i feel like i am finally catching on to this game where stuff you dont like is "realism" and stuff you do like isnt "realism"
― max, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:14 (thirteen years ago) link
do you want a medal or something
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:15 (thirteen years ago) link
honestly "realist" is kind of slippery here, in a way where i think you could endlessly argue that contemporary fiction is too "realist" for you, example by example. you seem to be using it kind of arbitrarily yourself, and even though i agree with scott and Alfred that Henry James novels could be considered experimental in form, he wrote about human consciousness, which counts as pretty realist to me.
xpost oh never mind, max covered it
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:16 (thirteen years ago) link
currently on review at the nyt:
biographythrillerbiographyBOOK ABOUT A HALF-APE GIRLnon-fiction about anti-semitismkidnapping book**REALISM ALERT** book about relationships in new york
― max, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:16 (thirteen years ago) link
kinda bummed i read that possible true blood spoiler
― jeff, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:17 (thirteen years ago) link
nonfiction = realism duh
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:17 (thirteen years ago) link
like how can you look at either the nyt bestseller list OR the nyt recently reviewd books and say "literary realism dominates the landscape"?? all the books are about spies or fairies or fucking half-ape teenagers
― max, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:18 (thirteen years ago) link
AND YES I WOULD LIKE A FUCKING MEDAL
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.
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:21 (thirteen years ago) link
would categorize the thriller and the kidnap book as realism fwiw
also the book about Facebook, probably
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:22 (thirteen years ago) link
for one thing, I do not want to read a book about fucking Facebook
so "realism" = takes place on Earth.
― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:22 (thirteen years ago) link
Shakey you're arguing so all over the place! do you want the books about spies and fairies to be accorded more critical attention? or do you despise the masses for liking them? i seriously am not sure what that nyt bestsellers post is doing on this thread.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:22 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:23 (thirteen years ago) link
um I think it's more likely that you aren't paying attention to what people are actually reading
― "Don't forget to bring a juggalo towel!" (HI DERE), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:23 (thirteen years ago) link
spies, kidnapping = realism
noir = not realism
white teeth = realism
dickens = not realism
fairies = not worth talking about
― max, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:23 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:24 (thirteen years ago) link
this thread
― caek, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:26 (thirteen years ago) link
, 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)
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:26 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:26 (thirteen years ago) link
didn't say this, said it was debatable in regards to SALMAN RUSHDIE
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.
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:27 (thirteen years ago) link
also this has led to Glenn Beck being described as a "realist!" GO ILX!
no one said this
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:28 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:28 (thirteen years ago) link
"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, 9 July 2010 20:28 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:29 (thirteen years ago) link
this thread is clarifying to me why we are mortal enemies wrt The Wire, also.
lol
hug it out bro
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:29 (thirteen years ago) link
just glancing over this now but yeah a fair amount of this makes me roll my eyes
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:31 (thirteen years ago) link
― 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.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:33 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:34 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:34 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― "Don't forget to bring a juggalo towel!" (HI DERE), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:35 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― Philip Nunez, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:36 (thirteen years ago) link
most people who write can't speak, right?seriously otm
― ghee hee hee (La Lechera), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:40 (thirteen years ago) link
wait, does shakey dislike the wire or something?
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:41 (thirteen years ago) link
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.
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:42 (thirteen years ago) link
― 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.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:43 (thirteen years ago) link
^^ that's not a "new novel" or anything, but I wonder if Shakey would enjoy it (probably not?)
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:44 (thirteen years ago) link
haha nah I like the Wire fine, I just think the Sopranos was better
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:45 (thirteen years ago) link
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 GoodmanThe 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 Frenchwhen 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 Simpsontook 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 BaldwinAlzheimer’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 FranzenJonathan 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 NelsonTypical 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 BirnbachActual 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 ChangChang, 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?”
― Master of the Manly Ballad (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:47 (thirteen years ago) link
you sound terrible!
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:47 (thirteen years ago) link
j/k i am going to go get some air
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:48 (thirteen years ago) link
yes nabisco! my grandmother gave it to me, actually, like right after you had recommended it, and i read it, and loved it.
― max, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:50 (thirteen years ago) link
Per Petterson is really good!
― surfer blood for oil (Hurting 2), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:50 (thirteen years ago) link
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
― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:51 (thirteen years ago) link
how can this per petterson be good when he/she writes books about mothers, so disgustingly realist.
― horseshoe, Friday, 9 July 2010 20:51 (thirteen years ago) link
lol now it is my turn to be snarky
She was as public-spirited as the sun.
This is great.
― surfer blood for oil (Hurting 2), Friday, 9 July 2010 20:52 (thirteen years ago) link