Thread 24861317

negative space is by far one of the best books i've ever read. i don't think i've ever read a book that represented teenagers so accurately and i found myself relating to every single character

upon a second read bookclubbing with my girlfriend, some of the prose is corny, but when you get immersed into the mindsets of the characters, it comes across as a natural sort of crude befitting of the characters

i've also read amygdalatropolis, which i didn't like nearly as much but i may try it again since i really only interpreted it on its face value. it does kind of read as outsider looking in at the EVILS of 4chan and adjacent sites but generally i think it's a pretty great story about how the internet can ruin a person

any other yeagarfags on this board? if not, become one.

>>24861317 (OP)
>Teenagers
>I relate

You have to be 18+ to post here

>>24861317 (OP)
I am, as far as I know, the only other yeagerfag on this board. I have posted negative space threads multiple times in the past few months and have seldom gotten any replies. It is good to know there are others. In fact, I actually heard about him from a horror chart someone posted here. I loved both Negative Space and Amygdalatropolis, although Negative Space is a clearly superior novel in my opinion. I think the very specifically rendered contemporary nihilism and apathy that Yeager is trying to get across in both novels is much more effective in Negative Space because Amygdalatoprolis, due to its more bluntly conceptual story, as well as its use of extremely depraved imagery and descriptions, is at times too gratuitous to truly land. In Negative Space, I love that the character are surrounded by this mystery of the abnormal teen suicide rate BEGGING to be solved or interrogated in some way, and yet the central question of the novel cannot really be given any effort to be solved by any of them due to their complete encasement in these interlinked circles of hedonic obsession. I think this idea is very well expressed in a line by Tyler towards the latter third of the novel. When Ahmir asks what the plan is now that they’ve graduated high school, Tyler says what else is there left to do, what else but sell WHORL now that it’s banned, living the same lifestyle like they’ve always had, giving not a moment to place themselves existentially. The debauchery that felt so vital and hopeful at the dawn of their junior year now completely calcifies them.

Another small note but I think the concept of lost time and how it is used towards the end of the novel for Ahmir and Lu is absolutely devastating. I have been looking for kicks similar to how that concept is manifested since then but have found nothing.

>>24861378
as in it reminds me of my own childhood, faggot. i'm in my 20s

>>24861396
Also in regard to the actual writing style. I agree that at times it is juvenile, but I found generally the use of adolescent language helps immerse the reader into the characters' perspectives and kept the narration moving along at a steady pace. Nothing ever really dragged. What I found most extraordinary, however, was Yeager's unexpected penchant for momentary mystic outbursts of prose, especially in the sections that leaned more into abstract horror. Here's one of my favorite, I think about it all the time: "I knew it was going to be today. It’s an ice creep, outward from my torso to my limbs. Not blue. Always alabaster. No one else here but the dot. I hum. I whisper the names of everyone I’ve known and remembered. Even the bad ones. They deserve to be remembered and whispered, too. I touch myself between my legs. I don’t feel anything, and it’s okay. A fuzzy numb. An ocean of gold. The most beautiful creatures I couldn’t begin to imagine. A spinning disk. Every color at once. I’m glad I’m alone. With all of my dreams." It's so simple, yet with context, approaches the absolute in an awe-inspiring way.

>>24861396
gotta keep evangelizing... i need more people to discuss this with

i absolutely agree that amygdalatoprolis is the weaker of the two, i enjoyed it a ton but it didn't really move me all that much. i find the layers to it interesting - like the "ghosts." it felt more symbolic but i couldn't help myself but take it on a literal level, as if there was some connection between the fictitious lives /1404/er lived through in his text based adventures and video games were a lower level of some greater game where he was also a pawn being pushed to improve, but i think i'm reading into it too much. i'm trying to figure out what the literary purpose of those games were beyond "i'm a fucked up guy and i like to play video games about murder and rape" because i feel like it goes a lot deeper. i want to give it a second read and try to analyze it in more detail. i had the pleasure of bookclubbing negative space with a few friends so we got to synthesize theories, but with amyg i'm kinda completely on my own. i feel like i only consumed it on a purely surface level

it's really fitting that, of all the characters, lu is really the only one given some semblance of a happy ending. she had her childhood essentially stolen from her, and the only joy she found within it disappeared alongside WHORL. everything with archie was so fucking heartbreaking. i still don't know if there's supposed to be something very literal with returning from the dead and WHORL's connection to the afterlife, like, i think to that one chapter with tyler and how he emerges from the bog after days of being entirely missing.

the last act of the book really went balls to the walls and i'm not sure i entirely understood it, like, the purpose of the rotted swan incarnation of the girl ahmir left to rot and the piece of flesh that caused jill and the college dyke to crash and die. my general interpretation of it was the specter of tyler they tried to bury and move on from but couldn't, and ahmir was able to make peace while jill wasn't.

i REALLY need to finish this reread and think on things more. i kinda blitz'd through the book the first time and didn't do a lot of a deeper look into its greater themes.

>>24861409
it never really dawned on me till my girlfriend made fun of one of the lines, i think from ahmir, about not being able to stop crying and pissing and cumming. when you're immersed into it, it feels naturally juvenile, relatable and how you'd describe shit in your younger years, but on its own in isolation it comes across as a bit. juvenile, that's a good way of putting it

as far as prose that sticks with you, the one i come back to the most is how he described time.
"Time compresses the older you get. Days turn to weeks turn to months turn to seasons turn to years, until your life resides in just one moment expanding forever, where each step and breath folds wrinkles into your face, carving minute, irreversible wounds between your joints. Pressing down the notches between your spine, driving your ankles and knees to ruin. I feel it now and it'll only be worse in the future."

i wrote this one down when i first read, i do that with lines that particularly move me in books. shit like "All the real soldiers are dead." in slaughterhouse 5, i like to immortalize those lines that you have to just stop and take a second to consume. i didn't specify who it was. i believe it was lu? maybe jill? whatever, it still really hits that theme you spoke of, lost time, a childhood ended early, a finite life that should've went on for longer

Shop shilling your garbage. Amygdalatropolis' major story beats were all patterned after Houellebecq's "Whatever".
• Both feature incels employed in the technology field.
• Whatever's narrator contemplates having sex with one of his clients, but can't bear to actually do it. Its narrator fantasizes about slipping a roofie to his mother and raping her, and comes close, but can't go through with it.
• Whatever's narrator seethes about sexual liberation and how it's left him sexually destitute. Its narrator is such an incel that he literally can't get it up anymore.
• Whatever's narrator is hospitalized for a heart condition. Its narrator experiences both of his parents dying from cancer.
• Whatever's narrator tries to talk his friend into killing a woman that they encountered at a night club. Its narrator orders a sex doll and, instead of having sex with it, rips it to pieces while screaming about how it's a slut.
• Whatever's narrator ends up in a mental institution. Its narrator completely loses his mind and destroys his house in an attempt to repel a centipede infestation.
• At the end, Whatever's narrator tries to unwind by vacationing in the forest. Its narrator tries to unwind by looking at a bunch of webcams showing pastoral areas.
Plus it tries to be edgy, by doing stuff that has became boring a long time ago.
• The narrator tries to fuck his mom. But that was done about 2500 years ago in "Oedipux Rex" by Sophocles.
• The narrator watches a video of someone drowning a baby. But that was done in 1960 in "Rabbit, Run" by John Updike.
I could go on, but bleah.
So not only did you not transcend 12-year-old edgelord crap, but you couldn't even come up with an original plot. No wonder you seethe mindlessly. Now stop pretending to be your own fan already. That's just masturbatorial.

>>24861378
Jews want you to relate to narratives and labels, not people and characters.

>>24861498
i have genuinely never heard of "whatever," i only ready amygdalatropolis because i really enjoyed negative space, which i still think is one of the greatest books of all time. i didn't find it all that moving or interesting in comparison. if you actually read the thread instead of baseding out, you'd see i've been pretty critical of it.

from a surface level glance, whatever seems a lot more appealing. is it worth a read?

>>24861513
onions. wtf? does it auto to based?

I read this and came out thinking it was one of the worst books I'd ever read and it only appealed to druggie burnouts who spent all of their high school years doing drugs and didn't amount to anything after.

>>24861513
Sorry. B.R. Yeager posts here a lot, pretending to be a fan of his work. He's worse than Gardner sometimes. As far as Houellebecq...

A while back I was interested in reading Amygdalatoprolis but couldn't find an ebook version of it, which is a dead end for me because it's hard to get physical books in English where I live. I also wasn't interested enough to want to wait weeks for it to ship to me. I did find an ebook of Negative Space and downloaded that and was honestly pretty disappointed. It was far too YA for my tastes, and I feel like the whole Nihilism is le cool shtick is overdone at this point.

>>24861535
This was my exact impression which is why I ended up dropping it.

>>24861705
I found Amygdalatoprolis linked from Anna's Archive

>>24861430
>my general interpretation of it was the specter of tyler they tried to bury and move on from but couldn't, and ahmir was able to make peace while jill wasn't.
My interpretation is pretty much the same.

One thing I couldn’t really get a grasp on was what was going on after Lu runs away to uncle Max’s. Part of me felt like that whole section was some kind of dream or illusion, but since I was moving at such a fast pace at that point due to my interest, I probably glossed over some important information. I could not wrap my head around what the alabaster room and the dot on the wall was about. It felt like some kind of Beksinsi painting of an alien future but I couldn’t tell how literal it was supposed to be. I need to also pull some passages from the section where Ahmir finds Tyler’s father’s notebooks. That felt like, again, an important but somewhat abstruse section. Let me know if your re-read provides any fruitful interpretations of these parts.

i read negative space a few years ago, not enjoyable but one of the most emotionally oppressive books i've read. i probably won't try to read more stuff by him to be honest.

after reading i did find out he lives in the same town i lived in for 10 years and have some mutual friends. so i have probably hung out in a room with the guy without knowing it. lmao.