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Now that the Naked Singularity Big Read is concluded, we’re running short responses to the book by Big Read participants. Here’s Kevin Ryan Nava discussing A Naked Singularity as an experience of its being written.
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
In a recent pre-review of D.T. Max’s upcoming David Foster Wallace biography, Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story, Lev Grossman asks the question so many young writers—writers who, like Sergio De La Pava, were raised on “E Unibus Pluram” and Consider the Lobster, writerswho, like I, were raised to worship . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Now that the Naked Singularity Big Read is concluded, we’re running short responses to the book by Big Read participants. Here’s Craig Chisholm discussing his general impressions of A Naked Singularity.
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
To begin an, at this point, untested novel of considerable girth with a biblical passage about the inadequacy of mankind, demanded that I adjust, or at least consider, the barometer of my expectations. There is a reason print-on-demand publishers are rightfully referred to as vanity presses. But in the history of publishing there are texts, . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Now that the Naked Singularity Big Read is concluded, we’re running short responses to the book by Big Read participants. Here’s Brandon Walter discussing how De La Pava works the idea of entropy, pioneered by postmodernists like Thomas Pynchon and William Gaddis.
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
A number of authors familiar to readers of this website, William Gaddis, David Foster Wallace, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, J.G. Ballard, Roberto Bolano, Don DeLillo, and most recently, Sergio De La Pava, have all used the ideas of entropy and chaos as central themes to their . . . continue reading, and add your comments
Now that the Naked Singularity Big Read is concluded, we’re running short responses to the book by Big Read participants. Here’s Richard Hutzler writing about his experiences with the combination of a very plot-driven book that also felt extremely dense at times.
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
Some books read like a river carrying you slowly downstream—so slowly you can’t even be sure at times you’re moving. It’s deep and it’s wide, and all sorts of interesting things are going on around and below and above you . . . then . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
This is the last post in the Naked Singularity Big Read, as per our schedule. Whether or not you liked the book, I hope everyone who participated had a good time.
Starting next week, we’ll be having a bunch of guest posts from participants in the read. And I may also chime in with some more thoughts on the book.
Now on to some concluding thoughts on our final chunk of prose.
In response to all the guilt and fear and sadness that Casi now associates . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
To start off, I’m going to ask for volunteers to write up short posts about their experiences with A Naked Singularity. First three volunteers get a signed copy of the original Xlibris edition. If you would like to participate, email me at scott_esposito AT yahoo.com.
Now then, in this final week of reading we’re covering the third and final part of the book. Dane and Casi have just finished their caper, and part three starts off with the information that the temperature is absolute zero. . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
In my mind, the chunk of this week’s read that deals with Casi’s experiences in the Alabama penitentiary [469 - 485] demonstrates conclusively at least one or both of the following: Casi’s detachment from reality; the polemical mode of De La Pava’s writing.
We’ve already discussed the former quite a bit; as to the latter, in A Naked Singularity I’ve found De La Pava to be a writer who presents extreme cases, juxtaposing them with one another. Unlike a David Foster Wallace, who would actually detail . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
To start this week’s section, we are once again with Casi and Dane hashing out their plan. I’m curious to know how everyone feels about these conversations between that De La Pava keeps giving to us. There’s been an awful lot of Casi and Dane hashing out their plan over the past hundred pages or so, but by and large it’s worked very well for me. Even as the conversations have overlaid on similar points and themes, I feel like De La Pava has kept the . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
Throughout the last 50 or so pages of this week’s section we see the re-introduction of the Puerto Rican boxer Wilfred Benitez, who was very quickly introduced to A Naked Singularity during week 2′s reading.
Benitez’s boxing career will come to loom larger and larger throughout the remainder of this book, becoming a third narrative strand in juxtaposition to the two main ones: Casi’s scheme with Dane and his defense of the death row convict Jalen Kingg with his colleague Toombin. Just as the . . . continue reading, and add your comments
For the rest of the Naked Singularity Big Read posts, click here.
Picking up where we left off earlier this week, in the middle of this week’s section Casi and Dane are hashing out the details of their heist plan. Casi, who already said “yes” to the plan at the end of last week’s section, is having doubts, and Dane is working hard to reassure him and bring him in to the plan.
On page 356 we see an interesting justification Dane gives, a justification that brings in the threads of morality and the American justice system . . . continue reading, and add your comments
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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Gaddis in the NYT
Graphs, Maps, Trees
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
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