headbang8
Admired Member
- Joined
- May 15, 2004
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- 1,628
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- Location
- Munich (Bavaria, Germany)
- Sexuality
- 80% Gay, 20% Straight
- Gender
- Male
Portnoy's Complaint too irreverent? (or as Alex's rabbi would have put it, "ir-rev-er-ed") A couple of Philip Roth's others have a slightly different take on things. in The Breast, he turns into a giant breast a la Kafka's Metamorphosis--I wonder if it was inspiration for the famous scene in Woody Allen's Everything your wanted to know about sex? If you're looking for something a little more issuesy, Patrimony, a memoir of his father as he faced a brain tumour, is compelling.
Several of these suggestions have dealt with an adult son's relationship with his father; here's another. One of the most moving accounts of a dying father I've read is Dad, by William Wharton, author of Birdy. Again, Hollywood made a crap film of it (starring Ted Danson and Jack Lemmon, two fine members of the stars-but-not-actors league), but the novel itself is very skilfully written.
Though it's not his most famous book, I think Wharton's masterpiece is A Midnight Clear. The story of a group of high IQ young men, recruited to be crack intelligence troops in WWII, turned into a normal infantry unit through funding cuts and sent to the German front. This is the story of the Christmas of 1944, where they hole up in a Bavarian castle only to discover that they may actually need to engage in acts of war.
A Poorhouse Fair and Another Bullshit Night... deal with poverty in America. A nonfiction take on it is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, where a well-educated, middle-class journalist spends a year living on minimum-wage jobs, just to see if it can be done. Her conclusion? It's barely possible, if you don't get sick or have any kind of unexpected expense. It would provoke lots of discussion, particuylarly if it followed Atlas Shrugged.
A book that would provoke lots of discussion is rock musician Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel.. The phonetic spelling grates on me a little, but the content is rich, bizarre, gothic.
I've just finished reading Underground, by Haruki Murukami. A nonfcition book, novelist Murukami interviews survivors of the Tokyo subway gas attack, as well as one or two of theperpetrators. I was surprised at the lack of bitterness from the victims, which doubtless would prove a stimulating discussion point for your group. It was compelling for me, because I recently lived in Tokyo, and my local subway stations were Kamiyacho, Toranomon and Kasumigaseki, three of those most heavily affected. It also explains why there are no rubbish bins in any train station in Japan.
In spite of having lived there quite happily, I'm not a big fan of Japanese literature. But one piece that piqued my fancy is Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni. There's a whole Japanese pulp genre of straight women writing about gay male relationships for other straight women--they think that two boys in love are cute and non-threatening. But this is a sophisticated take on the subject, where a gay man and an undesirable woman make a sham marriage to get their parents off their backs. Hardback only, but it's cheap--and the cover is a delight.
To Steve 319: yes, I have read all of Augusten Burroughs' books. Flynn is a cut above Burroughs, I think, when dealing with some of the same subject matter--he's much more serous. That's not to take anything away from Burroughs. I particularly liked the two books that followed Running with Scissors --Dry, and Magical Thinking. Two (literally) sobering observations of drinking too much while working at an ad agency. (I've been known to do both, too)
To DMW: I have a love-hate with Eco. Loved Travels in Hyper-Reality. Hated Foucault's Pendulum. I'll read Name of the Rose on your recommendation, though. The DMW Seal of Approval counts for a lot!
hb8
Several of these suggestions have dealt with an adult son's relationship with his father; here's another. One of the most moving accounts of a dying father I've read is Dad, by William Wharton, author of Birdy. Again, Hollywood made a crap film of it (starring Ted Danson and Jack Lemmon, two fine members of the stars-but-not-actors league), but the novel itself is very skilfully written.
Though it's not his most famous book, I think Wharton's masterpiece is A Midnight Clear. The story of a group of high IQ young men, recruited to be crack intelligence troops in WWII, turned into a normal infantry unit through funding cuts and sent to the German front. This is the story of the Christmas of 1944, where they hole up in a Bavarian castle only to discover that they may actually need to engage in acts of war.
A Poorhouse Fair and Another Bullshit Night... deal with poverty in America. A nonfiction take on it is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, where a well-educated, middle-class journalist spends a year living on minimum-wage jobs, just to see if it can be done. Her conclusion? It's barely possible, if you don't get sick or have any kind of unexpected expense. It would provoke lots of discussion, particuylarly if it followed Atlas Shrugged.
A book that would provoke lots of discussion is rock musician Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel.. The phonetic spelling grates on me a little, but the content is rich, bizarre, gothic.
I've just finished reading Underground, by Haruki Murukami. A nonfcition book, novelist Murukami interviews survivors of the Tokyo subway gas attack, as well as one or two of theperpetrators. I was surprised at the lack of bitterness from the victims, which doubtless would prove a stimulating discussion point for your group. It was compelling for me, because I recently lived in Tokyo, and my local subway stations were Kamiyacho, Toranomon and Kasumigaseki, three of those most heavily affected. It also explains why there are no rubbish bins in any train station in Japan.
In spite of having lived there quite happily, I'm not a big fan of Japanese literature. But one piece that piqued my fancy is Twinkle Twinkle by Kaori Ekuni. There's a whole Japanese pulp genre of straight women writing about gay male relationships for other straight women--they think that two boys in love are cute and non-threatening. But this is a sophisticated take on the subject, where a gay man and an undesirable woman make a sham marriage to get their parents off their backs. Hardback only, but it's cheap--and the cover is a delight.
To Steve 319: yes, I have read all of Augusten Burroughs' books. Flynn is a cut above Burroughs, I think, when dealing with some of the same subject matter--he's much more serous. That's not to take anything away from Burroughs. I particularly liked the two books that followed Running with Scissors --Dry, and Magical Thinking. Two (literally) sobering observations of drinking too much while working at an ad agency. (I've been known to do both, too)
To DMW: I have a love-hate with Eco. Loved Travels in Hyper-Reality. Hated Foucault's Pendulum. I'll read Name of the Rose on your recommendation, though. The DMW Seal of Approval counts for a lot!
hb8
(I've already ordered it from Amazon for me, though) And I'm reading Dry now after enjoying Running... and Sellervision. Thanks for suggesting Flynn!
