new novels and why they suck and whatever

it was just an exercise to lay out some concrete examples about what's out there, since people were giving me so much shit for apparently being ignorant of the market.

way to include non-fiction dude. now who's being disingenuous. If you think the books about spies and fairies garner the same critical attention as, say, the book about the kidnap victim or the book about a young woman dating an older man, you are bonkers.

um I think it's more likely that you aren't paying attention to what people are actually reading

spies, kidnapping = realism

noir = not realism

white teeth = realism

dickens = not realism

fairies = not worth talking about

i think, given your expressed tastes, people were trying to let you know that avant-garde experimental-in-form stuff is still being published, and pointing you to some. nyt bestseller list stuff seemed sort of definitionally irrelevant.

this thread

, people were trying to let you know that avant-garde experimental-in-form stuff is still being published, and pointing you to some.

which is great! I am thankful for the people on this thread that are doing this (scott, for example)

woof, the point of the analogy is that the dimension Shakey's been talking about for much of this thread isn't as broad of a dimension as "food from the entire rest of the world beside this continent," it's a rather specific quality that is, in my personal opinion as someone who's not even very well-read, comparable to wanting everything super-spicy and shrugging at a whole variety of others things food might attempt to do. or possibly lumping all other not-super-spicy food together in one bundle like "realist" food, or something, as if there's no real difference to be discovered between seafood and cake. (if neither's spicy.) it also feels like a weird reason to be generally negative about modern literature, for the same reasons "why isn't it spicy" would be a weird reason to be negative about modern restaurants -- there are plenty of places around to get spicy food.

part of why I harp on this is that I think I used to have flashes of the same feeling, when I was heavy into some of the stuff Shakey likes (even if that didn't lead me to the conclusion that fiction as a medium is lacking), but I think there's an element to it of focusing on broad stylistic gestures -- this is something I think music warped me into, actually! -- and I think my life has been generally enriched by getting more in touch with all the other things fiction can and does do. this is not picking on shakey or calling him an illiterate -- I find that idea especially funny because, as I've said, I think he would be a billion times meaner to anyone who was like this about music, or some other topic he felt closer to?

shakey, I'm not sure what ongoing misrepresentations of your reading habits are happening -- I'm more concerned about the ongoing misrepresentations of literature! -- but I think people are being pretty nice on this front? you're getting loads of good recommendations, if nothing else!

xpost -- also this has led to Glenn Beck being described as a "realist!" GO ILX! seriously, though, dude, that exercise right there would be like someone who only loved 77-79 punk rock posting the Billboard top 10 and going THIS IS WHY MUSIC IS WORTHLESS -- you would roll your eyes at that person so hard you'd go BLIND

dickens = not realism

didn't say this, said it was debatable in regards to SALMAN RUSHDIE

fairies = not worth talking about

didn't say this either.

I dunno why I'm bothering with you tbh, you seem to be doing a lot of snarky baiting in bad faith.

also this has led to Glenn Beck being described as a "realist!" GO ILX!

no one said this

sometimes I wonder if any of you can actually read

well dismissive attitudes toward realist fiction, whatever the hell that is, are probably always going to make me defensive. this thread is clarifying to me why we are mortal enemies wrt The Wire, also.

"I do not want to read a book about fucking Facebook"

I read some of the book about fucking Facebook. It's pretty far from realism, at least stylistically, because it is written in the same way as an x-files novelization, which the guy also wrote.

btw I just posted on the rolling lit ILB thread with this list of significant upcoming releases, which would probably be a better place to survey the levels of "polite realism" or whatever else

this thread is clarifying to me why we are mortal enemies wrt The Wire, also.

lol

hug it out bro

btw I just posted on the rolling lit ILB thread with this list of significant upcoming releases, which would probably be a better place to survey the levels of "polite realism" or whatever else

just glancing over this now but yeah a fair amount of this makes me roll my eyes

"I do not want to read a book about fucking Facebook"

I read some of the book about fucking Facebook. It's pretty far from realism, at least stylistically, because it is written in the same way as an x-files novelization, which the guy also wrote.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, July 9, 2010 4:28 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this the new jennifer egan novel? can i admit that i really loved her second novel look at me? she seems v interested in writing about social media, it's true.

Discussing the novel, Cunningham told Entertainment Weekly, “Peter is the central character. He’s an art dealer and he finds that he is increasingly drawn to his wife’s very much younger brother, who evinces for him everything that was appealing about his wife when he first met her. He’s not gay. Well, he’s probably a little gay because we’re all a little gay, right? But it’s certainly eroticized. It’s not because he wants to f— this boy. The boy is like the young wife.”

this person is paid to write books

but, again, i think she was cited in this thread in a lol-experimental-isn't-always-good way when she writes novels that could v much be classified as "polite realism" even though that designation makes me want to punch everyone.

Shakey, you realize that most people who write can't speak, right? This is why going to book readings done by the author usually end in tears.

re: facebook, the one i read was by ben mezrich, who also did a similar hollywoodized treatment of the MIT blackjack team. it's a really perverse way of writing about real events that makes them seem more like fiction than fiction does.

most people who write can't speak, right?
seriously otm

wait, does shakey dislike the wire or something?

hey, here's a small old book I think is incredible, and if I remember correctly Max wound up looking at it at some point and thinking the same (did I see that somewhere, Max, or am I thinking of someone else?): PICTURES FROM AN INSTITUTION by Randall Jarrell. The poet. Structurally speaking it's almost all just lengthy sketches of characters. But like 90% of sentences in it are the kind of sentence where you have to stop and close the book for a second and are tempted to read it aloud to whoever's nearby. I was writing something about it on a blog last year, and since it was impossible to pick out any great bit to quote, I just opened it to a random page and quoted whatever was there:

Flo always made me think: It is necessary that good come, but woe to him by whom it cometh. She was as public-spirited as the sun. She thought of others night and day, and never about herself -- but if she had thought about herself, she would have done something about that too. She worked for causes; she really worked. Yet she did not neglect her family for them; she didn’t neglect anything for anything. She treated you, no matter who you were, exactly as she treated everyone else, so that after she had talked to you a while you almost doubted that you existed, except in some statistical sense. Except when she was indignant, she was cheerful; she was good, honest, and sincere; and she was so thin you could have recognized her skeleton.

wait, does shakey dislike the wire or something?

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, July 9, 2010 4:41 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm sorry to invoke it; at some point i realized i was refreshing this thread in a rage that was basically identical to the rage the wire thread sometimes produces in me. this is all categorizable under i need to get a life, tbf.

^^ that's not a "new novel" or anything, but I wonder if Shakey would enjoy it (probably not?)

wait, does shakey dislike the wire or something?

haha nah I like the Wire fine, I just think the Sopranos was better

these all sound terrible btw, and is like a third of that list Nabisco posted (I haven't been able to make my way through all of it yet). Majority of it is by people who are at major publishing houses, winning awards, etc., and are good examples of the kind of thing I've been trying to articulate:

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
The book focuses on a pair of sisters at the turn of the millennium toiling on either end of the technology continuum, one the founder of a dot-com startup, the other an antiquarian book dealer. PW loves the book, calling it “Goodman’s most robust, fully realized and trenchantly meaningful work yet.”

Faithful Place by Tana French
when Frank Mackey was nineteen, he made plans with his girlfriend Rosie to leave the poverty and dysfunction of their lives in Dublin’s inner city and flee to London. But Rosie never appeared on the night they were supposed to meet, and Frank, assuming that she’d changed her mind, went on to England without her. Twenty-two years later, a suitcase is found behind a fireplace in a run-down building on the street where Frank grew up; when it becomes clear that the suitcase belonged to Rosie, Frank returns home to try and unravel the mystery of what happened to her. French is also the author of two previous critically-acclaimed novels: In the Woods, which won the Edgar, Barry, Macavity, and Anthony awards, and The Likeness.

The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer: In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it “an über-hip caper that pays homage to and skewers the state of publishing and flash-in-the-pan authors… Part Bright Lights, Big City, part The Grifters, this delicious satire of the literary world is peppered with slang so trendy a glossary is included.”

My Hollywood by Mona Simpson
took ten years to write this new novel about Claire, who has recently moved to Los Angeles with her husband and young son, and Lola, their Filipina nanny. In Publishers Weekly, Simpson said, “There are thousands of women who are here working, often with their own young children left behind. That leads to a whole different vision of what it is to raise a child, what’s important.”

I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson:
The book won the Norwegian Brage prize and, according to a “sample translation” on Petterson’s agent’s website, it begins: “I did not realize that my mother had left. There was too much going on in my own life. We had not spoken for a month, or even longer, which I guess was not that unusual, in 1989, when you consider the things that went on around us back then, but it felt unusual.”

You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin
Alzheimer’s researcher Victor Aaron discovers his late wife’s notes about the state of their marriage. Her version of their relationship differs greatly from his own, and Victor is forced to reexamine their life together. Wells Tower says the novel “is a work of lucid literary art, roisterous wit, and close, wry knowledge of the vexed circuits of the human mind and heart.”

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen’s first novel in nearly a decade, is a love story – albeit one surrounded by more ideas and insights and plot-lines than many novelists manage in a career. As he anatomizes the marriage of Minnesotans Patty and Walter Berglund, Franzen also looks at environmentalism, politics, sex, gentrification, and the pains and pleasures of growing up. And though a youthful anger animates his writing on the Bush years, his patience with Patty, in particular, suggests a writer who has done some growing himself. Franzen’s longest book is also, for great swaths of pages, his best.

Bound by Antonya Nelson
Typical to Nelson is a swift and biting portrait that’s as honest as it is unsentimental–consider this line from her story “Incognito” for example: “My mother the widow had revealed a boisterous yet needy personality, now that she was alone, and Eddie, least favorite sibling, oily since young, did nothing more superbly than prop her up.” Nelson’s latest novel, Bound, returns to her hometown of Wichita, Kansas, and depicts the turmoil of a couple on the rocks–the wife haunted by her past and the husband a serial adulterer–while a serial killer, the BTK (Bound Torture, and Kill), reappears after a long silence, taking vicious to a new level.

True Prep by Lisa Birnbach
Actual preppy people were chuffed to find themselves the subject of a well-drawn lampoon (or earnestly concerned with inaccuracies), the great unwashed found an arsenal or an atlas, depending on their aspirations, and people somewhere in the middle could feel a sheepish pride in being kind of sort of related to a tribe important enough to have its own book. People with real problems, of course, didn’t care either way. Now, True Prep is upon us, and if it fulfills the 1.3 million-print run promise of its precursor, Knopf Doubleday and authors Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd stand to rake it in.

All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang
Chang, who is the author of one other novel, Inheritance, and a story collection, Hunger, is also the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Perhaps the Workshop inspired her new book, which is about poets at a renowned writing school. At just over 200 pages, this slim novel examines the age-old question, “What are the personal costs of a life devoted to the pursuit of art?”

you sound terrible!

j/k i am going to go get some air

yes nabisco! my grandmother gave it to me, actually, like right after you had recommended it, and i read it, and loved it.

Per Petterson is really good!

btw shakey sorry for being snarky

christ on a bike, dude, you haven't read them or probably any of the authors in question! like WTF about that Petterson novel can even "sound awful" to you in that description? for all you know it's full of unconventional "narrative structures." the Baldwin actually sounds like it could be exactly the kind of thing you keep saying you like.

I mean, half of those sound like things I have zero interest in reading, but at this point it feels like you just enjoy eye-rolling slightly more than you enjoy reading, sorry

how can this per petterson be good when he/she writes books about mothers, so disgustingly realist.

lol now it is my turn to be snarky

She was as public-spirited as the sun.

This is great.

but at this point it feels like you just enjoy eye-rolling slightly more than you enjoy reading, sorry

people keep asking me to be specific, I get specific - you still complain. wtf

those books all sound pretty yuck--but i hate blurbs, would much rather read the first few pages of the book

you didnt get specific shakey bro collier

specific about hating books you've never read!

how can this per petterson be good when he/she writes books about mothers, so disgustingly realist.

lol exactly. that's another literary rule of mine. NO MOTHERS

i knew it! there are mothers in henry james sometimes so maybe that's a no-go...

fwiw I promise to read every book on that list front to back and report back on which ones suck because they were too realistic

and Eddie, least favorite sibling, oily since young

another literary rule of mine violated: NO OILY CHILDREN

i hate blurbs, would much rather read the first few pages of the book

― Mr. Que, Friday, July 9, 2010 4:54 PM Bookmark

I was just thinking the other day that book descriptions and blurbs tend to ruin books and I wish I could just know which books to read without knowing anything else about them in advance.

You'd like David Mitchell, Shakey. I started Ghostwritten last night: it sports the veneer of a realist novel but, boy, does he play with surfaces.

I was just thinking the other day that book descriptions and blurbs tend to ruin books and I wish I could just know which books to read without knowing anything else about them in advance.

― surfer blood for oil (Hurting 2), Friday, July 9, 2010 4:56 PM (16 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

judge them by their covers imo

gotta say i tried reading that Randall Jarrell a long time ago, and couldn't do it. and that paragraph doesn't really turn my crank either.

Shakey you should check this book out, it's pretty sick http://www.featherproof.com/Mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=226&Itemid=41

yeah Mitchell's on my library list Alfred

i think what threads like this always make me realize is that i like everything.