>arno schmi-->hes the guy that wrote bottom dream, botom dream bad, it bad, there no perpis behind it, he did house of leaf before house of leave mark z danielpoopski--never seen any talk about him here before, whats it like? seen people say hes in the same vein as william gaddis, enlighten me /lit/niggas that have actually checked his shit out b4
I‘ve been curious about reading Nobodaddys Kinder to dip my feet in but that‘s all I know
>>23797975same shit i did not too long ago, i guess hes fairly new for this board then. so let's consider this the first arno schmidt thread about arno and not bottom's dream
bump
I have collected stories, collected novellas, school for atheists, and bottom's dream. I mostly read stories/novellas here and there. Haven't tackled school for atheists yet. I made concerted effort to read Bottom's Dream when I got it, but only got ~150 or so pages in before giving up.I wouldn't say he's particularly "fun". I have to be in a specific mood to read him, because most of his stuff is so experimental it takes effort to get anything out of it. The stories themselves are not particularly exciting in my opinion. Most of it feels like he wants me to think he's smart and clever. Sometimes it is clever, most of it could be done away with for a better story. He also likes crass humor. Again, sometimes funny, mostly done too often that it becomes boring. I read English translations. Maybe it's better in German, but I kind of doubt it.
>>23798197Did you feel that way reading his earlier shit? Or was that only the thought that came from reading his later works?
im afraid he may be washed now, people only know him for bottom’s dream
And his books are expensive as fuck
>>23797964Huge fan of his works here. I've been on this board since forever, and I seldom see any anons showing any interest in his works. I read Nobodaddy's Children and Evening Edged in Gold, and I'm 250 pages through Bottom's Dream. >>23798197Like this anon pointed out, he's definitely not someone you read for 'fun'. He is very erudite and makes dozens of references on almost every page, and he's also an exceptionally good reader.
>>23799194have they ever known him for anything else? BD is already quite niche
he's the erudite type who read or wrote the whole day and did nothing else. So expect a lot of trivia about forgotten german literary figuers from 18th century together with marxism, freudianism and modernist stylistic extravagances.
>>23799302Howd you secure evening edged in gold? Or is it the epub
>>23799101I don't know enough to say "most", but I'd say his earlier stuff is less experimental than something like Bottom's Dream. >>23799302What did you like about Evening Edged in Gold, and really Arno in general? And did you buy it before it got more expensive or what? I bought Bottom's Dream when it came out, even used a gift card so I ended up buying it for $25.
Anybody got his whole collection?
Any reason he isnt as talked about? i see people suck pynchon dick 24/7, despite his books having 0 plots, being soulless shit, and also going eruditic with it, but not arno?
>>23801126His most famous book is like $500 used and big enough to kill somebody with
>>23801131all the more reason to hold him in high regard.
the school for atheists is pretty funny
>>23801227do you own a physical for that?
>>23797964Only read Scenes from the Life of a Faun, which I really liked and is probably a good starting point.
Interesting footage if you are learning German.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp7QsxSOa7ctimestamp 10:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toTCqAmmz5wI read>Leviathan>Schwarze Spiegel>Seelandschaft mit Pocahontas >excerpts of Zettels Traum. It's an enormous, weighty book.Personally, I enjoy his literary criticism and correspondence, particularly with Wollschläger, much more than his novels. He worked 100 hours a week, for his entire life. No sundays, no holidays, no vacations or travel, just reading and writing. The only thing he watched on TV were operas and women's figure skating.
>>23802156Why figure skating?
actually, how accurate is the Gaddis comparison? Compared to the prose style itself, I can't see it, same with plots, but I guess i can see some of it if we take into account that both authors experiment, but idk about anything else
>>23803210Nothing, it's just that pseuds like the long, hard, obscuur book
>>23803056She doesn't mention why. Just emphasized with a smirk that it was women's figure skating.
>>23803210Only somewhat comparable I can think of is Herzgewächse, Oder der Fall Adams by Schmidt acolyte Hans Wollschläger. The work's title has six different layers alone >archaic medical term>Schöenberg's op. 20>Maeterlink's poem Feuillage du coeur>the German translation of that poem>the Fall of Man>Finnegans Wake>ETA Hoffmann's Kater MurrWollschläger and Schmidt were both GENIUS translators, often surpassing the original authors' prose in their German translations.>pic from from Zettel's Traum / Bottom's Dream
I can recommend his radio essays on literature "Schreckensmänner" ~20 essays in dialogue format on Joyce, Dickens, May, Bronte, Meyern, ... a lot of writers some obscure some not so. Amazing read or to listen to as they were produced for radio. great stuff. they exist as cds (vol 1 — 7?cds and vol.2 11cda or the other way round)
Murph is that you?
read a bit of him today, great.
“2 Novels” is like $200, his readership might actually be wide enough if niggas actually published him
>>23797964I talked about him on here five years ago when I actually cared about avant garde bullshitread good bookers niggerand then write your ownstop hanging out with low test fags on this fag board
>>23805456what have you written?
>>23804344I will try to find it, thanks.On a related note, this is perhaps one of the most beautiful lectures in modern German. A shame one needs a high command of German, this lecture deserves all the attention it could get.>Wollschläger on his translation of Ulysseshttps://www.dichterlesen.net/veranstaltungen/detail/hans-wollschlaeger-liest-aus-seiner-uebersetzung-von-ulysses-2316/
>>23805456Why not care about Arno Schmidt anymore?
>>23806642I don't see the merit in prose so heavy on theory. you can go on and on and on and ultimately you have something additive you disguise as innovation, you have a complex train of thought but ultimately no narrative worth giving a damn about.I read Jon Fosse's Septology and I had to force myself through the last two hundred pages because nothing happens at all. These three books could ultimately be a short story. Everything could be, if you leave something out, but in this case there is nothing left out, the book is just overbearing. Mind you, I loved the first two hundred pages but, and it's the same for Arno Schmidt but worse, the gimmick gets old fast. I had Zettels Traum on my desk for two weeks and I really, really sat down with it and I just didn't enjoy it. Look how Wollschläger just does essentially the same but more and look how irrelevant he is. Pretty much everyone in my literary circles knows Arno Schmidt but no one's read him. His influence as a writer is minimal, and I think this is something you should strive towards, to have an influence, to have works convey meaning through your prose and that prose being read. A complex work doesn't necessarily convey complex ideas or complex meaning. The whole debate between entertaining books and art books put aside. The worst movies are "films" or "pictures" which jerk off on being art and it's the same with books. If we as writers don't offer our readers something meaningful, not in a quantitative sense, as I think Arno Schmidt is doing, actually, but in qualitative sense, that we write about something in particular way and restrict ourselves to our prose and to something close to our motivation, no one will read our books, the financial aspect and the death of publishing put aside, and no one will learn from our books. People will stop writing books, people will associate writing with a pseudo-academic pursuit of filling your work with a lot of fluff and leaving it at that. Arno Schmidt has masterfully finished Bottoms Dream in a theoretical sense, according to the aspects I pointed, but ultimately neglected the very notion of reading a book in writing a book that cannot be read. While all of the previously named books can be read, Schmidt almost makes it a point to write a book that stands as a testament. Look at the format, the price, the printing, the construction of the book in a way no person thinks and the events being even beyond the artistic license to empathies jarringly eccentric.
>>23805464a few stories, none published. and you?
>>23803809I mean look at the pages you posted. Look at what you list with such reverence. It's bullshit. It's all bullshit. It's the kind of thing this board as long criticized in academics and philosophy, but if a translator writes a book that is a translation in itself without changing language and is arguably genius to a degree in its practical execution yet, again, fundamentally fails at being a book that is read, not by the people, but is read by anyone, read-able by anyone, then it's okay? this is academic mysticism of 1969 generation
>>23807913just say youd rather read some dark fantasy bullshit nigga, it is genius, maybe you cant read it because it isnt the most fun, but the execution is insane
niggas will fuck and suck on joyce and call him a genius and say that he has great stories despite writing finnegans wake , which is complete gibberish, but then bitch about arno schmidt being too experimental, and hes like the german joyce, so i dont see a problem
>>23807913or maybe because you cant read fucking german? some of his works have exceptional plots, in example: School for Atheists, that book might just be the mid-ground between overt experimentation and storyline. i rest my case smoothbrain
>>23807954Exactly this. People think that books should always be 'muh le fun,' and that there isn't much to a book if it doesn't entertain, and so on. Schmidt isn’t the writer to seek out if you're looking for either plot (most of what he writes is plotless) or enjoyment. From what I’ve read—hundreds upon hundreds of pages—his work is painfully tortuous and requires a great deal of attention. He is also highly erudite and makes a vast number of references to writers, operas, and historical facts that often go over most people's heads... I will learn German to specifically read him in his native tongue.
Okay author, great experimentalist
>>23809770People here moan about books that don’t have any substance, but the moment a nigga like Arno extracts that very thing and writes the most substance-infused text, they will backtrack and bitch about it some more. Not only that, but they’ll praise Joyce who did the same, only with less substance and more experimentation.
Sorry for the spam, but in my honest opinion, more presses need to start publishing his shit. I heard that Dalkey only published Bottom’s Dream because the Arno Schmidt foundation shit made a huge donation to help get it jump started or else Dalkey would lose more money than’d be gained. Hopefully we get more soon. And Dalkey’s re-releasing Nobodaddy’s Children next year. That’s good, but it might be full of typos and proofread fails like the rest of their new releases lately.
>>23809770I find experimentation and dense prose fun, I seek enjoyment out of it. What now, whyte boy?
>>23810703that is fun
>>23797964>bottoms dreamthe bottom's dream is dick right?
>>23803056But why male models?
>Bottom's Dream>Of Human Bondage>Big Breasts and Wide Hips>Lolita>Pornography (Gombrowicz)Anything else I should pick up?
>>23810976Nigga they said female figure skaters, nowhere is there an implication that they’re male
>>23811246Roberte Ce Soir
Ignore the trolls, Schmidt’s great, technical but genius
>>23812359explain
>>23812361Just read. Scroll up. Like 8 people said the same shit. I don’t need to explain lol.
>>23812380Why can't you just tell me you gatekeeping bastard?
I remember reading some excerpts of Bottom's dream when the translation it came out, and it looked like the kind of book that wasn't worth reading in something other than its original language.Did he write anything that's a little more digestible in translation.
>>23797964I prefer The School for Atheists, there is a great scene where he rails against the socialists who have brought about a 40 hour week, thus making people lazy and decadent and underworked, and making the world weaker. That part should be taught in every school as a law, as if it was the law of gravity.
>>23803056;)
>>23812877Schmidt was a man of the people, real goon
>>23812530He wrote Nobodaddy’s Children, Bottom’s Dream is an extreme example of his ornate style, but Nobodaddy’s Children and his other novellas and stories and 2 Novels Dalkey collection are much more lenient than the extremes of Bottom’s Dream. They’re like a starting point in that style, while Bottom’s Dream is the style at maximum exertion
>>23812560Isn’t that one of his wide ass, anti-shelf sized books?
Found a copy of 2 Novels for $15
>>23797964I read Nobodaddy’s Children. Scenes from the Life of a Faun is the only one I liked but still have reservations about. The style began to greatly irritate me that I couldn’t even finish the other two stories. I wanted to like him more and would like to look through a copy of Bottom’s Dream some day.
>>23815261Shit just kinda seems that way
>>23814310Yeah, thing's the size of a coffee book. It's published by green integer who make either tiny micro booklets or fuckhuge Interview magazine pamphlets.
>>23816270Massive lmao
Might buy a copy today, B&N Dalkey
>>23817814fs ur not getting BD
>>23797964Will Bottom’s Dream ever be republished? Is it possible in paperback? Either way if they do put it out again I’m grabbing a copy even if it’s expensive because I know how hard it can be to get. It shall be one of those rainy day books if Dalkey does their job
>>23819443that shit's a must buy when it's out. odds are that theyll release it at a normal retail price as they did with their original hardcover edition, but people buy them out to resell. any bottom's dream republishing will be an investment, as everyone's learned from the last
Hopefully Nobodaddy's Children gets a better cover. The new global-homo minimalist covers are fucking hell
>>23821012fuck that
