Comments on: Needed: damn good bar reading

Question: Needed: damn good bar reading

dersins — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:16:03 -0800

I like to go to dark, smoky, dive bars and sit there with a drink and a book for hours. Unfortunately, I'm running out of good bar reading. Can you help me find more? Examples inside.

Good bar reading needs to be somewhat, but not extremely, challenging, forcing me to concentrate, but not so much that I can't "get it" once I'm on drink #2 or 3. It needs to be fiction. I don't know why, but it does. Although it helps if it's thematically related to bars and / or drinking and / or other vices, excesses, or dissolution in general, it's not necessary

Some examples of what I'm looking for:

Denis Johnson
John Fante
Richard Price
some Thomas Pynchon ("Vineland" good, "V." too willfully obscure)
Bukowksi (When I read him at home or on the bus he just pisses me off, but in bars he seems to...fit in better-- go figure...)
Harry Crews

Please help me-- I've only got a couple of good ones left on the shelf, and I have a Powell's gift card to take advantage of!

By: JeremiahBritt

JeremiahBritt — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:19:17 -0800

"The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker

By: DenOfSizer

DenOfSizer — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:25:44 -0800

I'd reckon from your list that you've already exhausted the Hemingway?

By: box

box — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:28:02 -0800

George Pelecanos, James Crumley, Donald Westlake, etc.

By: poppo

poppo — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:34:36 -0800

Having once followed the Bukowski -> Fante link myself, I was next led to a book which very much inspired Fante: Knut Hamsun's Hunger

Recommended highly for your smoky dive reading.

By: clockwork

clockwork — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:36:12 -0800

Celine: Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan

Frederick Exley: A Fan's Notes, Pages From a Cold Island, Last Notes From Home

Nelson Algren: The Man With the Golden Arm

John Dos Passos: U.S.A.

Wyndham Lewis: Tarr

Raymond Chandler

By: 1f2frfbf

1f2frfbf — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:39:41 -0800

I never understood Faulkner until I started carrying it to the bar. That stream of consciousness bit really requires you to turn off your brain a bit to get it. William Burrough's cut-up writing works much the same way.

Cranky always works well in bars for me, Abbey, Vonnegut and Grass fill this bill.

By: miniape

miniape — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:40:06 -0800

Raymond Carver
Venedikt Erofeev ('Moscow Circles')
Jack Kerouac (although it helps if you're about 18)
Graham Greene

By: Hildago

Hildago — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:40:19 -0800

Second Raymond Chandler.

By: occhiblu

occhiblu — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:40:51 -0800

Have you tried DeLillo? Maybe Vonnegut?

By: occhiblu

occhiblu — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:41:46 -0800

Oh, and Hunter S. Thompson always seems to work better in bars.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:43:41 -0800

Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry.

By: sixpack

sixpack — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:45:15 -0800

Ken Bruen: The White Trilogy. You can finish each one in about 3 or 4 good beers. Very brutal London police/derelict yarns.

By: suki

suki — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:45:16 -0800

Larry Brown
Russell Banks
Ernest Herbert
Annie Proulx

Sigh....I miss smoking in bars.

By: sebas

sebas — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:54:21 -0800

Iain Banks always works in bars, until beer #4.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:58:37 -0800

Paul Bowles
Alexander Theroux
Ian Fleming

This is kind of a weird one, but Frank Baldwin's "Balling the Jack."

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:00:19 -0800

Larry Brown - On preview, Argh!
James Ellroy
Mordecai Richler
Derek Raymond
Brendan Behan
Jim Thompson

By: krautland

krautland — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:02:12 -0800

kafka. kafka. kafka.

By: dersins

dersins — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:39:46 -0800

These are some GREAT suggestions. I'd forgotten about Frederick Exley and Knut Hamsun, especially, but so many of the others seem perfect as well. Keep 'em coming, and thanks so much to all of you

By: echo0720

echo0720 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:46:02 -0800

I'll second the recommendation for Graham Greene. I also think Camus would make for great bar reading - actually, I was in a book club once where we discussed The Fall over bottles of cheap wine in a dark and dreary bar.

By: jodic

jodic — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:54:43 -0800

I don't see it listed yet, but I'd give Mary Gaitskill a try. If you dig short stories go with Bad Behavior (which features the short story the movie "Secretary" was based on) or Because They Wanted to, and her lastest novel, Veronica is amazing.

By: shallowcenter

shallowcenter — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:20:40 -0800

Second Exley's A Fan's Notes, which I'm currently reading, though on a train, alas, not in a bar.

By: mds35

mds35 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:27:18 -0800

I want to second Malcolm Lowry, and even though it's not what you might call "challenging," the fiction of Jim Thompson. I've read most of his books, and nearly all of them in bars.

J.P. Donleavy's The Gingerman is great bar reading, unless you're a bad drunk and very open to suggestions, in which case you'll end up injured, in jail, or maybe just 86ed from your favorite watering hole. His The Saddest Summer of Samuel S. is a good bar read, too.

I also recommend Nothing Like The Sun by Anthony Burgess.

By: goethean

goethean — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:28:10 -0800

Philip K. Dick?

By: mds35

mds35 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:38:03 -0800

Ernesto Quinonez's Bodega Dreams and Chango's Fire are great bar reads, too.

By: ijoshua

ijoshua — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:42:31 -0800

Haruki Murakami

By: Urban Hermit

Urban Hermit — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:13:40 -0800

For blackly comic farce (and a fair helping of debauchery), try Tristan Egolf. For darkly poetic excess, you might also like some of Cormac McCarthy (e.g. Blood Meridian).

By: nasreddin

nasreddin — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:14:32 -0800

Second Raymond Carver and Erofeev.
Robert Scheckley wrote an awesome detective series, (Soma Blues was one of the books, can't remember the others).
John Cheever (but his early stories are somewhat pedestrian).
Borges.
Julio Cortazar.
Elmore Leonard, obviously.

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 15:15:20 -0800

Outside of some good old noir, I don't have many suggestions. But I will say that my wife and I, who do the same reading-in-bars thing, are thrilled to not be alone in this.

By: felix betachat

felix betachat — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:07:17 -0800

hey dersins, why not poetry? I read my way through most of CzesBaw MiBosz and into Robert Haas and W.S. Merwin while nursing my whiskey at the bar.

Also highly recommended bar poetry: James Wright, Theodore Roethke and John Ashbery.

By: I Foody

I Foody — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:16:36 -0800

Will Self

By: gergtreble

gergtreble — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:21:35 -0800

Bill Drummond.

By: Razzle Bathbone

Razzle Bathbone — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:38:01 -0800

Hangover Square by Peter Hamilton

By: wandering steve

wandering steve — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:29:23 -0800

You could do worse than reading "Journey by Moonlight" by Antal Szerb, if you can snag a copy.

By: Lockeownzj00

Lockeownzj00 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 17:32:57 -0800

Murakami. The surreal adventures he takes you through, which might very well be in a bar, will make for quite the experience.

By: skwm

skwm — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:22:29 -0800

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

By: govtrust

govtrust — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:43:14 -0800

J.R. Moehringer - The Tender Bar

By: black bile

black bile — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:48:46 -0800

Anything by Ross Macdonald. It's a cut above most detective fiction, and is concerned with vice, excess, and dissolution.

By: paulsc

paulsc — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:58:59 -0800

There's a school of thought that says Gunter Grass should only be read in smoky bars. I dunno about that, but his 1986 collection of stories, The Rat, might qualify as bar literature. I liked it.

First Sentence:
CHAPTER ONE, in which a wish comes true, there is no room for rats in Noah's ark, nothing is left of man but garbage, a ship changes its name frequently, the saurians die out, an old friend turns up, a postcard brings an invitation to Poland, the upright posture is practiced, and knitting needles click vigorously.

By: radioamy

radioamy — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:30:22 -0800

A Confederacy of Dunces.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:46:47 -0800

Moby Dick.

By: krautland

krautland — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 20:48:50 -0800

oh, good call. I second moby dick.

as far as günther grass is concerned - he has his place but I think a wide field of corn is much more appropriate.

By: dersins

dersins — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:00:36 -0800

Thank you all for these awesome suggestions. Because I can't possibly choose a single "best answer," I have marked them all "best," because they really are all good suggestions. I hope that doesn't defeat the purpose of the best answer. I just figure that future perusers of this thread should know that ALL of these are good answers.

Tomorrow, I've got a Powell's gift card to max the fuck out of...

Special shout-out to Urban Hermit, however, who is apparently the only person on the planet other than myself who has heard of "Lord of the Barnyard," one of my all-time favorites.

By: Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:37:53 -0800

This isn't a recommendation, because I'm not particularly into her stuff, but Poppy Z. Brite has a series out called Liquor that meets at least two of your three criteria, and I always like to pimp out new orleans authors.

I quite like Andrei Codrescu, too, and he's fairly challenging yet engaging.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 23:32:41 -0800

Just in case I catch you before you head off to Powell's: Geek Love.

By: kneelconqueso

kneelconqueso — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 08:24:58 -0800

tucker max. tucker fucking max.

go get 'i hope they serve beer in heaven' and see if you dont snarf your beer while reading it.

its inspiring.

By: krautland

krautland — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:57:07 -0800

go get 'i hope they serve beer in heaven' and see if you dont snarf your beer while reading it.

really? I felt somewhat cheated when I read that book. it struck me as relatively pedestrian.

By: zadcat

zadcat — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 06:40:31 -0800

R.A. Lafferty, who said something like "One of the great stories begins with a man and a woman in a garden. But an equally important story begins: 'These two guys go into a bar...' "

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 09:30:07 -0800

What, no Henry Miller? Orwell's Down and Out In Paris and London is good bar reading too