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i dont find myself in the mood for a plot-driven novel too often these days.
i'd rather just look at the schematic.
spelling it out seems redundant.
a book of maps that'd be a book of other books. that i'd buy.
anyway, loathsome is difficult. franz biberkopf from doblin's berlin alexanderplatz is loathsome---he's stupid and violent and trapped in this violent stupid world and there's no way out and it gets worse and worse in a way that can only happen if you're not just watching a diagram get restated but feel like you're up inside the characters head---which is a matter of voice----which is a matter of craft.
everyone in elias canetti's auto-da-fe is loathesome. but the book is among the most powerful explorations of dissociation i've ever read. you just get to explore it in the company of people who suck.
emma bovary---obviously another voice function. flaubert is awesome. great lists. lots of motion inside the sentences, like a crane shot.
but i digress.
actually, if i'm going to read a diagram, i like noir fiction. stuff like jim thompson. population 1280. damn.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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