new novels and why they suck and whatever

Mother and Oily Child in a Cabin

I think that pretty much has to be cultural stereotyping. I mean Out Stealing Horses was a relatively clear-headed, sober novel. Hunger is sort of about the brink of madness iirc and Pan is about a half-uncivilized character. I'm not sure what the "structural double meaning" was - I hope I didn't miss anything.

anyone know the title of this one?

― ksh, Friday, July 9, 2010 5:39 PM Bookmark

Pan

Shakey, i think this goes to nabisco's earlier point that "serious" literature looks less same-y to those of us who don't share your preference for a specific kind of thing. i'm also not sure i can generalize about serious literature and what gets paid attention to. i mean, this is returning to the beginning of the thread, but even if you can generalize about the type of fiction that appears in the new yorker, it's only a drop in the bucket of fiction and writing about fiction that there is out there. i think nabisco is right about a turn away from experimentalism in some strand of "literary fiction." this post is just turning into a recap of the whole thread, actually, never mind.

Hurting 2: thanks dude

tristam shandy kind of put me off experimentalism for a couple of centuries, but am still interested in lit by genuine madmen.

ksh: ywia - totally worth reading

Just that if the question is "where are the books like X," and the answer is "on smaller presses, often"

to be fair I guess I did ask for specific recommendations (seems like it would have been stupid NOT to), but yeah my gripe was more along the lines of why is group A more widely represented/popularly suppported than group B; ie why do people think crap like the Kite Runner deserves multiple print runs and awards and a movie adaptation when they could be reading TOTALLY MINDBLOWING weirdness.

xp

wow a bunch of stuff on here.

Motherless Brooklyn is yeah, not very good. Like, I preferred Number9Dream by David Mitchell for noiry stuff, and that's my least favorite Mitchell novel by far, in fact I think it's kind of dumb. But Fortress of Solitude was really good. Lethem's writing in that book was more vivid and more interesting.

why do people think crap like the Kite Runner deserves multiple print runs and awards and a movie adaptation when they could be reading TOTALLY MINDBLOWING weirdness.

are you seriously asking, "why do other people like things i don't like?"

Oh well hmm, nevermind I guess:

Petterson's kinship with Knut Hamsun, which he has himself acknowledged, is palpable in Hamsun's Pan, Victoria, and even the lighthearted Dreamers. But nothing should suggest that his superb novel is so embedded in its sources as to be less than a gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader's own experience of life."—Thomas McGuane, The New York Times Book Review

I don't know about mindblowing, but kite-fighting culture is weird, very Dune. Don't know how much the book goes into it, though.

why is "polite realism" (the current term in use on this thread for what we're discussing) so omnipresent, why is it so dominant a force in "serious" literature in terms of what gets published and critiqued

I mean this snark-free:

A1: because you're defining "polite realism" as meaning "the dominant force in 'serious' literature in terms of what gets published and critiqued" from the get-go

A2: because you're conceptualizing "polite realism" not as an individual quality but as the ABSENCE of a specific quality that appeals to you, so "polite realism" dominates literature in the same sense that "colors that are not orange" dominate the spectrum

A3: because if you take a picture in black and white, it will be dominated by shades of gray

A4: because you're defining "polite realism" to point at not just the same bulk of conventional midlist novels that has more or less always been the mainstream of what novel-writers write (which btw are not always invited into the realm of the "serious"), but everything around it, without discrimination

A5: because it doesn't, not in the way you're claiming

A6: because that's what lots of people read, and can you think of any art forms that aren't mostly dominated by their own conventions? this is sort of a tautology, that conventions are conventional

A7-10: TK

are you seriously asking, "why do other people like things i don't like?"

I know, I know, it's ridiculous lolz... but I do think its always kinda interesting to pore over why one set of tropes becomes more successful/deeply ingrained in a given medium than another. and fwiw I don't think we've actually gotten into that much on this thread beyond the observation that "realism is the style most easy to identify with". Like, why does "polite realism" occupy the space it does in lit culture? I really don't know. In some ways it baffles me.

xp

nabisco on cue haha

polite realism occupies a massive space in modern american lit and to think otherwise is 100% foolish

okay i had a whole post written out but for real, wtf is polite realism?

like, a genre name that is essentially an epithet strikes me as un-useful

this discussion that pits modern realistic fiction against mindblowing weird stuff that existed in some unspecified, better past is mad ahistorical, among other things.

It feels more like gentrified fantasy than polite realism to me. The ones that seem to get a lot of press anyway. Kavalier and Clay, etc...

is"polite realism" stuff with a chronological narrative in which nothing implausible happens?

its like pornography, I know it when I see it haha

seriously I've already posted so many things trying to delineate this (with a little help from others) I'm loathe to make more attempts

this discussion that pits modern realistic fiction against mindblowing weird stuff that existed in some unspecified, better past is mad ahistorical, among other things.

I'm not framing this as a historical argument by any means, btw (Lucien is just as mindblowingly weird on a structural level as the Arabian Nights or Nabokov or Borges or Vollman). That's a misunderstanding.

is"polite realism" stuff with a chronological narrative in which nothing implausible happens?

I would say... kinda? depends on the definition of "implausible" obviously.

if people like hamsun (my fave was growth of the soil), then they should also read some john cowper powys and some jean giono. birds of a feather. (i would recommend wolf solent by powys and joy of man's desiring by giono. "realism" but of a trippy nature-worshipping sort that is really hypnotic. nobody writes like those cats anymore.)

Yeah, I think I introduced 'polite realism' in passing. Sorry. Prob makes more sense in a Britishes context tbqh - I'd be using it to refer to fiction that's often middle/professional classes, family oriented, discovery of dark secrets in quiet life, fair bit of psychological description, maybe a few state-of-the-nation reflections. Agreed it isn't a useful or descriptive term here.

"songs with choruses and melodies occupy a massive space in modern american music and to think otherwise is 100% foolish," etc.

is "polite realism" stuff with a chronological narrative in which nothing implausible happens?

^^ barring a stretched definition of "implausible," this definition would absolutely not dominate serious fiction even the tiniest bit -- even stuff I would consider polite/conventional midlisty fiction is packed full of the unreal

woof there's loads of that garbage on American bookshelves fwiw

xp

"songs with choruses and melodies occupy a massive space in modern american music and to think otherwise is 100% foolish," etc.

Geir would disagree lol

yeah, but you are. you're like, why don't people these days/literary kingmakers/whoever the fuck guides this stuff from on high in your view recognize the mindblowing weird stuff. i recall that at some point you contended we're stuck in the nineteenth century formally. it's those kinds of arguments that strike me as historically incomplete, and also self-fulfilling, inasmuch as fiction being published right this second is less available to the teleological narrative of constant formal innovation because there's tons of it and a retroactive canonmaking process hasn't begun yet.

this is like the bizarro version of those threads where nabisco has to explain that actually contemporary lit doesn't consist of quirky ironic formalism

doesn't consist solely of quirky, &c., &c.

also, as the person in this thread who arguably has most consistently stanned for what you assholes are calling "polite realism," i guess all i can tell you is that my inferior pleasure centers respond to it.

i recall that at some point you contended we're stuck in the nineteenth century formally.

we're stuck in the 19th century critically, in terms of what people pay attention to, what's getting reviewed in the New York Time Book Review every week. you have to dig for the stuff that's off the beaten track formally--like my link to the book above. hasn't been reviewed by the NYT and won't be any time soon.

no one's saying there's anything wrong with polite realism! I like a lot of it myself. it just gets soooo much attention.

assholes?

all i can tell you is that my inferior pleasure centers respond to it.

dude TMI

it seems weird that there would be any formal innovations left to inventionate, other than something technological, like subliminal font progressions where you'd morph your starting typeface into another typeface by the end, but do it so gradually that the reader doesn't notice (though I have no idea how you'd integrate this into the text in a meaningful way).

assholes?

― Mr. Que, Friday, July 9, 2010 6:17 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was sort of kidding

I also think it's possible that you can only ask novels to do so many different things and still be a novel. I mean it's a genre with certain inherent constraints. All kinds of ingenious things can and have been done with both structure and language but it still kind of has to be a book-length story on some level, and unlike in film or music you don't really have new technologies coming along all the time to reinvigorate things.

all i can tell you is that my inferior pleasure centers respond to it.

dude TMI

― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, July 9, 2010 6:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, sorry, but people like the stuff they like because they like it

oh, weird that I just posted almost the same thing as Philip without noticing the xpost

ha, this is an xpost --

the other thing -- and I'm telling you, my life improved vastly when this really sunk in for me, sometime back in college -- is that it's possible to think the broad structural, narrative, and stylistic inventions of novelists are not actually the most important or amazing things about life as a human person, and to read books not to see what "mindblowing" things a writer can do with the concept or form of the novel, but rather to have them communicate something mindblowing about the actual experience of being human in the world, which maybe they are accomplishing via story or voice or language or any of the other elements of writing that are not broad "what can novels be like" concerns. i.e., people who just plain like fiction as a form, in addition to being interested in what else can be done with that form.

this is not weirder or dumber or less arty than thinking that a pop song can say something really meaningful and rich about the human experience, in addition to listening to mindblowing sonic explorations that redefine what a "pop song" might be.

i just got a ton of Simenon/Maigret paperbacks and a ton of old sci-fi, so i will be reading those when i'm done with the hugely entertaining mordecai richler book i'm reading (barney's version). and i am also really excited to read a book i got by italian writer niccolo ammaniti called I'm Not Scared. looks great. and reading about it/glancing in it it reminds me of some of emmanuel carrere's stuff. terse, sorta minimal, poetic, and creeeeeepy.

i could get by reading old sci-fi, old simenon, and all the graham greene books i haven't read. and all the wodehouse i haven't read. and all the e.f. benson i haven't read. and all the highsmith, tey, and ambler i haven't read. yeah, that oughta hold me. but i DO like finding new/newer stuff to dig too. i'm just a lot slower on that front. will be reading the new ILB thread with interest!

what happens when literature stops being polite and starts getting realist?

i recall that at some point you contended we're stuck in the nineteenth century formally. i

I did and I think this is largely true, inasmuch as the structure of your standard realistic story being told via a chronological narrative was definitely codified and sorta set in stone in the 19th century. There's loads that came after that that didn't (and doesn't) hew to these conventions, but the "serious" literary market - the market of NYT Book Reviews and nabisco's "conventional midlisty fiction" by and large sees this as a niche (or at its worst as delightfully "quirky ironic formalism" - Douglas Coupland springs to mind)

x-posts

unlike in film or music you don't really have new technologies coming along all the time to reinvigorate things.

have you heard of this thing called the internet

TRUE STOR-AY ... of twenty novelists...picked to form an elite

to read books not to see what "mindblowing" things a writer can do with the concept or form of the novel, but rather to have them communicate something mindblowing about the actual experience of being human in the world

i've read novels that do both! it's not one or the other!

I mean I'm not a huge Neal Stephenson fan or anything but his latest project is some sort of ridiculously convoluted hyper-"living" novel written via the internet by multiple writers

xp

some xposts

it seems weird that there would be any formal innovations left to inventionate

this isn't necessarily the issue: there's also the notion that the million or so formal tricks available to the writer, since Joyce or so, are part of the toolkit; that (weak case) they're helpful in representing our world to ourselves in ways that 19th-c. conventions aren't (sometimes it'll be helpful to have a slightly different wrench); or that (strong case) there is something fundamentally deceptive about using the conventions of nineteenth-century realism to deal with reality as it is now (that sometimes you just need a damn allen key or the nut's not coming off)