Tom’s Comments (group member since Sep 17, 2012)

Tom’s comments from the Completists' Club group.

MJ you are the king of Dalkey, impressive amount of their books you have read. I have read about 50, and so far I've rarely been let down. Maybe there will be a time in your life when Miss McIntosh will wow you in ways you could not imagine!

Dzanc is also publishing a sequel to Brunists next year along with the catalog re-issue.

I'm excited for this as I think it difficult to attain.

Ok I will track that one down! I have DaVinci's Bicycle at home, which looks manageable.

I will surely read both of those at some point. The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.has been my favorite so far as it has the obsessive mania of The Mezzanine; of course, Universal Baseball came first. Pricksongs & Descants along with The Public Burning are likely to go down first.

With great shame I admit I have read nothing by Davenport, but this will change soon. Thanks for posting this one!

While it is true that Baker's best work is behind him, I did enjoy The Anthologist. I have the feeling he has another great novel in him, and will likely publish some good non-fiction. The character of the completist needs to take the good with the bad!

Here are my 6 titles read, note how lamely I exhaust the short books:


The Origin of the Brunists
Spanking the Maid
Briar Rose
A Political Fable
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop.
Stepmother

Hopefully I can add to this list over the next year.

Firstly I would like to apologize to the venerable Coover for his late entry into this pantheon. I have barely scratched the surface of Coover having read a scant 6 books.

Novels
The Origin of the Brunists (1966)
The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. (1968)
The Public Burning (1977), completed 1975[2]
Gerald's Party (1986)
A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This (1987) (themed anthology)
Pinocchio in Venice (1991)
John's Wife (1996)
Ghost Town (1998)
The Adventures of Lucky Pierre: Director's Cut (2002)
Noir (2010)

Short stories, Novellas, Plays & Collections
Pricksongs & Descants (1969) (collection)
The Babysitter (1969) (short story)
A Theological Position (1972) (plays)
A Political Fable (1980) (novella)
Spanking the Maid (1982) (novella)
In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters (1983) (collection)
Whatever Happened to Gloomy Gus of the Chicago Bears (1987) (novella)
Dr. Chen's Amazing Adventure (1991) (novella)
Briar Rose (1996) (novella)
The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell) (2002) (novella)
Stepmother (2004) (novella)
A Child Again (2005) (collection)
"The Case of the Severed Hand" Harper's Magazine 317 [1898] (July 2008): 74-80
"White-Bread Jesus" Harper's Magazine 317 [1903] (December 2008): 79-88
"Going for a beer" The New Yorker (March 14, 2011)
"Matinée" The New Yorker (July 25, 2011)
[edit]Non-Fiction
The End of Books (1992) (essay)

Dzanc books will be re-issuing his books for e-reader sometime in the next year: http://www.dzancbooks.org/reprint-cat...

The Dalkey Archive will release this interesting critical book soon: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Coover-G...
& their latest ROCF is dedicated to him.

I was going to start this one! Human Smoke is incredibly good as it details the realities of WW2 as reported on during that period. The book really makes the case for considering Churchill a war criminal. Checkpoint was rather dull, but most of his titles, I have read 8 or so, range from excellent to at least pretty good. The Mezzanine is an all-time favorite of mine; oh if I could only write about absolutely nothing as well as Baker writes...

Ahh good to know... what are Theroux's political disagreements, do you know?

That is too bad, maybe the Dalkey will step up and reissue some more of his titles. I was shocked to see this largely true of A. Theroux as well.

I agree on The Ice Shirt, great book. You Bright and Risen Angels looms over me...

Rainbow Stories seem to be a decent landing place; I started with Butterfly Stories, seemed to be a good place. You could not go wrong with Europe Central as well. There are different Vollmann's though: historically based novels, journalism/informal history, whore books.

I have made it through 10 so far, I need to take down another soon. He told me has has a book of ghost stories done, a book on Bosnia, and a book on trannies & the 5th installment of the dream series. Even if you complete all of the above, you will be staring down the barrel of another 1500 pages.

Nathan you have convinced me to give Mano a shot; I just picked up Take 5, which I will read...some day. It looks amazing though. I imagine much of his stuff is out of print?

I have read 5 books by Bolano as I am rationing him slowly as he is amazing! I think I need to challenge Nazi Literature of the Americas soon.

Mike, have you read much Cortazar? If you like the Latins, then you will love him!

Hi & thanks for inviting me to the group; I'm glad to see there are other neurotic nuts like myself out there. I am a completist for sure, but an odd one. There are many writers I would like to complete, some I am close to finishing. My problem is I like to save things to read for the future. I could probably finish off DFW & Pynchon in the next 2 months, but then I would have nothing to read by them... so I cherish and pick one up here and there. Vollmann is certainly on the list, but the second you finish he will slam another 800 pound tome on your desk; he is a bastard like that. So I pursue many complete oeuvres with the naive assumption that I will live long enough to complete.

I would like to read the complete work of some odd-balls: Jack London, Susan Sontag, Philip K Dick, Julio Cortazar, Honore de Balzac... & many more.