new novels and why they suck and whatever

Re Asian authors: _Brothers_ by Yu Hua is a good BIG HISTORICAL novel from China w/ lots of scatology and sex:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/books/review/Row-t.html

Re Lethem: people should recognize that CHRONIC CITY is his best since, I dunno, since THIS SHAPE WE'RE IN at least -- and Shakey can take comfort in the fact that it represents a return to his SF roots (which did not keep it from being considered an Important Serious Contemporary Novel.)

You know, Shakey, I love you, and because I love you we tousle just about every day, so please don't take this personally...

BUT...you wouldn't have made these generalizations about "realist" fiction if your responses here had indicated you'd kept up with the kinds of realism practiced in the 20th century. To hold up as a dismissal the idea, as you wrote upthread, that the "realist" novel generally follows a chronological pattern, etc is a fantastically wrong mistake when you're dealing with writers as different as Hamsun, Mann, Lawrence, Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Bellow, Waugh, Forster, Roth, to name a few of the major writers of the twentieth century. What the fuck connects these writers EXCEPT a devotion to the novel in its marvelous, infinitely recombinable form?

The novel swears no allegiance to any credo except what the novelist imposes. Whether it's George Elot or Colm Toibin or Ursula K Le Guin, the novel is concerned with human beings; what form it ultimately takes matters insofar as it reflects what the novelist wants to propose about human life as lived. From my experience, the worst affliction is trendiness, which is why the Barthelme-Coover-Barth route looks so shallow to my eyes: a lot of tricks the modernists I'd mentioned upthread had explored without the chicness and devotion to surface pleasures.

If you want to read a well-written novel about aliens, go to it, dude! But, please, don't make generalizations about The Modern Novel. I don't know what it is, but it's thriving and boring as it was at the time of Joyce.

I mean, seriously, to dismiss Roth when he wrote Operation Shylock and the Zuckerman Bound trilogy?! Can they be any more different from a "conventionally" realist coming-of-age story like Goodbye Columbus?

If there's anything I've learned from reading all of James and the critical prose written by him, Conrad, Lawrence, and Woolf, it's that for them "realist" meant "I can do whatever the fuck I want with this thing."

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September 11, 2001

whoa this thread got pretty good after i left yesterday

que did you read the whole thread? everyone gave shakey recommendations already, like a million years ago, we were just piling on him because he came BACK to the thread to like copy-and-paste the nyt bestseller list for no reason

and anyway when ppl come to ilm saying shit like "all modern music sucks" we laugh at them instead of giving them recommendations so i dont know why hed expect any different

finally the real reason the literary scene sucks nowadays is cause all the smart people on this thread are posting shit on ilx instead of writing articles for important critical publications

Agreed that this thread got good. This is the kind of thread that got me into ILX in the first place so many years ago.

I read a bit more carefully upthread, and understand the flare-up a bit better - the Joyce-Borges-Nabokov-Dick thing is a fairly common taste cluster, more narrow than it at first appears, so the spicy-only analogy makes sense to me now.

But 'why does modern fiction suck?' can be turned into some actual questions: does midlist literary fiction sell? Who buys it? What role does the rise of the bookclub play? If it's not profitable, by-and-large, are publishers publishing it because a) lottery - you might land The Corrections, b) self-image as custodians of the literary tradition, which is important and must be kept c) they just really like it d) a mixture? Publishing/reviewing/bookselling is a narrow world in the UK at least - does it have echo chamber problems? Conservative replication of recognisable forms? (For me, sure; the former's a problem, the latter not so much. And it doesn't account for that much - The Raw Shark Texts was hyped pretty heavily, yknow - the machine is happy to deal with odd stuff. Or maybe that's just Canongate, who are a bit of an exception.)

What are current manifestations of glaze-over midlist? (bcz there's a Nabisco otm upthread about style and themes of this stuff changing over time: fantastic elements are entering, but UK answer, I think, is double plot contemporary/historical - return to family home, uncover something in the distant-ish past, second narrative of these events kicks in alongside). Who likes this and why? (Not meant as a loaded question - I don't especially think that ppl who are happy liking descendants of Austen + Eliot social and psych realism need to read Beckett).

Like, I think it's a real set of questions if it isn't 'why does modern music suck', and more 'Who are these major-label bands who are quite boring, who clearly won't break properly, who are being slightly half-arsedly hyped by the labels', which is maybe a question that, in music terms, makes more sense ten? 15? years ago, and would be open to actual answers.

Other random thoughts on thread: think Scott's take on the 70s/80s literary scene is convincing - lots of weird stuff sitting in unexpected places - Kathy Acker seems a good example - she was latterly in Picador over here, not sure if there's still room at a large-ish house for someone in that tradition, they're pretty much guaranteed to be at Serpent's Tail. I feel like that's because the money's gone, maybe, as much as a narrowing of taste.

Probably should just have let this thread stand at its 'hmmm interesting thread' natural end, but kept thinking abt it yesterday during an 8-year-old's birthday party. They didn't have any answers, but did recommend Skulduggery Pleasant.

georg lukacs appeared to me in a nightmare and mumbled something about the relationship between the conservative tilt/yuppie ascendancy since reagan-thatcher and how contemporary lit, a product of this culture, is as bankrupt as most western economies. he then explained reification to me, and here it gets fuzzy

He took off his pants so that D.H. Lawrence could bugger him.

skulduggery pleasant is kind of weird actually

like it's v obv an attempt to game the kid's lit marketplace but also introduces elements of like china miéville and h.p. lovecraft

my sense of things isn't that things suck as bad as people seem to make out, but a huge percentage of my reading is stuff in translation, and I'd say of the reading I do that's new/contemporary stuff, it's close to 75% literature in translation. most of the English-language books that get buzz/crit-love just do not sound like the sort of thing I'd be interested in.

Like, I think it's a real set of questions if it isn't 'why does modern music suck', and more 'Who are these major-label bands who are quite boring, who clearly won't break properly, who are being slightly half-arsedly hyped by the labels', which is maybe a question that, in music terms, makes more sense ten? 15? years ago, and would be open to actual answers.

so 'polite realism' is a nicer way of saying "landfill realism"!

wait what

it is the landfill indie of the realisms

idk it made sense to me, in my head

no, i got that

i wonder if there's a literary 'some of your friends are already this fucked'

that makes me think there could be an indie rock MFA programme, which would be the worst idea ever

shut the fuck up thom p, I will have my tenured job yet

I could totally see NYU offering that.

my name is not actually 'thom p' :/

yes it is

whatever mr aero smith

was there ever any money in publishing kathy acker?

Prob not a huge amount - I more meant money from big sellers that could be spent on buying odder prestige stuff for the list (like Bloomsbury can still afford this kind of thing, maybe, because of Rowling?). But it's speculation - not sure publishing was ever awash with £££/$$$ (net book agreement must have helped in the UK tho').

Thinking about it, Serpent's Tail might be part of the answer in the uk - a house founded in 86 pretty much dedicated to 'extravagant, outlaw voices neglected by the mainstream' could mean the mainstream can worry less about those voices.

that makes me think there could be an indie rock MFA programme, which would be the worst idea ever

not to derail thread but I consider this a certainty for the near future

not to derail thread but that sentence doesn't even make any sense

This stuff is a bit vague now, but back when I was closer to the publishing world than I am now, it was definitely the case that Harry Potter more or less saved Bloomsbury (bearing in mind that although it was successful after the first three, more or less, it wasn't until the fifth, and the films started coming out that it became an uncontrollable wealth generator - this was when they really started going all out on it - secrecy pacts, night-time last minute deliveries, huge queues, pyramids in all the bookstores etc).

The general impression I got from publishing houses like Bloomsbury and Faber was of a considerable dedication to the concept of modern literature, that would publish and push something they thought was good, regardless of the fact they might make a loss on it, but that this was becoming something less and less easy to do. I can't believe the situation is any better now. Certainly houses like Bloodaxe (not fiction obv) were dedicated to bringing out things they liked.

I think a couple of things are worth noting here, in terms of what woof was saying - 1) Fewer and fewer publishing houses (mid-size ones - not the giant conglomerates, nor the small presses) are able to take these risks. Both Faber (even though fairly conservative) and Bloomsbury are/were exceptional, and to a certain extent were still playing the 'book prize' lottery, we'll publish a load of stuff we think is good, and if we get it 'right' we'll get a couple of Booker Prize nominees out of it.

So then you come down to the question of what wins book prizes, and generally it's the sort of

So I don't think it's quite as simple as 'who reads this?'. I think it goes something like - serious literary fiction wins book prizes, book prizes bring in coverage, therefore readers, therefore money (people will buy booker and whitbread shortlist stuff), therefore if you're going to take a gamble, take a conservative gamble.

Problem is, and it can't be repeated enough, there is no money in publishing, and so in a way, it's to publishers' credit (some of them anyway) that they take the risks they do, they make a loss on most stuff. Readers like reading good stuff, editors like publishing it, and it's surprisingly easy to tell the good from the bad when you're dealing with submissions. The main question now is not just 'Do we want to publish this?', it's, 'Is this worth making a loss for?', a different kind of question. It becomes not 'is this good enough to publish?' but 'is it good enough to make it necessary to publish?' In fact readers tend, iirc, to be looking for an angle that is new, in order to give something a selling point, but it has to be a sort of conservative 'new', because you also need to say it's like something else, in order to give people a feeling they might enjoy it.

Non literary genre fiction is more self-sustaining I'd imagine, it tends to have a knowledgeable fan base, who don't necessarily need awards to know what they want, they'll buy it anyway.

Rambly rambly. At work, not really thinking things through, just maundering.

Yeah, that all makes perfect sense to me, and tallies with what I see - when I'm working for (ahem) the customer magazine of Britain's largest bookchain, it's clear that most people in the system believe in a lot of what they're trying to sell, esp with debut fiction, and will lobby hard for authors they feel are brilliant & a bit neglected here. A bit of the gritted-teeth 'well, we have to try and sell it' or 'it's... interesting' comes in with shaky or idiosyncratic follow-ups to fluke breakout books (Shriver, new Yann Martel, Lewycka, last Niffenegger to an extent).

Kid's lit is the only place where I look at the titles and feel someone, somewhere has a black and cynical heart - bk 17 in the Fashion Fairies series, seven hundred kinds of sexy vampire (eg the 'blue blood' series - Twilight x Gossip Girl), endless series of magic puppies, magic kittens, magic ponies. I guess it's where the nearly reliable money is.

& book prizes, of course - forgot that. But maybe their importance faded a bit in the Richard and Judy era? Being a book-group book will get you further now than being a traditional prize-winner.

Not especially relevant, but I always wonder how Alma-Oneworld-Hesperus make any money.

Just checked to see if I'd made up the fashion fairy series, must have been thinking of these books. Netball and sea-turtle specific fairies! Rum old world.

Christ, Kremlinology-sized and complexity knowledge sets there.

Also: Must remember to not jump around when I'm writing posts, thinking that I'll finish a thought later.

Anyway, just wanted to say - yes, never really factored in book clubs because, well, I never really remember it as a world (it really doesn't appeal, personally, but I can see how it's a good thing in the abstract), but yes, I can see how that would work.

The ages of literature - Romanticism, Victorian, Edwardian/Modernism, pomo, richard and judy.

reading Toby Olson's "The Woman Who Escaped From Shame" (which, lol, is from the 80s?)

can't say I'm enjoying it.

endless descriptions of horses

The Woman Who Escaped From Shane

i don't know if i would call it "enjoyable". it's fucking weird though. that much i know. and stubbornly anti-commercial. i dunno, i just think he's one of those strange american cranks who writes whatever he wants to write without any thought of the outside world. or what's going on elsewhere. hermetic in some way. which is why i mentioned him as an alternative to the fashionable.

not even gonna say what college toby olson went to

Let's just say he and Max shared a bunk bed in '56

btw, am I right in feeling like "endless descriptions of horses" is a recurring parody/joke about literary fiction? I feel like there are at least three or four examples in my head where that's a parody line, the constant description of horses. should we be blaming DH Lawrence for this?

haha it's true i was thinking of the scene in kicking and screaming where they're obviously discussing all the pretty horses

I found the descriptions of the horse to be, frankly astonishingly beautiful, and yet disturbingly arousing.

And when Grady, uh-He saw all those- those horses, I think you were saying, um...and it was... arousing. It was violently arousing.

wonder boys has a horses joke too

from the movie:

Hannah Green: Grady, you know how in class you're always telling us that writers make choices?

Grady Tripp: Yeah.

Hannah Green: And even though you're book is really beautiful, I mean, amazingly beautiful, it's... it's at times... it's... very detailed. You know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses, and the dental records, and so on. And... I could be wrong, but it sort of reads in places like you didn't make any choices. At all. And I was just wondering if it might not be different if... if when you wrote you weren't always... under the influence.

Grady Tripp: Well... thank you for the thought, but shocking as it may sound, I am not the first writer to sip a little weed. Furthermore, it might surprise you to know that one book I wrote, as you say, "under the influence," just happened to win a little something called the Pen Award. Which, by the way, I accepted under the influence.

i die laughing at the "you know, with the genealogies of everyone's horses"

i think of that "you didn't make any choices. at all." line all the time, both when reading and writing

"sip a little weed"

i really love that movie