Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

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 :(