great but headache-causing books.

yeeah.
since it's summer im actually reading annd.. well im trying to hone my visualization technique when reading.
so im not just analyzing the concepts the text offers but picturing the exact scene.

right now im reading Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf.
it's short.
but i can only literally read 10-15 pages before my head begins to ache a little. maybe her writing is too dense to be able to read it all in one sitting-there's so much pyschological depth to all her characters that are encrypted through all her drifting stream-of-consciousness writing.. ehck.
sorry im rambling.

just wondering if this happens to anyone of you.
thaanks.

 

I've read 5 Stephen King novels since the beginning of the year (The Tommyknockers, The Dead Zone, Cujo, Salem's Lot, and Gerald's Game). Visualisation is how I've always got through novels. It's like watching a movie, combined with a hallucination (in the sense that you are the only one experiencing this visual 'world' the story puts you in. The book is the source, your mind the creator).
When I read, my mind does the work. I'm so used to it, it comes as natural now and personally I think it is the way a reader can really enjoy a novel and get to grips with what's going on in a story. You're remembering scenes from the book instead of the text itself, etc. I was actually thinking about this the other day!!
I think analysing descriptive text which has been written in great detail (as King does) would take longer to read the book, and could throw you off the story somewhat. Visualising what an author is trying to get across is what makes a book memorable for me.

 

well. im not necessarily saying that visualizing is bad.
it certainly makes the novel.. memorable.
i guess what im trying to ask is: should i analyze the characters pyschologically during the reading as well as take in the description and plot or should i just focus on the scene in front of me and break open the character after ive gone through the text.
woolf's writing is much much too dense for me to take in all together-but my style of reading everything together at once has served me for a long time.


i should be more flexible i guess.
probs.

 

Some of Salman Rushie's books can cause mental anguish, but the payoff is usually worth it.

 

Head-ache causing. Try readin "House of Leaves" the text is formated to mimic the mood of the novel. There are footnotes, and footnotes with footnotes and refrences to works that don't exist. I'm still not finished with it yet, my friend read it and recommended it to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves

 

according to my dad there is some chinese author who won the nobel prize for literature that well.. wrote an entire chapter in one of his books that was comprimised almost entirely of pronouns.
ouch.

 

There's no straight answer to that. It's an individual thing, do it your way!
Back on the subject, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six gave me a stinker of a headache. Now, there's some hard going material, if ever I read some.

 

If you want to read a supposedly great book that will puzzle you, try Dahlgren by Samuel Delany. Go on, I dare you . . .

 

HOLY SHIT i came in this thread specifically to mention dhalgren!

i got NO WHERE with that book. halfway through i said, "screw it", slammed the book closed in my hands and haven't opened it back up since. i might pick it up again soon though... i don't know why. i WANT to like it. i want to follow it, because i think there's something really great in there. i did appreciate a lot of the imagery, and i think that's what it might be all about. i dunno.

 

I definitely have to agree. One of the few books that after reading made me say,"I'm definitely smarter now." Danielewski is the man

 

Also I picked up Only Revolutions, another really amazing Danielewski book.

 

IS that good? My cousin read it and said it was a little more "poetic" but said it was really good as well and I'm anxious to give it a shot.

 

Yes, it's VERY poetic but in a weird disconnected sense. There are parts that are like regular narratives, but they come more in the form of dialog... it's weird to read, but fast. LOts of passages are like "lists" of loosely connected thoughts and images. So when reading it almost is like you;re "remembering things" in flashes.

There are lots of cool codes and stuff just like house of leaves, though a bit more cryptic in a sense... plus there are SOOOOO many different ways to read the book.

I also picked up Dhalgen yesterday, I'm eager to check that out.

 

Oh please do report back what you think of it.

 

Headache-forming but great.. hmm, that'd have to be the Gormenghast Trilogy by mervyn Peake. Wonderful characterisation, but blimey, I have to stop every hour or so cause the prose just wears me down.

 

The Critique of Pure Reason, by Kant.

There is no other book that will flog your mind with more force than this one.

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanuel/k16p/


Now, if you're looking for visualization...The Histories, by Herodotus. Written around 440BCE. This man's intellect will astound you, and he writes in a way that brings in the world as he saw it through his eyes 2500 years ago. He puts you there with him.

Fascinating look at the ancient world.

Great book for late night reading in bed.

Both are probably available at your local library.


x

 

"The Bonfire of the Vanities" -

On the plus side, this Tom Wolfe novel compares well with Balzac's stuff. I mean, the methods are similar. The story follows several very different characters living in New York, and each scene is detailed, particularized, diced, analyzed, painted with a very fine brush. Many layers of New York society are represented, and most situations go beyond merely believable; they're totally authentic, and masterfully so. There are in this book, when all is said and done, no moral messages, no lessons to be learned, just life in New York in the late 'Eighties or early 'Nineties at its most intense, presented as "business as usual." There are corrupt politicians, lascivious prosecutors, moronic members of the jury; Ivy League graduates working the stock market and imagining they are on top of the world; cynical lawyers; less-than-bright policemen; political opportunists; socialites; priests; opera singers; real estate agents with five thousand dollar nails, glossy lipstick, and no moral side whatsoever; rich faithful wives who deserve to be strangled, except it never occurs to anyone to strangle them; mistresses on the make; petty criminals; immigrants; bone-headed journalists and feminists of both genders; racial and ethnic tension - and on and on. It's a lot of fun.


On the other hand, the opus just doesn't qualify as, well, "the Balzac of our time." Not even as the Ball Zack of our time. No scene is picturesque enough to be called cinematographic, and for a novel 800 pages long that's a bit, well, loquacious (on the author's part). The author tends to explain too much, and fits people and scenes together in such a way as to promote, well, his own agenda, leaving the attentive reader no choice but to examine the latter. Upon closer examination, it turns out that Mr. Wolfe's agenda is to show that people in general are vile, selfish, obtuse creatures (without exception); that life in general is a pretty ridiculous affair; and that, when all is said and done, any joy anyone ever derives from living is brief, accidental, and usually comes at the expense of others. To put it plainly, THERE IS NO GOD in this novel. Its an atheist opus, from start to finish; there's neither faith, hope, nor love in it. None. In that sense, it is totally flat.



(I realize I said there were no moral messages in the book. There aren't any. What I just described is a METHOD, not a message).



Literature thrives on extraordinary situations in which characters are inspired to perform extraordinary acts. The element of suprise in Wolfe's novel is purely circumstantial. In his story, people have no free will. (All atheists are determinists more or less by definition, I suppose).



In the past, I've had some interesting experiences related to the publication of this novel. Two years after it came out (in the early 'Nineties, I believe), the news finally reached the Philistines, and by Philistines I mean those representatives of the middle class (and, sometimes, the upper middle class; I have nothing to say about the actual upper class since no one, not even the representatives of the said class themselves, can figure out what the hell they're up to, what it is they do all day, and what their problem is) ... uh ... where was I? ... Philistines ... those representatives of the middle class that once in a while make a lukewarm (half-assed, to put it plainly) effort to appear CULTURED, which, in their view, is about catching a program on the History Channel once in a while and telling others that they're reading "this book, it's actually very good." They never seem to finish that book (whatever it happens to be), for some reason. I mean, they sort of struggle through the first twenty pages, and then skim through the rest, and make plans to read it properly when they visit Aruba next year, or some such. They're always too busy; there's never any free time. One would think that if they stopped being busy for a moment, civilization would just fall apart forever. Anyway, this dude had a copy of "Bonfire" in his briefcase and was telling me (his colleague) how everybody recommended this book to him and all. He was going to read it when he was less busy. He actually DID take it to Aruba with him (there was also a wife involved, I believe). He came back, I believe, without having finished it. A year later he died. He was a good guy, too. Reading just wasn't his thing, as Philistines like to say.



Anyway, when "Bonfire" came out, the hype was considerable, which for me is nearly always a turn-off. And then the movie came out (which, incidentally, was far more politically incorrect than the book, and the choice of actors and actresses was just UNBELIEVABLE; I loved it). So I put off reading "Bonfire" until, oh, I don't know, maybe after 9/11. By that time, home video games had become so popular, crime rates started dropping everywhere across the nation, including New York (for which then-Mayor Giuliani took all the credit, of course; whereas, as much as I hate saying this, if any credit is due, Mr. Bill Gates should be getting most of it. Well, no matter; I mean, we often hear that such-and-such person is the father and mother of this or that genre in literature, or theatre, and that without such-and-such person novels would not even exist; and we invariably forget to mention the medieval German monk who is, in fact, solely responsible for making it all possible (literature, science, and what have you)). Anyway, in the year 2002, when I finally read it, the novel struck me as a bit dated. Not that any issues described in it (with a flourish), social and otherwise, had become a thing of the past. No. They're very much with us still. And yet, the overall emphasis has shifted a little.



The book is constantly balancing on the edge of political correctness, even though it never goes beyond the boundaries, not once. Even so, few other authors would dare show a book that probes so many "untouchable," "sacred-cow" issues to an editor, and few editors would touch a book of this sort with a hundred-foot pole. The advantage of being Tom Wolfe, I suppose, is that after during his few decades of creative aggressive journalism (starting back in the '60's), the man gradually accustomed everyone to the fact that he says outrageous things and gets away with it. The degree of outrage had increased over the years, and today Mr. Wolfe can (I would imagine) get away with saying pretty much anything, because he knows that no one will take it (or him) seriously.



It is worth remembering, while reading this novel, that its author belongs to the glorious school of Southern authors with New York careers: the crux of American literature. God bless.

 

theres a book called barefoot in the head
http://books.google.com/books?id=2bkIAAAACAAJ&dq=barefoot+in+the+head
its about a war between europe & america & the arab nations who develop a psychodelic bomb that bombs europe & america into the stoned age
it made u trip more & more for the rest of your life, after the 1st chapter the main character gets affected, & it becomes insane poetic gibberish, words that are mixed up combinations of several semi simular words, sentences that run on for pages, but the crazy thing is, you totaly understand it as long as you dont try to understand it.. if you just read it & let it flow you totaly get the full impact of everything going on, but then if your like wait what the hell did i just read & actualy try to read the words & try to understand it it can be the most confusing thing youve ever read

 

YOU ARE NOT KIDDING! That is by far the most headache-causing book I have ever read!!! And I don't just mean confusing or throught-provoking, but hard on the eyes!

 

infinite jest by david foster wallace. 978 pages of finely printed text, 97 pages of footnotes even more finely printed. there are forums devoted to it. for anyone interested in "drug culture" it is an incredible read, and very very funny in an oddball way i have not encountered in any other book.