post itt writers you think are bad

am afraid to read Gilead because I think I will not like it, but Housekeeping was strange and was memorable to me

Raymond Carver

The jump in quality in his posthumous collection Cathedral was so dramatic, given that Gordon Lish was able to do what he wanted, that I subsequently started reading all Lish's other collaborators and discovered one of my fave short story authors, Joy Williams

joy williams rocks

I think Maggie Nelson is bourgeois liberal idpol nonsense of the highest sort, totally disposable trash

― The return of our beloved potatoes (the table is the table), Sunday, February 14, 2021 5:13 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

she sucks

i should have started this thread with maggie nelson

the polarized views on Nelson i've encountered periodically make me want to read her out of curiosity, but i could make no headway with The Argonauts.

Joy Williams is great, yes! I love teaching the title story from Cathedral. Otherwise, I kind of think one can sum up Carver pretty easily: alcoholic suburbanites in deindustrialized America fight and converse about their troubles. It's a shtick that gets pretty old pretty quickly.

https://www.theonion.com/ask-raymond-carver-1819583880

marilynne robinson's main problem is her similes. housekeeping would have been pretty good without them and even with them it was quite haunting

interesting to me that maggie nelson argonauts is considered bourgeois liberal idpol by radical poets of ilx. maybe that’s why i liked it so much :) i generally find radical humanities ppl to be totally insufferable and incomprehensible but her voice was incredibly compassionate and thoughtful to me. curious to hear about why she sucks

i wasn’t as crazy about bluets

I'm unable to read Hilary Mantel but I suppose she may not be "bad". But I seriously don't get the appeal.

@flopson: *taps the first post*

I think all but the most callow and insecure Murakami stans would concede that it’s justified to believe he is completely bad

no one cares about my joan didion hot take but - i used to be really into her when i was younger, but the more i read over the years (and the more i grew up) the more i realized she didn't really have much to say. she is very good at reporting and observing though, especially as related to anxiety. just that when she is reporting or observing herself, or the fictional world she is constructing in her novels, there isn't anything very interesting there imo, beyond .. generalized anxiety. i guess i think that's bad writing.

there can be good writing that is only about oneself, but that oneself shouldn't be a nervous uptight celeb or it's bad writing, is how i break it down.

i love joan didion and did not take issue with her first mention on this thread and i even think you're kinda otm map, for instance the essay about california's water systems sings more to me than any of her more personal dwellings (maybe bc her feelings about water are more personal for her than her own history, idk it's possible). i love play it as it lays but it is kind of a narrow and uneven book. i love book of common prayer but it's also... kinda lopsided. her best work that i've read remains miami which embodies the strengths you identify, it's keenly observed

i love didion and disagree that writing that is "only about oneself" is bad. also am totally irrational on this topic.

yeah, the california water stuff is something that often stands out in my mind. i should give miami a shot. xp

maybe i also have some "california as a topic" fatigue though, wrt didion.

I recognize that Adam Gopnik is bad but he’s bad in a way I enjoy

gopnik is good on a very narrow range of subjects and mostly terrible on anything else imo

bolaño

:-(

I think Maggie Nelson is bourgeois liberal idpol nonsense of the highest sort, totally disposable trash

― The return of our beloved potatoes (the table is the table), Sunday, February 14, 2021 5:13 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also bad opinion.

Bolano has held up really well I reckon. Savage Detectives is not good as are a lot of the posthumously published matter.

I have only heard Gopnik on R4's A Ppint of View, and have not been at all impressed

Like Solnit, Nelson is a bourgeois striver who dismisses radical members of the working class for disagreeing with her shitty class, gender, and racial politics. They both suck.

She writes a lot less than Solnit for a start (Solnit is a fair regular in The Guardian and in wider conversation), wiki tells me Argonauts was her last book (2015) so she is already far less of a 'striver' and I don't get any Solnit type vibes in her writing, which is just The Argonauts, so far.

bolaño

Yay I'm not alone

I love Maggie Nelson, specifically Jane and Bluets, but just like Anne Carson I get why people wouldn't be into her

Bluets isn't bad as a book, though I think Gass did better with "On Being Blue." (I just really hate the Argonauts, tbqh).

I'm not sure I totally agree with fellow poet K4y G4briel, but any interested in Carson might be interested in this take: https://tripwirejournal.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/tw14gabrieloncarson.pdf

A Separate Peace really impressed me as a kid. It was taught in schools at the time. I was just realizing I was gay when I read it and its content to me felt like a beacon

I later had an amazing experience related to it - I got to meet its author John Knowles by chance, happening to sit next to him at the Alta Plaza bar in SF in the 80s. I told him how much it affected me as a child. He was taken aback but I thought it meant a lot to him, it made me feel good to be able to tell him that

it wasn't very good in retrospect but I will always love it

i have nothing specific against donald antrim but dude has written like 500 words per year for 30 years now

let's go buddy

Oh now I do have an opinion, I've railed against Antrim before on here somewhere.

My work emails nobody reads probably average 500 words and I write at least one of those a week.

read Shuggie Bain recently, had a hard time with it, seems like there is a trend for fiction like this that presents so much suffering, is it good?

thought Shuggie's eventual connection with another child like him redeemed it though

i have nothing specific against donald antrim but dude has written like 500 words per year for 30 years now

let's go buddy

yeah we're aware

ok this isn't quite what the thread is searching for, but

thomas friedman

Yeah he’s terrible.

saw him speak instead of going to an Art Brut show in 2006 ~~regret~~

guess I'll be the one to mention Richard Ford

such a monumental asshole that i would never even bother seeing if he had any merit

probably just boomer shit anyway

Nelson is a bourgeois striver who dismisses radical members of the working class for disagreeing with her shitty class, gender, and racial politics.
― The return of our beloved potatoes (the table is the table), Monday, February 15, 2021 7:26 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

what are her politics? did she vote for kamala in the primary or something

I assume Elizabeth Bruenig is a bad writer, assuming she’s actually a writer and not just a poster

Thanks for that Carson link, table, it was also my first time encountering the word "presentist", which I think will be useful in the future

flopson, tbh her politics are left of center from what I can tell, but her casual dismissal of a certain politic ("I'd never responded to comrade") and her negative portrayal and what I'd argue as verbal abuse of her trans partner made me think her politics are shit.

If people are interested in a writer who is thinking about identity formations, the inability of idpol to grasp the nuances of individual experience, etc., they would do better to read Denise Riley.

guess I'll be the one to mention Richard Ford

― swing out sister: live in new donk city (geoffreyess), Tuesday, 16 February 2021 05:17 (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ford's an interesting one. I enjoyed The Sportswriter but found what I think he was trying to convey as a happy ending (SPOILER: bloke takes up with a younger woman and tries to convince himself she's a good replacement for his wife) utterly depressing, which I don't think is what he was going for. If he was going for that response then well played I guess.

I didn't want to spam the thread with an old post but that kind of thing is exactly what I hated from Antrim.