Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

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