Quantcast

The End of Oulipo?

The End of Oulipo? My book (co-authored with Lauren Elkin), published by Zero Books. Available everywhere. Order it from Amazon, or find it in bookstores nationwide. The End of Oulipo

Lady Chatterley’s Brother

Lady Chatterley's Brother. The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series, Lady Chatterley's Brothercalled “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future. Read an excerpt.

Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:

Translate This Book!

Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating Life Perecread" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle.
For low prices on Las Vegas shows visit ShowTickets.com

Book Lists

New Books

The Quarterly Convers-
ation's Favorite Reads of 2012


New Books

Interesting New Books — 2013


New Books

Interesting New Books — 2012


New Books

Interesting New Books — 2011


New Books

The Between Paren-theses Reading List


New Books

36
Out-
standing Novellas


New Books

Essential Oulipo Works


Airships

20 Must-Read Poetry Books


Airships

One-Paragraph and/or One-Sentence Books


Airships

My Favorite Reads of 2010


Airships

J.C. Hallman’s 10 Favorite Books of Creative Criticism


Airships

Damion Searls’ Top Ten NYRB Classics


Airships

Ten Essential Southern Novels


New Books

What I've Read So Far in 2010


New Books

Top 20 Spanish-Language Novels Written Since 1982


New Books

The Greatest Fiction from Argentina


New Books

Great Books of Austria-Hungary


New Books

Interesting New Books — 2010


You Say
twitter

Follow Me on Twitter

Group Reads

The Tunnel

Fall Read: The Tunnel by William H. Gass

A group read of the book that either "engenders awe and despair" or "[goads] the reader with obscenity and bigotry," or both. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
Naked Singularity

Summer Read: A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava

Fans of Gaddis, Pynchon, DeLillo: A group read of the book that went from Xlibris to the University of Chicago Press. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
Life Perec

Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec

Starting March 2011, read the greatest novel from an experimental master. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
Last Samurai

Fall Read: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

A group read of one of the '00s most-lauded postmodern novels. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
Tale of Genji

The Summer of Genji

Two great online lit magazines team up to read a mammoth court drama, the world's first novel.
Your Face Tomorrow

Your Face This Spring

A 3-month read of Javier Marias' mammoth book Your Face Tomorrow

Shop though these links = Support this site

Ten Memorable Quotes from William Gaddis’ Letters

New Books
Here are ten of my favorite moments from these hugely interesting letters.

Interviews from Conversational Reading

New Books
See this page for interviews with leading authors, translators, publishers, and more.

RSS New Articles

  • The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov March 6, 2013
    Pevear and Volokhonsky’s ambition in bringing Leskov and all his stylistic peculiarities into English is impressive, and all the more so for how it contrasts with their previous role as translators of Russian. The pair are justly famous for their renditions of the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists; their editions of Anna Karenina and Crime and Punis […]
  • Middle C by William H. Gass March 3, 2013
    What distinguishes Middle C from his other fiction, then, is not the that Gass’ protagonist, Joseph Skizzen, spends nearly a lifetime deflecting the dangers and horrors of life itself, but the ways in which the novel’s narrative voice buffers him from the responsibilities of being a protagonist at all. In this, the tale of his life, stretching from the Blitz […]
  • The Field Is Lethal by Suzanne Doppelt March 3, 2013
    This is a strange, engaging book that does not offer up its material to the reader without a struggle. Much of its strength comes from its juxtapositions, not only of idea with idea, word with word, phrase with phrase, but also text with image, image or text with white space, and in a larger sense, the abstract with the concrete. Doppelt is interested in how […]
  • 70% Acrylic 30% Wool by Viola di Grado March 3, 2013
    You can tell that Viola di Grado has a unique voice from the first line of her novel, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool: “One day it was still December.” If this line seems a little puzzling, the next one puts things in (ironic) perspective: “Especially in Leeds, where winter has been underway for such a long time that nobody is old enough to have seen what came before.” […]
  • Promising Young Women by Suzanne Scalon March 3, 2013
    Plath’s ghost haunts the pages of Scanlon’s book, a non-linear narrative that hinges around Lizzie, a bright liberal arts student from Barnard and aspiring actress who has much in common with Plath’s protagonist. We’ve fast-forwarded forty years to New York in the early 90’s’; like Esther before her, Lizzie has come from the provinces to make a name for hers […]
  • The Available World by Ander Monson March 3, 2013
    What happens to all the old, new things after two or three new, new things replace them? And what of the ideas and memories of which they are ultimately extensions and souvenirs? This is one of the larger questions, really, that Ander Monson poses in his most recent collection of poems, The Available World, though he does so in varying shades of subtly and e […]
  • The Whispering Muse by Sjón March 3, 2013
    There is something immediately seductive about Sjón’s The Whispering Muse. The narrator, a peculiar old Icelander named Valdimar Haraldsson, receives a letter from an old acquaintance, inviting him on a sea voyage aboard the newly launched merchant ship, the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen. Haraldsson, who has long been cooped up in his shabby Copenhagen apartment, r […]
  • Wolf and Pilot by Farrah Field March 3, 2013
    When Farah Field announced the opening of Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop (Field and Jared White’s pop-up shop the only all-poetry bookshop in New York City) two Februarys ago on her blog Adultish, she wrote this: It is kind of an anti-capitalistic act because no one could ever pay what poetry is worth. This sentiment is exactly true ofher new book, Wolf and Pil […]
  • The Selected Letters of Anthony Hecht March 3, 2013
    Unless he is John Keats, a poet’s letters seldom stand alone as literature. They might hold our attention as gossip (Lord Byron), psychiatric case study (Robert Lowell) or the after-hours thoughts of a combative poet-critic (Yvor Winters), but few could be pleasurably read without the additional scaffolding provided by the poetry. Even Marianne Moore, one of […]
  • Kind One by Laird Hunt March 3, 2013
    Readers who go into Laird Hunt's Kind One looking for kindly characters are presented with an array of unlikely candidates. It simply cannot be Linus Lancaster, a farmer with delusions of grandeur (his farm is named Paradise) who beats his wife Ginny, rapes his young female slaves Cleome and Zinnia, and whips Alcofibras, the slave who tends his garden, […]

Reader Picks
«  
  »

The Tunnel Big Read: Week 3

Welcome to Week 3 of our group read of William H. Gass’s The Tunnel. The read lasts from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 3, covering pages 247 through 379. Get the schedule here. Purchase the book here and benefit this site. All posts related to this group read are here.

Thank you, and please post any thoughts as pertain to the read in the comments to this post. More thoughts for Week 3 to come later in the week.

You Might Also Like:

More from Conversational Reading:

  1. The Tunnel Big Read: Some Questions for Week 1 We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 1, covering...
  2. The Tunnel Big Read: Questions for Week 2′s Reading We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 2, covering...
  3. The Last Samurai References and Annotations Thread: Week 1 I'll have some initial thoughts later in the week, but I thought I'd try something new that we didn't do with the Your Face Tomorrow...
  4. The Tunnel Big Read? If you’re on my Twitter you might have seen me post this last week: I am feeling kinda like doing a fall Big Read for...
  5. The Tunnel Big Read: Where Kohler Becomes a Little Less Baggy We are group reading William H. Gass’s The Tunnel on this website from September 30 through November 3. We are currently in Week 2, covering...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

October 15th, 2012 | Tags: | Category: Fall 2012 Big Read: William H. Gass's The Tunnel

2 comments to The Tunnel Big Read: Week 3

  • Darby
    October 15, 2012 at 8:17 pm · Reply

    I would personally love to see a short passage (pick one! any one!) get a group unpacking, a collective deconstruction. Even as I lose steady hope of making much of the shape(lessness) of the book I can’t help but wonder what might shake out of a violent attack on a single brick. With some hope of illuminating a few that surround.

  • John
    October 16, 2012 at 8:44 am · Reply

    I found a pssage that reminded me of the Dylarama section of White noise. It’s on page 268 and it deals with “language replac[ing] life”. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>