Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

Inspired by some of the talk on new novels and why they suck and whatever, here's a rolling thread for discussion of new literary fiction!

I just got to the top of the library holds list for 'Tinkers' (just won the Pulitzer) - I pick it up today! Sounds good - will report back after I finish bloody Proust.

this list of upcoming titles might interest some

i really want to read that shteyngart novel but it apparently doesn't come out here until september

i keep thinking 'oh, that's coming out soon', and then i check, and remember it's not, here

You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin

hmmmmmm

i really want to read that shteyngart novel but it apparently doesn't come out here until september

boy this one has all kinds of buzz, it feels like

I'm cleansing my palate after Your Face Tomorrow with nonfiction...it always takes me forever to finish nonfiction books tho

oh god, i still have that lying around for after i finish the thirty-eight other things i am reading

its really good dude!!!!! altho i tried reading the "prequel" but it was kinda boring so i read some short stories instead

today i bought the other two kj parker books and stephen king's new pb. i don't even belong on this thread right now.

haha u ended up buying the other parkers? im still keeping an eye out for them

on topic: i really liked the imperfections by tom rachman.

d'you want my copies when i'm done? they're only going to go in a box somewhere, otherwise

i am sure i will have THOUGHTS to share about them on the rolling contemporary nerd fiction thread. i will note in passing that one of the characters is now thinking about 'insurgents'

yah def - i can send you some stuff in return, if youd like. either from the nerd fic thread or this one. i have a whole bunch of nyrb publishing things i can send as well.

also i will be in LDN for a little bit this fall (like l8 sept.)

Current library pile = authors from the New Yorker Top 20 Under 40 list, bits and pieces from that Dalkey ArchiveBest European Fiction 2010, Ann Carson's Autobiography Of Red, and a few recommendations from the other thread (Tom McCarthy's Remainder, Mo Yan's Life & Death...). Had been caught up playing catchup with teen fiction for some freelance pieces - writers like Libba Bray & M.T. Anderson seem to be doing what Shakey wants from fiction, heh. Nothing local's caught my eye lately (I think Eleanor Catton's had some press in the UK?), but I've picked up a few journals.

Anyone read Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad yet?

i think there was talk abt it in some other thread?? cant remember where tho

Bit of chat about a UK one here.

(ayo lamp send me your address. tom dot west at gmail dot com)

hey dudes, it's ksh

I need to get back into the habit of reading fiction regularly again, so I've decided to start off by rereading Coetzee's Disgrace. haven't read any Coetzee since high school, I think, but I'm looking forward to revisiting this one

C by Tom McCarthy, anyone?

Also I see from the ILB FAP discussion that Steven Hall comes up in that list, and that was reviewed by Tom McCarthy.

Absolutely. The one book I'm excited by this year. I'm in the crowd that thinks Remainder was a bit special, & this is the proper follow-up, so I've been waiting for it for a bit. Should maybe try to shake a copy from the publishing tree this week.

Never had an impulse to read Steven Hall - he was recommended to me by a couple of people, but I think they were maybe assuming I'd like something a bit meta because I read curious things.

At the mo, enjoying the bloodsport reviews of Craig Raine's novel. Sounds awful, but I might read it in a bookshop. Intrigued by the bile it's generated.

Almost finished and I can confirm that Tinkers is wonderful.

tempted to go pick up the Gary Shteyngart tomorrow in store, which I pretty much never do

^i have it on hold at my library

recently finished 'atmospheric disturbances' which i liked a lot

Just chatted about C to a decently connected publishing person - acc to him, a few ppl are saying it's a masterpiece, easy best novel of the year, etc. But I don't really trust the insider perspective (especially as McC's properly represented and with a big house this time), so I'm ready to be disappointed.

Think I want to read Atmospheric Disturbances.

If man's autocracy, his genius, his powers of generation, have all passed to the machine, and if the pulpy, material base for the refined and abstract thoughts and emotions that we read in books has been revealed to us, then how can we understand poetry or prose as the sublime self-expression of autonomous and elevated individuals? Melville's answer is as implicit as his question: we can't, not any more.

wut

also am generally suspicious of anyone who writes about marinetti with breathy enthusiasm.

Booker longlist 2010:

Peter Carey: Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue: Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
Helen Dunmore: The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)
Damon Galgut: In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy: The Long Song(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
Tom McCarthy: C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet(Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
Lisa Moore: February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Paul Murray: Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
Rose Tremain: Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
Christos Tsiolkas: The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
Alan Warner: The Stars in the Bright Sky (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

Thoughts? I've only read one of these (The Slap, fucking brilliant) so I feel unqualified to really comment.

Shit--have read none, though I've bought but not yet opened the Paul Murray.

I've read the Paul Murray. It's enjoyable but it didn't exactly wow me and i'm not sure it really justifies it's length. Kind of surprised to see it on here tbh. Quite refreshing not to see Ian McEwan on there though.

still need to buy & read Solar. so out of the loop u_u

you really dont

is it bad? i've read a bunch of McEwan and the only thing I really wasn't a fan of was Amsterdam

by a bunch I mean, like, four of five

he kinda sucks, i think

Yup

i don't think he sucks at all, but that's not the point. curious to hear max's opinion

oh i was just being flippant. i didnt read it. i dont like him, or what he 'stands for.' he comes across like an asshole in interviews. but i met him once and he was vaguely nice.

oh cool. I think I've seen like one interview with him or something, but that was a long time ago so I don't really remember it. my opinion of him is more or less based on just reading his stuff. we were assigned Atonement in 11th grade or whatever and I read Amsterdam, Cement Garden, and Saturday after that -- all in high school and right after I graduated -- and then I picked up On Chesil Beach when it was released back in 2007. i liked Saturday the best

actually not sure if I even read all of Atonement

you missed a pretty crucial ending, dumbass

a "twist" ending

yeah

youll never know if 'atonement' 'occurs'

hey Que, can you shut the fuck up and leave me alone?

you follow me into every fucking thread, and at this point it's more or less harassment

hey, just saying. Atonement has a twist ending and if you didn't read the whole thing, you missed something crucial.

i'm not fucking kidding about the harassment, dude. i never did anything to you as far as I remember, but you make it a point to make my posting experience here way less enjoyable everyday. i understand you don't like me, and i don't care about that or if you actually still think i'm a sock, but you need to just leave me alone

**SPOILER ALERT**

Part four

The fourth section, titled "London 1999", is written from Briony's perspective. She is a successful novelist at the age of 77 and dying of vascular dementia.

It is revealed that Briony is the author of the preceding sections of the novel. Although Cecilia and Robbie are reunited in Briony's novel, they were not in reality. Robbie Turner died of septicemia caused by his injury on the beaches of Dunkirk and Cecilia was killed by the bomb that destroyed the gas and water mains above Balham Underground station. The truth is that Cecilia and Robbie never saw each other again after their half-hour meeting. Although the detail concerning Lola's marriage to Paul Marshall is true, Briony never visited Cecilia to make amends.

Briony explains why she decided to change real events and unite Cecilia and Robbie in her novel, although it was not her intention in her many previous drafts. She did not see what purpose it would serve if she told the readers the pitiless truth. She reasons that they could not draw any sense of hope or satisfaction from it. But above all, she wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia their happiness by being together. Since they could not have the time together they so much longed for in reality, Briony wanted to give it to them at least in her novel.

sorry i called you a dumbass dude. i hardly post anymore, so i don't know what you mean about following you into threads. but i will leave this one, ok?

it's ok. there are a million times where you've showed up and attacked me for what I thought was pretty innocuous stuff -- all I'm asking you to do is to back off it

anyway, is anyone else planning on reading Super Sad True Love Story? I actually dropped by Barnes and Noble earlier to pick up a copy, which I haven't done in a while for new fiction, and I just started reading the very, very beginning earlier

everybody's stoked about the upcoming translation of Zettels Traum right?

Markers, in an attempt to be helpful, I think if you liked 'Saturday' or 'The Innocent' of McEwan's, you'll like 'Solar'.

I'll quote myself from one of the 2010 reading threads:

I really enjoyed Solar, though everyone else round here seems to hate McEwan. It's pretty amusing, though it involves at least 2 unlikely coincidences. Really it's like a C21 version of Victorian lit: "big issue' theme, lots of coincidences, larger than life characters, and some lovely prose

thanks, James! much appreciated. I do still think I'd like to read it sometime

anyway, is anyone else planning on reading Super Sad True Love Story?

i have it but havent started it yet. i also got 'goon squad' & the new david mitchell novel. however its p hot so i really only want to read abt sorcerers atm

also i think atonement is really good or least 'interesting' despite my many problems w/ mcewan

also also thomp sent you an emailllll

Josipovici has a book to sell.

Never really like the 'not as good as it was before' narratives, even if

"prep school boys showing off"

and

"The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world"

have me giving a hesitant nod of acquiescence.

Also the analysis of 'hollowness' v 'genuine exploration' is too vague and the implied idea that the best books have some sort of spiritual centre makes me suspicious. And anyway I really didn't get on with his Goldberg: Variations (tho didn't mind Everything Passes), so am not automatically predisposed to his viewpoint. I guess if I want to find out more I'll have to read the book. Still seems like a pretty boring thing to go on about, so I think I'll end up standing this one out, thanks.

Tree-shakedown success! C just turned at work. Hmmmm. Appears to have present-tense narration, don't usually approve of that (exception: The Driver's Seat).

Josipovici... yeah, I've also noticed that Julian Barnes isn't as good as Kafka. Fair point, would not disagree. But for the rest of it.. it's all a bit muddled, especially what he has to say about newspaper opinion and awards etc. And I feel like we've been here before in various threads, but the heyday of Modernism he looks back to... it's never quite been like that in England, especially. I mean that's the era of Maugham and Priestley and AJ Cronin and Rogue Herries - it's always a bit disheartening to survey the body of literary production - just had a browse of the Short Title Catalogue for the 1st year of Tristram Shandy (1759) & there's a lot of tedious-sounding tosh there (ok, plus Johnson & Sarah Fielding. And I am very tempted to call up a copy of The uncommon adventures oF Miss Kitty F****r.)

But I'm sure knows this & just wants a bit of fuss.

Guess Josipovici feels he has to do this because especially McEwan is a big deal over here, btu one out of 10 people probably feel like he does. That article is taken from comments quoted from books and an interview, and the book itself I'm sure will sound a bit more together. But yeah it sounds quite tired.

The problem is his version of Modernism that he is playing off against this stuff. Or that I distrust the narrative, sure Joyce and Beckett were friends and collaborated; and Joyce helped Svevo and Broch but besides that it always assumed that, I dunno Joyce and Proust were looking at what each other were writing, or that there were common goals between the authors instead of those two pursuing their own goals.

Also has that flippant English have no art or music here, unlike the continent, and while my reading probably reflects some of this there are always notable exceptions you discover, and then you discover enough of them to think they are not exceptions anymore.

Funnily enough I suspect McCarthy of harbouring a lot of those corny old Euro-mod attitudes himself, which is one of the reasons I haven't got round to reading him yet.

Did manage to finish Lipsyte's The Ask on holiday last week - like everything I've read by him it starts off crackling and sparking, and then just seems to fizzle out. Also finished Catherine O'Flynn's The News Where You Are which I really wanted to like but again just meandered to dullness. I think she might be better off writing kids' novels?

That's true, but I think he does lean a bit later than or off to one side of high Euro-mod - Blanchot seemed to be key for Remainder, it's a bit of Futurism this one, comfortable with Theory & he seems to keep up with developments in French fiction. But yeah, it's still the 'i are serious book' tradition - v josipivici friendly, in fact.

Shame about O'Flynn. As I think I said at the Fap, she comes across as thoughtful & funny, and I was all for Midlands local telly star as protagonist.

I think O'Flynn is a lot sharper than her books in a funny way. Like Ian Sansom with his Mobile Library series, she seems to be going out of her way to write books for people who don't read much. Which is a laudable enough ambition, but you get the sense that both are needlessly hobbling themselves.

I really liked the way she talked about Birmingham as a city that wants reinvent itself & grab the future, but keeps changing its mind about what the future should be, so there are fragments & ghosts of old schemes all over the place. Seemed a simple, smart and affectionate way to look at a city.

anyone heard of michael syjuco's illustrado? sounds so much like my kind of thing i am a little afraid. here is a thing i read about it on tumblr

http://booksinthekitchen.tumblr.com/post/916201564/miguel-syjuco-ilustrado

The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers

the word 'overrated' should be removed from all discourse imo

Which of these Filmmakers are Most Overrated?

the word 'overrated' should be removed from all discourse imo

real talk

Others hide behind a smokescreen of unreadable inimitability--Marilynne Robinson, for example

OK is this writer an imbecile?

Also, if critics of the 1920's were so "perceptive" why they'd pick so many Pulitzer winners which are, by the writer's estimation, unworthy?

i would like to stand up for my man Mark Gluth and say that "The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis" is the best novella of the year, imho.

also markers, 'The Child in Time' is clearly the best McEwan novel. i've been pretty 'meh' about everything else i've read by him, but that book is just undeniably gorgeous.

seriously, amy tan is not my cup of tea either, but ascribing to her the power/role of "ruining ethnic/minority fiction" is totally insane/absurd/blaming an author for a marketing/publishing industry issue

guess i'll never read anything by an asian american again, bc joy luck club sucks

getting so mad just thinking about it; i need to not read the rest of that thing

^^^good idea

haha right?

i just dont read articles with the word "overrated" in them anymore because if i want to raise my blood pressure i might as well eat deep fried oreo or something, at least that way i enjoy myself

i know i'm such a sucker

articles about fiction are to me as fox news is to my dad

hahaha me too

that could go either way

Yeah I couldn't even get to the second page. Ugh @ the first paragraph - it sounds like something from my high school written exams.

i just dont read articles with the word "overrated" in them anymore because if i want to raise my blood pressure i might as well eat deep fried oreo or something, at least that way i enjoy myself

^^^^ with a vengeance.

quick show of hands: who's going to read the new jonathan franzen?

hand up

hand up (in paperback)

i just noticed it comes out three weeks later in england! cockgoblins

hand up
the uk cover's also kind of a monstrosity

http://nozama.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ed05fc288330133f294f045970b-600wi

i p much always prefer us covers to uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/aug/23/jonathan-franzen-freedom

oh god

i predict this novel will be 'sort of alright'

also, i wouldn't want to judge between those two covers without seeing physical versions - i think the drop-shadows on the uk one might be better, and the colour tone on the us one less obnoxious, in person. BUT OH, WHAT IS THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BIRD

hang on which cover is which? one on the left with the bird is by far the most dreadful.

i just realised i have them the wrong way round, i thought the one with the bird was the uk one? but i guess it's the us one since it says 'A NOVEL'

yessssss

neither of them are above kindergarten level really. uk one is portentous-by-numbers (pretty low numbers at that) but the us one is just 'clip art photoshop filter will this do'?

otm. why could they not have got better designers? i guess it's obv gonna sell so no one cares but still

guys apparently one of the subplots of this novel is about the quest to save a lesser spotted warbler or something, that is why there are birds on the cover

Still, that is a very weak cover.

Also, my hand is way up. I'm on the request list at the library, but according to the online catalogue they haven't even ordered it yet.

i just pre-ordered it, but i am hell of sick of the discussion surrounding it already

yeah that's true. also, so much of the discussion making it sound like no good books have come out since the corrections

doubt the insta-reviewers have like, read it, tbh

it's mainly how for most of the last ten years if he was mentioned it was 'ha ha that goofy self-obsessed jonathan franzen, and those overeducated white male novelists and their overeducated white male preoccupations' - which is totally correct, nb - and once there's a new book and the marketplace steps in this viewpoint is nowheeeeeeeeere

xpost i definitely plan to review it without reading it

it's mainly how for most of the last ten years if he was mentioned it was 'ha ha that goofy self-obsessed jonathan franzen, and those overeducated white male novelists and their overeducated white male preoccupations' - which is totally correct, nb

i dunno if either of these things are true? i mean obviously one shouldn't be too educated or white, and the best people to say so are... literary critics? academics? bloggers? but ppl were saying franzen was a good element iirc.

yeah, i think a part of my issue is my bias in terms of the media outlets i choose to expose myself to

like maybe the default broadsheet opinion on franzen would have been a lot closer to his current position over the entire period '01-'10, i just wouldn't encounter it because without the new book he hasn't been so publicly visible in terms of these things. whereas in terms of lit crit and lit blogs and nerds on message boards and er talking to people who read these things in real life the default opinion on him is a little more context-aware.

conversely, i probably need more exposure to sophisticated 'omg this writer is white and well-educated he probably sucks and gets all his college friends to write nice things about him' type blogs

I hate spoilers, so I've managed to avoid reading any of the reviews in full. I read the first paragraph of the NYT one and that will do until after I'm finished it.

Super Sad True Love Story remains mostly unread :-/

there's a new book and the marketplace steps in this viewpoint is nowheeeeeeeeere

― thomp, Thursday, 26 August 2010 16:18 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's somewhere - http://www.theawl.com/2010/08/behind-the-franzenfreude

But really, we're still doing the thing where we elevate a fiction-writing white men as the Greatest Thing In American Writing Today?

yeah ima stop reading when it gets this sassy

curse those white men though, curse them!

the author of that just started following my tumblr after a post of mine kvetching about franzen got reblogged ... she's pretty smart & a good writer, i think

the awl needs subeditors tho. "a fiction writing white men"?

it stops being sassy and becomes earnest, but it's all kind of ehh to me. if one aspires to writing novels it's probably more interesting.

Even the Brits agree that Franzen has tapped into some kind of shared experience psyche: the Guardian called The Corrections "a report from the frontline of American culture."

It seems a fair question, in that context, to ask: "What's this 'we,' white man?"

well the guardian is being glib, but doesn't this suggest that franzen does address people outside brooklyn? she doesn't say whether the guardian writer is white/a man/_______, and perhaps said writer isn't any of those things. if there isn't a 'shared experience psyche' (great phrase huh) i guess literature is p much fucked.

What collective American experience do these critics envision Franzen as describing? I have a suspicion they simply imagine their own white, male, middle class experiences as the "American experience," because it's always been presented that way to them, not least in the novels of Updike and Mailer and sometimes Roth that they so often list as favorites.

and this is kind of hmmmmmm too -- critics, ime anyway, talk about roth in terms of jewishness a whole lot of the time, not of 'universal' american experience. not, and this is the point with all of them surely, that he is defined by his jewishness.

I really liked Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, they're probably the two best new books I've read this year, but it feels like there's a trend of these like literary novels that humorously treat their heroes as grotesques, like constantly talking about how gross they look and how fat they are and how people don't like them very much. I don't know, I guess maybe it's not a "trend" since I can't think of any other examples but Shteyngart and Lipsyte in particular are very similar in doing this, across all of their books that I've read. It's interesting.

I'll probably read the new Franzen eventually but I'm not like superpumped about it or anything.

and yeah I guess is actually more of a long literary tradition than a recent trend, so nevermind. I just want to talk about those books. They both ended up affecting me more than I expected.

yeah super sad love story was pretty great, + i like that thing w/ how gross the heroes are but i kinda hope that shteyngart doesnt do it again w/ his next book, i had read absurdistan only a month or so ago + it's the same thing

Key transition between paragraphs 9 and 10:

So when you are a lady writer, or an African American writer (sometimes you are both, whee!) and you write something, and it is met with silence by those you see yourself as writing to, or, perhaps worse, a shrug or faint praise, well, that does seem to undermine your project. It makes you feel like your voice is worth less than someone else's. It makes you wonder if you should bother to keep speaking at all.

Your writing doesn't get the reaction you think it deserves, and as a result you feel less confident.

And the silencing and devaluing of those voices has consequences, particularly when it tends to happen disproportionately to certain populations.

Those feelings aren't your responsibility now. They are symptoms of external agency. Your voice is being silenced and devalued. It's being done to you.

Another move I don't follow:

Isn't it fair for her to ask critics to value for something that speaks more closely to her actual life?

No cheap shots about grammar from me. But this writer has already dismissed (accurately, I think) not only the gatekeeping role of traditional publishing but the "mere ego stroke of getting praise in a good review." From that stance, why should she plead for critics to value anything at all? I don't think she or anyone can maintain that critics are keeping gates between readers and writers when the gates have dissolved in the internet cloud.

Franzen doesn't live in Brooklyn.

I think these complaints are so daft, pointless, self-serving and time-wasting!

So I hope I agree with you alimosina!

I'm going to read this, but it looks like I'm going to have to wait for a new edition because those covers are horrible.

i have no idea how you can spend the best part of a decade on a book then accept that cover (the US one, the UK one is bad but not offensive) just... i mean, it's totally baffling. so awful.

I'm looking forward to the book though, I have it pre-ordered. Pretty sure it will be great.

hello book friends--i am working on a fall books preview (geared toward an american audience); is there anything coming out in sept/oct/nov/dec that you are particularly looking forward to?

who claimed he lives in brooklyn?

also there's nothing i am looking forward to not covered in the books preview at the start of the thread /: mainly twain's autobio and the pale king, i guess

also, that stating that the literary efforts of women and of people of colour are occluded by the auto-lionising treatment given to white dudes is "daft, pointless, self-serving and time-wasting" without bothering to engage with the particular complaint is pretty abhorrent. just saying.

yeah i dont know that i "get" the virulent response to that awl article, even if i dont agree with it 100%

the pale king <--- otm x 10,000

max, i'm guessing you've already been through conversational reading's 'interesting new books 2010' list? doesn't entirely overlap w the list at the the start of the thread.

(the things i've been looking forward to are i think already out in the us - the lydia davis short story collection, mo yan's life and death are wearing me out)

pale king doesn't come out until next spring

here's a "pro tip" for you guys: if you buy a hardcover book, you can "take off" the offensive paper cover and discard it/defecate in it/blog about it

yes i have c sharp though thanks for linking! i am sort of wondering if theres anything special to ilxors hearts that they are v excited for, because my personal anticipations are pretty basic and in-line w/ the lists that are out there

excited about the lydia davis translation of madame bovary

The Ask had more lol lines than any book I've read this year. Really not much more than that, but a hoot nonetheless.

excited about the lydia davis translation of madame bovary

― Mr. Que

i am now also excited about this idea

Anyone read Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad yet?

Good stuff.

Yeah, I enjoyed it too. I think any of the chapters expanded into its novel would be kind of insufferable but the format helps move things along before things get too morose or the characters wear out their welcome.

The Ask had more lol lines than any book I've read this year. Really not much more than that, but a hoot nonetheless.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 31, 2010 10:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'd say it's a little more than that, I thought it successfully built up some pathos by the end and I was more emotionally affected by it than I expected.

anyone heading out to pick up Freedom today?

the Franzen frenzy is a little weird to me. I liked The Corrections but that's pretty much his only book that anybody cares about so when did this turn into such a big deal? Is it just because it's been so long since the last one?

that and it's gotten stellar reviews

oh

I get people getting excited about a book that will probably be good, but like the cover of TIME magazine seems kind of unnecessary

I liked The Corrections but that's pretty much his only book that anybody cares about so when did this turn into such a big deal? Is it just because it's been so long since the last one?

all it takes is one of your novels to turn into a modern classic for the hype for the followup to be deafening

joke is on TIME magazine, no one reads books, or magazines

yeah and the article seemed 100% insane, from what i read online

all it takes is one of your novels to turn into a modern classic for the hype for the followup to be deafening

― markers, Tuesday, August 31, 2010 11:42 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and this is how David Mitchell was named People's Sexiest Man of the Year

it seems weird to me too, and it makes me a little sad because i'm expecting it to be a solid book that doesn't justify the hype/backlash.

apparently there's a translation of some bolano short stories coming out today as well?

xp

I wonder how many copies it'll end up selling -- I have no idea how well "blockbuster" literary novels tend to do

quick google suggests his last novel did over a million in hard cover

also one of the ten best sellers of '01, up there with the stephen kings and john grishams, sales-wise. i have no idea how you'd look at the long-tail sales for it, though.

yeah, a million plus is probably a really good & rare number for literary fiction to pull off

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/review/Burn-t.html

came out in the late spring but still looks rad

I'd say it's a little more than that, I thought it successfully built up some pathos

Yeah, I agree.

Que, that does look pretty awesome.

(And the reviewer apparently wrote a book on Franzen: "Stephen Burn’s latest book is “Jonathan Franzen at the End of Postmodernism.” He teaches at Northern Michigan University.")

Wow. The new James Franco book, a collection of short stories, actually has some big authors giving it really positive blurbs ...

http://www.amazon.com/Palo-Alto-Stories-James-Franco/dp/1439163146/ref=br_lf_m_1000535991_1_24_ttl?ie=UTF8&s=books&pf_rd_p=1272423682&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_i=1000535991&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0H2AY4DPEFT658406BN1

I'll be damned if I read it though.

This is a book to be inhaled more than once,

O RLLY

http://mimg.sulekha.com/english/the-pineapple-express/stills/the-pineapple-express05.jpg

I don't see why it's inconceivable that a dude pursing an advanced English degree at Columbia might be a good writer

He could be!

but he's got one helluva agent.

i think i defended his story that esquire published. i dont know if i remember it being amazing but it wasnt embarrassing

that story he had published somewhere (new yorker?) was awful.

xp

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/page-to-screen/article/44284-james-franco-s-palo-alto-our-review.html

ha

I don't see why it's inconceivable that some big name authors would want to blurb this either. Couldn't hurt, and it would probably help them to sell a few more copies of their own books.

But yeah ... maybe he's decent.

(Note to self: if I ever want to easily land a publishing deal, I need to star in at least one superhero movie.)

are you cuet?

(most) blurbs are used as currency by publishing houses fyi

that hamburger will be $5, sir

look, I don't have any money, but I got a blurb from Ian McEwan on my last novel!

its (mostly) like oh X owes me for something so I'll have them blurb this new book

but none of this really matters cuz I doubt blurbs are as important for ebooks (I've never seen a ebook tho)

although I don't know shit about ebooks I hate it when people are like "I have currently read 23% of Moby Dick" because I guess I hate change or something. I don't know. It all seems so unmagical.

I really liked Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, they're probably the two best new books I've read this year, but it feels like there's a trend of these like literary novels that humorously treat their heroes as grotesques, like constantly talking about how gross they look and how fat they are and how people don't like them very much. I don't know, I guess maybe it's not a "trend" since I can't think of any other examples but Shteyngart and Lipsyte in particular are very similar in doing this, across all of their books that I've read. It's interesting.

i was thinking about this too & while i think its a p common comedic trope it does feel like these two are using it in a slightly different way. like ignatius in "confederacy of dunces" is both more obviously grotesque & less seethingly aware of how unattractive he is. or like richard russo often has his character's slack unhandsomness stand in for their general lack of success/alienation from modern capitalism or w/e but its a lot more low-key.

i think i disliked both books in part because of how tedious & theatrical they were about their hero's shortcomings, although it made more sense in "super sad" then w/ milo's myopic whining.

n e way "visit from the goon squad" was p good i thought.

i got about 40 pages into the ask before passing it on to someone else. it's not just that i didn't find anything remotely funny or well written about it (it was sold as both), i actively disliked it.

i thought the ask was really hemmed in by its formal boundaries by the desire to be "funny" and "scathing" & that the dizzy self-conscious idiom he was using made everything really dishonest and terrible

i do think it was well-written though, there were some very clever sentences

maybe the good writing starts where i jumped off but i absolutely agree with your first point from what i read.

Max, some stuff I'm looking forward to:

Philip Roth: Nemesis
The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories: 1000+ pages of 1920s-1940s noir pulp
Antal Szerb: Love in a Bottle -- new translation of short stories from amazing Hungarian writer
Italo Svevo: THe Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl -- novella, from Melville House
Martin McDonagh: A Behanding in Spokane -- new play from 'In Bruges' writer/director
Jen Wang: koko Be Good -- interesting-looking new graphic novel

Max, there's a giant new McSweeneys book coming out. The Instructions by Adam Levin. Don't know if you are aware of it.
I'm gonna wait to check out some reviews before I take on all 1,000 pages of it.

damn cant believe the blurbs that franco's getting... amy hempel? ben marcus??

didn't he go to columbia?

it feels like there's a trend of these like literary novels that humorously treat their heroes as grotesques, like constantly talking about how gross they look and how fat they are and how people don't like them very much

Now I wouldn't say I was gross. I'd say I was fat. I wouldn't want you saying it, though. I'd be very offended, personally, if you were to say it to me. I might have to beat you up ... Fat's funny like that. Fat creeps up on you. How's the waistline, pal? Sister, what's the cellulite score? Ah I must kick it, the fat - the snout, the junk, the trash, all these things that have made me gross.

that franzen bird cover looks better irl (or at least the bird's eye is all hologram-y)

didn't he go to columbia?

yup.

Read a fairly mad article about Franco in one of the papers last week. He's enrolled at four different colleges, does art installations, writes short stories, does General Hospital etc. He's also a teetotaler.

I read a headline about Franzen's new book from USA Today on the office building elevator's ad screen this morning. MY mind's made up.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/jonathan-franzen,44716/

hee:

AVC: When Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Solar, was met with some indifference in America, he suggested that we might have become bored with global warming. In Freedom, a book in part about the environment, a character picks up a copy of McEwan’s novel Atonement and “struggled to interest himself in its descriptions of rooms and plantings…” Are McEwan’s comments and your swipe at Atonement purely coincidence?

JF: I hadn’t read that particular quotation of Ian McEwan’s. But he did say that there were no more major novelists in the United States, except for Philip Roth, now that Updike had died and Mailer had died. That certainly did not go down well with those of us who are still producing the work. But no, that was actually purely objective. I believe the character in question has trouble interesting himself in its descriptions of plantings and architecture. [Laughs.] And I’ve known people who have had that very problem with that book.

odd really as Atonement isn't very much about those things, or it's more noticeably about other things

might as well say, struggled to interest himself in its portrait of the tragic carnival of destruction around Dunkirk!

did anyone read josipovici's book, or glance at it even

reviewed by tom mccarthy in the graun i noticed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/04/gabriel-josipovici-modernism-tom-mccarthy

also, i just read remainder, and huh

what did you think? i didnt enjoy it as much as everyone else it seems

Fun take down of Freedom from the Atlantic, by the infamous B.R. Meyers. Kind of stupid, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Jonathan Franzen’s juvenile prose creates a world in which nothing important can happen.

http://i55.tinypic.com/13yh2tg.jpg

I wonder why they let that dickhead review Freedom in the first place--doesn't seem like his cup of tea.

Elif Batuman on MFAs in the LRB. this one's blowing up the tumblrs.

thx thomp, will read

I just read Mr Peanut (Adam Ross) and am really struggling to decide what I thought of it. Anyone else read it?

just read Skippy Dies, it was entertaining but not sure why it was a booker prize nominee exactly.

I've got C here to read once I read everything else I have to read.

that Elif Batuman article in the LRB is pretty awesome. i don't agree with everything she says but i mostly love the way she says it.

i did like remainder a great deal, by the way. and laughed maybe more than i'd expected to, at stuff like the cappucinos in the airport. but: i'd read that very long zadie smith article on remainder and netherland and so reading the former was a little like following an argument you've already had summarized to you: you appreciate the lucidity and depth of it, but it's not going to come as a surprise.

a lot of the stuff in that batuman article is kind of fallacious, i think, the stuff that's like:

i. the guy in the book says workshop fiction is x, y, and z; also it invented a, b, and c
ii. actually a, b, and c were already around; also x, y, and z are shitty things to be
iii. therefore workshop fiction is awful

which only works if you accept proposition i.

that said it's a good piece. i guess. ehh.

i for some reason had missed the hype over remainder so i came at it without having heard about how good it was or anything and was pretty "blown away"

i realized later that i had read mccarthys book on tintin (which i thought was quite good, especially for a pop-lit-crit book of that kind!) a few years earlier. it made sense--the same um critical concerns show up in each book

man I was getting all excited about the microscripts and so I read the Tanners to sort of get my bearings about this dude and that is just not what I wanna be reading. there are moments of real humor and nicely sketched scenes but the book is basically people making long speeches about opinions they'll no longer hold as soon as they're done expressing them...for 350 pages.

sounds like old ilx

admit that you edited that down from "sounds like aerosmith on the rolling politics thread"

thomp, she's doesn't say x y & z are shitty things to be just that there are many other things to be, i think. i read it quickly so i missed bits and couldn't get my head round other bits but i was impressed by it.

I do like Walser, so I'm still tempted by Microscripts. I just hope it's not one of those books where the story of how the book came to be is more interesting than the book itself.

it's just stories.

Read the Elif piece a couple of days ago: skimming through it again isn't it saying that workshop fiction apes 'a b & c', that were already around, but it has sorta codified them in a way (by dehistoricising and adding ethnicity and guilt, for example) as to place fiction in a vacuum of sorts?

I guess I agree that good writing as in nice sentences, etc. doesn't translate into good books or fiction. Which is quite basic, to me. One hopes Elif is an SF and pulpy noir fan like the rest of us.

read mccarthy's C and eh I don't know. I thought this dude was supposed to be all "postmodern" but this seemed like your basic "dude saunters through various representative historical situations" (I don't really know how to express this but where the time period is exhibited by the main character experimenting with radio, fighting in WWII, going to a seance, being in Egypt as the country gains its independence and the British Empire collapses) novel. I feel like I was missing something big.

Also I haven't read Remainder but everyone says it's funny, and there was like almost no trace of humor in C at all. It was interesting enough that I finished it but overall it left me cold.

I guess I agree that good writing as in nice sentences, etc. doesn't translate into good books or fiction. Which is quite basic, to me. One hopes Elif is an SF and pulpy noir fan like the rest of us.

Couldn't agree more.

I really enjoyed the essay but it did seem very much (as a UK person) diagnosing a foreign malaise with symptoms similar to that which I see in this country. Which is kind of interesting - why it felt so foreign to me I mean. (I guess the 'nice sentences - Which is quite basic' part of your equation, xyzzzz__ - it seemed really obvious, tho I'm a hella genre fan).

xpost congratulations - yeah felt this as well, it felt surprisingly unadventurous, certainly in terms of style, in some ways.

it's weird how now 'contemporary literary fiction' sounds like a kind of fiction on a par with 'genre fiction', so that there's really:

contemporary literary fiction
contemporary genre fiction
actual books

not too far from truth imo

gamaliel, do they not have… creative writing programs in the uk? surely they have loads of books produced in them (if only from us imports).

Plenty of creating writing programmes - the most famous of which is the East Anglia one, started by Malcolm Bradbury. I don't get the impression (although I haven't methodically gone through graduates of the schemes) that the elements of victimhood that Batuman identifies are as prevalent in British creative writing courses, and I would generally say that graduates seem more embedded in literary tradition than the scene that Batuman's describing in the States.

What I would say, tentatively, is that I often get a distinct vibe from cw graduates' books, which although distinct, is a little difficult to describe - something programmatic, too balanced, and well, it often feels too written (tho I'd absolutely be willing to accept this may involve some projection when I find out they're cw graduates), lacking in emotional content perhaps - no, not allowing emotional content to drive the writing.

That probably requires some glossing. Some, to my mind very good, writers are also in many ways very bad writers. You quite often see this in genre (retreading arguments from above): poor or thin characterisation (Ballard, Dick), daft or non-existent plotting (Chandler), insanely bad prose (Lovecraft, Machen). It's not confined to modern genre writing tho - to my mind Dostoevsky is often risible in many aspects of his writing. But that's the point really, I think all of them are good, and in the case of a couple (Dostoevsky very much included) great writers. The imbalances in their work are an expression of their aesthetic, it's what's important in them. The non-characters in Ballard totally feed into his aesthetic, and through the laughably purple prose of Machen you get a driving, all-consuming passion conveyed, gloriously glutting on Romance. Similar arguments can be made for all the writers mentioned. The weaknesses don't matter, in fact, they're their strength.

I guess it's a long-winded way of saying that I like a bit of bad in my writing, and programme writers seem to me to prioritise avoiding bad in their writing, and I think that comes across, and that's where I think there's a crossover between the programme writers of the states (as described in the essay) and the creative writing graduates of Britain. I'm sure there are exceptions, and I'd be quite willing to accept my whole thesis as wrong, as I'm not particular well informed about that sort of writing either side of the Atlantic, but it's the viewpoint I have from this distance.

I read the LRB essay over a steak on my first night in Paris. I've disliked the author's writing before but found this more substantial. But my reaction was the opposite of Jed's: I agreed with much of what was said, but disliked the tone. The older I get, the more I seem to feel that disagreement and critique should be as straight up and straightforward as possible; that a little sarcasm and self-importance goes a long way.

But yes, I did feel some sympathy with the rejection of 'persecution' as (necessary?) basis for writing.

But then again, I thought a lot of what she said was angry, self-propelling rhetoric that could easily be inverted with just as much conviction. So, writers nowadays don't read or make reference to other literature? You can pretty easily imagine a jeremiad saying the opposite - that creative writing is self-referential and too obsessed with literariness, or whatever. The truth, maybe, is more diverse? I guess I don't know enough about 'the program' to know.

Not a great issue of the LRB otherwise.

anyone going to be attempting 'the instructions'

i'm considering trying!

I liked the first sentence when I read it in the bookstore!

Shit, look at the SIZE of it!

i know it's enormous! ive ordered it so there will definitely be an attempt. hate lugging books that big around tho

this is a big fucking book

well they randomly had "the instructions" on the new book shelf at the library (usually it's all crap) so I checked it out and started it while eating s huge piece of carrot cake and drinking a coffee so the sugar and caffeine may be shading my perspective but the first 30 pages are really really good - excited to keep reading it

so did nobody read zone - the novel-in-a-single-sentence? it's on my list, I seldom/never get to stuff when it's new but open letter is a cool imprint with several real winners (esp. the merce rodoreda book from last year) and this one looks pretty great

http://catalog.openletterbooks.org/authors/25-enard

that sounds interesting/like it might drive me insane!

oh man, one sentence -- fantastic!

n/a, sounds promising! I'm still thinking of checking it out

Zone sorta is on my radar. If I find while browsing...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mk25

^From the 15/10: interview with Ariel Dorfman (Chilean novelist-crit I like) on the miners.

I think I'm going to buy the James Franco short story collection today

Some, to my mind very good, writers are also in many ways very bad writers. You quite often see this in genre (retreading arguments from above): poor or thin characterisation (Ballard, Dick), daft or non-existent plotting (Chandler), insanely bad prose (Lovecraft, Machen). It's not confined to modern genre writing tho - to my mind Dostoevsky is often risible in many aspects of his writing. But that's the point really, I think all of them are good, and in the case of a couple (Dostoevsky very much included) great writers. The imbalances in their work are an expression of their aesthetic, it's what's important in them. The non-characters in Ballard totally feed into his aesthetic, and through the laughably purple prose of Machen you get a driving, all-consuming passion conveyed, gloriously glutting on Romance. Similar arguments can be made for all the writers mentioned. The weaknesses don't matter, in fact, they're their strength.

I guess it's a long-winded way of saying that I like a bit of bad in my writing, and programme writers seem to me to prioritise avoiding bad in their writing, and I think that comes across

Sorry, missed this thread - I thought that was great though. To me, the writers you mention were hell-bent on saying something and didn't have time to learn to polish it - the graduate types started out wanting to be polished, and forgot to find to find something to say.

I think I'm going to buy the James Franco short story collection today

Don't encourage him!

Sorry, missed this thread - I thought that was great though

i appreciated it too, just nothing to say about it at the time.

i sometimes get the feeling that with non-writing-program writing, even if you're quite well read you still have to start all over again in order to really get something new. i barely read any of this program writing, but i do get the impression that it doesn't seem as liable to waste readers' investment in it.

xpost

ha!

btw the instructions is a lot of fun! n/a have you read much more? im abt 200 pages in

that's about where I am too, still really enjoying btw

things i still wish to get around to: richard yates, the instructions, witz

finished The Instructions a couple of weeks ago, it was good but, not surprisingly, got a little tiring by the end - doesn't really have enough variety or content to justify the length

The Instructions and Witz are the two novels from the last while that I'd like to have read. I'd feel quite well-informed, quite on top of things, if I'd read them. Realistically, prob won't happen, too much else to read & they look time-hungry.

Just got a copy of Jennifer Egan's Visit from the Goon Squad; most likely will read that. Manageable length, PowerPoint section.

still havent finished the instructions + yeah i think maybe it could do w/ being shorter

finished absurdistan the other day. it was odd. more and more i felt like i was reading black mischief or scoop: and then the halliburton contractors on the train out of the country in the last (?) chapter are talking about evelyn waugh. which made me think, right, that has to be deliberate -- that it's an attempt to rehabilitate that, er, mode -- which is, you know, kind of an awkward mode to try and rehabilitate. for kind of obvious reasons.

also, shteyngart doesn't have waugh's chops, i think: it seems like so much stuff takes away from the cohesion of the narrative - almost all of the russia stuff, the deeply half-hearted abusive-father business, the authorial self-insertion (though, yes, 'russian arriviste's handjob', ha ha ha ha). also waugh's mockery of banal modes of writing (the country column in the paper - "Feather-footed through the plashy fens passes the questing vole", etc) is funny to me and shteyngart doing r&b/hip-hop sendups, less so. but then that might just be a matter of what targets i'm comfortable seeing mocked, i don't know; misha's proposal for a holocaust museum late in the book was so much the funniest thing to me but i wonder if that's because i find it a more 'worthy' 'target' than i do the state of the post-9/11 middle east.

Joshua Cohen has reviewed both The Instructions and Richard Yates.

the review of the latter was what made me curious to read his (cohen's) novel, actually

Levin’s attempt to ape Wallace’s caffeinated chatter, to mimic that ferocious power, is unseemly and disastrous — an instance, almost, of a man playing God.

yeah i thought it was pretty crazy getting him to review it

Peeve of mine: book reviews written in the style of the book the reviewer is reviewing. Hate that. Didn't like the Bookforum review.

In the spirit of that joke, consider one of our books the Jewish novel you’ll never begin and the other the Jewish novel you’ll never finish.

i couldn't tell whose book was supposed to be whose here.

yeah dude talking about his own book in that review turned me off

more surprising that the editors let it go. if i turned in an academic book review that was half about my own work it would be sent back!

Peeve of mine: book reviews written in the style of the book the reviewer is reviewing. Hate that. Didn't like the Bookforum review.

Agree with your peeve. But Tao Lin's strategy is the troll's strategy: to evoke more response from the audience than the effort he put into the work. As proverb goes, the power in a relationship belongs to the one who cares least, and it's that position of power that Lin seeks aesthetically. If Cohen had approached, as a critic, from an independent point of view -- if he had begun by betraying a critical interest -- Lin would have won from the start, and Cohen knew it.

do you not believe lin when he says he spent hours upon hours chipping away at richard yates and american apparel, then?

also: while he discusses the possibility, that review isn't really written in lin's 'style', by which ppl generally mean the style of those two books, which are only ~30% of his total published wordcount

But it is in the 'style' of his 'blog'.

do you not believe lin when he says he spent hours upon hours chipping away at richard yates and american apparel, then?

Hours and hours, sure. It takes time to type.

But "effort", measured as time spent, was the wrong word. "Personal investment" is better. Lin's works (as far as I've been fooled into reading them) derive whatever life they have from the audience's attention.

Cohen's right to point out the contradiction between Lin's stance and his participation in the economy of physical books.

Ohhhh, you're talking about Tao Lin's 'Richard Yates'! For some reason I had it in my head that this was about the recent-ish biography of Yates, and couldn't work out what was going on. This is why I need to click on the links!

Yeah, the Cohen review of Tao Lin is more justifiably in the novelist's voice than the original ones that turned me off -- I've read some awful reviews of Tom Wolfe, Martin Amis, and Pynchon novels that are third-rate versions of the writers they're reviewing.

i was in a book store after work today and thought about buying richard yates but didnt. i think i feel better not having an opinion and just sort of shrugging if someone mentions it like at a party and saying 'i dont really know much about it' and then eating something.

i did buy 'the instructions' which i kept mistaking for 'the imperfectionists' which i read in the spring and 'liked' although its sloppy and kind of a cheat but has nice moments and is really funny in parts. im not really sure why i bought it since i already sort of feel disappointed by it for not being a novel about a man digging a tunnel out of his basement or study or 3rd floor walkup or w/e.

'visit from the goon squad' is one of only two really excellent new fiction books ive read this year btw

so, what good stuff is coming out this year? especially during the next few months

the only thing i already know i want to read is the pale king

Hollinghurst?

Don't think there's much exciting in UK - I looked over the schedules in autumn, things might have changed a bit since then, but it was mostly the usual names (Hensher, Justin Cartwright, Mars Jones, Barnes stories).

Debut hype for When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman, Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, and that Ours are the Streets book by Sunjeev Sahota that's just out. Tea Obreht too, but followers of US fiction could fill us in there - she was one of the New Yorker 20 under 40.

shes like 24 and i refuse to read her books and stories on principle

i for one appreciate a principled stand on these things

has anyone read/can recommend any of these? http://www.believermag.com/issues/201103/?read=believer_book_award

i remember the reason i read 'remainder' was cuz it won their book of the year award 1 year

the orange eats creeps is a total mess iirc and although i feel like i have read S P R A W L i cant remember anything about it so maybe im thinking of something else

yeah i should prob have said that i didnt actually like remainder anyway so its kind of weird i care abt their award

haha reading that list i am not very inspired but then it clearly speaks to the NOVELS ARE EXPIREMENTS IN LANGUAGE crowd more than to me

Skippy Dies is just alright. I was surprised at the level of praise it received but it's fun.

It's definitely not a NOVELS ARE EXPIREMENTS IN LANGUAGE book though

I am very much a 'novels are experiments in language' type person and am not very inspired. Obviously the write-up of the Henehan looked great, but after reading the first page in Google Books it seems like the same-old same-old surface posturing. In fact, I didn't see anything that looked like an experiment in language at all. Don't build my hopes up, man.

haha i was basing my opinion on the one book i remember + half-reading the blurbs, really. although theres nothing to say they arent simply doing a bad job of pandering to that crowd.

'orange eats creeps' wld (i guess hackishly) fit 'experimental', sorta. shes doing that associative, inward-curling thing that is mb more about 'conciousness' than it is 'language' (um) but drifts around the margins of 'thought-fiction'. idk i h8 this stuff mostly.

i liked remainder a lot

a LOT

The book’s final section is one of the most daring and hyper-realistic endings in recent contemporary fiction.

Can somebody explain this please?

This is new in English translation: Khirbet Khizeh.

Looks promising.

Here is the best translated book award long list -- only one I knew about was To the End of the Land, which was trashed in the LRB.

* The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)
* The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive)
* The Rest Is Jungle & Other Stories by Mario Benedetti, translated from the Spanish by Harry Morales (Host Publications)
* A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer)
* A Jew Must Die by Jacques Chessex, translated from the French by Donald Wilson (Bitter Lemon)
* A Splendid Conspiracy by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Alyson Waters (New Directions)
* The Jokers by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis (New York Review Books)
* Eline Vere by Louis Couperus, translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke (Archipelago)
* Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)
* The Blindness of the Heart by Julia Franck, translated from the German by Anthea Bell (Grove)
* Hocus Bogus by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar), translated from the French by David Bellos (Yale University Press)
* To the End of the Land by David Grossman, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen (Knopf)
* The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books)
* The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated from the French by Robyn Creswell (New Directions)
* Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (New Directions)
* Cyclops by Ranko Marinković, translated from the Croatian by Vlada Stojiljković, edited by Ellen Elias-Bursać (Yale University Press)
* Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions)
* I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund and the author (Graywolf Press)
* A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Jerzy Pilch, translated from the Polish by David Frick (Open Letter)
* Touch by Adania Shibli, translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar (Clockroot)
* The Black Minutes by Martín Solares, translated from the Spanish by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker (Grove/Black Cat)
* On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive)
* Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)
* Microscripts by Robert Walser, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions/Christine Burgin)
* Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (Archipelago)

'From that list 'The True Deceiver' is excellent, and 'The Jokers' was both flawed and fascinating. 'A Jew Must Die' by a bit too simple and straightforward, I thought. It was basically about some Nazis who decide a Jew must die, and so they kill him, and that's about it.

'visitation' is tremendous, started a thread on it actually, v worthwhile. the per petterson is ok, 'nice', i guess, sort of bland and uninteresting, 'the black minutes' is a lot of fun but maybe too exuberant & chaotic its a mexican noir w/ mostly unnecessary time-shifting structure, sorta james ellroy-esque. i have a copy of 'the golden age' but i havent read it

Blimey, you think "I Curse The River Of Time" is "nice"? I was really affected by it, found it grindingly sad.

oh haha i mean 'nice' as in 'nicely done' or 'fine', i didnt like the book v much but i didnt want to call it 'bad', yknow? its just i was immune to its pull its movements felt secondhand and tiresome

on elegance while sleeping is pretty immense, highly recommended, a quick read too

Thank you for the best translated book award list. I have read the first chapter of The Jokers and it promises ... diversion, escape, perspective. I am wondering about the translation of "bum."

'a visit from the goon squad' = p good

i liked remainder a lot

― max, Wednesday, March 2, 2011 3:48 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a LOT

― max, Wednesday, March 2, 2011 3:48 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

glad you said this, its been sitting on my shelf and i've been lacking the motivation to read it, kinda out of some fear of it being overly-conceptual/cold/whatever.

Love the Amazon summary of 'On Elegance While SLeeping' : "On Elegance While Sleeping is the deliciously macabre novel, part Maldoror and part Dorian Gray, that established its author’s reputation as a renegade hero of Argentine literature. It tells the story, in the form of a surreal diary, of a lonely, syphilitic French soldier, who—after too many brothels and disappointments—returns from Africa longing for a world with more elegance. He promptly falls in love with a goat, and recalls the time, after a childhood illness, when his hair fell out and grew back orange—a phenomenon his doctor attributed to the cultivation of carrots in a neighboring town."

I think I'm sold.

this is sort of the thread where i read things people were reading six months ago

i wasn't sure about how the egan novel wound up. the powerpoint presentation chapter (yup) was a tour de force, but the last chapter was pretty annoying

also it's so NICE. nice nice nice. NICE things happen to everyone, in the end; i feel like somewhere, elif batuman is complaining about this book right now. all the collapsed marriages are nice. the recovering addicts are nice. even the suicide is nice. the near-victim of a sexual assault sends a letter: "I am sorry for whatever part I played in your mental breakdown, and also for stabbing you."

i thought i'd escaped with only one reference to the world trade centre and then the last chapter kind of rocks up. and it goes LOOK here are IDEAS ABOUT MUSIC AND AUTHENTICITY and i was more okay with those being background noise, to be honest; it does do all the stuff the shteyngart novel does a lot better and in thirty pages, though.

also new york novelists sure do like the williamsburg bridge.

Here is more on The Best Translated Book Award. I actually found out about it from a wiki page (past list in that link), probably while googling some author or other. xp

Having read a bit about Egan now I am afraid that its notions about music/communication/technology and the like will sound really lame.

it's not really about that stuff

& while i'm annoyed by it, it is at least taking place in a version of the world i recognise, & by someone who is up to speed on how things work

the music stuff does pretty much all center around 'the industry', though; there's no room for outsider or oppositional models of art -- not a flaw, i think, just not in the book's purview

oh ok seem to remember but there was a review somewhere that mentions that stuff - probably imagining it.

there probably is! it's the milieu of a lot of the novel, and there is a sporadic argument about authenticity, which only jumps to the center in that last chapter. but i don't think it's the novel's motive cause and true centre; if that were the case, i'd probably have not liked the book at all

also it's so NICE. nice nice nice. NICE things happen to everyone, in the end; i feel like somewhere, elif batuman is complaining about this book right now. all the collapsed marriages are nice. the recovering addicts are nice. even the suicide is nice. the near-victim of a sexual assault sends a letter: "I am sorry for whatever part I played in your mental breakdown, and also for stabbing you."

― thomp, Sunday, March 20, 2011 6:21 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, there's scotty. and jocelyn. and rolph. and rob. i'll admit that i found this book comforting just because it was willing to imagine people's lives beyond the point at which they seemed tragic. life goes on, you know?

i sort of lost interest a little at the very end, too, though

horseshoe, i got 'look at me' but i can't decide if i should devour it now bc i am on an egan roll, or savour it bc there are no more for me to read after this one :(

that is a conundrum! i love that book so much that i have reread it several times, if that helps at all. omg i am so excited for you!!!

also it's so NICE. nice nice nice. NICE things happen to everyone, in the end

she has a lot of empathy for her characters i think but idk if id conflate that w/ 'niceness' (or 'weakness') shes just trying to find a way of balancing the ~essential goodness~ of ppl with the way things & ppl falter & fail. i mean i guess i like that shes thinking abt ~the future~ and ~connectedness~ in a less rigidly cynical & hobbesian way even if it means being 'nice'...

also the more i thought about it the more i liked the end of the book - the idea of a paradigm shift to particle physics as a foundational way of ~talking about the world~

my big problem w/ the novel was that it tried to be too neat, tie up too many loose ends, follow every thematic notion through

ugh @ paradigm shift, im the worst

but i mean i do get the 'nice' thing its something that bothered me about the keep her urge to humanize & sympathize w/characters and situations to the point where it betrays the novel

has anyone read/can recommend any of these? http://www.believermag.com/issues/201103/?read=believer_book_award

i remember the reason i read 'remainder' was cuz it won their book of the year award 1 year

― just sayin, Wednesday, 2 March 2011 19:48 (2 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

next by james hynes was the winner fwiw

I'm intrigued by the description of "Next" so I put a hold on it at my library. I live in Austin, so I want to see how he portrays it (although I usually hate (and love to hate) evocations of "Austin-ness").

just came here to bump this

can't even remember the last novel i read -- pathetic

has anything else been getting really hyped recently besides the pale king?

'swamplandia!' got a lot of good press & is i think the big 'must read' that isnt dfw. although i wasnt a huge fan. jean thompson's 'the year we left home' has also been really well reviewed & i think its fantastic. chris adrian's new book is a modern retelling of a midsummer's night dream & its... idk, not 'great' but i kind of loved it? teju cole's 'open city' has a lot of buzz amongst ppl i know/read but im not sure how widely read/acclaimed its been? it got a review in the newyorker. in translation new directions has a couple of interesting contemp titles - jenny erpenbeck's 'visitation' and lászló krasznahorkai's 'animalinside'. i think the latter has some good press the former is just the best thing ive read all year.

can you slow down a bit Lamp, please? I can't even note down the titles quick enough let alone read the damn things. Resistance of Melancholy has been staring reproachfully at me from my desk for the last couple of weeks. Soon it will be time to take it back to the library.

xpost yeah i read karen russell's book of short stories + wasnt really into it. i havent heard of that jean thompson book! i enjoyed 'the childrens hospital' so will be looking for that new chris adrian. 'visitation' still sitting on the shelf.

i got visitation on yr rec, lamp, but i just couldn't get into it - i think i got maybe halfway through and then i bought a bunch of other books and started reading those instead.

sorry :/

i thought it was good, if that helps

haha it's ok - i don't think it's a bad book by any means, it just isn't my kind of book.

Well my library got a hold of Books Burn Badly by Manuel Rivas. It has had some rave reviews (I didn't have to fill out a ILL card for this!) - more importantly, it seems to be the kind of book about a topic that I'm drawn to: namely the hijacking of literature/culture by surrounding political forces in a time and place where abosolutely everything is about to fall apart (see Bolano).

Yes I do have a life, just not a too interesting one OKAY!

About to start.

Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel is getting a reissue. A novel I have wanted to read for quite a while.

i really dug the excerpt of swamplandia in the new yorker. at least i think it was an excerpt. might have to check that out.

i read shane jones' light boxes today. i think it was the worst thing i have read all year.

been wondering abt that... i remember mr que stanning for it + i added it to my amazon wish list but have never clicked buy

Ernesto Sabato's The Tunnel is getting a reissue. A novel I have wanted to read for quite a while.

I dug this quite a bit.

there was a piece on el pais on him on account of his centenary that made me think of him again. i've never read him, but he wrote very few novels so not exactly hard to get through them. my main problem is getting to spanish language books in britain, but i expect this can be overcame just by paying a price.

also, he sounds grim.

haha for a minute my mind went to the gass novel

sorry i led anyone astray with light boxes. i dug it a lot. i dig this guy, too, he's a new discovery for me:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/review/Hoffman-t.html

mr. que have read/heard much about jesse ball's 'the curfew'? im interested in purchasing it but reviews have been mixed & no one i know has read it

yeah, i just read a thing in the new yorker that sealed the deal for me, something about "an inverted skyscarper plunging hundreds of feet underground" sounds pretty rad. there's a cool interview on the millions with the dude, too

not to mention this

http://www.themillions.com/2011/07/most-anticipated-the-great-second-half-2011-book-preview.html

skyscraper, not skyscarper

haha skimming that im reminded of how fantastic (wordplay!) i thought stephen millhauser's 'dangerous laughter' was. its also making me feel bad about how dismissive ive been of contemp writing this year, theres so much stuff i havent bothered to read or even think of reading. i was however vaguely aware there was a new ann patchett novel out

yeah the only real new thing i've read in a while is "The Pale King" and it was really really boring, terrible, awful, sad (not in a good way sad.)

ty for that link que -- i love kate christensen & didnt know she had a new book out!

other than the big names (baker, stephenson maybe, eugenides) im interested in the dana spiotta book

hey mr que sorry to be overly dismissive of the shane jones book

i was sort of on-the-fence about it until we got to february as writer-figure, it was then stuck for me both as generically like something i'd read before and very specifically like i. the people of paper (and i didn't even like that book much) ii. someone trying to 'do' ben marcus ?? which anyway i then started rereading notable american women and i like it way less than i remembered liking it, so either i'm not really in the mood for this stuff or my tastes have shifted away from it, oh well

I like César Aira a lot, though How I Became a Nun was my least favorite of everything I've read by him (which is everything in English translation, or 1% of his overall writing I think).

a year later and i'm still not reading fiction -- is there a literary fiction Book of the Summer? (or Book of 2011?) :-/

i want to get back to reading fiction but it's all non-fiction over here

still haven't read the pale king, although i want to -- i read that interview book twice though

i want to read that tea obreht book too

bump for the not 12:13 am at night crowd :)

mr. que have read/heard much about jesse ball's 'the curfew'? im interested in purchasing it but reviews have been mixed & no one i know has read it

just read this over the weekend, it was just okay, nothing special. read like a long short story. not very memorable, sorry.

that's handy, i was pondering whether to get or not, but i'll save the money

i ended up really liking dana spiotta's 'stone arabia' although i think its the sort of book thats too slight to really sustain scrutiny or mass affection, if that makes any sense

i also really enjoyed denis johnson's 'train dreams' which i think is mb the most lucid and thoughtful book of his ive read, certainly since 'fiskadoro'

Yeah, Train Dreams was really nice. Though I've only read this and Nobody Move, I'm going to have to get me some more of him.

whats up with this baseball book

what about this book

ALL MY FRIENDS ARE SUPERHEROES

is this 'quirky twee fiction' or something?

whats up with this baseball book

― just sayin, Tuesday, 13 September 2011 11:31 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

the harbach, right. yeah i am looking forward to it.

is

The Family Fang

o my bbcode blows. i not q!

Family Fang was pretty standard dysfunctional family contemporary lit. It had its moments though and is a pretty fast read.

i guess it was a little "lighter"/less overwrought than franzen e.g.

anyone read the new amy waldman? or house of holes? curious about both.

'house of holes' is not as bad as 'the anthologist'

kinda curious about the art of fielding since it's getting so much press but also it sounds like fairly middle-of-the-road contemporary lit

ha i liked the anthologist a lot but house of holes sounds gross

kinda curious about the art of fielding since it's getting so much press but also it sounds like fairly middle-of-the-road contemporary lit

i was too until i read an interview or two with the dude, he loves franzen i guess, so i'm a little less enthusiastic now

Who knows, it still could be good. . . but still. I hated the Corrections.

http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/a-conversation-with-chad-harbach-author-of-the-art-of-fielding

What don’t you like that he’s written?
My least favorite of his books is Strong Motion. You can probably point to some parts of Strong Motion that I don’t like, but Freedom and The Corrections are two of my favorite books in recent history.

am reading the amy waldman, only a short way through; so far it's good, there have been points that have seemed pat - from what i gather it's pretty sprawling, and some of the characters so far seem p simply drawn - but i'll only know by finishing it whether that's sorta besides the point.

i could go for a great piece of lit about baseball but it seems like art of fielding is not so much about the art of fielding and more about kids in college who happen to play shortstop

maybe i should just read the natural

or great american novel

or universal baseball association

I really enjoyed the Family Fang

am reading the amy waldman, only a short way through; so far it's good, there have been points that have seemed pat - from what i gather it's pretty sprawling, and some of the characters so far seem p simply drawn - but i'll only know by finishing it whether that's sorta besides the point.

i read really slowly & give up easily, so live blogging my reactions would be kinda excruciating, but characters in this are still really annoying me & sounding unrealistic, fwiw. i read a hammy exchange & then am all, she was bureau chief for somewhere or other for the new, york, times, this must be good, but it is bugging me.

thanks n/a and james. Won't read Fam Fang now, I'll put it in a to-read-when-I-fancy-contemporary-fun pile.

what about this book

ALL MY FRIENDS ARE SUPERHEROES

is this 'quirky twee fiction' or something?

― the pinefox, Tuesday, September 13, 2011 10:32 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

pinefox, oddly, otm

Quite interested in the new John Burnside - I read his first one, and I remember thinking it was ok without being great. Review here.

Yes, I was intrigued by that too, while also thinking that an author who publishes 2 novels even he admits aren't any good has perhaps exhausted my goodwill before I even start

so i couldnt make it past page 58 of 'the art of fielding' w/o continuously cringing so ive decided to read a book about rich english ppl in italy instead

That sounds good what is it

'a book of secrets' by michael holroyd

so i couldnt make it past page 58 of 'the art of fielding' w/o continuously cringing

oh what was up with this? i'm still in the buying-the-hype phase so you could save me some time if you named some specific unappealing trait

ha i just started art of fielding last night and was enjoying until it switched perspective from the baseball player to the college president and his estranged daughter. seems to have turned into rote franzenesque "strained family relationships" contemporary lit. haven't decided if i'm going to keep up with it or not.

feel like no one's writing good weird books anymore.

feel like no one's writing good weird books anymore

like what kinda thing? just curious. bc maybe the genre of like rolling literary fiction isn't the place to find it. i think 'busy monsters' is meant to be kinda strange at this end of the spectrum.

i just feel like all the big contemp lit over the past year or two has just been franzen rip-off stuff about estranged families and bad relationships. no one's writing novels about the world or the mind or ideas, or at least no one who's getting any press. if i'm missing it on stuff, please let me know.

i get that a lot of people like books about relationships and emotions, but i like good stories and stuff that makes me think. the current contemporary literary world feels very unambitious to me, content to explore these family/marriage dynamics and not go any bigger.

Have you read Gilead or Home? The religious debates in these novels undergirding the family drama are powerful.

i don't know what those are

by Marilynne Robinson? She won the Pulitzer for Gilead.

I recommend'em. It's not often we see real arguments in American fiction, like you point out.

Housekeeping ftw

A good novel. I prefer the movie though.

idk the movie

It's never been released on DVD unfortunately. Written and directed by Bill Forsyth (Local Hero), starring Christine Lahti.

heh, did this thread get created because shakey mo was saying the thing that nick is saying? obviously in way more offensive and weird terms but

neway n/a i just read c by tom mccarthy (booker prize nominee!) and it is allll about ideas baby

i read c and was kind of disappointed tbh, though it was definitely more ambitious/closer to what i'm looking for. there were definitely lots of ideas there but they didn't really cohere into anything for me. maybe i'm just not smart enough for it, i was reading the tom mccarthy thread and was just like ?

sorry if i'm coming off as complainy, i feel like i've read some good stuff lately but most of it was nonfiction. i did enjoy the sisters brothers by patrick macmanus - it was obviously kind of pynchon lite and also not particularly ambitious but it was fun and interesting.

Thought about trying to read 'c', but when I saw that n/a didn't like it, I figured I was off the hook. Seriously. Well, that and some article somebody linked to that the author wrote. I have read The C Programming Language by Kernighan and RItchie, which is a stone cold classic.

Preferred the movie version of Housekeeping as well.

i'd seen the title 'the art of fielding' but i'd assumed it was about, you know, henry fielding

let me guess, you are not american

ITS JUST GLORIFIED FUCKING ROUNDERS FOR FUCKS SAKE THAT IS NO KIND OF A GAME FOR GROWN MEN

i mean

haw

Heh I had assumed it was about cricket. I wouldn't pick up any of the three Fielding books I have so far imagined.

n/a do you read any genre fiction or fiction in translation? those tend to be the places i look for books abt 'ideas' and/or books that are telling interesting stories and just generally 'good weird books'.

i think there are ambitious and thoughtful books in english too but even then a lot of them are kinda 'about families' (cf. the privileges)

i don't really think these books don't exist, they just don't seem to get huge press and so i'm not always aware of them. i don't read a lot of translated fiction, though i read a lot of the bolano stuff, and in genre fiction i have some mystery and sci fi authors i keep track of. you're probably right that i should follow sci fi more specifically since it's designed more for exploring ideas and weirdness, i just have issues with some of the tropes of sci fi.

fwiw something ive been thinking its that it can be really hard to see the unheralded gems and worthwhile oddities of yr own time sorta by definition. and yeah part of that is that like the times book review and middlebrow lit mags and stuff are p focused on respectable, 'safe' authors like franzen or egan or even mccarthy who are generally operating w/in well-defined boundaries.

its obv not impossible, but compared to music or film finding weird, good novels just seems more difficult imo and like the whole 'alternate cannon' nyrb 'lost classics' type of thing seems to require a bit of distance and settling of the waters in order to happen? idk

i think you are right and i think that's also something we got into on the y kant shakey mo read thread

the real problem is that yr talking about a clutch of artists who were *already vetted* by the lit establishment before any of us on this thread were reading grownup novels. so when you talk about "places to start" and worrying about "hating them," yr essentially complaining about not wanting to do yr own work. i am sure there were people plowing through the grove and olympia backlists back then because they were turned onto one of the heavy-hitters and had to slog through a bunch of late-modernist/early-postmodernist garbage to find them gems.

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, June 25, 2010

not that i blame anyone for "not wanting to do their own work" because obviously reading an unknown, hard, dense, new novel takes a lot more time/effort than spinning an unknown, hard, dense, new album.

hey which thread is that? it's come up before, & doesn't list when i search 'shakey'. just i am drawn if it's a thread about why someone can't finish a book/has reading issues.

xxp re: 'y kant shakey read'

it's hidden under this p. hilarious deadpan title

new novels and why they suck and whatever

ohhhh wait i got it, new novels & why they suck
xp ha thank you

n/a have you read correction by thomas bernhard I will rec that book until I die read that ok

there is a guy writing for film comment atm agitating for greater reevaluation & investigation of potentially anonymous work in cinema - says a lot of the 'spadework' of canon formation needs to be done because it was sort of hasty & succinct.

I like sad germans mostly

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Friday, June 25, 2010 11:35 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

There is a post on m. john harrison's blog where he says that Literary Fiction is ultimately another genre with the same problems of repetitiveness, formulas, uninspired writing,etc. as any genre, but it gets a pass from most people because it is Literature Therefore Not A Genre. Which is basically what Lamp and some others said upthread.

it's a common lament of genre fiction writers! i'm not sure i trust it

the submerged and necessary counterpart to that argument is that it then follows that saying 'this novel about an academic couple divorcing is short on big ideas' is just as point-missing a criticism as 'this trilogy about the colonisation of jupiter is missing any in depth characterisation e.g. of an academic couple getting a divorce'

I just read this which I enjoyed - it's just an afternoon's reading really, I did sort of lose the thread but that was more my fault than the book's (I read the first half on a flight, then didn't get back to it until two days later and because it's a single continuous narrative that can be read in a sitting it kinda demands that). It is very very much a novel about the mind and a single idea within a single mind being pursued and exposed, and it manages to cover several moods within a short space pretty remarkably.

but you did specify "in English" - I think 60+% of my reading is stuff in translation, English isn't popping as hard as for example Spanish right now imo.

Usually I don't trust it, thomp, but mjh can walk the walk, and I don't think he would fall into the trap of either of those two approaches.

Actually in the current Harper's one of the BK Jonathans- Lethem, of course- ruefully regrets deserting his genre-writing buddies and going mainstream. He misses those guys and their intelligent, informed conversations but realizes you can't go home again and ultimately wishes his sci-fi buddies could be a little less nerdy about being excluded from the big kids's table and his Literary friends could lighten up and learn what a slide rule is for, or something like that.

it must have been so hard for jonathan, getting paid to think about that

I wish Lethem would go back to writing genre stuff

did anyone read his monograph on 'they live!' yet

dammit, had to google to be sure

When I want to find about about new novels not in the NYTBR vein I read the reviews in the back of Review of Contemporary Fiction, the journal from Dalkey Archive.

feels like there hasn't been any literary fiction i've been interested in reading in a loooong time. what have i missed?

its 5 years old now, but i just finished "the gathering" by anne enright and i loved it

what's good

and recent

also, does anyone have a list of shit that's coming out soon?

too easy to find shit without assistance

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4INBIsBDDXM/S984ThAaySI/AAAAAAAACEg/YOBdjIduqlI/s400/1940s+SHINOLA+Shoe+Polish+vintage+illustration+advertisement.jpg

Actually James Salter has a new book coming out which I am looking forward to, and should fit anyone's definition of Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction although I am afraid that he may be viewed, along my other ILB lost causes, Evan S. Connell and Gilbert Sorrentino, as a minor writer. (Not even going to mention Thomas Berger)

did anyone else read "the flamethrowers" by rachel kushner? best new literary fiction i've read this year

i'm in the middle of reading it with the caveat that instead of reading it i keep reading other, easier books about zombies and magicians and despair instead

you should see if ilx poster 'thomp' has something to say though

my only real problem with it is that i keep reading sentences of it and thinking of writerly people using the word 'scaffolding' and feeling lost

lol i don't have anything to say about it except you asked me if i'd read it. i still haven't

only heard good things about this book

enjoyed the james salter, and have LOVED several of his earlier novels, but this felt oddly like something pulled out of a set of drawers kept locked since 1957

ok, kushner's pretty good

like so much of it seems like it ought to seem piled on way too thick but just kind of works

"I remember a rainbow spectrum of men's wing tips parked in rows, triple-A narrow, the leather dyed snake green, lemon yellow, and unstable shades of vermilion and Ditto-ink blue. All of humanity dresses in uniforms of one sort or another, and these shoes were for pimps."

yeah

ok now i am like 120 pages in my estimation of this has shot up to really really fucking good. something about the parallel of valera's dad's superhighway and the line reno is making in the salt flats for the sake of land art pushes some great pynchonian buttons, though at the same time this manages like conventional empathy and subject-position stuff i don't normally expect to happen in the same book as the other sort of thing

john dogg is a p good artist name

haha 'subject-position stuff'

"A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them."

Enjoying the Kushner a lot, even the bits in New York where not much seems to be happening are infinitely readable on a sentence level.

We'd eaten lotus paste buns on a cold, damp, November day, on which the sun shone and the rain fell simultaneously, the strange, rosy-gold light of this contradiction intensifying the colors around us as we walked, the fruit and vegetables in vendors' bins, green bok choys, smooth sunset-colored mangoes packed into cases, spiny durian fruits in their nets, crushed ice tinged with fish blood.

ha does she mention lotus paste buns again seventy pages later because everything is densely patterned or did she just forget, do u think

sometimes people just eat the same stuff

in fact most times

nah she like makes a thing of it

j you should take a look at this book sometime

waiting for the pb; inconveniently sized hardback

Anyone read David Rakoff's Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish yet? I'm fourth in line for it at the library and hoping to get it before school goes back.

the uk hb of this has the worst jacket and i was putting off reading it for that reason but the boards are actually cool

Got the Rakoff coming in the post

I don't quite like those Kushner sentences, something very labored about them. I also don't like that Rakoff title. I don't like anything anymore.

Yuck
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/06/207429956/exclusive-first-read-marisha-pessls-night-film?utm_source=&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_campaign=20130805

A large chandelier showered golden light on the crowd as I surveyed the party in the bronze mirror over the mantel. I was startled to spot someone I barely recognized: myself. Blue button-down, sports jacket, third or fourth drink — I was losing count — leaning against the wall like I was holding it up. I looked like I wasn't at a cocktail party but an airport, waiting for my life to take off.

this is a thread for literary fiction

Just warning people y'all are gonna have this book shoved down your throat next couple months

Her debut was enjoyable, tbf.

Sure--just think that opening paragraf is yuck

'physical description of main character through medium of them seeing themself in a mirror' is such a feeb move tbh

'calamity physics' was sort of garbage, not as good as clear-eyed as curtis sittenfield's 'prep' but more elaborate

nothing enjoyable abt her debut tbf

on the other hand i'm sure she's a lovely person with many positive qualities

"Her name was Jeannie, but no sane man would ever dream of her."
:|||||||||||||

oof

Whoops, I'm in the wrong thread

can't believe you quoted this section and left the punchline out wf:

"A large chandelier showered golden light on the crowd as I surveyed the party in the bronze mirror over the mantel. I was startled to spot someone I barely recognized: myself. Blue button-down, sports jacket, third or fourth drink — I was losing count — leaning against the wall like I was holding it up. I looked like I wasn't at a cocktail party but an airport, waiting for my life to take off.

Infinitely delayed."

ugh sorry I felt bad enough

David Rakoff's Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish is astounding. I cried maybe four times and laughed out loud too many times to count. Also, more than a bit poignant when I realized, after the fact, that I was reading it on the first year anniversary of his death.

is there a substantive discussion of st aubyn around these parts anywhere, i feel like he's come up ~ a dozen times but never for long, anyway rather tragically i am reading them because they are cheap in fopp

i don't think they're the sort of books that inspire substantive discussion really

there's a paragraph in 'bad news' where patrick, on quaaludes, holds up a pastry and says or thinks "this pastry is 'out of control'", that for a second made me think i was reading taipei again

If you have a Kindle, "The Flamethrowers" is just $2 right now: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B008J4NBHI/ref=nosim/themillions-20

yeah, I just bought it. They had her first book for the same price last month and I really dug it.

almost done with The Flamethrowers, really enjoying it

trying to figure out what kind of real life bar was the inspiration for "Rudy's"

at first it seems like a dive but then there's descriptions of it having red neon art installations and stuff

I can read now guys, thx for the concern tho

trying to figure out what kind of real life bar was the inspiration for "Rudy's"

at first it seems like a dive but then there's descriptions of it having red neon art installations and stuff

funnily enough the very next book I picked up (Patti Smith's "Just Kids") answered my question, it's Max's Kansas City

"We eventually graduated to the back room and sat in a corner under the Dan Flavin fluorescent sculpture, washed in red light ..."

Read this interview:

Filer, who still does shifts on mental health wards, insists the book isn't specifically about schizophrenia, nor the NHS. But he did feel a responsibility to "not propagate myths". Of all mental health diagnoses, schizophrenia is often the most stigmatised. "Broadly speaking," he says, "people hang on to that Jekyll and Hyde, split personality idea, which is not part of the diagnosis. It's not even nominally a part of it. And there's a misrepresentation of violence as well – which is not to say that violence can't be a part of it, but it's overrepresented in the media, especially the tabloids."

Why can't you not "propagate myths" in a work of fiction?

Started Harvest by Jim Crace. The opening does not bode well for me -- really heavy on "voice" and labored "beautiful" prose imo. The narrator does not sound like a person. Opening to a random page:

"Still, there was essential work to finish yesterday, whatever our distractions. If we hoped for sufficient grain to last the year, we'd have to deserve it with some sweat. This summer's yield was not yet good enough. Plenty, here, has wed itself to Leanness. At the lower, shaded limits by the dell and on the more neglected stony slopes our plants have proven miserly." It's fine writing, and yet it's so fucking CRAFTED that I almost can't take it.

trying to figure out what kind of real life bar was the inspiration for "Rudy's"

at first it seems like a dive but then there's descriptions of it having red neon art installations and stuff

― dmr, Thursday, November 21, 2013 12:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've never actually been there, but are you sure it's not Rudy's, the famous Hell's Kitchen bar also mentioned by Steely Dan -- ("I saw you at Rudy's, you were very high")?

pynchon/murakami

I'm going to buy 3 popular fiction books with which to engage in a reading practice. it ishard for me not to just ascerrtain a vagueness about the book as a whole, without the ability to explore the ideas. i am a materialist, so that is normal for me

Wasn't Rudy's in New Haven, was it?

i loved the flamethrowers. only disappointments are that the italy stuff turned out to be a much slighter portion (and less action-packed) than i had anticipated, and that there weren't more sex scenes (the hookup with ronnie fontaine got me all het up) i loved all the stories people told, i'm a sucker for that kinda self-mythologizing, conversational anecdote. reminded me of Open City by Teju Cole in the way the narrator is revealed to you more through their own observations than their actions: you never really hear reno speak in a conversation, underlining how shy she is, the feeling of being in the company of people who don't accept you and all the subtle dismissals that she ingeniously but silently decodes. i know you're supposed to think they're jerks but i really liked sandro & ronnie, i felt their ennui relatable and their sense of humour and playfulness admirable

there def was a dive named rudys in new haven, it still sortof exists but moved spaces and is now like a gentrified sit down restaurant/bar

the flame thrower rudy's is closest to max's KC i think

i never really noticed how little reno speaks until i saw it pointed out in a review and i was like, huh

http://nplusonemag.com/world-lite

^ discussed this anywhere here? v much follows from args against university fiction/writing programs that we've seen but crosses it w/a disdain for the direction of politics post -'89.

Interesting to contrast this w/world music, which hardened into a genre years before the cold war ended.

What I really liked the most was that it wouldn't pan a writer for being this or that. Ngugi teaches; Naipul doesn't, they both have good and bad things about them (and whether they become bad or good isn't exactly because they teach or not, or it isn't always clear-cut).

Just loved the run-on discussion of writers. Probably the first article I've read where I felt like picking up a Salman Rushdie book, or Naipul. Some of the writers they talk up as displaying 'internationalist' tendencies sound good, but one or two win prizes: Girish Karnad seems to display both things...and Yan Lianke has been forced underground, it doesn't sound like he moved there for lifestyle reasons.

The only sour note was the disdain for 2666. "Appalling" I suppose that novel is a puzzle that doesn't resolve, a lot of it is there, statically sitting around, but its part of the dashed off judgement that I so like.

Their model is v much hard-left and modernist - but modernism is a complicated set of people and things coming from a left and right ideology as they know v well. Still most of the writers they list sound quite appealing so I'll try and find a few things. The plot of Lianke's Lenin's Kisses is absurdity on the level of Platonov.

It still is about the sentences.

Really into "The Blazing World" by Siri Hustvedt, though only about halfway through. Never read anything by her before. Vaguely similar to "The Flamethrowers" in that it's about a female artist and how she's perceived in the masculine art world but very different tonally, a lot more knotty and varied.

hahaha she seriously called her book that? good on her i guess

She's fantastic. Although it gets on my nerves that all her characters exist in this world where everyone is either a writer or an artist or a creative of some sort. It's a bit smug in large doses.

Until I read that New Yorker profile of Lydia Davis a couple months ago, I had no idea Siri Husvedt had written a novel about Davis's son (w/Paul Auster) and the "Party Monster" murder

Yeah, the profiler's quotes from the novel were arresting; ditto and more this Times review:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/review/the-blazing-world-by-siri-hustvedt.html?_r=0

And I don't usually give a shit about "the art world."

'nobody is ever missing' was really good but felt almost too perfectly situated in 'contemporary literary fiction' like i couldnt shake a feeling of idk displacement while reading it i was thinking about trollopes parody of 'bleak house' in 'the warden' - books that are sick with themselves

i also really liked the new lorrie moore collection but i want to read something that is new but i had the same sort of problem although less so probably because i already 'know' lorrie moore and am habituated to her voice.

I can't wait to read nobody is ever missing

that sheila heti sucked

Ben Lerner's new novel is coming out September 2nd. I got a hold of a review copy some months ago, and it's pretty amazing.

Similar to his last one but structured more interestingly, and more provocatively autobiographical and political. Less funny though, unfortunately.

the shelia heti book that i am assuming your talking about was just like man, i cant even, ok w/e. sometimes i like to think i am unique or meaningful or particularly alive and then this person writes a book that so overlaps my own experiences and it seemed to trivialize everything, the insights and emotions didnt all match-up but enough did or to an extent that seemed overwhelming especially because her novel is not the shape that i would have given to my own insights or emotions

it was so boring and just like ugh

hey lamp do u rate trollope? i read the wards a couple weeks ago, i was actually kind of disappointed in the dickens bit, I have opened barchester towers and looked at the first page and slowly closed it again thinking 'not today' six or seven times since then

'can you forgive her?' is really good i think. i like the palliser novels better than the barchester ones.

The ILB fave Trollope is prob The Way We Live Now. more scathing than Dickens, in part because no tear-jerking; his characters are already fucked up enough by their times, themselves and each other. The author is fair-minded though: even (most of) the worst characters can be sympathized with to a degree (but having real grievances can make them that much more dangerous. I was startled by the steady focus on female psychology times or divided by their available/perceptible options; also the generational clashes.
Good overview here, from Frederick Mount in the WSJ:

The Way We Live Now
By Anthony Trollope (1875)
Augustus Melmotte is a big, flamboyant man of mysterious foreign origin, "with an expression of mental power in a harsh vulgar face." The amazing thing about him is that, right from the start of Trollope's irresistible novel, he has the reputation of a gigantic swindler who has already ruined those who trusted him. Yet respectable types still come running to the door of his office in Abchurch Lane. His prize speculation in Central American railroads is revealed as a cynical scam, and, like Mr. Merdle, he does himself in. "The Way We Live Now" offers another marvelous panorama of mid-Victorian London, but the difference is that most of Melmotte's victims aren't innocent dupes but greedy chancers well aware of the sort of man they are dealing with. Melmotte is based on George Hudson, "the Railway King," whose swindles bankrupted Trollope's father-in-law, but his whole career is a dead ringer for that of the newspaper baron Capt. Robert Maxwell, MC, MP, who was discredited time and again but always bobbed up until, in 1991, he went down for the third time off his yacht.

I read somewhere that this 'un dismayed some of his fans, who found it too dark.

(It's tons of fun; make room for an epic read.)

putting the 'contemporary' in 'contemporary literary fiction'

well we can go back to how waterface doesn't like sheila heti i guess

Any opinions here on Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew smith ? Just about to start that one...

If you're a fan of John Green, Michael Grant, Stephen King or David Levithan, get your pincers stuck into this. In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend Robby have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It's the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. Funny, intense, complex and brave, Grasshopper Jungle is a groundbreaking, genre-bending, coming-of-age stunner.

Anyone read Josef Winkler?

http://contramundum.net/catalog/current/natura-morta-a-roman-novella/

http://quarterlyconversation.com/reading-prae

idk...idk

sounds scary...

I like me some Hungarians, but that looks pretty daunting

I liked Marginalia on Casanova quite a lot when I read it last year.

Plenty of books with non-existent plots and carnivalesques (which the thing sorta says so I'm not sure as to what Prae is meant to be bringing here). Its interesting why this has taken so long to be translated. Surprised Musil wasn't mentioned, reminders of him w/out as much control (although I haven't of course spent as much time w/Szentkuthy).

Szentkuthy translations might be what the Bolano translations were a few years ago. Its a massive project.

And in terms of the thinking of what Euro-lit was like in the 20s and 30s its on par with the Musil revival, The Book of Disquiet, the Platonov translations, etc.

I think Josep Pla also might do something in that direction.

Sounds fascinating, not to mention intimidating, and really I would probably be better off, as always, actually reading some of the classics on which books like this build. Either way, there's an excerpt of the first 100 pages here :

http://contramundum.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CMP_Prae_book_sample.pdf

reading this old interview with richard yates and this here:

Q. Who among your contemporaries do you feel have been seriously neglected? What about the work of Edward Lewis Wallant?
Y. A fine writer; and yes, seriously neglected today, though he was by no means overlooked or unappreciated when his books first came out. Wallant worked with tremendous energy and tremendous speed. He didn't even start writing until he was over thirty; then he managed to produce four novels in five years before he died very suddenly of a stroke at the age of thirty-six, ten years ago. He and I were pretty good friends, though we used to argue a lot about working methods: I thought he ought to take more time over his books; he'd disagree. It was almost as if he knew he didn't have much time. If he'd lived, God only knows how much good work he might have accomplished by now. Anyway, the four books are there, and I do believe they'll last.

makes me curious...