17.
2 years ago
Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
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Entries
14. The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
3 years ago
It’s been slow going on the book-reading. I’ve had so many short stories and articles to read for class, none of which quite qualify as books. I guess I could include my film textbook to bolster the numbers, but I don’t think I’m going to make it anywhere near 60 by the year mark.
Untitled
3 years ago
12. The Lottery and Other Stories, Shirley Jackson
13. The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
Untitled
3 years ago
9. The adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carrol
ummm… I know I’ve read other things lately… Can’t. brain. right. here.
Untitled
3 years ago
I haven’t been updating. Where am I at with this goal? Let’s see…
2. Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
3. Selected Poems of Allen Ginsberg 1947-1995
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Phillip K. Dick
No reviews tonight.
I’m still drudging through The Situationist International Anthology. It’s probably the densest, most confusing text I’ve ever read. What makes it worth it are the brief snippets of inspiration packaged within long, arduous essays. I’m also reading a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky. Today, I read half of Lullaby, by Chuck Palahniuk, as a sort of tasty treat for my brain.
I don’t care if I reach 60, but I’ll keep track anyway, because I’ve never bothered to count how many books I read in a year.
Great Apes, by Will Self
3 years ago
I didn’t read for the first three weeks of 2006, so I’ve decided that “this year” refers to the year of the dog on the Chinese calendar, which actually starts tomorrow. So, I’m not sure if I should count this as one of the 60.
Following an evening fueled by cocaine and ecstacy, the artist Simon Dykes awakes in the morning obsessed with the most absurd notion: that he is human. In Self’s satirical world, however, it is the chimpanzee who is the dominant species that built civilization, while man is stuggling against extinction in the jungles of Africa. The eminent anti-psychiatrist Dr. Busner comes to treat Dykes’ unusual psychosis while it progresses from a catatonic denial of everything he perceives, through an uncomfortable amusement with the absurdity of tea-sipping chimps dressed in tweed jackets, and finally into more or less an acceptance of his “chimpunity.”
Self’s satire analyzes a variety of topics, from the social makeup of society, to the individual’s perception of self. He puts the reader in the fortunate perspective of being able to associate fully with Dykes’ delusion, placing all of the necessary suspension of disbelieve upon the rest of the world of Great Apes.
All in all, this is a very entertaining read. However, in later chapters, Self’s brilliant psychedelic prose becomes a bit too convuluted and methodical. Self has said that he had wished he was able to make the ending “tighter,” and attributes the decline in craftsmanship to a heroin addiction he had still been struggling with at the time.
