Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

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