i'm talking about this on the show this week but i wanted to write here.... hogg is transcendental disgust, a nonstop pummeling of sick and horror. ami'm talking about this on the show this week but i wanted to write here.... hogg is transcendental disgust, a nonstop pummeling of sick and horror. american psycho and glamorama had a similar effect in me but delany warps the sensation into a nonstop feeling of rot and terror. breaks the thin veneer of civility the world keeps to reveal the infinite sea of human capacity, required reading for anyone into extremity, a transformative experience in evil...more
i am sort of endeared by the feminist and moral panic this whipped up in the nineties when it is very clear to me that ellis was merely witnessing thei am sort of endeared by the feminist and moral panic this whipped up in the nineties when it is very clear to me that ellis was merely witnessing the violence of an unrestrained upper class. everyone was right to be so comically upset, they just misplaced who exactly they should have been upset with. in any case this is a truly horrible exercise in control and authority: the endless patterns and sequences of trite materialism are as compulsive as they are maddening. it’s a disgusting and cumbersome drag of a book that unquestionably succeeds because of and not in spite of those merits. not necessarily complicated or nuanced but very physically persuasive. i’m going to be thinking about it for a long time...more
my favorite stories are 'mr. wu,' 'an honest woman,' 'dancing in the moonlight' and 'slumming.' everything else is at least interesting if not a littlmy favorite stories are 'mr. wu,' 'an honest woman,' 'dancing in the moonlight' and 'slumming.' everything else is at least interesting if not a little plagued by the overtness of moshfegh's moshfeghisms -- lots of unengaged narrators, acne, body fat, nihilism, anti-conclusions... all good stuff but definitely becoming closer to trope as her career continues. the collection approaches the same terrible brilliance as that last page of my year of rest and relaxation as often as it does the inconsequential stuff of eileen. still, moshfegh is my favorite mfa brat and i'm very much looking forward to death in my hands later this year...more
life is meaningless sex/heroin/violence/rock and roll sludge. can't say i loved it but murakami does always have his moments. here, it's in an extendelife is meaningless sex/heroin/violence/rock and roll sludge. can't say i loved it but murakami does always have his moments. here, it's in an extended orgy scene that is sickening and frightening, thirty pages i loved periling through. everything else is somewhat protracted and uninspired but that sequence is brilliant enough to warrant a read.
i also think the dialogue is beautiful. there's some striking imagery. the notion that we're all scrambling through nothingness toward a greater nothing resonates with me. all of it is sort of artless and unrefined but knowing that murakami finds his footing in his later work make this an interesting companion to the books of his i like much more (in the miso soup, particularly)...more
dehumanizing noumenal sex meltdown. extremely cruel and awful, never pleasant at any point. basically right up my alley. this is my first jelinek and dehumanizing noumenal sex meltdown. extremely cruel and awful, never pleasant at any point. basically right up my alley. this is my first jelinek and i was floored by her capacity to revolt the reader with simple images of regular people on every page.
"dismayed, erika pictures herself as a numb hole, six feet of space, disintegrating in the earth."...more
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