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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

What the hell was That Book called? You know, the one where That Stuff happened in it...

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11:34 / 15.01.07

Lummy...stately home? Not sure.

None of the names given thus far really ring a bell.

All I am certain of is that it was not a full narrative as such, but a story within a story. I had the oddest hunch that it might have turned up in a Will Self. Couldn't say.

16:14 / 15.01.07

HOWARD FAST. That's who it was. The one story I remembered as a magic realist pastiche was "The General Zapped an Angel" in Touch of Infinity.

That diorama story sounds like one of Fast's.

21:28 / 29.01.07

There was a fictional book I read in highschool involving the mutilation and torture of captive men in order to allow them to become possessed with demons, who in their possessed state would then be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes by others. I can remember it being quite a gruesome read, and I'm curious as to whether I 'll find it utterly boring by now.

I think the title refered to a japanese form of magic-inspiring torture but I can't be sure.

09:55 / 30.01.07

Whilst in Paris last year I flicked through a book of collected short stories by the same author - the first story seemed to be about a couple pretending to be neanderthals in a museum exhibit as a job, with the guy complaining that the woman wasn't getting into the role as much as she used to. I didn't finish the story, and can't remember the name of the book or author anymore (the title was something which sounded like the name of a place) - any help apreciated as I'm thinking of it as a gift for someone.

11:46 / 30.01.07

Do you know, to my shame, I have a feeling that the crushed puppet story might have been from an old Robert Rankin I read as a teen - one of the ones with Cornelius Tuppe and Hugo Rune, probably.

RFR, Airwolf style

12:32 / 30.01.07

Saveloy, with the story about the letters, does it start by someone stealing a box, or some such, and finding an M in it?

Which is alive? Sort of thing?

And the main character somehow gets ahold of one and becomes obsessed with the letters? Writing a novel one letter at a time, sort of thing?

if so, I don't know what it is either, and it's driving me crazy. It's strongly associated with "the third policeman", in my head, but I don't think it's actually in it.

Christoph_Chicken

06:45 / 01.02.07

Hi peeps.

)

Does anyone have the foggiest what this may be? It’s been dogging me at regular intervals for years……. (not in carparks late at night mind.)

Well, from what I remember (which is very little): I’m pretty sure the book was translated from French to English. It’s set in France, the main character being an academically excellent young man. He’s interested in art, writing or philosophy, and becomes obsessed with a particular artist/philosopher/writer, who happens to be locked up in an asylum not too far from where he lives. He begins visiting this man, who eventually convinces him to either break him, or argue him out of captivity. From there they embark on a road trip (that I’m sure involved a 2cv) and end up falling in love….lots of beach imagery. The artist/philosopher/writer from the asylum has many memories (and sub-stories) from his youth, and these are interspersed with the current story. I can’t remember the end.

)

Kiltartan Cross

11:17 / 05.02.07

There was a fictional book I read in highschool involving the mutilation and torture of captive men in order to allow them to become possessed with demons, who in their possessed state would then be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes by others. I can remember it being quite a gruesome read, and I'm curious as to whether I 'll find it utterly boring by now.

Almost certainly not what you're thinking of, but a similar plot forms the background to Peter Hamilton's gargantuan (and heavily "black-boxed") sf/horror Night's Dawn trilogy.

12:22 / 07.02.07

When I just read the above post, suddenly, the name just popped into my head:

It was "Tengu" by Graham Masterson.

Thanks for the tip though.

01:30 / 08.02.07

Whisky P says:

Benny, that would be George Saunders's excellent Pastoralia.

If the giftee likes it, you can follow up with the equally good CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. (Saunders has a thing about theme parks).

01:37 / 08.02.07

Christ, I'm on fire tonight.

Christoph Chicken, the book you're talking about sounds like Hallucinating Foucault, the acclaimed debut of Patricia Duncker. Pretty sure I'm right but report back if not.

01:40 / 08.02.07

Originally written in English, by the way, but set largely in France. It starts off in Cambridge, though, where our young hero has a fling with a girl who is in love with (dead German poet/playwright) Schiller, prefiguring his own obsession with (non-existent French writer) Paul Michel.

the real anti christ

06:19 / 08.02.07

All I remember are a boy, a bicycle and it was all in black and white.

08:22 / 08.02.07

That'd be the one - thanks Whisky P/A Grandma?

You are the star

13:51 / 29.04.07

I'm pretty certain this was a short story, so I hope it's OK to ask here! I must have read it while I was in late primary school or early high school.

It was about a man who had the power to 'freeze' people and 'unfreeze' them at will. He used this ability to go to casinos and gaming tables and make a load of cash. One day he freezes a room of people, but one woman doesn't freeze - I think she has the same power as him. She asks him why he doesn't use this ability for . . . stopping wars, or something GOOD. He gets pissed off and they have a battle of wills! He is finally able to freeze her, too. When he tries to unfreeze the room of people, he can't do it. He looks at the football game on the television and realises he's frozen the whole world, OMG! There's this one image that sticks in my mind of the football rolling away cross the grass . . . I think at the end of the story this guy is standing on a jetty or something and yells, "Goddamnit!" (Which makes me think it was originally in Dutch, as my Oma always said "Godverdomme!" though she also told us it was Very Rude!)

I'm almost embarrassed that I remember the story so vividly, but have no idea of the title or the author.

Dcdnt Dytrppr n Lv
(prev. Decadent Daytripper in Love)

12:37 / 09.06.07

Novel about a guy, kinda a good-natured schlub, who does the word jumble or crossword or something in the local paper, gets it right all the time, and wins prizes. It turns out, that he's actually doing computations to assist some big war w/Mars, a Mars colony or actual Martians or something and his whole world is an artifice put up to make folks like him use their brains to assist conflicts and situations they would not willingly engage in.

RFR, Airwolf style

14:45 / 09.06.07

Time Out of Joint, Philip K. Dick.

(probably)

Dcdnt Dytrppr n Lv
(prev. Decadent Daytripper in Love)

15:12 / 09.06.07

That's it! Thanks, RFR.

I suddenly flashed onto it yesterday, attached it to Dick, but somebody insisted he never wrote any such thing, so I started racking the brain for other authors with no luck. Quick googling of that title makes it a definite yes.

21:54 / 15.06.07

I'm interested in books from any genre (except romance) involving a character searching for something (person/place/item/state of affairs) and every time he thinks he has it, discovers it is somehow flawed or a distorted facsimile and has to resume the search, over and over. Anyone know any titles along those lines, dealing with a repeated, failed "quest?"

23:58 / 15.06.07

If I remember correctly, If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino is kind of like that, as well as maybe any book by Pynchon.

Mist combats dehydration

10:51 / 16.06.07

The Club Dumas has a book-dealer search all over Europe for a book that the devil has written himself (Polanski has adapted half the novel into The Ninth Gate). It´s been a long time since I´ve read it, but whenever he found a copy he found differences to the one he already had and it was destroyed or stolen the next day or the very same day. At least, that is what happened in the movie. In the novel he also searches for clues about a Dumas manuscript and again faces a lot of difficulties varifying its authenticity.

19:06 / 23.06.07

V by Thomas Pynchon is sort of like that, with one of the characters in search of the true V...

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

21:32 / 10.07.07

So is this thread okay to ask about "I'd like to know if there's a book like..." rather than just "I read this once and can't remember the name"? Or is there another thread?

I'm going to go ahead and ask - I'm looking for something set in a world where time travel is very commonplace. not like Sound of Thunder where it's a rare touristy thing but more like going down to the corner to get on the Time Bus and paying your $1 fare to go back to this morning and redo the bit where you forgot to turn off the stove, kind of thing.

23:40 / 10.07.07

That sounds like something Ron Goulart would have written. I know he did one like that about teleportation - the main character wakes up hungover in some back alley in India when he went to sleep in New York City or something, and he's really annoyed because his teleport key isn't working. (Turns out he's officially dead, and thus the mystery unfolds.)

Goulart was (is?) something like the Carl Hiaasen of sci-fi. He did humorous mysteries.

Tryphena Absent

14:47 / 13.07.07

When I was a teenager I recall a book about a breaking space station/ship, the sky was malfunctioning and there was an artificial squirrel that kept repeating movements because it was broken? I have absolutely no idea if it was even interesting, it's been bothering me for years though, no one knows what it was do they?

Whisky Priestess

17:04 / 26.07.07

I trust you guys to know this, despite the utter feebleness of the following description:

A popular science book about neurology/consciousness/philosophy of mind, published in 2007, rave reviewed in the Indy, Guardian, Observer or Times or on Radio 4, written by a bloke.

That's literally all I remember but I really want to buy it. Please help.

Epic Scrabulous
(prev. Notes from Boris-town)

18:28 / 26.07.07

Could it be this one? Written by three blokes, not one, but it still looks like a cracking read.

Epic Scrabulous
(prev. Notes from Boris-town)

18:38 / 26.07.07

Or this one by Gerald Edelman?

Mist combats dehydration

16:51 / 31.08.07

Yes! I found the author I was looking for here. His name is Cyril M. Kornbluth.

""The Little Black Bag"
The alcoholic Dr. Full, who has lost his license and become a derelict. He finds a bag containing advanced medical technology from the future, which, after an unsuccessful attempt to pawn it, he uses benevolently — reclaiming his career and redeeming his soul ... but not that of the guttersnipe he takes in as his receptionist/assistant.

"The Marching Morons" was one of Kornbluth's most famous short stories; it is a satirical look at a far future in which the world's population consists of five billion idiots and a few million geniuses — the precarious minority of the "elite" working desperately to keep things running behind the scenes. Part of its appeal is that readers identify with the beleaguered geniuses (which is entirely compatible with science fiction fans' broadly held opinion of their relationship with the mundane majority)."

Now I only need to find the author of the novel I am still looking for to get more of this refreshing feeling of relief.

23:49 / 31.08.07

"Another one from Year Nine English class: A Russian poet is sent to the gulags in Siberia and, after finding it not to be to his liking, escapes. The majority of the novel shows how he survives the long walk home, catching food and making clothes, basic survival stuff. Then he gets home. That's pretty much it but I remember enjoying it a lot."

i think that ones "Beasts, Men and Gods" by Ferdinant Ossendowski. it also sounds a bit like 'a hero of our time' but the other is way more survival orientated.

Princess Augustine the Hippo
(prev. Prayerful Princess Petulant)

20:17 / 11.09.07

OK. Not sure if this is the right thread, but:

I need to find a poem. It's by Denise Levertov and it says that the fruit of the tree of knowledge was logic. Really you'd think something that specific would be easy to find but google isn't working and I have no paper books.

Thanks all.

20:34 / 11.09.07

Zing.

20:36 / 11.09.07

(Fifteen seconds, BTW. Search terms "denise levertov" and "fruit of the tree" gave me title; search terms "denise levertov" and "contraband" gave me the poem.)

Princess Augustine the Hippo
(prev. Prayerful Princess Petulant)

21:13 / 11.09.07

Hooray!
You rock!

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