Translation can make a huge difference. I’m not an expert on the Divine Comedy, but for example the first translation of The Tale Of Genji (which is advertised as just that, “the first translation”) cuts the entire text down from ~1300 pages to less than 400. That’s not so much a “translation”, that’s a translation of a heavily edited, reduced and recompiled version. But they don’t tell you that - they call it “the first translation”.

Other translations were made in times when massive cultural chauvinism was the norm. My translation of the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius has constant references to god, because the good christian fellow who translated it back in 18something decided that when Aurelius speaks of “the gods”, he means capital g God of course. It’s also full of insanely pompous language that was archaic and weird even back then. This is not uncommon with Victorian Age and earlier translations of classics - they just feel like they need to talk all biblical because the work is old, and “forsooth” and “nay” and “thee and thine” are great old words. Nevermind the fact that Marcus Aurelius wrote perfectly normal contemporary (to him) Latin.

So yeah, different translations of the same work can vary massively. I recommend googling around a bit and seeing if there are one or two consensus translations, and going with those.

Such an amazing book. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the movie, but I’m glad I read the books before that. The movie seems to cut a lot of material and take a lot of liberties.

I think you’re not supposed to like (much less identify with) Johnny Truant. Or Zampano, or Will Navidson. It’s basically a long exercise in unreliable narrators on multiple levels, and I think it would be fair to call it a bit of a metafictional wankfest (I say this with nothing but love). I don’t think that enjoying the story on its own merits is really the point - what he’s going for is that you enjoy the way the story is being told. If that doesn’t work for you (and for many people it won’t) then the book really has nothing else to offer you, I think.

I loved it, but I’m not sure I’d re-read it. I think the main gimmick wouldn’t be as effective the second time around.

That said, if you really want to challenge your perception of what literature as a medium can be, formally, metafictionally, then yeah, this goes to eleven. Infinite Jest is a walk in the park after this.

And the idiot saga of book bans continues, because some fundamentalist dingbats can’t be arsed to parent their own goddamn children, but instead want the “liberty” to inflict their medieval morals on everybody else.

I think I’m understanding a fair bit of it (certainly not everything!), since I usually read a chapter once, look through the various online resources (Pynchonwiki etc.), then read it again, or reread most of it. So it’s not that I can’t make head or tails of it, it’s just… it’s such a strenuous process. It’s intellectually stimulating for sure, but it’s hard to find what I would consider a typical sense of enjoyment in it. It’s more like slowly grinding away at a difficult and monumental task. But maybe I’ll get to a point where it “grips” me and I’ll start reading it purely for enjoyment.

I love it for its role in Japanese literature overall. No Longer Human is basically the definition of a Watashi Shōsetsu. An entire genre came from this (I mean there were others before, but Dazai really gave it the shape it had forever since). But like other works in that genre, it’s kinda rough reading this knowing it’s basically autobiographical, and one can speculate whether Dazai specifically focuses on all the negative stuff and dark thoughts.

I think nobody should edit a book after it’s been published - neither the author nor the publisher or estate - except in a handful of very narrow cases:

1. In textbooks obviously to include new information, new research, update statistics etc. Absolutely doesn’t apply to prose.

2. Misspellings and grammatical errors

3. An extant manuscript or older unpublished version is found that clearly shows that the author (who is dead and can’t speak out on it anymore) intended something to be different, but it was misprinted, the author was browbeaten, talked out of it, censored, etc.

I’m absolutely against “updating” prose. I hate "X as a service"ification of things, I like to own books and movies and music, not have a subscription to them. This is that, but worse. And we all know authors (cough JKR cough) who would update their goddamn books every time they’re waiting on a dentist appointment or sitting in traffic.

I’ve been working on it for more than 6 months. I read one chapter, read it again, then give up on the book for 3 weeks. Then I come back to it and read another chapter. It’s a hell of a difficult read.

The Judge is one of my favorite villains of all time… if you can even call him a villain? I’m honestly not sure. He’s certainly brutal, inhuman, arguably even evil, but he feels more like a force of nature than a person motivated by human motives and interests.

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent”. My god what a line.