This is the best thing I have ever read. Perfect depictions of despair and hopelessness. Just super masculine and gritty in general.
>>24818481Read it earlier this year, personally. It’s decent but not nearly as good as you seem to think it is. Particularly the portion after he returns home. Just becomes drivel at that point.
>>24818539>Particularly the portion after he returns home. Just becomes drivel at that pointYep, that is my only gripe with it. Thankfully it wraps up relatively quickly.
>>24818481fantastic book, I think my favorite post 2016 novel. I've mentioned it here and nobody seems to have even heard of it.
>>24818481Is he a competent stylist or should I just watch the TV series?
>>24818629Book is much better than the series, much crazier, bloodier, violent and mystical.
>>24818636Cheers, added it to my TBR list.
>>24818629I much preferred the book. The TV series is good but its less gritty and has left some stuff out. Here is a random excerpt from the book so you can decide for yourself:The sea ice has been cracked by winds, buckled, and then refrozen into a rubbled landscape of crazed and tilted blocks fissured and motionless. Black mountains, gargantuan and sumptuous, rise off in the distance. The dangling sky is the color of milky quartz. He walks until he is breathless and his face and feet are numb, and then turns about. The wind is blowing against him as he begins to walk back. He feels it seeping through his layers of clothing, nudging and chilling his chest, groin, and thighs. He thinks of Webster and the others walking west and feels suddenly sickened and wretched at his core. He stops, groans, then leans over and vomits out gobbets of half-digested seal meat onto the frozen snow beneath. He feels a sharp pain like a lance jabbing in his stomach and releases an involuntary squirt of shit into his trousers. For a moment, he cannot breathe at all. He closes his eyes and waits, and the feeling passes. The sweat is frozen on his brow, and his beard is hard now with saliva and bile and fragments of tooth-ground meat. He looks up at the snow-packed sky and opens wide his mouth, but no sounds or words come out of it, and, after a short while longer, he closes it again and walks on silently
>>24818643>The sweat is frozen on his brow, and his beard is hard now with saliva and bile and fragments of tooth-ground meat. He looks up at the snow-packed sky and opens wide his mouth, but no sounds or words come out of it, and, after a short while longer, he closes it again and walks on silentlyAbsolute kino
>>24818629Fuck off to /tv/ you faggot
Anybody read The Abstainer? Is it as good as this?
>>24818539Is the ending in the book the same as the one in the series, because that ending was really shitty and anticlimatic
>>24819788Its a bit different, in the book he robs but doesn't kill Baxter, and his escape to Germany is detailed out.
>>24819788I don’t watch shitty streaming shows or even subscribe to any of those services so I wouldn’t know.
>>24819856Nobody asked that and nobody cares. Say "I don't know" and that's it.
>>24819876You asked me if it was the same and I told you I don’t know, faggot. Cry more.
>>24819983>and I told you I don’t knowYou also told me about what you watch and what you subscribe to like an over-sharing tranny.
>>24820058>o-o-overshare!! 0h n0oO00oOo0 how could I do such a thing!? cry more
>>24818481Behold the man.He shuffles out of Clappison's courtyard onto Sykes Street and snuffs the complex air—turpentine, fishmeal, mustard, black lead, the usual grave, morning-piss stink of just-emptied night jars. He snorts once, rubs his bristled head, and readjusts his crotch. He sniffs his fingers, then slowly sucks each one in turn, drawing off the last remnants, getting his final money's worth. At the end of Charterhouse Lane he turns north onto Wincolmlee, past the De La Pole Tavern, past the sperm candle manufactory and the oil-seed mill. Above the warehouse roofs, he can see the swaying tops of main- and mizzenmasts, hear the shouts of the stevedores and the thump of mallets from the cooperage nearby. His shoulder rubs against the smoothed red brick, a dog runs past, a cart piled high with rough-cut timber. He breathes in again and runs his tongue along the haphazard ramparts of his teeth. He senses a fresh need, small but insistent, arising inside him, a new requirement aching to be met. His ship leaves at first light, but before then there is something that must be done. He peers around and for a moment wonders what it is. He notices the pink smell of blood from the pork butcher's, the grimy sway of a woman's skirts. He thinks of flesh, animal, human, then thinks again—it is not that kind of ache, he decides, not yet; it is the milder one, the one less pressing.He turns around and walks back towards the tavern. The bar is almost empty at this hour in the morning. There is a low fire in the grate and a smell of frying. He delves in his pocket, but all he finds there are bread crumbs, a jackknife, and a halfpenny coin."Rum," he says.
>>24820992Tourism. He has never lived that life and the rhythm and word choice make it clear. He does not see the scene in his heart.
>>24818643>He feels a sharp pain like a lance jabbing in his stomach and releases an involuntary squirt of shit into his trousers. based and G.R.R.M.-pilled
>>24821079I didn't realize fiction had to be derived from personal experience
>>24821111Great writing does.
>>24821117so go read nonfiction if you think thats what great writing isgood fiction writers don't need personal experience
>>24820992>>24821079>Continued"Rum," he says.He pushes the single halfpenny across the bar. The barman looks down at the coin and shakes his head."I'm leaving in the morning," he explains, "on the Volunteer. I'll give you my note of hand."The barman snorts."Do I look like a fool?" he says.The man shrugs and thinks a moment."Head or tails then. This good knife of mine against a tot of your rum."He puts the jackknife on the bar, and the barman picks it up and looks at it carefully. He unfolds the blade and tests it against the ball of his thumb."It's a fine knife, that one," the man says. "Hant never failed me yet."The barman takes a shilling from his pocket and shows it. He tosses the coin and slaps it down hard. They both look. The barman nods, picks up the knife, and stows it in his waistcoat pocket."And now you can fuck off," he says.The man's expression doesn't alter. He shows no sign of irritation or surprise. It is as though losing the knife is part of a greater and more complex plan which only he is privy to. After a moment, he bends down, tugs off his sea boots, and puts them side by side on top of the bar."Toss again," he says.The barman rolls his eyes and turns away."I don't want your fucking boots," he says."You have my knife," the man says. "You can't back away now.""I don't want no fucking boots," the barman says again."You can't back away.""I'll do whatever the fuck I like," the barman says.There's a Shetlander leaning at the other end of the bar watching them. He is wearing a stocking cap and canvas britches caked with filth. His eyes are red and loose and drunken."I'll buy ye a drink myself," he says, "if ye just shut the fuck up."The man looks back at him. He has fought Shetlanders before in Lerwick and in Peterhead. They are not clever fighters, but they are stubborn and hard to finish off. This one has a rusty blubber-knife pushed into his belt and a gamy, peevish look about him. After a moment's pause, the man nods."I'd thank you for that," he says. "I've been whoring all night and the whistle's dry."The Shetlander nods to the barman, and the barman, with a grand show of reluctance, pours out another drink. The man takes his sea boots off the bar, picks up the drink, and walks over to a bench by the fire. After a few minutes, he lies down, pulls his knees up to his chest, and falls asleep. When he wakes up again, the Shetlander is sitting at a table in the corner talking to a whore. She is dark-haired and fat and has a mottled face and greenish teeth. The man recognizes her but cannot now recall the name. Betty? he wonders. Hatty? Esther?
>>24821174>>24821175Right. You dont understand. This is not good. It lacks presence and the mystery of actual life. Which is mined from experience.
>>24821213yeah we got it, you don't like fiction.go read a nonfiction book and stop pestering people who enjoy fiction.
>>24821280I dislike bad fiction and bad writing. He is not a good writer.
>>24821359Is your fav writer Bukowski? because he lived it, and so enobles us with ensouls us with the knowledge that can only be attained through REAL drinking and whoring, not this academic chapslop
>>24820992>>24821175Look bro I don’t know why you people (shills) ever thought the prose was a selling point. It’s inartful, try hard, cringeworthy drivel. The book succeeds despite it not because of it. It’s like if Sjon spent the entirety of the blue fox talking about cunts and crusty buttholes. That it’s presented proudly is absurd to me. >inb4 you reply with some autistic nonsense like you did to this anon>>24821280>>24821213Im: >>24818539It’s a book I’d recommend but always with a caveat that it feels like it was written but a high schooler who just got into his father’s whiskey at points.
>>24821755Written by*
>>24820992This reads like a bad imitation of the style of the opening of blood meridian. "See the child"
>>24821803The author said it himself that thats where he got it from
>>24821881Thats even more pathetic lol
>>24821803I'm sorry for the anons here that cannot FEEL the pavement, SMELL the garbage, HEAR the cries of children and prostitutes, such visceral writing. He walks back down Sykes Street. He does not think of the Volunteer, now lying at dock, which he has spent the past week laboring to trim and pack, nor of the bloody six-month voyage to come. He thinks only of this present moment—Grotto Square, the Turkish Baths, the auction house, the ropery, the cobbles beneath his feet, the agnostic Yorkshire sky. He is not by nature impatient or fidgety; he will wait when waiting is required. He finds a wall and sits down upon it; when he is hungry he sucks a stone. The hours pass. People walking by remark him but do not attempt to speak. Soon it will be time. He watches as the shadows lengthen, as it rains briefly, then ceases raining, as the clouds shudder across the dampened sky. It is almost dusk when he sees them at last. Hester is singing a ballad; the Shetlander has a grog bottle in one hand and is conducting her clumsily with the other. He watches them turn into Hodgson's Square. He waits a moment, then scuttles round the corner onto Caroline Street. It is not yet nighttime, but it is dark enough, he decides. The windows in the Tabernacle are glowing; there is a smell of coal dust and giblets in the air. He reaches Fiche's Alley before them and slides inside. The courtyard is empty except for a line of grimy laundry and the high, ammoniacal scent of horse piss. He stands against a darkened doorway with a half brick gripped in his fist. When Hester and the Shetlander come into the courtyard, he waits for a moment to be sure, then steps forwards and smashes the half brick hard into the back of the Shetlander's head.
>>24822671Every example you post is worse than the one before. Perhaps you are the author, or his son, or his catamite.
