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Question
From where does the following quote come?
Merely finishing one of these monstrosities may be the perverse attraction for me and as well as for other disturbed individuals. And having the lunatic gumption to repeat the tortuous process with another hefty offering could be yet another facet of this fevered malady.
a) A (slightly tipsy) economics professor discussing the cost/benefit schedule of one of those 96 oz. steaks that you earn a t-shirt for finishing.
b) A chimpanzee who was taught to speak English real nice-like.
c) The President explaining his Iraq policy.
d) A strange, more or less pointless "review" of WIlliam Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down.
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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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On Joining Oulipo by Accident
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)
That’s a pretty pointless review, but it does speak to the compulsion to read more Vollman (even while finding it excruciating and frustrating), which I think implies that there is something in the lengthy repetition that strikes us a certain way, that we can’t quite define, something strange and addicting, which I think is the mark of great art (the Mona Lisa, Gertrude Stein, Richard Serra). It draws us in, brings us back again and again, but we can’t say exactly why… My new WTV theory is that we like reading him because we are forced to consider what we would edit if we were the editor, and in this way, we participate further in the reading of the work. I’m already working on what I would consider to be a better edit of Europe Central (in my head), and this quiet personal toil makes me even more interested in what I’m reading and why it’s so good.
Terri: That’s a very interesting theory. It’s a pity John Holt couldn’t explain himself as succinctly as you have.
Good catch–i think the reviewer missed the point on RURD though, because he did not check out the full version. The 7vol. edition is a much better “experience”–though the subject matter is difficult and at times distasteful, that gives a true picture of what WTV was trying to accomplish, more so than the edited version which was issued solely for money.