Authors you will never read

At this point in my reading life I presume I will never read Steven King or John Grisham, despite each having reputations as decent authors. If they've never tempted me up until now, I think I'd have to be imprisoned with only their books as reading material before I'd start one.

In a more literary vein: John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates.

Not to forget Jean Auel, who wrote a wildly popular series of best selling novels about the adventures of a paleolithic heroine, most notably Clan of the Cave Bear. My mother was an enthusiast and tried to graft her enthusiasm onto me. I lasted about four paragraphs. To my ear her prose was as grating as a dental drill.

weirdly, grisham and king are both authors i've met. grisham is the nicer guy of the two but king is also nice, just aloof.

i am going to read every author before i die.

Ben Lerner

You're missing out.

J.K. Rowling

Very much so, yes.

Jonathan Franzen

i didn't even see the lerner comment. he's very worth reading. the most recent two novels were flawed but in ways that were instructive. he writes about literature--and language--in a way that is worth grappling with

he writes about literature--and language--in a way that is worth grappling with

Yeah, this is the crux of it. The Hatred of Poetry is one of the pithiest encapsulations I've read of why no one pays attention to poets, especially those of the living variety.

I mean, most authors, probably.

But yeah, fuck JK Rowling - I doubt I would have read her before, but I'm sure as fuck not reading her now.

Donna Tartt

donna tartt is good though

Leïla Slimani

Basically, all authors whose writerly expertise is limited to psychosociological explorations of upper middle-class specimens and most authors who are utterly uninterested in the formalist challenges posed by modernism and its precipitates to this day.

Most authors, of course, but this is ppl you come across enough times, like its on your radar...but the answer is just a flat no.

Yes to Dave Eggers, Franzen, Updike, Oates and Rowling lol (although I would like to read more children's books when I am older)

Ian McEwan
Martin Amis
Angela Carter
Deborah Levy

LOL a ton of LRB/NYRB people's fiction. Most of it is because I don't particularly care for what they write

John Lanchester
Colm Toibin
Andrew O'Hagan
Adam Mars-Jones
Tim Parks
Adam Thirwell
Jenny Diski (I like her essays but I reckon she doesn't have fiction in her)
Lauren Oyler (same as above, even before she publishes anything)
Lorrie Moore (aka the Sally Rooney discourse)

every Tartt novel could be more tarttly written.

Also: novelists that have been dissed by Gabriel Josipovici.

Btw there's some overlap between this thread and

People You Suspect Are Frighteningly Overrated But Don't Actually Know Enough About To Say So

I somehow doubt that I'm ever going to get to Norman Mailer.

David baldacci
Dan brown

Philip Roth

The one novelist whose work everyone reads, and cites, and praises, and always sounds tedious, self-obsessed, and offensive, and which I have so far managed never to read, is ...

Philip Roth.

So I like to think of it as a lifelong ambition to maintain this record, but not sure I'll manage it.

Remarkable simultaneous posting with Lily Dale! :D

I have wondered a few times lately how The Human Stain reads in 2020...very poorly I would guess

ill let you know im thinking of reading the human stain soon-ish

have you read other Roth? If nothing else, I certainly wouldn't start with that one.

Do we have a "Authors you regret reading" thread? (I'm not thinking of Roth btw)

Do we have a "Authors you regret reading" thread?

Not that I know of, but I had the same thought.

yea ive read lotsa roth xp

william luther pierce
lew wallace

I read loads of Amis as a teen, and will never find reason to read any more, and wish I'd spent the time reading something else.

pomenitul will appreciate that I read The Orenda literally about a week before the scandal broke as a first step to learning more about indigenous literature

Je est un autre is evergreen for a reason.

Ian McEwan. I hate English novelists almost as much as I hate English comedians. Some of the dead ones are pretty good though.

I like Tom McCarthy.

He's probably got some Irish in him, that would explain it.

Good thread, but I haven't been able to read in recent times so I recuse myself.

Lee Rourke’s another good’un.

See my previous post.

I know, ‘twas on purpose.

I trudged through 70-odd pages of Embassytown so technically he doesn’t count but: China Miéville.

When I read Updike, I needed a deep cleaning.

i'm probably never going to read cormac mccarthy at this point

Hitler

Which one?

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387748142l/521675.jpg

Bridget Hitler’s Diary

I think David Foster Wallace would be a good candidate for never reading, if one had not yet started reading him.

God

Feel like there's a number of 'you should probably read these dudes in your twenties' dudes (like Kerouac and Hesse) who I haven't read and probably won't get around to now that I'm long past my twenties.

Tbf both are great midlife crisis reads, especially Hesse.

I get what you're saying OL, but honestly it's probably better for your soul to read Kerouac at an age when you can see the gender dynamics clearly and not be influenced by them

When I read Updike, I needed a deep cleaning.

The bit where In-a-Gadda-da-Vida is playing is so bad my toes have still not uncurled since 198whenever

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v03/n22/martin-amis/football-mad

(it's from 1981, just email boosted in their "diverted traffic" series of unlocked pieces from the past)

ONLY good thing about Manhunter is the good Brian Cox

lies

in any movie or tv show featuring william peterson there is also the good thing of keeping an eye out for his incredibly bandy legs

both red dragon (the book) and manhunter (the movie) are good

Voskuil's magnum opus deserves to be translated into English. It's a lot but a lot of it is great.

LBI delivering as usual

lol <3

Amazed it hasn't been translated tbf. Dibs on an abridged Bildts version!

I'd like to know more! What's the experience of reading it?

Amazed it hasn't been translated tbf. Dibs on an abridged Bildts version!

― Monte Scampino (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 15 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

It's longer than Proust, but yeah a volume would be good. Looking at this overview and his debut sounds good.

http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/author/194/jj-voskuil

Amazed it hasn't been translated tbf. Dibs on an abridged Bildts version!

― Monte Scampino (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 15 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

It's longer than Proust, but yeah a volume would be good. Looking at this overview and his debut sounds good.

http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/author/194/jj-voskuil🕸

apologies for that, office life is getting to me it seems.

🚨Giveaway alert🚨 We have two proofs of Jon Fosse's I IS ANOTHER (tr. Damion Searls) to give away. Reply to this tweet with your favourite notable doppelgangers or twins and be entered to win a proof. Giveaway ends tonight at 6 PM BST. pic.twitter.com/kGvtndJRDa

— Fitzcarraldo Editions (@FitzcarraldoEds) September 15, 2020

This series of books by Jon Fosse. Nothing I've read about it strikes me as something I'd like. Sounds like a post-Knausgaard cash-in tbh.

Someone told me everything I have said about mental health is meaningless because it doesn’t continually address the class struggle. And I am thinking back to when I nearly fell to my death and genuinely believe a treatise on structural inequality would have been a bit too heavy.

— Matt Haig (@matthaig1) September 20, 2020

wanker

andrea long chu

Lockwood as novelist is probably going to be ok, but not as good as her tweets, which is where the magic happens

xxxp that's a crazy assumption, that Jon Fosse would ever be influenced by Knausgaard. if there's one author who fully has his own thing it's Fosse, and this new septology is very much still that 'own thing' he's been doing for decades.

Not influenced so much as a cash-in. Let's get someone who is male, middle-aged, Norwegian..

His translated novels have been well received for a while. He's also one of the most performed dramatists in the world for the last couple of decades. So I don't know that a modest push behind his new, major work (which is winning prices and rapturous praise back in Scandinavia) can be construed as a cynical cash-in. But sure, I guess all promotional efforts will look for synergy with another trend in some way.

I think my problem here is an association with an author I don't like much, but also it encourages bad reviewing to say this is like Knausgaard when I'm sure there are worthwhile differences that are never explored.

All I'll say is a dislike for Knausgaard is no indication of whether or not you like Fosse, their writing styles couldn't be more different

All the authors whose work has been lost due to war, disasters or just the inevitable march of time. Never reading any of them.

They sound like a buzzkill anyway.

What's the best "Internet novel"?

— Malcolm Harris (@BigMeanInternet) February 15, 2021

All I'll say is a dislike for Knausgaard is no indication of whether or not you like Fosse, their writing styles couldn't be more different

― abcfsk, Monday, 15 February 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Cool I'll have a go and see how I get on.

Writers I primarily encounter being tits on social media: Roxane Gay, Matt Haig, etc

now imagine nabokov on twitter

be fun spotting his alts

https://www.shared.com/content/images/2017/03/timthumb--2--1.jpg

Best internet novel is Jarett Kobek's 'I Hate the Internet.'

Piers Anthony
Terry Goodkind

it’s fun to imagine nabokov composing his tweets on index cards and then passing them off to someone else to post

Lol, sinkah

xp Véra no doubt

Voskuil's magnum opus deserves to be translated into English. It's a lot but a lot of it is great.

― Monte Scampino (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 15 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

8000 words on Voskuil. Sounds really great.

Here's the teeniest taste of my JJ Voskuil piece in @readliberties: https://t.co/kKk2fr1vJw

— Adrian Nathan West (@a_nathanwest) October 5, 2023

Looking at his Wikipedia page I see he published a 'scientific work' entitled 'Hanging the Afterbirth of the Horse'. I'm in!

I have a bias against Franzen because of the kerfuffle over his comments on Edith Wharton. He's probably a gifted writer, but so are a lot of others.

My brother is a huge fan of William T. Vollman, I have a hard time believing anyone who writes that much can write all that well.

I'll add Scott Adams to the list, even though that's fish in a barrel.

William Vollmann’s historical novels are very good.

I love Bill Vollman but that is because I respect a person who gets interested enough in a subject to become an expert in it through sheer force of intellect, chance, and economic privilege. Imperial, Train Dreams, the newer ones about peak oil— I mean the guy isn’t necessarily the best stylist, but he makes up for it in terms of research and “experience”.

Vollmann also has a disturbing origin story that probably explains his unique drive

I'll take y'all's word for it, I don't have that many years left on Earth.

He doesn’t either!

haven’t read any of his fiction yet but enjoyed both volumes of carbon ideologies. currently wrapping up part 1 of the abridged rising up and rising down, which is pretty good. as table says, his obsessive attention to detail is immersive, love all the historical threads he brings up and the sort of “dialogues” he constructs between the ideas of eg Trotsky and Lincoln or whatever. I enjoy his deadpan understated sense of humor as well.