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I don't get it. :confused: From the American Heritage Dictionary: 4. Psychology A mark or spot on the skin that bleeds as a symptom of hysteria.

I thought it was rather wholesome and instructive.

Some Hope by Edward St. Aubyn is another good one.

The short novel Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion is a good choice.

Totally blanking on what you meant there, Kenny. The words flow through my fingers, not my mouth. It would be like cooking without a knife.

I agree with you totally, jaybe. Illness is a self-fulfulling prophesy for a lot of people. Going to the doc sucks. I avoid it at all costs. Sorry I posted to this thread. But mine is a mysterious, nay, religious experience that falls outside the purview of normal medicine. I once...

I think there are two types of work here: journalist/documentarians and primary experiencers. Didion and Wolfe would be the former. Hunter S. would be both, Kerouac and Thoreau would be both. I would put something like Peter Coyote's Sleeping Where I Fall into the journalistic catagory, as he...

Of course their writing affects their popularity. But to call them tastemakers implies that they directly influence buying and popularity trends, which as writers they do not. As a related example, I would say that goat cheese has become far more popular than ever in the US. I would say the...

Thanks for the suggestions. The truth is I've tried a lot of stuff. Apparently it's a stress-related eczema-type problem. It's very localized, probably because I type so much and use my hands so much for cooking, etc. But it does abate if I am very very careful and calm and sensible and keep my...

Perhaps Naked Lunch would be less than relevant, but if you are angry, underemployed, resentful, feeling disenfranchised and poverty stricken because the steel mill has just closed its doors or the shoe-store franchise was gobbled up, something like Be Here Now might be very relevant indeed...

pontalba doesn't address that question at all. She just says that the 'counterculture' of yesterday is the mainstream of today while simultaneously saying that nothing ever changes, two contradictory statements. I simply do not agree that the counterculture of yesterday is the mainstream of...

I'm a little confused by this, because I think of 'tastemakers' as trendsetting consumers, not producers. In other words, Oprah would be a big literary tastemaker, affecting so many people's choice of book to read. Another person would be the editor of the Washington Post book review, the...

The tips of my fingers where they hit the keyboard split, like a small paper cut, but it happens to be where a lot of surface nerves are. It will start with one on a bad week and in a few days it will be two or three. It hurts like hell, but nobody notices it until I point it out, which is why I...

Oh, SFG, sorry to hear of your back affliction. I'm sure the rack will help. I have Editorial Stigmata. When I am under stress and writing, the tips of my fingers bleed. I'm not kidding. It's not related to deadlines, but to how emotionally intense the piece I'm working on is. I have...

Yeah, I agree with you about the naming. I'm not sure. Well, this is funny. I was thinkiing about what you've written here, and stories of quest and quasiphilosophy, etc., and I googled a bit and found this : http://www.gnooks.com/ which really prods my associative ideas on the subject...

Well, I would consider 'Zen . . .' part of the genre for a couple of reasons. For one, it's a quest book set in modern times, with the quest being both a very individual search for philosophical 'truths' about how to live and a cross-generational journey of father and son. The concerns with...

They're really not based on a comic strip, but on individual-frame cartoons by Chas. Addams, primarily published in The New Yorker and based on his real family. His humor was slyer and wryer than the movies'.

Hang on a second. You guys are the ones who brought culture at large and political leanings into it. I would have liked to discuss particular authors and books and their influence. If you read the thread, you will see that I've tried repeatedly to come back to partculars and to books and authors...

That speaks more to the wilfull ignorance of the average GOP voter than anything else. Isn't it the conservative line that such allegations are all cruel and baseless lies?

I knew I was going out a limb with that one . . .:rolleyes: Anyway, it's a minor point. It's their chosen subject matter that matters.