Just finished the New York Trilogy - what a mindfuck!
I was completely drawn into the book, thinking "what the hell is he pulling off now?!" on several occasions. As you say, in terms of narrative play it's nothing less than a masterpiece. I am sure I have not reached it's ground yet, or grasped it fully. Sometimes it was even too tricky and playful for my taste, Invincible was a bit more stringent and I think I preferred that. But Auster is absolutely brilliant, that much is for sure. Mr. Vertigo is going to be the next book I read from him. But before that I will try something else, and then there's Infinite Jest already luring in my book shelf as well...

Speaking of DFW, I came across this article/essay about him, probably on the occasion of the publication of the Pale King, and it makes a great read if you want to try to understand him: http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/0 ... ntPage=all

Currently reading Oscar Wildes's 'The Importance Of Being Earnest', seen the play performed by my college's drama society and decided to download it onto the iBooks app. Absolutely hilarious and surprisingly advanced language and humour for the time!

I have a copy of that laying around with The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'll have to give it a read. Thanks for the tip!

Hope you enjoy it as much as me, Ardyer! You reminded me, I downloaded The Picture Of Dorian Gray onto that iBooks App aswell, looking forward to delving in. Went on a bit of a download frenzy in the free books section, some surprisingly good choices in there, its perfect for the travelling to and from college.

I'm glad somebody else has enjoyed New York Trilogy. Everyone else I've pushed it on has just given me a token "its alright". Calvino's "if on a winter night's a traveller" is also exceptional, perhaps better, even a massive influence on Auster's work if your interested. Again, a bit of a mindfuck, but I find that sort of narrative play really amusing - and I think I've trained myself to read this sort of stuff so I can read it for pleasure as well as an intellectual excercise. I'm pretty sure Auster has "robbed" a bit of Calvino as well, but the publication dates are pretty close - but there is one part in Calvino which especially seems lifted straight into NYT.

I read Invisible just after Christmas, definitely a more conventional novel, pretty cool still though.

Thanks for the DFW link, I'm devouring any interviews and essays by him at the moment, becoming a bit obsessed, and have begun referencing him in casual conversations etc. Finished Brief Interviews, and Consider the Lobster, and am 80 pages into Infinite Jest, and my Mrs has got me a Pale King in paperback from Portugal. Trying to give Infinite Jest the attention it deserves so only reading it at night when I can really focus on it, but my bus, lunchtime reading is currently The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Also good, just very cool, loads of awesome wise cracks, and anti-hero attitude.

Finished it the other night, and I found it quite humorous. After finishing it I read Wilde's poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and was absolutely blown away. He used a very complex rhyme scheme and managed to invoke the mood of death row brilliantly.

I have just read " Herbert Chapman on Football " It is extracts from what he wrote in the Sunday Express in 1934. The mans visions were decades ahead of his time, the parallels of the game we know today is truly remarkable. In some ways i think Wenger has taken some of his ideas and used them for his ways of running Arsenal ( but sadly not of late ! ) I would urge all Gooners to read this because in my opinion Chapman would not be out of his depth in this era.

So, are you done? (Don't read on if you haven't!)

I finished Infinite Jest about a week ago, and somehow I am still lost for words. It's hard to compare it with any other book I have read so far. Brilliant, overwhelming, also overstraining at times. It definitely had some lengths for me, some passages are just too extensive - I am thinking about the conversation on the "hill" between the wheelchair assassin and the guy dressed as a woman, and also about the dream/hallucination sequences Don Gately has when he is lying in hospital. I was also a bit disappointed that so many plots are not finished. I would have loved to know what happened to Joelle Van Dyne or Orin Incandenza. All in all it was a great read though, and one wouldn't hang on for 1400 pages if the book wasn't engaging.

I have the feeling that the shorter stories and essays that are non-fictional feature a more direct observation and analysis of modern life, certainly more to the point and maybe more witty as well. But then again, Infinite Jest covers so much, so many facets that an essay obviously could never cover, and so many characters and their fates were extremely compelling. I absolutely loved reading it, and in the end I was sorry when the book was finished. Even though sometimes I felt that I am not up to the genius of this book.


Started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez now, I wanted to read something very different before I go back to DFW (which I surely will, because he has become my favourite author long ago).

Sorry mate, I posted a reply but upon submitting it I got an error and it's forever been lost.

I'll post back some thoughts over the weekend - at work now - but year I finished it, and loved it also.

I'm back in the spirit of travel literature; currently rapidly working through Daniel Kalder's Lost Cosmonaut, which is an account of four loosely-linked experiences in the Russian ethnic republics. Very accessible writing style; an embellisher of tales rather than a historian, I appreciate the accessibility of the book. Its amusing tempo, combined with the fact its Russia....and that always excites me....is making for an enjoyable read. And the guy is the extreme of my own personality as a traveller; an anti-tourist, shunning overcrowded places of fame and renown in search of oddities, however trivial.

I think I'll move onto his other Russian work - Strange Telescopes - next.

Also started Let Our Fame Be Great by Oliver Bullough. Another four-account structure, a book also about Russian ethnic republics, but this time centred exclusively on the Caucasus. And over a much greater time-span than Kalder's; from the Russians' first move into the Caucasus over two-hundred years ago, through to Beslan in 2004, confidently appraising a history that is little known withn Russia let alone elsewhere in Europe (except, of course, Beslan).

Read 'Starter for Ten' by David Nicholls - very Hornby esque. Also read all the Frost books by RD Wingfield, and really getting into the Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth books by MC Beaton. Very formulaic but so easy to read.

So yeah. I loved the book also, felt a massive satisfaction when finishing it, took me nearly 3 months. I love the fact it was intentionally arduous, Foster-Wallace has admitted he wanted to go back to the early postmodern avant garde stuff he fell in love with. It makes the good bits in the book even more rewarding. I personally loved the cross-dresser and the wheelchair assassin guy having their philosophical discussions in the desert. I struggled with some of the more mathy bits of tennis. I’m also really into the whole idea of fictions within fiction, so I liked reading about the films Hal’s dad made. One in particular I found physically disturbing (was sick and felt faint whilst having a coffee in a Deli near my house, very embarrassing!), don’t wanna be too graphic but it was the one about the gay guy picking up an aids-ridden rent boy (even now my stomach is going).
I would love to read Infinite Jest again, but can’t see it happening for a few years. It’s kind of the point Foster-Wallace makes about contemporary society, in that people don’t have time to do anything of value anymore – or don’t push themselves to find the time. I generally try and read 2 quite long, heavy going books a year – last year it was Infinite Jest, Crime and Punishment (surprisingly light I thought), and V by Pynchon (only about 550 pages, but extremely dense). Next year I have ear-marked Gravity Rainbow by Pynchon and the Brothers Karamov by Dostoevsky, would love to re-read the Tin Drum again too. I also suspect the Pale King by Foster-Wallace will take a long-time. Anyways, my point here is that I only really get to read in short bursts, on the bus, lunch-breaks etc, which is pretty crap.
Luckily on the MA part-time course I’m doing the Oblivion Stories Foster-Wallace wrote is on the reading list, the only collection I haven’t read. So can’t wait for that.
How is 100 years of Solitude, I got about ¾ about 3 years ago, but had to stop reading it because of Uni coursework. Keep meaning to revisit it cos I love Magic Realism.
Currently just starting Ceremony by Silko for the third-time which examines the difficulties Native Amercian Indians have establishing an identity and culture in modern America. Reading it for my MA to support an essay I plan to write over Christmas to do with the invention of Nationalism, and constructed memories of nationality.

Starter for Ten the film is truly awful

I loved the tennis descriptions! I also enjoyed the parts about the films, and I knew immediately what particular film you were talking about.


Yeah, exactly the same for me. You get to read a lot of novels for Uni though, no?


I am halfway through, it's decent, but not my cup of tea. I am not really into Magic Realism, and I also struggle with the general... colour or tone this book has. Somehow it reminds me of Grass, since you mention the Tin Drum. It's so... earthy, and natural, very similar to the Tin Drum in this regard. It's hard to put it in words, it's just a feeling I get about the tone of the book. Next in line is If on a winter's night a traveler, recommended by you. Already had it in my shelf, read the first lines and thought that it's an utterly brilliant way to begin a book!


Cool, sounds interesting. I take it you are familiar with the work of Benedict Anderson, especially Imagined Communities?

On my phone, so will reply to thisin full in a bit. I think magic realism gets a bad press cos people associate it with fantasy. But its so much more, heavily political, clash of ideologies, very much part of the whole postcolonial experience. I love it and have learnt so much from it.

Jules, the connection you make between Marquez and Grass is with merit. I've read numerous essays linking 100 years, tin drum and midnights children. Rushdie has admitted huge debt to the others with regards to midnights children, and all three are consider prime examples of historiographic metafiction, a device commonly used in magic realism

Yeah been reading Anderson