Ryan Berger > Recent Status Updates

Wait am I the last person to find out about Elon Musk's grandfather. Did everyone know that he was a technocrat con man who lied about being an engineer???

Hate it when this happens

*stacking bales of hay* Hi. I'm Ryan Berger. I've been around the farm long enough to know that just because you got a shiny new tool, don't mean it's gonna work. On this profile, we won't use cowardly half or quarter stars. You deserve the entire star. Over here, we use FULL, holistic, no-GMO stars. That's up to 75% more star per star. Because you deserve it.

"Editors have come along who use terms like "nut graph".... That sort of structural formalism is part of the rote methodology that governs the thought of people who don't have better ideas".

Get their asses, John.

I'm gonna do it. Hold me accountable. I need to write about how I Think You Should Leave is the closest thing to Kafka in contemporary culture

So much Kafka can be read like a Tim Robinson sketch. I can’t be the only one who has noticed this, can I?

Lotta foot stuff huh

My enjoyment is really cresting here but I've heard this is the exact moment it starts to go downhill. Really hoping it doesn't because it would squander something that's got a lot going for it.

IT’S IN THE AIR

Manna from heaven for people who reach critical Discourse Brain and need to scream for everyone to just shut the fuck up and be normal.

Among other things. It's quite good!

I am determined to get this but I am realizing that this is the kind of book that requires 50 minutes of solid, complete concentration to go ten pages. Hoo boy.

Giving the Booker one last chance to stop annoying me (I lied I’ll read the new M John Harrison no matter what)

Let’s fucking go

This got better, don’t think it sucks anymore but just wish this was written in a higher register of language. That + some inconsistent characterization but this is taking shape in a way I can respect.

Just like last time, the story of the mathematicians makes me so mad, and now it's even worse. Labatut just annoys the shit out of me in general lol.

Shocking and arresting premise. Through 30 pages: Not very good. In fact, it’s rubbing me the wrong way in a couple very acute and specific ways that makes this good teach-tape to tell young writers: “maybe do not write like this”

That first story is still so fucking good. It was downhill from here the first time around.

My book club has chosen to read this. Right now I would probably pick it (if I had to pick) as among the most overrated books of the last 25 years. Will see if I come away feeling the same a second time through.

Home stretch

It took Gass 30 years to write, and it's taking me 60 decades to read

Hard to think of another author more cruel to his characters than Nabokov. He is god with a magnifying glass, burning his ants

I could argue that this is the single most experimental thing I’ve ever read— in the truest spirit of the word.

Will talk more about this in my review but Aira unquestionably pushes the novel beyond its container and expands its horizons— and his talent is possibly undeniable. But by that same token, I don’t think anything in here qualifies as a “story” in the traditional sense. Just words.

This isn’t about the Ninja Turtles at ALL >:(

It is epic, but it is tedious. The most I have ever had to battle my concentration for something I enjoyed. I'm ready for this to be over.

Taking a brief detour from E.B. White for a different look at New York and WOW. This isn’t exactly what I was looking for when I went in but it’s compelling in its own right. Bring back subtext to essays!!!!!!!!

I thought the illustrations would be kind of whatever but they’re absolutely gorgeous and so charming.

New York is a beach town baby

I'm charmed! Enchanted! Oh what a delight. Multiple sentences already leaped right into my heart. "A man can be launched, or catapulted, into the Christmas tree business quite by surprise." I mean come ON

How much did I like Blue Moon? Turns out Lorenz Hart and E.B. White never even met in real life and I’m still running to read his essays. Though of course already I’m seeing that I think the choice of White, specifically, was far from arbitrary.

In any event, the White style of essay is extinct in any meaningful sense. Hard to say we suffer greatly from its lack, but once you notice— it’s hard to ignore.

Very funny (but also part of a genuinely very interesting dimension to Rollins’s practice) is how he keeps talking about how hugely important for jazz players to stop smoking and purify their bodies and then decides “well I guess if you don’t use your lungs to play then smoking is fine”. Rhythm section gets to have all the fun per usual.

'Twilight' by John W. Campbell - A fascinating thing you see with early Science Fiction, and I don't know if there's an existing term, but so often the stories are all framed as tall tales one person who experienced the events tells to an audience rather than actively placing us in the narrative as it unfolds. Here is an example. The Time Machine is another. The previous story is yet another.

Every time I read Calvino I'm filled with an overwhelming desire to teach him.