Whom finished reading Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
First published short story volume by the author of Catcher In The Rye.
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First published short story volume by the author of Catcher In The Rye.
First published short story volume by the author of Catcher In The Rye.
While this is lovingly written (if somewhat "obvious"), the poor print quality makes it so this is little more than a list of recommendations for pretty movies. That's perfectly fine, it's just a shame since the paper is thick and fancy and they clearly tried to make it look good, but in any lighting I've had it in everything looks so dark and drab on the weirdly matte pages. A bit of a shame.
The silence of Dolores is ear-splitting. Well, except for the bit about everyone hating all that fucking French. I choose to believe that was an authentic thought untinged by Humbert's narration.
Meet Franny and her younger brother, Zooey, in two Salinger stories.
These are the kind of mental circles one goes in when they don't appreciate the hard-earned simple wisdom of the saccharine and sentimental. I say that not to dismiss what's here but just to make clear that I have a fundamental disconnect with the struggle described, especially as someone whose religious interest has never been particularly theistic. I moved past the feeling that people are self-interested fakes with no real insight into the world young enough that I never really tried to build intellectual and spiritual supports around that feeling, yknow what I mean? If there was one thing being a young kid exposed to 4chan early actually did for me, it was shuffling me through that stage much earlier than I would have otherwise.
That said, I really love the alternate approach to that mindset we get. Rather than exploring what drives the emotions which create its immature form …
These are the kind of mental circles one goes in when they don't appreciate the hard-earned simple wisdom of the saccharine and sentimental. I say that not to dismiss what's here but just to make clear that I have a fundamental disconnect with the struggle described, especially as someone whose religious interest has never been particularly theistic. I moved past the feeling that people are self-interested fakes with no real insight into the world young enough that I never really tried to build intellectual and spiritual supports around that feeling, yknow what I mean? If there was one thing being a young kid exposed to 4chan early actually did for me, it was shuffling me through that stage much earlier than I would have otherwise.
That said, I really love the alternate approach to that mindset we get. Rather than exploring what drives the emotions which create its immature form as in The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey tackles the grown-up, intellectual, well-reasoned form of the same thing. It goes "You know what, lots of people do suck and lots of what we do is empty and you're right to be frustrated by that. But not everything is like that, and you're doing a disservice to all the good that is out there and to Christ himself if you lump it all in together and shun all that is good yet imperfect." Growth often involves learning not to let our grand observations on the universe override the individuals around us, tough as it may be.
Salinger's dialogue is perfect. Of course it is.
American Psycho is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person …
disdain for the rich and empty. brands, GQ, unrelenting violence, unreality, misogyny, brands, designer, restaurant, more expensive restaurant, donald trump, brands, hair, cocaine, huey lewis and the news, thinner, bulkier, taller, hatred, hatred, aimless empty prejudice, everything empty even violence
Ultimately successful in its aims as a hatred-induced breakdown of a particular kind of insufferable person but so unbearably gruesome that my honest feelings are mostly just disgust. I appreciate its rage but want nothing to do with the result. This has messed with my dreams on several separate days.
Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of …
Much as I love O'Connor, I always felt like the short stories that Wise Blood was made up of were so loose and dissociative that they fall through my fingers, and reading their modified forms strung together doesn't really change that. Her portrayal of the south is as compellingly rancid and distant as ever. Everyone talks past each other, rambling in ways that only have meaning to themselves. They're all dirty, hell-bound, and know it. This is of course O'Connor's strength, but I have a harder time connecting with her earlier work which feels so directionless in comparison to the much more pointed The Violent Bear It Away.
Ultimately I think faith in any real sense is too foreign to me for any of this to really strike a chord.
Black Boy (1945) is a memoir by American author Richard Wright, detailing his upbringing. Wright describes his youth in the …
Content warning racism, racial hatred
Finely tuned to communicate racial double-consciousness not only as an idea a reader has to accept, but as an experience they're dragged into. Every abuse, every false accusation, every interaction with an undertone of violent intent is perfectly calculated not only to make you fucking angry about racism, but to force you to confront the mentality of the oppressed and its obsession with attempting to read the thoughts of the powerful for the sake of simple survival.
Black Boy, through a composite of Richard Wright's and others' personal experiences, shows a pre-civil rights Black America that is thoroughly beaten down, thoroughly exploring the multitude of ways that the complicated and brutal mindfuck that is American racism conditions the oppressed to do anything but resist and drives them to a multitude of different kinds of ruin. It's certainly not an easy read to handle emotionally, but your emotions are always directed toward understanding, a ditch is always carefully dug so all your feelings flow toward empathy and new insights into a deeply damaged psyche. This is probably its greatest value to a modern reader who hopefully already condemns everything described.
The Chicago section originally cut by the publisher tackles the latent distrust and cynicism granted by survival in the south, the subtler (but still ever-present) racism of the north, living and working during the Great Depression, the isolation found by loving to read in a world where that's "not your place," and the confusing social maze that was being a communist more interested in art and connecting with average people than the party line. Despite obviously opposing its original exclusion, I did still find this portion a bit weaker than the perfectly pointed opening sections. I've no idea at what point in the publication process it was cut, so it's possible it was just not as rigorously edited. Regardless, Wright has much to say about the anti-intellectualism, malappropriated tactics, paranoia, and general dysfunction of the then-strongly Comintern-aligned Communist Party which is still applicable to the attitudes of leftists today. I appreciate criticism of communist movements like this which clearly comes from a place of love and a feeling of betrayal...I find that it's often the most illuminating. See also: La Chinoise.