new novels and why they suck and whatever

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.

she even overstates the case just like we are doing!!

Yes, & I think Remainder came up in this thread a couple of times from the anti-polite-formal-midlist-nineteenth-century-bourgeois realism end (but Remainder not exactly formally innovative).

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.

yeah this is almost a conversation i prefer to have over a drink, b/c you and i are probably closer than we think. but yeah.

now that's it's clearer to me that this opposition lines up with that Smith article that i actually read and understood, i feel much more confident dismissing the opposition entirely. to write that article she came up with a total strawman polite realism, which she actually called lyrical realism, iirc, which is a phrase she invented afaict, and the reason you know it's a strawman is that she used FLAUBERT as her example of it which is hilarious and insane.

largely because Zadie describes it correctly and does not use it to jump to the conclusion that modern literature is garbage

*sigh* come on dude yr better than this

that would be awesome, Que; one of these days!

I mean I've called specific authors/books garbage, I've disparaged a particular style/form that I've tried to provide examples of and discuss in more general terms but I haven't said ALL MODERN LITERATURE IS GARBAGE

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?

Couldn't we just as easily say they didn't move away from Updike/Bellow/Roth? Why weren't writers driven from that more realist style by anxiety of influence?

you kind of did! i mean this thread has this title for a reason.

xpost yeah, woof, i was thinking of roth when i typed that. i don't know. barthelme and coover were younger and hipper than those dudes, right? lol i'm talking about coover like he's dead. this ultimately become all about which lying and selective history of the novel you want to tell.

oh come on the thread title is a joke (and I didn't even write it!)

also Shakey this book seems like it would have a lot of good things to read (though not new stuff at all)

http://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=9390

I didn't! Find a post where I said this. This is the kind of thing that makes me sad on threads - misrepresent something enough and eventually it becomes accepted as the reality

um x-post

felt like this for years tbh. modern fiction blows. except for Victor Pelevin.

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, June 25, 2010 12:06 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

xpost -- haha well, Shakey, you have described modern literature as primarily composed of a type of book you later and separately described as boring/garbage, with the remainder being small-press stuff generally beneath notice ---- no but seriously, I'm not gunning at you here, but if you're gonna make broad comments about literature you're gonna have to let us make some broad comments about your broad point, you know?

I just mean there is a huge difference between correctly describing a kind of fiction that indeed forms a mainstream (especially in the UK), fairly acknowledging the value of that style, and yet sort of wishing people forward from it -- versus a more dismissive stance that denies any value to huge swathes of undifferentiated literature that the speaker might not really be engaged with in the first place.

(Also I think Zadie is sort of a head-down Good Student type who therefore has a things-I-don't-do admiration for formal advancements -- for the record this is a quality I love about her and even her Good Student fiction)

so, fine, more like: ALL MODERN LITERATURE (except Victor Pelevin) IS GARBAGE

― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, July 9, 2010 6:41 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hahaha

(Also I think Zadie is sort of a head-down Good Student type who therefore has a things-I-don't-do admiration for formal advancements -- for the record this is a quality I love about her and even her Good Student fiction)

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, July 9, 2010 6:48 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is true, but i find this tendency in her self-hating and suspect she could write circles around many of the dudes (there, i said it) she identifies as formally inventive.

so this is kind of sidetracky but er in re. What American Fiction Did Next --

i think claiming that later generations cleaved from barth/b.elme/coover or cleaved to roth/bellow/updike is pretty reductive --

i. 'dirty realism' (or w/e) happened
ii. barthelme is a latent presence in everyone writing short stories in the past 20 years that isn't in (i)
iii. i think the only ppl who are writing REALLY like roth and updike are roth and updike
iv. only one of barth's books is really about 'experimenting with form'; the others are more ironic-revisitation-of-older-form (i think)
v. howabout 'the intuitionist' or 'the white boy shuffle' or something; which of these lines is that more along?
vi. eh

(xposts)

Horseshoe, yeah, had second thoughts when I wondered if they weren't a generation down, but they're actually the same age as Updike and Roth at least - but Roth has at least a foot in that formal experiment camp (ugh sounds like SS exploitation movie) too I guess. Lol things are complicated when you look closely, we should stick to shouting generalisations across party lines.

she came up with a total strawman polite realism, which she actually called lyrical realism,

Hey polite realism is my strawman dammit and and it's completely different from that 2nd-rater's lyrical realism.

lol okay words, eaten

xp

yeah it's fun to pick on Shakey but i would like to point out that he liked my linked book a lot, and that list of boring mid list stuff. . . not so much!

i mean i think i at least "get" what he's trying to "say"

okay, self-hating was too strong a word, i'm not her shrink, but that was one of many things that drove me crazy about that article.

this is true, but i find this tendency in her self-hating and suspect she could write circles around many of the dudes (there, i said it) she identifies as formally inventive.

totally

to be fair, i pulled that Shakey quote from the M.I.A. thread. i'm sure he's going to like a lot of the stuff recommended to him in this thread.

i mean maybe we should just be suggesting stuff for him to like instead of being all "oooooooh Shakey! ya burnt! I got you!"

and if he doesn't like it try again. seems like a nice thing to do.

well what i meant about 60's and 70's was there was ROOM for both barth and roth and it was all a part of the literary discussion and there was excitement from all kinds of people for all kinds of things. people were going in all kinds of directions and were taken seriously. and now it really does feel like "experimentation" or whatever is treated as a "dead end". people are only willing to go so far. or only go for the most simplistic kinds of fabulism. its almost like the majority of people out there don't want their art TOO arty these days. they DO want comfort food. even smart people. hey, even me, probably.

Also I think Zadie is sort of a head-down Good Student type who therefore has a things-I-don't-do admiration for formal advancements -- for the record this is a quality I love about her and even her Good Student fiction)

Wasn't the Pynchony end of things her earlier aspiration? I can't reread this article now, but it's an account of her shift towards Forster (and hence lots of the realisms we're talking about here) iirc.

So otm about the good-studentness btw.

all the serious young men i knew in grad school seemed to find plenty of arty fiction and poetry to read, being published these days!

Wasn't the Pynchony end of things her earlier aspiration? I can't reread this article now, but it's an account of her shift towards Forster (and hence lots of the realisms we're talking about here) iirc.

that account of her shift toward forster was more of an apologia for being forster-esque iirc. that article pissed me off too (lol nothing gets me madder than fiction, i guess). like, it's one thing for you to hate what you're good at, zadie smith, but don't hate on e.m. forster for being a totally lovely-seeming dude, which is what she kind of did, with her backhanded compliments!

i should take that link over to the forster thread so i can use it to assist me in hating on forster