Novelists No One Reads Anymore

Also, to comment on a couple of suggestions made upthread:

I don't know if Spider Robinson *ever* had any rep among the cool SF kids, as least as far as critics and fellow authors goes. The last joke in the last issue of Bruce Sterling's Cheap Truth zine revolved around him.

Richard Brautigan's downward rep as a dated hippie novelist has been around for a while. When I was first digging into the counterculture (then-) canon in the early 90s (you know, Burroughs, Ballard, the usual crew), he was already considered terribly passe. The main thing I remember was that some guy at the time (90s) legally changed his name to "Trout Fishing in America". Which is kind of impressive.

Surprised that no-one mentioned Jerzy Kosinski, but I didn't think of him myself until tonight. He was well-known enough that I read Being There as a kid, though the decline in his reputation can't have helped his claims to posterity.

Has anyone mentioned Richard Bissell? I have a soft spot for Goodbye, Ava.

Prompted by a viewing of A Place in the Sun: Does anyone read Theodore Dreiser?

I reread Sister Carrie a dozen years ago and it grabbed me like The House of Mirth did.

I greatly enjoyed that in the Library of America omnibus (alleged naughty bits restored) with Jennie Gerhardt and Twelve Men (profiles). However, my sister tried to read An American Tragedy (basis of A Place in The Sun) and said some of the sentences were so long and winding that when she got to the end she was lost. But I spied it in the library last week, think I might take a shot.

I read the beginning of something by Brautigan where a girl came in crying about being knocked up and the narrator offered her a candy bar and I quit. Got a little further into something by Tom Robbins which had no especially low or any point, was just twaddle.

Jerzy Kosinski was eventually accused of fraud, but always had his defenders, and some say the books are good, no matter who wrote what (dunno, haven't checked):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kosi%C5%84ski#:~:text=In%20June%201982%2C%20a%20Village,of%20Nicodemus%20Dyzma%20%E2%80%94%20a%201932

Kosinski seems to still be attracting readers, judging from all the Goodreads ratings of The Painted Bird from Oct 2022

https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html

Poetry, but Related

Helen Hooven Santmyer (November 25, 1895 – February 21, 1986) was an American writer, educator, and librarian. She is primarily known for her best-selling epic "...And Ladies of the Club", published when she was in her 80s.[3][4]

The saga:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22...And_Ladies_of_the_Club%22

https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html🕸

Poetry, but Related

I started a book of his last night, but James Purdy was a real critical favorite back in the day, and despite the fact that many of his books were recently reprinted, I know very few people who have read any of them. Almost none of those who have have read anything beyond Malcolm or Eustace Chisholm.

As I noted in the seasonal book thread a while ago, this is sort of understandable— gay sadomasochism with an air of southern gothic isn’t really a go-to genre. But jesus, they’re incredible books.

Does anyone read Theodore Dreiser?

I went through a Dreiser kick about ten years ago. Dude desperately in need of an editor but deeply otm re: America generally in the Cowperwood books. A Hoosier Holiday is honestly a hoot, he has a bad day in Ohio and actually rants a little

I read "...and Ladies of the Club" in one sitting when it came out. (I can't figure out how I did it, either.) I don't recall much to distinguish it from any other bestseller of the day.

I read Purdy in 2004 after Gore Vidal wrote one of his last coherent essays reappraising him. "Southern Gothic sadomasochist" is right on. The tonal control reminds me of Paul Bowles (another Veee-dal fave) but I found Purdy less compelling.

(The library copy of Malcolm hadn't been checked out since 1983 lol).

I suppose people still read Bowles, or at least The Sheltering Sky.

I suppose people still read Bowles, or at least The Sheltering Sky.

I prefer his short stories.

Re: Bowles, I refer to only one: Jane, because she wrote most of his books.

I had not heard that. Her writing under her own name is still admired.

I like Two Serious Ladies.

I hadn't heard that accusation, table! Funny how Judy Davis, who played Jane Bowles in Naked Lunch, played in Barton Fink a woman who wrote Faulkner's books.

Jane and Paul are different stylists too. She's arch, light; he's matter-of-fact to the point of creepiness.

This doesn't sound like the letter of someone who has written her husband's novel:

Five years later, when Jane was writing her story “Camp Cataract,” she revealed that their fiction not only stimulated them but also made her intensely competitive. She wrote Paul, with many doubts and insecurities, “I hope maybe to have done enough writing by then so as not to be completely ashamed and jealous when confronted with your novel. At the moment I can’t even think of it without feeling hot all over. And yet if you had not been able to do it I would have wrung my hands in grief. . . . However little I have done I am pleased with but shall probably throw it in the rubbish heap when I see yours.”[29] But her writing stopped soon after his began, and his far greater talent quietly eclipsed her own.

It sounds like they edited each other quite a bit:

In 1942 his stimulating role in the creation of her novel provided the impetus for his own career as a writer: “I went over Two Serious Ladies with her again and again, until each detail was as we both thought it should be. . . . We analyzed sentences and rhetoric. It was this being present at the making of a novel that excited me and made me want to write my own fiction. . . . Neither of us had ever had a literary confidant before. . . . We showed each other every page we wrote. I never thought of sending a story off without discussing it with her first.”

That reminds me of the scene in "Henry and June" when Miller is editing a page of Nin's work.

And that reminds me that Miller and Nin are probably two novelists (loosely defined) whom very few people, if anyone, reads any more.

hmm, that sounds wrong

Miller was hugely respected a couple of generations ago--I started reading him because Hunter Thompson praised him to the skies. I think he's fallen very far in the collective estimation, although I could be wrong.

He was certainly a writer capable of moments of genius, but overall a difficult person. I really became disenchanted when I read a biography. He seemed to spend the last decades of his life continually asking friends and associates for money.

I couldn't finish a Miller book if you paid me, but Nin at her best holds up fine. She reminds me of Maupassant. I wouldn't mind re-reading her now (though I suspect she's in storage).

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have lumped the two together. I've read Nin's erotica, but none of her other work. It's very well done.

Miller and Nin were part of a hipster canon and they will probably still be read alongside Burroughs and Bukowski even if they aren't influences on new writers anymore.

Burroughs' voice was his best asset. I love his spoken word stuff. His books are almost unreadable. Not sure how much hipster cachet any of those writers has any more, though--they're all about as relevant as Kerouac.

Goodreads:

Henry Miller- 149,408 ratings
Anais Nin- 86,584 ratings
William S. Burroughs- 239,549 ratings
Charles Bukowski- 678,629 ratings

Bukowski running away with the field.

Jane Bowles- 5,149 ratings
Paul Bowles- 43,056 ratings
Helen Hooven Santmyer- 12,976 ratings

I "rated" Tropic of Cancer when I joined Goodreads even though I read it in about 1990.

I thought Tropic of Cancer was good in its gamy (also gamey) way, and Orwell gave it a very favorable review, which I wouldn't have expected (two very diff favorites of mine converging). But one Miller was enough, somehow, like The Moviegoer was enough (very satisfying) Percy.
Burroughs has his moments on the page, but agree that its his voice, reading his own stuff, that really works; ditto, for the most part, Ginsberg and even Kerouac, in his quirky vocal way (backed by Steve Allen on piano, as some mentioned re Dylan's Nobel speech)
I find Jane Bowles' fiction compelling, with a sense that she's finding her own way through it, with only some sense of direction and goal. Didn't get very far in The Sheltering Sky, but may try again.

I had the Kerouac box on Rhino. His spoken word stuff was far more engaging than his written work.

Nice mention on The Moviegoer. A friend of mine back in the 80s recommended that book to me as portraying a character very much like him (my friend). I read it and was like, "Really, dude?"

That book is an all-time fave, I will never not love it

moviegoer is definitely not enough percy imo. i like all his weird books but i think the last gentleman and love in the ruins are better and more interesting than the moviegoer.

I think I read Lancelot, but now I am not sure. I guess it wasn't memorable.

All of these apps will be subsumed into X.

Oops, wrong thread.

as far as the hipster-friendly writers go, Bukowski is the most enjoyable to me by far and seems like the one who is most likely to retain his cachet.

Do people still read Ken Kesey or so they just watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

I heard some guy in a grey ponytail recently humblebragging about running with The Merry Pranksters, does that count?

I don't remember how good I thought it was, but from the frequently fogged, medicated (he'd get upset and they'd slam him with Thorazine or the like) POV of the Chief, jolted into scenes, eventual continuity, but not conventionally realistic like the movie: Big Nurse was his built-up, cartoonized reaction to the actual nurse, for instance, not that she actually wasn't doing some evil shit (at least, he was pretty sure). The reader is challenged to sort it all out. Would be worth attempting another read, I think, if I happened to come across it.
His other best-known novel, Sometimes A Great Notion, was most sympathetic to the female character, but the two brothers fighting over her seemed like a false or extreme dichotomy, the manly man (more "sympathetic") and neurotic artso (two sides of the author?) Got to be an outdoors soap opera, although liked the bit about some people being influenced/pressured by their good looks.
He published some others way later, after the Pranksters travels, but I rarely saw them.

(There's really no good reason not to look into more Percy; thanks for the tips. Adam.)

To me the only good Percy novels are the first two. He turned into a grumpy old man after that. Seem of his essays are good though.

I have no quarrel with the notion that Moviegoer and Last Gentleman are the best of his novels.

For essays/belletres/nonfiction (stretching the term), Lost in the Cosmos is great and Message in the Bottle is pretty good.

Those four are probably all you need of Percy, but you definitely need him to have existed.

Yes. This is about my assessment as well. I am a pretty big fan of all of those. I liked a few bios of him I read too.

I guess his other claim to fame is kind of midwifing or being the doulos for A Confederacy of Dunces.

I'd never heard a "Jane ghost-wrote for Paul" accusation before, but a friend did describe to me at length one evening a scenario in which Paul was blamed for spiriting Jane away from her social circle, her descent into alcoholism, the drop-off in her literary output, and even complicity in her death. I re-read "Without Stopping" for any clues that this was the case, but if it was the case, Paul's autobiography didn't suggest it. I haven't read Jane's biography, but "Camp Cataract" is stronger than anything Paul wrote, imo