in every 'new yorker' short story ever...

2) effete professor mulls lustily over graduate student and her lovely paper on Kafka.

3) the word 'arabesque'

4) "they did not talk for most of the long car ride"

5) cancer/pregnancy scare

6) *intriguing* opening sentence

^^in every short story ever tbh

well yeah

7) protagonist's sibling significantly more/less successful than then, and blasé about it

7) protagonist's sibling significantly more/less successful than protagonist, and blasé about it

8) high school bully / crush wanting to settle the score after twenty years

9) protagonist has precocious child

9b) who lives with other parent

10) over-developed "ethnic" backstory closely mirroring writer's own

best remy thread ever

11) aging academics have sex

12) dramatic destruction of important documents symbolic of Personal Baggage

13) toga party

I never read NYer short stories, unless they're by writers I already like, like Updike or Murakami.

14) http://www.radosh.net/images/070402_contest_p465.jpg

15) characters with off-kilter names like "Claymer" and "Theria" whose relationship to the narrator is never spelled out; probably a cousin

16) relentlessly dialogue-free paragraphs

17) protracted anthropomorphic metaphors e.g. 'as ever, Lorinoma wants to grasp the hands of the grandfather clock, stare into its face, and plead for leniency and respite'

18) epigram by marcel proust or joni mitchell

18)sinewy limbs

11) aging academics have sex

oh come on, that's totally hot.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/JennV1988/rachel_dratch53.jpg

19) description of narrator's family rituals as if the narrator is revealing some precious secret instead of simply how her daughter peels a fucking grapefruit

I never read NYer short stories, unless they're by writers I already like, like Updike or Murakami.

-- jaymc, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:08 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I usually think of The New Yorker Short Story as a genre that includes the ones by lesser writers but from which the better ones are exempt

tracer otm w. 19 ^

'they walked to school hand in hand, avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk'

Typified by the stories of Antonya Nelson:

My family owns a house in Telluride” was his favorite, most useful line. He used it on a particular kind of girl or woman, somebody with whom he could not foresee a future, somebody who he knew would one day perceive him truly, with X-ray eyes, and move on. In the meantime, he could take her for a long weekend to Telluride.

20) atheist longs for faith of youth, walks into religious establishment and feels 'hollow'

melancholy family pets
melancholy children
melancholy babies

Marissa Silver:

It was sad. Of course it was sad. But she didn’t feel sad. Sad was what people said they were in the face of tragedies as serious as suicide bombings or as minor as a lost earring. It was a word that people used to tidy up and put the problem out of sight.

21) ^^ anhedonia in any form whatsoever ^^

John Burnside:

The way she spoke, it was as if she’d made the journey herself, but she hadn’t. She’d never even left Scotland, and all that talk about the Montreal customs was just stuff she’d picked up from Caroline, who’d been back three times in the six years since she got the job in Montreal. Not long before her last visit, though, she had met this new boyfriend and had started making a big thing about how it was our turn to go over there.

22) Everything narrated in *hushed tones*

22) hushed even tones, preferably with a pretentiously thin vocabulary

23) stalwart avoidance of brand names or recognizable products and replacement with generic signifiers 'listened to his ipod' becomes 'put on some headphones'

or

24) slavish devotion to product tags and their social import 'i wasn't sure if i was allowed to drink progresso soup -- my family stuck with the ineffable security of campbells'

hi, i'm ira glass

Maxim Biller:

It was a very cold day. He hadn’t closed the balcony door overnight, and when he breathed out a small cloud of vapor rose from his mouth. He lay in bed with only his face outside the covers, making clouds of vapor. Another five, no, another ten of them, and he’d get up.

She hadn’t kissed him when she awoke at dawn. She had simply reached for him, and when he’d been lying on top of her she hadn’t given him any help, but it had been quite easy all the same. She hadn’t kissed him before she left, either, and he’d fallen back asleep straightaway and dreamed of a bottle of Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz.

The New Yorker Story is a single, unending story

Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz Corona as large as the water pump in Monbijouplatz

bahahaha ANHEDONIA otm

25) decisive, 'edgy' lack of closure.

yeah, anhedonia is like the word I've been trying to think of all my life to describe those stories

I was going to say 'it should be its own genre,' but basically isn't modern literary writing the anhedonia genre?

26) someone goes home, has mixed feelings about being home

27) someone remembers college, has mixed feelings about college

Fun fact everyone probably already knows: Anhedonia was the original title of Annie Hall.

didn't know, but appreciate

28) scene at an empty Atlantic beach in midwinter

29) protagonists subconsciously haunted by 9/11

30) minor act of passing kindness on final page miraculously restores protagonist's faith in humanity

31) second home/vacation home

although, in every TWENTIETH story, trailer or ghetto rowhouse

32) Someone makes cultural or grammatical mistake in a charming way on final page miraculously restores protagonist's faith in humanity

I rarely feel like the protagonist of a NY story has the balls either to renounce or regain faith in humanity

@ 30: 'for there, on her desk, lay Nai Nai's jade bracelet, polished and gleaming proud for the first time the events of Nanking seventy years prior.'

first time since

33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.

34) people haunted by something

34a) haunted by death of family member

35) Dude pops boner, feels bad about it

36) adultery

there are frequent short stories in the new yorker these days that don't conform to stereotype, to be fair.

still, lol at "Claymer."

I never really saw anybody use "anhedonia" except when referring to the original title of Annie Hall.

Does anyone remember a television commercial where there was a redneck in a hunting outfit with a shotgun walking in the woods and saying "They say a revenuer come up in the these parts, he might get better but he never get well"? You couldn't figure exactly what it was a commercial for until the very end when the Yankee (or Midwestern) voiceover man said "from the story 'Moonshine' in the January New Yorker." Like they were trying to change it up, get the naysayers to lose the scent of their trail.

2) effete professor mulls lustily over graduate student and her lovely paper on Kafka.

Recommendations for actual similar stories, plz

See: whatever story of Philip Roth's became The Ghost Writer.

Although I think that was in The Atlantic.

33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.

-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:42 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

as opposed to ilx poster remy bean who saw his buddies die face down in the muck at da nang

Mark it a zero, Smokey.

"I never really saw anybody use "anhedonia" except when referring to the original title of Annie Hall."

i think of jarboe too. ex-swans artiste. she had an album called *Anhedoniac*.

sadly, if it isn't by lorrie moore or alice munro, i don't read ANY short stories in the new yorker. i glance at them in every issue. my suspicions (usually) confirmed that i don't want to read whatever it is. and i LOVE short stories.

I like the Jonathan Lethem ones that have run recently, although they don't exactly buck the NY genre.

33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.

-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:42 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

as opposed to ilx poster remy bean who saw his buddies die face down in the muck at da nang

-- and what, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:53 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

wrong, confrontation douchebag. as opposed to considered research.

Looks like voiceover man said "'Moonshine' by Alec Wilkinson, in the August New Yorker."

37) Judgmental pet.

38) Sex as evidence of character's patheticness.

39) Someone running their hands through their hair.

40) Body image issues.

41) The Unbridgeable Gulf of Class Difference

42) Young parent looks at her child and realizes she has already failed to be the mother she promised herself she would be.

43) Aging sculptor looks at a recent work and realizes he has ultimately failed to become the artist he promised himself he would be.

Ha, all of this reminds me that Gilbert Sorrentino is sort of the anti-New Yorker writer.

In that he kind of covers the same material but with an additional cruel and mocking godlike Fassbinderesque p.o.v that provides comic "relief."

44) Particular form of reticence typical of character's region/ ethnicity/ gender/ generation is presented, vaguely frowned upon.

I have never read a New Yorker short story, and yet, after reading this thread, it is as if I had read them all.

In this interview Gil S. mentions the New Yorker briefly in Item 11, but also talks about similar writing elsewhere, especially item 6.

nuance masquerading as epiphany, epiphany masquerading as peripety

there are frequent short stories in the new yorker these days that don't conform to stereotype, to be fair.

I was going to say this in a ruder, bitchier, more self-aggrandizing way

good restraint

Well yeah, that's partly what I meant by this (xpost):

usually think of The New Yorker Short Story as a genre that includes the ones by lesser writers but from which the better ones are exempt

-- Hurting 2, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:14 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Link

What, you got a story in there, nabisco?

I guess it's time to link to this relevant thread.

45) character quietly repeats meaningless phrase to himself under his breath, as if it mattered, but he knew it did not

That sounds more like something from The Twilight Zone

Actually all of work pretty well when considered as fragments of Twilight Zone episodes.

Cold War sci-fi paranoia preferable to unnameable ennui. Especially when enacted by future sitcom stars.

what the fuck are you talking about?

most of these are actually pretty ominous when removed from context

Sorry, bleeding over from this thread.

Hm. Looks like Salter published plenty of stuff in The New Yorker, so maybe I should put a lid on it. I guess the strategy is if you don't like something you say "typical New Yorker fare" but if you do like it you say "it just happened to be published in The New Yorker." In any case, didn't mean to derail thread. Am enjoying these, including number 45.

Some of these are Belew-era King Crimson song lyrics in sum.

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2007/12/10/071210fi_fiction_egan

This story is totally typical new yorker fare but I still enjoyed it a lot.

The golden thread that links Junot Diaz and William Trevor.

"The Ghost Writer" was first published in the New Yorker.

Philip Roth: the Woody Allen of neurotic jewish writes

wate

a++++ thread u guys

reading so much nyer for creative writing undergrad seminar.

harpers 4 lyfe

^ real talk

harpers wack too

upstate writer living off 90's economy gets drunk and falls asleep in central park and wakes up in a cave 20 years later and wait they never get this far

damn son i thought we was fam

minstrel

the creeps at mcsweeneys should ride on the new yorker

i should offer to ship valencia assault rifles see how they respond

"Mr. Eggers, I have some light verse, and John O'hara and Louise Erdrich naked and strapped down on a spinning table. How much would your people pay per mutilation?"

rather get an astrology magazine

from the story linked by 31g:

But that wish only camouflaged the deeper feeling that Sasha always had: that fat, tender wallet, offering itself to her hand. It seemed so dull, so life-as-usual just to leave it there rather than seize the moment, accept the challenge, take the leap, fly the coop, throw caution to the wind, live dangerously (“I get it,” Coz, her therapist, said), and take the fucking thing.

Ha. I think it was actually Zuckerman Unbound that started in The Atlantic. It's all about Alvin Pepler.

haha, I remember reading that exact SENTENCE when that story came out and going "UGH, NEW YORKER FICTION!"

I guess stuff like that doesn't bother me because 1) I'm basically illiterate so it doesn't really seem cliched to me and 2) I just skim over the boring parts whenever I read anything.

Ok wait, come on, this?
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/03/10/080310fi_fiction_kunzru?currentPage=3

This???

Sorry, starts here:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/03/10/080310fi_fiction_kunzru?currentPage=1

We liked to do things casually. We called at the last minute. We messaged one another from our hand-held devices. Sometimes our names were on exclusive guest lists (though we were poor, we were beautiful, and people liked to have us around), but often we preferred to do something else—attend a friend’s opening, drink in after-hours clubs or the room above a pub, trek off to remote suburbs to see a band play in a warehouse. We went dancing whenever we felt like it (none of us had regular jobs), and when we didn’t we stayed in, watching movies and getting high. Someone always had something new or special—illegal pre-releases of Hollywood blockbusters, dubs of 8-mm. shorts from the nineteen-seventies. We watched next summer’s exploding airplanes, Viennese Actionists masturbating onto operating tables. Raw meat and Nick Cage. Whatever we watched was, by definition, good, because we’d watched it, because it had belonged—at least, temporarily—to us. By the time the wider world caught up—which always happened, sooner or later—we’d usually got bored and moved on. We had long since given up mourning the loss of our various enthusiasms. We’d learned to discard them lightly. It was the same with clubs and bars. Wherever we went would be written about in magazines three or four months later. A single mention on a blog, and a place that had been spangled with beautiful, interesting faces would be swamped by young bankers in button-down shirts, nervously analyzing the room to see if they were having fun.

I must make it clear that we didn’t plan for our lives to be this way. We despised trendies—fashion kids who tried too hard, perennially hoping to get hosed down by the paps or interviewed about their hair. With us, it wasn’t a neurotic thing. We put on public events—salons, gigs, parties, shows. But once in a while, in the midst of our hectic social gyrations, we liked to do something for one another, something that didn’t drain our energy, that made us feel private again.

I was confused. What did she mean, “so Raj”?

The food was simple and plain—fruit, cheeses, loaves of crusty bread—and while we ate it there was a program of entertainment. Michel read several of his poems. Hengist and Horsa played folk songs. A woman called Kevin did some kind of improvised dance, a flurry of arm-swirling that made me feel embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable. I took that as a good sign. If a piece of art makes me uncomfortable or, better still, angry, that seems to be a reason to pay attention to it.

As I’d hoped, I went home with Thanh, and for a few weeks my memories of Sunita’s party were filtered through my new relationship with her. We’d lie for hours on a rug on her studio floor, fucking and listening to music.

Cue Vampire Weekend

well at least there's some fucking in it I guess

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/9/94/Hengist.jpg/200px-Hengist.jpg

It took me a minute or two to put it together, and when I did I wasn’t happy. The bastard. The two-faced little fucker. Raj had been getting paid to take those pictures. He’d come to our party, and not just any party, to Sunita’s party, the most beautiful gathering imaginable, and he’d shamelessly used it to sell us—to sell me—a product. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became. All that trash about the vodka being smooth: his whole conversation had been a sales pitch. It was creepy. More than creepy. It was sinister. Furious, I told Thanh to come over and have a look. She peered at the monitor, doing up her blouse.

“You came out pretty well,” she said. “I like your glam-rock pout.”

“But look at it. That bastard made us into an advert.”

“Are we credited?”

“Only our first names.”

“Shame. And I look so drunk.”

“I suppose you—no, no, no! That’s not the point. I mean, don’t you feel used?”

“What are you so upset about? You don’t look nearly as wasted as me. It’s hardly fair. You were downing those shots all night.”

“But what about Raj? He never asked us whether we wanted to be on his damn vodka Web site. And all that patter about how smooth it tasted!”

“It was smooth.”

“But to talk to people and secretly be trying to sell them something—isn’t that, I don’t know, unethical? Surely you agree that it’s completely out of order.”

“He didn’t ask us to buy anything. He gave us free drinks.”

“I know, but the point was to get us to buy something later on. That particular brand. We generate buzz. We recommend it to our friends, it becomes hip, blah-blah-blah.”

“He should have given me image approval. Look at my chin! I’m going to have words next time I see him.”

“For fuck’s sake, Thanh! He was just using us. He wanted to make us into—into early adopters.”

“But we are early adopters. I got a free phone a few months ago. All I had to do was watch a film and say how it made me feel.”

“Jesus, you really are a shallow bitch.”

Hmm, does this plot device make clear my point about appropriation? Nah, I'd better have the characters explain it through excrutiating dialogue.

One thing I must admit here: I find anger tricky. Anger is a very sincere emotion. We live under the rule of cool, and we are expected to encounter the vicissitudes of the world with a certain degree of irony.

SINCERITY/IRONY

Sincerity, as any hipster will tell you, is for awkward teens and people on SSRIs.

SINCERITY/IRONY/SSRIs

HIPSTERS

that paragraph is a grand slam

Time Out New York: Harmless Toilet Reading or Used Toilet Tissue?

I still think it's amazing that an entertainment magazine in one of the entertainment capitals of the world can't think of stuff to put on its cover.

As the story continues, things start to get cray-zee! But I won't spoil it.

Late to the party, but that Gilby S (my pet name for him) interview posted above totally rocks my dick off

Also, McSweeney's gives me bloody, chunk-filled diarrhea. Someone should start a thread on that pile of used-up toilet paper.

hurting that story ... jesus

I couldn't even finish that Raj story; whenever the New Yorker and the NYT tries to do anything with "contemporary" culture, it reads like it was written by 60 year old hermits living in Upper Montclair, NJ or Westchester County, observing those "crazy kids" in New York through very powerful telescopes.

no, it reads like it was written by some young new york writer living in a brownstone

Also, McSweeney's gives me bloody, chunk-filled diarrhea

Something tells me it's not McSweeney's that's doing that.

actually he's in London, apparently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Kunzru

Well, the story's terrible regardless of origin.

Apparently he was one of Granta's "Best Young" whatevers, which is a mark of death in my opinion. They specialize in that whole "laundry room epiphany" style of fiction.

eh, Granta is sometimes a good mag. I rarely bother with anyone's "writers to watch" type lists though. I think there's just something that fundamentally doesn't work about labeling writers as rated rookies and eagerly awaiting all the homers they're going to hit a couple seasons from now. Course that usually doesn't work with baseball players either.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Burt Stanton.

trying to work out what Nabisco means by this phrase

maybe I hope he won't say

Hi pinefox!

I like yr urbane pastiches a lot, TH!

eg
15) characters with off-kilter names like "Claymer" and "Theria" whose relationship to the narrator is never spelled out; probably a cousin
-- Tracer Hand, Monday, 21 January 2008

btw what is 'Anhedonia'?

Look, why don’t you check out this band I’m working with?” He handed me a sleek little music player. I listened for a while, out of politeness.

“They’re the final wave of New Wave,” he explained. “After this, there will never be another reason to wear a Blondie T-shirt.”

Despite her eccentricities, she was no introvert, was a lively presence on various online sites and game worlds.

...

there's nothing sadder than some dude so out of touch, yet trying to appropriate what they think is youth culture. like, you're dad trying to get into hip-hop in the 90s.

No, I'm not.

where is Nabisco now?

that story people are quoting from does sound diabolical, in an entertaining way.

Actually, my dad identifying blues jams sampled in hip-hop records I liked (a useful skill) is better than average as memories go.

Hari Kunzru = top fella in many ways. You may not like the turn of his descriptions, or the weird indulgence of the story twist, but they are accurate in describing LDN '90-'96.

LolDN

Dunno, there are more deserving targets of internet playa hate than Hari - or me, for pointing it out.

23) stalwart avoidance of brand names or recognizable products and replacement with generic signifiers 'listened to his ipod' becomes 'put on some headphones'

-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:23 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

Look, why don’t you check out this band I’m working with?” He handed me a sleek little music player. I listened for a while, out of politeness.

remy ftw

Too much brands = you are Douglas Coupland. I am trying to recollect whether an author wrote a novel and asked for product placement as a lark. But remy b. correkt.

Fay Weldon!

The problem with picking on the Kunzru here is that ILX is, whether it's pro or con, largely obsessed with the kind of people the story is about -- and of course largely is the kind of people the story is about, as maybe evidenced by the implication that he's doing it wrong -- so the idea that there's something odd or embarrassing about him writing about these people isn't exactly a point that's been carried yet. It's clearly a set of social manners we're interested in, one that informs way too many arguments around here; so why wouldn't a writer of fiction try to tackle it? (And the opening paragraph lets you know straight off that it's not just scenery here, that this social class is kind of his topic.)

But of course it really is hard, and risky, to try this sort of thing, because there's a huge chance of embarrassment: we love the way someone like Waugh might write about the manners of his bright young things, because we weren't around to nitpick the cultural references, but of course it's hard as hell to do it in the moment when people are. (And magazine short stories are kinda the best place to attempt it.) That opening graph pasted above doesn't do a bad job of it at all, cataloging habits and boxing up a lifestyle in a way that'd still make sense from outside of it. There's an effective neutrality to it -- "this is what we did" -- that's a pretty good option when you're trying to do this sort of thing.

I also think it's kinda funny that there were a bunch of initial assumptions about Kunzru's relationship with the type of person his narrator is, mostly because he's taken on the necessary fictional task of treating his narrator as human. But then I also think several of Hurting's actual criticisms of the story-as-a-story are pretty dead-on.

Oh, you know what else is interesting to me, is that it seems way more common among English writers to try and honestly tackle portraits of modern-day social categories than it is for Americans! Or not even social categories: there's so much English fiction that's willing to go directly at realistic portraits of how specific types of (usually middle or upper-middle class) people actually live. Whereas the top-flight fiction of the U.S. -- or at least the stuff that gets attention -- tends way more often to be about unusual circumstances, elements of fantasy, abstractions from and metaphors for the actual stuff we do. You could say the same thing about the difference between an American crime procedural and a BBC detective show, actually, but I don't know if that means anything.

Ladies and gentlemen, Nabisco.

I haven't read the story but I think that the bits I've seen here are bad

you might like Evelyn Waugh but I don't - I think he was vile

other points re. US / UK sound interesting.

Many Britishes crazy about Fitzgerald for this very reason.

I'm finding that if I have to write a modern problem it's much easier to send it back in time a few decades and work it out like that.

but some of us also like FSF because he was a hopeless romantic who wrote with unabashed gorgeousness

Ha, yeah, Fitzgerald was the other example I had in mind, yeah. I tend to like the "sending it back in time" answer too, Suzy, especially for longer things -- even a small amount of perspective is ridiculously helpful in figuring out what defined a social class, or how it operated. (I also like how novels sometimes have this built in -- spend a few years working on it, a year or two getting it on shelves, and there you go.) But I'll admit to having a soft spot for people trying to do this sort of thing in the moment, usually in magazine stories, and especially since it's part of the PURPOSE of magazines, a kind of in-the-moment disposable "what are we doing right now" approach.

I'm trying to think of who has been good, in my lifetime, at getting into existing social groups and classes, ones I know about firsthand. I can't necessarily think of much.

nice point, Nabisco, about the built-in time lag.

Amis said of Money (1984, set in 1981), something like: 'I thought it would be fun to write a historical novel about something that happened the other day'

and a fair defence of the role of magazine fiction too.

I have a fond memory of the time we walked out of the west side of Central Park, february 2005, early on a cold Saturday evening, and at a subway newststand you remarked how 'New York is a MAGazine culture', or possibly even a magaZINE culture, unlike, you said, Chicago.

this isn't relevant to the debate, I'm just sharing my fond memory of your company.

did you ever read Geoff Dyer, The Colour of Memory: published 1989, set c.1986? it's good on dole-age bohemians in Brixton (a very small set). I saw him once say that the dole had inadvertantly constructed a new generation of Bright Young Things.

he also compared himself, then, to Michael Bracewell, who in a sense is obsessed with this issue - it's his whole schtick in a way. I was going to say "cf ... " - then realized, well, cf all his novels.

I realize this is basically UK 1980s whereas you're interested in US 00s

Miranda July: getting into existing group of sexually obsessed and frustrated pervert losers

nabisco i would say that a 'certain class' of people are overrepresented in popular culture today and i can entirely see why its annoying to open up the nyer and read about the same shit we read about in practically every mainstream music mag or whatever

FSF and waugh - whatever else you think of them - used cultural identification and social classification as grist and fodder for character development, always at a slight distance, a remove, and not for the purpose of self-supporting cleverness or with-it-ness.

both of them wrote with enough detachment (what john gardener called 'camera placement') to allow the characters hoisting on their own frequently-idiotic petards, without endorsing or scorning the cultural associations.

the story above, conversely, uses these tools as self-substantiating, apparently interesting on their own, names-as-currency b.s. stylewise, the story is not abjectly poor, it is just poorly edited.

Yeah but deej part of my point was that if we don't want to hear about that class of people, why do we read a message board that's heavily obsessed with them. (I'd also note that the NYer does not really spend a huge amount of time on that class of people, but I think that's mostly an age demographic thing, and they're already starting to shift their way down toward our age group.)

I don't really see any "self-supporting cleverness" in this just-okay story, but I will certainly agree that it is no Fitzgerald or Waugh.

Robin Carmody: getting into existing group of progressive ruralists for proportional representation

DJ Martian: getting into existing subculture of systems theorists

n, this is supposed to be clever:

I ended up adopting a sort of ironic nerd look, with thick, plastic-framed glasses and a clip-on tie. I wasn’t very satisfied with it. I considered wearing my “own” clothes, on the ground that it would have been the most sincere response—to dress as if there were no dress code—but I couldn’t work out what the most neutral choice would be. How to let everyone know that not only was I myself, I was expressing myself?

actually, I think Nabisco's thought re. "who has been good, in my lifetime, at getting into existing social groups and classes, ones I know about firsthand" - gives me an excuse to ventilate, once more with affect, my long-standing theory & complaint about the movies: they never have people like me in them.

How is that an attempt for the writer to be clever? It's not an attempt to be clever on the level of language, and it's not an attempt to be clever on the level of content -- content-wise, it's actually fairly earnest, setting up an issue of authenticity versus the character's need to be clear about constantly "expressing myself." That's the basic work that fiction is supposed to do, using situations of plot to examine character -- how is that "clever?" Do you mean "clever" on the part of the character?

Look, it is soooooo hard to write about any mode of dress well in the context of fiction, because it has to do all of those things.

To me the story seems like an awkward attempt to give the 2000s the same gauzy, heady perfume of nostalgia that Paris in the 1960s often gets

Brand new, you're retro

the first bit is cute, if overwritten in the way TH suggests. the plot development is like lightweight writers-workshop "idea-driven" sci-fi.

seriously. if i read this in a "dangerous visions" style collection i'd feel hella disappointed.

ehh, I don't have the patience to argue this point with you. If you don't find that story -- or that excerpt -- smugly 'clever' than we will just leave it at that.

Agreed, my problem with the story is the heavy-handedness, which goes along with the awkward tone.

xp

considering the sludge that the NYer can sometimes put between its covers, this story is really not that bad, not too offensive, from what little i have read. the writing--at least the first page or so--does not seem too cute or too clever at all.

"Sunita buzzed up fat Constantine, who was hefting a box of mangoes in his meaty hands."

"Otto was a long-haired German who shot music promos. 'I need information, man,' he said, shrugging. We were sitting in a sushi bar, drinking green tea. 'I don’t care how it gets to me.'"

My main problems with the story are that it seems more about an idea than about characters, that that idea isn't a very interesting or original idea, and that the writing generally isn't very good.

hey look there a pile of shit on the ground - its kinda greenish isnt it - ohh is that some corn i see in there!

Look, it is soooooo hard to write about any mode of dress well in the context of fiction, because it has to do all of those things.

-- suzy, Tuesday, March 11, 2008 2:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

"It's hard to do x well" should not be used to defend stories that are supposed to represent the best of contemporary fiction. This is The New Yorker. Glimmer Train is down the hall.

http://www.serenedominic.com/snob1.jpg

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an24130627-v

Oh god am I glad I don't typically expect the NYer to provide the best of contemporary fiction! The only time I'll really get on them about that is with debut fiction issues; for most of the regular issues it's just popular authors who have name recognition with the demographic, and have a story that needs conversion into a paycheck.

Wait, does that make sense? I get pissed off when they debut of first-expose writers I don't think are particularly good or promising, but can't work up a sweat about established writers dropping in sub-par stories.

A lot of that is based on some fear that if the NYer today were seriously spending its time trying to find and boost the best young writers, it would screw up the world entirely, give them some weird and awful power over the industry, create a what's-new cycle that celebrates writers for two years and then leaves them out to dry as they mature -- just generally create something about like indie bands and blogs, only in a much worse way.

i let my subscription lapse - its just factoids w/a side of shitty fiction

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. ... oh wait

I pretty much never read NYer fiction unless it's an author I already like (Updike, Murakami, etc.).

On one hand, I guess it's silly to expect The New Yorker to mean to fiction what it did fifty years ago when the fiction landscape has completely changed. Also it's probably easy for me to idealize the old New Yorker with a filter through which only the best material has passed. OTOH with declining print space devoted to fiction, I'd think The New Yorker could be more choosy and I've been a little disappointed with their choices -- the writing they choose these days that isn't Doctorow or Munro or Updike too often has a *lifestyle* feel.

I don't know who either Mr Burt Stanton or Mr (?) jhoshea are, but boy, that (3 posts up) just made me laugh out loud.

I'm impressed or pleased, I think, that anyone buys and reads The New Yorker. Good for you!

seriously, i started feeling so much better about myself and my life when i stopped expecting the New Yorker to ever have good fiction.

id read that rag from front to back then find myself telling everyone abt all the fascinating things i learned - srsly that is no way to be.

eh, New Yorker non-fiction at its best can be revelatory, although the lesser stuff tends to just sort of ramble on. I think they've been way overdoing their primary coverage. "Hillary's Latest Comeback" is just not worth anywhere near the wordage they give it.

im just kind of joking abt hating the nyer kind of

although i did let my sub lapse a while ago

damn son i thought we was fam

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:11 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

minstrel

― Arms, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:12 AM Bookmark

This thread kind of makes me glad I don't have the time or energy to get all worked up about stuff like this anymore.

"10) over-developed "ethnic" backstory closely mirroring writer's own"

i swear this is a plot to get me to never read international fiction. cuz i see those stories and my eyes glaze over and i reach for a slim volume of ring lardner.

racist