Bonus points for being completely out of print. Such as:Wilfrid Sheed.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:12 (one year ago) link
Although some stuff of his like his Great American Songbook survey and maybe some memoirs and baseball books can still be found.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:14 (one year ago) link
And it looks like Real James Morrison read Max Jamison in recent years.
Checked for any earlier such thread but couldn’t find one.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:22 (one year ago) link
George Gissing
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:26 (one year ago) link
Gilbert Frankau.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:28 (one year ago) link
Harold Frederic
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:29 (one year ago) link
xpost Extraordinarily popular at the time, and i found to my astonishment at the weekend, also wrote poetry. The only novel i attempted to read was almost unbearably boring.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:30 (one year ago) link
Peter de Polnay
*forty novels in 45 years*
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:31 (one year ago) link
again, v popular. again, very hard to find any worth these days, though i think he was favourably mentioned by Julian McLaren-Ross somewhere.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:32 (one year ago) link
Another Peter de...
Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 19:33 (one year ago) link
Edward Jenkins
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:34 (one year ago) link
There's a book on this topic, The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler. Here's an article about it, hilariously the hyperlink to the book on his publisher's website is now a 404.https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171010-the-great-writers-forgotten-by-history
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:37 (one year ago) link
J.G. HollandWilliam BlackJ.W. DeForestHjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
I like these btw
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
Arnold Bennett
― lord of the rongs (anagram), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
Another Peter de...Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:39 (one year ago) link
George MeredithSinclair Lewis
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:40 (one year ago) link
― lord of the rongs (anagram)
In a college course on the British modernists, my professor said in ref to Woolf's attacks on Bennett, "Ha, ha, actually, Arnold Bennett's a pretty good novelist!"
Ever heard of Alexander Baron or Mary Elizabeth Braddon?
I'd say Braddon is no longer "forgotten." Lady Audley's Secret has 22, 573 ratings on Goodreads, for example.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:41 (one year ago) link
Sinclair Lewis― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 26, 2022 3:40 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 26, 2022 3:40 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
It Can't Happen Here got a bump after the 2016 election. It along with Arrowsmith, Babbitt, and Main Street appear to be print as "The Essential Sinclair Lewis."
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:56 (one year ago) link
if i’ve read them they don’t belong in this thread, so sinclair lewis def doesn’t
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Monday, 26 September 2022 19:59 (one year ago) link
Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens. Now, he's a dim blip on a fast receding horizon. And who reads John Galsworthy nowadays?
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 26 September 2022 20:00 (one year ago) link
_Another Peter de...Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?_Good one! A friend once decided to lend me his copy of _Slouching Towards Kalamazoo_ which I eventually returned years later unread except for the first page or two.
― Fizzles, Monday, 26 September 2022 20:13 (one year ago) link
Mrs. Alexander (Annie Hector)Margaret Oliphant
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 20:17 (one year ago) link
Have read some Mrs. Oliphant, as she was credited in the anthologies where I found her---don't remember other particulars, but thought she was very good.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:01 (one year ago) link
Mervyn Peake
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:07 (one year ago) link
oliphant still has several regular readers at my library (granted it's a strange one); have seen bennett, braddon, and gissing all go out too.
― devvvine, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:11 (one year ago) link
Some of the long-book high modernists -- Robert Musil, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos -- feel this way to me. Still famous, I think, but read?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:11 (one year ago) link
has anyone not writing a disraeli biography read a beaconsfield novel?
― devvvine, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:13 (one year ago) link
Mervyn Peake― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, September 26, 2022 10:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, September 26, 2022 10:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
No way, I read Titus Groan just this year.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:28 (one year ago) link
I still want to read Peake, also Gissing's New Grub Street, sounds v. relatable. Did read a lot of Dos Passos a few years ago, but seemed like would have been best read in high school (later confirmed by ILB founder Scott Seward). Enjoyed the Ford memoir I read, haven't gotten to the novels. Will read my copy of The Man Without Qualities when I can dig it up.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:53 (one year ago) link
eephus' list are all authors I've thought I should read at some point or another and never did, so you might be onto something there (xp)
For some reason I read a couple of Sinclair Lewis books in high school (on my own, not for class). I was assigned Galsworthy in college, but it was his plays for a course on modern drama. A friend gave me a copy of Titus Groan not too long ago, so definitely not Peake.
Booth Tarkington, maybe?
― rob, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:55 (one year ago) link
Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:00 (one year ago) link
Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens.
Probably greater in stature actually.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:02 (one year ago) link
I don't like Gissing, afraid he's often like "what if Dickens or Zola was a tory who hated poor people and thought they deserved all they got?"
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:11 (one year ago) link
Wanna read BT's The Magnificent Ambersons. (Just now finally got irony of family name btw.)
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 22:14 (one year ago) link
I did read Lewis's Kingsblood Royal: rising young pillar of a Minnesota community is urged by his daddy to investigate family tree, which may be like title says. Turns out key ancestor, whom they knew to be Canadian immigrant, was originally Haitian---Creole at least. Youngblood conceals findings from father, and self for a while, but eventually is told by out Black people of Minnesota race crimes, one of which (been so long, can't recall) may well be the Duluth lynching which some Minnesotans think is referenced in first verse of Duluth native's "Desolation Row." Novel, even by Nobel Prize winner, seems to be pushing envelope of late 40s, when civil rights was said by proto-McCarthyites and some others to be subject to Commie plots.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 22:35 (one year ago) link
Robert Musil, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos
Musil recently had a minor revival with new translations coming out and I read Man Without Qualities several years back. I've read Ford's most famous novels, and thought his Parade's End trilogy much better than The Good Soldier. Every time I try to read anything of Dos Passos I bog down before I get to page 20.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:56 (one year ago) link
I figure very religious novelists are less read today, like E.P. Roe who was hugely popular and is probably now just read by Christians.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 23:19 (one year ago) link
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes)
oooh, how about lew wallace?
first one to come to mind was james branch cabell
do people read, like, james clavell? james a. michener? how about clive cussler, author of the extremely popular "dirk pitt" series of novels? how about don pendleton, whose character mack bolan, the executioner, was the inspiration for marvel comics' "punisher", and is really the guy cops _should_ be celebrating?
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:40 (one year ago) link
J.F. Powers?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:53 (one year ago) link
Thought Powers got revived by NYRB.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:55 (one year ago) link
I bet Executioner books are still read by gun show types
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:01 (one year ago) link
99% sure my dad still reads clive cussler
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:14 (one year ago) link
I'll see your James Michener and raise you Herman Fucking Wouk
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:15 (one year ago) link
"Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk's 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy.[2]"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:16 (one year ago) link
Feel like the most canonical answers so far areArnold BennettGeorge MeredithJames Branch CabellI even seem to remember something the subject of the original post said about Meredith, have to go look for it. Of course all the other answers are welcome as well, although some authors that have been named seem to have had recent enough revivals to be disqualified, such as Mervyn Peake, as someone has already brought up.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:19 (one year ago) link
Meredith mentioned here:
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:25 (one year ago) link
Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:26 (one year ago) link
Doesn’t work on zing though
Bernard DeVotoA.B. Guthrie Jr.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:31 (one year ago) link
^these two were on the reading list of The Other (Honors?) English Class one summer in high school so I checked them out at the time but don’t think I have heard much mention of them since.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:33 (one year ago) link
I read a George Meredith book last week!
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:47 (one year ago) link
Which?
btw, James, I didn't know this thread was for obscurities we hadn't read.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:48 (one year ago) link
It was Beauchamp’s Career. I liked it.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:51 (one year ago) link
those sound like worthy lost authors, but I haven't heard of any of them
I've been thinking about more pedestrian works
Years ago I loved Len Deighton's espionage trilogies - Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match, and also Spy Hook, Spy Line, Spy Sinker and Faith, Hope, Charity. Looking him up today I'm surprised to read that he is still alive
― Dan S, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:51 (one year ago) link
I just looked to see when the Mack Bolan the Executioner series ended. 2020!
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:53 (one year ago) link
Yeah, a lot of popular spy novelists from the 50s/60s not named Ian Fleming or John Le Carre are pretty obscure these days.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:59 (one year ago) link
Oliver Optic
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:05 (one year ago) link
ok I guess, not sure what you're mad about
― Dan S, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:06 (one year ago) link
Leon Uris maybe too obvious but also maybe I missed the Uris revival. James Clavell already noted. I kind of think those types of novelists who wrote those astronomically long works which inevitably were turned into eight hour mini series are perfect for this thread. John Jakes!
― omar little, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:15 (one year ago) link
Which? btw, James, I didn't know this thread was for obscurities we hadn't read.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:17 (one year ago) link
Although now that I look, some of the names mentioned (even by me) are still in print. But still in print is one thing. Being in print plus the cachet of a new edition with foreword by Michael Moorcock like a recent edition of Titus Alone I just got is another thing.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:29 (one year ago) link
But the cover says the intro is by another guy, David Louis Edelman.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:30 (one year ago) link
Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, September 26, 2022 5:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, September 26, 2022 5:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
There was a good New Yorker article a couple of years ago about Tarkington's changing reputation. Here's how it begins:
A trick question: Can you name the only three writers who have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice? Faulkner, yes; Updike. And? Hats off if you came up with Booth Tarkington. And yet his two prize-winners—“The Magnificent Ambersons” and “Alice Adams,” just reissued in one volume by the Library of America—are not even the most commercially successful novels of his extraordinarily successful career. Nine of his books were ranked among the top ten sellers of their year (up there, pre-Stephen King, with Zane Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart), and the outlandishly dissimilar “The Turmoil” and “Seventeen” were the No. 1 sellers in consecutive years. And then there’s “Penrod,” probably the most beloved boys’ book since Tom and Huck, though I can’t recommend a stroll down that particular memory lane.There are thirty or so novels, countless short stories and serials, a string of hit plays. And there were countless honors: Tarkington was not only commercial but literary—not just the Pulitzers but in 1933 the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells had won previously. As early as 1922, the Times had placed him twelfth (and the only writer) on a list of the twelve greatest contemporary American men. “Yes, I got in as last on the Times list,” Tarkington commented. “What darn silliness! You can demonstrate who are the 10 fattest people in a country and who are the 27 tallest . . . but you can’t say who are the 10 greatest with any more authority than you can say who are the 13 damndest fools.”As for booksellers, in 1921 they voted him the most significant contemporary American writer. (Wharton came in second. Robert Frost? Thirteenth. Theodore Dreiser? Fourteenth. Eugene O’Neill? Twenty-sixth.) Nothing ever changes. Some forty years earlier, a comparable poll ranked E. P. Roe and Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth at Nos. 1 and 2, with scores of votes each. At the bottom of the list—with two votes—came Herman Melville.How to explain this remarkable career—the meteoric ascent to fame, the impregnable reputation over several decades, and then the pronounced plunge into obscurity? If you read all his fiction (which I strongly advise not attempting), you find a steady if uninspired hand at the helm. Slowly, painstakingly, Tarkington had taught himself to write reliable prose and construct appealing fictions; he was unpretentious—always literate but never showy. You could count on him to catch your interest even if he failed to grip your imagination or your heart. And he was always a gentleman.
There are thirty or so novels, countless short stories and serials, a string of hit plays. And there were countless honors: Tarkington was not only commercial but literary—not just the Pulitzers but in 1933 the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells had won previously. As early as 1922, the Times had placed him twelfth (and the only writer) on a list of the twelve greatest contemporary American men. “Yes, I got in as last on the Times list,” Tarkington commented. “What darn silliness! You can demonstrate who are the 10 fattest people in a country and who are the 27 tallest . . . but you can’t say who are the 10 greatest with any more authority than you can say who are the 13 damndest fools.”
As for booksellers, in 1921 they voted him the most significant contemporary American writer. (Wharton came in second. Robert Frost? Thirteenth. Theodore Dreiser? Fourteenth. Eugene O’Neill? Twenty-sixth.) Nothing ever changes. Some forty years earlier, a comparable poll ranked E. P. Roe and Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth at Nos. 1 and 2, with scores of votes each. At the bottom of the list—with two votes—came Herman Melville.
How to explain this remarkable career—the meteoric ascent to fame, the impregnable reputation over several decades, and then the pronounced plunge into obscurity? If you read all his fiction (which I strongly advise not attempting), you find a steady if uninspired hand at the helm. Slowly, painstakingly, Tarkington had taught himself to write reliable prose and construct appealing fictions; he was unpretentious—always literate but never showy. You could count on him to catch your interest even if he failed to grip your imagination or your heart. And he was always a gentleman.
The article finds that Tarkington turned into a hack as he got older and concludes that "ultimately what stands between him and any large achievement is his deeply rooted, unappeasable need to look longingly backward, an impulse that goes beyond nostalgia."
― jaymc, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:38 (one year ago) link
Good find! As a kid I forced myself through some giant new volume of Penrod since the elementary school librarian said it was only for True Readers or something like that. The only thing I can remember about it was some gag about all the kids bumping into each other and saying "Pardon my bum."
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:56 (one year ago) link
Not to pick on Alfred but those NYRB J.F. Powers volumes have intros by the likes of Elizabeth Hardwick and Denis Donoghue.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:59 (one year ago) link
David ElyWIlliam KotzwinkleRichard Brautigan
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:01 (one year ago) link
Now wondering how the LoA edition of Tarkington fits in with my reissue rule, does it not really count because they kind of do it because of historical importance? Maybe my rule is BS? Don't really want to discourage people from submitting as many authors as possible that sort of fit, or disqualifying any author since somebody read them last week. Really thread should be interpreted as something like Out of Print or Out of Fashion.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:07 (one year ago) link
Hmm. Kotzwinkle still going strong.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:13 (one year ago) link
it's kind of true about brautigan, which is a fucking shame. he's one of my favorites and a big influence on my own writing style. he really got pigeonholed unfairly as a "hippie writer" i think.
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:18 (one year ago) link
do people still read william gaddis?
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:20 (one year ago) link
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n24/august-kleinzahler/no-light-on-in-the-house
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:23 (one year ago) link
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:28 (one year ago) link
i plan on reading the recognitions this year
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:29 (one year ago) link
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs)
"Often described a “pugnacious” and a “pugilist poet,” August Kleinzahler’s reputation rests on his jazzy, formally inventive and energetic poetry, though he has also garnered notice as something of a bad-boy literary outsider prone to picking fights with the establishment."
oh look a "fight me bro" poet decided to fight the corpse of richard brautigan
how _unexpected_
so many science fiction and fantasy writers who have fallen into obscurity. spider robinson. harry harrison. both pretty beloved writers when i was in my teens. does anybody remember either of them?
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:29 (one year ago) link
Yes, but mostly in the way that they are good candidates for this thread.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:36 (one year ago) link
Spider Robinson really forgotten. Can’t remember much about him except that I once thought he had a cool name but then didn’t really like his writing, being especially disappointed by The Sliced Crosswise Timewise Cafe or whatever it was. Seem to later recall some entry about some book in the sf encyclopedia where John Clute said “avoid reading the unfortunate childish introduction by Spider Robinson” or words to that effect.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:40 (one year ago) link
Harry Harrison remembered mostly as the author of the book the film Soylent Green was based on, Make Room, Make Room! although the book didn’t have the famous punchline. He also came up recently as begin married to one of the sf wives, who had also been married to… Damon Knight? Lester del Rey?
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:44 (one year ago) link
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:45 (one year ago) link
Evelyn Harrison became Lester del Rey’s third wife and died when they were in a car crash which he survived.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:48 (one year ago) link
Harold Brodkey and John O’Hara both were more visible and important when alive than after. Not sure how much self-promotion, when alive, played a role in that.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:50 (one year ago) link
John Clute said “avoid reading the unfortunate childish introduction by Spider Robinson” or words to that effect.
can't possibly be as unfortunate or childish as harlan ellison's introduction to the american doctor who target novelizations. that thing was a masterpiece of cringe.
i got one! when i was young people kept attributing "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" to someone named santayana. i looked him up once. he wrote some novels. i can only surmise that at some point somebody must have _read_ him, that his name must have _meant_ something to someone.
oh, people _loved_ "jonathan livingston seagull" by richard bach when i was young. haven't heard of that one in a while. do people still read paul gallico's "the snow goose"? i only know it through the prog-rock concept album based on it.
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:53 (one year ago) link
oh, and jean m. auel! she wrote the "clan of the cave bear" books. one was published as recently as 2011! also, she's a portlander - i didn't have any idea!
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:56 (one year ago) link
Kleinzahler kind of a tough guy but with a sense of humor and not overly macho, more like a San Francisco James Salter in a leather jacket than Mailer or Hemingway. Or maybe like a distant cousin of M. John Harrison.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:56 (one year ago) link
Was waiting for Jonathan Livingston Seagull to show up! Couldn’t quite remember the author’s name anymore. In fact have been considering this thread as somehow related to In every 70s US home ever
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 04:00 (one year ago) link
Auel another good one. Seems to show up crosswords occasionally although I haven’t been paying attention recently.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 04:01 (one year ago) link
Thought Santayana was more of a philosopher, didn’t know about novels.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 04:03 (one year ago) link
michael arlenw somerset maughame phillips oppenheimmark rutherford
wsm prob the only one of these with even general name recognition nowadays?
― no lime tangier, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 04:47 (one year ago) link
xps to Dan Sgot 3 len deighton titles on the 'classics table' in our shop right now 'ipcress file' 'ssgb' and 'berlin game'. sold okay in the wake of TV production of 'ipcress file'
― oscar bravo, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 06:16 (one year ago) link
also clive cussler still sells well
― oscar bravo, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 06:18 (one year ago) link
Auel literally has whole shelves to herself in every bookshop ime, fair to say people read her books still
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 07:16 (one year ago) link
i've been a third of the way thru gissing's new grub street for several years, not sure if this counters the thread project or affirms it
it's fine, what it isn't is grabby
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 07:21 (one year ago) link
James Hanley? I read one of his 70s books a few years back.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 07:24 (one year ago) link
I think 'Boy' by Hanley still has some currency as a 'banned' etc book.
Angus WilsonNevil ShuteHarold RobbinsDesmond BagleyTom Sharpe
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 08:54 (one year ago) link
I've read an Angus Wilson or two, no idea what his current standing is but definitely doesn't deserve to be forgotten.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 08:56 (one year ago) link
He is now more known as the father of scholar, and Homer translator, Emily.
Also had a lunch or two with the Queen, which he recounted, and came up during her becoming.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:01 (one year ago) link
anybody still reading Wilbur Smith?
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:03 (one year ago) link
"There was a good New Yorker article a couple of years ago about Tarkington's changing reputation. Here's how it begins"
I remember how Tarkington came up as a contrast to William Gaddis in a (poor) review in the LRB of the reissues of his novels.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:04 (one year ago) link
Wonder if a good way to come up with lists of writers no one reads would be to dig up old sales figures from past decades (something that's equivalent to the pop charts).
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:08 (one year ago) link
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs),
I'm aware -- I own one of them, bought about 15 years ago -- but you're being unusually insistent considering the top of this thread has no rules.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:24 (one year ago) link
Denton Welch enjoyed some popularity when Exact Change of Galaxie 500 fame published his books. I think he's a great writer, but I haven't reread his writings in a while.
― youn, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:30 (one year ago) link
Welch probably picks up readers from William S Burroughs being a big fan - but I wonder how widely READ (as opposed to name checked) Burroughs himself is these days.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 09:38 (one year ago) link
I think there's another category of writers who are definitely not forgotten and certainly still read but are just way less important than they were 30 years ago. People like Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, even Salinger.
― Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:19 (one year ago) link
What about the novelist Winston Churchill?—who is not the same guy
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:29 (one year ago) link
i checked out denton welch when i read a john waters book where he cited him as a favourite a few years back...i imagine quite a few ppl have done the same
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:29 (one year ago) link
― Dan S, Monday, September 26, 2022 10:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
Ha I wasn’t mad about anything. Just saying that would be a good place to look for thread candidates.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:33 (one year ago) link
joking around with comrade alph on another thread it struck me -- by wayward train of thought -- that no one reads carlyle any more
isn't he an "essayist"? does he even count as a novelist? yes! sartor resartus is a novel -- a comic novel abt hegelianism! *ilxors hurry off to get a copy*
i have a weird tattered ancient large-size versions somewhere, like an 1890s A3 graphic novel lol, i'm not even sure where from (i mean my family but i don't know which side of which side). i've never got beyond the first page, its humour really REALLY doesn't carry
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:34 (one year ago) link
Re: Alexander Baron, I think he's highly rated in the admitidely niche world of East London literature geeks.
When I did those books by year polls there were a lot of names that kept popping up again and again that I don't think have much exposure nowadays. Georgette Heyer I remember standing out.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:40 (one year ago) link
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, September 27, 2022 5:08 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
Bestselling fiction titles (Publisher’s Weekly)
1895Ian MacLaren- Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush
1896F. Hopkinson Smith- Tom Grogan
1897Henryk Sienkiewicz- Quo Vadis
1898F. Hopkinson Smith- Caleb West
1899Edward Noyes Westcott- David Harum
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:41 (one year ago) link
Hammond Innes
― lord of the rongs (anagram), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:46 (one year ago) link
now and then some of the more literary-minded american periodicals take it on themselves to get one of their um wittier stylists to do a kind of singles column of the best-selling books of 50 years gone, many of which are entirely forgotten
(the new yorker had anthony lane do one in the 90s and james wolcott did one did one for someone, maybe vanity fair, more recently)
anyway even if there's no chance of me soon deciding which of lane or wolcott is the worse writer and the crappier critical mind this concept is good!
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 10:47 (one year ago) link
ages ago i started trying to read CP Snow but didn't get into it, dunno how much he's read anymore
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 11:02 (one year ago) link
A shelf at my uni library groans with the weight of 50-year-old CP Snow paperbacks.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 11:13 (one year ago) link
anybody borrowing them?
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 11:15 (one year ago) link
i have a handful also, nice late 50s penguins which i'm guessing my dad (a very arty scientist) dutifully read. i think i did try one as a teen and thought it was awful lol (not exactly a good judge then but happy to carry on believing i was correct)
in the same orange-backed reach of my bookshelves: some angus wilson and some anthony powell, v alluring cover illustrations, i believe i also attempted "the old men of the zoo" and metaphorically threw it against the wall
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 11:18 (one year ago) link
I think there is a distinction between truly obscure names, where no-one could readily eg: name a single book by the author or say who they were; and names that are well-known, where you could probably reel off titles and mention that author's place in history, but you haven't really read them.
For me, Wilfrid Sheed and Peter de Polnay are in the former category, and Bennett or Gissing are in the latter.
It seems to me that this thread started off mainly aiming to enumerate true obscurities, and quickly started including well-known names.
I agree that these names are now much less read than they were, but they're still quite famous.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 11:34 (one year ago) link
I suspect that Maugham, Angus Wilson, Brautigan, not to mention Walter Scott and especially Mervyn Peake, are still read - especially given how many readers there are in the world, plugging away.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 11:36 (one year ago) link
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, September 27, 2022 10:03 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
had to direct a customer to his shelf just yesterday
― oscar bravo, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 12:00 (one year ago) link
This is the kind of reportage I like. Agree with pinefox's point tho
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 12:43 (one year ago) link
A Far Side cartoon of Wilbur Smith's Shelf, hewn from jungle vines with a machete, with animal skulls used as bookends.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 12:59 (one year ago) link
I feel like the kind of people who read Wilbur Smith still insist on calling Zimbabwe "Rhodesia"
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:10 (one year ago) link
Yes, the pinefox otm. Thread would have been pretty short if we had only stuck to Type I Obscurity though, so mentally opened the gates to those other barbarians pretty quickly.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:12 (one year ago) link
eBooks of works in the public domain are probably having an impact. I was pleased to discover that the Project Gutenberg website maintains lists of most frequently viewed/downloaded works (https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top) and books sorted by popularity (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=downloads).
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:12 (one year ago) link
Starting to come around on J. F. Powers after seeing this:https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-saint-with-a-bad-temper-j-f-powers-company/
Born in 1917, James Farl Powers in mid-life won the 1963 National Book Award for his first novel, Morte d’Urban, which Gore Vidal and his fellow judges found worthier than either of that year’s other leading contenders, Pale Fire or Ship of Fools. Nabokov’s masterpiece was “over-elaborate academic funning” compared to Lolita, as Vidal saw it, while Katherine Anne Porter’s best-seller had already been quite grandly, if not excessively, celebrated. Even Porter agreed with the verdict
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:14 (one year ago) link
We should start a thread on great short story writers whose novels suck, for Ship of Fools would land in the top five.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:16 (one year ago) link
Go ahead!
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:18 (one year ago) link
That bbc article CaAL linked to is quite good and contains this interesting pull quote:
Unlike musicians or filmmakers, authors can vanish completely – Christopher Fowler
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:20 (one year ago) link
people keep recommending that i read mervyn peake. as well as peter curren brown, whose sole novel "smallcreep's day" was the inspiration for mike rutherford's solo concept album...
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:28 (one year ago) link
I own Smallcreep's Day but never finished it, it's pretty heavy-handed allegory imo
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:33 (one year ago) link
At some point I am actually going to back and talk about Wilfrid Sheed if I can manage
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 13:59 (one year ago) link
wilbur smith sold his name to his publisher around 10 years ago so I expect he was still selling well then.https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdnwzb/wilbur-smith-gavin-haynes-sleepless-nights
― formerly abanana (dat), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:01 (one year ago) link
legit "wow"
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:10 (one year ago) link
I read a lot of Jack Higgins, Alastair McLean, Frederick Forsyth etc as a kid and even then I thought Wilbur Smith was terrible
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:11 (one year ago) link
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:20 (one year ago) link
Bernard DeVoto's granddaughter is a friend of mine. His wife was also an interesting person - Julia Child's best friend.
Approximately a century ago I went to Virginia Commonwealth University, where the library (and several other things) are named after James Branch Cabell. I tried to read him but fell asleep on or about page 4.
Fun fact: apparently his name is supposed to rhyme with "rabble," not "cab bell" or "cable."
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:26 (one year ago) link
My favorite fact from Mervyn Peake's Wikipedia entry:
Peake designed the logo for Pan Books. The publishers offered him either a flat fee of £10 or a royalty of one farthing per book. On the advice of Graham Greene, who told him that paperback books were a passing fad that would not last, Peake opted for the £10.
Trying to calculate what his eventual income would have been had he chosen the farthing.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:28 (one year ago) link
Thread delivers, thanks YMP!
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:31 (one year ago) link
Winston Churchill (not that one) definitely belongs in this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_(novelist)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:32 (one year ago) link
Heh, just noticed that Wallace Stegner wrote a biography of Bernard DeVoto.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 16:47 (one year ago) link
Any relation to Howard Devoto?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:01 (one year ago) link
hi there
https://i.imgur.com/95GTVBZ.jpg
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:02 (one year ago) link
bernard is where howard d got the name from -- a book he read as a student i think
(his birth surname is trafford)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:03 (one year ago) link
I can confidently report that Bernard DeVoto is NOT related to Howard DeVoto of the Buzzcocks (which is, alas, a pseudonym).
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:03 (one year ago) link
lol xp
Any relation to Howard Devoto?― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, September 27, 2022 1:01 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:05 (one year ago) link
"I definitely don't remember this happening."
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:08 (one year ago) link
I can't find an confimation of mark's explanation, much as I want to believe.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:37 (one year ago) link
a or any
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:40 (one year ago) link
I wonder if Harry Styles has given Brautigan a slight bump in popularity.
― JoeStork, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:42 (one year ago) link
Have read, and enjoyed, Snow's Strangers and Brothers series (under the influence of Burgess' 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939). Not great literature, but I intend to return and re-read a couple volumes at some point.
Ronald Firbank probably belongs here? (The Flower Beneath the Foot: Being a Record of the Early Life of St. Laura de Nazianzi was a good read for me last year)
― bulb after bulb, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 17:53 (one year ago) link
Disappointed by the new thread title*
*Please don't change it.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:07 (one year ago) link
Wrong thread!
https://wikimili.com/en/Buzzcocks#cite_note-14:↑ Some sources claim that the surname came from a "bus driver in Cambridge" mentioned by a philosophy tutor at Bolton (e.g. Dave Wilson, 2004, Rock Formations: Categorical Answers to how Band Names Were Formed, San Jose:, Cidermill Books, pp. 38–9). Other accounts link it to US novelist Bernard DeVoto. (See, for example, Adrian Room, 2010, Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, 5th ed., Jefferson, North Carolina/London, McFarland & Company, pp. 38, 144.
i mean it's possible it's the "bus driver in cambridge" mentioned by the "philosophy tutor at bolton" (maybe it was a trolley not a bus)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:08 (one year ago) link
that's not where i read it btw (but my music books are all in boxes and anyway probably i remember it from being a clean teen slate reading the inkies in 1977)
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:10 (one year ago) link
i will tentatively add Jocelyn Brooke here, even though i bang on about him a lot, and he didn’t sell *that* much even when he was around. now in the Faber Finds graveyard. But extremely good, especially The Image of a Drawn Sword, and well respected by his peers.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:13 (one year ago) link
And I think Ronald Firbank, while a reasonably well known *name* is v little read these days despite being moderately significant in his connection between fin de siecle aestheticism and subsequent 20th C comic novels.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:17 (one year ago) link
Ronald Firbank may go unread these days, but his offspring Butch Firbanks still looms large in his legend.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:24 (one year ago) link
Hi bulb after bulb that was the series I embarked on the first book of and tbf I could have continued, it just didn't hold me at the time. I'm definitely interested in Snow for historical reasons if nothing else
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
Does anyone read Ben-Hur or Shepherd of the Hills anymore? Huge in turn of the century US.
― sweating like Cathy *aaaack* (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:28 (one year ago) link
How about The Robe for that matter.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:30 (one year ago) link
Lloyd C. Douglas.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:32 (one year ago) link
What was the name of the guy who wrote Seven Who Fled again? He was in the comeback kid mode around here for a hot minute.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:33 (one year ago) link
The Flower Beneath the Footbulb after bulbThe Flower Beneath the Footbulb after bulb*please don't change itThe Flower Beneath the Footbulb after bulb
― dow, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:34 (one year ago) link
Zane Grey? Louis L'amour?
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:34 (one year ago) link
(not answering James's question; just wondering if anyone still reads 'em)
What Are You ReadingThe Flower Beneath The Footbulb after bulb
― dow, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:35 (one year ago) link
Grey L'AmourFall '22bulb after bulb
― dow, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:37 (one year ago) link
James Gould Cozzens.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:40 (one year ago) link
wow Winston Churchill really was a giant at the time
His first novel to appear in book form was The Celebrity (1898). However, Mr. Keegan's Elopement had been published in 1896 as a magazine serial and was republished as an illustrated hardback book in 1903. Churchill's next novel—Richard Carvel (1899) — was a phenomenal success. The novel was the third best-selling work of American fiction in 1899 and eighth-best in 1900, according to Alice Hackett's 70 Years of Best Sellers. It sold some two million copies in a nation of only 76 million people, and made Churchill rich. His other commercially successful novels included The Crisis (1901), The Crossing (1904), Coniston (1906), Mr. Crewe's Career (1908) and The Inside of the Cup (1913), all of which ranked first on the best-selling American novel list in the years indicated.[2]
That quote about novelists vanishing, when compared to musicians or filmmakers, rings pretty true. I wonder if a lot of it has to do with stylistically a lot of writing simply becoming unfashionable or dull compared to other eras, which might lean more into poetry or a sort of hardboiled realism, or working in a genre which has fallen into complete disfavor. For example I've got to believe there were so many writers of western novels which will never see the light of day again, whereas western films and music influenced by the west will always have a huge audience. L'Amour and Grey are obv largely unfashionable (maybe the latter has been since he was obliquely zinged in The Third Man) but they'll always be known.
― omar little, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:46 (one year ago) link
Peter Benchley probably sticks around in the public consciousness exclusively due to Jaws. I'd be curious to see if Mario Puzo would have suffered a fate of being forgotten, too, if The Godfather was never filmed.
― omar little, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:48 (one year ago) link
Michael Swanwick wrote a pamphlet-length essay on why Cabell's reputation fell. Swanwick's theory was that the uniform edition did it. Cabell collected all of his very uneven books into a series, and tried to force all the stories into a common legendarium. (Heinlein was influenced a lot by Cabell, and tried doing the same.) The simpler explanation is that the world after 1929 got too serious for Cabell's brand of ironic comedy, and he starved his imagination by temperament and circumstance. The same happened to Flann O'Brien, who was also influenced by Cabell.
I read Cabell as a boy, which is the only time for that. The oldest member of my family saw me doing so and said, "Well, well, well. So Cabell is still read."
Cabell disappoints but in real life he was brilliant. He was a prodigy in classical languages and was asked give lectures in college while still in his teens. (Unfortunately his emotional development stopped there.) A few years later the Teddy Roosevelt administration tapped him for a career in the diplomatic service. He would have been ideal for that (he had the languages, the intellect, and the polite obnoxiousness) but in those days diplomats had to be independently wealthy and Cabell wasn't.
I remember Spider Robinson from the same period, but found him unreadable even then. Cabell was extremely limited, but within his narrow bounds he had wit. Robinson didn't even come up to Douglas Adams standards. Robinson was the guy you must have met once, who makes a play on words for no reason and laughs uproariously at his own joke. Or takes a familiar song, changes one thing in the lyrics to something different, and then sings the entire song to you. Later he had a sort of fan culture in the days of Usenet. ("alt.callahans." I never spent any time there, but a woman I loved did, which was awkward.)
Cabell's close friend was the writer Joseph Hergesheimer, who was also acclaimed in the 1910s and 20s. Hergesheimer was famous for his stories of emotional drama among the very rich. He wasn't very rich himself, but he made money and bought a large country house. The Depression killed his career too. (In a letter in old age, Cabell answered his correspondent's question. "Hergesheimer? I seem faintly to recall the name.")
― alimosina, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 18:54 (one year ago) link
I thought about Zane Grey earlier but would guess there's cowboy afficionados out there
Thought about Jacqueline Susann too but same rules apply I guess, still historically noteworthy
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:04 (one year ago) link
Ben Hur vs. Quo Vadis FITE
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:10 (one year ago) link
But Flann O'Brien is still very popular! In ILx circles anyways
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:13 (one year ago) link
Flann O'Brien will never not be read.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:13 (one year ago) link
What was the name of the guy who wrote _Seven Who Fled_ again? He was in the comeback kid mode around here for a hot minute.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:16 (one year ago) link
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko)
sort of a related question that one, _genres_ that have fallen out of favor probably they have at least niche followings. i was at powell's i think before the pandemic and they had a whole section, for instance, of nautical adventures. i think my brother read some of the horatio hornblower books. he's kind of big on old niche fiction, he's really into doc savage. i didn't know nautical fiction was an entire genre, though i guess it stands to reason.
i'm actually half-heartedly reading a harlequin romance now! _for the love of april french_ by a lady named penny aimes. my mom read harlequin romances by the bushel when i was young - i never touched them myself, they were For Girls, so i don't know how _for the love of april french_ stacks up, but i can _definitely_ see the appeal. only reason i haven't finished it is because all of my leisure reading tends to be dour nonfiction books about genocide and for some reason i've stopped enjoying reading for leisure as much as i used to. april french is pure fantasy - it's about a trans woman (of course, because i am a cliche) who meets a cis guy who isn't a chaser, an egg, or otherwise a fucking asshole but who is nevertheless into her. aside from that it was actually super relatable to my own life, which i can't imagine would be true about '80s harlequin romances. the titular april french is sort of a den mom at a local bdsm club, who by day works a job that's _very_ similar to my own, even considering that there are like three or four careers that have historically been open to trans women.
anyway. my feeling - and again i haven't read any '80s harlequin romances so i can't confirm - is that the idea of a "harlequin romance novel" has changed to adapt with the times, and that while the romance novel is probably even more of a niche concern than it was previously - nowadays i suspect that ao3 fills a lot of the niche that harlequin used to fill - there's certainly good quality writing still being put out by harlequin.
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:17 (one year ago) link
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:19 (one year ago) link
I wasn't proposing Flann O'Brien as a subject for this thread. O'Brien and Cabell were both stuck and couldn't renew their imaginations.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:22 (one year ago) link
What about Henri Barbusse? Feel like he would be difficult and lack the cache of say Celine.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:25 (one year ago) link
My best friend at high school was an obsessive reader of Alexander Kent novels, was he ever a big deal? Certainly wrote a lot of books, and he only died five years ago.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:30 (one year ago) link
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:31 (one year ago) link
i didn't know nautical fiction was an entire genre
OCEANS ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:33 (one year ago) link
Poster Boy Arnold Bennett is a Penguin Classics kind of guy, so while this definitely disqualifies for Type I Unread, not sure about Type II Unread. Maybe Type II should have subdivisions of the clade: Type IIa- famous for being unread, but still read and in print, Type IIb - unread and unknown by most but still in print but a publisher you know etc.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
definitely need some empsonian classifications of that sort.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:45 (one year ago) link
have read two Arnold Bennett's in the last couple of years - the card and Anna of the five towns. was figuring him for stoke's version of gaskell based on descriptions of the latter but the card was a bit of a knockabout. tptv shows the film from time to time.
gissing also, New Grub Street, slightly depressing
― koogs, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 19:58 (one year ago) link
Most recent Arnold Bennett reference prior to this thread
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:05 (one year ago) link
i was right to say it
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:10 (one year ago) link
Lol
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:13 (one year ago) link
I think the important thing about Bennett is that Stoke is now widely understood as a racist shithole
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:13 (one year ago) link
So George Meredith doesn't seem to be in print with any publisher of note in the US but it seems maybe Penguin UK does have The Egoist.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:14 (one year ago) link
So his Penguin Score is very low but non-zero.
**ahem** a more recent Arnold Bennett reference:
Bright Remarks and Throwing Shade: What Are You Reading, Summer 2022?
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:19 (one year ago) link
sort of a related question that one, _genres_ that have fallen out of favor probably they have at least niche followings.
Good point. In identifying Grey and L'amour, I was kind of thinking of them in these terms, and my suspicion, at least, is that the pop Western as a genre was basically replaced by the likes of Clancy, Grisham, Patterson, etc. There are undoubtedly some large gaps in that history; Stephen King might belong there, but I always think of him belonging to slightly different, if related, literary traditions. Basically, I'm arguing for Grey and L'amour as the "airport reads" of their day, if that makes sense.
― Les hommes de bonbons (cryptosicko), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:20 (one year ago) link
Oh wait, sorry, maybe I was sorting by relevance instead of date.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:27 (one year ago) link
lol
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:28 (one year ago) link
EIther that or I just can't read or something.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:28 (one year ago) link
Stephen king has a new book in the top ten just this week
― koogs, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:34 (one year ago) link
he's the new winston churchill
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:34 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSzJNQSkbi8
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:39 (one year ago) link
probably nobody still reading j.b. priestley? pretty big in 50s & 60s, lots of his books still in op shops (uk -"charity shops") - i read one once, was a sort of heavy handed satire of an arts festival
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:44 (one year ago) link
op shops is probably where you'd get a pile of answers for this thread but i seldom go into those places any more
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:46 (one year ago) link
Good one, Priestley. I always get him confused with J.R. Ackerley tbh who had a recent revival via NYRB, not sure how high he got on the Type-O-Hype-O-Meter.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:47 (one year ago) link
At the risk of dragging out the big gun for dinosaur and aiming it at Stonehenge (DO U SEE?), there is a kind of hauntology associated with these kinds of authors.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:49 (one year ago) link
lot of '90s "chick lit" & "lad lit" dudes in the op shops last i looked but i don't remember any of those authors' names & anyway maybe ppl still do read em idk
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 20:52 (one year ago) link
^^ those feel like a different category, as far as an omnipresent best-seller (Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain) that never entered a canon vs. one that endured for a while and has now petered out.
That said, not sure Millennials or Gen Z are getting into High Fidelity or Bridget Jones's Diary unless it's picked up from a Little Free Library.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 21:17 (one year ago) link
yeah those are ubiquitous in the ol' LFL & i don't know if that means nobody reads em any more or if it means lots of ppl still read em
actually i realise that i don't have very much idea what other people are reading at all
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 21:26 (one year ago) link
probably nobody much still reading susan hill or andrea newman (also ubiquitous 2nd hand & both actually good imo)
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 21:28 (one year ago) link
this thread is a delight & i'm awed and charmed by many posts
― ꙮ (map), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 21:43 (one year ago) link
I read a few J. B. Priestley plays in that same modern drama course I mentioned earlier. Maybe the instructor was some kind of freak?
― rob, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 22:01 (one year ago) link
SF/fantasy seems like a slightly different thing, but I hope no children are reading Piers Anthony like I did.
I'm curious if kids these days are into Baum or (older kids) Vonnegut? Is Kerouac too toxic masculine now? Bukowski? I feel like the category of "genuinely popular in my lifetime but now not read" is harder to fill. I remember my parents reading The Jewel in the Crown when the miniseries was on Masterpiece Theater—I assume that's a tough sell these days
― rob, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 22:06 (one year ago) link
I meant to include Heinlein in my childhood wonderings
― rob
god, even when i was young piers anthony had a well-known reputation as a creep.
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 22:50 (one year ago) link
Daphne du Maurier. (Surprising that she died as late as 1989.)
― alimosina, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 22:53 (one year ago) link
Andre Norton btw? idk
― Mizue loves company (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 22:54 (one year ago) link
People surely still read Du Maurier (and Brautigan), a lot.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 22:57 (one year ago) link
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:04 (one year ago) link
she was still in her 20s when she wrote her big hits, hitchcock was on it!
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:09 (one year ago) link
Is kind of mad that she wrote Rebecca and Jamaica Inn and The Birds and Don't Look Now, if we judge an author by their film adaptations she's a world-beater.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:13 (one year ago) link
I just downloaded a du Maurier novel onto my Kindle! And I recently read a collection of her stories that included Don't Look Now. It was patchy, but very readable.
― Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:15 (one year ago) link
i think of those four as the birds expanded universe tetralogy
― mark s, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:16 (one year ago) link
I've read two of her short stories and tried to read Rebecca (not bad but life is too short)
― formerly abanana (dat), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:21 (one year ago) link
First encountered Rebecca as part of my stepmother's set of "classic novels" audiobooks, think it was the only thing from the 20th century in the set, still odd to me that it was written so late
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:26 (one year ago) link
There’s a sub-group of novelists who were sort of big deals because they were related to famous authors:
Julian HawthorneConstance Fenimore Woolson Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 23:46 (one year ago) link
They're the literary equivalent of James Taylor's siblings.
Someone who knows more of the English Canadian literary canon could probably come up with a bunch of names that were considered important in their times. Brian Fawcett was a writer (and quasi-novelist) who died earlier this year; celebrated in the 80s as Canada's foremost post-modernist, but there's only one, non-circulating copy of Cambodia : a book for people who find television too slow now in the Toronto library system.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 00:39 (one year ago) link
So I said later for this thread and went striding the stacks of my local library this afternoon, and for the first time spied a novel by xpost Margaret Oliphant, Miss Marjoribanks, another xpost Penguin Classic. The back of it referred to Q.D. Leavis (this phrase is the only direction quotation): heroine is a "missing link" between Austen's Emma and Eliot's Dorothea, and Leavis likes her better. Well I glanced through long tunneling sentences in tiny type: Miss M is not the heroine (whom she tells to drop by tomorrow only if she can "pick up someone amusing"), seems to be queen bee or enforcer of high-ish society types I got sick of in Proust, but maybe I'll read it some more, having liked the few anthologized stories I've come across (though she may be one of those great or good short story writers who suck at novels, as mentioned by Alfred).
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 00:50 (one year ago) link
direct quotation
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 00:52 (one year ago) link
Does anyone read Norman Mailer any more?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 00:54 (one year ago) link
oh that brian fawcett book is great. i never read or even saw any other books by him or talked to anyone else who'd read it (far as i can remember) so i guess he might be a writer nobody reads any more
or maybe never did, i dunno
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 00:56 (one year ago) link
Mailer's Armies of the Night still speaks to ongoing frustrations: levitate the Pentagon? Sure, why the fuck not, let's go, Fugs. "Out Demons Out."
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:12 (one year ago) link
(Come to think of it, the Fugs took their name from the published compromise for a term v. frequently used in Mailer's '40s war novel, The Naked and the Dead.)
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:15 (one year ago) link
Kurt Vonnegut, Hermann Hesse, Robert Heinlein and Richard Brautigan were really popular with high school and college students in the 70s
― Dan S, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:23 (one year ago) link
Thought of him earlier and assume that people still read him, but a time-traveler from the 70s might be surprised that he isn’t taught.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:27 (one year ago) link
He showed occasional flashes of brilliance, but most of his books seemed to be attempts to follow and one-up other (better) writers (Hemingway, Capote, Hunter Thompson).
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:30 (one year ago) link
Mailer's Harlot's Ghost is great fun, especially if you think Oliver Stone's JFK is fun.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:35 (one year ago) link
i hope to god no one reads edward abbey anymore
― ꙮ (map), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:36 (one year ago) link
xp To be fair, I never read Harlot's Ghost. I kind of gave up after Tough Guys Don't Dance.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:38 (one year ago) link
Armies of the Night, dammit! Also, his play, The Deer Park, had some of the best lines and some of the worst lines ever, for good characters---I still daydream about going back to college time and directing it---
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:43 (one year ago) link
oh that brian fawcett book is great. i never read or even saw any other books by him or talked to anyone else who'd read it (far as i can remember) so i guess he might be a writer nobody reads any moreor maybe never did, i dunno
Cambodia was publicized enough that I read it in high school, as a teenager who wasn't really tied into the literary scene.
He's having two books published posthumously, though, so presumably somebody is (or will be) reading.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:44 (one year ago) link
xpost But if I did go back then and put it on, he might show up unannounced, as other playwrights did, and not like that I cut lines---I mean, he was pretty small, but so was Polanski in Chinatown (ouuuch)
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:46 (one year ago) link
xp Yeah, I read Armies of the Night in, I think it was grad school, although it may have been undergrad. In any event, it was good, but as a piece of political gonzo journalism it didn't hold a candle to something like Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:47 (one year ago) link
He also wrote a good one about that campaign, St. George and the Godfather. It was just whatever happened, don't think he was trying to beat Thompson at his own game.Lines cut/me cut cont.:And he did land in Bellevue after stabbing his wife, so might still be carrying a knife like Polanski's character: "Hey kitty-kat."
― dow, Wednesday, 28 September 2022 01:53 (one year ago) link
People seem to like Mailer’s Apollo book, Of a Fire on the Moon, in which he refers to himself appropriately as Aquarius. Not a novel though.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 28 September 2022 02:21 (one year ago) link
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
well i was discussing this with an intermittent ilxor the other day and the answer was a tentative yes. but more the point was just how much he isn’t part of *anything* these days. “he hasn’t even been cancelled” was an observation.
― Fizzles, Friday, 30 September 2022 19:02 (one year ago) link
Hah!
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 19:02 (one year ago) link
He wasn't even the best curmudgeon in the Amises.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 19:54 (one year ago) link
yeah does anyone still read kingsley amis?
or john braine, alan sillitoe, john braine etc
all those dudes were still in the school library when i was at high school (end of the 70s) but i get the feeling i was in the last generation to read them
might be wrong
― lambert simnel (doo rag), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:06 (one year ago) link
Much easier to watch the films iirc.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:11 (one year ago) link
Because I’m out for a good time. All the rest…
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:19 (one year ago) link
no one reads either of the john braines any more
― mark s, Friday, 30 September 2022 20:20 (one year ago) link
The Man with Two Braines
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:22 (one year ago) link
lol oops
― lambert simnel (doo rag), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:23 (one year ago) link
the other john braine is john wain i guess
Figured that’s what you meant but didn’t want to call you on it as it was kind of funny.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:24 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJf7_5vH1WE
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:26 (one year ago) link
you read one angry young man you've read em all
― lambert simnel (doo rag), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:26 (one year ago) link
motherfuck him and John Braine
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:29 (one year ago) link
Lol!(xp)Never noticed until now that that song has a sub-Police faux reggae groove.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 20:30 (one year ago) link
Insane in the Membraine
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 30 September 2022 22:21 (one year ago) link
― lambert simnel (doo rag)
hell does anyone read _martin_ amis lol
i read his book about pac-man i think
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 30 September 2022 22:46 (one year ago) link
Julian Barnes?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 30 September 2022 22:59 (one year ago) link
Anybody seenMy old friend Kingsley Can you tell me Where he’s gone
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 23:04 (one year ago) link
Thought I saw him out walking Out over the hillWith John OsborneJohn BraineAnd John
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 23:13 (one year ago) link
DO U SEE?
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 30 September 2022 23:27 (one year ago) link
Jilted John to #onethread!
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 00:24 (one year ago) link
Jeez, you're busy, man
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 00:29 (one year ago) link
Sorry. Do you have a thread of your own you’d like to attend to?
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 00:35 (one year ago) link
(Thought I might have to help with homework tonight but kid is taking a break)
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 00:37 (one year ago) link
Again in truth I think this thread has undergone a, maybe inevitable, maybe somewhat productive, mission creep -- from genuinely listing people who are now very obscure (but maybe once weren't), to listing people who were once central and are now, necessarily, past, and recognised as important in an earlier generation but not current.
Anyone studying, say, England in the 1950s is likely to read Sillitoe (I've read SN&SM maybe 3 times, others here may have too - not to mention the LONELINESS book), and also the early Braine and Wain. (Wain btw was quite an interesting critic - a good essay on Orwell for one, as I recall.) I have actually been lining up HURRY ON DOWN and ROOM AT THE TOP to read for months myself.
These authors are not now extensively read as current authors (which they're not), but they are still read and part of the catalogue of cultural and literary history. In sum I don't think they are really good candidates for the thread.
I believe that people do still read Kingsley Amis, though clearly his stock has fallen since say 1995.
Martin Amis is I think a more specific and interesting case - he ought still to be, or could be, central and current in some way, but has faded away from that - as is correctly noted. I think that he made a number of particularly bad calls - the wayward statements on feminism and matrimony around PREGNANT WIDOW an example - in an attempt to maintain public profile. In that, indeed, it is hard to resist the obvious parallel with Morrissey - people vaguely know the controversial opinions, better than they know any of the later work.
MONEY I would say is (naturally?) as good and bad as it ever was. It was outrageous, extreme, nasty, brilliant, central. I still think it's his most impressive feat by far.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 1 October 2022 13:38 (one year ago) link
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs)
That was a compliment.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 13:42 (one year ago) link
*raises hand*
The NYRB rereleased his only good books.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 13:43 (one year ago) link
So The Alteration then.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 13:49 (one year ago) link
And The Old Devils too, I think.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 13:50 (one year ago) link
Sorry Alfred, I was a bit irritable last night for some reason.
pinefox speaks wisdom - honestly for me the mission creep is cool.
I mean, it might well be true that there aren't a lot of people reading (say) Elinor Glyn or John Galsworthy or James Branch Cabell. Fades like those are going to happen.
To me it's WAY more interesting to speculate when people will stop reading more recent authors, even (perhaps especially) ones who are still alive. Because a relatively modern writer going out of style quickly is a more dramatic development than the natural process of forgetting the distant past.
There's a line in my second-favorite novel (The Real Life of Sebastian Knight) about how hyper-modern art sometimes gets dated really fast, and I think it is accurate.
Has anybody here thought much about Douglas Coupland in this century? (pause for show of hands)
There will be a day when Bret Easton Ellis or Kathy Acker become a footnote, interesting only to specialists in a particular zeitgeist. Not sure when that will be, but I'm interested in finding out.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 13:54 (one year ago) link
literally 5 minutes ago i was looking at a half-obscured book on my shelf and wondering what it was. it was Generation X.
― koogs, Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:10 (one year ago) link
You forgot #onethread!
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:13 (one year ago) link
Good post from Ye Mad Puffin. It's these specific developments that are intriguing, rather the general fade-out of everything.
In 2005 Coupland was hired (by the Observer Music Monthly as I recall) to interview Morrissey in Rome. He produced a strange text that showed that he hadn't bothered to interview Morrissey, had written up almost nothing Morrissey had said - I'm not certain he'd even met him. People were unimpressed. That's the last distinctive thing I can remember from Coupland.
Ellis and Acker, though, I feel still have kinds of cachet. I believe that people value Acker as some kind of avant-gardist - she had a big LRB retrospective only a few years ago. Ellis seems to have followed a different path - becoming some kind of ... maybe gay libertarian shock jock?
― the pinefox, Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:35 (one year ago) link
Of the 80s lit brat pack, Tama Janowitz is the one who faded without a revival. (Ellis has a tome coming out January, and even if McInerney is more bon vivant now, I feel like I see/hear Bright Lights, Big City referred to often.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:40 (one year ago) link
Wasn't there a novel recently told in first person in the voice of Kathy Acker? Crudo, by Olivia Laing iirc.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:43 (one year ago) link
The shiftcreep was inevitable. The only way the thread could have survived in its original form is if somebody else had actually read, say, Wilfrid Sheed. Either him or some other obscurity was posited who at least turned out to be a folie à deux.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:46 (one year ago) link
lol, koogs and Eazy. Plate of shrimp, I guess. I think of how prominent Coupland and Janowitz were on my friends' DIY bookshelves circa 1993 and shudder. A few years later the same people were all knee-deep in Infinite Jest.
Maybe the thread needs a "future edition" spinoff. I dunno.
My sideswipe at Elinor Glyn reminds me that I only ever heard of her because of Dorothy Parker's deliciously snarky reviews. Her collected book and theater reviews are a very good source of fodder for this thread.
I know have a couple collections of Woolf's criticism, as well as Eliot's (somewhere, probably in the attic). Negative book reviews from 100-ish years ago will reveal people you've justifiably never heard of. Is that cheating? I dunno.
There was a recent New Yorker piece about Elizabeth Hardwick that was chock-full of extremely precise evaluations of people I had never read, and it made me a bit melancholy.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:47 (one year ago) link
Feeling this last bit.I would think twice about a Future Edition thread. The one I started seem to only sow confusion.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:50 (one year ago) link
I think I said before that it might be more rational to posit that EVERYTHING becomes unread, except a handful of things, lights in a vast darkness, islands on a dark sea.
What are those islands? Things that do remain in print, prominent, or read?
I posit:
1: old canonical stuff, often in translation, like the Odyssey or DON QUIXOTE - things that are presumably cheap to publish and that readers still keep attempting because of an admirable desire to educate themselves.
2: English canonical material within eg: the C19 novel - so the Brontes, Dickens, G Eliot, not to mention Austen, remain always above water whatever else drowns. In modern times this is true of Woolf, Joyce, then Orwell. Meanwhile lots of things around them have wayward, up and down fortunes. Lewis went up as Lawrence fell away - but this surely still didn't mean that Lewis ever became as widely read as Lawrence had been (or even still is).
3: within genre fiction, some things that become canonical and hold their place: Christie, Chandler, Simenon; Asimov, Dick?
4: then you have a world of Current Literary Fiction which is prominent and read. Zadie Smith and J Franzen would be good cases from UK and US. Slightly longer established names hang on: Jonathan Coe, Jeanette Winterson, and yes, McEwan. And this contemporary corpus gets added to - probably especially now by writers of colour.
4a): you could add a sub-category for independent publishers and more experimental writers - ILB favourites like C-L Bennett, who are read by, maybe, passionate subcultures.
5: then add the tendency of publishers, sometimes critics, to go back and reclaim, republish, champion. Penguin making pretty new editions of something, multiple titles by an author, is a good sign. Feminism has broadly been a factor here - so Jean Rhys is more prominently in print than ever before? - perhaps so are Elizabeth Bowen, Djuna Barnes. Yet there must still be people who were contemporaries of theirs who do not get salvaged (yet).
The logic of the premise, justifying that perhaps increasingly predictable perambulation, would be that anything NOT in those categories is no longer read - and in any given case you would be positing a happy exception or surprise.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 1 October 2022 14:51 (one year ago) link
pinefox
In 2005 Coupland was hired (by the Observer Music Monthly as I recall) to interview Morrissey in Rome. He produced a strange text that showed that he hadn't bothered to interview Morrissey, had written up almost nothing Morrissey had said - I'm not certain he'd even met him
That is so David Foster Wallacesque it almost physically hurts. In retrospect there was a whole genre based around 90s white dudes who - consciously or unconsciously - sought to invent a very specific neo-gonzo aesthetic. "I'm not a real interviewer, I'm just going to submit 5,000 words about how nervous you are about peeing, and how we needed to find a very specific snack." I'm looking at you, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, Joe Queenan.
There is another, demographically related, subgroup of probably genuinely sensitive souls who had a BIT more to say, but who are not without their own flaws. David Shields, Allan Gurganus, Lionel Shriver.
And there is another more elite tier of writers with some pretty solid literary merit who I don't think will vanish quite as easily: Chabon, Franzen, Lethem, Michael Cunningham. But
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:06 (one year ago) link
...but I dunno
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:08 (one year ago) link
The pinefox otm. Part of me wants to attempt to make a case why people should read those Wilfrid Sheed novels and novellas I enjoyed so much as a nipper, in particular The Hack and The Blacking Factory. Seems to me there was some kind of, not to say existential dread or malaise but just some kind of sense of discomfort in his work that spoke to me, but maybe I have misremembered that, you really can’t go home again, maybe there was something offensive or clumsy or wooden I forgot about or overlooked, or maybe the stuff was actually really good but people won’t care, they will say “Why do we need him? We have Walker Percy, we have J.F. Powers” and so ultimately it wouldn’t be worth the tilting at windmills effort.
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:10 (one year ago) link
Your loyalty to your past is laudable, Mr. Redd. But I generally feel there is just way too much culture for any one brain to comprehend. So any particular lacunae (Enid Blyton, or Wilfrid Sheed, or Banana Yoshimoto, or R.F. Delderfield) are forgivable.
I feel the same way about music, FWIW. No, I don't know as much about Wu-Tang Clan as the person sitting next to me at the bar. But she doesn't know as much about Nanci Griffith or Elvis Costello. The person two stools over knows way more about Ultravox than I do, and that's okay.
It's all a vast tapestry.
Crap I think I meant to put George Saunders in the last post but I forget which category.
Carry on, y'all
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 15:30 (one year ago) link
Here in Canada, Coupland has become the kind of cultural presence who is called upon to make government-sponsored installation art.
― Halfway there but for you, Saturday, 1 October 2022 16:10 (one year ago) link
Lethem has an essay, 'Rushmore vs Abundance' I think it's called, which well articulates a point that poster Ye Mad Puffin is making.
Roughly he is saying that we should accept the idea that there is a ton of culture, beyond our ken, and be happy with this abundance and diversity, rather than bothering trying to delimit the canon (which would be the 'Mount Rushmore' of literature).
A good moment is where he says that we have an anxiety that we're missing something, which we shouldn't bother having - '(trust me, we're missing something)'.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 1 October 2022 16:17 (one year ago) link
re Ye Mad Puffin's comments again, and re the thread, it would actually be good if we could plot Wallace on it -- ie: that there was a peak of his fandom, which is now declining for various reasons, as we are supposing it has done for M Amis.
Unsure about this, though, especially as academic work on him seems almost as thick as ever.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 1 October 2022 16:21 (one year ago) link
I have had some nice moments with Wallace - Girl With Curious Hair has some undeniable gems, for example.
But I think it would be fine for our cultural health if he eventually went the way of Updike, Mailer, Cheever, etc.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 17:04 (one year ago) link
Cheever, I think, has survived, partly because he's waaaayyy weirder than Updike; he's in the same league as the Latin American fablelists.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 17:12 (one year ago) link
Well I recently re-read "The Enormous Radio" and right away he's sneering at his characters---this thirtysomething couple hasn't made it to Westchester yet, but if and when they do, Cheever will be waiting (as in "The Swimmer" etc. etc.) Yes, he's got an imagination, but the critique of plastic suburban New Yorker readers, literary default of his era has an edge of personal hostility (he was one of the downwardly mobile Cheevers, not like the ones who started contacting him only when he had a lot of New Yorker stories to show for himself), which can add electricity to the distinctive imaginative momentum, but also can be off-putting and/or encourage me to squint a little harder at the dazzle or just get plain predictable: you get to know when he's going to stick pins in a character or get boozy-sentimental.Having said that, now I want to dig up my copy of The Stories of, first published in late 70s (I have the doorstop paperback with bright red cover), which was a trip then, pulling in a lot of stuff us youngsters had never seen, seemed startling to some older reviewers and profs also)---and his novels!!
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 18:45 (one year ago) link
That's an early story, though. Tonally they change after The Housebreaker of Shady Hill.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 18:47 (one year ago) link
Even in that collection with "The Enormous Radio" there's "O City of Broken Dreams," this lyrical account of a family of naifs in Manhattan agog in the Automat.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 18:52 (one year ago) link
True, and I was about to admit that, although this was among shallowest among the (New Yorker anthologized) ones I just read---though in part because "these are shallow people dammit," young JC would be likely to remind me---it's got more grabby momentum than any of the others.
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 18:59 (one year ago) link
(others were by: Elizabeth Taylor, Jessamyn West, VS Pritchett, Nabokov, Shirley Jackson---from The 40s--The Story of a Decade--New Yorker nonfiction, poetry, fiction---which I'll prob say something about on WAYR?; it's v. worth checking out, for the most part.)
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:03 (one year ago) link
Naifs in Manhattan is my next band name; our debut album will be called Agog in the Automat
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:05 (one year ago) link
(xpost Well, Irwin Shaw's story, about PTSD x antisemitism in WWII, was also a grabber, but was longer and took hold more slowly, not like Cheever's)
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:07 (one year ago) link
Agog and Magog In The Automat
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:09 (one year ago) link
Yes I'm going to get back to reading him---these things come around, as I noticed working in a bookstore and a CD store in the 90s---oh good call imagewise on Amis and Morrisey, pinefox---I have the impression from a couple of overviews that Amis is better the further back you go---any truth to that?
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 19:14 (one year ago) link
George Saunders
I'm betting he will be regarded thirty years from now the way Donald Barthelme is today.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 1 October 2022 20:20 (one year ago) link
The only M. Amis book I can stand is his memoir.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 20:23 (one year ago) link
Experience?
― If The Damned Are United (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 20:57 (one year ago) link
Yep. The latest one, another memoir, has decent bits about writing around yet more tedious valentines to Hitch.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 1 October 2022 21:05 (one year ago) link
Here's one for the thread: The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas. It was very present on the literary landscape in the '80s, always saw it at bookstores and on friends' parents' bookshelves. I eventually read it, I liked it, but that was 30 years ago so who knows what I'd think now. Anyway, it was his only popular book and I feel like it's just totally disappeared.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Saturday, 1 October 2022 21:10 (one year ago) link
John Barth is well on his way to this thread, smiling self-contentedly all the way. Early this year I read Lost in the Funhouse and Where Three Roads Meet, but that won't stop it.
― alimosina, Saturday, 1 October 2022 22:57 (one year ago) link
B-b-but what about the upcoming Dalkey Arcjive Essentials edition of The Sot-Weed Factor?
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:05 (one year ago) link
Dalkey Archive of course, although now I kind of want to reuse Arcjive.
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:09 (one year ago) link
I read The White Hotel in the 80s: don't remember specifics, but it seemed refreshing.
George SaundersI'm betting he will be regarded thirty years from now the way Donald Barthelme is today.
― dow, Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:20 (one year ago) link
jane smiley
― ꙮ (map), Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:24 (one year ago) link
will anyone read murakami in 10 years?
― ꙮ (map), Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:30 (one year ago) link
John Irving
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:51 (one year ago) link
Anne Tyler, although ledge was reading something recently.
― ꙮ (map), Saturday, October 1, 2022
I think so. Two of the most loved and acclaimed films of the last few years - Drive My Car and Burning - are based on his short stories, and they are destined to be remembered
― Dan S, Saturday, 1 October 2022 23:58 (one year ago) link
Dow: yes I broadly think that earlier Amis has more energy and interest than later. MONEY is 11 years after his debut, and is now 38 years old - in that sense it's 'early'. I can't praise any of his 3 longer novels that I've read after it.
Great call on THE WHITE HOTEL - a book that was big and taken seriously and now isn't.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 October 2022 00:11 (one year ago) link
moving away from academia - how about VC Andrews? didn't read it myself but the vibe i got of it was that it was a particular manifestation of child abuse lit, something that fit alongside "satanic ritual abuse" really well. maybe people weren't _quite_ ready to face up to the truth that in america it was _christianity_ that was the main driver of child abuse in those days...
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 01:14 (one year ago) link
Bruce Chatwin. Huge in the 80s, never hear anything about him these days.
― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, 2 October 2022 01:30 (one year ago) link
Anne Tyler has books out all the time. i tend to reread old things of hers rather than new ones but it's quite regular.
my mum is currently reading Garp
― koogs, Sunday, 2 October 2022 01:35 (one year ago) link
in a similar vc Andrews vein, what about Dennis Wheatley?
― koogs, Sunday, 2 October 2022 01:36 (one year ago) link
David Foster Wallace... is a writer I have Complicated feelings about. In one sense he's an avatar of Clever White Man literature, people who write about whatever the hell they feel like writing about. it's only white guys who ever get praised enough to start doing that sort of thing.
Well. White _AMABs_. One of the transfem tropes out there is "gifted boy -> burnout trans girl with a praise kink". My past self had a certain... lack of insight about things. The kind of person who would _notice_ that all of their favorite writers were deeply miserable white men who had killed themselves and concluded "Well, that's that, I definitely shouldn't become a writer, I have enough problems with my mental health."
What I see in the writers I loved in my younger days - writers whose writing style is the most like my own - is not just that they tended to be deeply miserable, fucked up people - yes, I do know I'm talking about _writers_ here - but men who were deeply fucked up by _masculinity_ in particular. Often in ways that perpetuate the problem. DFW is widely known and acknowledged as an abuser whose self-loathing only really seemed to perpetuate his abusive behavior patterns. All of his self-hatred about being a tennis child prodigy and wow he brings a tennis player who's a trans woman into the story and it's _the_ stereotype of the trans female athlete, just like 20 years before damn near anyone else (me included) had any idea what "gender dysphoria" actually was.
With DFW I guess what you get back to is something like "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men". The sense I get is that he thought of himself as a "hideous man", like I did, and couldn't figure out how _not_ to be a hideous man. I guess I eventually figured it out but my particular solution probably wouldn't work for most people - and none of the writers I grew up reading lived long enough to be able to have the option I wound up taking.
I don't really think that DFW is a writer who should be Read, but I think the problems he exemplified have become more, rather than less, acute since his untimely passing.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 01:54 (one year ago) link
Back in the early '90s my sophomore high school English teacher, who was a Clever White Man who had a second job selling luggage at Sears and spent his spare time trying to sell spec scripts to second-rate three-camera sitcoms, assigned _A Prayer for Owen Meany_ as the summer reading assignment for the honors English class he taught. I never really read Garp, in large part I think because it had a transsexual in it and it was important to me to know as little about transsexuals as possible. (In retrospect I probably would have been fine, since the character in Garp, like most trans characters in fiction of the era, bears no noticeable resemblance to any actual trans person.)
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 01:59 (one year ago) link
One problem with speculating on who will be unread in the future is there's a temptation to name authors you don't think are very good - yet the literary world is full of rediscoveries of unjustly forgotten authors, so clearly it's not some platonic notion of quality that prevents authors from falling into oblivion in the first place. I guess a good exercise then is "what current authors you admire do you think will be forgotten?".
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 2 October 2022 11:27 (one year ago) link
I am considerably more skeptical of this argument now than I would have been when that essay was published (2007, if I'm correct?). It's immensely freeing on an individual level no doubt, and the fact that canons, no matter how well tuned to preoccupations of race, gender, etc. are always going to be oppressive on some level, makes it tempting to want to ignore them entirely. But We Live In A Society, there is a social dimension to art and the death of the monoculture seems to have resulted not so much in a world where every person has their own highly curated individual tastes but rather a situation where what is left of the "mainstream" feels impoverished. There's never been a greater time to be a specialist, you can get into dadaist poetry or 60's wuxia films or 30's swing and have more information available to you than ever before, but meanwhile those who haven't got those geeky impulses to research and look beyond are now I think much less likely to be exposed to anything that might take them out of their comfort zone. It's kind of like the nostalgia expressed on the Godard thread for TV channels showing foreign arthouse fare, probably the vast majority of ppl who came across these must have found them pointless but for a few people it may have been an entry point to explore these new worlds. So I guess that is where I see the usefulness of a shared canon, of having these works that most people get exposed to in school or whatever. This might also be viewed as a defense of the middlebrow, I guess.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 2 October 2022 11:48 (one year ago) link
"it's not some platonic notion of quality that prevents authors from falling into oblivion in the first place"
Think I agree with this. It's contingency, happenstance, politics - unsure how much quality has to do with it. Maybe it does, but then, most of us don't agree about questions of quality in the first place. If it was up to me, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW would be forgotten. Other ilxors would have the diametrically opposite view.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 October 2022 12:18 (one year ago) link
>>> I guess a good exercise then is "what current authors you admire do you think will be forgotten?".
Yes - agree - this kind of angle on the question is interesting.
Off the top of my head, Lorrie Moore (whom many of us love) might be a relatively good candidate for this because of her lightness.
David Mitchell - if thinking harshly I can see his work coming to be seen as youthful and brittle, more than dazzling.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 October 2022 12:33 (one year ago) link
I was just thinking of taking another crack at GRAVITY’S RAINBOW – after all, it can’t be as bad as V- but maybe not.
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:06 (one year ago) link
― Zelda Zonk, Sunday, 2 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink
A test for this thread is to get hold of the names, go to a bookshop and see whether they stock a copy.
I would say this is the case for the vast majority of the authors in here, such as Chatwin.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:08 (one year ago) link
What is this bookshop you speak of?
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:11 (one year ago) link
In a secondhand bookshop yesterday (South London readers: the tiny cheap and chaotic BOOKS on Oglander Rd in SE15) I was inspired by this thread to take a look at a Len Deighton book, “Horse Under Water”. On the back it had a quote, no context, apparently from LIFE Magazine: “Next, big soft girls will read Len Deighton aloud in jazz workshops”.I don’t know what that was supposed to mean or what readers it was meant to attract but it sure as hell worked on me, I bought it for £2.
― Tim, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:21 (one year ago) link
I like this story and quotation a lot.
I also quite like that shop. We may have discussed it before.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:23 (one year ago) link
We may well have.
Truth told, the appealing front cover of the book also had a part to play in my decision to purchase:
https://astrofella.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/fab6d-deighton20horse20under20water.jpg
― Tim, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:26 (one year ago) link
LIFE magazine: “Next, big soft girls will read Len Deighton aloud in jazz workshops”.narrator's voice:
― mark s, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:27 (one year ago) link
Deighton After Dark.
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:30 (one year ago) link
I love the context-free "Next"
― jmm, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:32 (one year ago) link
It's an amazing blurb.
Friend informs me that particular Deighton is set in Portugal, and at one point the main character mentions the German's uncanny ability to emulate the local language accent-free. This, I regret to say, is not true.
― Daniel_Rf, Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:50 (one year ago) link
http://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2017/11/big-soft-girls-and-jazz-workshops.html?m=1
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Sunday, 2 October 2022 13:59 (one year ago) link
The thriller is borrowing the props of the conventional “literary” novel…No wonder a newspaper reviewer breathlessly declared that “the vitality of the modern thriller flows directly from the bloody realities of our embattled day”. Next, big soft girls will read Len Deighton aloud in jazz workshops. The real question is not whether the new thrillers are literature (the answer is no) but whether they really do tell anything about the latest symptom of fiction’s increasing inability to get to the terrifying matters of our time.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:00 (one year ago) link
context of the context: conrad knickerbocker (for it is he) is supplying his own implied narrator's voice (viz that this is not in fact going to happen, bcz newspaper reviewers are making too much of "the modern thriller", which knockerbocker boldly offsets against "fiction" (despites its current, viz 1964, failures)
― mark s, Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:08 (one year ago) link
He liked In Cold Blood though.
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:14 (one year ago) link
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/home/capote-blood2.html
He was working on a Malcolm Lowry bio but committed suicide, some say as the result of a Lowry curse.
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:18 (one year ago) link
comically enough given the context of this thread what the full blurry knickerbocker review is pleading for is the arrival of the pynchonesque spy thriller (viz a form that also reflects desk-bound faceless bureaucracies at scale)
― mark s, Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:19 (one year ago) link
adding: george plimpton klaxon
― mark s, Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:25 (one year ago) link
Great cover too: Len halfway under what over here (US) signifies "watered down" to some and "Lifesaver!" to others---not the candy but the striped Cliff's Notes you read just before the big test. There are or were (when I worked in a mid-90s bookstore) even Notes for short stories, and I sold some; God forbid you risk getting lost in the five-page original when you can (well probably) cruise right through Cliff's ten. But I'd still like to look at the Notes for Finnegan's Wake before I finally try to read the whole original (which will happen, if at all, with Campbell's A Skeleton Key To).Meant to say that Daniel's misgivings about lack of canon feel right re further fragmentation (of secular, pluralistic, in my take) social-and-even-individual cohesion.
My mother taught English, American and World Lit (in a university geared toward STEM and other non-Liberal Arts majors), and I maybe spent too much time in school, so I tend to think of canons as academic: What should be taught now, to all students, to those with certain majors, on what grade levels, secondary and college?
― dow, Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:30 (one year ago) link
Just read Conrad Knickebocker's obit and feel a little unclean. Somebody posted his interview with William S. Burroughs here if you want to read: https://bluewatsons.tumblr.com/post/122329932364/conrad-knickerbocker-interview-william-s
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:32 (one year ago) link
@Daniel_Rf - Good thoughts. My feelings on monoculture are complicated, I guess I'd say. I grew up I guess with an adverserial relationship to monoculture - I guess what you could call "hipsterism", with the caveat that I was in no way anything resembling "hip". As I've gotten older, some of the stuff I liked _because_ it was opposed to the monoculture has been absorbed into the monoculture. Geeky shit, a lot of times. Comic books and so forth. There's a shared cultural context that gets lost when something gets mainstreamed.
With books I guess that doesn't matter so much - time to "canon" is longer than that. The original cultural context of Olaf Stapledon, say, doesn't play into it so much.
There's this rift, I think, between liberal and radical approaches to... life, really, just life. And I've been on both sides of that divide. The liberal approach is look, can't we just expand the divide? Let's read more Octavia Butler. (I really need to read some Octavia Butler.) The radical approach on the other hand is... the monoculture isn't just _impoverished_, it's fucking insane and is killing all of us. I like the idea of _a_ monoculture, one where we don't have this fundamentally adversarial relationship with the "other". At the same time to defend _this particular version_ of the monoculture is an exercise in defending the indefensible.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:36 (one year ago) link
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs)
Always wondered what Lou Reed meant when he sang "Malcolm's curse haunts our family"
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:37 (one year ago) link
Kate otm (incl. that last scary quote)(Despite well-earned news coverage about book bans as grassroots prairie fire in US, and this being the Deep-ass South, my sister reports that, meeting the cast of a "beautiful mumblecore" local high school production of The Glass Menagerie, she was told that they're now reading The Handmaid's Tale.)(Have also read that Banned Books lists can be good for sales.)
― dow, Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:41 (one year ago) link
Now reading it as assignment, that is. Wonder if anybody's sticking to Cliff's Notes---I'm guessing some might go from those to the original, once given an indication of the details.
― dow, Sunday, 2 October 2022 14:47 (one year ago) link
Those nice Vintage International early-90s paperbacks probably led to more readers of Rilke and Camus in the U.S., or at least more people getting them as birthday gifts.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:00 (one year ago) link
and their covers made them ideal beach reading..
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:04 (one year ago) link
Anyway---first thought not nec best thought---I wanna say "The Waste Land" should be required, while pointing out that it's Ezra Pound's remix---tell 'em/maybe have 'em read some Pound, maybe have to tell what a remix is by now, show/play examples of process (demonstrating value of revision and editing), also Eliot as St. Louis->London remix, and how that affected his writing maybe (allowing them to speculate at all times). Also about shittier side of him personally, ditto Pound ("Now, class, how does this affect your reading?") Also is any of his other writing as good as "TWL," to the extent that you can appreciate why it is-was considered good, whether you enjoy it or not.
― dow, Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:05 (one year ago) link
moving away from academia - how about VC Andrews?
Should I read Flowers in the Attic? I found an extremely tattered free paperback, which seems somehow appropriate.
― jmm, Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:06 (one year ago) link
Been meaning to type all morning that there is an implicit slipdrift in the thread title itself. Does No One meanNo one at allNo one I know No one I care aboutNo one I respectYour day breaks, your mind aches.
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:08 (one year ago) link
xpost Somebody who I think first read it in middle school presented a very readable reconsid in The New Yorker not too long ago.
xxpost Not saying it would *have* to be taught this way
― dow, Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:09 (one year ago) link
some of the stuff I liked _because_ it was opposed to the monoculture has been absorbed into the monoculture
I was an English major circa 1989, and I recall that critiquing the monoculture was a pretty central part of the monoculture even then.
In White Noise there's a coterie of PhDs who only read comic books, gum wrappers, cereal boxes, etc. 1984.
In like 1968 or so Ishmael Reed writes "No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o'clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons."
Pictures from an Institution has a line about a soap bubble being equivalent to a pyramid.
Culture has a ways to go toward full inclusion, but it has almost always had inbuilt self-criticism, if only of a halfhearted sort.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 2 October 2022 15:19 (one year ago) link
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin)
randall jarrell!
maybe contrarian of me but i'd put soap bubbles over pyramids. this idea of the Enduring Edifice, the megalith. what can you say about Giza? Wow, that's big? Who builds skyscrapers? North Korea. Saudi Arabia. I should _admire_ them? Admire their _great work_?
Not huge on "banned books" lists. Oh, everybody makes a big deal about Huck Finn being a banned book and I mean. I read it in, I don't know, sixth grade. It's a 19th century novel by a racist white guy and this is the novel we use to teach children that racism is bad? I don't think I benefited from reading that book. I think there are better ways of teaching kids about racism. I don't think reading it made me less racist, though it did _eventually_ help me figure out that America is, and always was, a white supremacist ethnostate.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 17:24 (one year ago) link
I've never seen a celebrity on an "I Read Banned Books" poster holding a copy of The Turner Diaries. I guess it's only a matter of time, though.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 17:26 (one year ago) link
Like, how do I feel personally? Burn every copy of Myra Breckinridge. Bury it wherever they buried the Gore Vidal biopic starring Kevin Spacey. Heine saying "Where they burn books, they will one day burn people" - I don't think it's _true_. Where they burn books, they are _already_ burning people, and people care more about the books than the people. Those famous pictures of the Nazi book burnings - Magnus Hirschfeld's _Institut Fur Sexual Wissenschaft_. A great loss to history, to _science_? Sure. How about Dora Richter, though? Where's her fucking obituary? She was "presumed dead" when the Nazis destroyed it. Presumed. Nobody _bothered_ to make note of her murder. It's only by chance that we know she ever existed.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 2 October 2022 17:38 (one year ago) link
Happy Nobel Prize week to all who observe. This is your reminder that, in October 1922, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, and Rilke were all alive and publishing major work. The prize that year went to Jacinto Benavente.— Ryan Ruby (@_ryanruby_) October 3, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 3 October 2022 10:07 (one year ago) link
https://www.nobelprize.org/images/benavente-12925-portrait-medium.jpg
― mark s, Monday, 3 October 2022 10:11 (one year ago) link
I think this is part of why I liked Huck Finn (apart from being a good to excellent yarn): besides showing the origins of the white ethnostate, it shows an America full of grifters and (nyuk nyuk) huckers.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 October 2022 10:22 (one year ago) link
I would certainly throw my lot in with the radicals when it comes to life - hierarchies are to be abolished, not tokenized, and sure canons qualify. The problem I guess with any kind of less horrible monoculture we could dream up is it's always going to be based on exclusion to some extent, because what's in it will always be less than what's not.
On the other hand, deciding then that monoculture is a lost cause and canons to be entirely abolished is that it cedes cultural ground to capitalist forces who do not share the hand wringing - so the shared culture becomes, at best, the front page of Netflix and, at worst, the youtube front page before you log in.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 3 October 2022 10:50 (one year ago) link
I'd say capitalism is killing us all, and, yeah, capitalism opposes monocultures of any kind, i.e. "You will no longer stream Von Sternberg on Netflix, suckers."
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 October 2022 12:05 (one year ago) link
On the other hand, deciding then that monoculture is a lost cause and canons to be entirely abolished is that it cedes cultural ground to capitalist forces
Yes there's that. But for me the problem is that _I_ can curate my cultural intake just fine (for me). But so can everyone else, and "everyone else" will inevitably include horrible people.
So yeah, I'm curating for me. Kate is curating for Kate. And so on. There's a part of me that is glad that a few dudes on one specific island no longer decide who gets published and who doesn't.
But Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Eric Trump and Lauren Boebert are curating for Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Eric Trump and Lauren Boebert. I am not suggesting things were better when there was an alleged "consensus" about the world and reality - because I am old enough to remember that consensus sucked too.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 October 2022 12:21 (one year ago) link
This is your reminder that, in October 1922, Proust, Joyce, Woolf, and Rilke were all alive and publishing major work.
I'm not sure if this proves very much. Recherche was unfinished, Ulysses wasn't published until that year, Woolf's best-known novels are later. Rilke, sure.
― jmm, Monday, 3 October 2022 12:34 (one year ago) link
That's well argued!
Yeats, winning in 1923 I think, is a more encouraging case.
― the pinefox, Monday, 3 October 2022 12:36 (one year ago) link
the photo proves the nobel was correctly assigned in 1922
― mark s, Monday, 3 October 2022 12:38 (one year ago) link
Yeah the Nobel is (by design) meant to be for your whole canon, and therefore tends to indicate that you're "done" (whatever that means). Which is why at least some writers have drily regarded the Nobel as a death sentence and sought to avoid it.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 October 2022 12:39 (one year ago) link
(At the same time, that's a pretty good problem to have, just sayin)
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 October 2022 12:40 (one year ago) link
Woolf should've gotten the Nobel in 1882 imo.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 October 2022 12:52 (one year ago) link
Sick burn on toddler, damn
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 3 October 2022 13:02 (one year ago) link
Her stuff up to age 6 was quite experimental. Lots of alternative spellings.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Monday, 3 October 2022 13:06 (one year ago) link
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 3 October 2022 13:41 (one year ago) link
Not sure I agree with this! Personalised choice is what streaming services claim to peddle, sure, but I'm not sure it actually pans out that way. You won't stream Von Sternberg, but you sure as hell will stream Squid Game! Which is not the greatest example of the evil of this model, being as it is a non-anglo show that from all I've heard is very well made and ideologically right on, but it's when I became aware of a certain disconnect - all these breathless articles going "wow a Korean show is the most watched thing on netflix, how could this be??". And, well, it can be because Netflix fucking put it on their main page for everyone. Which those of us accostumed to curating our culture might ignore, but there's still a huge amount of people who will click on that. And having that sort of mass audience will always be better for capital than tailoring a thousand different things to different niche audiences.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 3 October 2022 14:22 (one year ago) link
― jmm, Monday, 3 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink
Ulysses was published in February. Fine. I doubt they could've give it to him the same year.
They could've easily given this to Proust. Even if it was for Swann's Way I'm sure by then many could see the ambition for the entire project.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 3 October 2022 14:57 (one year ago) link
"Yeah the Nobel is (by design) meant to be for your whole canon"
Beckett also had a whole period of work ahead of him!
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 3 October 2022 15:02 (one year ago) link
Not sure I agree with this! Personalised choice is what streaming services claim to peddle, sure, but I'm not sure it actually pans out that way. You won't stream Von Sternberg, but you sure as hell will stream Squid Game! Which is not the greatest example of the evil of this model, being as it is a non-anglo show that from all I've heard is very well made and ideologically right on, but it's when I became aware of a certain disconnect - all these breathless articles going "wow a Korean show is the most watched thing on netflix, how could this be??". And, well, it can be because Netflix fucking put it on their main page for everyone
This is what I meant to say -- merely that "I can't watch what I want on Netflix because Netflix has decided for me; the rest goes into the memory hole."
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 October 2022 15:05 (one year ago) link
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)
Oh, I agree with you totally - Huck Finn is a well-written and entertaining book even for the contemporary reader and it's of invaluable historical importance. I'd put it on the reading list for a university course on 19th-century American history, along with _Democracy in America_ and that book by Anthony Trollope's mom. There was a lot of important stuff about 19th-century American history nobody taught me in school, not just thinks like that impeachment was first used successfully to reinforce white supremacy but things like the vice president who tried to fund an expedition to the center of the hollow earth, or that on the floor of Congress nearly everyone was drunk constantly.
I just don't think it's appropriate as summer reading for sixth-grade English. That's all.
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:18 (one year ago) link
Agreed. In elementary school we read an illustrated abridged Tom Sawyer, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is not as fraught as HF.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:19 (one year ago) link
I'd put it on the reading list for a university course on 19th-century American history, along with _Democracy in America_ and that book by Anthony Trollope's mom.
Now this is a curriculum. Also: Dickens' American Notes.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:20 (one year ago) link
the vice president who tried to fund an expedition to the center of the hollow earth
*perks up*
― mark s, Monday, 3 October 2022 17:21 (one year ago) link
well, what do you expect with a middle name like Mentor
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:29 (one year ago) link
― Daniel_Rf
I'd argue that it cedes no ground at all - they already have the high ground! They control the media, they control what you see and don't see. Why has everybody heard "Plastic Love"? Because Youtube promoted it to anybody and everybody. They _are_ the monoculture. Marjorie Taylor Greene may curate for Marjorie Taylor Greene, but it's the capitalist media - Facebook, Youtube, Netflix - who decide what people see.
I open a new private tab and I search "transgender" and what do I get? Abigail Shrier. Matt Walsh. Blaire White. This is what the monoculture is teaching cis people about what it means to be trans today. Hatred. Bigotry. Lies.
Was it ever different? Has it _ever_ been different? Hahahahaha. No. Fuck no. Before that, the monoculture was the acclaimed, best-picture winning, virulently transphobic film _The Silence of the Lambs_, a film about which the major argument was whether Buffalo Bill was _a homosexual man_. This is the world I grew up in, the world I lived in my entire life. That I exist at all is the result of a collective struggle waged by trans people from before I was born, and were we given voices within the monoculture? No. The voice of trans people, according to Youtube, is fucking _Blaire White_, apparently, and that is NOTHING NEW. In the UK media monoculture, who is given voice to speak about trans people? The openly genocidal Lily Cade. Do we get to speak for ourselves in the UK media?
In fact the only way I can even _hear_ the voice of a British trans woman in the UK media is through... YouTube. Abi Thorn. This is how fucked up the monoculture is, YouTube spends all of its money and time preaching hate, promoting hate, and people like Abi fight for the _scraps_, because if she wasn't on YouTube, hardly anybody would hear her at all. When the only way we can get heard at all is through an openly transphobic platform, well, that's what we do.
If Sam Feder's amazing documentary _Disclosure_ is picked up for peanuts by Netflix, and Netflix then turns around and pays incredible amounts of money to Dave Chappelle to spew transphobic vitriol, then, well, that's what we have to do for anybody to hear us, anybody to know we exist, because silence = death, as always. Capitalist monoculture means that "the debate" means elevating the voice of Dave Chappelle, and silencing the voice of, say, trans sex workers who will gladly tell you about their professional interactions with Dave Chappelle. Like there's maybe some important fucking _context_ missing to this debate.
I'm ceding _nothing_ to them, because they started with everything, and I started with nothing. I, and the people I fight along side, are _taking back what is rightfully ours_. We are fighting to _exist_ in a world that has always, ALWAYS tried to erase us. Is capitalism killing us all? Yes, absolutely. And that's more... _evident_ to some of us than others. I don't have the luxury of pretending otherwise. Alfred doesn't have the luxury of pretending otherwise. And the monoculture, that _is_ capitalism. That is an _essential part_ of how capitalism gets its power, through _capitalist media_.
Hi! I have _opinions_!
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:38 (one year ago) link
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes)
but was it pronounced "menner" like the Ohio town
that book by Anthony Trollope's mom
DON'T SLEEP ON THIS ONE, people, it rules
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:39 (one year ago) link
Right, Tom Sawyer is a fun all-ages adventure story, and then people kept bugging Twain to do a sequel and he's like "OK, fuck it, you know what I'm gonna go Darker and Grittier".
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 3 October 2022 17:40 (one year ago) link
(He did so some stuff like Tom Sawyer, Detective later on, maybe vs. one of his bad business adventures)Continuing the threadcreep, re novelists we'd like to see more of:Before I got off the Anne Tyler bus somewhere in The Accidental Tourist, gave her points for giving the Tourist an ideal longread travelling companion, which could even or especially be read satisfyingly at random: the massive novel Miss Mackintosh, My Darling, by Marguerite Young---wiki sez:
As she worked on The Accidental Tourist, Anne Tyler cured spells of writer's block by reading pages from Miss MacIntosh at random. "Whatever page I turned to, it seemed, a glorious wealth of words swooped out at me."[12] Tyler made Young's novel a traveling companion for her main character Macon Leary. A hardcover edition of the book was used as a prop in William Hurt's suitcase in the film adaptation.
In her zeal to demonstrate that nothing lives except in the imagination, Miss Young, with superb virtuosity, may have written a novel that in the profoundest sense does not exist.— Melvin Maddocks, Christian Science Monitor, 9/16/1965
— Melvin Maddocks, Christian Science Monitor, 9/16/1965
― dow, Friday, 7 October 2022 18:23 (one year ago) link
Isn’t Dalkey Archive republishing that?
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 00:18 (one year ago) link
According to Amazon the Dalkey Archive reissue "will be released on June 6, 2023."
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Saturday, 8 October 2022 01:07 (one year ago) link
Yes. But this fact was already mentioned on this borad at least once recently.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 01:10 (one year ago) link
I saw your question mark and jumped to a conclusion.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Saturday, 8 October 2022 01:12 (one year ago) link
Not sure why I put the question mark or worded it that way. Maybe because I wasn’t sure whether it had come out or not. Believe it’s one of those new Dalkey Archive Essentials.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 01:17 (one year ago) link
As far Anne Tyler, I remember really liking Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant at the time and also reading a few others but then felt a sense of saturation or diminishing returns or paradigm shift in the Zeitgeist or what have you and so stopped reading.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 01:20 (one year ago) link
Dinnerseemed like a creative peak, then Accidental got too cuet---but I loved A Slipping Down Life, which seemed to incl. a parody of early Michael Stipe lyrics (boondocks zen sequitur indie rock), but then I realized it was published in 1970---also enjoyed Searching For Caleb(1975). Some of the other early 70s novels looked good, maybe should get back to those.
― dow, Saturday, 8 October 2022 01:42 (one year ago) link
I haven't rereading but remember Breathing Lessons being great, and Morgan's Passing pretty good
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Saturday, 8 October 2022 02:07 (one year ago) link
I really dug the family dynamics aspect way back when, but feel like there is an intentional artless to the writing that I don’t know if I could stand anymore at this remove.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 02:16 (one year ago) link
Morgan's Passing is yet another relatively early novel I remember being favorably mentioned. But maybe she's just written too many for her approach, the reader's pattern recognition acceptance level, something:
If Morning Ever Comes (1964)The Tin Can Tree (1965)A Slipping-Down Life (1970)The Clock Winder (1972)Celestial Navigation (1974)Searching for Caleb (1975)Earthly Possessions (1977)Morgan's Passing (1980)Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982)The Accidental Tourist (1985)Breathing Lessons (1988)Saint Maybe (1991)Ladder of Years (1995)A Patchwork Planet (1998)Back When We Were Grownups (2001)The Amateur Marriage (2004)Digging to America (2006)Noah's Compass (2009)The Beginner's Goodbye (2012)A Spool of Blue Thread (2015)Vinegar Girl (2016)[47]Clock Dance (2018)Redhead by the Side of the Road (2020)French Braid (2022)
― dow, Saturday, 8 October 2022 19:38 (one year ago) link
That seems like hella fan service.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 20:11 (one year ago) link
Reviews of earlier work, as quoted on her wiki, are grrrreat! Although later:
Reviewing The Patchwork Planet, Kakutani states: "Ms. Tyler's earlier characters tended to be situated within a thick matrix of finely nuanced familial relationships that helped define both their dreams and their limitations; the people in this novel, in contrast, seem much more like lone wolves, pulled this way and that by the author's puppet strings ... Ms. Tyler's famous ability to limn the daily minutiae of life also feels weary and formulaic this time around ... As for the little details Ms. Tyler sprinkles over her story ... they, too, have a paint-by-numbers touch. They add up to a patchwork novel that feels hokey, mechanical ... and yes, too cute.[46]
― dow, Saturday, 8 October 2022 21:17 (one year ago) link
Having recently watched both The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Killing Them Softly, I wonder if anyone is reading George V. Higgins (other than to mine him for dialogue-heavy screenplays)?
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Saturday, 8 October 2022 22:09 (one year ago) link
I tried Eddie Coyle once, based on a friend’s recommendation, but couldn’t really get into it.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 23:35 (one year ago) link
But really came to postMordecai Richler
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 8 October 2022 23:37 (one year ago) link
Also, I popped in a modern art museum today and one of the installments featured a plexiglass box full of James Michener paperbacks.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 9 October 2022 00:34 (one year ago) link
was going to give george v higgins a reread actually. my recollection of impostors, outlaws, and the kennedy novels is that they are exceptionally well written, not just the dialogue, which is about as good as dialogue gets (spare, witty, sharp, advances matters without being information delivery), but the depiction of material culture, legal and financial matters, and dense, psychologically astute plots. he rated v highly for me when i read him in my late teens.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 9 October 2022 07:08 (one year ago) link
Co-sign on that, Fizzles. GVH's non-fiction book on writing also v good.
Even at the time, Higgins used to complain about being pigeonholed as a crime writer AND about his relative lack of commercial success compared to ppl like Grisham or Scott Turow. But some of his early novels, in particular, are as hardboiled as they come while approaching a level of abstraction that doesn't scream bestsellerdom to me.
Legal textbooks were always a horror to be avoided when I worked in a secondhand bookshop, because they date so rapidly. I wonder if the same is true for legal thrillers.
― Ward Fowler, Sunday, 9 October 2022 09:51 (one year ago) link
Maybe think of them as historicals? Thanks guys, will check him
I think the Marguerite Young books I might start with are Harp Song For A Radical and Inviting The Muses:
Young's next project was to be a biography of Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley,[4][5][7] the creator of Little Orphant Annie. Her experiences in joining the protests against the Vietnam War made her turn her focus to Riley's friendship with Eugene V. Debs.[3] The digression was to occupy the rest of her life, becoming an ambitious biography of Debs, the union organizer who evolved into the first Socialist candidate for President of the United States (1904, 1908, 1912, 1920). She projected a three-volume epic history of the people, through Debs's battles for workers rights and the development of the Locomotive Firemen's workers union.[1] Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs remained unfinished at the time of her death.[5]Part I, “Prelude in a Golden Key,” portrays Swiss agnostic Wilhelm Weitling’s cross-country tour of the pioneer utopian communities built during the settlement of the western United States. He visits the Mormon communities in Nauvoo, Missouri and Salt Lake City, Utah; the Shakers; the Amish communities in Pennsylvania; the Oneida community; the Icarians; the Rappites, and many other settlements in the wilderness. Through this perspective Young establishes that this nation was founded and settled on the principles of communal ownership and mutual assistance. In Part II of Harp Song for a Radical, Young establishes that Eugene Debs was the catalyst through which these principles became the basic tenets of the labor movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.During Marguerite Young's final illness, her unfinished manuscript was compiled by Marilyn Hamilton and Suzanne Oboler and was then submitted to her publisher. After her death, the manuscript was edited by Charles Ruas to include Young's survey of utopian communities as well as her portraits of major historical figures encountered by Debs in his struggles as a labor organizer: the portraits of Mary Todd Lincoln, James Whitcomb Riley, Joe Hill, Sojourner Truth, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith and Susan B. Anthony. This edited version of Harp Song for a Radical was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1999.Also in her last illness, Marguerite Young returned to writing poetry. Inviting the Muses, a collection of her stories, essays, and reviews, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1994.
Part I, “Prelude in a Golden Key,” portrays Swiss agnostic Wilhelm Weitling’s cross-country tour of the pioneer utopian communities built during the settlement of the western United States. He visits the Mormon communities in Nauvoo, Missouri and Salt Lake City, Utah; the Shakers; the Amish communities in Pennsylvania; the Oneida community; the Icarians; the Rappites, and many other settlements in the wilderness. Through this perspective Young establishes that this nation was founded and settled on the principles of communal ownership and mutual assistance. In Part II of Harp Song for a Radical, Young establishes that Eugene Debs was the catalyst through which these principles became the basic tenets of the labor movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
During Marguerite Young's final illness, her unfinished manuscript was compiled by Marilyn Hamilton and Suzanne Oboler and was then submitted to her publisher. After her death, the manuscript was edited by Charles Ruas to include Young's survey of utopian communities as well as her portraits of major historical figures encountered by Debs in his struggles as a labor organizer: the portraits of Mary Todd Lincoln, James Whitcomb Riley, Joe Hill, Sojourner Truth, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith and Susan B. Anthony. This edited version of Harp Song for a Radical was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1999.
Also in her last illness, Marguerite Young returned to writing poetry. Inviting the Muses, a collection of her stories, essays, and reviews, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1994.
― dow, Sunday, 9 October 2022 18:15 (one year ago) link
Mickey Spillane used to be the king of crime fiction. According his wikipedia article "more than 225 million copies of his books have sold internationally", but I don't see many of them on the shelves in bookshops. Are many of his titles still in print and do crime fiction readers still read him?
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Sunday, 9 October 2022 18:42 (one year ago) link
I'd imagine that even within the territory of vintage noir fiction Spillane's incessant bigotry and law & order fascism have made him somewhat difficult for modern audiences to take. He's also kind of a Michael Bay, OTT take on the genre that I think ppl can't really get with.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 10 October 2022 10:28 (one year ago) link
Spillane's popularity partly a result of him 'getting away' with more salacious material than was permitted in films or TV at the time. Once that was no longer the case, the actual quality of the writing wasn't good enough to last in the way that Chandler, Hammett, Cain etc have lasted.
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 10 October 2022 10:47 (one year ago) link
I read Friends of Eddie Coyle because Elmore Leonard would often mention it in interviews as a perfect crime novel.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Monday, 10 October 2022 14:20 (one year ago) link
Think they've now run out of unfinished novels and outlines, but Max Allan Collins has been completing and releasing Mike Hammer books for years now, with Spillane's blessing.
― the body of a spider... (scampering alpaca), Monday, 10 October 2022 16:28 (one year ago) link
So the ilx hivemind reports that Spillane may have a small remnant of his former readership, but it is fast disappearing and if he has a chance of being read twenty years from now it might be down to just Friends of Eddie Coyle.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 10 October 2022 18:08 (one year ago) link
Don't see the connection between Spillane and Friends of Eddie Coyle.
― dow, Monday, 10 October 2022 18:45 (one year ago) link
Was either a typo or a joke maybe
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 10 October 2022 18:48 (one year ago) link
I see now that the Eddie Coyle remark was harking back to GV Higgins and I was confused by that because I've not read either Higgins or Spillane, as befits a thread about authors no one reads.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 10 October 2022 19:28 (one year ago) link
You seem to be taking the Non-Self thing pretty literally.
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 10 October 2022 19:43 (one year ago) link
talk about spillane made me realise that no one has mentioned Sapper here. an extremely good example. i can’t imagine very many of any people choosing to pick up a Sapper book these days. in general the railway thriller and its sequel the spy thriller would have to be v lucky to have any sort of lifespan beyond their immediate context. anthony price was another name i thought of this morning in that regard (though it’s still possible to buy his books, some of them formally quite surprising iirc). also thought about dick francis in this regard but he’s probably still fairly well read i imagine, and not just in the horsey set.
― Fizzles, Monday, 10 October 2022 20:04 (one year ago) link
Could be a side effect of all the killfiles.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 10 October 2022 22:16 (one year ago) link
I read a Bulldog Drummond once. It was good fun though obviously politically indefensible - though I will say it was interesting as a person of German origin reading something that so explicitly sees Germans as Evil, gave me a "oh so this is how it must feel for marginalized people all the time reading fiction" moment.
John Buchan seems to be the one to have survived from that early spy thriller era, gets republished by Penguin a lot I feel.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 09:48 (one year ago) link
Basically I think that if it's classic genre fiction, and doubly so if it's British, it'll be in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics and some saddos like myself will have tracked it down as a result.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 09:49 (one year ago) link
"sapper" <-- call him by his name, he earned his quotemarks (gassed in ww1 and died young as a result)
based on wikipedia (the root of all sublte biography) he seems like a p terrible person lol
― mark s, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 09:54 (one year ago) link
wasn’t “sapper” multiple people? but yes, misogyny, racism, and violent suppressed sadi-masochism.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:28 (one year ago) link
bulldog drummond too, yes.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:29 (one year ago) link
lol had forgotten bulldog drummond *was* a sapper hero fffs.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:30 (one year ago) link
dunno why i thought sapper was multiple people. who am i thinking of?
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:32 (one year ago) link
Several people
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:32 (one year ago) link
omg haven’t done such a huge public eye roll in ages.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:36 (one year ago) link
Sappho and her seven eight nine sisters, maybe?
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:49 (one year ago) link
O. Henry
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:55 (one year ago) link
Did he even write any novels?
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 18:57 (one year ago) link
Seems like the breeezy, easily anthologized short story writers will always have a life of some sort.
If I had to teach a literature class tomorrow (fortunately I do not have to), I betcha I would fall back on a lot of 20th century stuff like O. Henry, Vonnegut, LeGuin, Barthelme, Coover, Oates.
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 19:13 (one year ago) link
Ah I didn't think about the novelist designation
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 11 October 2022 20:11 (one year ago) link
Grainy obit photo of Conrad Knicerbocker just popped up on my screen and I almost gasped. Previous CK mention here
― Askeladd v. BMI (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 13 October 2022 14:21 (one year ago) link
Leading to a reminder of another novelist I still want to check out, thanks:
Charles Wright, Novelist, Dies at 76By BRUCE WEBERPublished: October 8, 2008Charles Wright, who wrote three autobiographical novels about black street life in New York City between 1963 and 1973 that seemed to herald the rise of an important literary talent but who vanished into alcoholism and despair and never published another book, died on Oct. 1 in Manhattan. He was 76 and lived in the East Village.The cause was heart failure, said Jan Hodenfield, one of Mr. Wright’s former editors; earlier in the year, he said, Mr. Wright had learned that alcohol had eroded his liver. From the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, Mr. Wright lived in the spare room of the Brooklyn apartment of Mr. Hodenfield and his family.Mr. Wright’s three books were “The Messenger” (1963), “The Wig” (1966) and “Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About” (1973), all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Together they describe a loner’s life on the fringes of New York society, his protagonists stand-ins for himself, working at low-level jobs, living in low-rent apartments, hanging out with lowlife personalities.“The Messenger” was the best received of the three, perhaps because it told a more universal tale about being an outsider.“The Wig” is a far angrier effort. “Malevolent, bitter, glittering,” the critic Conrad Knickerbocker wrote in The New York Times, adding that Mr. Wright’s style was “as mean and vicious a weapon as a rusty hacksaw,” and that he wielded it against blacks as well as whites. The book is an occasionally surreal, comic portrait of a black man, Lester Jefferson, who feels he must hide his blackness to achieve the acceptance and material rewards he thinks he deserves.“Absolutely Nothing,” most of which had been previously published in columns that Mr. Wright wrote for The Village Voice, is a chronicle of seedy adventures — as a dishwasher and porter, as a lover, as a drunk — that some critics questioned as self-hating, though others found it evocative and disturbing. The three books were republished in a single volume by HarperCollins in 1993.Charles Stevenson Wright was born June 4, 1932, in New Franklin, Mo. His mother died when he was 4, and his father, a railroad porter, sent him to live with his maternal grandmother. When he was 14, they moved to another central Missouri town, Sedalia.By that age, Charles was an avid reader and knew he wished to be a writer; he dropped out of high school and spent his days in the library, and according to one story he told the Hodenfield family, he would read magazines in their bound stacks at the railroad station because he knew that once they got to the local drugstore, he wouldn’t be allowed in to look at them.At 17, having read about the Handy Writers’ Colony in Marshall, Ill., newly founded by the novelist James Jones and others, he went there.Mr. Wright served in the Army during the Korean War and moved to New York in his 20s. An early novel was rejected by Farrar, Straus, but an editor there encouraged him to write his own story, which became “The Messenger.” Over the next decade, his profligate habits — he told one interviewer his hobbies were smoking and drinking — seized hold of him. Mr. Hodenfield, who in the late 1960s was working at GQ Scene, a magazine for teenage boys, assigned him to write an article about Motown.“He was a very strange man, and after we met I thought, ‘Well, this is not going to work,’ ” Mr. Hodenfield said. “Then he turned in the most perfect manuscript I’d ever received.”The two men became friends, and when Mr. Hodenfield saw Mr. Wright, then 44, spiraling into oblivion, he offered him a room in his home. Mr. Wright leaves no survivors.“He came to stay for a few weeks in 1976,” Mr. Hodenfield said. “And he stayed until just before he turned 64. He was a second father to both my children.”― scott seward, Wednesday, October 15, 2008
By BRUCE WEBERPublished: October 8, 2008
Charles Wright, who wrote three autobiographical novels about black street life in New York City between 1963 and 1973 that seemed to herald the rise of an important literary talent but who vanished into alcoholism and despair and never published another book, died on Oct. 1 in Manhattan. He was 76 and lived in the East Village.
The cause was heart failure, said Jan Hodenfield, one of Mr. Wright’s former editors; earlier in the year, he said, Mr. Wright had learned that alcohol had eroded his liver. From the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, Mr. Wright lived in the spare room of the Brooklyn apartment of Mr. Hodenfield and his family.
Mr. Wright’s three books were “The Messenger” (1963), “The Wig” (1966) and “Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About” (1973), all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Together they describe a loner’s life on the fringes of New York society, his protagonists stand-ins for himself, working at low-level jobs, living in low-rent apartments, hanging out with lowlife personalities.
“The Messenger” was the best received of the three, perhaps because it told a more universal tale about being an outsider.
“The Wig” is a far angrier effort. “Malevolent, bitter, glittering,” the critic Conrad Knickerbocker wrote in The New York Times, adding that Mr. Wright’s style was “as mean and vicious a weapon as a rusty hacksaw,” and that he wielded it against blacks as well as whites. The book is an occasionally surreal, comic portrait of a black man, Lester Jefferson, who feels he must hide his blackness to achieve the acceptance and material rewards he thinks he deserves.
“Absolutely Nothing,” most of which had been previously published in columns that Mr. Wright wrote for The Village Voice, is a chronicle of seedy adventures — as a dishwasher and porter, as a lover, as a drunk — that some critics questioned as self-hating, though others found it evocative and disturbing. The three books were republished in a single volume by HarperCollins in 1993.
Charles Stevenson Wright was born June 4, 1932, in New Franklin, Mo. His mother died when he was 4, and his father, a railroad porter, sent him to live with his maternal grandmother. When he was 14, they moved to another central Missouri town, Sedalia.
By that age, Charles was an avid reader and knew he wished to be a writer; he dropped out of high school and spent his days in the library, and according to one story he told the Hodenfield family, he would read magazines in their bound stacks at the railroad station because he knew that once they got to the local drugstore, he wouldn’t be allowed in to look at them.
At 17, having read about the Handy Writers’ Colony in Marshall, Ill., newly founded by the novelist James Jones and others, he went there.
Mr. Wright served in the Army during the Korean War and moved to New York in his 20s. An early novel was rejected by Farrar, Straus, but an editor there encouraged him to write his own story, which became “The Messenger.” Over the next decade, his profligate habits — he told one interviewer his hobbies were smoking and drinking — seized hold of him. Mr. Hodenfield, who in the late 1960s was working at GQ Scene, a magazine for teenage boys, assigned him to write an article about Motown.
“He was a very strange man, and after we met I thought, ‘Well, this is not going to work,’ ” Mr. Hodenfield said. “Then he turned in the most perfect manuscript I’d ever received.”
The two men became friends, and when Mr. Hodenfield saw Mr. Wright, then 44, spiraling into oblivion, he offered him a room in his home. Mr. Wright leaves no survivors.
“He came to stay for a few weeks in 1976,” Mr. Hodenfield said. “And he stayed until just before he turned 64. He was a second father to both my children.”
― scott seward, Wednesday, October 15, 2008
― dow, Thursday, 13 October 2022 17:56 (one year ago) link
Just heard a mention of Wilkie Collins
I don't think even I have ever read Wilkie Collins
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, 14 October 2022 16:46 (one year ago) link
others have
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 14 October 2022 16:48 (one year ago) link
This I have observed as well.
― We Have Never Been Secondary Modern (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 14 October 2022 16:50 (one year ago) link
the moonstone and the woman in white are still widely read. they are notable as early mystery novels.
― formerly abanana (dat), Friday, 14 October 2022 22:46 (one year ago) link
Armadale is the best. It's got four characters named Allan Armadale and a really awesome female villain.
― Lily Dale, Friday, 14 October 2022 23:27 (one year ago) link
The worst Wilkie Collins I read was about a man who marries a blind girl who is deathly of people with brown skin even though she has never actually seen one. He gets some kind of fatal disease that can only be cured by medicine that darkens his skin. The doctor who saves him figures out how to restore the wife’s sight. Knowing that she will be repulsed by him, he has his still white twin brother switch places with him.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Saturday, 15 October 2022 01:55 (one year ago) link
Should read Deathly afraid
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Saturday, 15 October 2022 01:56 (one year ago) link
Wasn’t that one made into a Douglas Sirk film?
― We Have Never Been Secondary Modern (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 15 October 2022 01:57 (one year ago) link
Oh yeah I think my mom warned me about that one. But I thought his skin turned blue, not brown? or did I get it confused with another completely bonkers book?
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 15 October 2022 02:43 (one year ago) link
I think it was bluish-black. The woman was particularly fearful of people from India.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Saturday, 15 October 2022 11:31 (one year ago) link
Dunno if this is what happens in the story but there are real life cases of ppls skin turning blue from taking colloidal silver for supposed (but I think nonexistent) health benefits
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Saturday, 15 October 2022 11:41 (one year ago) link
Yes, that would be enough to freak out the Indiaphobe, if she knows about this, ondowntoearth.com
Religious interpretation of blueEtymologically speaking, the Sanskrit word ‘Krishna’ means black or dark. At times, it is also translated as “all attractive”. According to Vedas, Lord Krishna is a dark-skinned Dravidian god. Even in traditional patta chitras (cloth art) in Odisha, Lord Krishna and Vishnu are always shown having black skin. Then why is Lord Krishna universally depicted as someone with blue skin?Hindu religion believes in symbolisms and the blue color is a symbol of the infinite and the immeasurable. According to Swami Chinmayananda, the inspiration behind Chinmaya Mission, whatever is immeasurable can appear to the mortal eye only as blue, just like the cloudless summer sky appears blue to the physical eye. Since Lord Krishna is beyond our perception, it seemed apt to attribute this colour to him.
Etymologically speaking, the Sanskrit word ‘Krishna’ means black or dark. At times, it is also translated as “all attractive”. According to Vedas, Lord Krishna is a dark-skinned Dravidian god. Even in traditional patta chitras (cloth art) in Odisha, Lord Krishna and Vishnu are always shown having black skin. Then why is Lord Krishna universally depicted as someone with blue skin?
Hindu religion believes in symbolisms and the blue color is a symbol of the infinite and the immeasurable. According to Swami Chinmayananda, the inspiration behind Chinmaya Mission, whatever is immeasurable can appear to the mortal eye only as blue, just like the cloudless summer sky appears blue to the physical eye. Since Lord Krishna is beyond our perception, it seemed apt to attribute this colour to him.
― dow, Saturday, 15 October 2022 16:56 (one year ago) link
i think as long as people read dickens a small percentage of those will also read wilkie collins (was writing partner in his various magazines, along with gaskell and a few others. actually, those nameless others might be candidates for this thread)
― koogs, Saturday, 15 October 2022 17:11 (one year ago) link
R.D. Blackmore
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Saturday, 15 October 2022 17:37 (one year ago) link
Wilkie Collins is cool.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 15 October 2022 17:37 (one year ago) link
I greatly enjoyed Phoebe Judge's reading of The Moonstone. It did indulge in a bit of Orientalism, but no more than most works of the time.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 15 October 2022 18:18 (one year ago) link
Some of Dickens other peers were William Ainsworth, Thomas Love Peacock, Mrs. Henry Wood, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Kingsley, George MacDonald, Charles Reade
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Saturday, 15 October 2022 21:12 (one year ago) link
Charles Reade is a lot of fun, esp. Foul Play
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 15 October 2022 21:38 (one year ago) link
bulwer-lytton is reponsible for snoopy's "it was a dark and stormy night" and also the concept of VRIL
george macdonald's thing was GOBLINS
― mark s, Saturday, 15 October 2022 21:46 (one year ago) link
Trollope also contributed to All The Year Round. and Gaskell. and Le Fanu. but those were the only names i could name anything by.
― koogs, Sunday, 16 October 2022 00:12 (one year ago) link
https://www.amazon.com/Author-Who-Outsold-Dickens-Ainsworth/dp/1526720698
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Sunday, 16 October 2022 00:18 (one year ago) link
I hope people still read Trollope's The Way We Live Now: a vast banger and still timely.
― dow, Sunday, 16 October 2022 03:47 (one year ago) link
I've never Trolloped, but it's so Dickens adjacent and lily has been talking it up so much that he's on my to-do list for next year.
Ainsworth sounds like it might be a romp, his highway-man stuff. also plague and fire stuff.
― koogs, Sunday, 16 October 2022 06:23 (one year ago) link
lots of Trollope still in print btw, by multiple publishers, so i figure it must sell.
― koogs, Sunday, 16 October 2022 06:24 (one year ago) link
Oh yeah, tons of tv adaptations of his books too
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Sunday, 16 October 2022 12:04 (one year ago) link
Yeah, just putting in gratuitous plug. Based on a real life Englisn scam fever (T.'s own father-in-law enthralled by the Railway King, for inst). In the book, a lot of the people who see the guy as Humpty Dumpty still want a piece of the action ASAP and fuck you if you get in the way, if not sooner. Some comedy and different notes in the serious, but Steadicam realness too dark for some of his fans.
― dow, Sunday, 16 October 2022 14:14 (one year ago) link
just saw a Bernard Malamud book at the local little free library -- a paperback in a plastic bag, like it had been preserved for resale value -- and thought, wow, that book (The Fixer) was EVERYWHERE when I was a kid
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 16 October 2022 14:20 (one year ago) link
― dow,
This novel kicked off a Trollope phase. He's so much fun, and his interest in contemporary politics is refreshing.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 16 October 2022 14:26 (one year ago) link
I keep meaning to try him out again, I have some cool old eds. of his stuff
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 16 October 2022 14:30 (one year ago) link
I've still only finished one Dickens book (Great Expectations).
One of those writers who always feels easy to put off - I'll get to Bleak House eventually /cope
― jmm, Sunday, 16 October 2022 14:46 (one year ago) link
just realised ainsworth is the author of ROOKWOOD, which refurbed the rep of dick turpin inc.inventing his wild overnight ride from london to york -- which his famous horse black bess did not survive :(
― mark s, Sunday, 16 October 2022 15:01 (one year ago) link
i mainly know it thru the medium of toy theatre
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Dickturpin.jpg
― mark s, Sunday, 16 October 2022 15:02 (one year ago) link
Does anyone read Andrew Greeley anymore? Catholic priest who wrote steamy potboilers in the 80s and 90s.
― gjoon1, Sunday, 16 October 2022 16:24 (one year ago) link
Trollope remains popular, widely in print, new TV adaptations still being made of his books, not even close to the "no one reads anymore" bin
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 16 October 2022 18:28 (one year ago) link
Because, among other things, he actually rules and you guys should try HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT and CAN YOU FORGIVE HER?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 16 October 2022 18:29 (one year ago) link
I think he was just mentioned as a peer of Dickens, not an unread novelist
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Sunday, 16 October 2022 18:42 (one year ago) link
Isn't John Major the world's biggest Trollope stan?
― Fronted by a bearded Phil Collins (Tom D.), Sunday, 16 October 2022 18:58 (one year ago) link
that wd be my aunt tbf
― mark s, Sunday, 16 October 2022 19:00 (one year ago) link
oh sorry for my knee-jerk trollope defense
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 16 October 2022 19:21 (one year ago) link
I know I've talked up Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset on ILB many times (and named myself after a character in it, which is a pretty obvious giveaway that I like it), but seriously, it's so good.
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 16 October 2022 22:58 (one year ago) link
oh I see koogs mentioned me upthread! sorry for posting before reading.
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 16 October 2022 22:59 (one year ago) link
Really dug Trollope's non-fiction North America, about, yes, traveling across North America and noting what he sees.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Sunday, 16 October 2022 23:40 (one year ago) link
Almost as sharp as Dickens' own book.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 16 October 2022 23:42 (one year ago) link
More possibilities (have not checked if any of these have been reissued reassessed etc.):
Hans Koning or Konigsberger: Only know him through 2 relatively obscure film adaptations: The Revolutionary with Jon Voight, and John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death with Anjelica Huston in her debut.
Evan Hunter: Excluding Ed McBain. I have only read Last Summer - OK, but the movie is more effective - and flipped through the sequel Come Winter, which is a straight retread, except minus the first book's most interesting character.
Pat Booth: In the Danielle Steel/Jackie Collins/Harold Robbins mode, but doesn't seem to be as remembered. Used to flip through these as a kid in the 90s looking for the naughty bits.
― gjoon1, Sunday, 16 October 2022 23:53 (one year ago) link
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.
― gjoon1, Monday, 17 October 2022 00:00 (one year ago) link
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.
― Halfway there but for you, Monday, 17 October 2022 01:15 (one year ago) link
Has anyone mentioned Richard Bissell? I have a soft spot for Goodbye, Ava.
― Lily Dale, Monday, 17 October 2022 01:41 (one year ago) link
Prompted by a viewing of A Place in the Sun: Does anyone read Theodore Dreiser?
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Monday, 17 October 2022 01:50 (one year ago) link
I reread Sister Carrie a dozen years ago and it grabbed me like The House of Mirth did.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 17 October 2022 01:52 (one year ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 17 October 2022 02:19 (one year ago) link
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
― dow, Monday, 17 October 2022 02:24 (one year ago) link
Kosinski seems to still be attracting readers, judging from all the Goodreads ratings of The Painted Bird from Oct 2022
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Monday, 17 October 2022 02:26 (one year ago) link
https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html
Poetry, but Related
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 00:50 (one year ago) link
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
― dow, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 02:41 (one year ago) link
https://slate.com/culture/2022/10/rod-mckuen-best-selling-poet-songs-what-happened.html🕸Poetry, but Related
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 11:10 (one year ago) link
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.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 11:14 (one year ago) link
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
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 11:32 (one year ago) link
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.
― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 14:47 (one year ago) link
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).
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:00 (one year ago) link
I suppose people still read Bowles, or at least The Sheltering Sky.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:19 (one year ago) link
I prefer his short stories.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:20 (one year ago) link
Re: Bowles, I refer to only one: Jane, because she wrote most of his books.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:34 (one year ago) link
I had not heard that. Her writing under her own name is still admired.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:45 (one year ago) link
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.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:52 (one year ago) link
Jane and Paul are different stylists too. She's arch, light; he's matter-of-fact to the point of creepiness.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 15:54 (one year ago) link
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.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 16:18 (one year ago) link
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.”
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 16:20 (one year ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 16:34 (one year ago) link
hmm, that sounds wrong
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:00 (one year ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:04 (one year ago) link
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).
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:18 (one year ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:21 (one year ago) link
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.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:25 (one year ago) link
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.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:28 (one year ago) link
Goodreads:
Henry Miller- 149,408 ratingsAnais Nin- 86,584 ratingsWilliam S. Burroughs- 239,549 ratingsCharles Bukowski- 678,629 ratings
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:34 (one year ago) link
Bukowski running away with the field.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:37 (one year ago) link
Jane Bowles- 5,149 ratingsPaul Bowles- 43,056 ratingsHelen Hooven Santmyer- 12,976 ratings
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:37 (one year ago) link
I "rated" Tropic of Cancer when I joined Goodreads even though I read it in about 1990.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 17:40 (one year ago) link
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.
― dow, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:00 (one year ago) link
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?"
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:03 (one year ago) link
That book is an all-time fave, I will never not love it
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:04 (one year ago) link
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.
― adam, Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:08 (one year ago) link
I think I read Lancelot, but now I am not sure. I guess it wasn't memorable.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:14 (one year ago) link
All of these apps will be subsumed into X.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 19 October 2022 18:15 (one year ago) link
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?
― omar little, Thursday, 20 October 2022 16:53 (one year ago) link
I heard some guy in a grey ponytail recently humblebragging about running with The Merry Pranksters, does that count?
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 17:02 (one year ago) link
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.)
― dow, Thursday, 20 October 2022 19:43 (one year ago) link
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.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 19:47 (one year ago) link
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.
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 20 October 2022 20:23 (one year ago) link
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.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 20:37 (one year ago) link
I guess his other claim to fame is kind of midwifing or being the doulos for A Confederacy of Dunces.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 20:39 (one year ago) link
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
― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, 20 October 2022 20:39 (one year ago) link
Bukowski widely reviled by most literary types, fwiw— people find his misogyny appalling, because it is!
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:07 (one year ago) link
Like, edgelord bros and pervy straights will always love him but anyone with sense knows the guy wrote maybe one book’s worth of food poems.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:09 (one year ago) link
Mickey Rourke playing Charles Bukowski in Barfly was pretty much peak 80s bad bro masculinity.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:11 (one year ago) link
John Irving― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, October 2, 2022 12:51 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Misirlou Sunset (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, October 2, 2022 12:51 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink
Was just thinking about him and wondered if he had been mentioned yet. I did my independent essay (let's not call it a thesis) for A-level English Literature on The World According To Garp, do not think I've a word of his since.
Nobody has mentioned E. L. Doctorow, is that because he's still widely-read?
Haven't read Bukowski since the 90s but think he had his moments.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:13 (one year ago) link
Doctorow a good candidate, no idea who's reading him this days. In fact I tend to get him mixed up(!) with somebody who I believe was already mentioned, the author of The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:23 (one year ago) link
Going by what's available at my local Barnes and Noble, yes. Bukowski has more books on the shelves than Burroughs, Kerouac, Miller and Nin combined.
― gjoon1, Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:44 (one year ago) link
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.
I just read the New Yorker essay and was startled by how Purdy was considered part of the "hot center" of the literary scene in the early 1960s.
I never even heard of Purdy until I found a used copy of a 1960s black humor anthology a few years ago (not the Bruce Jay Friedman one, but a later one).
― gjoon1, Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:48 (one year ago) link
Oh, and although this is obviously drifting away from the thread topic, the rows of Dave Barry, P.J. O'Rourke, and Erma Bombeck etc. books in the humor section of the local used bookstore make me wonder if anyone still reads old humorists of the essay/non-fiction variety if they're not, say, SJ Perelman or someone of that stature.
― gjoon1, Thursday, 20 October 2022 21:51 (one year ago) link
Wait, that reminds me of one of the greats who is now out of print and barely read and fits the original, narrow parameters of this thread, Veronica Geng.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 22:29 (one year ago) link
Except not a novelist. :(
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 20 October 2022 22:32 (one year ago) link
John Edward Williams wrote four novels between 1948 and 1972. Stoner (1965) is his most famous and is really good, and Augustus (1972) won the National Book Award, but he definitely fits the description of a novelist who no one reads anymore
― Dan S, Thursday, 20 October 2022 22:55 (one year ago) link
I’m not a fan of Bukowski’s misogyny but like many other awful people I find a lot of his work compelling.
― omar little, Thursday, 20 October 2022 22:56 (one year ago) link
You're probably not that awful, omar.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 20 October 2022 23:12 (one year ago) link
rows of Dave Barry, P.J. O'Rourke, and Erma Bombeck etc. books in the humor section of the local used bookstore make me wonder if anyone still reads old humorists of the essay/non-fiction variety if
I have a shelf that I call "cheeky bastards," reserved for mildly humorous essay/nonfiction. It does not contain Barry, O'Rourke, or Bombeck, but it does have:
Joe QueenanSarah VowellBill BrysonDavid SedarisChuck KlostermanUmberto EcoJames ThurberDorothy Parker
A few others I can't remember right now but you get the idea
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 20 October 2022 23:14 (one year ago) link
(There is an adjacent shelf for non-cheeky creative nonfiction. It has Annie Dillard, John McPhee, George Saunders, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Sometimes the cheeky nonfiction blurs into the non-cheeky nonfiction; my categories are not perfect.)
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, 20 October 2022 23:23 (one year ago) link
John Edward Williams Has NYRB Classics reprints though, and has been popular around here at least for some time.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 21 October 2022 00:14 (one year ago) link
Also Stoner has 133,000 ratings, which is probably more than a lot current literary novelists
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 21 October 2022 00:17 (one year ago) link
am dubious about 'popular around here' tbh
― Dan S, Friday, 21 October 2022 00:38 (one year ago) link
Ha. You haven’t been on ILB very long now, son, have you?
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 October 2022 00:48 (one year ago) link
He’s so popular around here that he even has his own Loyal Opposition, of which I am proud to call myself a member.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 October 2022 00:49 (one year ago) link
I have only contributed recently. I would be happy to be pointed to some discussion about him. His name is comically common - John Edward Williams - and I haven't found it in a search
How are some of you so omniscient in every category and genre of culture, film, music and puzzles on ilx? It's unnerving
― Dan S, Friday, 21 October 2022 01:05 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPCOKoavNNA
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 October 2022 01:26 (one year ago) link
I've read Augustus. It's good.
― alimosina, Friday, 21 October 2022 03:46 (one year ago) link
Looks like academia is keeping George Meredith on life support.
Fletcher, ed., Meredith Now (good luck with that), 2017Wilt, The Readable People of George Meredith, 2015
― alimosina, Friday, 21 October 2022 03:55 (one year ago) link
I read Ragtime three years ago (I can't remember why), but he's definitely someone who's much lower-profile now than his reputation at one point would seem to have predicted.
― jaymc, Friday, 21 October 2022 04:02 (one year ago) link
John Williams belongs on a different thread entirely - novelists who are read more now than when they were alive. This article describes the remarkable posthumous success of Stoner:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/56997-a-perfect-american-novel-strikes-gold-overseas.html
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 21 October 2022 05:43 (one year ago) link
yeah stoner has sold decent amounts in the v mainstream airport bookshop in UK where I work for the last decade and a half at least.
― oscar bravo, Friday, 21 October 2022 06:05 (one year ago) link
Biggest Bukowski admirer I know is a feminist woman who finds the insight into a misogynist mind of extreme value in a know your enemy sort of way. Which is not to say she reads him exclusively for that - she also rates him as a stylist and finds his depictions of childhood trauma moving.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 21 October 2022 10:59 (one year ago) link
but yeah 90% of Bukowski mentions I catch these days are from TikToks telling people to read YA instead
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 21 October 2022 11:00 (one year ago) link
Augustus >>>>>>> Stoner
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 21 October 2022 11:56 (one year ago) link
My local bookstore told me last year that they can't keep Stoner on the shelf; every time they order copies they're sold out in a few weeks. I don't have the numbers, but it might be a NYRB best-seller?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 21 October 2022 11:58 (one year ago) link
Please don’t take this the wrong way but I had you pegged as being in the pro-Stoner camp. Maybe I misremembered.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 October 2022 12:06 (one year ago) link
I do like it but prefer Augustus/
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 21 October 2022 12:08 (one year ago) link
The only Stoner I care about is that one that played with Bob Dylan and Robert Gordon. #onethread
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 21 October 2022 13:05 (one year ago) link
Bukowski widely reviled by most literary types, fwiw— people find his misogyny appalling, because it is!Biggest Bukowski admirer I know is a feminist woman who finds the insight into a misogynist mind of extreme value in a know your enemy sort of way. Which is not to say she reads him exclusively for that - she also rates him as a stylist and finds his depictions of childhood trauma moving.― Daniel_Rf, Friday, October 21, 2022 3:59 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, October 21, 2022 3:59 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
Not to be overly insulting, but your friend is daft— I find the misogyny so appalling and the rest of the work so totally middling that I can't fathom how anyone with any sense would like him.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Friday, 21 October 2022 17:28 (one year ago) link
Like, one good poem "The Genius of the Crowd" and that's it— the rest is dreck, utter dreck
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Friday, 21 October 2022 17:29 (one year ago) link
oh i think there are plenty of people with sense who like Bukowski, flaws and all. It isn't a black and white proposition. I of course am nonsensical.
― omar little, Friday, 21 October 2022 17:54 (one year ago) link
I mean, I'm not the one who likes Bukowski— I try to not yuck on others' yums as much as I could on here, but Bukowski is a line for me. It's just not very good.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Friday, 21 October 2022 17:56 (one year ago) link
He's not my favorite, I think compared to some of the others mentioned I just like him a lot more. I do definitely think he probably has some attraction from a lot of extremely flawed types of men, let's put it mildly like that. His poetry doesn't do much of anything for me.
― omar little, Friday, 21 October 2022 17:59 (one year ago) link
Not to be overly insulting, but your friend is daft
lol I reserve my drawing of lines for people who harm others or espouse bigoted ideologies, find the idea that one should do so in matters of literary taste pretty daft and not worth engaging with really.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 21 October 2022 18:36 (one year ago) link
It's been quite a while since I've read them, but I remember Post Office and Factotum being pretty good realist depictions of the world of mundane work, not without insight or humour.
― Ward Fowler, Friday, 21 October 2022 18:56 (one year ago) link
Post Office was fine in the one read I gave it for those reasons.
Also I read one interview w/Knausgaard where the woman doing it talked about the insight she got into masculinity from his writing. It's a thing you can read other books for, literature included.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 21 October 2022 19:05 (one year ago) link
Don't remember reading Ragtime beyond the preview in the ever-handy litmag-as-mass-market paperback New American Review, which might be good for its own thread, though was v. informative, like the non-lit-aimed best sellers of Michener and others in same era,
do remember, all too well, that his The Book of Daniel mixed info and some eually apt imagined detail re lives and fates of the doomed Rosenbergs, with hot mess of their entirely fictional daughter, and hapless version of adoptive parents---why the first, when he had a very credible incl. truth-based sensationalist aspect with the Cold War hysteria x exploitation? Well, actual Rosenberg kids were both boys, and EL felt the need for a babe in there, apparently---and if the adoptives could cope, melodrama would run into a wall, not suiting his purposes either. The sons, who had already been raised as the Meeropol brothers, were not pleased, and their adoptive father was the hardy Bronx teacher who had already gotten in trouble for writing "Strange Fruit," not really a wilting suburban sweater dad with unread New Yorkers piling up (per book)Re later ELD, Garry Wills did a really NYRB longread on either Billy Bathgate or Loon Lake, but I (don't know why I )didn't finish it, even though I liked Wills.
― dow, Friday, 21 October 2022 19:49 (one year ago) link
My wife went to college where Doctorow was teaching--he didn't let students from the Lit dept. into his classes because he hated theory.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 21 October 2022 19:55 (one year ago) link
(Don't think xpost Dorothy Parker wrote novels, did she? Was very impressed with some of her short stories, in I think The Portable Dorothy Parker:one in the middle of very and evidently typical tense scene between mother and daughter, another wife and husband [just before his brief leave from WWII is up], and "Big Blonde," about house party of pent-up, day-drinking wives and girlfriends of goodfellas. Pretty tough stuff, vs. sometimes cringeworthy, ritualistically self-mocking intros to reviews [but once she got going with those, could be refreshingly down-to-earth blunt about limitations of review-objects, or her own taste-barriers, in some cases]. Verse kind of a more 3-D, hungover Ogden Nash? Not bad.)
― dow, Friday, 21 October 2022 20:02 (one year ago) link
In the spirit of being positive, then, I’ll recommend the work of Mike Amnasan, whom no one reads for any number of reasons, some if which probably have to do with the coterie he was in when he was first published. In any case, he’s a writer that gets at the philosophical and abject possibilities and negativities of masculinity in a way I find interesting.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Friday, 21 October 2022 20:07 (one year ago) link
Don't remember reading Ragtime beyond the preview in the ever-handy litmag-as-mass-market paperback New American Review, which might be good for its own thread, though was v. informative, like the non-lit-aimed best sellers of Michener and others in same era
Will admit to being reluctant to read Ragtime after the Greil Marcus takedown – twinned with Nashville – that seemed pretty convincing.
Later Marcus would go to the well too many times with needless invective, as if he was attempting to turn Doctorow into the lit equivalent of his neurotic Lucinda Williams fixation.
Really want to read his Western, Welcome To Hard Times.
Wonder if anyone still reads John ('don’t confuse me with that Magus guy') Knowles’ A Separate Peace. A favorite when I was a teenager – the back cover blurb compared it to Salinger – but I think it was out of fashion even then. All I remember is lots of suppressed homoeroticism, and a guy named Phineas (not a Freak Brother reference) falling (or was he pushed??? - that's a plot point) from a tree.
― gjoon1, Friday, 21 October 2022 23:55 (one year ago) link
Joe Queenan
Yeah! His Mickey Rourke send-up is a favorite. Find myself mumbling "sometimes you gotta roll the potato" in many contexts.
― gjoon1, Friday, 21 October 2022 23:57 (one year ago) link
omg Marcus takedown of Nashville and Anti-Lucinda fixation make me suspect he might well be wrong about Ragtime too, although not as wrong, perhaps. My high school friends and I dug Salinger, for the most part, but considered Knowles a little too corny, right or wrong.
― dow, Saturday, 22 October 2022 01:43 (one year ago) link
We were assigned A Separate Peace in school. I wonder if that still happens.
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Saturday, 22 October 2022 02:20 (one year ago) link
That book was assigned to The Other English Class by The Other Teacher when I was in tenth grade so I sort of read it by vicariously by reading more than one friend’s essay about it on the subway on the way to school.
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 23 October 2022 00:08 (one year ago) link
"his neurotic Lucinda Williams fixation"
I've never heard of this. What was it?
I have never read Bukowski. From this position I add the impression that he is or was a writer admired by people who didn't otherwise like literature very much or couldn't be bothered with reading.
A bit like the old ILM 'people with 12 CDs', maybe.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 23 October 2022 11:58 (one year ago) link
lucinda w was for years a bit of a whipping post in GM's Real Life Rock n Roll Top Ten, as a symbolic congealing of a tendency in quasi-country that he detested? now and then it did feel a bit awkwardly if not revealingly overstated
(poster dow can correct me here but i'm not sure GM ever went after LW at greater than snarky blurb-length)
(i could google this myself but i'm doing something RN)
― mark s, Sunday, 23 October 2022 12:05 (one year ago) link
(Pvmic)
― We Have Never Been In Precise Modern Lovers Order (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 23 October 2022 12:16 (one year ago) link
I don't know about literature or reading, but he is often the poet for people who otherwise don't like poetry.
lucinda w was for years a bit of a whipping post in GM's Real Life Rock n Roll Top Ten, as a symbolic congealing of a tendency in quasi-country that he detested?
Yep. He also seemed to just think she was a big phony, because her father was a professor or something.
― gjoon1, Sunday, 23 October 2022 16:02 (one year ago) link
Recent Facebook post from Michael Moorcock:
When I was in my forties, Sir Angus Wilson was, with Iris Murdoch, the most respected name in modern English literature. Now it is a name most bookshop assistants either don't know or confuse with Colin Wilson. Only a few writers -- Christie, for instance -- seem to survive the demographics. The best of them are usually kept in print (or KINDLE) by specialist publishers. By it nature, because it reflects the tastes and virtue signalling morality of the day, popular fiction is particularly subject to the vagaries of public taste. That said, fringe writers can become pretty mainstream and can be revived to become canon. In my time both Tolkien and Peake were marginal writers at first and Lovecraft was no better known. Now Lovecraft and Howard are Penguin classics. There are quite as many works of popfic which become canon as there are litfic works and they too depend on fluctuating taste. The more enthusiasts try to promote their forgotten gods the more chance there is of them returning. Or it becomes a kind of secret lore known only to sophistiated initiates. It appears that if a book is not on college syllabuses, few recall it. There again, few newly literate 16th century European/Mediterranean readers of the latest best-sellers would believe you had never heard of AMADIS OF GAUL!
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 24 October 2022 18:01 (one year ago) link
hey pinefox and gjoon1, here's some other impressions by ilxors who don't fit your dismissive impressions of people who like Bukowski:
t's been quite a while since I've read them, but I remember Post Office and Factotum being pretty good realist depictions of the world of mundane work, not without insight or humour.― Ward Fowler, Friday, October 21, 2022 1:56 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglinkPost Office was fine in the one read I gave it for those reasons.― xyzzzz__, Friday, October 21, 2022
― Ward Fowler, Friday, October 21, 2022 1:56 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink
Post Office was fine in the one read I gave it for those reasons.― xyzzzz__, Friday, October 21, 2022
― dow, Monday, 24 October 2022 19:57 (one year ago) link
I thought of two that fit the bill when I was half-asleep this morning: Erica Jong and Jerzy Kosinski. When I was a kid, especially the latter could still be seen everywhere. I don't think I know anyone with a copy of any of either author's books.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Monday, 24 October 2022 20:12 (one year ago) link
Without searching, I think Kosinski was mentioned elsewhere on this thread, but I suspect the recent pain porn film of Painted Bird has at least kept that in print. One of Erica Jong's novels merited inclusion in Anthony Burgess's 99 novels selection (along with Angus Wilson!) but that was many years ago now and yes, it's hard to see her work making much of a comeback. See also: Looking for Mr Goodbar.
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 24 October 2022 20:35 (one year ago) link
Last time I heard mention of Erica:
It must be a holiday, there’s nobody aroundShe studies me closely as I sit downShe got a pretty face and long white shiny legsShe says, “What’ll it be?”I say, “I don’t know, you got any soft boiled eggs?”She looks at me, says, “I’d bring you someBut we’re out of ’m, you picked the wrong time to come”Then she says, “I know you’re an artist, draw a picture of me!”I say, “I would if I could, butI don’t do sketches from memory”“Well,” she says, “I’m right here in front of you, or haven’t you looked?”I say, “All right, I know, but I don’t have my drawing book!”She gives me a napkin, she says, “You can do it on that”I say, “Yes I could, butI don’t know where my pencil is at!”She pulls one out from behind her earShe says, “All right now, go ahead, draw me, I’m standing right here”I make a few lines and I show it for her to seeWell she takes the napkin and throws it backAnd says, “That don’t look a thing like me!”I said, “Oh, kind Miss, it most certainly does”She says, “You must be jokin’.” I say, “I wish I was!”Then she says, “You don’t read women authors, do you?”Least that’s what I think I hear her say“Well,” I say, “how would you know and what would it matter anyway?”“Well,” she says, “you just don’t seem like you do!”I said, “You’re way wrong”She says, “Which ones have you read then?” I say, “I read Erica Jong!”She goes away for a minuteAnd I slide up out of my chairI step outside back to the busy street but nobody’s going anywhere.
She studies me closely as I sit down
She got a pretty face and long white shiny legs
She says, “What’ll it be?”
I say, “I don’t know, you got any soft boiled eggs?”
She looks at me, says, “I’d bring you some
But we’re out of ’m, you picked the wrong time to come”
Then she says, “I know you’re an artist, draw a picture of me!”
I say, “I would if I could, but
I don’t do sketches from memory”
“Well,” she says, “I’m right here in front of you, or haven’t you looked?”
I say, “All right, I know, but I don’t have my drawing book!”
She gives me a napkin, she says, “You can do it on that”
I say, “Yes I could, but
I don’t know where my pencil is at!”
She pulls one out from behind her ear
She says, “All right now, go ahead, draw me, I’m standing right here”
I make a few lines and I show it for her to see
Well she takes the napkin and throws it back
And says, “That don’t look a thing like me!”
I said, “Oh, kind Miss, it most certainly does”
She says, “You must be jokin’.” I say, “I wish I was!”
Then she says, “You don’t read women authors, do you?”
Least that’s what I think I hear her say
“Well,” I say, “how would you know and what would it matter anyway?”
“Well,” she says, “you just don’t seem like you do!”
I said, “You’re way wrong”
She says, “Which ones have you read then?” I say, “I read Erica Jong!”
She goes away for a minute
And I slide up out of my chair
I step outside back to the busy street but nobody’s going anywhere.
― dow, Monday, 24 October 2022 20:46 (one year ago) link
hey pinefox and gjoon1, here's some other impressions by ilxors who don't fit your dismissive impressions of people who like Bukowski
I like Bukowski! Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a favorite.
But I was thinking of comments like this (from the Bukowski C/D and S&D thread):
My absolute favorite thing is showing Bukowski to friends who don't like poetry: I've never met anyone that hasn't been turned around by him.― VegemiteGrrrl, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 10:22 PM (fifteen years ago)there's a bukowski forum that i belong to, and there is an insane amount of people who end up posting there, who have never been fiction or poetry readers. but once they've been turned onto bukowski, that changes entirely. i think that's where his real power lies.― Rubyredd, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 10:47 PM
there's a bukowski forum that i belong to, and there is an insane amount of people who end up posting there, who have never been fiction or poetry readers. but once they've been turned onto bukowski, that changes entirely. i think that's where his real power lies.― Rubyredd, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 10:47 PM
Or this appreciation from the comics critic R. Fiore written upon Bukowski’s death titled “I Don’t Bother to Defend Bukowski":
One can only imagine the consternation of the contemporary poet fraternity, committed as it is to turgid, unreadable pap, watching helplessly as this dirty, cheating usurper writes about things that matter to people in language they can comprehend under the name of poetry. And it may well be that Bukowski’s poetry is essentially prose with an overactive return key.[…]When I speak of “turgid, unreadable pap,” I speak not of the handful of good poets but of the great slobbering mass who are read only when taught, who send you lunging for the dial quicker than Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz any time they’re asked to “read a little bit of their work” on NPR, their natural habitat, and who seem to be readily granted the status denied to Bukowski. Leave us not let the bad hide behind the skirts of the good; there’s not nearly enough room back there.
― gjoon1, Monday, 24 October 2022 22:12 (one year ago) link
Ok, thanks for clarifying, and the first 2.5 quotes make me want to check out his poetry (the second half of R. Fiore's riposte is pretty broad, if vivid, maybe goes with his commitment to comics as well as Bukowski).I haven't read enough of him to have an opinion, but was irritated because it seemed like what had just been posted about basis of his appeal, for some, was already being ignored (as happens frequently on other boards, but I hold ILB to a higher standard). Thanks again.
― dow, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 00:15 (one year ago) link
Amazing quote
I dislike Bukowski, personally, but I haven’t read him in 20 years, maybe I like him now? Probably not
I was going to mention Iris Murdoch but I’m not UK so I don’t know if the sun has entirely set in that regard
― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 00:31 (one year ago) link
Has Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance been mentioned? Can't even remember who wrote it but it was ubiquitous in the 70s
― Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 00:36 (one year ago) link
Pirsig. Robert Pirsig, I think.
― 2-4-6-8 Motor Away (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 00:47 (one year ago) link
Robert Pirsig, yes. Lou Reed said he read that and was inspired to take his motorcycle apart. But he had to have somebody from the shop put it back together.wiki:
Robert Maynard Pirsig (/ˈpɜːrsɪɡ/; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991),
A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine,...Pirsig became intrigued by the multiplicity of putative causes for a given phenomenon, and increasingly focused on the role played by hypotheses in the scientific method and sources from which they originate. His preoccupation with these matters led to a decline in his grades and expulsion from the university.[7]
― dow, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 00:55 (one year ago) link
I am a pretty big Iris Murdoch fan fwiw.
Of her novels I think A Severed Head is a clear standout; I've read it a couple times. I like her Platonic dialogues. I have a few of her denser philosophical works but they are slow going. I think I can just about grasp the Platonism, but some of the deepest stuff... I can only grasp enough to know that it is beyond my tiny brain.
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 00:59 (one year ago) link
And this guy---and his readers, including sometimes me, I think, in someone else's dorm room--and followers, and his defenders, and his critics, way out West---Evis Telecom to thread:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda
― dow, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 01:07 (one year ago) link
I still need to try Murdoch, thanks for reminder.
― dow, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 01:08 (one year ago) link
The defense that Bukowski is an “everyman’s poet” is more an indictment of Bukowski and “everyman” than some of you seem to think it is, but I digress.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 02:09 (one year ago) link
Yeah I am kinda with table here: "poetry for people who don't like poetry" seems tempting at first. But it can easily slide into a kind of artphobic and possibly reactionary stance.
First, beware of liking Bukowski just for shock value (that's a sugar high; it isn't nutritious in the long term).
But also, be careful about liking Bukowski for something like "accessibility" or "immediacy." That path is also tempting, but it leads to elevating Shel Silverstein (or whatever) over stuff that probably has more lasting merit.
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 02:49 (one year ago) link
Poetimism
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 02:54 (one year ago) link
Yes, such tags can be rong, or not---will approach the B. with caution, if at all.
― dow, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 03:00 (one year ago) link
For someone whose finest poem is “The Genius of the Crowd,” it’s kind of hilarious that he’s held up as this populist poet lmfao.
― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 14:42 (one year ago) link
I’ve never thought of Iris Murdoch as fitting into this category. She seems to have maintained a decent rep.
Backtracking, someone described Stoner to me and it just made me want to read Elmore Leonard.
― omar little, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 15:45 (one year ago) link
One further Iris Murdoch-related thought: my wife and I had a long-running injoke about Kate Winslet nudity. If she is in a movie there will be some skin sooner rather than later. Of course we, as literature dorks, obligingly went to see "Iris" in 2001.
In this film, Ms. Winslet is portraying a widely respected scholar, philosopher, author, and professor. A Booker prizewinner, a doctor of literature, a Dame. And (in a first) she gets conspicuously naked before the opening credits.
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 16:23 (one year ago) link
https://mjpbooks.com/blog/the-senseless-tragic-rape-of-charles-bukowskis-ghost-by-john-martins-black-sparrow-press/
This is a p gross article, but does make some kind of a case that lots of the posthumously published Bukowski poetry has been heavily tampered with by the publisher (I dunno myself, only ever read the prose). Just remembered I also read his much later (and far more slapdash) 'novel', Hollywood - the only detail that has stayed with me is that at he one point he meets a famous French film director called 'Jean-Luc Godard'.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 17:04 (one year ago) link
Jean-Luc Modard, that should be - he only bothers to change one letter.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 17:45 (one year ago) link
Teve Torbes
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Tuesday, 25 October 2022 18:13 (one year ago) link
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/returning-again-to-robert-m-pirsig
News to me too that it was a novel. Always thought it was one of those I'm OK, You're OK type self-help books.
― gjoon1, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 22:05 (one year ago) link
I actually read it when I was 14 or 15! Can't remember anything much about it now, but I doubt it has aged well.
― Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 25 October 2022 22:43 (one year ago) link
A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine
A 'precocious' child's accomplishments are generally negligible, because they are a child, but they are constantly told they are significant when they most certainly are not. Often this is the kiss of death for anyone's intellectual maturation. Seems to me like the only child prodigies who consistently progress in their adult accomplishments are musical prodigies.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, 26 October 2022 03:46 (one year ago) link
at one point he meets a famous French film director called 'Jean-Luc Godard'.
Godard used some of Bukowski's stories for Sauve Qui Peut, and paid him several thousand dollars in cash at the racetrack for the rights.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 26 October 2022 17:02 (one year ago) link
Good to know re Iris Murdoch!
― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, 26 October 2022 17:37 (one year ago) link
It's at least as much the latter as the former.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 26 October 2022 17:43 (one year ago) link
absolutely fascinating article about a guy I'd never heard of but which touches on a lot of things we are going to need to start caring about quite urgently https://t.co/cMSjV3n8Av— Crowsa Luxemburg (@quendergeer) October 27, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 27 October 2022 20:33 (one year ago) link
Rod McKuen is now "a guy I've never heard of"?
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 27 October 2022 20:36 (one year ago) link
I mean, sure -- names that register with 50-year-olds (or 75-year-olds) as "extremely famous, everybody knows who this is" and 25-year-olds as "I have never heard that name before" are perfect for this!
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, 27 October 2022 20:47 (one year ago) link
50 year olds probably mostly know McKuen as a guy who used to take up a lot of shelf space in the poetry sections of used bookstores
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Thursday, 27 October 2022 20:53 (one year ago) link
Also know him as the translator/lyricist for Terry Jacks’s “Seasons in the Sun.”
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 27 October 2022 21:05 (one year ago) link
It says something about the 70s culture that I have this memory of him recording a reading of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, even though a Google search produces no result.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 27 October 2022 21:06 (one year ago) link
He had a line of beachy casual clothes, don't know how well that did.
― dow, Friday, 28 October 2022 01:00 (one year ago) link
He perfectly embodied some kind of variety show sitcom idea of what a poet was back in the day, just like Billy Collins does now.
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 01:28 (one year ago) link
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 03:24 (one year ago) link
He was also the translator/lyricist for Scott Walker's "If You Go Away".
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 28 October 2022 03:54 (one year ago) link
Interesting. Which was also a Jacques Brel song. Wonder if there are more. Maybe Mort Shuman did some too.
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 03:59 (one year ago) link
Yeah, there are reasons no one has heard of him
― poppin' debussy (the table is the table), Friday, 28 October 2022 11:23 (one year ago) link
He did all of those initial Brel translations that walker sang, that’s a lasting contribution to culture if nothing else (tho there’s also the Beat Generation song, which Richard Hell nicked)
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Friday, 28 October 2022 11:42 (one year ago) link
I’ve heard some of his records, they’re all that sort of dippy mor-beatnik stuff - surprised they didn’t put him in a mad men ep, has that time capsule quality. The poetry is affable drivel
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Friday, 28 October 2022 11:48 (one year ago) link
he was always the go-to pop poet for midbrows to hate on (runner-up: leonard cohen)
― mark s, Friday, 28 October 2022 11:51 (one year ago) link
Trying to remember that Canadian writer who was Leonard Cohen’s mentor and some kind of snappy dresser. When he passed there some great quotes about him.
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 12:02 (one year ago) link
Irving Layton.
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 12:04 (one year ago) link
Somehow I remembered it but if I didn’t I could have looked it up here: https://www.mentors.ca/mentorpairsdatabase.html
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 12:05 (one year ago) link
Leonard Cohen on Irving Layton: “I taught him how to dress, he taught me how to live forever.” https://t.co/EpgKvmGNjz pic.twitter.com/49uo6yo9q1— New Directions (@NewDirections) October 17, 2016
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 12:07 (one year ago) link
Back to the novelists dammit. Edna FERBER
NovelsDawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed (1911)Fanny Herself (1917)The Girls (1921)*So Big (1924) (won Pulitzer Prize)*Show Boat (1926, Grosset & Dunlap)*Cimarron (1930)American Beauty (1931)*Come and Get It (1935)*Saratoga Trunk (1941)Great Son (1945)*Giant (1952)*Ice Palace (1958)
*Dinner at Eight (1932) (play, with G. S. Kaufman)*Stage Door (1936) (play, with G.S. Kaufman)
Dunno about adaptations of shorter fiction, but lots of collections, so maybe.
Also:
ScreenplaysSaratoga Trunk (1945) (film, with Casey Robinson)Musical adaptationsShow Boat (1927) – music by Jerome Kern, lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II, produced by Florenz ZiegfeldSaratoga (1959) – music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, dramatized by Morton DaCostaGiant (2009) – music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa, book by Sybille Pearson
― dow, Friday, 28 October 2022 14:22 (one year ago) link
So Big had a long, productive life as crosswordese, SOBIG.
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 14:25 (one year ago) link
I've seen all those movies---Giant several times---but never read a word---think local library still has So Big.
― dow, Friday, 28 October 2022 14:32 (one year ago) link
Wow. Watch out for dust mites and silverfish!
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 14:34 (one year ago) link
Michael moorcock?
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 28 October 2022 15:09 (one year ago) link
i still read Moorcock sometimes
― saigo no ice cream (Noodle Vague), Friday, 28 October 2022 15:12 (one year ago) link
His intros to other people's books or his own stuff?
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 15:21 (one year ago) link
I read him for the first time this summer, the Elric Saga Vol. 1 collection, i.e. the first four Elric books in terms of internal chronology.
They're pretty fun, but I don't think I'm a huge fan yet.
― jmm, Friday, 28 October 2022 15:22 (one year ago) link
He's a writer with excellent ideas who has a lot of trouble using words well. I read the Elric books as a kid and really had to force my eyes through his prose on a re-read a few years ago.
― Halfway there but for you, Friday, 28 October 2022 15:25 (one year ago) link
Fantasy strikes me as a genre where there are lots of readers willing to dig deep, and where writers can have a long shelf-life compared to literary writers of similar relative status.
― jmm, Friday, 28 October 2022 15:42 (one year ago) link
i feel MM kept his excellent ideas well out of the elric series
― mark s, Friday, 28 October 2022 15:42 (one year ago) link
(xpost!) Sinkah has had some choice words to say about Moorcock's way with words but hard to locate them in the archives.
― Capital Radio Sweetheart (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 15:52 (one year ago) link
yeah, fantasy, horror and science fiction readers are quite willing to read older, out-of-fashion writers
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 28 October 2022 16:41 (one year ago) link
― mark s, Friday, 28 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink
✔️✔️✔️
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 28 October 2022 18:24 (one year ago) link
Didn't get into first Elric trilogy (too soon after Urth of the New Sun, for one thing), didn't really focus on his Hawkwind lyrics, but in last five years or so have come across some good new stories. Well, the first part of one (I think in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) about most recent (American & allies involved) Afghanistan War seemed a bit stilted in the battlefield, maybe because he'd never been in war, but when the main character gets to Kabul, and re-encounters a woman x olde webs of complicity and duplicity re dealing with various factions of governments, as well as each other---it gets better. Also liked the brawny sandy savvy steampunker he contributed to Old Mars, a good RR Martin-Dozois-edited collection of all-new stories. Di
― dow, Friday, 28 October 2022 19:09 (one year ago) link
I had no idea Hawkwind was an actual band when I read Time of the Hawklords.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 28 October 2022 19:18 (one year ago) link
he was always the go-to pop poet for midbrows to hate on (runner-up: leonard cohen)― mark s, Friday, 28 October 2022 bookmarkflaglink
― poppin' debussy (the table is the table), Friday, 28 October 2022 19:22 (one year ago) link
Rod McKuen piece in Slate recently
I’m in my 40s but only heard his name as a punchline in Giffen & DeMatteis Justice League comics
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 28 October 2022 21:04 (one year ago) link
That Slate link is the ICP of this thread
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 28 October 2022 21:15 (one year ago) link
Insane clown posse?
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 28 October 2022 22:18 (one year ago) link
Yes
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 28 October 2022 22:20 (one year ago) link
Just a reference to the “Bands with their own subculture “ thread where people continuously post ICP(The Slate link has been posted here 3 times btw)
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Friday, 28 October 2022 22:24 (one year ago) link
Ha oops
― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 28 October 2022 23:15 (one year ago) link
In fairness one of those posts was within the quote part of a reply to the previous such post.
― Regex Dwight (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 October 2022 23:23 (one year ago) link
As Angus Wilson and Murdoch have both been mentioned I came across this review of a book by the former on the latter.
Wilson's value, if any, was as a gossip.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/sep/06/biography.highereducation?
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 30 October 2022 07:15 (one year ago) link
You're confusing AN Wilson with Angus Wilson there
― Ward Fowler, Sunday, 30 October 2022 07:34 (one year ago) link
Haha ah so that's a writer I do not know a lot about.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 30 October 2022 10:27 (one year ago) link
the old men at the zoo (angus w) was made into a TV drama in the early 80s!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldvbZmtm7_E
― mark s, Sunday, 30 October 2022 11:11 (one year ago) link
tho tbh i feel this was a last little throb on the slope of his forgetting
― mark s, Sunday, 30 October 2022 11:12 (one year ago) link
that title has stuck with me, and that appears to be the extent of my knowledge
― saigo no ice cream (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 30 October 2022 11:14 (one year ago) link
Two kids authors that were relatively omnipresent on the mid-80s WH Smith shelves of my childhood, but now never even turn up in charity shops: JH Brennan and John Antrobus
― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, 31 October 2022 00:43 (one year ago) link
None of the novelists today will be read.
there’s so little contemporary literature that has the potential to be classic (i.e. to be appreciated outside its immediate context). nobody in a hundred years is going to read donna tartt or sally rooney as literature (even if they might read them as cultural history)— rose ❤️🔥🗡 (@roselyddon) November 1, 2022
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:27 (one year ago) link
tweeters with a time machine
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:29 (one year ago) link
Incidentally I am not sure if I ever read a piece of old literature as cultural history xp
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:32 (one year ago) link
I read Madame Bovary once to find out what kinds of hats were considered unfashionable at the time.
― (We're Not) The Experimental Jet Set (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:33 (one year ago) link
Think cultural history is at least a component in my enjoyment of...everything, really.
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:35 (one year ago) link
Yes, what will last is silly. But there are many novels published in the last two decades that will have an interest as exciting things to read
xp = guess the Anatomy of Melancholy is interesting as an insight of how people thought about depression, but it's the expression of it that really holds for me.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:38 (one year ago) link
I kind of feel like the default case for literature is to be forgotten. What percentage of old books are remembered decades or even centuries later? I would guess much less than 1%. So predicting that something will be forgotten is kind of easy.
― o. nate, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:43 (one year ago) link
OTM. See also all the languages gone missing over the millennia.
― (We're Not) The Experimental Jet Set (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 14:47 (one year ago) link
It is hard to think of recent authors who I actively hope will be read in the future. Whether as literature or as a time capsule.
It's a very abstract question and it is, of course, not ours to decide. There's a (possibly apocryphal) thing about how if Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said "faster horses."
Elinor Glyn was pretty popular; so was I dunno Tom Clancy or whoev. If you time-traveled to 1850 and asked art critic which painters would still be talked about in 100 years, they would almost certainly answer wrongly.
I do not weep for the legacy of, say, Donna Tartt. But in my secret heart I kinda hold out hope that maybe George Saunders will still be read in future.
― blissfully unawarewolf (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:07 (one year ago) link
Think the concept of timelessness during the time of the author’s life is weird and it’s not as though it’s remotely objective.
― after several days on “the milk,” (gyac), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:12 (one year ago) link
Also, books not being read anymore is hardly indicative of this quality, like trends affect books too.
― after several days on “the milk,” (gyac), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:14 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ujNVw8Shk
― (We're Not) The Experimental Jet Set (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:19 (one year ago) link
I know, we’re talking novelists, but George Crabbe is a perfect example of this— someone well-regarded in his time by Byron, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, and others, he is virtually unheard of in English letters today. I think that part of it is his form— he wrote exclusively in heroic couplets lmfao— and part of it is that the narrative poem, with some exceptions, has dramatically fallen out of favor with the reading public. The whims of the reading public are unpredictable, and so any predictions re: timelessness are quite silly.
― poppin' debussy (the table is the table), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:38 (one year ago) link
I predict the Captain Underpants books will still be read in 2407
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:39 (one year ago) link
I met a traveller from an antique land iirc
― (We're Not) The Experimental Jet Set (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:40 (one year ago) link
Every other sentiment an antique.
― (We're Not) The Experimental Jet Set (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:41 (one year ago) link
Crabbe was on the syllabus when i did English Lit in the late 80s, tho only in a minor way. his biggest connection to the present is probably Britten's Peter Grimes i'd guess
― wearing wraparounds (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:48 (one year ago) link
anyway it's hard to write anything at length about the contingencies of what "lasts", never mind a quick Tweet with a lazy handwave at The Canon
my tweets will last, yours are already forgotten
― mark s, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:52 (one year ago) link
― poppin' debussy (the table is the table), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 15:58 (one year ago) link
We read him alongside Pope in an 18th century lit class.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 16:02 (one year ago) link
Dryden obv has more name recognition but he's not much read/discussed, is he?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 16:03 (one year ago) link
Nothing odd will do long. Sinkah's tweets will not last.
― (We're Not) The Experimental Jet Set (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 16:05 (one year ago) link
Thoroughly unpopular opinion, but I think Tom Wolfe's novels and the research within will have an audience a century from now.
― The self-titled drags (Eazy), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 16:07 (one year ago) link
I could see Bonfire being read as social portrait of the world Trump sprang from
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 16:19 (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?― the pinefox, Wednesday, September 28, 2022
― the pinefox, Wednesday, September 28, 2022
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 18:47 (one year ago) link
re: predicting legacy while the writer is alive
I was looking at some lit journals from the 1870s and a critic was giving a run down of recent Russian publications. Anna Karenina had been coming out as a serial but was as yet unfinished by Tolstoy. The critic said something like "Even if Tolstoy dies before finishing the novel the existing portions are already great enough to ensure its permanent place in great literature."
― “uhh”—like, this is an insane oatmeal raisin cookie “uhh” (President Keyes), Tuesday, 1 November 2022 19:10 (one year ago) link
"the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon [Wuthering Heights] is that it will never be generally read"
― abcfsk, Tuesday, 1 November 2022 19:45 (one year ago) link
Got a little further into something by Tom Robbins which had no especially low or any point, was just twaddle.
Isn't this every Tom Robbins book though? I made it through Another Roadside Attraction but punched out early from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues and Still Life With Woodpecker. Distrustful hippies and boomers seem to have been the only ones reading him (of course my brother was a fan)
― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 11 December 2022 16:40 (one year ago) link
The adaptation of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues is one of the most chilling things I've ever experienced.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 11 December 2022 16:46 (one year ago) link
Details please.
― dow, Sunday, 11 December 2022 21:39 (one year ago) link
My book club seems in sync with this thread. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is the consensus choice for our next read.
I read it decades ago but don't remember anything about it.
I usually use audible or audiobooks to listen to the books we've selected. I'm very curious about James Franco's narration for this
― Dan S, Monday, 12 December 2022 01:30 (one year ago) link
Speaking of writers no one reads
― jmm, Monday, 12 December 2022 01:37 (one year ago) link
S-5 is very much not a novel that nobody reads anymore.
― the pinefox, Monday, 12 December 2022 10:22 (one year ago) link
meant to put him hear from another thread - laureate of Dartmoor, Eden Philpotts. Just looking at that reminds me - wasn’t The Red Redmaynes a Borges fiction choice? finding out brb.
― Fizzles, Monday, 12 December 2022 18:16 (one year ago) link
here. not hear. i’m having a bad day.
and i misspelled his name. Phillpotts.
― Fizzles, Monday, 12 December 2022 18:22 (one year ago) link
Eden Phillpotts (1862 -1960) was an English author. He was the author of many novels. Phillpotts was a friend of Agatha Christie, who was an admirer of his work and a regular visitor to his home. Jorge Luis Borges was another admirer. Borges mentioned him numerous times wrote at least two reviews of his novels, and included him in his "Personal Library," a collection of works selected to reflect his personal literary preferences. according to some amazon/goodreads boilerplate.
― Fizzles, Monday, 12 December 2022 18:25 (one year ago) link
fwiw he’s surprisingly good, v much in a Hardy plus “supernal immanent nature” mode.
― Fizzles, Monday, 12 December 2022 18:26 (one year ago) link
"Hardy plus “supernal immanent nature” mode"
This description makes me think of John Cowper Powys. Has he been mentioned yet?
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 12 December 2022 19:08 (one year ago) link
I just dmor and nope, no mention of Powys.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 12 December 2022 19:09 (one year ago) link
i almost mentioned Powys in relation to him. And as you say he, in fact all of them, are well qualified for this thread.
― Fizzles, Monday, 12 December 2022 19:10 (one year ago) link
I might have to give Phillpots a go. Dartmoor + Borges is a mix too good to ignore.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 12 December 2022 19:13 (one year ago) link
Powys has a cult following, have two friends reading him right now
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Monday, 12 December 2022 19:13 (one year ago) link
A Glastonbury Romance *is* magnificent, fwiw.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 12 December 2022 19:14 (one year ago) link
Believe Skot was a big Powys enthusiast as well.
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 12 December 2022 19:44 (one year ago) link
Found a bookshop, and a book that looked at all of Phillpotts's cycle, and had a great quote from The Mother that covered much of the route I'd taken the day before:AFTER Walla has fallen from her fountains near the cradle of her greater sister, Tavy, in midmost Moor, she winds south-west and passes downward under Mis Tor into the wooded glens beneath the Vixen. But, before she leaves the waste, a bridge of grey stone spans her growing stream, and road and river meet at right angles. Down the great slope eastward this highway falls, then upward climbs again under the triple crown of the Staple Tors ; and just beyond the bridge, extended strag- gling by the path, like a row of tired folk tramping home after a revel, shall be seen the few cottages of Merivale. Northward, separated from the village by moorland, and its own surrounding fields, the farm of Stone Park stands naked, treeless and solitary ; southward, where Walla flows from the upland austerities into a gentler domain of forest and arable land, there extend regions of cultivation with their dwellings in the midst. All round about upon this day, the stone monarchs of the land thrust sombre heads upward into a stormy sky. Beyond Great Mis Tor something of the central desolation might be seen
― Fizzles, Monday, 12 December 2022 19:58 (one year ago) link
Isn't this every Tom Robbins book though? I made it through Another Roadside Attraction but punched out early from Even Cowgirls Get The Blues ― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 11 December 2022 16:40 (yesterday) link
― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 11 December 2022 16:40 (yesterday) link
I once read an interview with him. Apparently your namesake Elvis Presley had one of those books in the bathroom where he, Presley, was found dead. Robbins took great pride in that, something like "The critics hate me, but I've got Elvis!"
― alimosina, Monday, 12 December 2022 20:32 (one year ago) link
B-b-but what about Willie?
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 12 December 2022 20:55 (one year ago) link
I greatly enjoyed Still Life with Woodpecker when I was 13.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Monday, 12 December 2022 20:56 (one year ago) link
A lot of my friends and peers report that there is a very narrow window in which Robbins appeals. Very much a late-high-school/early college idea of profundity. There are some fun bits, and some cringy bits, and some things that are pretty unforgivable - whether it is a retrograde sexual politics or a corny-ass Rusted Root-style hippie vibe.
Robbins went to my college and wrote for its newspaper; I don't think I ever met or interviewed him but I did edit and publish a rather puffy profile that someone else wrote. Adolescent me thought parts of Jitterbug Perfume were enjoyable, and parts of Woodpecker, but I haven't the stomach to revisit those books.
― Cirque de Soleil Moon Frye (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 12 December 2022 21:03 (one year ago) link
I can dig that kind of landscape mysticism, Fizzles. Great photos, too.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Monday, 12 December 2022 21:26 (one year ago) link
Ominous, powerful, just another day at the office for Misty Tor (but not for me)
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 01:38 (one year ago) link
Thanks also to YMP for Robbins context: I prob should have tried him in the early 70s, not the late. Vonnegut was pretty good for late, though. Still curious about Altman's version of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 01:47 (one year ago) link
There was an Altman attempt to film it?? Not that it would have mattered...
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 01:55 (one year ago) link
Does anyone read anything by John Masefield other than The Box of Delights? Yesterday I learned that was the second book to feature Kay Harker, Abner Brown, and other characters, the first being The Midnight Folk. And he wrote at least twenty adult novels, some plays, and he was the poet laureate for nearly 40 years.
― ledge, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 08:43 (one year ago) link
Have read The Midnight Folk though don’t remember much about it. A sort of Midsummer Nights Dream collection of characters and animals involved in a fight between good and evil? Something like that.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 08:52 (one year ago) link
This is very Fizzles.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 10:58 (one year ago) link
Borges likes any old anglo crap tbf.
brutal and fair
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 12:34 (one year ago) link
https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/anthony-burgess-jorge-luis-borges-and-shakespeare/
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 13:06 (one year ago) link
I’m reading the Midnight Folk to my kid now. It’s part of NYRB Children’s Classics series
― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 13:22 (one year ago) link
There was a movie of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, but it was Gus Van Sant with Uma Thurman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_Cowgirls_Get_the_Blues_(film)
I may have tried to watch it - I honestly don't remember. With some exceptions, I generally don't enjoy movies based on books I like. Because films mostly don't film what I like about books (which is mostly sentences, by which I mean narrative prose).
This isn't (I hope) a stereotypical "OMG THEY CHANGED IT" objection. Just that movies tend have characters and dialog and stuff happening, so when a filmmaker goes to adapt a book, they gravitate toward the filmable elements. Like, characters saying and doing stuff. Stuff happening. Which can be fine, and an artwork in its own right. When I like a book, I sometimes like the movie of it - but usually for different reasons than I liked the book.
Usually when I like a book I like the sentences in it (the stuff that is not as filmable) rather than the stuff that happens in it (the stuff that is more filmable). Anthony Minghella made a decently successful movie called "The English Patient," for example. I saw it and thought it was okay. But literally nothing that I liked about Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient - one of my very favorite novels - appeared in the movie.
Robbins at his peak had a decently rich and ecstatic gonzo prose style. It does not translate to film. You can make a movie of the plot, sure, go ahead. But for me the action is in the prose.
― Cirque de Soleil Moon Frye (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 15:39 (one year ago) link
― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 13:22 bookmarkflaglink
how correct was my iirc post, PK? I read it when I was staying at an airbnb near Denbigh while walking Offa's Dyke, in a bedroom full of children's books, with a view out across the Welsh landscape. In other words I remember the context quite vividly, but not the book itself.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 18:22 (one year ago) link
Very Fizzles.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 18:31 (one year ago) link
xxxpost Sounds good, YMP, thanks. Will give him another chance if I come across any more books.Somewhere I acquired the mental image of Shelly Duvall in all-white rodeo/parade float gear, slso sporting giant thumbs, apparently congenital, perfect for hitchhiking---wiki:
...it was reported that she was to star as the lead in the film adaptation of Tom Robbins’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was to star Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Cindy Hall and Sissy Spacek'
Are Tom McGuane's novels good? The New Yorker recently published a short story that I thought could work better as a streaming etc. adaptation.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 18:31 (one year ago) link
well, so far Kay is sneaking out at night with the toys his governess hid away from him and encountering beings who are searching for hidden gold.
― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 18:39 (one year ago) link
So you're basically otm
― The Beatles were the first to popularize wokeism (President Keyes), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 18:40 (one year ago) link
Borges likes any old anglo crap tbf.brutal and fair- J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 12:34 bookmarkflaglinkI also like any old anglo crap, I should say. And I need to soften slightly, as his list contains a lot of wider ranging European and American literature. But he does have a love of an anglo form I'II hazily describe as 'romance, mystical-adjacent mystery, and the pastoral' all of which obviously blur into each other. The Three Impostors is an execrable book in many ways, Machen as the epigone of RLS, and TTI to The New Arabian Nights its poncif. but it does have something and that something is an ineluctable progress to the centre of a labyrinth of mystery - supernal or infernal - through pure randomness or standing entirely still. Absolutely no detection as such whatsoever. That is to say in London the mystery discovers you, in fact it must do, eventually, because it is an infinite city. None of this is exactly surprising with Borges, but like the other books in his list it does indicate one facet of his writing in a slightly different light.
― Fizzles, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 18:57 (one year ago) link
Yeah, he took what he needed from pulp and so on---bringing me back to movies for a second: Sergio Leone talked about how this could work better than trying to adapt high-brow/more respectable/commercially and/or critically successful material, pointing out that Dr. Strangelove was built from Peter George's Red Alert, UK knock-off the US bestseller Fail-Safe, which was an extreme example of the Cold War "See, the System can work" subgenre.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 20:04 (one year ago) link
Bringing it back to Borges, I mentioned his poking through true crime etc. re: A Universal History of Infamy on Borges translation?
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 20:09 (one year ago) link
An obvious point, but another excuse to plug that book.
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 20:11 (one year ago) link
he took what he needed from pulp and so on
― dow, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 20:45 (one year ago) link
he took what he needed
I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK, MYSELF, I AM A WRITER, I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK AND IT’S CALLED— “‘HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED BUT HE LOST WHAT HE HAD’! THAT’S IT! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 20:50 (one year ago) link
Borges also greatly admired Shaw, who wasn't a Romantic. (And Chesterton who might have a better claim to be in some degree mystical or mysterious.)
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 13 December 2022 21:44 (one year ago) link
I also like any old anglo crap, I should say.
oh yeah I'm continually threatening to get back into Trollope don't get me wrong
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 22:14 (one year ago) link
i read half asleep in frog pajamas by tom robbins but i don't remember anything about it other than coming away with the idea that the dude was a real fucking goofball
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 22:16 (one year ago) link
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to thread!
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 22:27 (one year ago) link
It's about time I read another long Trollope.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 December 2022 22:49 (one year ago) link
Are Tom McGuane's novels good?
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 14 December 2022 04:31 (one year ago) link
I've read three of McGuane's books and saw the film he directed of one of them, 92 in the Shade. I found The Bushwhacked Piano very funny in an absurdist way, but Something To Be Desired from 1984 was a lot more sentimental and conventional.I haven't read his debut novel The Sporting Club, but the film adaptation is my pick for worst movie ever made.
― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, 14 December 2022 16:08 (one year ago) link
Kathy Lette
― fetter, Thursday, 15 December 2022 23:42 (one year ago) link
John Gardner. Has anyone read him?
― the pinefox, Saturday, 17 December 2022 11:58 (one year ago) link
imo the midnight folk >>> the box of delights
i loooooved the former as a kid and ripped off some of the names of kay's stuffed animals for my own (viz i had a stuffed donkey called robin pointnose). the idea that they have always been kay's guardians and soldiery is a nice idea, like he'd kind of grown out of this and they had become disheartened and sloppy then a peril fully arose and everyone teams up and tools up and rises to the occasion
as i recall i found the narrative confusing bcz there's a massive (treasure-related) flashback for the story that a very old bedridden lady tells abt a sequence of father-son-grandson ne'er'do'wells who all have the same name (abner brown), which in tone feels like a different book tbh (which fair enough in context but it threw me as a very skippy kid reader)
i particularly liked the section where he hides in a witch's cupboard -- it has a good LIST of magical items, inc. both seven-league boots and also 49-league boots (which are twitching and have to be nailed down they're so powerful)
― mark s, Saturday, 17 December 2022 13:12 (one year ago) link
also in the house we always stayed in on our summer holidays someone had carefully written out by hand masefield's sea fever and put it up on the wall with presed wild flower and a v ancient b/w photo of some retired old sailor looking out to sea with a telescope (i believe named captain kettle):
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tideIs a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
i also very much liked these lines as a child (not a novel tho). somewhere packed up among my books is his actual adult adventure novel ODTAA (stands for one damn thing after another, good title imo) but i haven't read it
― mark s, Saturday, 17 December 2022 13:20 (one year ago) link
this is a scene from the flashback section (which is fairly treasure island-y i guess) as found in my puffin books edn; illustrator is rowland hilder
https://thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/hilder4-768x582.jpg
― mark s, Saturday, 17 December 2022 14:07 (one year ago) link
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 14:12 (one year ago) link
Even when everybody I knew was reading Gardner's instructional books on writing (which are great!) nobody read the novels, and people commented on how weird it was that his writing advice was so spot-on when his books themselves were not so great.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, 17 December 2022 14:35 (one year ago) link
them wot can't do, etc etc
https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/john-gardner-pugilist-at-rest/
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 15:12 (one year ago) link
^read the comments too!
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 15:21 (one year ago) link
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,I left my pants and socks there, I wonder if they're dry?
― ledge, Saturday, 17 December 2022 16:35 (one year ago) link
lol spike, he was exactly the age -- and temperament -- to get aggressively bored b yit, by the time i encountered it it was a fragile fragment of a lost world
― mark s, Saturday, 17 December 2022 17:04 (one year ago) link
Good memories Mark S - sounds like I should try to read this Masefield book also.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 17 December 2022 17:25 (one year ago) link
Very interesting comments on Gardner. In the PARIS REVIEW interview he seems full of himself and certainly sure that his opinions count for a lot.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 17 December 2022 17:29 (one year ago) link
Now that we’ve established that, we’re left with the task of finding out whether any of his own novels are still read and are any good or not.
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 17:55 (one year ago) link
Here is the first page of the action of October Light. I don’t know if I shall read further. /pvmic
[The Patriot’s Rage, and the Old Woman’s Finding of the Trashy Book by the Bedside “Corruption? I’ll tell you about corruption, sonny!” The old man glared into the flames in the fireplace and trembled all over, biting so hard on the stem of his pipe that it crackled once, sharply, like the fireplace logs. You could tell by the way he held up the stem and looked at it, it would never be the same. The house was half dark. He never used lights, partly from poverty, partly from a deep-down miserliness. Like all his neighbors on Prospect Mountain—like all his neighbors from the Massachusetts line clear to Canada, come to that—he was, even at his most generous, frugal. There was little in this world he considered worth buying. That was one reason that in the darkness behind him the television gaped like a black place where once a front tooth had hung. He’d taken the twelve gauge shotgun to it, three weeks ago now, for its endless, simpering advertising and, worse yet, its monstrously obscene games of greed, the filth of hell made visible in the world: screaming women, ravenous for refrigerators, automobiles, mink coats, ostrich-feather hats; leering glittering-toothed monsters of ceremonies—for all their pretty smiles, they were vipers upon the earth, those panderers to lust, and their programs were blasphemy and high treason. He couldn’t say much better for the endless, simpering dramas they put on, now indecent, now violent, but in any case an outrage against sense. So he’d loaded the shotgun while the old woman, his sister, sat stupidly grinning into the
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 17:59 (one year ago) link
I’ve not read him except the odd interview & essay (where yeah he comes across v pompous with his moral fiction steez) but Grendel is def still read inc maybe by me one day cause it looks good
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Saturday, 17 December 2022 18:00 (one year ago) link
Yeah, Grendel seems to be the one to read.
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 18:04 (one year ago) link
I actually picked up a copy of October light but it’s quite fat so I’ll see how I get on with the slimmer ones before I decide whether to read. From that milieu of less-read-anymore Americans of then I’ve read about half a dozen by Robert coover & am maybe 60/40 like/don’t like and still would struggle to answer the question “good or not iyo”
― Wiggum Dorma (wins), Saturday, 17 December 2022 18:11 (one year ago) link
Grendel is part of Gollancz’s Fantasy Masterwork series. I don’t imagine Gardner would’ve been too chuffed to be remembered now as primarily an author of fantasy. Apparently Gardner mentions Howard the Duck (the Steve Gerber comic) somewhere in On Moral Fiction, which Gerber took as a big validation from a high tone lit critic.
― Ward Fowler, Saturday, 17 December 2022 19:40 (one year ago) link
I'm pretty sure I read Mickelsson's Ghosts back in the day. It obviously wasn't very memorable.
I used to use his book The Art of Fiction in the creative writing class I taught. My students were usually skeptical.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 17 December 2022 19:43 (one year ago) link
oh Grendel is great, i've read it
i got mixed up with the John Gardner who did James Bond books after Fleming died
― partez Maroc anthem (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 17 December 2022 20:19 (one year ago) link
yes, very much like Grendel. have a copy of The Sunlight Dialogues I hope to get to at some point.
― bulb after bulb, Saturday, 17 December 2022 20:26 (one year ago) link
Will have to check those two and his instructional books. In the late 70s, I went to a reading. He was already onstage as we filed in, with a motorcycle-booted ankle resting on worn denim knee, studying us (yes, boot, knee, and he were studying. He was wearing a long, loose white linen top with a design on the chest: a singlet, is that what you call it? He was short, even sitting down With long white-blondish hair, like singer-songwriter Paul Williams, also a short Rick Wakeman. but with round wire-framed Lennon glasses, so more like Williams. I don't remember what he was talking about when a man stood up in the audience, stalked to the center aisle, identified himself as Richard Ivo Schneider, and rebuked Garnder for (as RIS put it) saying somewhere that medieval aristocrats read lives of the saints for entertainment. Gardner replied in a low-key, laidback way, then muttered something more as Schneider was returning to his seat. S. wheeled around and shouted, "You should go to Europe and visit the reliquaries of the saints!" (point being, I take it, that they wouldn't be still be available if somebody with money and position hadn't taken them seriously enough). Gardner: "Thank you, I've done that."he then read his short story, "The Temptation of St. Ivo," which reminded me of "All Along The Watchtower," until the bad guys suddenly vanished, like a figment of a fancy paranoiac's imagination.
― dow, Saturday, 17 December 2022 20:45 (one year ago) link
!
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 20:59 (one year ago) link
He was visiting from York?
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 22:10 (one year ago) link
Anyway, awesome story.
― Soda Stereo Total (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 17 December 2022 23:17 (one year ago) link
I've read three of McGuane's books and saw the film he directed of one of them, 92 in the Shade. I found The Bushwhacked Piano very funny in an absurdist way, but Something To Be Desired from 1984 was a lot more sentimental and conventional.
I’ve only read The Bushwhacked Piano. For the first 2/3 it felt like it could be The Great American Comic Novel (I have no idea what is the Great American Comic Novel). There is one exchange in particular involving the name of a bat (the animal) that is one of the funniest pieces of writing I’ve read. Unfortunately, the last 1/3 has to make the big statement about How We Live Today in America, which mainly means unfunny gross-out humor, death, heartbreak, and general misery. The sexist streak that stays mostly hidden throughout also surfaces: both hero and heroine are likeable, exasperating flakes, but by the end he’s become a semi-tragic mythical figure, while she betrays him and reverts back to being a privileged trust fund baby. The prose is great throughout.
I also rather like The Missouri Breaks which he scripted, though it's deservers it bad reputation in many ways.
― gjoon1, Saturday, 17 December 2022 23:41 (one year ago) link
Grendel seemed to be everywhere in the 90s: on high school syllabuses, in bookstores used and new. I had the impression that it was considered an important book, a modern classic, so it was surprising later on when I learned how low the critical reputation of John Gardner was, or at least had become since then.
I think it’s close to a masterpiece. I have not read it in probably 30+years, but there are lines, images that still rattle around inside my brain. If I hesitate to call it a flat-out masterpiece, it’s because it’s so grueling and bleak (despite plenty of comic bits) that I have never felt like going back to it. One of the all-time great closing sentences too.
― gjoon1, Saturday, 17 December 2022 23:43 (one year ago) link
My cousin's AP lit class back in high school read Grendel, and one of her friends accidentally left her copy on top of her car and then ran over it. She came to class the next day, brandished the ruined book at everyone, and said, "Poor Grendel's had an accident. So may you all."
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 18 December 2022 04:52 (one year ago) link
I have Thomas McGuane's fishing book somewhere, *The Longest Silence*. Another impulse buy, presumably.
― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Sunday, 18 December 2022 09:27 (one year ago) link
These are fine responses on John Gardner.
Poster Dow's description somewhat chimes with the description of him by the PARIS REVIEW - long white hair. And he perished in a motorcycle accident.
James Redd, OCTOBER LIGHT does not sound good.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 18 December 2022 13:54 (one year ago) link
I have totally the opposite of received opinion on John Gardner!
Personally I found his instructional books tendentious and wrong. Like, DEEPLY wrong. Very anti-playfulness, anti-narration. Anti-modernist, anti-postmodernist.
In the 90s I loved both High Modernist shenanigans, fine writing, and madcap metafictional experiments. Gardner's opposition to narratological playfulness - winking Nabokovian trickery, etc. - made him feel like the anti-fun police (along with the equally buzzkilling Strunk and White).
I found Gardner's actual fiction to be quite serviceable and well-done. Way more readable than the scolding tone of his books on writing.
― Cirque de Soleil Moon Frye (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, 18 December 2022 14:35 (one year ago) link
Unfortunately, the last 1/3 has to make the big statement about How We Live Today in America, which mainly means unfunny gross-out humor, death, heartbreak, and general misery.
92 In the Shade, his next book, has a lot more of this throughout.
― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, 18 December 2022 20:13 (one year ago) link
instructional books on writing tend very heavily to proffer advice for would-be writers who have no passion for writing, but rather a kind of dogged persistence, which means they appeal to a very broad audience that takes in most people who imagine they might be writers or who simply are required by their job or other circumstances to write things more complex than shopping lists.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Sunday, 18 December 2022 20:41 (one year ago) link
J P Dunleavy...?
― fetter, Monday, 19 December 2022 21:47 (one year ago) link
Seems about right.
― A Kestrel for a Neve (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 19 December 2022 23:34 (one year ago) link
I think they are intended mostly for fledgling writers, who by and large are very ill advised to jump into the pool of postmodernism without developing some ability with the basics of storytelling.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Monday, 19 December 2022 23:37 (one year ago) link
From WaPo (gift link) https://wapo.st/3hIgSgv
“Nobody reads Zane Grey.”
― Cirque de Soleil Moon Frye (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 20 December 2022 00:24 (one year ago) link
Emma Tennant. I picked up an omnibus of her novels as I was intrigued by the premise (reworkings of classic literature from a feminist perspective), was surprised to discover how prolific she was over multiple genres and had only died in 2017, but seemed to've fallen out of fashion long before that. She was well known enough at one point to have one of her books turned into a film for Channel 4 (The Bad Sister, 1983) but that one seems to've vanished into a lost media hole.
Does anyone still read Leon Garfield? He was a massive school library mainstay when I was a kid but seems to've vanished from popular consciousness following his death in the nineties. I think the only one I ever read at the time was The Ghost Downstairs, but the pseudo-Dickensian strangeness of it really stuck with me.
― "Spaghetti" Thompson (Pheeel), Tuesday, 20 December 2022 08:39 (one year ago) link
I do think I remember Garfield as a children's TV source 40 years ago.
Emma Tennant's TWO WOMEN OF LONDON (1989?) is of interest, especially for its sense of London changing in the 1980s.
She had an interesting career eg: involved with SF magazines in the 1970s as I recall.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 20 December 2022 13:36 (one year ago) link
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Tuesday, 20 December 2022 13:58 (one year ago) link
Ha, me too.
― A Kestrel for a Neve (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 20 December 2022 14:09 (one year ago) link
Wow---one of her novels and a book of poetry are finally available again, but she did her born again best:
The Writer Who Burned Her Own BooksRosemary Tonks achieved success among the bohemian literati of Swinging London—then spent the rest of her life destroying the evidence of her career.
― dow, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 04:02 (one year ago) link
Bedouin of the London Evening (Bloodaxe) is really good – I need to dig it out again.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 07:52 (one year ago) link
Tonks has been fashionable for a couple of years now, Stewart Lee is a big fan.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 4 January 2023 13:16 (one year ago) link
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._Coppard
short stories rather than novels, and an rfi more than a nomination
― koogs, Saturday, 7 January 2023 17:35 (one year ago) link
xp Tonks did her best to make sure she was no longer read.re cyclic rediscoveries, as veteran bookstore staffer Ward Fowler mentioned upthread, I sometimes wonder about Dawn Powell. I got an omnibus trade paperback from QPB back in the late 80s, immediate take was of hard sell "Isn't I funny!" Set it aside---since then she's gotten at least on Library of America omnibus. Also somewhere in there, read good, thoughtful words about her from Gore Vidal and others---is she good, far enough beyond archness to enjoy if you don't care for that kind of tone (which I may have been v. wrong about in the long run)?
― dow, Saturday, 7 January 2023 18:47 (one year ago) link
at least one Library of American omnibus (& think there was more than one QPB collection).
― dow, Saturday, 7 January 2023 18:49 (one year ago) link
Alfred is reading Dawn Powell all the time!
― Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 7 January 2023 18:56 (one year ago) link
Funny you should mention Gore Vidal— I don’t think I know a single person under 40 who has ever read anything by him.
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Saturday, 7 January 2023 18:56 (one year ago) link
Myself included— I look at the size of most of his books and think to myself, “I would rather not.”
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Saturday, 7 January 2023 18:57 (one year ago) link
Once again I summon Alfred to this thread.
― Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:01 (one year ago) link
A Time to Be Born is arch in places but I need "arch" in a postwar lit environment dominated by Norman Mailer types.
I'm not surprised Vidal's not known: his reputation died when he stopped appearing on talk shows. But Lincoln has its ILB/ILX cult, deservedly. He's not at all a dull historical novelist.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:04 (one year ago) link
burr is great (but i am over 40)
― mark s, Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:10 (one year ago) link
have managed so far to remain under 40 and i've distributed a lot of copies of burr the last few years but idk if they're read
― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:11 (one year ago) link
Thirding Burr, especially when Jefferson appears.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:12 (one year ago) link
Saw a copy of Look Homeward, Angel in a charity shop today and instantly thought that Thomas Wolfe wld be a gd candidate for this thread.
― Ward Fowler, Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:26 (one year ago) link
Oftentimes reading this thread, I come to the conclusion that my own tastes are much more provincial and specific. The idea of reading a novel about Lincoln or Burr bores me to tears, don’t really understand why anyone would subject themselves to it.
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Saturday, 7 January 2023 19:43 (one year ago) link
Not meant ti be knock in anyone except myself fwiw
Having read at least six Dawn Powell novels I can see why Gore Vidal sought to save her from the vortex of obscurity. She deserves to find her readers, but their number will never be very large. In addition to A Time to Be Born which Alfred always mentions as his favorite, I'd recommend The Locusts Have No King, which is both satiric and rueful on the subject of New York newcomers striving to find their level and flailing about.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Saturday, 7 January 2023 20:01 (one year ago) link
Has anyone ever read the similarly titled The Roaches Have No King? The author is…Daniel Evan Weiss.
― Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 7 January 2023 20:06 (one year ago) link
Somebody told me to read it once, but the author seems weird.
― Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 7 January 2023 20:08 (one year ago) link
Gore Vidal’s whole American History series is pretty great and catty.
― Motion to adjourn to enjoy a footling (President Keyes), Saturday, 7 January 2023 20:11 (one year ago) link
I read several of GV's novels and all of Wolfe's in high school, but have long since forgotten virtually everything (may not be their fault: the drug years appeared soon after). My ruthlessly pruning local library still has those ancient volumes of xpost Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again, so somebody must have read them fairly recently. Will give him and Vidal and Powell more chances. (Thanks for the Powell recs, hadn't heard of those titles.)
― dow, Sunday, 8 January 2023 00:25 (one year ago) link
In his collection Hugging the Shore, Updike says of xpost DM Thomas,
...he was busy lecturing, translating, and writing poetry before becoming a novelist. It is a happy move: he writes with a poet's care, an academic's knowledgeability, and the originality of a thorough unprofessional. The popular success of The White Hotel could not have been aimed at.
astonishing novel...an elegantly experimental yet quite warm work whose unhyped best-seller status during much of 1981 represented an authentic triumph pf reader discrimination and word of mouth
...there is nothing like the propulsive telescopic action of The White Hotel, where the epistolary prologue yields to the heroine's erotic poem, the poem to its prose retelling, the retelling to Freud's psychoanalysis of the young lady, the analysis to her later history, her history to the historical horror of Babi Yar, and Babi Yar to a miraculous Palestine---at every shift new perspectives opening thrillingly and a superb suspense maintained.
I didn't remember any of that specifically, from the early 80s---to the library now!
― dow, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 21:34 (one year ago) link
When I was a teenager I was sent to a summer school for gifted mutants and D M Thomas was one of the guest speakers. He read an extract from The White Hotel, making a point of stopping just before he got to a rude bit. This really got the audience on his side!
He also had some short stories in the later incarnations of Moorcock and Bailey's New Worlds.
― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 10 January 2023 21:53 (one year ago) link
DM Thomas’ poetry is great, any critic of it can kiss my grits
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Tuesday, 10 January 2023 22:14 (one year ago) link
Oh, Updike said it, no wonder.
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Tuesday, 10 January 2023 22:15 (one year ago) link
Heh.
― Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 10 January 2023 22:24 (one year ago) link
Someone on my twitter feed mentioned Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. I'd never even heard of it so I'm wondering if it fits in this thread.
― lord of the rongs (anagram), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 11:40 (one year ago) link
Not really.
― And Your Borad Can Zing (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 11:48 (one year ago) link
He is extremely well-known, read and talked about all the time, especially on but not restricted to this board, that book in particular.
― And Your Borad Can Zing (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 11:49 (one year ago) link
James Redd OTM !
― the pinefox, Wednesday, 1 February 2023 11:52 (one year ago) link
Yeah, that’s a bit like asking ILM if we’ve heard if Insane Clown Posse. Hell, I did a reading with Chip just last March! Delightful person.
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 12:03 (one year ago) link
Dhalgren also Delany's best-selling novel by some distance.
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 1 February 2023 12:11 (one year ago) link
Wondering now whether anagram was trolling.
― And Your Borad Can Zing (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 14:12 (one year ago) link
No I wasn't, I never troll. I was genuinely wondering if he was widely read these days, since I'd never heard of him. But I don't read book threads much and I never read SF, so there we are.
― lord of the rongs (anagram), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 14:16 (one year ago) link
Oh okay, thanks for clarifying.
― And Your Borad Can Zing (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 1 February 2023 14:21 (one year ago) link
has anyone ever read Johan Bojer? norwegian novelist, nominated for 5 nobel prizes in literature, never mentioned on ilx. i'm intrigued by his Last of the Vikings and The Emigrants, was curious if anyone knows much about his work
― President of Destiny Encounters International (Karl Malone), Sunday, 19 February 2023 03:48 (one year ago) link
Never read him, I know The Emigrants got turned into a highly regarded film with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann.
― JoeStork, Sunday, 19 February 2023 04:13 (one year ago) link
reading a book published in the mid-sixties in the corgi "modern reading" series with a bunch of otherwise mostly big name authors: a novel about a forgotten novelist by the forgotten novelist thomas hinde. never heard him referenced or mentioned in any form before, but he seems to have put out quite a few.
― no lime tangier, Monday, 24 July 2023 23:25 (eight months ago) link
I've a couple of the books in that Corgi series and have been keeping an eye out for others - I've never heard of the Hinde one. How is it?
The internet is really bad at having reliable lists of series like that one (cases in point: how hard it was for us to have a decent go at all the books in the Harvill Leopard series; the comprehensive list of the Penguin Modern European Poets is similarly down to one mildly obsessive internet person). I wish I could find full lists of the Corgi Modern Reading Series and Quartet Encounters.
― Tim, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 13:50 (eight months ago) link
A reference librarian or someone else handy with WorldCat could probably generate lists of the titles in those series.
― Brad C., Tuesday, 25 July 2023 18:09 (eight months ago) link
Maybe - I’ll have an ask around and find out. It certainly wasn’t possible with the numbered Harvills: it’s easy enough to get lists of everything from a particular publisher in a period of time but the data around particular editions / formats / series can be spottier I think.
― Tim, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 20:28 (eight months ago) link
Dhalgren is one of my three most beloved novels of all time.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 21:59 (eight months ago) link
xposts: it's written from the pov of a glib & cynical london journalist in search of his literary quarry, very much about 60s brashness running up against pre-war restraint. not a lost masterpiece or anything, but i'm quite enjoying it.
the only other in that corgi series i have is queneau's zazie. what i can see online of some of the others they have quite an appealing design style.
― no lime tangier, Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:35 (eight months ago) link
WorldCat is incredible, I use it often but mostly for rudimentary purposes
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Tuesday, 25 July 2023 23:47 (eight months ago) link
also re quartet encounters, i came across this awhile ago when trying to recall the author/title of a book i'd seen once and then couldn't remember the details of except it was from that series... not sure how exhaustive that list is though.
― no lime tangier, Wednesday, 26 July 2023 06:18 (eight months ago) link
Wow thanks - there are things on there I've never seen or heard of. It's not exhaustive - can't see my old favourite "The Demons" by Heimito von Doderer on there, for example, but it's' a lot better than nothing.
― Tim, Wednesday, 26 July 2023 07:16 (eight months ago) link
Yeah there is about 2/3 I can think of that are missing.
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 26 July 2023 07:32 (eight months ago) link
Agreed re: the inconsistency of bibliographic info on the interweb.
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database has a broad remit and can sometimes be good for genre-adjacent writers - certainly puts literary fiction equivs to shame. Thomas Hinde has an entry:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1615330
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 26 July 2023 08:18 (eight months ago) link
There's a critical anthology called The Salon.com reader's guide to contemporary authors, published in 2000. "Contemporary" in this case means "first published after WWII", although they specifically omitted the Beat writers on the basis that "they've been over-discussed" and everyone had their fill of them now.Obviously the Beat writers stay in public memory as names and cultural figures, but what of their writing? Was this dismissal common in literary circles at the turn of the millennium? Has attention swung back towards these writers in the years since, or are they locked in the past? My guess is that Burroughs is probably more read than anything except maybe "Howl" these days.
― Halfway there but for you, Friday, 28 July 2023 16:15 (eight months ago) link
I think Kerouac still gets checked out by readers as a "big name" and captures a smallish but continuing readership in that way. I think the Beat poets have had a bit better luck at finding readers than the novelists who aren't Kerouac. But this is a novelists-no-one-reads thread so poets are just tag-alongs here.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 28 July 2023 17:01 (eight months ago) link
There were two Kerouac movies about 10 years ago. He's probably still being read, but since we're not in high school it's hard to know.
― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Friday, 28 July 2023 17:05 (eight months ago) link
I'm surprised to see that Kerouac has four Library of America volumes.
― Brad C., Friday, 28 July 2023 17:08 (eight months ago) link
Re: the Beats, Kerouac and Burroughs are still widely read among the novelists.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 28 July 2023 19:37 (eight months ago) link
I wrote a big term paper about Wild Boys back in 2009. That’s his best afaic, and the most pornographic.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 28 July 2023 19:38 (eight months ago) link
He was very interested in young men ejaculating while being hanged. Not judging.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 28 July 2023 19:43 (eight months ago) link
He was! Also the power of gay sex to overthrow the state.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 28 July 2023 21:06 (eight months ago) link
Which, frankly, I am totally here for.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 28 July 2023 21:07 (eight months ago) link
xxxp i agree abt wild boys. it’s a great summation of the cut up trilogy + naked lunch, while shifting from the early single focus on hard boiled fiction to the “now we’re pirates / now we’re cowboys / now it’s sword and sandal” thing of the cities of the red night trilogy
idk how to describe the arc i see , except maybe trying on a succession of “mens adventure” styles as a formal device, whereas the early stuff is tied to hardboiled crime conventions and the middle is based in cut ups. wild boys is the one stop shop, the one single book of his that never gets stale or overdoes it in any part
i also think cities of the red night trilogy is really great, i recently got the boy scout manual he wrote but sadly haven’t even opened it. he has a million minor works to track down
― the late great, Friday, 28 July 2023 21:49 (eight months ago) link
i guess i think of wild boys as the spot where he jettisons the formal bs and the confessional junky stuff and really gets down to it, and then the cities of the red night is an expansion on that (pirates, cowboys and indians, sword and sandal being popular topics for early 20c runaway wild boy imaginations)
― the late great, Friday, 28 July 2023 21:51 (eight months ago) link
yeah, i would agree. of course the themes remain, but Wild Boys feels more apace with a fantasy novel about a war of feral twinks against polite society than the sad junky elicit desire exoticism of the early works. he was, of course, an execrable person, but Wild Boys really is a treasure.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 28 July 2023 22:38 (eight months ago) link
yeah for me i sort of got into the beats via burroughs. like i wanted to hang out with this weird poltergeist ii looking dude from ministry's "just one fix" and learn his weird negative philosophies. it wasn't like "now i want to read the one who hooked kerouac up with pills like a creepy older cousin with a fake ID, and survived hard drugs by turning into a scarecrow"
actually that makes it sound a lot cooler than it is, esp when you get into actual biography. i also appreciate that he moves away from the misogyny during that period, although i guess if you look at papers, interviews, etc he never quite hangs up it up entirely, even the worst stuff
― the late great, Friday, 28 July 2023 22:51 (eight months ago) link
yeah i found out enough to know i was fine with liking one of his books a lot, nothing more.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 28 July 2023 23:50 (eight months ago) link
I think the Beat poets have had a bit better luck at finding readers than the novelists who aren't Kerouac.
― dow, Saturday, 29 July 2023 04:13 (eight months ago) link
Those are the only Beat-associated novelists beyond the Big Two that I can even think of (although later, when I read Tropic of Cancer, I thought the Beats might be influenced by Miller, who hasn't been mentioned yet on this thread, has he?)
― dow, Saturday, 29 July 2023 04:16 (eight months ago) link
i remember a burroughs interview where he specifically denies any miller influence, on him anyway.
ferlinghetti wrote at least one novel which i don't think i ever finished. lew welch wrote an unfinished novel which i liked. haven't read any of these peeps since my teens.
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 29 July 2023 05:48 (eight months ago) link
will always have a soft spot for miller for pointing me in the direction of so many other better writers.
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 29 July 2023 05:52 (eight months ago) link
Miller isn’t read much by young people because shocking sexism and graphic sex scenes aren’t too welcome. Ginsberg’s aura has gone down a lot since his death and people became aware of two things: firstly, he was a NAMBLA supporter (yuk), and secondly, other than about ten poems, most of his work is abysmal
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Saturday, 29 July 2023 11:32 (eight months ago) link
I picked up a copy of *The Colossus of Maroussi* recently. I think I'll leave Miller to memory but if I was to re-read him, this is where I'd go.
― (picnic, lightning) very very frightening (Chinaski), Saturday, 29 July 2023 11:49 (eight months ago) link
i don't find Miller especially graphic but his misogyny is very hard to get past. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare was the last book of his i still felt affection for but that's probably 20+ years ago
i've read a couple of Clellon Holmes's books, Nelson Algren feels like a proto-Beat in that mould, i think these are not "nobody reads" authors but v limited interest nowadays?
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 29 July 2023 14:54 (eight months ago) link
I went through a Miller phase in my early 20s, largely because Hunter Thompson, whose writing I still idolize, said he was, and I think this quote is right, "a fucking brilliant writer." Yes, he could write great sentences, that much is true. But everything said upthread is otm. Also, I read a biography of him once, and came away with the impression that he spent most of his life asking other people for money.
He did point me in the direction of Lawrence Durrell, who is mentioned upthread and who, while is not much read any more, probably should be.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 29 July 2023 15:17 (eight months ago) link
asking other people for money is the mark of an artist tbf
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 29 July 2023 15:20 (eight months ago) link
Yeah, but he seemed to spend most of his waking hours doing that rather than writing. And he was obnoxious enough about it that most of his friends recalled that first and foremost.
I did very much enjoy his turn in Reds.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 29 July 2023 15:22 (eight months ago) link
i was semi-joking, the "artist as bum" trope is its own kind of mythology. for another thread i guess - earning a living but staying free enough to do your thing without compromise, and whether that's possible or desirable
― Let's talk about local tomatoes (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 29 July 2023 15:25 (eight months ago) link
there are a few glorious beautiful passages in tropic of cancer but yeah ick
― brimstead, Saturday, 29 July 2023 15:49 (eight months ago) link
Was Steve Katz ever read in the first place?
― alimosina, Saturday, 29 July 2023 16:59 (eight months ago) link
i’ve had these thoughts too but i think if anything maybe it’s maybe just being part this line of mean mister self destructs that maybe also includes celine and baudelaire etc
― the late great, Saturday, 29 July 2023 19:35 (eight months ago) link
“how i fought the law and found redemption transcended morality by hurting the people around me” pfffffft not so fast buddy
― the late great, Saturday, 29 July 2023 20:53 (eight months ago) link
"there was just as much fucking going on back then as there is now"
― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Saturday, 29 July 2023 22:00 (eight months ago) link
That was what young I got from Tropic! Wasn't surprised by the sexism, broads there for the taking etc.---don't remember racism, but wouldn't have been surprised by some of that, given the generation (also just as much that going on then as now). But without remembering specifics, overall, and warts and all, I thought it was---impressively well-constructed and articulate and robust, for something made out of scroungey old man--but also I read that it took him ten years to put it together, and given his limitations even so, one book was enough for me (though I'll check out xpostColossus if come across it).That happens sometimes anyway, like somehow The Moviegoer. though great, is enough Percy for me, though I know I'm missing out.
― dow, Saturday, 29 July 2023 23:40 (eight months ago) link
After The Moviegoer you only really need The Last Gentleman and maybe some of the essays in Signposts in a Strange Land and The Message in the Bottle
― Poor Little Fool Killer (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 29 July 2023 23:44 (eight months ago) link
Feel like YMP and I weighed in on this pretty recently, maybe upthread.
― Poor Little Fool Killer (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 29 July 2023 23:49 (eight months ago) link
Yeah probably upthread, but maybe not so recently; we've been doing this a while.
Less familiarly, perhaps:
Speaking of The Moviegoer and Percy though, I sometimes wonder about novelists who were Beat without being part of that movement or whatever you call it: A certain vein of early-to-mid-century American, maybe especially Catholic artistry, looking out at the world, passing through it, committed to some things but always speculative, mystical in personal ways: Percy (no Graham Greene, but also suited to being) the convert, Kerouac born into it, at least in working class work-drink-think cycles, ---and James Agee, who seems like he may have influenced Kerouac, or at least preceded him via his own such (middle class) cycles, def incl. expeditionary flights as novelist, and machine-gun typewritin' moviegoer, for that matter, seemingly brushed by his Southern (Gothic?) "Anglo-Catholic" high church Episcopal upbringing, and then deepened by the (actually Catholic?) college mentor and lifelong correspondent---Also, not Catholic, but---in Growing Up Absurd, Paul Goodman says, "Even Faulkner is Beat, in a complicated way," and thinking of that, I always think first of thee purple prolix barnstorming ov Pylon---Gough Man Gough!(WF reportedly wrote it to "let off steam" from a bigger project: quite the work-drink holiday, I say.)
― dow, Sunday, 30 July 2023 00:07 (eight months ago) link
^nice post!
― Poor Little Fool Killer (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 30 July 2023 00:09 (eight months ago) link
Thanks---one other thing, re the artist as mooch: for all his faults, Ginsberg, judging by what I've read and been told over many years, was quietly generous, right up to the end.
― dow, Sunday, 30 July 2023 00:15 (eight months ago) link
Ginsberg came into some money by selling his papers to Stanford University. He did a reading on campus and played the harmonium and chanted a bit in the mid-90s.
I guess Patreon and crowdfunding have enabled some artists to keep going economically.
― o. nate, Sunday, 30 July 2023 15:39 (eight months ago) link
This piece on Lisa Carver is illuminating on the material aspects of being a writer on the edges of economic viability from the ‘90s to the present:
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-43/reviews/live-free-or-die/
― o. nate, Sunday, 30 July 2023 15:49 (eight months ago) link
I've told this story in another thread, but I worked at a record store in Boulder, Colorado in the 80s. Boulder was also home to the Naropa Institute, at which Ginsberg was a regular visitor. He would come into the store from time to time and ask whether we had the album First Blues (he never identified it as his, but of course we all knew who he was). I told him we did. What I didn't tell him was that it was the same copy we'd always had.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Sunday, 30 July 2023 16:02 (eight months ago) link
Omnivore has brought out a greatly expanded and often great The Last Word on First Blues, The Complete Songs of Innocence and Experience and one I haven't heard, At Reed College: The First Recorded Reading Of Howl & Other Poems The olde Holy Soul Jelly Roll box is awes, ditto his Hal Willner-produced The Lion For Real. Like Burroughs and Kerouac, he was often at his best as performer, with his singing, speaking and harmonium guiding Don Cherry Elvin Jones,Arthur Russell, Dylan, Ribot, Frisell, The Clash etc. etct
(Novel-wise,Valmouth is so far pretty stupid, trying to decide whether to jump to ilx-favored The Flower Beneath The Foot or send these Five Novels back to library loan.)
― dow, Sunday, 30 July 2023 17:42 (eight months ago) link
I learned from John Szwed's Harry Smith bio that Allen Ginsberg gave him tons of $ & support (& Ginsberg wasn't rich) & Smith's later work wouldn't have been possible without Ginsberg. Also this Ginsberg LP recorded by Smith at the Chelsea Hotel is good! https://t.co/FHavRN0Pzg— Marc Masters 🌵 (@Marcissist) July 30, 2023
― mookieproof, Sunday, 30 July 2023 18:11 (eight months ago) link
I know it’s the wrong thread, but anyone who gets really enthusiastic about Ginsberg is either in high school or knows little about poetry-/ the poems, nor his performance of them, are very good.
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Monday, 31 July 2023 12:03 (eight months ago) link
xp love a lot of First Blues, esp the version of New York Blues on there
― bulb after bulb, Monday, 31 July 2023 13:11 (eight months ago) link
On the shelf in the public area of my daughter’s dorm there seems to be a copy of a Sidney Sheldon novel.
― Smike and Pmith (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:35 (five months ago) link
the other side of midnight!
― Smike and Pmith (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:37 (five months ago) link
Seems to be a brand new copy. By “the master of the unexpected.”
Another thread asserts that the film version wrecked Marie-France Pisier’s career.
― Smike and Pmith (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 October 2023 16:40 (five months ago) link
Just returned to the spot. See a ton of Robert B. Parker on there.
― Smike and Pmith (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 21 October 2023 22:03 (five months ago) link
Not that he isn't read at all anymore but Oliver Goldsmith was super popular for a long long time. The Vicar of Wakefield was getting anew edition every two or three weeks a hundred years after it was published.
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Tuesday, 24 October 2023 19:47 (five months ago) link
Vicars used to have a much higher Q-Score and were capable of filling the leading-man role without hurting the box office.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 24 October 2023 19:51 (five months ago) link
Paul Gallico
― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 15:53 (one month ago) link
Already mentioned though, sorry
― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 21 February 2024 15:54 (one month ago) link
Have read that, even as he became more of a Slavophile, Dusty was still affected by this French guy; have also read that Karl Marx was a fan:
Marie-Joseph "Eugène" Sue (French pronunciation: [øʒɛn sy]; 26 January 1804 – 3 August 1857) was a French novelist...He was strongly affected by the socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works, the anti-Catholic novels: The Mysteries of Paris (Les Mystères de Paris) (published in Journal des débats from 19 June 1842 until 15 October 1843) and The Wandering Jew (Le Juif errant; 10 vols, 1844–1845), which were among the most popular specimens of the serial novel.[4][8] The Wandering Jew is a Gothic novel depicting the titular character in conflict with the villain, a murderous Jesuit named Rodin.[1] These works depicted the intrigues of the nobility and the harsh life of the underclass to a wide public. Les Mystères de Paris spawned a class of imitations all over the world, the city mysteries. Sue's books caused controversy because of their strongly violent scenes, and also because of their socialist and anti-clerical subtexts.[1]
― dow, Thursday, 22 February 2024 03:09 (one month ago) link
someone asked me about May Sarton today and i said that nobody reads her anymore but i actually have no idea if this is true! it just felt true. this is how fake news gets started.
― scott seward, Thursday, 22 February 2024 05:53 (one month ago) link
in my defense, i read a really nice book by Mary Ellen Chase this year. she died in 1973. in lieu of flowers read one of her books.
― scott seward, Thursday, 22 February 2024 05:55 (one month ago) link
I recently saw a copy of the Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum and thought of his thread. I know the Bourne films still persist but I never ever see anyone reading the books, and they don't even seem to turn up that often in UK charity shops these days (and they really were all over airport bookshops etc in the 70s/80s).
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 22 February 2024 10:06 (one month ago) link
Do people in the UK still read Hal Caine? Those Manxman/Deemster books were a pretty huge deal at the end of the 19th century.
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 23 February 2024 18:53 (one month ago) link
xp as far as Bourne is concerned he was obviously cash-worthy enough for the publisher to pay Ninja Pulp King Eric van Lustbader to write a bunch of further sequels at one point, tho i have no idea what the state of play is in 2024
― wang mang band (Noodle Vague), Friday, 23 February 2024 19:03 (one month ago) link
that's Sir Hall Caine to you. I've heard of none of these.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/591
― koogs, Friday, 23 February 2024 19:19 (one month ago) link
Hitchcock adapted one of his novels!
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 23 February 2024 19:22 (one month ago) link
Also I thank him for this:
It was this book, (The Manxman) published as one volume in August 1894 by Heinemann, that ended the system of three-volume novels.
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 23 February 2024 19:28 (one month ago) link
I'd never heard of Gertrude E. Trevelyan but she fits the thread and sounds interesting:
82 years ago today, Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan, one of the most remarkable novelists of the generation that followed Virginia Woolf, died at her parents' home in Bath of injuries sustained when her flat was bombed during the Blitz. Died—and was utterly forgotten.A thread. pic.twitter.com/7SQkv87OXH— Neglected Books (@neglectedbooks) February 22, 2024
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 23 February 2024 20:52 (one month ago) link
xp which Mary Ellen did you read? Silas Crockett rings a bell, so maybe I've seen it--- also like this note:
She taught at Smith College starting in 1926 until her retirement in 1955. She was the lifelong companion of Eleanor Duckett, a medieval scholar whom she met at Smith, and with whom she lived in Northampton until her death. Two adjoining residence halls on the Smith campus are named for Chase and Duckett.[3][1]
― dow, Saturday, 24 February 2024 01:08 (one month ago) link
i read *Dawn In Lyonesse*. its short. you could read it in a day. i liked it a lot. she had a simple style.
the best book i've read in the last year was *A Country Doctor* by Sarah Orne Jewett. i loved it. it was like 1884 alice munro kinda. don't know how many people read her anymore! i'm sure *The Country of the Pointed Firs* is still in print but i'm guessing when its taught its taught in some kind of medicinal way. for historical importance. regional writing of the late 19th century in america. i could be wrong. she's so readable and entertaining to me.
― scott seward, Saturday, 24 February 2024 04:32 (one month ago) link
The Country of the Pointed Firs remained very much a thing when I finished grad school in 2010.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 24 February 2024 13:25 (one month ago) link
i've just got done reading a memoir/polemic by the english novelist douglas goldring. also a poet, playwright, publisher, lit mag editor, travel writer, tourist guide & journalist, he seems to have known everyone in art and leftist circles during the twenties but the only reference to him i can remember ever seeing was as the publisher of an early story by wyndham lewis. have never come across one of his novels but now keeping an eye out.
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 24 February 2024 18:05 (one month ago) link
are there richard aldington readers out there? another writer of that era whose novels i never see around.
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 24 February 2024 18:09 (one month ago) link
once upon a time i kept meaning to read some. plus the themes were relevant to some stuff i was taking notes on and chewing over. i remember his cycle was being kept in print - yellow spined volumes iirc - but can’t remember who by. was he a bit fash?
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:15 (four weeks ago) link
wait, i’m getting him confused with… who am i getting him confused with?
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:16 (four weeks ago) link
henry williamson.
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:18 (four weeks ago) link
aldington i kept bumping when i used to be in the english language modernists etc, think if anything id have him as a v minor poet, didn’t realise he’d written any novels or if i did know i’ve forgotten.
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:20 (four weeks ago) link
Edward Dahlberg
― Don’t Want to Say Goodbye Jumbo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 March 2024 13:18 (four weeks ago) link
No one except skot that is
― Don’t Want to Say Goodbye Jumbo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 March 2024 13:19 (four weeks ago) link
Burgess picks the whole of Williamson's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight in his 99 novels selection, while admitting "In the later volumes a pro-Fascist tone prevails, highly disturbing, and an almost manic bitterness which is far from acceptable"!
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 18 March 2024 13:36 (four weeks ago) link
his son played on some gong related projects iirc
xpost: liked the dahlberg collection i read a few years back!
& xposts: yeah aldington mostly known for his imagist association and biographies of the two lawrences. death of a hero is the only one of his novels that got/gets any attention as far as i know. was even published as a penguin which is why i'm surprised i've never spotted it.
also reading an article about goldring's lit mag turns out it was where a bunch of what would later become lewis's the wild body was first published speaking of fash
― no lime tangier, Monday, 18 March 2024 14:05 (four weeks ago) link
The only Williamson I’m curious to read is his unused film treatment for tarka that was 400,000 words long & basically encompassed that whole 15-novel cycle, going through centuries of history of the region before the otter even appears; weirdly the producers ended up going in a different direction. His descendants seem to work extremely hard at whitewashing his more unsavoury traits but even the official website basically intimates it was the scribblings of a demented crackpot
― cozen itt (wins), Monday, 18 March 2024 14:13 (four weeks ago) link
I myself have been meaning to read Dahlberg for a long while/pvmic
― Don’t Want to Say Goodbye Jumbo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 March 2024 16:30 (four weeks ago) link
Mayne Reid, who wrote 75 adventure novels of the American West in the mid-1800s, which were quite popular, especially with young readers, and translated into many languages. He was cited as an early influence by some better-remembered writers, such as Nabokov, Chekhov, Milosz, Conan Doyle.
― o. nate, Monday, 18 March 2024 18:35 (four weeks ago) link
I just ran across this 1897 article from The Yellow Book called "A Forgotten Novelist" about an 18th century writer named Robert Bage
https://archive.org/details/yellowjan189712uoft/page/n318/mode/1up
― President Keyes, Monday, 18 March 2024 18:37 (four weeks ago) link
i keep my dahlberg books handy for comfort reading. he always brings a smile to my face.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 19 March 2024 03:29 (four weeks ago) link
Just came across a cheap ebook of mentioned upthread and championed by Conrad Knickerbocker author Charles Wright’s novels that looks intriguing
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 March 2024 19:51 (three weeks ago) link
Reminds me I have a Wright threefer somewhere: The Messenger, The Wig, and Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About, with intro by Ishmael Reed. Gotta dig that one up and get started!
― dow, Monday, 25 March 2024 03:31 (three weeks ago) link
Marie Corelli
The popularity of Marie Corelli has never been understood in this office, ‘“The Review of Books and Art” has done its full duty in pointing out the errors of Marie’s literary ways. Readers who still linger over her pages must do so at their own risk. The editor can no longer feel that he is in any way responsible for them. Mr. Alden’s letter from London, printed last week, probably explains the recruiting ground whence Marie’s readers are mainly drawn. He said she is read “by people who are ‘so fond of reading,’” and that, when a new book of hers comes out, the chambermaid is sure to read it. Here are the sources for a very large following, and Marie Corelli unquestionably has one. She was virtually started on her successful career by an august personage— who to have been told better—the Queen herself. Since the Queen was known to read her works, thousands of other persons, beginning with chambermaids and rising in the social scale far too high, have been drawn into the miscellaneous following.
But this is no reason why “Harry ©.” should read Marie Corelli. The Queen may do so, but he should not. It will be neither wise nor profitable for him to waste his holiday hours in that vain pursuit. The editor is glad to know that he finds “The Sorrows of Satan” “rather ridiculous,” and sees in that fact sound literary judgment. Publishers’ counters are loaded with better fictions than hers. Here below is a list (which the editor has chosen somewhat at random from the much longer list printed in “The Review” on Dec, 11) to which “Harry C.”, and all his reading friends are earnestly urged to give their days and nights, rather than to the books of Marie
--New York Times Book Review, Jan. 8, 1898
― President Keyes, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 14:28 (one week ago) link
“The Review of Books and Art” has done its full duty in pointing out the errors of Marie’s literary ways.
Amazing line
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 15:28 (one week ago) link
i want to see how many on the much longer list no one reads anymore
― mark s, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 15:35 (one week ago) link
Ulysses references Corelli a few times i think, which may have extended her longevity and would imply that at least in Dublin in 1904 people were ignoring the New York Times Book Review
― Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 15:53 (one week ago) link
In 2007, the British film Angel, based on a book by Elizabeth Taylor, was released as a thinly-veiled biography of Corelli. The film starred Romola Garai in the Corelli role and also starred Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling. It was directed by François Ozon, who stated, "The character of Angel was inspired by Marie Corelli, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria's favourite writer. Corelli was one of the first writers to become a star, writing bestsellers for an adoring public. Today she has been largely forgotten, even in England."
― President Keyes, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 15:56 (one week ago) link
Horror critic R. S. Hadji placed The Sorrows of Satan at number one in his list of the worst horror novels ever written.[2]
Brian Stableford, discussing Corelli's "narcissistic" novels, described The Sorrows of Satan thus: "as delusions of grandeur and expressions of devout wish-fulfilment go, the fascination of the Devil was an unsurpassable masterstroke"
― President Keyes, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 15:58 (one week ago) link
On Wormwood:
The Times described it as "a succession of tedious and exaggerated soliloquies, relieved by tolerably dramatic, but repulsive incidents", and criticized Corelli's writing as having a "feminine redundancy of adjectives".[2] The Standard described the book as "repulsive".
― President Keyes, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 16:01 (one week ago) link
"Corelli’s heaving blend of overheated romance, vitalist metaphysics, and occultism, with plentiful hints of clairvoyance, reincarnation, mesmerism, Egyptian mysticism, and mysterious psychic powers and traditions, had secured her position as one of the most popular and successful authors of the Edwardian period, outselling writers like H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling."
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/radioactive-fictions/
― Brad C., Tuesday, 9 April 2024 16:07 (one week ago) link
sounds rad tbh
― Daniel_Rf, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 16:12 (one week ago) link
Margaret Mackie Morrison "achieved international acclaim in 1932 with the publication, under her pen name March Cost, of her first novel A Man Named Luke," says Wikipedia. Someone must have read her stuff.
― alimosina, Wednesday, 10 April 2024 00:40 (one week ago) link
Ulysses references Corelli a few times i think,
The Guardian Angel by Paul de Kock IntroductionThose who have heard of Paul de Kock at all will have probably have come across the name in Ulysses; Molly Bloom asks her husband Leopold to get her one of his books, and there are several other references to him in various places in the novel. (Though Sweets of Sin, the book Bloom bought, is apparently not by him.) Even to Joyceans it may come as a surprise to realise that Paul de Kock really existed; at least one (amateur) Joyce fan assured me that he didn't. But he did; he was a well-known and popular French author of the first half of the nineteenth centry. His books were translated into several languages, and popular in Britain for many years. Collected editions in English translation were published in both England and the USA in 1902-1904. Paul de Kock - a Brief Biography(From the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911])KOCK, CHARLES PAUL DE (1793-1871), French novelist, was born at Passy on the 21st of May 1793. He was a posthumous child, his father, a banker of Dutch extraction, having been a victim of the Terror. Paul de Kock began life as a banker's clerk. For the most part he resided on the Boulevard St Martin, and was one of the most inveterate of Parisians.
Introduction
Those who have heard of Paul de Kock at all will have probably have come across the name in Ulysses; Molly Bloom asks her husband Leopold to get her one of his books, and there are several other references to him in various places in the novel. (Though Sweets of Sin, the book Bloom bought, is apparently not by him.) Even to Joyceans it may come as a surprise to realise that Paul de Kock really existed; at least one (amateur) Joyce fan assured me that he didn't. But he did; he was a well-known and popular French author of the first half of the nineteenth centry. His books were translated into several languages, and popular in Britain for many years. Collected editions in English translation were published in both England and the USA in 1902-1904.
Paul de Kock - a Brief Biography
(From the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911])KOCK, CHARLES PAUL DE (1793-1871), French novelist, was born at Passy on the 21st of May 1793. He was a posthumous child, his father, a banker of Dutch extraction, having been a victim of the Terror. Paul de Kock began life as a banker's clerk. For the most part he resided on the Boulevard St Martin, and was one of the most inveterate of Parisians.
― dow, Wednesday, 10 April 2024 03:08 (one week ago) link