Rolling Contemporary Literary Fiction

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'

well we can go back to how waterface doesn't like sheila heti i guess

Any opinions here on Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew smith ? Just about to start that one...

If you're a fan of John Green, Michael Grant, Stephen King or David Levithan, get your pincers stuck into this. In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend Robby have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It's the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. Funny, intense, complex and brave, Grasshopper Jungle is a groundbreaking, genre-bending, coming-of-age stunner.

Anyone read Josef Winkler?

http://contramundum.net/catalog/current/natura-morta-a-roman-novella/

http://quarterlyconversation.com/reading-prae

idk...idk

sounds scary...

I like me some Hungarians, but that looks pretty daunting

I liked Marginalia on Casanova quite a lot when I read it last year.

Plenty of books with non-existent plots and carnivalesques (which the thing sorta says so I'm not sure as to what Prae is meant to be bringing here). Its interesting why this has taken so long to be translated. Surprised Musil wasn't mentioned, reminders of him w/out as much control (although I haven't of course spent as much time w/Szentkuthy).

Szentkuthy translations might be what the Bolano translations were a few years ago. Its a massive project.

And in terms of the thinking of what Euro-lit was like in the 20s and 30s its on par with the Musil revival, The Book of Disquiet, the Platonov translations, etc.

I think Josep Pla also might do something in that direction.

Sounds fascinating, not to mention intimidating, and really I would probably be better off, as always, actually reading some of the classics on which books like this build. Either way, there's an excerpt of the first 100 pages here :

http://contramundum.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/CMP_Prae_book_sample.pdf

reading this old interview with richard yates and this here:

Q. Who among your contemporaries do you feel have been seriously neglected? What about the work of Edward Lewis Wallant?
Y. A fine writer; and yes, seriously neglected today, though he was by no means overlooked or unappreciated when his books first came out. Wallant worked with tremendous energy and tremendous speed. He didn't even start writing until he was over thirty; then he managed to produce four novels in five years before he died very suddenly of a stroke at the age of thirty-six, ten years ago. He and I were pretty good friends, though we used to argue a lot about working methods: I thought he ought to take more time over his books; he'd disagree. It was almost as if he knew he didn't have much time. If he'd lived, God only knows how much good work he might have accomplished by now. Anyway, the four books are there, and I do believe they'll last.

makes me curious...

also nice to see them mention ILB favorites Brian Moore and Evan Connell.

Q. Who do you consider some other good, neglected writers?
Y. Read the four spendid books by Gina Berriault, if you can find them, and if you want to discover an absolutely first-class talent who has somehow been left almost entirely out of the mainstream. She hasn't quit writing yet, either, and I hope she never will.

And read almost anything by R.V. Cassill, a brilliant and enormously productive man who's been turning out novels and stories for twenty-five years or more, all the while building and sustaining a large influence on other writers as a teacher and critic. Oh, he's always been well-known in what I guess you'd call literary circles, but he had to wait a long, long time before his most recent novel, Doctor Cobb's Game, did bring him some widespread readership at last.

And George Garrett. I haven't read very much of his work, but that's at least partly because there's so very much of it - and he too has remained largely unknown except among other writers. I guess his latest book, like Cassill's, did make something of a public splash at last, but that too was long overdue. And Seymour Epstein - ever heard of him? I have read all of his work to date - five novels and a book of stories, all expertly crafted and immensely readable - yet he too seems to have been largely ignored so far.

But hell, this list could go on and on. This country's loaded with good, badly neglected writers. Fred Chappel. Calvin Kentfield. Herbert Wilner. Helen Hudson. Edward Hoagland. George Cuomo. Arthur J. Roth - those are only a few. My God, if I'd produced as much good work as most of those people, with as little reward, I'd really feel qualified to rant and rail against the Literary Establishment.

i gotta write these down! other than hoagland never read any of them.

one more:

"Another excellent, underrated writer is Thomas Williams..."

http://www.richardyates.org/bib_pshares.html

When did Connell get promoted to ILB favorite? Always felt like it was only a few of us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Berriault

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Williams_%28writer%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lewis_Wallant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Verlin_Cassill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Garrett_%28poet%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Chappell

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-17/news/vw-947_1_open-heart-surgery

http://www.thewessexcollective.com/the_wessexcollective/Hudson.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Michael_Cuomo

http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/75857.Arthur_J_Roth

it was probably just me and you. but that qualifies when there are only like five people on a message board.

some more!

Q. Who among the newer first novelists are you interested in?
Y. I thought Leonard Gardner's Fat City, which came out a couple of years ago, was an excellent first novel, and I was glad to see it win such immediate and general acclaim. Apart from that book, I guess the first novelists I've paid the most attention to are those I've known personally at Iowa over the years. Quite a number of them have been breaking into the field recently, getting their first books published with greater or lesser degrees of success, and I can't say I've liked all of those books. The best of them so far, in my opinion, are those by Andre Dubus, James Crumley, James Whitehead, Mark Dintenfass. Nolan Porterfield, and Theodore Weesner. They're all fine writers - modern writers in the best sense, traditional writers in the best sense. So, by the way, are some five or six other young writers I've known at Iowa who haven't published their first books yet, but who will soon.

though everyone here should know fat cit. and dubus and crumley.

"city"

Dagon [1]is a novel by author Fred Chappell published in 1968. The novel is a psychological thriller with supernatural elements, attempting to tell a Cthulhu Mythos story as a psychologically realistic Southern Gothic novel. It was awarded the Best Foreign Book of the Year prize by the French Academy in 1972.[2]

it was probably just me and you
lovebug starski too!

Fat City was also adapted by John Huston, who always did right by his literary sources (having finally read Moby-Dick, I'm wondering what I would think of the movie's climax, but overall still seems like a good faith effort).
James Whitehead! He and Miller Williams, Lucinda's Dad, were among the founders of the University of Arkansas Fayetteville's writing program, which schooled a number of noted scribblers. Mainly a poet (publications-wise), but also wrote Joiner, a novel about a very freewheeling college student: 60s Mississippi Baroque more than Southern Gothic, was my impression http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/arts/james-whitehead-67-author-of-joiner-novel-of-deep-south.html
Fred Chappell was another highly esteemed writing instructor, when I first heard about him in the 80; still need to check him out.
The library shop has several by Ha Jin now. Is he good?

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?s=btb

^some really good titles.

Read Ferrante and Miaojin.

Immeditaely interested in Marechal and HildaHilst (reading the latter last week)

An overview of Chris Kraus's novels by Leslie Jamison, pretty apt on Kraus's treatment of gendered reading expectations and the tension between self-exposure and generic play in her writing:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/this-female-consciousness-on-chris-kraus

Has anyone else read John Brandon? He has three novels and a short-story collection from McSweeney's. I've read all of them except his first novel, and they're all pretty great. https://store.mcsweeneys.net/authors/john-brandon

Some books that were issued in 2015, caught my eye but haven't got around to:

Regina Ullmann - Country Road
Mahabhrata - A Modern Re-telling (Carol Satyamurti)
László Krasznahorkai - Seibo There Below
Wolfgang Hilbig - Sleep of the Righteous
Clarice Lispector - The Complete Stories
Silvina Ocampo - Thus Were Their Faces
Claire-Louise Bennett - Pond
Agustin Fernandez Mallo - Nocilla Dream
Bae Suah - Nowhere to be Found
Joanna Walsh - Vertigo
Elfriede Jelinek - Rechnitz and The Merchant's Contracts
Maggie Nelson - Argonauts
Chris Kraus - I Love Dick
Mairtin O Cadhain - The Dirty Dust

Poetry:

The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Bilingual Edition
Arseny Tarkovsky - I Burned at the Forest

What I've seen that will be published in 2016:

Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen
Han Kang - Human Acts (Jan)
Alejandra Pizarnik - Extracting the Stone of Madness (Mar)
Pere Gimferrer - Fortuny (Feb)
Elfriede Jelinek - Charges (The Supplicants) (May)
László Krasznahorkai - Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens

Wolfgang Hilbig - Sleep of the Righteous
Clarice Lispector - The Complete Stories
Silvina Ocampo - Thus Were Their Faces
Bae Suah - Nowhere to be Found
Mairtin O Cadhain - The Dirty Dust

-- these are all well worth it; really good, in very different(but mostly depressing) ways

re: Lispector/Ocampo - Depressing? Not a word I've seen to describe them both. The Dirty Dust sounds comedic.

In a surge of language proficiency-related optimism I bought an original-language copy of Cré na Cille (aka The Dirty Dust) when I was in Dublin for Christmas...I can't really say anything for the actual story but it's an enjoyable book to read out loud even when you barely understand half the words...

Irish is reasonably challenging language

It is comedic, but everyone in it is dead