new novels and why they suck and whatever

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.

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

― horseshoe, Friday, July 9, 2010 4:58 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i get kind of sad when people dont like stuff, even if i dont particularly like it

except the kite runner

sounds awesome Que! on the list it goes

xp

haha actually shakey this entry on that list sounds right up yr alley:

My Prizes by Thomas Bernhard

no read correction instead

it has dragons I promise

uh oh i'm having a fantasy, correction is next on my list bc you were so emphatic about it itt!

well yes obviously if anyone hasn't read correction or wittgenstein's nephew or the loser or like any other bernhard they should read those first

yeah it is pretty life changing for a minute or two

cuz this is, like, essays or some shit

i could read that crank-ass german rant for 1,000 pages

you know what other book had a mother disappear in the first line, and wound up reading basically like "The Help," was that one by Camus

Shakey, nobody needs you to do anything, it's fine, but you're probably not going to convince anyone literature has failed because several half-sentence blurbs about forthcoming books failed to convince you novels could do more than one thing

btw, here's what you said upthread, in reaction to the idea that lots of interesting stuff was published on small presses:

how convenient

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, June 25, 2010 4:01 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

small wonder I don't know about them eh

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier)

So now when you say "majority of it is by people who are at major publishing houses," I'm like ... I dunno. Do you want to read stuff you like, or just not ever look wrong on ILX? It really does feel like you're being weirdly and deliberately head-in-the-sand, like "why doesn't someone just PUT books doing exactly the one limited thing I like IN MY LAP, instead of a whole world of books existing that do other things as well?" It's very confusing, honestly. Like I have no idea how "small wonder I don't know about them" gets used as an eye-roll and a write-off, instead of a spur to, you know, if they're so important to you, know about them?

xpost - I think Shakey's gotten multiple Bernhard recommendations -- I'd add The Voice Imitator to them, if I haven't already

voice imitator was pretty weak imo, but a lot of people like it

lolz I just finished Bernhard's Old Masters this morning and was gonna revive the Bernhard thread to ask if there was a biog available to skim through.

Can't wait for those essays. Xmas and all that. xp

oh and -- I didn't read Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, but I think it might actually fall in the Shakey-friendly category too! Maybe depending where the Shakey call is on Knut Hamsun

Out Stealing Horses is the one I read. It involves cabins and dads and logging and world war ii and teh coming-of-age sechs. What could be bad about it?

dads!

It's very confusing, honestly. Like I have no idea how "small wonder I don't know about them" gets used as an eye-roll and a write-off, instead of a spur to, you know, if they're so important to you, know about them?

sure I was being flippant but is it necessarily wrong/invalid to wish that the stuff I'm fond of was more popular/easy to find/more widely read/more actively supported? Following small press stuff is certainly something I should do, and I try, but y'know, it takes time and effort and sometimes I can't expend as much of those as I would like on books.

wwii

which is why threads like this are a godsend

xp

Following small press stuff is certainly something I should do, and I try, but y'know, it takes time and effort and sometimes I can't expend as much of those as I would like on books.

no, it really does take time. not every one is tuned into small press stuff

Maybe depending where the Shakey call is on Knut Hamsun

a dude I've heard of but never read. nazis and nihilism, not sure I wanna go there

omg I love Hunger

I don't see that much of a link btw Knut Hamsun and Per Petterson, but it's been a while since I read Hamsun. I mean if you're looking for Advances in the Field of Literature I don't know how much Petterson has to offer. But he's good.

There is that Hamsun book about a dude in a cabin, but he doesn't have a dad or a war, and plus he's like crazy.

I should be clear, I'm not saying anyone has to follow small presses -- I mean, I don't, really. Just that if the question is "where are the books like X," and the answer is "on smaller presses, often" ... this doesn't need to be a cue to get skeptical and back off modern fiction, it can be a cue to poke a little further in, you know? I feel some possibly related things about film (not worth going into), but my conclusion isn't so much skepticism about film, just an acknowledgment that it's not an art form I'm really engaged with, and an admission that there's probably lots of stuff I'd like but don't have the time/energy to sort out.

xpost - huh, I always hear people describe Petterson as Hamsun-like, but maybe that's just regional stereotyping or something. and isn't there some kind of structural double-meaning thing with that book? (that's why I said it might fit in a Shakey direction, but maybe I'm wrong.)

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

this wasn't really the question though (I have plenty of stuff to read thx). the question was 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.

There is that Hamsun book about a dude in a cabin, but he doesn't have a dad or a war, and plus he's like crazy.

― surfer blood for oil (Hurting 2), Friday, July 9, 2010 5:30 PM (8 minutes ago)

anyone know the title of this one?

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