new novels and why they suck and whatever

alice munro is the only living author i truly love. now that muriel spark is dead. and janet frame. and saul bellow. i feel like a grouch when it comes to new books. i'm mostly happy with old ones. i'm sure there is a ton of great stuff out there. hopefully i will get to it before i'm ancient. i can't remember the last "new" book that i've read that i thought was GREAT or a WORK OF GENIUS or EARTH SHATTERING.

people watch too much t.v. these days!

(hahaha, that's my theory on the lack of genius writers out there.)

Also are who are the good contemporary authors from Asia? I am particularly interested in South and Southeast Asian authors.

the couple things I've read (Mian Mian's Candy, for ex.) I was not impressed with, unfortunately. Murakami doesn't appeal to me, at least not as much as say, Kobo Abe did.

i liked "tree of smoke" but long-form is definitely not johnson's strong suit.

scott i thought you liked mary gaitskill, too. but perhaps not "truly love."

I missed this and posted something shouty to the other thread. Too bad I have a bunch of work to finish up today.

But Shakey, immediately upon reading your description about the formal qualities of novels, my first thought was ... David Markson just died. Have you read or heard of Wittgenstein's Mistress?

Also, since I was talking about the interior nuances of fiction on the other thread ... I think there is an argument that could be made that the kind of formal inventiveness you're describing was a very big thing in America through the second half of the 20th century, but might be considered a little exhausted and "over" now, by some people.

I think most people here would sorta mercilessly mock anyone who came to ILM and was like "modern music is terrible -- I listened to the radio in the car, and no one's doing anything like X, Y, or Z." You'd remind them that there's more music in the world than that. If someone said "I really liked music in the 90s, nobody does that stuff anymore," you might remind them to ask what music is doing today, instead of demanding something it did before. Right? I don't expect anyone to know or care about modern fiction, seriously, but I really want to stress that it has the exact same complexity of taste as the music people talk about here. Like if you'd tear into someone or consider them a clueless moron for saying something about music, think twice before saying it about literature.

^^ btw that third paragraph is not intended to really say formal invention is "played out" or something. It's just interesting that plenty of music geeks here would happily say "I am so sick of every act doing this or imitating that." Because you follow music. Modern fiction is obviously less quick and trend-driven than pop music, but if you followed it, you might have some similar feelings in terms of what you were sick of or thought was getting old or imitative!

I think there is an argument that could be made that the kind of formal inventiveness you're describing was a very big thing in America through the second half of the 20th century, but might be considered a little exhausted and "over" now, by some people.

yeah, this seems true to me. and i identify with it as a reader. there's more than one kind of formal inventiveness, too.

the kind of formal inventiveness you're describing was a very big thing in America through the second half of the 20th century,

I wouldn't limit it to America at all fwiw

Plus, the idea that we could return to the narrative hanky-panky of Coover-Barthelme-Pynchon is itself a conservative notion.

a third of the authors I listed are Latin American, for ex

Barthelme and Pynchon were largely too dry for me to get into (altho I do love Crying of Lot 49)

"I really liked music in the 90s, nobody does that stuff anymore," you might remind them to ask what music is doing today

also I don't think this is really an accurate analogy because it's not like a lot of popular literature TODAY is doing anything new, tons of it is still stuck in, as I said, forms that were popularized in the 19th century.

xp The most recent Pynchon, Inherent Vice, is worth a look if you liked Lot 49

that's not true, Shakey!!! i mean i guess it depends on your definition of "popular" and "tons" but it's still not really true.

also depends on your definition of "new" sorry to be pedantic but lol

a more accurate analogy for music would be like, despite tons of groundbreaking, genre-shattering, formal innovations in the 90s and 00s, a majority of popular music was still being produced to sound like it was 1965, with small live combos augmented by orchestras doing 2 1/2 minute songs about teenage love.

xp

xp The most recent Pynchon, Inherent Vice, is worth a look if you liked Lot 49

yeah this is on my list, what I read of it sounded really promising

Omg Music is still made with guitars!!!! AND RHYTHM

okay you're on your own shakey

Yeah, Shakey, that is one of those things that makes you sound like you don't know or care much about fiction. I don't mean that in a mean way. It's just a bit like saying music today is the same as in the 1800s, because it's basically the same scale and harmonic rules and ballad formats and such. I.e., it seems truer the less you care about particulars.

Fiction does have more continuity with its long-term history than pop music, but I tend to consider that a good thing.

"I'd read more modern novels but authors are still stuck on archaically using WORDS."

Like, I don't even read any decent fiction and even I know that you are completely talking out of your ass in the most ignorant manner possible.

that's not true, Shakey!!! i mean i guess it depends on your definition of "popular" and "tons" but it's still not really true.

yeah I know I'm making some horrible strawman generalizations

xp

Da Vinci Code gets a lot of deserved hate, but it's formally interesting -- every part of the narrative is broken into almost uniform chunks of bite-sized pieces, and he's very disciplined about it -- that story about Wesley Willis once hearing about the perfect length of a song being however many seconds, so he makes EVERY song that long -- i feel like maybe Dan Brown heard something about the perfect length of words where a human being can digest a discrete idea is 43 words exactly.

(Naturally I rate Wesley Willis a better formalist than Dan Brown)

The Lost Symbol is even worse in that way. He has multiple 1/2 page chapters for no good reason beyond a point-of-view shift.

^^^good piece of evidence for the argument that formal inventiveness is not inherently to be wished for

xpost

about the davinci code though i'm kind of an asshole since i've never read it

i think i'm gonna end up liking 2666 a lot more than The Savage Detectives

yeah, 2666 >>>>>>>>> savage detectives

a thread called "new novels and why they suck" is like a bug light for dan brown.

you know who else blows? grisham. man does he blow.

savage detectives started out great but became a bit of a slog

Yeah, I kinda thought the move away from overt formal trickery was considered a "thing" now. I think there is a vibe in the air of a sort of synthesis of modern formal invention and story/characters you can sink your teeth into, rather than just a supposed return to good old fashioned story-telling. Like elegantly enfolding the psychological truthfulness of formal complexity into the characters themselves, rather than the formal qualities being what the book is about. I don't really read enough contemporary fiction to know what I'm talking about though.

i think my favorite bolano is still "nazi literature in the americas" but maybe i'm just a sucker for politicized borges rip-offs.

I would be curious what someone more familiar than myself with the publishing industry would say the split is between yr conventional narrative-format novel and more experimental/less straightforward/non-linear stuff. Maybe it's always been 80/20 or something, I dunno.

I'm sure part of my problem is that from an aesthetic perspective, for me in a lot of ways the latter invalidates the former. Like, why do that when you can do THIS, which seems so much more interesting and challenging, for both the author and the reader. My own personal prejudice, I'm sure...

many x-posts

all you motherfuckers need to read this awesome book by Joy Williams, it shreds hard

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/joy-williamss-30-year-old-comeback-novel/

because trickery with the way you tell a story doesn't mean anything unless it's tied to a story, and most people read because they want to be told a story?

xp

there are probably just as many "experimental" novels being published as there are mass-market genre books. they're just published by teeny little presses which means that they're a.) not publicized, b.) not marketed, c.) not reviewed, and d.) not stocked anywhere.

savage detectives started out great but became a bit of a slog

― (e_3) (Edward III), Friday, June 25, 2010 3:58 PM (1 minute ago)

yeah, there were a couple sections i didn't care for at all.

Yeah, I kinda thought the move away from overt formal trickery was considered a "thing" now

that's the impression I get from perusing best-seller and new release shelves at bookstores but yeah, what do I know...

they're just published by teeny little presses which means that they're a.) not publicized, b.) not marketed, c.) not reviewed, and d.) not stocked anywhere.

how convenient

small wonder I don't know about them eh

― Mr. Que, Friday, June 25, 2010 4:00 PM (1 minute ago)

wb

You've managed to find out about indie record labels, right?

hi Mr. Que!

i missed-er que!!

otm

yeah seriously shakey i don't exactly expect to crack a new issue of spin and read about the latest round of fuck it and woodsit releases, you know?

haha okay well is there a lit equivalent of Pitchfork? don't say the New Yorker.

"scott i thought you liked mary gaitskill, too."

i do. and joy williams and lorrie moore too. but these are all people i started reading 20+ years ago. (lorrie's latest made me sad...)

last person to make my jaw drop was probably sebald. and he seemed like some sort of early 20th century holdover or something.

I haven't read it but isn't that girl with dragon tattoo series that has a bajillion holds on it pretty outre?

(lorrie's latest made me sad...)

because you found it bad? i have come to the conclusion that it was kind of bad...