"It seems like it's daring readers to try and find meaning in it, but I suspect it is also laughing at anyone who would dare try to find meaning there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

I think you have to give authors freedom to define their own work, within reason. And with novels, I think that has more to do with page count than anything. If it's short enough, you have to call it a short story. Otherwise, I suppose you could publish a longish clothing catalog and call it a novel of suburban…

I don't see why that couldn't be true. (On pages 9 and 10.) But perhaps Alyssa being comfortable with her family suggests a comfort also with her origins, i.e. The Void. And Elisabeth doesn't seem to comfortable with her family, with where she's from or what she's created. That works thematically, too.

Fivestring— I think we need another word besides enjoyable and entertaining, because I think many great works are neither.

This is from DURAS: A BIOGRAPHY, page 247, and it makes me think you might be onto something there, Weenus.

YBMM— Three cheers for your third paragraph. I too loved that sentence of yours that Miller CLIAW quoted—none of these characters felt real to me, although I have to say their dialog and demeanors felt fairly convincing in the film version—pretentious and a bit fake, but in a way that real people sometimes are.

This intrigues me. And it does seem that this sort of interpersonal analysis was in vogue and the time of this book's writing. Thanks for the lead—I'm going to follow it.

Madness and the Forest and the Void Beyond
I already wrote about this in the other thread, but as it's more relevant here, I'll summarize what I said and elaborate. I really think of this book as a determinist version of WAITING FOR GODOT, but crossed with the fairy tale idea of the forest. In fairy tales, the…

Miller— I don't think the book itself uses a cycle in its narrative structure, I just think that literature as a whole tends to cycle between the terse and the florid, the minimalist and the lavish, the traditional and the experimental, et cetera—and I don't think DESTROY overturns any of that. It fits in. Also, I…

I think we've all been ruined by that shitty interview.

Nice analysis, FJ. I especially like the meditation on the book's world of watching one another, something I hadn't thought much about.

Let's get fucking mean!

Three times. Fall at my feet.

He's got to be producing in name only. I can't hear his influence anywhere in that dreck. That is a terrible, terrible song. It's like Celine Dion.

It's happened.
Phil Spector has finally gone too far.

"a deliberate provocation to our ideals as to what a novel is and isn't."

Um…thanks. Thanks. But it really is an enjoyable song, if you're into electronic dance pop. And the video is hilarious.

"Durasville," excuse me.

TOTALLY. They're almost like keys to each other, and lurking around in Dumasville for the last month made me want to see TRASH HUMPERS, especially after reading that interview. Both, I think, are Dadaist at their cores, although I don't either would say so themselves.