R8 Book Vote 2: Coitus vs Conditions (Patreon)

Next up in the Round of 8. Cast your vote at the bottom -- winner advances!

(And don't forget to vote on the other three matches, all posted now!)

"Coitus and the Greater Metropolitan Area"vs."Three Conditions of Silence"

If "Coitus and the Greater Metropolitan Area" ends up winning, we're all going to spend the next however-many months pretending it's a sophisticated exploration of modern relationships. But really, it's mostly going to be about three women making shitty decisions with absolute confidence. There will be bad dates. There will be good dates that somehow become bad dates. Somebody will accidentally text the wrong person. Somebody else will spend an entire chapter convincing herself that a man who owns three fedoras is "probably just misunderstood." They all make way too much money for the jobs they do, and they all somehow have their own apartments.

Then there's "Three Conditions of Silence," which is what happens when somebody accidentally leaves a French film school student's failed thesis in the dryer with Ingmar Bergman's journal. The dialogue is sparse, the coats are phenomenal, and nobody smiles. While reading this book, I would encourage you to have a track playing where a violin is playing exactly four notes. At the end of each chapter, you will be encouraged to look thoughtfully across a frozen lake wondering: is silence itself capable of forgiveness? It probably isn't. The plot? Either there isn't one, or it's the most profound exploration of melancholy you've ever experienced, and you're simply too dim to "get it." Your friends will think less of you if you say you read the book and didn't like it. They didn't understand it either. Most of them haven't even read it. Nobody has.