new novels and why they suck and whatever

I quite liked that Michael Chabon book about comics and I liked Stephen Millhauser's "Martin Dressler".

xp - yes, sure

I have a similar knee-jerk thing that I consciously try to overcome. Threads like this help, also I find reading good, thoughtful interviews with living writers gets me excited about trying their stuff.

I am reading Under The Volcano now, which is great, but by all accounts Malcolm Lowry was a prick, yes?

yeah he sounds crazy

Speaking of which, wasn't there some profile (The New Yorker, I think) that mentioned his incredibly small penis

that profile is my source for thinking he was bonkers. strangely didn't recall the thing about his penis.

more importantly, did he eat any truffle fries

sometimes i read things that are not the new yorker btw :/

I have some knee jerk reaction against new fiction and I can't exactly say why. The writers always seem like people I don't want to spend much time with,

The novels are better company.

lol

xxp

What about short fiction? Some new short form writing seems good. I read Black Clock sometimes which varies but has good things in it. Expensive, though. How is Granta these days?

She's slipped a bit, but, god, I love Alice Munro.

The novels are better company.

Of course, but I can't help but be hyper aware of the person behind the novel. I'm married to a writer though! =)

granta's pretty :/ these days. The stuff I read in the new electric literature was p. good if kind of relying on big writers in the lit mag or lit conference circuit these days.

Two of my best friends are total Alice Munro freaks. i rly need to check her out.

my older sister has 2666. it is big. she gave it to me and my other sister said "its really hard to find the kind of books i like"

i like agni. should probably read more lit journals.

any suggestions for "historical fantasy that is not about vampires in the '40s"

plax I highly recommend Moorcock's Pyat novels, a re-counting of the first half of the 20th century as told through a highly unreliable narrator who fancies himself a scientific genius but is actually just a deluded stooge. hits all the high points - the Russian Revolution, Roaring 20s and Depression-era America, north Africa and the middle east just prior to WWII, and then of course a love affair with Hitler. Fantastic.

long but REALLY fun

I second the love for Alice Munroe, I've only read Runaway, but it was really good and I'll def be seeking out more.

Munro*

Did anyone read "Tree Of Smoke" and can they recommend it? I hate to admit it, but I do not read enough female authors.

i read about 40 pages of tree of smoke and stopped. couldn't get into it.

Also are who are the good contemporary authors from Asia? I am particularly interested in South and Southeast Asian authors.

Good thread, btw

plax, re: excellent historical fantasy, try anything by Tim Powers (except for his lone vampire one). Anubis Gates and Last Call particularly recommended.

There was a contemporary Chinese novel reviewed in the Times last year, I believe the title was 'Living And Dying Are Getting Me Down', which sounded hella awesome, subversive talking animal stuff.

my older sister has 2666. it is big.

it's easy to read, though. i've read half of it in less than a week.

I started The Savage Detectives but it really annoyed me

what about it?

Too meta? The wrong kind of meta?

Definitely willing to give it another try

huh, i guess i find his kind of meta to be fairly subtle. or well integrated into the story/characters.

Too many characters to keep track of in that second section (says the guy reading Dickens).

i think i'm gonna end up liking 2666 a lot more than The Savage Detectives

There was a contemporary Chinese novel reviewed in the Times last year, I believe the title was 'Living And Dying Are Getting Me Down', which sounded hella awesome, subversive talking animal stuff.

Sorry, missed this. Thanks! Google search not turning anything up, sadly.

What I want is the literary equivalent of an Apichatpong film.

would read ^

ah:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/books/review/Spence-t.html

Thanks, JL!

Ha, yes, 'Life And Death Are Wearing Me Out' was it. It's good for me to be reminded, I need to track that book down.

What I want is the literary equivalent of an Apichatpong film.

The good parts of Pound's Cantos?

alice munro is the only living author i truly love. now that muriel spark is dead. and janet frame. and saul bellow. i feel like a grouch when it comes to new books. i'm mostly happy with old ones. i'm sure there is a ton of great stuff out there. hopefully i will get to it before i'm ancient. i can't remember the last "new" book that i've read that i thought was GREAT or a WORK OF GENIUS or EARTH SHATTERING.

people watch too much t.v. these days!

(hahaha, that's my theory on the lack of genius writers out there.)

Also are who are the good contemporary authors from Asia? I am particularly interested in South and Southeast Asian authors.

the couple things I've read (Mian Mian's Candy, for ex.) I was not impressed with, unfortunately. Murakami doesn't appeal to me, at least not as much as say, Kobo Abe did.

i liked "tree of smoke" but long-form is definitely not johnson's strong suit.

scott i thought you liked mary gaitskill, too. but perhaps not "truly love."

I missed this and posted something shouty to the other thread. Too bad I have a bunch of work to finish up today.

But Shakey, immediately upon reading your description about the formal qualities of novels, my first thought was ... David Markson just died. Have you read or heard of Wittgenstein's Mistress?

Also, since I was talking about the interior nuances of fiction on the other thread ... I think there is an argument that could be made that the kind of formal inventiveness you're describing was a very big thing in America through the second half of the 20th century, but might be considered a little exhausted and "over" now, by some people.

I think most people here would sorta mercilessly mock anyone who came to ILM and was like "modern music is terrible -- I listened to the radio in the car, and no one's doing anything like X, Y, or Z." You'd remind them that there's more music in the world than that. If someone said "I really liked music in the 90s, nobody does that stuff anymore," you might remind them to ask what music is doing today, instead of demanding something it did before. Right? I don't expect anyone to know or care about modern fiction, seriously, but I really want to stress that it has the exact same complexity of taste as the music people talk about here. Like if you'd tear into someone or consider them a clueless moron for saying something about music, think twice before saying it about literature.

^^ btw that third paragraph is not intended to really say formal invention is "played out" or something. It's just interesting that plenty of music geeks here would happily say "I am so sick of every act doing this or imitating that." Because you follow music. Modern fiction is obviously less quick and trend-driven than pop music, but if you followed it, you might have some similar feelings in terms of what you were sick of or thought was getting old or imitative!

I think there is an argument that could be made that the kind of formal inventiveness you're describing was a very big thing in America through the second half of the 20th century, but might be considered a little exhausted and "over" now, by some people.

yeah, this seems true to me. and i identify with it as a reader. there's more than one kind of formal inventiveness, too.

the kind of formal inventiveness you're describing was a very big thing in America through the second half of the 20th century,

I wouldn't limit it to America at all fwiw