Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - 2/10
I only got through the eponymous short story. I'm reminded of the same situation as with Lovecraft or that Algernon story, where the premise is interesting and everything else not. I have no idea why Ellison felt the need to give Benny certain.. physical characteristics. That was just bizarre. But the plot largely meanders, there's some limp exposition, various comments about this or that unpleasant situation and a random giant bird, but it's devoid of reason why anyone should really care.
cont. (spoiler)
The characters hardly feel like individuals and the ending comes jarringly and nonsensically--stabbing each other to death with icicles, really? There's glaring issues with plausibility and plot consistency, but ultimately an appropriate end, I guess. A poor conclusion for a poorly written story :/
Daniel Orozco, Orientation and Other Stories - 6.5/10 slices of lives for the voyeurist in all of us
Clement Greenberg, Modernist Painting - 7/10 Funnily, the ideas of removing elements not unique to a medium and dismissal of intent to invoke emotion by representative content are both lines of thinking that I tend towards, but I never find the results of that sort of thought process very appealing--just seems pedantic at best. Following this I would be more inclined to relegate all of art to entertainment.