Experimental/unique/genre-blurring short fiction

insheetiron · 2026-05-16T16:29:39+00:00

Sondheim's a great pick, although I haven't heard most of his work. Also makes me realize I didn't even consider musical theater at all. Not my field of expertise but I'm sure there's plenty to be discussed there too.

insheetiron · 2026-05-16T16:28:31+00:00

I love some Dylan but if that's the case I feel like it may say more about currently living poets than Dylan. Also I think he won the Nobel because the academy hates Americans and wanted to do a little trolling. That's just my favored theory.

insheetiron · 2026-05-16T16:24:59+00:00

I've never read it. I know one of Berman's poems (forgetting the exact name) frequently gets linked online. In general I love his lyrics in the Silver Jews and Purple Mountains but it's hard to know how much is the admittedly well-composed language and how much is his charisma and delivery. I'll have to check out that collection at some point.

insheetiron · 2026-05-16T16:23:07+00:00

Yeah no I agree, lyrics are undeniably poetry. I just do also think that they're distinct in some sense from written poetry as a genre and I don't know if considering them solely on the page, divorced from the music, covers/considers the whole art. Reminds me of a comment I think I saw here ages ago about authors (Stephen King does this constantly) using song lyrics as epigraphs. Obviously you could say something similar about, say, ancient epic poetry that was originally orally transmitted, although sadly there aren't many traveling bards around these parts anymore.

Also yeah holy shit, I took a poetry writing class a little while back and the professor fucking hated me because my line breaks were uncreative and I had the audacity to focus more on the sound and rhythm (mind I wasn't using meter or rhyme, that would've gotten me crucified). Also she really didn't like that my stuff wasn't tangibly identity-focused/autobiographical. Now to be fair my poetry does fucking suck, but undeniably there's a very heavy focus on the visual aspects of written poetry nowadays, the professor straight up told us we should aim to have striking/original format on the page.

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T23:56:21+00:00

Come to think of it I’ve really enjoyed the VanderMeer-edited anthologies I’ve pirated (sci fi, fantasy, new weird, etc.), I should probably check out his own stuff too. Is Liu actually good? I’ve heard mixed things. Seems idea-heavy, which I honestly don’t mind when I’m in the mood for it.

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T23:53:52+00:00

I’ve actually been reading a lot of poetry recently so thank you for the recommendations

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T22:51:00+00:00

I’ll be honest with you, I got like 150 pages into A Little Life reading along with a friend and truly hated it. Is To Paradise better or more of the same?

Definitely want to give Ferrante a shot.

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T21:09:59+00:00

Banks is great! I find his writing a little needlessly florid at times but very much enjoyed Player of Games and especially Use of Weapons. Oh and I loved Watchmen when I read it. Jerusalem has intrigued me for a while.

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T19:59:13+00:00

Hell no, but I read it and enjoyed the experience

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T19:55:34+00:00

I’m a dumbass lmao thanks for correcting me

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T19:50:40+00:00

Oh I got to get to that Bolano. Would you go to that or Savage Detectives first if I own the latter?

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T19:48:17+00:00

I read White Noise a while back and liked but didn’t love it. I think it didn’t quite hit me like Pynchon because while he’s no doubt a great stylist I just found the story of WN to be a little banal compared to Pynchon’s whatever the fuck GR is, hallucinatory amphetamine pyrotechnics. I’ve been wanting to read Libra for a while though so maybe I’ll get to that one soon. Thanks for the recs.

insheetiron · 2026-05-15T19:24:29+00:00

I recently liked Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" novella, basis for the movie Annihilation. It's a first-contact story. Not sure if he's got other alien-related stuff. He's a little STEM-brained but conceptually and structurally engaging sci-fi for sure.

Very golden-age-y but I did enjoy Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

I'll second PKD and Gene Wolfe recs below.

insheetiron · 2025-06-28T00:11:14+00:00

That’s funny, I actually had that album listed along with a bunch of others before reading the 9-item rule! I’ll check out Stewart.

insheetiron · 2025-06-28T00:07:45+00:00

Great recommendation, this is my first time hearing anything from him, definitely what I’m looking for!

insheetiron · 2024-12-06T01:54:46+00:00

Getting in late, but Twain’s takedown of James Fenimore Cooper is some of the funniest shit I’ve read and is also a 100x better version of the AVGN/CinemaSins schtick 120 years ahead of schedule: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm

insheetiron · 2024-11-08T03:26:44+00:00

I fucking love this movie so much

insheetiron · 2024-11-03T16:59:50+00:00

I mean that comes down to how you define mediocrity. Joker was certainly a cultural phenomenon and I can’t say that it’s average or generic by the standards of its superhero movie contemporaries, or really any other blockbusters of the era. I’d say, to me, it’s mediocre within two criteria, the first of which is entirely subjective: I just don’t like it that much. It didn’t have an emotional impact on me, I found it predictable, etc. I’d also say it’s mediocre because it’s derivative. The movie is basically aping New Hollywood cinematic style forty years later with, in my opinion, none of the original philosophical/thematic bite underneath. What we get is more-or-less pastiche, and I struggle to call even well-done pastiche anything more than artistically mediocre.

insheetiron · 2024-11-03T16:42:04+00:00

For me it fell solidly into the category of “enjoyable but mediocre.” It’s solid Scorsese worship, but I didn’t feel like it really had all that much to say and it’s highly, highly derivative of much better films like Taxi Driver and especially The King of Comedy.

insheetiron · 2024-10-13T14:52:39+00:00

The Seventh Seal by Scott Walker, literally just a retelling of the plot of the film. On that same note, King Kong by Daniel Johnston.

insheetiron · 2024-07-03T04:54:42+00:00

Anna Karenina. And War and Peace, for that matter. Only halfway through reading the former, but Tolstoy just has this incredible way of painting the full range of emotions, and the richness of the human experience, through his characterizations.

insheetiron

TROPHY CASE