Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Reading List

Further reading, Enthusiasts. Hey, let’s start a book club!

Sure, right after the podcast.

I’M GETTING TO IT.

You’ll die unfulfilled.

We all will.

True.

If I may get back to my point: here’s some nonsense to read/look at/pleasure yourself. I’ve assiduously curated this list for you; it’s not just a bunch of random bullshit cluttering up my desktop, I swear.

Being There by Jerry Jerzy Kosinski is about an idiot who likes to spend his days watching teevee and not making any sense that gets elected president because everyone else is just as dumb as he is. Why this particular novel called to me now is a mystery, but it’s a hoot and only 87 pages with not many big words. You can knock this sucker out in an hour.

Check this out:

Frankie Nickels’ soliloquy about the wagon route across America from the other week was partially inspired by Horace Greeley’s An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859; which, stylistically, is the diametric opposite of Kosinski’s short sentences and vague descriptions: like all other 19th century writers, Greeley does that thing where he writes too fucking much. Paragraphs shouldn’t be a page long, Horace Greeley. Stop doing that. Give a brother some white space on the page. Indent every now and then, Horace Greeley.

(After you get past the prolixity, it’s a great time: first-person reporting from the trail about shitty breakfasts in Denver, and running into old friends in saloons, and so many rivers.)

I’ve done all I can do: enlighten yourselves or don’t.

8 Comments

  1. Tor Haxson

    Certainly in these depressing times you should remind the good people that reading any other Kosinski book will be a terrifying, globe spanning fascinating journey through human cruelty.

  2. Luther Von Baconson

    got a good beat. a Guy can dance to it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XWf-ivZcBg

  3. JES

    pss pss pss . . . Jerzy Kosinski . . . With a Z . . . I was shocked to finally notice his first name decades after discovering him too . . .

    • Mean, Green, Devil Eating Machine

      “Being There” – the film!!!

    • Thoughts On The Dead

      I would have bet you good money that his name was Jerry. Our eyes see what they want to a lot. Danke.

      • JES

        Me too. And my eyes did see that for a long long time!

  4. ste4ve

    Lest we forget: https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/the-jerzy-kosinski-controversy

Leave a Reply to JES Cancel reply