October 6th, 2010 / 3:38 pm
Random
Sean Lovelace
Random
Theme-drenched works can be damn suspenseful. Page-turner and mind-turner–concepts not mutually exclusive (no matter what the aisles of my grocery store say). My example is The Road, by Cormac the Withered. Yours?
Tags: cormac mccarthy, Literary Suspense, the road
Edith Wharton can be a real page turner.
“One by one they gained her bosom, and she felt her two breasts pointing up to them, the nipples hard as coral, but sensitive as lips to his approaching touch. And now his warm palms were holding each breast as if in a cup, clasping it, modeling it, softly kneading it, as he whispered to her, ‘Like the bread of the angels.'”
and
“My little girl,” he breathed, sinking down beside her, his muscular trunk bare, and the third hand quivering and thrusting upward between them, a drop of moisture pearling at its tip.
She instantly understood the reminder that his words conveyed. Letting herself downward along the divan till her head was in line with his middle, she flung herself upon the swelling member and began to caress it insinuatingly with her tongue. It was the first time she had ever seen it actually exposed to her eyes, and her heart swelled excitedly: to have her touch confirmed by sight enriched the sensation that was communicating itself through her ardent, twisting tongue. With panting breath she wound her caress deeper and deeper into the firm, thick folds, till at length the member, thrusting her lips open, held her gasping, as if at its mercy; then, in a trice, it was withdrawn, her knees were pressed apart, and she saw it before her, above her, like a crimson flash, and at last, sinking backward into new abysses of bliss, felt it descend on her, press open the secret gates, and plunge into the deepest depths of her thirsting body….
“Was it… like this… last week?” he whispered.
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/the-bread-of-angels.php?page=1
Barry Gifford, especially the Wild at Heart books and also Night People. He is really good at mixing the kind of thriller-esque / pulp page turner aesthetic with really literary concerns and writing. To me this is the only kind of literature that matters. I dont care how great the ideas are, or how clever it is, if it doesnt keep me reading then who gives a shit? As I get older I have less and less time to slog through pages of worthy bullshit. Other writers who do this well:
Charles Willeford (especially The Shark Infested Custard, The Cockfighter and The Burnt Orange Heresy.) Harry Crews. Jerry Stahl. Bukowski was edging toward this with “Pulp” but then he died. But I liked that book a lot, despite it’s flaws. Jim Thompson was one of the brainier pulp writers, and often tackled lots of “big” subjects in roundabout ways, even managing to slip a bit of meta-fiction into his paperback originals. Clarence Cooper Jr’s The Farm. Donald Goines’ “Dopefiend” to me is a very literary work, a kind of companion piece to Selby’s “requiem for a dream” but still considered pure pulp by most. Actually Selby is a good example – “The Demon” was American Psycho decades before Ellis wrote a book (and actually a better book to my eyes, and that’s coming from a fan of American Psycho.)
Edith Wharton can be a real page turner.
“One by one they gained her bosom, and she felt her two breasts pointing up to them, the nipples hard as coral, but sensitive as lips to his approaching touch. And now his warm palms were holding each breast as if in a cup, clasping it, modeling it, softly kneading it, as he whispered to her, ‘Like the bread of the angels.'”
and
“My little girl,” he breathed, sinking down beside her, his muscular trunk bare, and the third hand quivering and thrusting upward between them, a drop of moisture pearling at its tip.
She instantly understood the reminder that his words conveyed. Letting herself downward along the divan till her head was in line with his middle, she flung herself upon the swelling member and began to caress it insinuatingly with her tongue. It was the first time she had ever seen it actually exposed to her eyes, and her heart swelled excitedly: to have her touch confirmed by sight enriched the sensation that was communicating itself through her ardent, twisting tongue. With panting breath she wound her caress deeper and deeper into the firm, thick folds, till at length the member, thrusting her lips open, held her gasping, as if at its mercy; then, in a trice, it was withdrawn, her knees were pressed apart, and she saw it before her, above her, like a crimson flash, and at last, sinking backward into new abysses of bliss, felt it descend on her, press open the secret gates, and plunge into the deepest depths of her thirsting body….
“Was it… like this… last week?” he whispered.
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/the-bread-of-angels.php?page=1
Genres like fantasy and science-fiction and crime and so on have never been afraid to thememonger, often profitably.
That’s good.
House of Leaves – Danielewski
Random Acts of Senseless Violence – Womack
anything by Jeanette Winterson, much of mary gaitskill, all the a.m. homes I’ve read, and so on…
and all the palahniuk I’ve read, except the latest, which I stopped reading after 30 pages.
the road is a fcking ditch