new novels and why they suck and whatever

third section - "Half Lives: the firt Luisa Rey mystery", sooo 90 pages or so?

ppl should stop writing, publishing novels in 2014

free advice! step right up and get your free advice!

lol stfu silby

xp: uh oh im having a fantasy u started a thread about an east european or mb german dude like a year ago whose books i really wanted to read but i forget who it was now. also did i ever ask u about hard rain falling? i really really love that book

― Lamp, Friday, June 25, 2010 3:11 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I went to the library today and picked this book up among other things because I remembered it from somewhere, I guess it was here

Who was the east european or mb german dude tho

I also picked up The Alp by Arno Camenisch, which isn't really a novel, but seems to be a 2014 thing that I, so far, really enjoy. It's also the first new Dalkey book that I've enjoyed reading in a while, I mean I usually get something out of new Dalkey things but they're, often-times, painful to get through.

probably laszlo krasznahorkai, war n war is the only book of his I can actually get through. xp

cant believe we had a thousand post thread on nu novels and now ppl only read young adult fan fic graphic novels rip literature

a lot of this thread was about sci fi though

silby otm. fiction is dull.

hey I didn't say fiction is dull

like obviously I'm adopting some sort of semi-disingenuous lol internet position by posting "people should stop writing novels" but just the continued existence of the market for new lit-fic novels is kind of legitimately weird to me

ahem, *new* fiction is dull

but honestly i'm bored* of all fiction for the last couple years. this must be the curse of studying english lit.

*i'm also pretty sure that the more non-fiction i read, and the less fiction, the more boring i get

always a risk that when you say something, mordy will agree with you

haha

anyway I'd settle on a moratorium on new novels written in English by white men

I realize I can adopt this as a personal rule but I read a wikipedia article about Kant once and I think it means I'm supposed to babble about it on the internet too.

When novels like 2666 are being written, there is still a reason to write and publish novels. QED.

silby have you read the sugar-frosted nutsack?

no but I have to confess this looks disturbingly like something I would enjoy

it's not that I haven't enjoyed any recent long fiction, I just think it's weird that it exists

like I walk into the bookstore and I look at the New in Fiction table and I'm like, who are these people? how did they get around to writing a novel? is anyone going to read this?

a lot of people (me included) have creative writing degrees/MAs/MFAs - we've got to do something with them

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one of the best novels I've ever read. I'm a big fan of Jonathan Franzen as well.

I am surprised that old classics are published, such is the focus on the chronological new and now.

unapologetic Hilary Mantel stan here, will continue to read whatever she rolls out until my time or hers runs out

new novels r good

Mordy
Posted: July 2, 2014 at 1:24:03 AM
but honestly i'm bored* of all fiction for the last couple years. this must be the curse of studying english lit.

*i'm also pretty sure that the more non-fiction i read, and the less fiction, the more boring i get

just gettin old bro

u guys heard of tao lin i hear he is the future of novels

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one of the best novels I've ever read.

same

Modern mainstream writers often don't know how to do endings.

anyway I'd settle on a moratorium on new novels written in English by white men

― Forks I'd Clove to Fu (silby), Wednesday, 2 July 2014 01:29 (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm half greek cypriot, gonna class that as off-white

subthread: are CW programmes damaging to the future of fiction?

silby have you read Americanah? if you have and do not like it i don't want to hear about it fyi.

I've mostly ignored stuff by English White Men.

Plenty of novels by women and a ton of translations (even if you could argue not as much gets translated as it should).

Not read anything properly new in an age. How is a Girl is a Half Formed Thing? Seems to be getting a lot of traction, though that always worries me that it'll be *dun-dun-dun* middlebrow. Gasp. The horror.

imago i didn't know you were one of us! explains some of the overlap in musical taste

just gettin old bro

two cliches i always heard about getting older - that you get more right-wing and read more non-fiction. i wonder if there's a correlation.

i do love mantel. there are "new" novels that i do pick up and love (in addition to mantel, i like atwood, lethem, chabon, mccarthy, jacobson, russell) but i just have so much less patience for reading fiction now. even w/ authors i love i can rarely finish the novel - i get about halfway through and then distracted.

emil.y, did u see sunless sea is now on steam? (kinda pseudo-fiction connection to this thread)

silby have you read /Americanah/? if you have and do not like it i don't want to hear about it fyi.

I haven't so you are safe from whatever opinions I would've had about it!

When novels like 2666 are being written, there is still a reason to write and publish novels. QED.

― Aimless, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 10:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2666 was written more than 10 years ago, so I guess there hasn't been a reason to write and publish novels for the past decade.

I liked this piece a lot, and it seems at least indirectly relevant to new novels and why they suck:

https://medium.com/@emilygould/how-much-my-novel-cost-me-35d7c8aec846?src=longreads

_silby have you read /Americanah/? if you have and do not like it i don't want to hear about it fyi._

I haven't so you are safe from whatever opinions I would've had about it!

Okay, then you should read it! But also, it's okay to take a break from novels.

Americanah sounds interesting, just picked it up based on this thread (thanks silby!).

I don't get the feeling I would like Emily Gould's novel, but she managed to make me feel sympathetic to something I would normally be all "quid-ag" about. A very honest and thoughtful piece.

regarding why they "suck" i think it's more of an chicken/egg type of question. my inclination would be to say that new novels suck because their isn't really anyone around to read "good" novels anymore--it's the readership that has evaporated, a readership that in at least two ways (producing good readers and good writers) seems to be the prerequisite for good novels. and while the collapse of this special kind of literacy is tied to the decline of while/male/western cultural hegemony--which is certainly a good development--i think we're gonna inevitably see emergent forms of cultural hegemony that aren't really tied to being white/male/western. (indeed, embracing literature by non-white/male/etc writers seems only to reinscribe a kind of privilege modeled after the while/male canon!)

all of that a fancy way of saying i don't usually have much patience for cultural nostalgia but--and maybe this is because ive been reading too much pessimistic stuff lately--being liberated from old ideas of what "literacy" entails seems to me to be a bigger loss of imaginative freedom than a gain. feel like what we'd need more than anything is a new way for assigning value to writing even as words seem cheaper than ever.

my inclination would be to say that new novels suck because their isn't really anyone around to read "good" novels anymore

That's lazy of you to think so.

I think it's more tied to the shifting media and economic landscape than the "decline of white/male western cultural hegemony" tbh, but yeah I agree that you can't novels from their social and economic context -- readership, financial support, place in the culture. People with the hypothetical ability to write good novels are less likely to be motivated to do so, people who write good novels are less likely to be able to continue doing so, good novels that do get written are less likely to reach a wide audience.

I don't think there's literally "no one around anymore" to read good novels, just a lot fewer people, perhaps not enough to sustain the enterprise in its former glory.