AI slop, yeah yeah, I know, but: Wallace's prosaic style was so specific and detail-oriented, especially when he wanted to really paint a mental picture with his words.
I don't even particularly love this band, but this is such a gorgeous music video: full of sapphic beauty, unbridled eroticism, dreamlike prismatic flashes of colored light, oceanic waves of euphoria and dancing flowers. The dream-pop and shoegaze adjacent music works well.
Are there any particular performances that are considered the best of his career?
I'm a fan of the Austin City Limits show from 2005: https://youtu.be/HYN-NW-i2yc
Share your favorites and a link!
Apologies on the quality, a lot of his work is not actually available as proper scanned images online (or at least, easily accessible to the English speaking world), so I just used a camera... hopefully this lower quality also promotes people interested in his work to order prints or books themselves.
Plenty of contrarian magazine lists that put The Velvet Underground and Nico as the number one pop album of the 1960s, but I think we all know deep down this is the best.
Finished reading it recently. It's been brought up a few times in passing in various threads, but didn't have a dedicated post yet.
It's in public domain, so it's fairly easy to find a PDF online, also there is a pretty well-narrated audiobook freely available via podcasts / youtube etc.
I found a lot of the concerns of Durtal's impressions of the 1890's very relatable to today. Society on the whole never really changes, does it? I also feel like it's actually the kind of book that's deserving of a modern film adaptation, especially considering how the figure of Gilles de Rais maps onto the public perception of Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the perennial psychic anguish of aging hipster artistic types as they discuss the aesthetics of literature, music, religion, etc. I'm imagining it as some sort of prestige period piece mini-series.
Unsure of how to feel about Madame Chantelouve. She's a self-described succubus, but we only really get to know her through the biases impressions of the narrator. I feel like there's something in her life/marriage situation (beyond what is hinted at in the book) that drove her towards the occult and seeking the excitement of an affair with a man quite older than her. I haven't read any Huysmans besides this and the classic A Rebours, so perhaps she crosses paths again with Durtal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xse69oMhPJI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A0-bas_(novel)
https://www.amazon.com/Bas-Down-There-Joris-Huysmans/dp/0486228371