new novels and why they suck and whatever

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)

(or at its worst as delightfully "quirky ironic formalism" - Douglas Coupland springs to mind)

this is like ppl talking about free jazz and you going 'yes, these bebop types really are rather lacking in harmony to my ear'

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

in my opinion when done correctly the former enriches the latter. and yeah these are not mutually exclusive by any means

xp

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!

― Mr. Que, Friday, July 9, 2010 6:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

of course it's not, but this entire thread is premised (kind of?) on the idea that an ill-defined formal approach is mindblowing and a played-out formally transparent approach is worthy of contempt.

there's an essay in zadie smith's book from this year on this whole thing this thread has descended into which is actually really good

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)

― thomp, Friday, July 9, 2010 6:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, for real, also politely realist novels (i give in, i guess) are not absent form or formal tricks, ffs. everything's got a form.

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

― Mr. Que, Friday, July 9, 2010 10:16 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there was some pretty crazy shit published by major publishers in the 60's and 70's. just like with movies and music. then spielberg and stephen king ruined everything. or something. i mean, they used to at least allow the arty types a little room in the back. now, maybe not so much. franzen and wallace and lethem and moody are kinda it. and they are not coover, barth, barthelme, etc, to me. they just aren't. they are hybrid writers. one foot in commercial land and one foot in...i dunno. one of them is dead. so no fair dissing him. and he was probably the wackiest one. i promise i won't talk about my problems with modern indie rock now. or modern cinema.

king is sort of twenty-to-thirty percent more 'arty' than i always expect him to be

yeah, for real, also politely realist novels (i give in, i guess) are not absent form or formal tricks, ffs. everything's got a form.

― horseshoe, Friday, July 9, 2010 10:26 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, this is where i cite wayne booth

to be fair, the kind of conventional chronological narrative you're talking about was likely first set in stone by a guy with a chisel someplace they hadn't invented paper yet, and before that had just rhymed so people could remember it better: what was codified by the 19th century was a certain kind of stylistic presentation of the narrative, which has changed and varied quite a bit since that point ... I think you are kinda conflating a big thing (ancient human narrative structures) with a small one (novelistic style), and then using a lack of motion in the big one to exaggerate a perceived lack of motion in the small one

xpost -

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

I KNOW, that's what we're arguing with Shakey, who has repeatedly said, upthread, that he doesn't understand why there would be novels without the formal stuff -- we are arguing with him that neither one needs to be a precondition

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/

"These aren’t particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical Realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked." -- she even overstates the case just like we are doing!!

too bad I hated her book haha

i think you misspelt 'the one book of hers that i read'

and they are not coover, barth, barthelme, etc, to me.

leaving aside the question of whether they're as good as those writers for the moment, i think it is true that post-coover/barth/barthelme many self-consciously "literary" writers(<---cringing at the way i put that, but not sure how to do it better) purposely moved away from those kinds of experiments with form. which is what happens, right, anxiety of infulence-wise? not sure i would pick those three dudes as the emblematic writers of right now, either, and i've never actually read any lethem.

guys I know this is gonna be mind-blowing but I would argue with Shakey's view of this and not Zadie's, largely because Zadie describes it correctly and does not use it to jump to the conclusion that modern literature is garbage -- Zadie does not "agree" with Shakey here apart from their probably shared belief that White Teeth was not that great

idk i mean i cant really understand 95% of this thread but it seems crazy to me that are certain subjects or structures that can make a piece of fiction uninteresting or bad or w/e a priori?

that zadie smith article is crazy and drives me crazy and makes up lying lies about the history and form of fiction. conversely, i enjoy her fiction.

nobody is ever allowed to call anything mindblowing ever again btw

^^^mindblowing post

i didn't wanna suggest that smith 'agrees' with shakey's position - more like "hey u guys, here is a thing which is a pretty nuanced and smart take on the whole thing we're arguing both sides of"

lol Que btw you're coming at this as a practitioner of the form, right? i think i probably agree with you about many things; i just have a different outlook because for (too) many years i was training to be a critic of the form and a historian of it to some degree.