lin

William Gibson, George MacDonald Frazier, Neal Barrett Jr, Joe Keenan, Christopher Moore, Ray Bradbury......

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lin

What the HELL do people see in Salinger? I just never got it and still don't,

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Buddy Glass

By far his best. Everything else was disappointing, I thought.

Buddy Glass

A lot, actually. Have you read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction, Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey? I hope you aren't judging Salinger based on your high school reading of The Catcher in the Rye...

There's a lot to be found in Salinger, I think. He is, of course, the most prominent voice of adolescent and post-adolescent anxiety and despair (evident in "Franny", "Teddy" and, of course, Catcher). But there's a maturity in his writing that he doesn't seem to get much credit for (Like the tragic depth of "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" or the moving and very human account of love and a soldier's post-traumatic stress in "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor") and a devotion to his art that - to me, at least - seems extinct. He's the last great writer.

There's a wonderful moment in "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" when the protagonist, a soldier in WW2, awaiting orders in a house that belonged to Nazis, picks up a book written by Goebbels with an inscription that reads: "Life is hell". The soldier - a thinly disguised Salinger - writes underneath, in trembling hand, "What is hell? I maintain it is the inability to love - Dostoevsky".

I don't like that many young writers who debut with nihilistic coming-of-age novels are automatically compared to Salinger. Salinger's writing is compassionate toward human beings, not cynical and indifferent. His characters are complex, flawed and endlessly loveable.

quarterscot

Pulp Fiction, for god's sake. Have you people forgotten about Pulp Fiction?

Vincent: There's a philosophy that says when a man admits he's wrong, he's automatically forgiven his wrongdoing. Have you ever heard of that?

Jules: Get out of here with that shit. The man who said that didn't find himself picking up iddy-biddy pieces of brain on account of your dumb ass.

I could go on; and on and on. Admittedly, everything Tarantino's done since Jackie Brown has been pretty rubbish.

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Andrew
http://whyisthishere.co.uk

Buddy Glass

Pulp Fiction is grossly overrated.

lin

Well, that settles that, huh?

And of course, that hilariously myopic statement sets that question to rest.

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Buddy Glass

Much like your brilliant response to the Proust thread did.

lin

Hey, no charge. I don't understand why you pose so vociferously as some super-read superior intellect, but never demonstrate anything more than snarfing at the posts of other, cheap put-downs, and repititions of commonly accepted evaluations of writers everybody reads in school.

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Buddy Glass

Hmmm. Well, not being from the US or the UK - how the hell would I know what they read in school? And why should I care? Does that in any way subtract from the value of the given writer? Not in my books. Besides, if Pynchon and Joyce and Proust are writers "everyobdy reads in school", then why is it no one has anything to say about any of them? Has no one on this forum gone to school?

lin

You seemed to have it all figured out when you made the jape about high school reading a few posts back, didn't you?

Nobody has much to say about them in your threads, because it's pointless to discuss things with an ignoramus. All you do is stomp around and act superior. Why bother to get into it with you when you are both unlettered and unpleasant?

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Buddy Glass

Excuses, excuses, excuses. You know, I don't think you've ever said anything even remotely knowledgable about anything. Maybe you should go chit-chat in the JK Rowling thread, where you can feel more at home.

lin

Excuses for WHAT?

What are your knowlegable contributions here? Other than just you-too gradeschool japery and gutter language.

I see nothing here to justify your self held conviction that you are some literatus and highbrow.

Quite the fucking contrary.

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Barraque

holy god, buddy glass is an idiot

ClancyBoy

I realized as soon as I hit "post" I had forgotten Pulp Fiction. Seriously, I defy anyone to think of a movie with better drawn characters. I doubt even Charles Dickens could do as well.
Yeah, I said it. You're on notice Mr. Dickens!

From Dusk 'Till Dawn, Foxy Brown and Kill Bill are kinda crap though. Grindhouse I can take or leave; without the awesome awesome promos at the very beginning it would go on the crap pile. Too much focus on the aesthetics and not enough on the story and characters.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.