Recommend me stuff based on this:

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Please recommend me a book/film/play/tv programme/bit of music/garden spade based upon the fact that I like it when people are humourously gloomy and downtrodden and maybe a little fantastical at the same time, but too knowingly deprecating to be truly Goth. Reference points:

Tom Waits: the albums Rain Dogs and Blood Money
Alasdair Gray: the books Unlikely Stories, Mostly
Tim Burton: the film Nightmare Before Christmas

Other stuff along these lines plz?

Once I have been answered, feel free to ask for recommendations of your own.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 08:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Lemony Snicket's books are probably a good start, along with the film "Track 29".

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Monday, 16 August 2004 08:55 (twenty-one years ago)

My sister has the Lemony Snickett books - I haven't read em but they look almost like they could have been written by Alasdair Gray.Is Lemony a real name?

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Also - the movie Brazil, that would fit in with this.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

> the film Nightmare Before Christmas

this (which i didn't like btw, mostly due to the songs) suggests Charles Addams (y'know, the Addams Family) cartoons and Edward Gorey (http://www.goreyography.com/west/west.htm). and other burton things like Oyster Boy (http://homepage.tinet.ie/~sebulbac/burton/home.html) (um, there were a bunch of Stain Boy animations on the web somewhere that were fun)

and The Cure 8)

and the film of James and the Giant Peach and the Sandman cartoon short done by the same people - Paul Berry http://www.stopmotionanimation.com/dcforum/DCForumID8/19.html um, reading that thread mentions that he died in 2001. i didn't know this 8(

― koogs (koogs), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Dan Rhodes "Timoleon Vieta Come Home" (or anything by Dan Rhodes actually....)

― reclusive hero (reclusive hero), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:14 (twenty-one years ago)

i like Sock Monkey comics too - I think Tony Millionaire's vision fits in pretty well. Thanks for the suggestions so far guys - will check.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:17 (twenty-one years ago)

The Reginald Perrin trilogy by David Nobbs?

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:25 (twenty-one years ago)

lemony snicket = daniel handler?

― ken c (ken c), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Music: Jandek- Blue Corspe or Harry Partch- Delusion Of The Fury
Book: Jean Sheperd- A Christmas Story or Raymond Queneau- Excerises In Style
Movie: The City Of Lost Children or Meet The Feebles

― brg30 (brg30), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Archel - is that like the tv programme "The Rise and Fall"? I loved that when it was on - like a proto-Brazil innit?

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 09:49 (twenty-one years ago)

stainboy web animations:
http://atomfilms.shockwave.com/af/spotlight/series/stainboy/

― koogs (koogs), Monday, 16 August 2004 10:04 (twenty-one years ago)

also, more stop motion film stuff, the quay brothers, svankmmejer, starewicz (although this is all getting kinda grim and grimey, a bit too arty)

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/directors/tbrothers/
http://www.illumin.co.uk/svank/
http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/STARE/stare1.htm

― koogs (koogs), Monday, 16 August 2004 10:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Lemony Snicket is Daniel Handler, yes. The new book (number 11 in the series of 13) is pre-orderable on Amazon now, but you really need to read the others first. You could get through them all easily in a week.

― Madchen (Madchen), Monday, 16 August 2004 10:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Archel - is that like the tv programme "The Rise and Fall"?

Yes. Hard to read the books now without picturing Leonard Rossiter of course (not to mention the late John Barron as CJ) but I think that's no bad thing.

― Archel (Archel), Monday, 16 August 2004 11:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Neil Gaiman?

― Cathy (Cathy), Monday, 16 August 2004 11:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Unhelpful guy: I've always found I couldn't really go anywhere from my Tom Waits obsession, especially the clunky germanic things. Harry Partch has the clunky sound but it doesn't have the Waits charm or the comically downtrodden thing your going on about. If you like those things, i'd just buy everything tom waits ever did and get schmaltzy, downtrodden, crazy, inventive things all from there.

see, i told you i was unhelpful.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Monday, 16 August 2004 11:56 (twenty-one years ago)

yeh - i've pretty much got all the TW I can get my hands on apart from the odd 70s album.

Oh yeh - there's always dEUS I suppose, though they're not as drunk or dark. Robbie, I also recommend Bob Drake's "The Skull Mailbox" for creepiness. There's a little country and western stuff like "I Remember You" by some dude I forget the name of that is suitably eerie as well.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

This thread can also double as a "How great is Alasdair Gray" thread too if anyone likes to chime in. I have three books of short stories but "Unlikely Stories Mostly" is far and away the best one of all of his I reckon. "1982 Janine" isn't bad either and I really enjoyed "Poor Things" for it's Victorian psy-horrorness and playful twists in the tale.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Waits (necessarily, i guess) lacks a country sensibility (i'd say "Blind Love" feels forced and is a noble failure), so some decent country waitsian gothic should be a thing of fantastic beauty. will check out your recommendations.

just thought of someone who i could recommend! if you can take the anglo-folk bits: richard and linda thompson, particularly "I want to see the bright lights tonight". not notably waitsian, but mega and miserable without being gothy.

crosspost

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Slim Whitman - that was his name!

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:08 (twenty-one years ago)

gaaaad - Slim Whitman's fucking dreadful! I bought his birmingham jail record and it was just ridiculous parody country. i'll look out that song you're talking about there and perhaps revise my opinion. but god, that album is torture.

― Robbie Lumsden (Wallace Stevens HQ), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:10 (twenty-one years ago)

it's the only song i know by him - i don't know about the other stuff. I like it though.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Def check The Skull Mailbox though. It was Dleone who recommended that first on ILX I think and it was one of my fave records I bought that year.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:13 (twenty-one years ago)

jim jarmusch.

― cºzen (Cozen), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:33 (twenty-one years ago)

The book "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind.

― na (Nick A.), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:40 (twenty-one years ago)

The Handsome Family - "In the Air" or "Through the Trees" or "Milk & Scissors" or, well, all of those put together.

― Charlie Rose (Charlie Rose), Monday, 16 August 2004 12:43 (twenty-one years ago)

four weeks pass...

i am looking for a few books to pick up today... these are a few of my favorite things:
books:
wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami
crying of lot 49 by thomas pynchon
white noise by don delillo
fierce invalids home from hot climates by tom robbins
a scanner darkly by phillip k. dick
(i've read and enjoyed most of the things by these authors too)
films:
sex & lucia / lovers of the arctic circle
la jetee
royal tenenbaums
lost in translation
solaris (the new one)
chungking express
wonder boys (haven't read the book though)
music:
arvo part
alice coltrane
bjork

so i am looking for books that maybe hone in on whatever thread might exist here if
someone can think of anything?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:16 (twenty-one years ago)

You are a corny indie fuck. You need to read a lot of Nabokov (seriously). I'm assuming you've already read Lolita. Get Pale Fire and Pnin and Despair and all the other ones. Also get A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

If you're a Tom Waits fan, you'd probably also quite enjoy Firewater and Big Lazy.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:40 (twenty-one years ago)

i probably am a corny indie fuck. and no proclomations of my undying ardor for other less indie oriented things can save me from the list i hath wrought above, but i assure you that that the things i left off might well have gotten me skinned in harsher climes.
nabokov. i always avoided him because... i don't know why... never read lolita because i
enjoyed the kubrick version and don't think that nabokov deserves the diservice of my
imagining the (in my mind) insurmountable peter sellers in his character. i know pynchon
had something of a nabokov obsession though. until this morning i thought a
confederacy of dunces took place in colonial times... but it apparently doesn't. and seems
funny. thanks for the suggestions.

and alex, i have a sometimes love of tom waits.. are firewater and big lazy books? or...?

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Read 'Ghostwritten' by David Mitchell.

― Wooden (Wooden), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

You could probably still read Lolita because the Claire Quilty character (Peter Sellers' character in the movie) is much less prominant in the book, so your preconceptions probably wouldn't interfere too much. Seriously, based on your likes, you would probably love Pale Fire at least.

― n/a (Nick A.), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Firewater is a band, presumably Big Lazy is also.

Try reading "The Business" by Iain Banks, and "Lizard" or "NP" by Banana Yoshimoto.

Re: dog latin's earlier version of the thread, see also "Phantasmagoria" by the Damned.

― webcrack (music=crack), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:47 (twenty-one years ago)

"The Tin Drum" by Gunter Grass

― Reed Moore (diamond), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

definitely will pick up the nabokov... should have already read some...

as for iain banks, i read the wasp factory and found it to be almost good. which is the
worst really because you're writing it better in your mind as you're reading it and not
enjoying the novel. but i've heard good things about many other books by him, so
perhaps i shall not give up just yet.

if i didn't like lizard by banana yoshimoto might i still like np?

tin drum is another favorite...

― firstworldman (firstworldman), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Wasp Factory is actually the worst of Banks's books that I have read so far. I'm not sure why it received such acclaim. If you didn't like Lizard, odds are you won't like NP either. In that case, I recommend "the Tale of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu.

― webcrack (music=crack), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 19:58 (twenty-one years ago)

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