Zach > Recent Status Updates

Hm. I don’t know if I’m gonna finish this or not.

“…what we are engaged in is a kind of fraud, possibly an offense to our whole society.”

Guys, unless things are radically different in Japan, the “offense” is, effectively, ghost writing.

“A knight does not protect the truth; he lives inside it and the truth protects him.”

Doesn’t get much better than this.

I was loving Tengo’s story and only begrudgingly getting thru Aomame’s, until—!

The same normal complaint with Murakami novels, the same normal praises. This one feels distinct tho.

I hate this novel. When the author does actual dialogue, where he can’t be overly creative, it shines. But, Good Lord—dear angel!—make it stop.

“And that’s it. Bagger vomits up what feels like a jellyfish with a gasoline kick.” 🙄

This is what happens when people read Blood Meridian *because* it’s the most violent book in the canon or whatever.

People who think this is a gripping war novel are after violence. Not that it’s the threat of relationships and personal dreams dying that makes war narratives so engrossing.

Why love Helm’s Deep? Battle of the Bastards? It’s not the violence. It’s what the violence defends.

“…Bagger’s scaling the ramp of a trench exit, out of dank sewage funk into a troposphere of hot ash that burns a cigarette cherry into his every bronchial.”

Every sentence! Clear and brilliant, then verbose and try-hard. Chekhov’s Advice: to make the reader feel something, restrain your prose. This has turned up every sentence to 11. But you end up not needing 3 of 5 sentences to get what’s going on.

Why read two giant novels at once and listen to two more? Suffering advances the plot, I guess.

Murakami is a spectacular storyteller, but much of his content drives me—hear me—absolutely insane. I hit a block in my own storytelling, picked up a Murakami book, and immediately loved it and started rolling my eyes: block demolished.
So far, it’s enjoyable. Even if the usual HM fare can drive me nuts

a barbarian noise, lionlike in solipsistic bloodthirst, its shadow was swelling, widen black pool. And, boy it stings to have gotten so close to saving his own butt one last time. Stings even more that he failed to protect this woman’s breathtaking light. But at least Uncle Sam’s gone quiet, happy and satisfied at long, long last. And then so then but then it happens. A thing happens. A thing, it happens…

Yeah. I don’t like this at all. Don’t get the hype. I’m getting curious if you could just read “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and get all you’d need.

I’d still look at Whalefall. Or maybe just watch the movie. But mix stream of conscious writing with McCarthy’s thesaurus and an Instagram poet’s sense of language, and you got Angel Down.

I’ll finish this—probably—but, boy do I not care about anything happening here. There’s not a likable character for miles.
The shrieker’s still shrieking.
The narration, undeniably skilled, is a too verbally extraordinary: tiring, overwrought.
Kraus is a good writer, though. I don’t know how to identify this, cuz I don’t care about his characters, but I he comes off as a genuinely likable author.

I genuinely can’t tell if I love or hate this. The language is beautiful and musical, but sometimes feels off. But I could be wrong. What is nice is a well-regarded novel that actually has a plot.

It’s giving Moby-Dick, except Transcendental religiosity is Zen Buddhism; motorcycles are the Pequod; rationality is the White Whale; and Ishmael and Ahab may be the same person.

The tone/style is very 60s-70s, a continuation of Steinbeck-like prose, with Beat Gen navel-gazing. Very readable and enjoyable, thus far.

Exceeds impossibly high expectations

Unironically v life changing

The problem with most dystopians is the us-versus-thems. I’d like to see one where both sides are, within the fictional world, right. Currently, Smith is doing a much more literal representation of Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse: conservative member in organized religion? Bad.

Definitions are also oppressive, which is a tricky linguistic position that usually folds in on itself.

Wow wow wow. Ali Smith knows how to do just enough experimental stuff to keep you interested and locked in. Unless this novel nosedives, I can’t recommend this enough.

So far, there’s not a bad story present here. That said, they’re all dense and very disturbing. Some more dense and aggravating than others. All stunning, but deeply troubling.

So far, this novel reminds me of Never Let Me Go and The Road. While distinct from both, it’s got a similar feeling, tone, and vibe. That is about as high of praise I can give a novel, I think.

—It says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
—I don’t understand…Do you understand it?
—Well, I wouldn’t say I know it completely, but it’s something like, “Everything is a story, a story told by God, and the story is God”…At least that’s how Brother Aed explained it to me.