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Thread: What should I read first??? I'm 17 and value style over content.

  1. #1

    What should I read first??? I'm 17 and value style over content.

    I currently have Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster, Train Dreams, Lolita, Naked Lunch, Suttree, Omensetter's Luck (DFW-recommended), Reader's Block (DFW raved about Wittgenstein's Mistress, but it was checked out), Ulysses, The Corrections, Middlesex, and Joseph Andrews (mainly because I always see Tom Jones being used for lit exams). I still need to finish Infinite Jest, but had to return it to the library with 200 pages to go. I'm 17, a senior in high school, and I really love lyrical and difficult prose. I attempted the first few pages of Suttree, but it was so incredibly difficult to read. Maybe that was because I read the italicized opening. I'm the type to look up every single word I come accross with which I am not familiar. There must've been 20 words per page of that opening of Suttree that I didn't know.
    Words like (at random) "pinchbeck," "dogwhelk," "bolos," "murenger." I love this type of writing though. I was absolutely wowed by Nabokov's prose in Lolita (reading it again).



    what about all this contemporary stuff

    i don't know how well known it is
    but

    one example (random)
    joshua cohen's Witz (dubbed the Jewish Ulysses (even though Ulysses is about a jew i think)

    the intstructions- adam levin
    zadie smith
    pynchon
    gaddis
    martin amis
    ben lerner
    delillo
    robinson
    krasznahorkai
    cortazar
    eggers
    safran foer
    murakami
    houellebecq
    banville
    chabon
    vila-matas
    egan
    danielewski
    harbach
    saunders
    mitchell
    bolano
    roth
    updike
    lydia davis
    walser
    shteyngart
    lipsyte
    st aubyn
    tobias wolff (wolfe?)\
    colson whitehead
    barnes (djuna and julian)
    denis johnson
    coover
    perec
    vollmann
    celine (louis something)
    sebald
    waugh
    wodehouse
    hitchens (not a novelist, but still good)
    atwood
    rushdie
    eco



    and what about the books/novelists on this list, many of which/whom are quite obscure and unfamiliar to me


    ^am i missing many contemporary novelists of great literary merit? i'm sure i am, i haven't read very much, but i've read stuff about all of those authors above
    and there are many others who i'm forgetting

    also

    am homes
    calvino
    erickson
    daitch
    pessoa
    lethem
    dyer
    d'agata
    diaz (not sure about this one)
    nicholson baker
    colm toibin
    auster
    edmund white
    leyner

    moore
    kundera
    carson
    shirley jackson
    oh ya, barth
    alice munro
    coover
    carver
    cheever
    will self
    ellroy

    hunter s thompson
    didion
    borges
    saramago
    dos passos
    beckett

    coetzee
    winterson
    mcinerney

  2. #2
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    It takes a hundred years, at least, to get a consensus on what has great literary merit. Of course it's usually possible to spot some early contenders, and you seem to have listed most of them

    I don't like difficult prose, and can do without "lyrical", so I will refrain from making specific suggestions in that vein.

    A lot of the authors you list aren't difficult; like Roth, Coetzee, Julian Barnes, Saramago, Waugh... These would also, surely, be near the top of many people's lists... they would certainly be at the top of mine. Why do you want difficult? Why not go for great? Great can be difficult, but it can also be easy.

  3. #3
    ok
    so who are the difficult contemporary

    i hear banville is a lot like nabokov

  4. #4
    Registered User kelby_lake's Avatar
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    Ian McEwan is not difficult but he does prize style above content.

    If you want difficult prose, try the slang of A Clockwork Orange, or Trainspotting. They have quite a male appeal I think.

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    My mind's in rags breathtest's Avatar
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    Delillo has an attractive style. Very smart prose. Expresses small things in a way that makes you wish that your own writing could accomplish such ease and elegance.

    Beckett is the king, in my opinion. The style of his later prose, particularly, is very intricate and complex, and ultimately rewarding. Pieces like 'Ill Seen Ill Said', 'How It Is', and the shorter prose like his collection of 'fizzles'. One of the 'fizzles', for example, is about a man who sits silently in a chair, apparently lifelessly, but on closer inspection Beckett makes us see that he is teeming with life, describing his minute movements in such great detail. Very Avant-Garde writer. And very humorous at times as well.
    'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'. Hemingway

  6. #6
    ^thx

    are most of those authors i listed worth reading, though
    even if most of them aren't difficult

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    Registered User Jassy Melson's Avatar
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    Try reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray--for both style and content.
    Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist.

    Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    I agree with the suggestion of Oscar Wilde. I'd also look into other writers of the art pour l'art movement: Theophile Gautier, J.K. Huysmans, Comte de Lautréamont, Walter Pater, etc...
    Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
    The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
    My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
    http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/

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    i love the title of this thread "i'm seventeen and value style over content"

    i would reccommend calvino's invisible cities. beautiful book! it was the only present i got on my 19th birthday and i enjoyed it immensely

  10. #10
    thank u for the responses everyone

    i'll look into wilde
    i have read about pater a bit
    i'll check out the other guys
    i suppose pater's main work on the renaissance would be best,

    ill look into calvino also
    i've heard a lot about his if on a winter's night a traveler

  11. #11
    ill look into beckett and delillo also

    according to harold bloom

    the 4 contemporary authors who have touched on the sublime are delillo, pynchon, mccarthy, and roth


    i currently checked out dubliners, lolita, the sea (banville), a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and the lottery (shirley jackson)
    from my local library, i just picked up what there chanced upon

  12. #12
    Registered User kelby_lake's Avatar
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    If you want Wilde, go for the plays. The Importance of Being Earnest is the big one.

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    Registered User Jassy Melson's Avatar
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    Wilde also wrote three collections of short stories--most of them in the fantasy realm. All his stories and plays make for good reading.
    Last edited by Jassy Melson; 12-06-2012 at 09:38 AM.
    Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist.

    Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein

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    My mind's in rags breathtest's Avatar
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    Bury yourself in books! It's the best way to die
    'For sale: baby shoes, never worn'. Hemingway

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    Registered User miyako73's Avatar
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    If you want entertaining wit and unique writing style, try arundathi roy's the god of small things.
    "You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same."

    --Jonathan Davis

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