Recommend me some shaggy dogs
November 23, 2020 6:11 PM Subscribe
Watching Tim Rogers's (!) latest epic video, it came to me that I really like things that are excessively elaborate.
Like the archetypal example would be Moby Dick, which takes a straightforward whaling tale and piles on encylopedic natural history entries, religious symbology, stage directions, and fart jokes--just mashes everything up with the author obviously aware of how too much it is, with one foot being in on the gag and the other foot totally dead serious. This is what Tim Rogers does, is to recreate Moby Dick for each of his video game reviews. I find this endlessly entertaining.
Another great example is the work of Tom Scharpling. He's done a weekly radio show/podcast for the last 20 years. Three hours a week combining music, calls from listeners, and long-form comedy "bits" that are treated with total kayfabe. Over the years, Scharpling and his partner Jon Wurster have built up an alternate reality town in New Jersey populated by creeps and weirdos. But the show is also a reflection of the real host and real callers, and a lot of touching moments happen alongside discussing which bands suck.
So what are some other things you'd recommend? Things that can't decide between going high or going low, so they do both. Things that go into way more detail than necessary but do it with a wink, but the wink knows that you both know that there's more to it than just irony? Things that get to the heart of the matter by talking around and around without really getting to the subject at hand directly? What is worth the extra time commitment?
I tried reading Proust many years ago, but didn't get the humor (if there was any). Perhaps I was too callow. I've always wanted to see the 5-hour version of Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World, and it looks like that's finally available in the US. Does this make any sense? Do I really have to read Infinite Jest? Help a feller out.
Like the archetypal example would be Moby Dick, which takes a straightforward whaling tale and piles on encylopedic natural history entries, religious symbology, stage directions, and fart jokes--just mashes everything up with the author obviously aware of how too much it is, with one foot being in on the gag and the other foot totally dead serious. This is what Tim Rogers does, is to recreate Moby Dick for each of his video game reviews. I find this endlessly entertaining.
Another great example is the work of Tom Scharpling. He's done a weekly radio show/podcast for the last 20 years. Three hours a week combining music, calls from listeners, and long-form comedy "bits" that are treated with total kayfabe. Over the years, Scharpling and his partner Jon Wurster have built up an alternate reality town in New Jersey populated by creeps and weirdos. But the show is also a reflection of the real host and real callers, and a lot of touching moments happen alongside discussing which bands suck.
So what are some other things you'd recommend? Things that can't decide between going high or going low, so they do both. Things that go into way more detail than necessary but do it with a wink, but the wink knows that you both know that there's more to it than just irony? Things that get to the heart of the matter by talking around and around without really getting to the subject at hand directly? What is worth the extra time commitment?
I tried reading Proust many years ago, but didn't get the humor (if there was any). Perhaps I was too callow. I've always wanted to see the 5-hour version of Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World, and it looks like that's finally available in the US. Does this make any sense? Do I really have to read Infinite Jest? Help a feller out.
So first of all I saw this question while Tim Rogers's Doom review was playing on my other monitor so I knew I had to answer.
But oh, man. First, if you haven't read Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, it is without equal. The main character isn't even born for like a hundred pages because the author is going on so many (hilarious, interesting, historical) tangents about the other characters, telling ribald stories, addressing the reader, and printing entirely black pages. It's absolutely wonderful and it's really funny. Get an annotated version like a Norton or something because there are some fairly deep cuts and references, but don't worry about "getting it." It's just ridiculous fun, and sometimes quite dirty.
On a similar note, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is probably the most "elaborative," I suppose it would be called, book of all time. He has stories and quotes and theories and practices and lists sometimes pages long — and they're all AMAZING. My reading edition (NYRB) has a modern introduction, a historical introduction, a note on the text, a latin dedication, a latin prefatory poem, a frontispiece, a poetic explanation of the frontispiece, a poetic abstract of madness/melancholy, then a 100-page introduction and thesis (ending with "I will begin."), then a warning to the reader who "employs his leisure ill," then finally — the book proper starts, with the first subsection of the first member of the first section of the first partition. There is a diagram showing this. And then there are the footnotes...
That may sound like... work, kind of, but certainly at the very least the introduction (taught in many classes) is massively, massively worth reading and incredibly elaborate and fascinating. It's like immersing yourself in the greatest polymath of that century's brain and swimming around. "He was a madman that said it, and thou peradventure are as mad to read it," as Burton said.
I can also second Hugo, though I've only read Les Miserables and am really looking forward to Notre Dame. He definitely goes broad and deep — l'homme ocean they called him, the human ocean.
Don't worry about Infinite Jest. Burton and Sterne were doing it centuries ago and absolutely nailed it.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:00 PM on November 23, 2020 [4 favorites]
But oh, man. First, if you haven't read Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, it is without equal. The main character isn't even born for like a hundred pages because the author is going on so many (hilarious, interesting, historical) tangents about the other characters, telling ribald stories, addressing the reader, and printing entirely black pages. It's absolutely wonderful and it's really funny. Get an annotated version like a Norton or something because there are some fairly deep cuts and references, but don't worry about "getting it." It's just ridiculous fun, and sometimes quite dirty.
On a similar note, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is probably the most "elaborative," I suppose it would be called, book of all time. He has stories and quotes and theories and practices and lists sometimes pages long — and they're all AMAZING. My reading edition (NYRB) has a modern introduction, a historical introduction, a note on the text, a latin dedication, a latin prefatory poem, a frontispiece, a poetic explanation of the frontispiece, a poetic abstract of madness/melancholy, then a 100-page introduction and thesis (ending with "I will begin."), then a warning to the reader who "employs his leisure ill," then finally — the book proper starts, with the first subsection of the first member of the first section of the first partition. There is a diagram showing this. And then there are the footnotes...
That may sound like... work, kind of, but certainly at the very least the introduction (taught in many classes) is massively, massively worth reading and incredibly elaborate and fascinating. It's like immersing yourself in the greatest polymath of that century's brain and swimming around. "He was a madman that said it, and thou peradventure are as mad to read it," as Burton said.
I can also second Hugo, though I've only read Les Miserables and am really looking forward to Notre Dame. He definitely goes broad and deep — l'homme ocean they called him, the human ocean.
Don't worry about Infinite Jest. Burton and Sterne were doing it centuries ago and absolutely nailed it.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:00 PM on November 23, 2020 [4 favorites]
The entire career of Stewart Lee is based on excessive repetition, and self awareness of and deconstruction of that repetition. He's an acquired taste, and seems to be actively engaged in trying to test the patience of even people who have already acquired it, but I would wholeheartedly recommend him anyway!
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:10 PM on November 23, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:10 PM on November 23, 2020 [4 favorites]
I haven't listened quite enough to know if the podcast Sleep With Me ever gets around to the heart of anything, but it at least deserves an honorable mention.
posted by gennessee at 3:16 AM on November 24, 2020
posted by gennessee at 3:16 AM on November 24, 2020
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy also follows the Shandy formula, and it's three books. Um, which is what a trilogy is...
posted by Billiken at 10:50 AM on November 24, 2020
posted by Billiken at 10:50 AM on November 24, 2020
Oh yeah, you'd actually probably really like infinite jest. I did. It's great sprawling Swiftian fun. If you do get it, get an actual copy, and order a bookmark, too. About 1/5 of it is footnotes in the back, which are brilliant and all over the place, and some of which are entire short stories on their own. You will do a lot of flipping back and forth. It's fun.
OH MY GOD. Until the End of the World is one of my favorite movies of all time, probably only second to Brazil. (Which if you haven't seen that or the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, yes definitely put both on the list) Watch Immediately. It predicted a lot about the future and every shot is like a painting. It says a lot of important things about the human condition AND it's also like...a futuristic international spy-chase thriller on top.
For video games, definitely check out the youtube channel 'Let's Game It Out'...he does reviews/playthroughs of mostly simulation games, but he plays them totally wrong with the ultimate goal of making the game crash. Lots of over-engineered monstrosities and excessive fatalities, which is impressive considering that most simulation games are meant to be non-violent. He's really fond of lots and lots and lots of conveyor belts and his non-stop one-liners are pretty priceless. 'I abducted all my neighbors in the Sims' is a good entry point.
Have you read any Neal Stevenson? I'd go with The Diamond Age, then Cryptonomicon, and then the 3-volume Baroque Cycle trilogy that starts with Quicksilver. That's in order of thickness. The Diamond age is about a future transformed by nanotechnology and is so detailed that the first 40 pages or so are nearly inscrutable, and then you go "oh. Amazing." The Cryptonomicon is about cryptography and the search for a horde of hidden (using codes, natch.) nazi gold. But the Baroque Cycle will probably be the most your jam. It's about the rise of science during the Baroque era and follows both real and fictional characters (like Isaac Newton, 'Leroy' (King Louis XIV of France) and pirate vagabond 'Half-cocked' Jack Shaftoe (botched syphilis cure)) through alchemy, palace intrigue, plague, mercury, slavery, Europe, America, the establishment of various scientific orders and societies, a harem escape, and the attempted sale of a small quantity of ostrich plumes. Just a whole buncha stuff.
posted by sexyrobot at 11:13 AM on November 24, 2020
OH MY GOD. Until the End of the World is one of my favorite movies of all time, probably only second to Brazil. (Which if you haven't seen that or the Adventures of Baron Munchausen, yes definitely put both on the list) Watch Immediately. It predicted a lot about the future and every shot is like a painting. It says a lot of important things about the human condition AND it's also like...a futuristic international spy-chase thriller on top.
For video games, definitely check out the youtube channel 'Let's Game It Out'...he does reviews/playthroughs of mostly simulation games, but he plays them totally wrong with the ultimate goal of making the game crash. Lots of over-engineered monstrosities and excessive fatalities, which is impressive considering that most simulation games are meant to be non-violent. He's really fond of lots and lots and lots of conveyor belts and his non-stop one-liners are pretty priceless. 'I abducted all my neighbors in the Sims' is a good entry point.
Have you read any Neal Stevenson? I'd go with The Diamond Age, then Cryptonomicon, and then the 3-volume Baroque Cycle trilogy that starts with Quicksilver. That's in order of thickness. The Diamond age is about a future transformed by nanotechnology and is so detailed that the first 40 pages or so are nearly inscrutable, and then you go "oh. Amazing." The Cryptonomicon is about cryptography and the search for a horde of hidden (using codes, natch.) nazi gold. But the Baroque Cycle will probably be the most your jam. It's about the rise of science during the Baroque era and follows both real and fictional characters (like Isaac Newton, 'Leroy' (King Louis XIV of France) and pirate vagabond 'Half-cocked' Jack Shaftoe (botched syphilis cure)) through alchemy, palace intrigue, plague, mercury, slavery, Europe, America, the establishment of various scientific orders and societies, a harem escape, and the attempted sale of a small quantity of ostrich plumes. Just a whole buncha stuff.
posted by sexyrobot at 11:13 AM on November 24, 2020
What about Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman?
From the publisher's summary:
From the publisher's summary:
Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda.posted by kingless at 1:17 PM on November 24, 2020
Agree that Infinite Jest is right up this alley, and I would add Ulysses too. And the novels of Umberto Eco for sure, "encyclopedic" is absolutely the right word for them. Foucault's Pendulum is my favorite, The Name of the Rose is probably the most "fun" in the sense of the author winking a bit.
posted by equalpants at 1:44 PM on November 24, 2020
posted by equalpants at 1:44 PM on November 24, 2020
...and thinking a little more I do believe Foucault's Pendulum fits this really nicely, because one of its major themes is that the characters themselves are encyclopedic smart-asses that take pains to put themselves at some ironic distance from the world, and it works out both well and poorly for them.
posted by equalpants at 1:56 PM on November 24, 2020
posted by equalpants at 1:56 PM on November 24, 2020
AlternateHistories.com and similar message boards can generate a lot of weirdly compelling details. For example: Player Two Start, a timeline in which Nintendo decides to collaborate with Sony on a CD-based console in 1991. Thousands of butterflies later, this leads inexorably to the election of President Jon Huntsman in 2008.
posted by Iridic at 6:29 PM on November 24, 2020
posted by Iridic at 6:29 PM on November 24, 2020
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon seems like it would be right up your alley.
posted by ejs at 1:55 PM on November 27, 2020
posted by ejs at 1:55 PM on November 27, 2020
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Radio performer Joe Frank often does stuff that sounds a bit like your second example. There's no approved way to get most of his stuff except by subscription or purchase, but a few shows that might be of interest include: Rent a Family, The Death of Trotsky, The Dictator, Iceland, Great Lives, In the Middle of Nowhere, A Call in the Night, anything with Karma in the title.
(I've spent too much time arguing with people who don't believe Melville is mostly having us on, occasionally pausing for the serious bits. Glad to see I'm not entirely alone in that!)
posted by eotvos at 8:20 PM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]