For the Rebecca West bit , although the nuancing by Patricia Lockwood is interesting
(hat tip Dorian Lynskey)
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Sterling Morrison, quoted in Rob Sheffield's Beatles book I'm guessing the VU hated the Mothers ever since that period when the latt... -
"When I first saw Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction' , I turned to my wife during the screening & said, “Everything I have d...
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The preservation of music in records reminds one of canned food. —Theodor W. Adorno
Is the Patricia Lockwood from No One Is Talking About This? The sentiment fits, although I don't remember that specific line.
ReplyDeleteHighly recommended, if you haven't read it.
I don't know - someone posted it on Facebook (well it was Dorian Lynskey in fact).
ReplyDeleteIs her writing all like that David Foster Wallace megapiece in the LRB? Bits of it were incisive and funny but much of it felt like trying to get a grip on water - and running water at that. Mind you I read all 8000 plus words of it so she's doing something right.
I couldn't tell if she was trying to put you off reading DFW or encourage you to read it - or both simultaneously.
Thanks for the recommendation: that piece on DFW is fantastic. And it is very much like her other stuff that I have read: discursive, diffuse, sometimes very funny, sometimes obdurately opaque. She started out as a poet, I think, and that tracks.
DeleteIt sounds like DFW is another candidate for "good art made by bad people". Is he covered in Monsters?
Although, that said, I have never had any time for him myself. I read one essay, on porn, thought it was excruciatingly trite, and have never felt moved to try again. But I am prepared to accept it may be unfair to write him off on the basis of such limited experience.
I don't think he is in Monsters actually. Almost everyone under the sun is - and quite a few women, interestingly (not for abuse of others, but artists or writers who abandoned their children in order to concentrate on their work).
DeleteI fear I fall into a rather cliched category with DFW of those who love the essay about going on a cruise and who started Infinite Jest but never finished it. In my case, I barely started it - read the opening chapter, which I thought was pretty amazing, but something made me not continue. Well, there's the sheer size of the book. It's so inconvenient to read. One of the funniest bits in the Lockwood piece is when she's talk about the weight of it pressing into her gusset.
I read something else, I think in New Yorker, possibly one of those stories that went into Hideous Men - very creepy and unsettling.