and kind of poetic without being Ashberry Berryman lame. It is both a four-on-the-floor, 3-chord punk song and a pair of shoes tied at the laces caught on a line fifteen (15 is chosen arbitrarily here) that overhangs a dusty road in the middle of nowhere. If you prefer straight formal description, it is a Bildungsroman about a black teenage poet cum basketball star cum messianic iconoclast named Gunnar Kaufman. Gunnar is from inner city Los Angeles, but this story is to Finding Forrester as Kool Keith is to Young MC. A chart detailing this book’s themes would do well to include individualism v. collective identity, as well as suicide/negation as a form of self-empowerment.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: Laughing hyena. Which reminds me, doesn’t Allen Iverson sort of realize in adorably human form the non-human characteristics of Mighty Mouse? I think I would get a tattoo of Allen Iverson if I was to get a tattoo of any Illadelph Half-Life icon. On a second sidenote, the room I’m living in now is probably as big as the house my roommate and I shared last year. It is BIG. And I’m paying $117 a month for it. God bless Me.
Author: Ken O'Brien
Title: Buffalo At the Broken Heart
Kind of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: Rubbing alcohol.
Take on Book: This was my SoDak nation book. I decided to see if there were writers from my fair state. There are. Their use-value varies. This book is about a rancher who changes from raising cattle to raising buffalo. This particular rancher likes to read a bit in the summer, and his writing reflects this habit, which is good. Plus I have a predilection of late for big country, and I know the land this guy lives on so it made things a little easier. The story is serviceable, its narrative arc is not the equivalent of a stuttering epileptic, meaning its smooth, and, as I am now firmly ensconced in MT once more, I see lots of cows and buffalo, which increases the book's staying power.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: If indie rock darling Connor Oberst procreated with an albino chameleon, this book would be the literary equivalent of their love child.
Author: Wallace Stegner
Title: Crossing To Safety
Kind of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: Port.
Take on Book: There are some self-conscious semi-pomo moments in this book e.g. the scene in which the narrator, a college professor/writer, responds to his friends' daughter's entreaty to write about her parents by noting that books about regular people and their struggles lack sufficient gravitas to be of interest to modern day readers. Incidentally, the book is about regular people and their struggles, namely the narrator, his wife, and the parents of the inquiring daughter. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but I read it in a mood in which standard fare gravitas and verbal precocity did not prove titillating. The narrator's wife does spend time in an iron lung, though, and this episode, while not gripping, catalyzed enough puzzlement for this reader as to compensate for the everyday people stench one finds on every page.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: One of those dogs which lacks back feet and uses a wagon or other wheeled device in its place, but this particular crippled dog - say, a yellow lab/coyote mix - would have some audaciously undoglike skill, such as shuffling cards or juggling.
Title: Oblivion
Author: David Foster Wallace
Kind of Alcohol With Which Book Goes Best: Grain alcohol.
Take On Book: Who knows? I just took it to cool coffeehouse type places and college libraries as the literary equivalent of taking your sister's baby to Grant Park to grab girls' attention. Ha. I read it. Alone, without proper light, while pummeling myself with a mace. It was hard. But good. Really quite good.
Kind of Animal Book Would Be: Ocelot.
Finally I found the post on Iraq’s elections at coggdogg.blogspot.com quite thoughtful and a good read. You should go over there now. Don’t act like you have something else to do. Slacker.
posted by am at
2:06 PM
1 Comments:
Not an ocelot. A marmet: small, peculiar, economical in motion and, ultimately, a vicious little motherfucker. Color me still marked out.
Sup?
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home