new novels and why they suck and whatever

hes too lazy to seek out books he wants to read

dude I'm reading 4 different books right now (Horace satires, Process Church of the Final Judgment bio, Disch short story collection, Riddley Walker) so um fuck you

also not exactly helpful to blow up my very specific criticism of a couple of sci-fi writers into a LAW OF FICTION WRITING but thx for the strawmanning well done

but shakey how many of those books have aliens in them?

SORRY FOR MISUNDERSTANDING YOU I BASICALLY ASSUMED YOU WERE CONTINUING YOUR DUMB CRITIQUE OF ALL LITERARY FICTION NOT JUST WILLIAM GIBSON MY BAD DOGG

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_c_L6wtZ6XJA/Sut19E2jMcI/AAAAAAAABHo/OqgCQgHQzaQ/s400/Signs_alien.jpg

like I said a few posts back my dumb literary critique boils down to = modern realist novels, I hate them

yeah

*shrugs*

i wonder if there are books that have both emotions and aliens, that i cld recommend to shakey mo

shakey have you read stanley crawford stuff

i wonder if there are books that have both emotions and aliens, that i cld recommend to shakey mo

The Forever War!

did you ever read forever free? that one is *mind*blowing*

i wonder if there are books that have both emotions and aliens, that i cld recommend to shakey mo

― Lamp, Friday, July 9, 2010 2:21 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they discovered all abt this in party down midway through season two at steve guttenbergs house, have you guys tried tv it might be just what youre looking for there i posted it

I've read the Forever War. Dreading the movie

theres a party down ep abt that 2

Not a stan, and haven't read a ton of his stuff, but always seems a little weird to me that Wolfe doesn't have much of literary rep - sustained immaculate style, bags of narrative tricks, incredibly inventive in a sort of hazy territory between realism and allegory, tons of stuff that clicks with some big literary themes of the age (memory, identity). The Soldier books aren't zippy reads, but they're a really intense imaginative effort to see Greece in the era of Herodotus. Kind of amazing.

(more generally, agree with Gamaliel, just take out detective novels & sub in idk Wodehouse or something.)

haven't read Forever Free yet, will move onto that once I finish the Black Company books (which btw, MASSIVE THUMBS UP)

xp: okay this is silly but I am lolling that a dude calling himself "woof" is repping Wolfe

I was really into the first Soldier book but as the series wore on I got tired of trying to constantly untangle all the oblique references. it is a pretty fascinating exploration of that particular era/culture tho

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Really wanted to read Wodehouse today, feeling totally in the mood.

To get away from the Emotions v Aliens stuff, I think it's a lot to do with the sets of emotions that are used. A book like Wyndham Lewis' Tarr (character exploration etc), which is a book I love, has a thoroughly new feeling way of delineating character and exploring the world, abstracting it, playing around with it, having fun with forging a way of writing and description, savage wit and comic tragedy. Whereas I pick up some (far more recent) books and go, 'Oh, this stuff again'. I remember feeling that most disconcertingly with Jack Maggs by Peter Carey - the fact it was a historical novel made the whole well-trodden modern character investigation stuff jump out all the more.

Now, Emotions v Aliens 2...

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hmmm yes I see the oddity there, may not start thread on the literary dog biography genre (Maf, Flush etc) after all.

Shakey, what was the last "realist" novel you read? Just curious about what repelled you.

iirc it was the kite runner!

well see there's your first mistake

im sayin

for real i would be more sympathetic to your novel woes if it were not the kite runner, Shakey.

like, many terrible novels were published in all eras since the novel's inception, what are you gonna do?

refuse to read novels ever again i guess

that is a totally valid life choice, btw.

That's like watching Cold Mountain and saying that novel adaptations suck.

to be honest, a lot of this sounds like, let's say, a guy who once lived next door to a Thai place where everything was VERY spicy, and then spent the rest of his like "food now is terrible! most of it is non-spicy! why would you not want all your food to be extremely spicy? I went to this place called 'Bennigan's' and had a 'hamburger,' and it wasn't spicy at all, it just tasted like normal food. and the dessert was horrible, it was even less spicy than the hamburger. the person who took me was like 'do you want to go somewhere else? I know this great Italian place that has terrific grilled octopus,' and I was like 'is that spicy? no? then what's the point of it?'"

hahahahahaha

I understand a preference for sci-fi over "realist" fiction; what I don't understand is beating up on "realist" fiction for qualities it may or may not have. My favorite novelist is Henry James but I sure don't expect other novelists to mimic him.

I've never been to Bennigans, but I would be very suspicious of their pad thai.

Bennigan's once boasted a fantastic beer selection imo. I even had a Copper Clover card.

I said Bennigan's instead of Applebee's because I haven't read The Kite Runner and therefore should be fair/neutral about it.

"my niggas, tonight we will be reading The Kite Runner"

(sorry)

^^ ha, I still always picture this accompanied by Kadeem Hardison's little dance in White Men Can't Jump, when he's like "we goin' Sizzler, we goin' Sizzler"

"My favorite novelist is Henry James but I sure don't expect other novelists to mimic him."

james was totally in outer space. he will blow your earthly mind.

motherless brooklyn totally turned me off from reading any more of lethem's books. blah.

James was a weird motherfucker.

btw James' novels -- especially the later ones -- bear no resemblance to any realistic fiction I know. They may as well be sci-fi.

shakey, you ever read any toby olson? you might dig him. try The Woman Who Escaped From Shame. such a strange book.

yeah, that's what i mean about james. i mean, some of his stuff is as far from realism as you can get.

it's true; i have been wondering whether Shakey would like James. not that that helps with the new novels problem.

Shakey, what was the last "realist" novel you read? Just curious about what repelled you.

I'll ignore the ongoing misrepresentations of my reading habits and opinions in favor of answering this actual earnest question. To be honest it's been awhile. Couldn't finish Aryundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things" or Zadie Smith's "White Teeth". (I did not actually read "The Kite Runner", my father's gf gave me and my wife a copy insisting we read it. This was a couple years ago). I read a friend of mine's historical novel "The Obedient" which was great. Really enjoyed Soehnlein's "The World of Normal Boys". Some Russell Banks stuff (Rule of the Bone is great til he gets to Jamaica then it gets kinda stupid). Tons of Naguib Mahfouz and RK Narayan, but I'm not sure if classifying some of that stuff as a realist novel is accurate (Mahfouz in particular gets pretty heavily allegorical). Read a bunch of Jose Saramago but again the realism angle is debatable. I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff, and I don't have my library in front of me.

fwiw I don't really appreciate being cast as an illiterate on this thread, it's fairly insulting.

the categorizations "realist" is not really holding up, is it?

fuck lethem. everyone should read olson's the blond box. if they dare!

Review
"Of all the writers of his postmod generation, Toby Olson is the most forgiving. Even when writing of the most mundane acts--performing in a backwoods porn show, for example, or inaugurating an outhouse--he grants all his characters the full wonder and mystery of their lives, and strokes language as a lover might the flesh of his beloved. The Blond Box, like the most memorable of his work, skirts borders--geographical, artistic, metaphysical--and explores the mysteries found there, especially the unfathomable mysteries of art. Toby Olson is one of America's most important novelists, and The Blond Box is perhaps his best book ever. A rich compelling read." --Robert Coover, author of The Adventures of Lucky Pierre
-- Review
Product Description
El Malabarista, pianist and juggler for a troupe of sexual performance artists, is found dead in the dusty wilderness, his fingers crushed. Beginning like a murder mystery, The Blond Box then defies all the usual expectations of a murder mystery plot, by juxtaposing "real" events in two different decades with a draft version of a hack sci-fi novella. This mixed narrative serves as a meta-fictional commentary on the efforts of a retired sex-theater artist, a hairstylist/pulp writer, a doctoral student, and a host of other characters to, not only solve the murder, but uncover its motivation, which seems to be linked to El Malabarista's knowledge of the whereabouts of a certain boxed treasure. By turns lyrical and scatological, puerile and cerebral, The Blond Box is at once a daring formal experiment and a good yarn.

Mian Mian's "Candy" was terrible (I think I may have already mentioned that one tho...?) Not sure where Rushdie falls on the scale, his stuff is kinda Dickensian-level ridiculous rather than realist but I was on board with him up until the Moor's Last Sigh. Tried to read some Philip Roth, hated it.

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