post itt writers you think are bad

no need to explain yourself, thread is for catharsis not debate

ok i already regret this mods lock thread

j/k

these books are made for junkin

every single writer at every single metal site I regularly use for recommendations is bad

Goethe

ok lock thread now

There are many ways for a writer to be bad, many fewer ways for them to be good, and almost all of them yield somewhat mixed results. If they have a following, there's bound to be something mixed in with the crappy aspects that their followers rate much higher than you do, while what disgusts you hardly registers with their fans.

For me, the worst writers are not those who write appalingly bad sentences, but those who reinforce their audience's worst traits and convince them those traits, like selfishness, hatred or arrogance, are not really bad at all, but actually good in ways that others are too blind or stupid to see.

Or, I could just say 'Jordan Peterson' and leave it at that.

roth

stalin

noah berlatsky

Nathan J Robinson

Having read two of her books — one which I liked a lot until the end absolutely shit the bed, and one which I disliked all the way through — Ottessa Moshfegh.

lauren oyler

roth

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, February 9, 2021 10:39 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Crazy From the Heat is a great read

Orlando Bloom

jeet heer

neal stephenson

guy who wrote the Bible. boring af

uh, there were a bunch of guys who wrote it ... they even like named some of the books after themselves?

no i think it was a guy named Michael Bible?

All those postwar realist "big" American writers, Bellow, Updike, Roth etc

xpost Thx, very nearly sprayed a mouthful of soup across the room just then

Nathan J Robinson

he's a great choice for this thread

Joan Didion

dave marsh

Poe

Lovecraft

George Gissing

ben lerner

Brad i love you but this will just turn into yet another "the pictures are not on trial" fuckwits of ilx thread

i say "will"

Jurgen Habermas

Not sure if I entirely mean this or not but dang he can be a slog, however insightful

No bad writers, read everything.

this thread should have been about other ilxors only for that extra needle

I am a bad reader

I don’t necessarily think Ann Beattie is a bad writer, but I’m not sure whether she’s a good novelist.

https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/book-review-a-wonderful-stroke-of-luck/

Read what terrifies you. Read tweets.

I don’t necessarily think Ann Beattie is a bad writer, but I’m not sure whether she’s a good novelist.

https://bookandfilmglobe.com/fiction/book-review-a-wonderful-stroke-of-luck/

― We’re Up All Night To Get Lochte (Raymond Cummings), S

I have the same problem with her stories. I read ...Dana Falcon at the start of lockdown.

going for maximum controversy here, everyone ready?

David Walliams

Brad i love you but this will just turn into yet another "the pictures are not on trial" fuckwits of ilx thread

― The Scampo Fell to Earth (Noodle Vague), Saturday, February 13, 2021 5:27 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i feel like “this thread is a terrible idea” is there subtextually in the opening posts

Anyway Comrade Alph otm everything is good nothing is forbidden lol for biden

it is important to recognize what is bad so it can not be respected and/or repeated

ok yeah i know that recognizing it doesn't actually help

My moaning about other people's moaning is just as bad

Anyway D H Lawrence is for shit

otm

I dig many of his poems and stories, though I'm frightened about rereading WIL.

Bob Vickery

1994. Here’s the full essay: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/12/26/discussing-the-undiscussable

thanks tipsy

I know some readers will accuse that approach to criticism as conservative, but if the dissed Black, abused women, and disfranchised homosexual makes this part of the identity central to their art, and the art still sucks, then, yes, fire away.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 23, 2025 9:29 AM (twelve seconds ago)

yeah much of this convo rings true with what my art prof partner tells me about her classes as well as how the art market latches onto young POC artists. I do sometimes worry that it can sound a bit reactionary to others (she is a WOC though), but she finds the emphasis on self-victimization extremely disappointing and politically troubling.

then there's the corollary that in this context straight white men artists gain a perverse freedom to make art about a much broader range of ideas. which is partic annoying because she also personally experienced being told very bluntly that she should make her art reflect her identity if she wanted to succeed, or people simply assuming her racial/cultural background dictated her choices

I am def here for any Vuong takedowns. Yesterday I put three of his books (all gifts, all unread; I’ve read his writing elsewhere and know I am allergic) into a neighbourhood sidewalk library, somebody else’s problem, now.

The NYT did an interesting appraisal of the Croce/Jones controversy in 2021, when a new performance of "Still/Here" was mounted. Jones talks about how devastating it was for him — not least because she seemed to dismiss the possibility that there was real art in the work.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/arts/dance/still-here-bill-t-jones-arlene-croce.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Yk8.wGvm.0Vz9jK-A5jhu&smid=url-share

“Trauma and healing” have been themes in contemporary visual art for some time now too.

Don't forget music. I just wrote this for my Stereogum column:

Spanish trumpeter Milena Casado is getting the push. Her debut album, Reflection Of Another Self, was co-produced by drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin. Her band includes three promising young players I like a lot: pianist Lex Korten, bassist Kanoa Mendenhall, and drummer Jongkuk Kim. There are a bunch of special guests on the record, too, including bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, pianist Kris Davis, turntablist/sampler wizard Val Jeanty (who cuts up an interview with Wayne Shorter), and, on the beautiful “Lidia y los Libros,” harpist Brandee Younger and flutist Nicole Mitchell. This many co-signs — plus the fact that the press release describes it as “a deeply personal exploration of identity, trauma, and self-discovery” — would often send me running in the opposite direction, but she really can play, and the music combines high-powered instrumental interplay with electronic textures that add something vital. She’s earned my attention, and deserves yours too.

in this context straight white men artists gain a perverse freedom to make art about a much broader range of ideas.

Then why don't they, he asked churlishly.

some more xpost thoughts:

LG, surprisingly, my mentioning this at the beginning of the semester has always gone well!! i always note that this does not preclude writing about difficult or traumatic topics and experiences, but that we have to assess the writing as writing, because that is our job— to help the writer bring the best version of what they want to write into the world. trauma dumping is not good writing, no matter how one cuts it, and so if the writer is engaging in it, we need to let them know!

rob, what your partner says rings true with what many of my non-white friends and colleagues have said, and reminds me of Reginald Shepherd’s essay where he says something like “i am always writing from the perspective of a Black gay man because that is what I am— I am not here to perform myself or a proper politic for an audience.”

then there's the corollary that in this context straight white men artists gain a perverse freedom to make art about a much broader range of ideas. which is partic annoying because she also personally experienced being told very bluntly that she should make her art reflect her identity if she wanted to succeed, or people simply assuming her racial/cultural background dictated her choices

One of the 20th Century’s greatest composers, George Walker—an African-American who only occasionally referenced African-American themes in his music—snapped at a Washington Post interviewer: “I don’t want to talk about jazz, I want to talk about Hindemith.”

remember when interviewers showed shock when Missy Elliott said her favorite artist was Bjork?

Also, I feel that to make a career of art, one must be skilled at applying for and receiving grants, and emphasizing trauma and identity are things that will get you the grant.

Then why don't they, he asked churlishly.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, July 23, 2025 10:10 AM (nine minutes ago)

lol fair, but I was very narrowly talking about the specific milieu of her art dept. and yeah of course this doesn't remotely mean all that art is good, and some of the more identity-focused autobio art is extremely good too. just if a white student makes art about idk medieval astronomy or just gets really into minimalism, no one presses them to foreground their identity as a white man (which is not the same as being asked to confront one's subject position in a society stratified by race, class, gender, etc etc) or make it more personal.

the whole therapy aspect of it is also big in her world, and like table says profs need to guide students. if nothing else, there is a huge difference between talking to a therapist and putting your trauma & life story up for quite literal critique. the best case scenario there is getting a lot of affirmation and no real feedback, the worst case is way way worse!

re: grants -- probably depends on the agency, but yes in defense of these artists, there is a lot of institutional and economic pressure to market yourself in these restrictive ways

It’s been noted that college application essays have largely centred a “this is my trauma, this is my story” approach in the last decade, and I can imagine that applies well to MFA programs. I don’t teach creative practices, but would guess there’s a cycle of institutional reinforcement where people get into programs by telling that narrative, then are the people who make up the program, and then take the same approach to grants, residencies, etc.

When applying for full professor after visiting for a few years, I'll admit to using queerness-informs-my-pedagogy in my statements of intent.

i once brought up that i was trans in a review as a way of asserting legitimacy over what i was talking about and i still sorta hate that i did it

i am writing a novel about a trans woman i suppose but the novel is not about trauma!!!!!!!

obv don't want to seem like people shouldn't write about trauma if they want to, or shouldn't feel free write about whatever they choose, it's more a sort of pressure from the industry i guess, which can sometimes exist even long before anyone is talking to agents or whatever as reflected by classmates or teachers or just what is on bookshelves.

then there's the corollary that in this context straight white men artists gain a perverse freedom to make art about a much broader range of ideas

this is it exactly! so well put. i remember talking to a friend about how i often felt in workshops that if i wrote any piece of fiction whatsoever i would get technical feedback only, as a straight white men. useful and necessary technical things that make workshops valuable. but when they wrote a piece which had like religious upbringing and associated violence against women everyone very enthusiastically moved on to a social/political discussion and nobody talked about anything technical at all. they sort of lost the actual benefit of the workshop in this weird party of empathy/virtue.

also, as an irish person living and then studying in the uk, i once had a lecturer tell me i should change a main character in a story so they were irish, and make another character a posh british racist who victimises them. i still can't believe that this happened, and it wasn't like hinted or a passing suggestion, it was a direct piece of advice in a one on one tutorial.

beyond that tho i felt university was a really good place to explore a lot of the issues we are talking about here. a lot of trust once you get to know classmates.

not mentioning that story about the lecturer to say 'this happens to everyone btw', more just to say that even as the most invisible/privileged minority in a uk context, somebody still said oh hey stick some prejudice in there

Ken Loach used to complain that, because his mode is social realism, film critics never discuss the formal aspects of his films at all.

One thing left out of this can be related back to another book I recently read a great deal of, battling my boredom the whole time, only to put it down after reaching a scene that could be described as racist caricature. The book, a reissue of a Joe Westmoreland novel from 2001 entitled Tramps Like Us, has gotten wonderful reviews from many major outlets upon its reissue.

unrelated to the larger convo but i just finished book and enjoyed it -- i thought there was power in the mundanity -- but in the gay book club for which it was the assigned reading opinions were pretty split, leaning more towards your view of it

i thought it might be the worst novel i have read in the past decade

i haven’t not finished a book because i hated it so much in years, Westmoreland’s broke my streak

more on Vuong: a lot of chatter because the cover for Nightboat’s reissue of David Wojnarowicz’s ‘Memories that Smell Like Gasoline’ features a foreword by…. Vuong.

my joke on insta was “memories that smell like the dictates of the market”

Tramps Like Us is a modern day Huckleberry Finn. It's an all-American story, albeit one that isn't told much, if at all. It's about the search for home, for a better life, feeling like a refugee in one's own country.

and it’s told by the dullest faggot who ever lived

Well, here we go: Joe Westmoreland is a bad writer.

Thanks to this thread, I clicked on Dwight Garner's 2001 review; it got me to check Young Man From the Provinces out of the library.

i will have to check that out.

Well, here we go: Joe Westmoreland is a bad writer.

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Wednesday, July 23, 2025 12:49 PM (twenty-five minutes ago)

i don't think i can really disagree w/ this -- i mean, i do disagree but not in a way where i can mount an argument for why you're wrong. like, i recognize the qualities you are picking up on as "bad" but i just kinda like them. i found he had a way of ending thoughts w/ simple descriptive statements that while basic captured something real & earned to me. there's one scene of him hitchhiking that just ends w/ him saying "i stepped into the car and felt a semi truck speed past me" and i could feel the wind blow past my neck. a lot of scenes or chapters just sort of end w/ him being like "and then i fell asleep in the morning sunlight" lol but yeah idk, i did find profundity in the mundanity but i can't push back too much against someone that just found it mundane. i think even if you like the book at points you have to let the diaristic aspect kinda wash over you, i started disassociating from the names -- i get how it all could be spun as demerits

there were aspects i liked about the book -- a fuller picture of san francisco for instance than what you get from rose colored portrayals of the castro. there were people in my group that wanted far deeper introspection, more genuine wisdom, so i get it. i can see how it works moreso w/ distance from the events in question -- time can lend meaning to things that don't seem revelatory at the time

The MH platonov review didn’t even really read as a pan to me despite the fact that he clearly didn’t enjoy the books and outright says he struggled to get anything out of them lol (read him on zweig for a proper diss). It made me want to read them tbh! You can’t say it isn’t “negative criticism” I guess but I think that just exposes the shallowness of this way of looking at things.

It’s a commonplace (even around here a bit) that “it’s always more interesting to read ppl describing things they like than things they dislike” and yeah enthusiasm is good but whenever I see that I’m like, always? Why would that be true? Clearly it isn’t! At its worst this ends up with that kind of toxic positivity of that dumb let ppl enjoy things cartoon, the infantile obsession with “haters” ~10y ago, ostensibly grown ppl who go fully pisspants if they hear a single negative word about tswift/ marvel slop/ joseph biden. But an engaged and interesting critic talking about things they dislike can be really valuable (or just funny/entertaining) & I feel like anyone who claims otherwise is fronting, & the Hofmann eg shows that it can actually get to something singular about the work that a dutifully reverent review might not

This goes especially for discussion boards like this! I think we go thru phases of NO HATERS/ why come into a thread just to shit on* something

*mildly criticise

When we’re talking about stuff I like I like to hear those takes! Sometimes they are foolish, what are you gonna do! Years ago I had a call centre job where we were trying to sell ppl extended warranty plans (I was v bad at it) and during training they had this horrible term “objection-handling”: the idea was if the potential customer says “but (I can’t afford it/ don’t need it/ not gonna buy shit over the phone under pressure)” we were supposed to, not quite argue but say “yes i see what you’re saying but (it’s only £x a month/ wouldn’t you like the peace of mind/ you can cancel anytime)”. I’ve realised that sometimes talking about art on here when I’m chatting shit with ppl who hate something I like I end up using a version of objection-handling to sound out my own feelings about the thing beyond “it rules”: if I can be annoying and say to someone’s complaint “yes that’s true and here’s why it’s good actually” it clarifies things for me in a way that enriches my continued living-with-the-thing. Or sometimes I go actually yeah, that that aspect was shit now you mention it. Obv it’s not about “winning” an aesthetic argument but just reducing it all down to its a matter of taste agree to disagree feels like a kind of impoverished way to go about being a talking about art enjoyer, we can’t demand to have mother cut the crust off everything jfc

Sorry that went a bit astray from negative lit reviews but it’s stuff I’ve been thinking about for a while

good post and fwiw I encountered the term "objection-handling" when being trained in union organizing, though I wouldn't be surprised if it drifted over from the sales world

yeah these have been excellent posts past few days

my only objectives to negative criticism are the occasional fish-in-a-barrel quality it takes on when the target is really obvious and it's clearly just trying to harvest attention/clicks, and i personally dislike writing about things i hate with any depth (other people have told me they like when i do it, i don't, it's not fun to write). but a merited, thorough takedown can feel like a good meal after a long fast y'know. like any given writer there is a hater deep inside of me who loves seeing hacks and charlatans get reamed

I’ve realised that sometimes talking about art on here when I’m chatting shit with ppl who hate something I like I end up using a version of objection-handling to sound out my own feelings about the thing beyond “it rules”: if I can be annoying and say to someone’s complaint “yes that’s true and here’s why it’s good actually” it clarifies things for me in a way that enriches my continued living-with-the-thing

i do this all the time! have never thought about it like this

"The MH platonov review didn’t even really read as a pan to me despite the fact that he clearly didn’t enjoy the books and outright says he struggled to get anything out of them lol (read him on zweig for a proper diss). It made me want to read them tbh! You can’t say it isn’t “negative criticism” I guess but I think that just exposes the shallowness of this way of looking at things."

Yeah didn't think it was a pan either. Your post actually clarifies that what I liked about it felt like neither (unlike the Zweig 'review', which was basically shitposting and v aggressively trolly). At the end I did think this is why Platonov is a really great writer, in that it could get a reviewer tied up like this.

Whereas Tom Crewe's straightforwardly negative review is not something I care to engage with, because I know the kinds of things that are coming, and that kind of review can be as much part of a moribund lit scene as the bad writing being reviewed.

I grew up reading pans and mixed reviews and the good writers made me examine what are (for me) signposts of bad writing. It was valuable.

some xposts:

Jordan, yeah, I think I just wanted more from the protagonist. As I have written elsewhere, I don’t think I have ever read sex scenes or drug scenes which were so bland. I guess what made it interesting for me at first is that it had a real bildungsroman feel, and since I am currently enrolled in a YA lit class and have been reading a ton of YA lit over the course of the past seven months, there was something there that piqued my interest. But 100 pages in and what I read as repression and trauma informing a taciturnity in the narrator just turned out to be how he reacted to everything and went through life.

For what it’s worth, I guess that part of my distaste was that I know many older gay men who lived through the plague years, and all of them have much more interesting stories than Westmoreland’s. I just felt like I couldn’t get the time back if I kept reading, and I was gaining nothing from it.

xpost to Ivy— yeah, it’s not like I relish being a hater, but I also think that what needs to be panned needs to be panned. The only fun I ever had while writing a negative review was when I absolutely slaughtered some idiotic track by Tiësto and Diplo, the headline was “Tiesto and Diplo Take Huge Crap in Your Ears” lmfao

it's weird cos lots of reviews where someone dislikes something are actually shit, like people have rote or stock reasons for their dislike which seem to have been born in them before they ever encountered the work. that's prob about 95% of negative reviews, especially with music or whatever. people criticising a vase for not being a spade or whatever.

i guess the other 5% is pretty important though. idk, maybe the longer we've lived online the less true it feels that it's mainly worth focusing on writing about stuff you like or value. as wins says, a lot of quite aggressive defensive attitudes protecting vastly powerful companies/artists, and rejection of any criticism of same.

Well I have sort of shat things up by drifting away from professional reviews and talking more about general online posts. I just find the idea that anyone would want to spend hours talking about art but insist on frictionless reinforcement odd, for one thing you’re being very boring and for another you’re blocking yourself from a deeper understanding of the thing you claim to love! Like you can just keep repeating to yourself that your partner is flawless or you can actually try to know them

I barely read fiction/poetry reviews so I have no idea how common bad reviews are these days but I have definitely read a lot of lazy takedowns of stuff in various media

I'm 100 pages into Brandon Taylor's Late Americans, have no idea what y'all think.

I liked it, I like the super- sensitive fussiness of the character and finely observed micro-aggressions that he experienced. Those were even more prominent features of Real Life, his first novel

I grew up reading pans and mixed reviews and the good writers made me examine what are (for me) signposts of bad writing. It was valuable.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 23 July 2025 bookmarkflaglink

Sure but at some point I stopped caring about technical reviews of novels. Then again I don't write, I just read stuff.

I’ll reiterate that I hated Real Life. I’ve spent enough time around neurotic, insecure grad students whining about school and life (including myself, lol) that reading a whole book of it was just painful. To me, it felt more like an extension of that whining than anything, further weighed down by hamfisted tropes (fighting turns into fucking, oblique references to childhood trauma, the whole “this is ~Real~ life” commentary). I remember recommending this to a friend who had a lot of similar experiences around grad school drama, sexual insecurity, etc. Don’t know if he read or liked it, but I do not get the hype around it.

Wow, coincidence: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/in-defense-of-the-traditional-review

I find Taylor really insightful, but his need to be the smartest guy in the room at all times, whether it’s relevant or not, whether it’s funny or not - is annoying. Also like every modern critic (Chu for example), everything is too fucking long - not just a bit prolix but 1000s and 1000s of words too long.

I haven’t read taylor’s novels but I enjoy his reviews and his twitter feed lol. I also read a short story of his in granta magazine a year or two ago that was minor but enjoyable. I understand the aversion if you’re tired of grad students but cosmopolitan people in their late 20s-early 30s making bad decisions is basically my favorite genre

he strikes me as rather benign and unfussy which can’t be said of some of the other culprits itt

Give me a 30 second uncritical fawning tik tok video over anything Brody says.

This is hilarious:

For instance, it’s a fundamental error of editors and reviewers alike to consider classical-music concert reviews as mere accounts of performers and performances. I’ve written some, and the main subject of a review of a performance of, say, a Beethoven symphony isn’t the musicians but Beethoven and the symphony. A classical review of merit weighs in on the meaning and the significance of Beethoven, makes a persuasive case for even performing Beethoven nearly two centuries after his death. Or, to put it differently, critics who take Beethoven for granted are doing injustices to readers, Beethoven, and music—whereas those whose reviews reach deep into the music itself and renew knowledge, interest, and passion in regard to Beethoven have thereby broken the limits of time lines and opened readers’ listening pleasures and perspectives into the future.

This is just wrong imo, you are writing for a public that you assume is knowledgeable about music to a certain degree and I would expect a review to be 90% about that particular performance. I'd expect the reviewer to be familiar and have a pretty big history of attending performances of the works in question, the knowledge of the ensemble's musicianship and what they bring to the table, and to be able to bring his ears to it.

You can't have every review being about Beethoven and an argument for performing his music ffs.

Bring video on.

You're making the argument he is, I think. At least that's how I read "Or, to put it differently, critics who take Beethoven for granted are doing injustices to readers, Beethoven, and music—whereas those whose reviews reach deep into the music itself and renew knowledge, interest, and passion in regard to Beethoven..."

If you read the last "Beethoven" as synecdoche for "Beethoven's music" instead of his biography.

yes i actually dont think RB is wrong in some moral-political abstract sense -- what is it that music writing shd be doing!?? -- tho as an actual account of 99.999999% of classical reviewing for the last 100 years it is wrong as fuck lol

on the other hand "classical music is about the composer not the performance" is an extremely stupid position to attempt to take: brody is a land of contrasts

Give me a 30 second uncritical fawning tik tok video over anything Brody says.

Brody historically less likely to be outed as an employee for Lockheed Martin

worth reading a letter taking issue with Tom Crewe’s review of Vuong, as well as Crewe’s withering response.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n13/letters