What are you reading?

[cactusfan]

Blood Meridian is waiting in my queue. Not until I finish this, which I'm finding fascinating but somehow I've lacked the discipline to knock it out in a reasonable amount of time:



Sent to me by my fiancee's mom, no less.

that book!

i read it a few months ago, having heard it was in some way good. it was not. it made me angry.
here's a review i wrote of it at the time...

     Look, the first time I took a hallucinogen, I too saw all of the natural world break apart and twist together and reveal to me its interlinked workings, its fundamental connectedness to me and every other living and non-living entity in the universe entire, I too saw into the deeper reality of the unified cosmic consciousness, and I (alone?) learned that the funniest thing in all of creation is the taste of a 7-11 watermelon Slurpee.

But did I write a breathless book about it and pretend that none of this had ever occurred to anyone else in the western world and that only I, on my personal magical mystery tour into the world of psychedelics, had discovered the ONE TRUE SECRET that would forever re-write the laws of science and place me alongside Copernicus, Newton and Einstein?

No. I did not. I went to bed early, closed my eyes, and watched the pretty colors some more.

Jeremey Narby took the other route, and so, following his ayahuasca fueled vision of two giant, fluorescent snakes, wrote a book every sentence of which is delivered as if by Pinto in Animal House, the first time he gets stoned, when with eyes wide he says, "So, our whole solar system could be like one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being!" Gee willikers! Neat!

The book starts off all right. Questioning the scientific method as the only means of gaining knowledge is certainly reasonable. His investigations into comparative mythology and the preponderance therein of snakes and twins across cultures is interesting, if not already rather well known. But the book just gets loopier after that.

Narby bashes all scientists with absurd generalizations about how they hate mystery, etc., he trots out all kinds of nonsense about evolution, which he grasps not at all, and every one of his arguments is along the lines of, "Did you realize how complicated the human genome is? Let me throw a bunch of huge numbers at you! See? Wow is it ever big! And that's supposed to have come about by chance? No way!"

Here's a paraphrase of how most chapters begin: "Now I'm not a biologist, so I don't know anything about biology, but I read a book and talked to this friend, and oh my god! You won't believe what I found! DNA is superintelligent and comes from outer space!"

Anyway. He's right that there is more to the universe than what we in the west think we know, and more ways than we know to know it. But he's too timid to actually propose anything other than a mushy-headed load of vague crap about consciousness I can't even summarize since he never directly says what it is. In short, it's something about how life is so complicated, it must have been directed by some form of intelligence. Hm, now where have I heard that argument before?

[gah]

Mental note: don't get stoned with cactusfan and say things like, but man, we could totally be on this bubble right, and it's about to pop, see, but we don't even know it, but if that giant sneezes everything we know will end and we won't even know why....oh, look a penny. Did you know if you find a penny with heads up its good luck, but tails, you shouldn't pick it up. I think that's stupid, so I just kick the penny until it lands heads up,and then pick it up. I call that making my own good luck.......hey, wait a minute..... what were we talking about?



:-D

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

Haha.  That book really set Cactusfan off.

I give that review an A+.

[VDB]

Like I said, I'm not done with the book, but I'm mostly done, so I'll offer these observations thus far:

1) I do think Narby gets a little over-excited in assuming that every squiggly line or serpent reference from some ancient culture is evidence that they could look inside DNA. He seems to try and force-fit most such overlaps between his thesis and incidences from this or that mythology.
2) You're right, he seems to give up rather easily on the possibility of life on earth through chance and evolution. Or at least he alludes to that but changes the subject just as quickly. His thinking-out-loud alternate explanation is, like you say, plenty flimsy in its own right.
3) Which is odd, because he seems to show an otherwise admirable, and even disciplined, desire to dig up the biological underpinnings of hallucinations. I enjoyed his musings that came out of the remark about DNA being able to emit photons.

I can see how if you got mad early on reading the book that feeling would continue and maybe even get reinforced. I'm not so hot over it so I think I'll make it to the end OK.   :wink:

Now, if you want to see someone going ga-ga over cosmic revelations and jumping to wild conclusions about what we know, don't know, should know, think we know and good lord we can change the world if we only knew, check this one out:

[cactusfan]

Mental note: don't get stoned with cactusfan and say things like, but man, we could totally be on this bubble right, and it's about to pop, see, but we don't even know it, but if that giant sneezes everything we know will end and we won't even know why....oh, look a penny. Did you know if you find a penny with heads up its good luck, but tails, you shouldn't pick it up. I think that's stupid, so I just kick the penny until it lands heads up,and then pick it up. I call that making my own good luck.......hey, wait a minute..... what were we talking about?



:-D

just make sure i'm also stoned and you'll be fine...  :-D

I can see how if you got mad early on reading the book that feeling would continue and maybe even get reinforced. I'm not so hot over it so I think I'll make it to the end OK.   :wink:

actually, i liked the book at first. i think that's what was so maddening. he starts off being very reasonably curious, and just slowly but surely gets crazier, until by the end he's just totally gone off the rails.

[gainesvillegreen]

Very pleased to see all the McCarthy queued up, and that it is being taught (sunrise, what grade or classes do you teach?).

I'll be interested in hearing about the Foer. Unlike McCarthy, of which I've read everything, I haven't read Foer yet. He certainly has his enthusiasts.

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

Haven't read Foer.  I will say that during the movie "Everything is Illuminated" I was nicknamed "the town crier", because I cried at least twice.

[gainesvillegreen]

Is the Illuminated book regarding the trip to eastern Europe and so forth?

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

Yes, the Ukraine, specifically.

[gainesvillegreen]

Gotcha, sounds like an interesting guy, plus he has a decent looking author wife as well - always key when assessing a writer's place in the canon

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Nicole+Krauss&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=wG0DS-iUIZDOsQOX-tW4BA&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQsAQwAw

[cactusfan]

Very pleased to see all the McCarthy queued up, and that it is being taught (sunrise, what grade or classes do you teach?).

I'll be interested in hearing about the Foer. Unlike McCarthy, of which I've read everything, I haven't read Foer yet. He certainly has his enthusiasts.

i am, as usual, the curmudgeonly grandfather in these discussions, but i'd say Foer is a sincere lightweight. i read Everything Is Illuminated and thought it merited little more than a shrug... as in, it was okay, but whatever.

what are your top picks of McCarthy? i've read four, but would like to try some others:
Blood Meridian - brilliant, one of the best books i've ever read.
The Road - good, but i felt like i'd seen the setting and the story many, many times in the movies for it to feel in any way original.
All The Pretty Horses - not bad, just didn't do much for me.
No Country for Old Men - nice writing, but a story that doesn't work at all.

[nab]

More impossible shit.


God, Grad School sucks in as many ways as it shines.


Wanna know something about the Chinese experience in the western half of the United States in the last half of the 19th century, just ask me and I'll hit you up with some "heady" references.   


Do you know what this is?

[Mr Minor]

Very pleased to see all the McCarthy queued up, and that it is being taught (sunrise, what grade or classes do you teach?).

I'll be interested in hearing about the Foer. Unlike McCarthy, of which I've read everything, I haven't read Foer yet. He certainly has his enthusiasts.

i am, as usual, the curmudgeonly grandfather in these discussions, but i'd say Foer is a sincere lightweight. i read Everything Is Illuminated and thought it merited little more than a shrug... as in, it was okay, but whatever.

what are your top picks of McCarthy? i've read four, but would like to try some others:
Blood Meridian - brilliant, one of the best books i've ever read.
The Road - good, but i felt like i'd seen the setting and the story many, many times in the movies for it to feel in any way original.
All The Pretty Horses - not bad, just didn't do much for me.
No Country for Old Men - nice writing, but a story that doesn't work at all.

Foer is my light reading right now.  It's an interesting story that I can read at my own leisure.  Haven't read Illuminated though, just picked up the second one and went with it.

As for McCarthy:
The Road
No Country

I found both to be great reads.  Surprised you didn't like the story.  I like the realism of the characters and the misunderstanding of "new" outlaws by the sheriff.  It shows the generation gap.  I also like the internal conflict of Moss with what to do with the money.  The inner greed of the common man was intriguing to me.
As for The Road, all I can say is WOW.  Loved it from start to finish.  Couldn't put it down.  Finished it in one Sunday afternoon.  All the questions and lack of information made me question so much and it threw in the uncertainty of what could happen to these two.  Also found the father/son thing intriguing, especially as I have a son and felt some sort of relation to the characters.  The need for the father to protect the son was amazing and heartfelt, especially in this world.

I have All the Pretty Horses right now, but I am worried that his other novels aren't written like No Country and The Road.  At least that's what I have heard.  We'll see.  I will give it a try, though.

[gainesvillegreen]

Mr. Minor, you can head next to Cities Of The Plain if ou like the sparse style. The fact that it is the third of the a trilogy does not preempt it being read first.

Southern Novels:                 Western Novels:
Outer Dark                                   Blood Meridian
The Road                                     The Crossing
Suttree                                       All The Pretty Horses
Child Of God                                 Cities Of The Plain
Orchard Keeper                             No Country For Old Men

Those would be my rankings, with Blood Meridian ahead of Outer Dark, but The Road ahead of The Crossing. I haven't read the plays which is a shame...

[sophist]

Now, if you want to see someone going ga-ga over cosmic revelations and jumping to wild conclusions about what we know, don't know, should know, think we know and good lord we can change the world if we only knew, check this one out:

I read that earlier this year.  The logic can be a little flawed at times, but overall it was a good read.