Books written by authors who seem very satisfied with themselves....

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Hello,
I'm on a reading kick and am looking for recommendations...my pet peeve is reading a book whose tone is that of someone who thinks they've made some deep and unique insight, even if what it's saying: a) has been said before; b) is painfully obvious for anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass

based on this criteria, i was wondering if you guys could either recommend books i should read, or should avoid.

THANKS

― waxyjax (waxyjax), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 18:59 (twenty-one years ago)

S: Dogwalkers by Arthur Bradford, All Hat by Brad Smith, Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler

D: my forthcoming roman å clef Huck Solo and the Temple of the Lost Crusade. It's really fucking terrible.

― Huck, Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

DAVID BROOKS MOTHERFUCKERS.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

ALL OF THEM

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Kafka?

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Sylvia Plath?

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

(not in a bad way - I'd be pretty fucking pleased if I had a published novel)

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

― ())(())()()()(()(LASER)()()()LA(Z)E(R)()()()((L)()()(A)(S(E)R()()()) (ex machina, Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:10 (twenty-one years ago)

DAVE EGGERS.

― eat fudge banana swirl (Nick A.), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Martin Amis

― Leon Czolgosz (Nicole), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

You should read some Vonnegut, if you haven't already. His tone is almost conversational, but his books are always thought-provoking and wise. Everything he wrote up to 'Breakfast of Champions' is highly recommened. Also William Boyd. His latest, 'Any Human Heart', is excellent.

Avoid: Martin Amis. He constantly seems to be sneering at the reader.

― Wooden (Wooden), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

(not in a bad way - I'd be pretty fucking pleased if I had a published novel)
-- Markelby (boyincorduro...), August 18th, 2004.

i see what you're saying--if it's novel written by a published writer...but i'm sure there are writers who wrote their first novel just to put a story, idea,rant, etc...down on paper without having any assurance of getting it published.

― waxyjax (waxyjax), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

x-post

i often fall back on reading vonegut when i'm not sure what i want to read....i haven't read breakfast of champions, but i've ready pretty much everything else--good stuff ;)

― waxyjax (waxyjax), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:20 (twenty-one years ago)

waxyjax, if it's any consolation, if I managed to write a novel that was pretty much okay, I wouldn't need it to be published to feel please (or, rather, astonished) with myself.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:31 (twenty-one years ago)

V.S. Naipaul has a unique way of making his characters, readers, critics, and other writers see and understand their own inferiority. In other words, he's a dick, but I always feel my synapses repairing themselves while reading anything he's written. "Mr Stone and the Knight's Companion" is very good.

― andy, Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:40 (twenty-one years ago)

TEH MOTHERHUFFIN CORRECTIONS

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:41 (twenty-one years ago)

Douglas Coupland, etc.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Martin Amis - London Fields

― Alba (Alba), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh god, avoid Douglas Coupland's Souvenir of Canada at all costs. It's horrendous. There's a sequel, but I'm not going near it. I think I was the only person to give it a neg. review too.

― Huck, Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm reading London Fields right now. It goes beyond satisfied and into smarmy.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:45 (twenty-one years ago)

I gave up about 50 pages in. Reading it was too much like giving attention to an obnoxiously precocious child.

― Wooden (Wooden), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:47 (twenty-one years ago)

Quit, Stence -- it doesn't get any better.

― Leon Czolgosz (Nicole), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I am a glutton for punishment.

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

I have read almost all of William T. Vollmann's novels.

"the new world" (terrence malick film)

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:50 (twenty-one years ago)

markelby--i understand what you're saying...i just want to point out that even if this feeling of accomplishment occurs once the writer has finished writing the novel (regardles of whether or not it gets published), it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be present within the text, which was written during the process leading up to the finish (obv)--ie, an author in the midst of writing a novel, but is uncertain as to how good it will be (and therefore isn't pompous about the content)...but once s/he completes the novel ends up feeling satisfied by the finished product.

basically, all i'm saying is that communicating a self-congratulatory tone during the writing process isn't a constant, regardless of whether or not the author feels a sense of accomplishment once the writing process has finished.

― waxyjax (waxyjax), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:51 (twenty-one years ago)

im reading Due Preparations for The Plague by Janette Turner Hospital and really enjoying it. also by her that is good: Oyster, The Last Magician, the Ivory Swing

― Anthony (Plato Guy), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:55 (twenty-one years ago)

x-post Avoid The Crimson Petal and the White, dear stupid I can outDickens Dickens reader

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm terrified something I write could end up like this.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:58 (twenty-one years ago)

infinite jest to thread!

haha i quite liked london fields

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 19:59 (twenty-one years ago)

Oddly, given that he has been recommended by two people here, the first person I thought of when I saw the thread title was Vonnegut. The second was Tom Robbins. On the other hand, I'm not at all convinced that what we see in Amis is self-satisfaction so much as a broad misanthropy that also includes a substantial slice of self-hatred.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Understood, waxyjax. I recently read "Chatterton" by Peter Ackroyd and the chracters are SO badly written, they just seem to be a terrible reflection of the writer's own idiosyncracies.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I remember seeing that book when it first came out and idly wondering whether or not it would be good. I liked Ackroyd's London bio well enough.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Peter Ackroyd is a twat, really.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Does he have eight million books and that one was the only good one?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, my day is ruined!

― Tom Robbins, Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't really know, but he's fat and he smells and that really comes through in his prose.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Brett Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:09 (twenty-one years ago)

and that other lady that goes with those guys...not Donna Tartt another one.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:10 (twenty-one years ago)

oh god: iain (m.) banks' the business was dripping with smugness. among the worst books i've ever finished.

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:10 (twenty-one years ago)

the Slaves of New York woman?

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:11 (twenty-one years ago)

ayn rand?

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:11 (twenty-one years ago)

yes!

xpost

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:12 (twenty-one years ago)

What about JERRY STAHL?

(I have liked many of these authirs at one time or another, I should say)

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:13 (twenty-one years ago)

PIERS ANTHONY!

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:13 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.vlt.se/uploaded/image/2003/6/17/Parsons_9802.jpg

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:14 (twenty-one years ago)

London Fields is pretty good, but it's the only novel of his I've finished.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:14 (twenty-one years ago)

What author isn't satisfied with themselves? I'd be very satisfied with myself if I ever wrote a book.

― adam. (nordicskilla), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:16 (twenty-one years ago)

again, Kafka, Plath, maybe Vollmann. Shall I list more very unsatisfied-seeming authors?

― hstencil (hstencil), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:17 (twenty-one years ago)

Neal Stephenson, current era? (Not Snow Crash).

― 57 7th (calstars), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Herman Hesse is another one that gets my goat....and I'll be sure to avoid this "Chatterton" by Peter Ackroyd book.

― waxyjax (waxyjax), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't believe I haven't been slathered with OTM's over DAVE EGGERS!!!

― eat fudge banana swirl (Nick A.), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:43 (twenty-one years ago)

It was so obvious nothing more needed to be said.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:44 (twenty-one years ago)

How is that no-one has mentioned the Bible?

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Forgot to mention my little black book too.

― Michael White (Hereward), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:57 (twenty-one years ago)

VLADIMIR NABOKOV (my favorite writer, I think I like smarmy self-satisfaction. I liked Bobos in Paradise too, god help me).

― Symplistic (shmuel), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 20:58 (twenty-one years ago)

AYN RAND SECONDED

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Wednesday, 18 August 2004 21:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Eggers strikes me as very un-satisfied, actually: surely all of his most notable tics started off as nervous, self-conscious "please love me" plaster-overs. If he's self-satisfied he can only be self-satisfied after the fashion of a Woody Allen character. I hope (I hope) this means he's always known that he's a good periodical person who doesn't necessarily know what he's doing as a writer; the stuff he's working on these days seems to bear that idea out.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 21:06 (twenty-one years ago)

His Spin column is practically unreadable.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 21:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Plath's fiction writing was pretty poor, but it wasnt her forte anyway really - compared to her later poetry, the short stories and the Bell Jar are quite weak and magaziney.

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 18 August 2004 21:56 (twenty-one years ago)

Smug & self satisfied- PJ O'Rourke. I read "eat the rich" and that was the first thing that came to mind when you said self-satisfied. It's like Rush Limbaugh as a pseudo-intellectual, facile-cynical hipster.

― Queen Electric Butt Prober BZZT!! BZZZZZT!! (Queen Electric Butt Prober BZZ), Thursday, 19 August 2004 02:22 (twenty-one years ago)

just got these and wanna know which to read first(and am too lazy to post on ILB):
David Foster Wallace - The Broom of the System
Daniel Keyes - Flowers For Algernon
Chuck Palahniuk - Invisible Monsters
Vonnegut - Breakfast of Champions

I've never read Wallace or Keyes before...

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 19 August 2004 03:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Read Flowers for Algernon and then really depress yourself with the Vonnegut. I should think the Palahniuk will be a laugh riot after that.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:10 (twenty-one years ago)

ENTIRE PUBLISHED WORK OF WILL SELF TO THREAD!

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I liked Broom, but he is kind of self-satisfied (not as much as Vonnegut though!). Palahniuk is very good, and although I don't think I've read anything else by Keyes, Flowers For Algernon is a really great novel.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Anything by Nabokov and John Updike

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:16 (twenty-one years ago)

Some idiot recommended The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho to me once. Oh God. What an absolute pile of turgid banal vapid woolly new-agey misguided and downright harmful excrement, dressed up as profound spiritual insight.

― ledge (ledge), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't believe no one has yet mentioned Will Self. starining so hard to be an enfant terrible. he seemed quite nice on shooting stars, but any other time he comes on the telly i want to punch it. his books are even worse.

i gave up on money 150 pages in. the precocious child thing upthread couldn't be more accurate.

― dave amos, Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

ENTIRE PUBLISHED WORK OF WILL SELF TO THREAD!
-- Matt DC (runmd...), August 19th, 2004.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 19 August 2004 09:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't mind so much people being self-satisfied in their writing if I like them. For whatever reason, I feel like like Will Self and don't like Martin Amis. Maybe it's because WS is funny and MA is not. I've never read any of Self's fiction though.

― Alba (Alba), Thursday, 19 August 2004 10:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Nabokov only comes across as self-satisfied in his introductions, but not in his novels themselves. Plus I think his self-satisfaction is pretty damn justified.

― eat fudge banana swirl (Nick A.), Thursday, 19 August 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I agree. His book of lectures from Princeton, or wherever, is quite interesting and his short stories are lovely.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 19 August 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I've only read Lolita, in which the narrator is supposed to be self-satisfied.

― Wooden (Wooden), Thursday, 19 August 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Ok I started BOTS, and while DFW seems a little smug, he's smug in a specific sort of way that I seem to find entertaining.
After that I'll go for the Keyes -> Vonnegut -> Palahniuk sequence that Liz suggested.

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Thursday, 19 August 2004 19:19 (twenty-one years ago)

Huck, how come you hated 'Souvenir of Canada' so much?

― dave q, Friday, 20 August 2004 18:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Recommended books where the author is overly satisfied with himself:

The Fall - Albert Camus
Keep the Aspidistra Flying - George Orwell

― dave225 (Dave225), Friday, 20 August 2004 18:44 (twenty-one years ago)

The Beats.

― Markelby (Mark C), Saturday, 21 August 2004 17:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Recommended books where the author is overly satisfied with himself:
The Fall - Albert Camus

haven't read this in a while but isn't it more the CHARACTER who's satisfied with himself rather than the author?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 21 August 2004 19:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Haruki Marakami comes to mind.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 21 August 2004 20:01 (twenty-one years ago)

A lot of Milan Kundera would fall into this category. but his books are still great -- only for those who can bear extensive philosophizing.

― Star Cauliflower (Star Cauliflower), Saturday, 21 August 2004 20:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, we haven't heard enough about people who are great precisely because they're so self-satisfied (although I don't know if I'd put Kundera in that category).

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 21 August 2004 21:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Those slippery devils, Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill. Did they peak at A'level?

― kayT (kaytee), Saturday, 21 August 2004 22:53 (twenty-one years ago)

What do people mean when they say something feels self-satisfied? (I suspect sedaris would qualify under any terms but I avoid him like the plague!)

I mean for eggers its this feeling like it was one thing when he was searching for validation, but then he got it and the ticks never went away!

Others I feel like when they searched for validation they refused it.

Is it coz ppl. feel the author has a pat moral compass which they refuse to interrogate?

I'd really strike Ellis from that list, except maybe for Glamorama, and McInerny too, if not for Bright Lights (which I guess did feel pat, but also elegant) then for Brightness Falls which is just fantastically glum.

Is it authors who are too simple-mindely funny? What about maybe Heller circa Good As Gold or so?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I just think "smug" when i see "self-satisfied".

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Sterling, how come you don't post more on ILB. You really should. Maybe.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:46 (twenty-one years ago)

Self-satisfaction means to me just what it sounds like it means. A feeling that the author is sitting there writing it going "ah ha ha, I'm so brilliant, I'm putting this so well".

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:50 (twenty-one years ago)

There's a kind of poverty of vision about it, like they think it, whatever it is, can all be wrapped up by them.

It probably often hides great insecurities, but doesn't everything.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:52 (twenty-one years ago)

but sometimes they are genius and they are right. isn't that what we like about clever people with talent? it's only when they fail that we sniff and proclaim them poseurs of the worst sort.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 22 August 2004 01:57 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.pcusa.org/today/images/cover/0903/bible.jpg

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 22 August 2004 02:08 (twenty-one years ago)

I dunno, scott. Reading the books that have impressed me most of all, I have almost lost a sense of the author altogether.

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 22 August 2004 02:17 (twenty-one years ago)

(or at least, I haven't held an irritating picture of them in my mind, writing it. Maybe it helps a lot not to have seen or even read the author in interview)

― Alba (Alba), Sunday, 22 August 2004 02:18 (twenty-one years ago)

This is true in many cases, alba. and certainly in more traditional forms of writing that are less self-reflexive, po-mo, experimental, author-as-subject, etc. But a truly talented writer can bring themselves into the proceedings without alienating the reader. I think. I do agree with you that I bristle when I see the author behind the curtain trying and failing to work magic for there own benefit. Some people, too, have a faulty idea of just how clever and humorous they really are.

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 22 August 2004 02:30 (twenty-one years ago)

Have you ever seen Def Poetry Jam on HBO?

― scott seward (scott seward), Sunday, 22 August 2004 02:32 (twenty-one years ago)

scott i don't post more on ilb coz i haven't read novels in a relatively long time, a few particular authors aside. i fully intend to read more this coming year though, as my grad program will require it.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 22 August 2004 02:42 (twenty-one years ago)

eleven months pass...

"The Romantic Movement" by Alain de Botton. There were moments in the book when I could imagine him, as he was writing it, looking at himself in a mirror, chuckling and saying something to the effect of "Damn you're good."

― J-rock (Julien Sandiford), Thursday, 18 August 2005 07:18 (twenty years ago)

Nietzsche.

― The Popish Plot (dymaxia), Thursday, 18 August 2005 07:24 (twenty years ago)

pynchon

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 18 August 2005 07:27 (twenty years ago)

Pauline Kael!

― C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Thursday, 18 August 2005 07:54 (twenty years ago)

COMPLETE WORKS OF N**K H***BY

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Thursday, 18 August 2005 07:56 (twenty years ago)

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