Yeah ok ZMF was funny with all that Panera shit but when you need someone to explicate some 19th century French poetry just take a guess who you'll be crawling to.

ZMF gets uncomfortable with words that are longer than his cock. But you know I guess I shouldn't have picked a fight with you on the Kettle Chips page because we all know how excited you get about snacks.

That's right, if you're gonna be illiterate at least be proud of it.

What I'm saying: Blood Meridian makes your favorite movies look like the the infantile wish-fulfillment fantasies of America's collective body of impotent reactionaries (which they are).

Hey ZMF you should read Blood Meridian.

Whatever I can do baby

I read the book a while back…
but doesn't the Kid kill a boy before his final confrontation with the Judge? I always saw his time wandering the desert as a sort of penitence, or at least a rejection of a life of violence, with the necklace of human ears there to remind him of his sins, and also maybe act as a sort of…

You guys all sound so funhappy.

God some people are such pussies. "Oh it's so long…" "Oh the words are too big…" Just read the damn book. Read it. (Read the goddamn book.)

The ending does effect the original experience. It's like if you're hanging on to a balloon, and it's going higher and higher, but you're ok because the guy who gave you the balloon also gave you a parachute. So anyway, the balloon gets really high and you really enjoy it, but then it pops and you start falling. …

You should make an exception to the "last 50 years" thing for "Lucky Jim" by Kingsley Amis (it's only 4 years out of range). Also "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Alan Sillitoe (1 year out).

Hey Sevendeuce — James Joyce is a better writer than Danielle Steele.

I don't care if you don't like Joyce, this is required reading: http://johnhamilton.us/2/ja…

Gatsby is a great fucking book. The fact that Fitzgerald did it in 50k words is incredible. Updike and Cheever basically spent their careers trying to make anything remotely as good. So what if everybody's read it. So what if everybody says its good. It's fucking good.

Erin lacks the initiative of a MPDG. That said, she is kind of a dream girl: existing only hypothetically, giving boners to sensitive types.

I actually prefer professors who go all old-school Socratic because at least it forces you to pay attention, instead of letting you to spend class on the AV Club comment boards. Oh and only suckers do all the reading.

Miller—I'm just talking about story-telling. The Crossing meanders a bit, with (spoiler) a few different excursions into Mexico, and characters that while maybe compelling aren't as entertaining. Meanwhile AtPH is the perfect cowboy story—horses, rascals, love, violence, and a ideally masculine protagonist who…

Maybe Doctorow's other books are good, but I only read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and the following passage basically turned me off forever:

It's accessibility prevents it from being the cult favorite, but on the level of pure story-telling, All the Pretty Horses is perfect.

I read up to book 7 or 8 as a pubescent and I'm kinda tempted to read these just to get some closure. But the author better promise some badass passages of Rand al'Thor magicking shit up and getting the ladies to fall madly in love with him.