brautigan - dodge - robbins
So i have this notion, feeling, internal certitude etc, that of the many qualities a writer can have, there's one which is shared between Richard Brautigan, Jim Dodge, and Tom Robbins. Unfortunately i don't have a name for it but i can tell you that Brautigan's dial is at about 9 and Robbins's at about 1. I think it has to do with refusal to Make A Point. Of the three, obviously i despise Robbins and not so obviously i think i prefer Brautigan to Dodge. I mean Dodge to Brautigan. I mean..
I realize i will probably be eviscerated by several of my dear friends when next they see me.
In any event,
i finished The Hawkline Monster, and enjoyed it immensley. It reminded me of Dodge's Stone Junction, but without so much reliance on Plot. Which is saying something.
This morning i started Trout Fishing In America, and it's not going as well. But we'll see. Also the collection i picked it up in, which also has Watermelon Sugar, includes a bunch of poems which hopefully i'll just skip. Strangely, i suspect that much of what irks me in Brautigan, the fey coyness, the firm disbelief in nonnonsequitor, is stuff i personally could easily be accused of.
That's about it reading-wise.
I'm still doing The Turn of the Screw, but slowly. Same for the hemingway.
I realize i will probably be eviscerated by several of my dear friends when next they see me.
In any event,
i finished The Hawkline Monster, and enjoyed it immensley. It reminded me of Dodge's Stone Junction, but without so much reliance on Plot. Which is saying something.
This morning i started Trout Fishing In America, and it's not going as well. But we'll see. Also the collection i picked it up in, which also has Watermelon Sugar, includes a bunch of poems which hopefully i'll just skip. Strangely, i suspect that much of what irks me in Brautigan, the fey coyness, the firm disbelief in nonnonsequitor, is stuff i personally could easily be accused of.
That's about it reading-wise.
I'm still doing The Turn of the Screw, but slowly. Same for the hemingway.
posted by good old o at
11:54 AM
5 Comments:
So, then, let me see if understand: you're saying that an important quality in a novel is that is be describable as a "romp". That what you're after?
(Of course it's not. Yet I am wounded in my reading parts by your above assessment, and must lash out blindly with poor dulled talons.)
By
indeterminate identity, at 2:09 PM
So, then, let me see if understand: you're saying that an important quality in a novel is that it be describable as a "romp". That what you're after?
(Of course it's not. Yet I am wounded in my reading parts by your above assessment, and must lash out blindly with poor dulled talons.)
By
indeterminate identity, at 2:12 PM
no, i would never say a good book needs to romp.
i mean i'm not against a romp if it's well-done,
but it's neither here nor there.
all three of these authors are definitely rompers tho.
but i think robbins romps in a pretty straight and uninteresting/distasteful line, dodge does it while engaged in a decent plot and uh, what, aesthetic structure, and brautigan is sort of like an electric field of romp which more or less exists in many places at once without really caring about any of them.
i'm not saying henry james is worse than these yahoos because his book plods and wears starched collars. i was just incidentally recently preferred brautigan.
(note, Trout Fishing In America is languishing unread at work, while The Turn of the Screw is on active BART duty in my backpack.)
By
good old o, at 2:16 PM
i did not like 'jitterbug perfume' and dropped it after the first chapter. i dont know why, but i didnt.
~mdm
By
Anonymous, at 3:53 PM
i really tried to read a TR book a couple years ago;
i think it may've been jitterbug perfume or maybe still life with woodpecker. i tried. but every page was the same as every other page (i tried the begining and two spots in the middle) and i couldn't bear it. so i dropped it in the bath water and threw it in the trash.
By
good old o, at 3:59 PM
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