EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lK6IkQw.png)
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Welcome to the TL Book Club! Now I know you must be saying to yourself, "Haven't I seen this very thing before?". Well, you most certainly have, but I'm hoping that as the summer of '13 approaches, TL's yearning for perspective and knowledge stumbles upon new found invigoration. Won't you be so kind as to join me in putting this motivation to good use as we read a few good books and argue about them?
+ Show Spoiler [About me] +
I suppose it would make sense for me to provide some sorts of credentials in pursuit of convincing anyone to take what I say at all seriously. At the risk of sounding cliche and self-indulgent (which I'm sure most who know me as a poster have come to expect), I've been surrounded by books my entire life, and decided upon a course of serious literary study around senior year of high school. I worked closely alongside a number of published professors of English Literature during my time at the Ohio State University, and focused on Postmodernism, Modernism, Medieval/ Early Modern English Lit, and Critical Theory in my studies. Because I was that annoying kid who enjoyed having basically 1-on-1 conversations with the professor in front of the class for 30 minutes at a time (everyone else's questions weren't very good anyway 
), I had the opportunity to lead class and facilitate discussion groups rather frequently. On some level, I know it just sounds like I'm annoying and bossy, but I promise you that I've got interesting things to say if you'll do me the honor 
), I had the opportunity to lead class and facilitate discussion groups rather frequently. On some level, I know it just sounds like I'm annoying and bossy, but I promise you that I've got interesting things to say if you'll do me the honor In terms of approach, I'm definitely not a fan of singular New Criticism, or singular any sort of criticism for that matter. Reader Response, Marxist, Post-Structuralist, Psychoanalytic, Postcolonialist, and Queer Theory perspectives among many others all have their utility, and it is ultimately the reader who holds the keys. In terms of choosing a lens with which to view a book, I think it best for a reader to learn as much as they can as they fill in the background of a particular work (through historical references, short stories, essays, perhaps even a bit of poetry!), so I'll be sure to provide as much of this as I can alongside whatever work we decide to go with. Our format of discussion will revolve around this thread in order to avoid any time zone issues, though perhaps we'll steal way to irc or skype from time to time when folks are up for it.
When it comes to reading schedule, we'll be opting for slow rather than fast every time, with likely around 30-80 pages every week or two depending on the difficulty of the material and whether or not we have any good supplementary material to go over.
I've chosen 10 books/pairings that I can lead a good discussion on, and we'll go through 3 or 4 votes in order to narrow it down. I've rated them 1-5 as an indicator of my estimation of their difficulty. I am of the mind that one of the biggest reasons book clubs on forums like TL tend to fail deals with how difficult it is to find a book everyone can find good motivation to read; I hope I've made the process exhaustive enough to tease out something good.
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The Choices
1.
The Prague Cemetery (2010) by Umberto Eco
Difficulty rating: 4~5
His most recent novel, and supposedly his best since The Name of The Rose, The Prague Cemetery revolves around supposedly the least likeable character in fiction (according to Eco) as he travels about Europe during the 19th century and witnesses a great many traumatic and tremendous events. It's Eco, so intertexutality is the name of the game, and we'd pretty much be learning a great deal of 19th century European history alongside it. Still, Eco's works tend to be incredibly rewarding, and are an excellent means of gaining access to a huge breadth of knowledge all at once.
2.
To The Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
Difficulty rating: 4
This is a book I have studied very closely, and I would love for nothing more than to share my insights with y'all. It is story of a journey to a lighthouse that ends up taking many, many years while a painter comes to terms with precisely how she wants to finish a work of art that also suffers from a nagging incompletion. This is one of those novels in which nothing really happens, and yet along the way the entire life and time of the Ramsey family is filled in with wonderful detail. Inherent to Woolf's formalism in TTL is a certain sort of commentary on how people interact with one another, and how multiple minds can operate at dramatically different frequencies given similar conditions, in addition to a number of, shall I say, headier representations of things such as the passage of time.
It's good; trust me.
3.
James Joyce
Difficulty rating: 3~6
I've made this choice simply James Joyce for a number of reasons, the largest being that I rather enjoy all of his major works, and I think each could likely be handled by TL given the motivation. We would likely be choosing from Dubliners (3), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (4), Ulysses(5, though Corum says 4
), and Finnegan's Wake (6). Their difficulty lines up roughly in that order from easiest to hardest, with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake being significant jumps in difficulty. The latter two require "large investments" to put it one way, and it would take a strong consensus for us to choose them. In any case, I'd love to have a reason to reread any one of them.4.
On Beauty (2005) by Zadie Smith
alongside
Howard's End (1910) by E.M. Forster
Difficulty rating: 3
I've wanted to do these two together ever since I read On Beauty for the first time. OB revolves around two families of rather unique makeups as their lives proceed to intertwine. Much of it takes in and around a small Massachusetts liberal arts college town, and the ideas of race, politicization, aesthetics, higher education, class, gender, among a host of others take center stage as the reader learns more about the Belsey's and the Kipp's. OB is roughly based on Howard's End, the Forster classic which pokes holes in the classic British social hierarchy as the very human characters prove time and time again that all lines are arbitrary. While the writing in both isn't all that difficult to get through, this would require a fair amount of reading, as both are not small books. Something to keep in mind.
5.
Les Particules élémentaires, or Atomized (1998) by Michel Houellebecq
Difficulty rating: 3~4
Having never read this book and yet having always wanted to, I don't know a great amount of detail on this one. Definitely on the postmodern side of things, this book tells the story of two brothers and their experience of a sort of existential anguish brought on by modern society. Lots of vulgar weirdness takes place, as sex and sex addiction are a frequent topic, and the general theme is rather bleak, so this may not be for everyone. There are likely ample opportunities for discussions of existentialism to take place alongside this, so expect that sort of thing as supplementary material (Everyone brushed up on their Camus, Sartre, and Dostoyevsky?) What's especially cool though is that we might have the chance to speak on translation and its effects on a book via differences in interpretation; that is if at least one of TL's esteemed French community will join us.
6.
V. (1963) by Thomas Pynchon
Difficulty rating: 4.5
Pynchon's first novel, it serves as an excellent discursive introduction to his whiplash style of story-telling, which, unsurprisingly, formally challenges many ideas as to what exactly constitutes a story. Two plotlines seek to converge at the end of the novel; in one, we follow the main character Benney, his friend Stencil, and other members of a group known as the Whole Sick Crew in 1956. In the other, Stencil's attempts to discover the identity of a mysterious figure known as V. take the shape of interspersed historical crises intertwined via the frame of Stencil searching through history for clues as to the identity of V. (We'll get to see where the movie Black Swan comes from). Granted, this book is pretty tough; there is tons going on, many characters, and a fair bit that just won't make sense no matter how you paint it during a given reading. I think it will be extremely rewarding nonetheless.
7.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Diaz
Difficulty rating: 2~3
Definitely one of the breezier choices, this book is like a delicious flan; sweet, easy to consume, and likely difficult to prepare just right. Oscar is a fatboy Dominican nerd with an obsession for sci-fi novels and finding his one true love. In the background we are given an incredibly detailed and moving history of the Dominican people, both here in the US and back in the Dominican Republic. I can guarantee that almost every single poster on TL can see a bit of themselves in Oscar, and the story does a wonderful job of intermingling historic fact with compelling fiction. This is a book we can literally just pick right up and be done with in relatively short order, so this might be a good starter.
8.
Du côté de chez Swann, or Swann's Way (1913) by Marcel Proust
Difficulty rating: 4~5
As volume one of À la recherche du temps perdu, or In Search of Lost Time, this book forms a cornerstone of the Modernist canon as the introduction to one of the greatest (and longest ) stories ever told. As one might expect, memory, recollection, time and its passage, and how these things operate in and around human relationships are the soup du jour. The writing is mostly very dense with a great amount of detail, so we'll be taking this one on the slower side, which will also give us time to get some valuable input from our French friends.
9.
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, or The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774, revised in 1787) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Difficulty rating: 3
Credited by some as the world's first "best-seller", TSOYW more or less marks the beginning of Romanticism as a literary movement (alongside the French Revolution of course!), and would serve as an excellent jumping off point for a great many other works, from Wordsworth and Keats to Pushkin and Chateaubriand. In what forms a sort of response and counter to the Enlightenment, the German literary movement known as Sturm und Drang (literally Storm and Drive) circles around an archetypal main character who is both sensitive yet driven to action, a being ultimately unable to resist the interpolations of experience as they sometimes override even the instinctual desire to live. Again, if we happen to have any German-speaking TL'ers join us, we'll be especially blessed. This would definitely be a fairly academic undertaking, so take that into consideration. (We could also consider any other major Romantic work as centerpiece, so if you've any alternative suggestions, feel free to PM me)
10.
Junkie (1953) by William S. Burroughs
alongside
Confessions of an Opium Eater (1821) by Thomas De Quincy
Difficulty rating: 2~3
I can think of no better way to jump into counter culture than to start off with the OOG of dope followed up by the OG of dope. COAOE, alongside Kublai Kahn among a few other works, presents readers with one of the first literary depictions of drug use and it's effects on consciousness and lifestyle; readers follow De Quincey's autobiographical account of his laudenum addiction, and one can't help but notice that De Quincey has an awfully hard time coming up with bad things to say about the drug. This segues nicely into Burroughs' account of 1950's American Heroin culture. Burroughs pulls no punches in Junkie; the stunningly deleterious effects of heroin are left bare for all to see, and the confessional build-up of the novel would go on to be a hallmark of Burroughs' style.
Our first choice is Dubliners! For those of you without books, Project Gutenberg has a free, digital copy that can be accessed here. Everyone try and have the next four stories, or "After the Race", "Two Gallants", "The Boarding House", and "A Little Cloud", read for this Sunday the 19th. Below are links to pertinent posts. I've also set up an irc channel #TLBC, and will do my best to idle there as much as possible, so stop on by if you've got any questions or concerns.
Prologue: Irish Nationalism and the Roots of Modernist Expression in Ireland.
Thanks to Azera for the layout and design, and thanks to sam!zdat for being banned so that we may read books.
