new novels and why they suck and whatever

I think "most people" want to read "modern realist novels" though? Which is why that form/genre is so dominant?

yeah well most people are idiots

(sorry I'm grumpy today)

Because realism is the easiest form of art to identify with. Because people enjoy reading stories about people more or less like themselves.

(and there's nothing wrong with that)

(xposts) I'm happy with what you've quoted there Shakey, I think, but the more I thought about it, the less happy I was with how I said it, but I didn't want to draw attention to the fact by hedging and putting caveats all over the place. Or at least I'm happy with what I was gesturing towards, but...

Well, for a start, I really don't hate character (anyone who's read a book without any sense how to draw character will know how dull they are). I guess that was shorthand for books devoted to investigations of a certain type of character (how the educated middle classes see themselves and those around them?), again, caveats and handwaving, I think this is dull and (if importance is important, which is moot) is also unimportant (and probably self-important).

I'm not sure a person who isn't particularly interested in strongly character based novels necessarily hates humans tho (an accusation I saw above) - I quite like relatively flat characters put in unusual situations for instance, because it's exciting and exercises the imagination about what a human is far more, imo, than 500pp of involved agonising.

Also, I don't hate the 19th century novel (19th century novel as English Lit construct here - anyone who's looked through a bibliography of Victorian literature will know there was an awful awful lot of novels published, most of them forgotten by everybody I'd imagine, probably most of them really quite dull by any standards, even those of the time, and probably a handful of really weirdly bad, or perhaps even weirdly good, but hey, I ain't goin to search through them). I don't think we should be re-writing the 19th century novel now, unless it's an appropriation of genre for a reason.

Finally (god how boring this can be) I certainly didn't want to suggest a) I think this is all that is being published, although I do think the lack of money in the frontline publishing industry means a loss of abundance in Britain certainly. Nor did I want to suggest b) all mainstream lit pages do is review modern versions of the 19th century novel. There's probably vareity there, but when I see the sort of things they champion, and go on about quite a lot of the time, my eyes glaze over, and I don't really trust anything they write, and so I'd rather go elsewhere, somewhere less entrenched in the world of the people being reviewed.

Finally all that is irrelevant if something is good, but, you know, that's a whole other can of worms, and we're kind of back at the beginning.

I guess I was pleading for a demotion of serious literary fiction as a selling concept (the airport novel for the self-regarding if you like) not its abolition, just a bit of equivalence, for the lit press to open its doors a little, no, a lot to stuff that it doesn't already have a long tradition of reviewing, fewer reviews of a literary group, by a literary group for a literary group.

quite honestly I have been super happy for pretty much my entire life reading pulpy genre-bound science fiction and fantasy and the idea of reading most "literary" novels makes me want to scream

This reminds me of an artist who was up for the Tate prize a few years ago, Glenn Brown, who painted huge canvases of spaceships mostly cribbed from sci-fi novel covers. Ignoring the whole plagiarism angle, I think one of his points was why should 'good' painting be all about portraits and figures and human landscapes? Perhaps the stories suggested by his paintings could be just as moving and important. I'm a sci-fi lover myself but thought that was mostly bullshit because most people just don't give a fuck about giant spaceships or the stories behind them, and why should they?

cuz they're cool

landscapes vs. spaceships

quite honestly I have been super happy for pretty much my entire life reading pulpy genre-bound science fiction and fantasy and the idea of reading most "literary" novels makes me want to scream

That too.

'pretty much my entire life reading pulpy genre-bound science fiction and fantasy and the idea of reading most "literary" novels makes me want to scream'

They've kind of converged though, right? If you pick at random a page from a Bolano and a Warhammer novel, someone uninitiated might have a hard time picking out which was the "literary" one.

Also, is realism as much a constraint today as it was say a few decades ago? Would Gibson need to set Neuromancer in a fantastic setting if he wrote it today?

If you pick at random a page from a Bolano and a Warhammer novel, someone uninitiated might have a hard time picking out which was the "literary" one.

really now

thread keeps giving

Would Gibson need to set Neuromancer in a fantastic setting if he wrote it today?

speaks more to the failings of the imaginations of modern sci-fi writers than anything else (Gibson himself has already conceded the fact, no longer feels writing about the future is "necessary" etc. But he's been shit for like 25 years now anyway so who cares)

We don't have a Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction thread, do we? Would people be interested in that? I would. If anyone else would too, I'll start one on ILB.

I think Gibson's gotten better at writing, but his novels have gotten worse, if that makes any sense. But if it's a collective failure of imagination, that failure stretches back pretty far then -- which great genre works cannot be re-written as realist novels today?

not that I think accurate prognostication is what makes sci-fi interesting (it isn't), and it's a given and well-worn truism that all science fiction is actually about the present anyway - but to me one of the most enduringly fascinating things about science fiction is this creation of other worlds, whether they're in the future or on other planets or other dimensions or whatever. These "what if?" scenarios that are fired by speculation and imagination seem so much more engaging to me, they encourage the reader to shift perspectives and see things, real world things, in a new light. Sci-fi writers like Lethem or Gibson essentially abandoning this tool altogether in favor of realism just seems like a weak capitulation. Their books suffer for it.

xp

Boom: Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

I used to love that Ben Marcus book pictured up above when I was in college, and I recently tried to re-read it and decided it was bullshit

I'd agree that Lethem suffers for it, in that he's more adept at pure invention in the fantasy realm, versus say, places he happened to have lived in, but Gibson's schtick was always more pastiche, when the source realism could be rendered in just as perspective-shifting and exotic a fashion as necessary.

But even Lethem with some effort could translate a lot of his genre stuff no-problem. The fact that some characters are kangaroos in Gun With Occasional Music isn't particularly crucial. Michael Jordan shoes could be reformulated as a story about Moneyball-type statistics-based changes affecting basketball. Amnesia Moon could be morphed into a more Oliver Sacksian story.

There might be some stories that are just pure philosophical thought experiments that have no easy analog in realism, but even then, I feel a writer with enough will and skill could make it happen.

I disagree that Gibson's fiction has gotten worse. Pattern Recognition is one of his best novels. None of his books hold up very well plotwise and never have; all of them have been pretty contrived. It was one of the lesser contrived ones. But I do think the Difference Engine was his most interesting book. No idea how much of it he wrote.

Someone give me a compelling writing prompt and I'll go and save literature

there once was a message board,

Pride and Prejudice and Bearotaurs?

Someone give me a compelling writing prompt and I'll go and save literature

Provincial academic sees a cat being run over which prompts a sudden realisation that his life is empty, that results in him staying exactly where he is and gradually watching his life is unravelled, that's before a mysterious stranger turns up on his door with an unusual proposition...

Then aliens land in massive shiny spaceships and blast them all to shit.

not that I think accurate prognostication is what makes sci-fi interesting (it isn't), and it's a given and well-worn truism that all science fiction is actually about the present anyway - but to me one of the most enduringly fascinating things about science fiction is this creation of other worlds, whether they're in the future or on other planets or other dimensions or whatever. These "what if?" scenarios that are fired by speculation and imagination seem so much more engaging to me, they encourage the reader to shift perspectives and see things, real world things, in a new light. Sci-fi writers like Lethem or Gibson essentially abandoning this tool altogether in favor of realism just seems like a weak capitulation. Their books suffer for it.

xp

― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, July 9, 2010 1:26 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is just nuts to me, assuming im reading you right

Anyway, Bolano Warhammer isn't enough inspiration for you? xpost

These "what if?" scenarios that are fired by speculation and imagination seem so much more engaging to me, they encourage the reader to shift perspectives and see things, real world things, in a new light.

this is what all books do, or are supposed to do, and if woolf or carver or... whoever were trashing here arent doing that to you im inclined to think its your fault

but i also have a pet peeve with people who are demanding toward their books/music/art i.e. "why isnt this thing doing what i want it to do"

this is what all books do, or are supposed to do, and if woolf or carver or... whoever were trashing here arent doing that to you im inclined to think its your fault

nah I like Woolf and Carver - the people I'm explicitly trashing are sci-fi writers who transition to more conventional realist novels and as a consequence have their work suffer for it

harry potter and the sea

oh well i dunno. motherless brooklyn is my favorite lethem book and its his most 'realist' isnt it? no flying kids or anything.

harry potter is sci fi right

Never particularly happy with that 'this is what all books are supposed to do' argument tbh. Novels can do what they damn well please - it's the freedom of what can happen between the pages that fascinates me, the enjoyment to be had in reading, rather than any real world relevance (<---ugh).

There's no doubt that the seeing things anew thing has happened with some of the best things I've read, but equally it's not a thing with an awful lot of other stuff that I like. I'll settle for 'it made me laugh' quite a lot of the time. Or spaceships.

"world-building" happens in p much all fiction although theres a specific kind of world-building that gets done in spec fic that i can see finding more compelling than "literary realism"

but im just like "..." over warhammer 2666K

lethem's a hack there I posted it

oh well i dunno. motherless brooklyn is my favorite lethem book and its his most 'realist' isnt it? no flying kids or anything.

I dunno if I would call it realist - it's a pretty obvious noir homage, more than anything. Probably the last decent thing he did imho

the last sci fi book I read was the first book of the new sun when I was a teen, I saw an old dude reading it in a diner a month ago and kind of nodded at him but he was reading and didn't see me

book of the new sun is terrible, there i posted it

Never particularly happy with that 'this is what all books are supposed to do' argument tbh.

I hope this isn't how I'm coming across - I pretty directly disputed this above somewhere iirc

Wolfe is great there I said it. altho I wouldn't recommend everything of his (the amnesiac greco-roman soldier stuff got kinda tiresome)

Never particularly happy with that 'this is what all books are supposed to do' argument tbh. Novels can do what they damn well please - it's the freedom of what can happen between the pages that fascinates me, the enjoyment to be had in reading, rather than any real world relevance (<---ugh).

ok fine but "books are supposed to shift perspective and help you see things in a different light" isnt a very precise restriction is it? i mean its vague enough to be sort of meaningless which i guess is my point. having aliens and shit in your book doesnt make it better at shifting perspective than have a particularly acute way of talking about emotions or something

yeah I kind of skipped around it but there are still some cool scenes I remember like when people were sitting at a dinner table in a forest and tripping out on some sci fi fantasy drug and eating that dude's gf

I dunno if I would call it realist - it's a pretty obvious noir homage, more than anything. Probably the last decent thing he did imho

― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, July 9, 2010 2:03 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

noir isnt realist!? but those guys are all hemingway stans!

postman always rings twice is one of my fav books I think

Anyone who thinks Gibson has ben shit for 25 years has not read Pattern Recognition

I flipped through a Star Wars novel that appeared to be 90% concerned with architectural and political considerations on building a large public-works project like the Death Star, and was thinking did they dig up an old novel about the Panama Canal and just search/replace on proper names?

re: motherless brooklyn -- is this the one with the guy with asperger superpowers? that seemed like a book that is ambiguous as to its being set in the real world or not.

anyway i sort of thought we had established that shakeys real problem with books isnt books its that hes too lazy to seek out books he wants to read

yeah it was that