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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.2062086 [Reply] [Original]

I want some new books to read, since I finished my last (pretty good) batch, but I don't have ANY idea what to read. Okay. These new books can be anything at all, as long as modern, and also no genre fiction (fantasy and sci-fi) please. I don't like fantasy that much, and I recently remembered why I hate sci-fi. A brief overview would be super helpful. Funny...I had this problem back in about June, when I had a mini-meltdown over a complete lack of inspiration of things to buy. Please help me.

>> No.2062091

The Melancholy of Resistance by Laszlo Krasznahorkai

>> No.2062096

The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz

>> No.2062097

>>2062091

What's it about?

>> No.2062099

Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayib Salih

>> No.2062105

>>2062097
"A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, "is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, 'lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.'"

So, surreal, in a kind of Gogol-esque fashion. I haven't actually read it, but it sounds awesome and I thought I might as well try and get someone else to read it.

>> No.2062112

>>2062105

That seems like the kind of thing I'd like. What language was it written in?

>> No.2062118

Second street of crocodiles, it's gorgeous. Kind of modernist and on the edge of magical realism, really strange wonderful imagery. Interesting. The guy who wrote it is a real weirdo too.

>> No.2062121

>>2062112
Originally in Hungarian, I believe.

>> No.2062123

Try Little, Big, by John Crowley. It's American magical realism, the tale of several generations of an upstate New York family, written with impeccable prose. And Harold Bloom likes it, it's got his imprimatur.

>>2062091
>>2062105
Now I really need to read this, thanks a lot.

>> No.2062131

>>2062105
Is Werckmeister Harmonies based on this book?

>>2062086
For you Sunhawk, maybe William H. Gass' Omensetter's Luck. I'm reading it now and enjoying it a lot.

>> No.2062151

>>2062131
According to Wikipedia, it is! Haven't seen it though.

>> No.2062160

I'm a fan of Ryu Murakami. His stuff is pretty gruesome (people biting other people's tongues off, rape, murder, lots of drugs), but somehow really hard to put down.