Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

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."
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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'