I remember reading somewhere that John Barth is an author who was once in many syllabi but is rarely taught any more. I read "Lost in the Funhouse" in a textbook released in the mid 90s (and I dug it).
― formerly abanana (dat), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 02:50 (one year ago) link
Wouldn't it actually be rational to assume that most novelists are no longer read, and the ones who are extensively read are exceptional?
I agree that Mailer, Vonnegut, Brautigan are less read than they were, when they were cult heroes of a generation or two. But are the other novelists of their era still read, by this thread's standards? Maybe it's really only a small sample who stay afloat. Say: Pynchon, Barthelme, Didion, Updike, Bellow ... And then dozens of names now more obscure than Mailer, Brautigan et al.
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 08:08 (one year ago) link
Vonnegut was still a huge name for teens getting into literature when I was one in the early 00's, at a point where Mailer already felt like a bit of a relic.
probably nobody still reading j.b. priestley?
Saw a National Theatre production of An Inspector Calls a few years ago, I think he's also taught a lot?
Is Kerouac too toxic masculine now? Bukowski?
These live on as avatars of toxic masculinity for ppl to make angry TikToks about. They probably read them enough to find some cringey passages to include.
(maybe the latter has been since he was obliquely zinged in The Third Man)
I wouldn't call it a diss! Our cowboy novelist is surely sympathetic and the highbrow assembly portrayed as pseuds.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 09:37 (one year ago) link
Was thinking about Louis Auchincloss, but a glance through archives seems to indicate he has yet to by the wayside.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 10:44 (one year ago) link
Barth, Barthelme, Gaddis, and Gass were pretty big in the 90s. I still read that sort of thing from time to time.
That said, I find it refreshing to have whole years go by without even having to think about John Updike.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 12:09 (one year ago) link
Some quality Updike hating here
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 12:21 (one year ago) link
Worst sex writing ever.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 12:23 (one year ago) link
Yeah, that's the stuff, JR+tB. Feel the hatred rising within you. Let it flow.
I fully admit I admired JHU's prose style (and even light verse) when I was a teenager. Dude was silver-tongued at his best. But taking even a cursory look at the politics, the sexism, the crude self-absorption, the waspy angst... cured me really fast.
There are some really lovely sentences in Updike. But I can't wait for him to be as justifiably forgotten as, I dunno, Hesiod.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 13:54 (one year ago) link
E.R. Eddison, Tolkien-contemporary, author of The Worm Oroboros (which was apparently the main point of comparison for LOTR when it came out) and the really peculiar Zimiamvian Trilogy. I've picked up a few of these as second-hand paperbacks over the years and it's hard to imagine them finding a contemporary audience, that and the fact Eddison had a relatively small body of work I think means he's unlikely to experience a revival anytime soon
― "Spaghetti" Thompson (Pheeel), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 17:17 (one year ago) link
― the pinefox
i'll always remember vonnegut for what he said about semicolons. what the fuck, kurt? the only way you can think of to express your exaggerated and irrational grammatical prejudices is to fucking dump on trans people too?
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 18:46 (one year ago) link
huh? wha'd he say?
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:16 (one year ago) link
“Here is a lesson in creative writing. The first rule: do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:18 (one year ago) link
I do think that if he were still alive (and ancient) he would be embarrassed about that and apologise, he wasn't ever a Norman Mailer type about these things
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:20 (one year ago) link
Let's not be too hard on Mailer. Who among us hasn't stabbed his wife?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:22 (one year ago) link
i use semicolons all the time
― mark s, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:23 (one year ago) link
so it goes
who among us hasn't killed their wives with their semicolon use?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:24 (one year ago) link
fine as long as you don't stab your wife in the semicolon with a pen knife
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:26 (one year ago) link
William S. Burroughs to thread
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 19:35 (one year ago) link
More of a full stop in his case.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 21:03 (one year ago) link
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)
i never stabbed norman mailer's wife
fun fact, this is the only grammatically correct way i can construe that particular sentence
one of the books i'm reading is a book called "semicolon" about how grammarians done the semicolon dirty
i think what shocks me most about vonnegut's comment is how utterly _out of character_ for him it is. he was a humanist, not a cruel man. very strongly empathetic. it says a _lot_ about how fucked up the world was for trans people that someone like kurt vonnegut would consider _saying_ something like that, let alone believe it to be clever enough to publish. not only is it not clever, it doesn't even make any sense! the idea of a "transvestite" is sort of rooted in binary ideas of gender. to label someone or something an intersex transvestite is nothing short of incoherent.
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 21:16 (one year ago) link
Not to defend it but thats literally the joke?
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Thursday, 29 September 2022 05:53 (one year ago) link
Like he’s using an apparently self-contradicting term (person of both sexes who dresses as the opposite sex) to convey the (to him) meaninglessness of the semicolon
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Thursday, 29 September 2022 05:57 (one year ago) link
Who among us has not stabbed his, her or their spouse, registered domestic partner, significant other, life partner, boyfriend or girlfriend (as applicable)?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 29 September 2022 16:50 (one year ago) link
Who among us has been at a wedding with Norman Mailer's son at which he made a toast in which he told the newlyweds "I have two words for you: couple's therapy"?*Raises hand*
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 29 September 2022 16:59 (one year ago) link
Worm is such a wonderful and weird book -- I've been hunting down the Zimiamvian Trilogy in paperback and I think I have all 3 volumes around here somewhere now, I keep meaning to get to it. There's something so pre-modern about Worm in the way the plot just wanders here and there.
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, 29 September 2022 17:58 (one year ago) link
Umberto Eco seems like one who had bestseller novels that were intellectual and thoroughly researched but didn't make it into the classroom to endure.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:13 (one year ago) link
worm is available on project Gutenberg fwiw (but only that by him)
― koogs, Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:17 (one year ago) link
Is Gore Vidal much read? He enjoyed a renaissnce during the Iraq War. But since his death -- nope.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:18 (one year ago) link
Isn't Zachary Quinto playing him on stage right now?
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:21 (one year ago) link
uh yeah
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/sep/05/zachary-quinto-star-west-end-production-best-of-enemies
Had no clue.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:25 (one year ago) link
Umberto Eco
I read The Prague Cemetery a few years ago. I thought it was quite good.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:43 (one year ago) link
Many xps
I teach Priestley (An Inspector Calls) and have tried a few bits of late. English Journey is a decent, angry trawl around England of the 1930s (Owen Hatherley cited it as the main inspiration for A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, FWIW). Margin Released is a decent writing memoir, where he spends a good deal of time NOT writing about his WWI experiences (while writing really well about his WWI experiences). And Bright Day, which, the further I get away from, I'm convinced is a damn fine novel.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:53 (one year ago) link
I'll be interested to see what happens to Ballard over the next 20 years or so.
Anyone still reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon?
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 29 September 2022 18:54 (one year ago) link
Does anyone read Joaquin Miller anymore? Mostly a poet, but wrote some novels too.
Miller was championed, although not enthusiastically, by Bret Harte and Ambrose Bierce. In his time, Miller was known for his dishonesty and womanizing. Bierce, his friend and contemporary, said of him, "In impugning Mr. Miller's veracity, or rather, in plainly declaring that he has none, I should be sorry to be understood as attributing a graver moral delinquency than he really has. He cannot, or will not, tell the truth, but he never tells a malicious or thrifty falsehood." Miller's response was, "I always wondered why God made Bierce."
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Thursday, 29 September 2022 19:11 (one year ago) link
Joaquin Miller's literary works seem to have been locked into a cabinet of Victorian era curios around 1920 and largely forgotten since. He wasn't a very good poet or novelist, but he was one hell of a character with a talent for self-promotion.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 29 September 2022 19:17 (one year ago) link
I'm mentally going back through my college-era faves and realizing I haven't heard much about Margaret Drabble lately.
I hope she's still being read in the UK at least.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 29 September 2022 19:50 (one year ago) link
I enjoyed reading the beginning of some Margaret Drabble book recently but couldn't keep up the momentum, but that is more my problem than hers, haven't been able to read a novel in quite a while. Being an empty nester might change that though. *fingers crossed*
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 29 September 2022 20:28 (one year ago) link
heh, I read The Ice Age after Lester Bangs mentioned it somewhere (do people still read him?)
― jmm, Thursday, 29 September 2022 20:38 (one year ago) link
Greil Marcus mentioned it, I think.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 29 September 2022 20:39 (one year ago) link
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 29, 2022
Our book club just read Julian
― Dan S, Thursday, 29 September 2022 22:40 (one year ago) link
I think hardest novel I ever actually made it all of the way through was Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. It was assigned to our book club on my recommendation and I was the only one who finished it
― Dan S, Thursday, 29 September 2022 22:44 (one year ago) link
Yup, I'd say Gore Vidal's lease on literary life hasn't expired, yet.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Thursday, 29 September 2022 22:48 (one year ago) link
Drabble > Byatt
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 29 September 2022 22:50 (one year ago) link
I've got a modern translation of The Magic Mountain, looks like all the French is translated too, and it's promising to skim. I should dig it up and dig in, considering that even H.T. Porter-Lowe's old Britishy roast beef version was intriguing enough.Ice Age and the other two Drabble novels I read in the 70s and 80s had some good bits but ran out of steam. The first was, "Yes, we are in the 70s, and the 70s are fucked, ah yes, ah yes," which was what Bangs and Marcus seemed to like about it.
― dow, Friday, 30 September 2022 02:21 (one year ago) link
Lawrence Durrell is a good answer. Robertson Davies too?
Some favourite Gissings:
New Grub StreetThe Odd WomenBorn in ExileThe Private Papers of Henry RyecroftThe House of Cobwebs and Other StoriesBy The Ionian Sea (poor George having a miserable time in southern Italy but good fun anyway)
Some favourite Bennetts:
Anna of the Five TownsRiceyman StepsOld Wives TaleBuried Alive (a Borges recommendation)The Card Clayhanger
― gravalicious, Friday, 30 September 2022 09:34 (one year ago) link
(why late in the week in the uk does mark s get all pynchoned out: Thomas Pynchon )
― mark s, Friday, 30 September 2022 10:00 (one year ago) link
Dunno if this Magic Mountain stuff is just a tangent but I can't imagine Thomas Mann not being widely read in German speaking countries still at least.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 30 September 2022 10:25 (one year ago) link
martin amis lol.
― Fizzles, Friday, 30 September 2022 17:14 (one year ago) link
Heh. But Money might still be good, or is that challops at this point?
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 17:18 (one year ago) link