DFW's Signifying Rappers, his essay collections, and other essayists I should probably know about.
I just finished DFW's Signifying Rappers. I've already read Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and am I huge fan of his essays. Does anyone know of any other essays of his, possibly in another collection? Are there any other essayists who you can recommend?
I've also read (and dug) Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs, all of Vonnegut's essay collections, and some of Ayn Rand's (I really enjoyed Return of the Primitive).
wallace is REALLY fucking over rated.
www.triplebeard.com
http://darkroomreview.blogspot.com
“...There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
-James Baldwin
Thanks for the input!
I'll quit reading him based on your opinion!
Also: Thank you for providing other essayists, who write much better essays than him so I have a sense on where to go in order to maybe one day share your view, other than saying "Hey, no, well I used to like him, but now I don't b/c fucking ATOMOS thinks he's overrated. I don't know who rates these things, Atomos I guess keeps track, but y'know, I really just kind of loathe DFW now. B/c of Atomos. He is kinda like an internet god to me. He is the Rotten Tomatoes of LIFE."
I haven't noticed this thread before. I'm afraid I can't help you either, I don't remember the last time I read an essay.
i dont think there should be a medium for "essayists" in the same way i dont feel people should be able to publish books of interpretations of other people's books. write a book. tell me a story, dammit. shit or get off the throne.
if anyone's keeping score, it's assholes like this guy that give this site a bad name.
www.triplebeard.com
http://darkroomreview.blogspot.com
“...There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.”
-James Baldwin
Um. Is Lazlo or DFW the asshole? You're the one who thinks an entire genre shouldn't exist because you don't like it.
The only book of essays I can remember reading recently is one by Anthony Bourdain. He's definitely not a GREAT writer but he has plenty of stories and opinions and they were all pretty entertaining.
I also really liked every chapter in A Man Without a Country.
I'm not sure if I understand what an book of essays is.
Wouldn't Freakonomics be a book of essays? Or anything by Malcolm Gladwell (mainly What the Dog Saw)?
Would Mary Roach's books be books of essays?
My definition of an essay collection would be something like "a collection of non- book length nonfiction pieces". Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs", David Rakoff's "Fraud", and Chuck Palahniuk's "Stranger Than Fiction" would all fit this bill. I prefer a collection to be about varied topics, personally.
And Atomos, PLEASE tell me how I'm ruining the site. I posted a perfectly reasonable thread about books I like and was seeking recommendations about books in a section of the forum called "Book Club" on an author's website. If any of this is out of line, I'm confident the moderators will let me know.
The somewhat surprising thing is that despite all that, you still accuse me of ruining the site. You post a thread that contributed absolutely nothing other than your opinion, w/o any reasoning to back it up.
So how am I mucking anything up? Probably by continuing this conversation with you w/r/t your half-assed trolling attempt, which I've allowed to derail my thread. For that I apologize. Not to you, but the few people who actually took the time to read this thread and saw me responding to your sophomoric plea for attention, which I have and am giving you. To you people, again, I'm sorry.
ANYWAY.
P.Goutis! Have you read "What the Dog Saw", and if yes, would you recommend it? I read the amazon.com synopsis and am willing to pick it up based on your recommendation. thank you.
What the Dog Saw is great. He writes about a whole slew of topics. I think it's a compilation of a bunch of his articles from The New Yorker. Everything is well researched and well written. I love Gladwell's style.
Really? Nobody has anything to say about essays?