Literary Clusterfucks 2013

Less incest presumably. But maybe not.

I accidentally bought this without realizing it's written in a (much less offensive) invented version of (I guess) 'old English.' The only way I made it through ten pages was to read out loud and then I decided it wasn't worth the effort.

If you know any Nordic languages it helps. Lots of the words are just misspelled/modified Scandinavian words. Which of course makes sense (the Danes were there before the French). Anyway, it's a really good book.

So are you…recommending it then? You got an advance down under copy?

Yeah, got an advance copy. I liked it, but having read it after watching the Y The Last Man TV series meant it wasn't exactly fresh (though it did do a number of different things with the premise). To be honest my main problem was the plot relies on one character being an incredibly charismatic natural leader lots of people are irresistibly drawn to, and it did not sell me on their charms.

Paul Kingsnorth of The Wake has his own problems, being an anti-vaxxer let-everything-fall-apart accelerationist.

Basically, my advice is forget everything else in this thread, everyone should read RIDDLEY WALKER, which is brilliant.

haha i like hoban but couldn't deal with that patois either

Saw that stuff about Kingsnorth elsewhere.

I see that Sandra Newman got some good reviews for The Heavens, maybe I will check that one out.

Kingsnorth may be an accelerationist and a former-conservationist-turned-IRL-prepper (IRL in both senses lol) (also, didn't know about the antivaxxer stuff?) but The Wake is too brilliant a work to flippantly dismiss, and one which very much allows its reader to take a different moral viewpoint to its narrator's

Without giving away any spoilers. And also without giving away any spoilers, lol milo

International Rugby League?

He now lives in rural IReLand! Waiting for the climate apocalypse

Kingsnorth seems about as crazy as Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke (who I believe moved to Iceland at one point, to wait out Y2K). The Wake remains a very good book.

have you summoned the fire?

can anyone (tables is tables?) explain the clusterfuck around sean thor conroe's novel? saw some vague allusions to it on twitter but couldn't traceback. i like his podcast

The fact it's called "Fuccboi" seems pretty explanatory tbh. Aside from that someone (Sam Pink) claims he ripped off their style.

It sounds like the novel equivalent of the Anne Hathaway vehicle Havoc (directed by Barbara Kopple of Harlan County, USA fame!)

ok ya just read this https://neutralspaces.co/blog/post.php?id=1136

p good lit drama

can't say sam pink comes off particularly well there, and the drama undoubtedly gave the book some free promo lift

James, can you spoil how the novel deals with trans ppl (if at all)?

I really enjoyed Sandra Newman's The Heavens fwiw - strangely moving story about a 21st century dystopic woman who believes she is also Amelia Bassano aka Shakespeare's Dark Lady. Had no idea about her previous books.

Fuccboi gets a slightly prudish ("my understanding is that it’s a slang term, about a decade old, for young American men in cities who conduct a caddish heterosexual sex life" it begins, adjusting its monocle) but generally positive review from Christian Lorentzen in the latest LRB https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n05/christian-lorentzen/how-tf-was-i-privileged

even since lorentzen used the word poptimism in a lazily incorrect and negative sense i have enjoyed imagining him being chased round the room w/a cattleprod to improve his critical thinking one zap at a time

I will keep that image in mind when I imagine you reading Grimey Simey Reynolds on Talcy Malcy Maclaren in the same issue of the LRB!

i expect it will be food for thought *adjusts monocle*

lol:

"And while you a fkn legend to mfkrs who know, it baffles me how many of these so-called literary fucks don’t know your shit. So many people who read my shit are like Yo, that style you doin, how figure that out? To which I’m like, Sam Pink, bitch! Read Sam Pink you New Yorker Paris Review fuck."

can anyone (tables is tables?) explain the clusterfuck around sean thor conroe's novel? saw some vague allusions to it on twitter but couldn't traceback. i like his podcast

― flopson, Tuesday, March 8, 2022 1:30 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The clusterfuck seems to be from any number of sides. One side, the snooty bougeois liberal progressives, think the protagonist is offensive. Another side, the more actually left literary types, think that another stylized novel about a terrible man looking for fucks and redemption is the last thing anyone should ever have to read again. And more conservative types are like, "good heavens, a book not written in the queen's English, by crum!"

I mostly don't care, fwiw, because in interviews, Conroe comes off as the most obnoxious asshole I can possibly imagine, an actively disgusting human being, and the excerpts from the novel look like utter shit.

And the dude got a $200,000 advance, so there's the "guy imitates others in the indie ranks to take major-label money" angle.

Like seriously, look up excerpts from the book and you'll find that it is the clunkiest, cringiest straight male "voice of authenticity" that you've ever read. That would be fine if there was an ounce of self-awareness, but there isn't.

If you want to read a guy who is writing in a toxic masculine voice that is actually interesting and aware of itself, read Mike Amnasan.

The money thing isn't surprising, money begets money and Conroe is clearly from a well-to-do background.

having a podcast probably didn't hurt

I don't really understand the phenomenon of podcasts, I don't listen to them and don't see that changing. If assholes and charlatans keep getting book deals from them, to me that means that they're even less worthy of attention.

for a writer I'm sure they provide more exposure than a reading at a small bookstore does

I liked Sean Thor Conroe more when he was called Atticus Lish

Though not THAT much more tbh

I mean, I've DONE podcasts— hosted them and been interviewed on them. I still never listen to them lmfao.

James, can you spoil how the novel deals with trans ppl (if at all)?

Trans people are mentioned but (DRAGS DETAILS FROM POSSIBLY FAULTY MEMORY) don't play much of a role. Basically trans women with XX chromosomes vanish with all the men; so do women with androgen insensitivity syndrome.

And yeah, the bits of Fuccboi I've seen make it look like absolute trash.

Honestly it's desperately bad, the excerpt on the book's website and what little I've read from people posting it makes it seem like the worst garbage. I was going to paste a quote but I'll spare everyone.

i, however, feel no such compunction

I know you have your ideas about me. And maybe they’re correct. Maybe I am a sus hetero bro who’s been subtly abusive and deserves to be cancelled, for my basic ways.

i have a fondness for sean after listening to a few episodes of his podcast and liked the short story of his that was posted on tyrant blog a year or two ago. i don’t think he’s toxic, just a neurotic kinda dumb stuttering stoner bro. im not sure if his background is affluent, is that confirmed or inferred from the schools he attended? i read he went to swarthmore on a scholarship

we should all have to declare before holding forth else how can we know the sus from the sussers

https://i.imgur.com/MIcvku1.jpg

I don't really understand when ppl talk about podcasts like there's something specific to them - it's just talk radio, basically, if the ppl talking are ppl you think are worth listening to you'll enjoy if they're not you won't. Not having a go at you table, some mediums just aren't for certain people, it's just I find it sad when ppl hear "podcast" and assume it's all Joe Rogan shit.

Trans people are mentioned but (DRAGS DETAILS FROM POSSIBLY FAULTY MEMORY) don't play much of a role. Basically trans women with XX chromosomes vanish with all the men; so do women with androgen insensitivity syndrome.

Thread has moved on but yeah this seems like the author hasn't done as much thinking on gender as she might think.

I get what you're saying, Daniel, and didn't take it as a swipe. I think, tbh, that I have some weird psychological thing wherein I was forced to listen to a lot of NPR growing up, and then a few years ago was forced to listen to Rogan episodes while working on a weed farm, and I simply don't want to listen to other people talk, almost ever. I'd rather read.

It's also related to the phenomenon, for me, of people talking about Netflix or other shows or the football game like it's something that everyone does. So many people I know talk about certain podcasts this way, and it really icks me out.

I was forced to listen to a lot of NPR growing up

lol I have used this fact as an explanation as to why I a) hate NPR and b) don't listen to podcasts much. I can only listen to them in situations where I'm doing something that means I can't read (washing dishes, cooking, and driving), and I tend to prefer fully scripted ones. In my personal hell, Marketplace will be playing ubiquitously

Somewhat glad to know that I'm not the only one who has this aversion for similar reasons

Oh yeah the NPR house style is unbearable. Recently listened to the Trojan Horse Affair podcast, which is gripping, vital journalism and even on that the cutesy NPR style drove me up the wall.

I think my mental image of podcasts is like the opposite of ubiquity, a lot of the stuff I suscribe to I assume has like twenty other listeners. I do actively resent that stuff being edged out by huge celebrity podcasts, but twas ever so.

I hate listening to radio news for the same reason, but I've recently realized that my aversion doesn't extend to all podcasts. I think the format of people talking to each other in my hearing doesn't bother me as much as someone reciting information at me. But I'm still very picky about my podcasts; I have a few French ones that I listen to for language purposes, and a couple of English-language ones that I like okay, and that's it.

In a convergence of separate clusterfucks in this thread, Lauren Hough weighs in on Sandra Newman

https://laurenhough.substack.com/p/a-question-for-lambda-literary?s=r

Have to say that Hough comes off better here than she does when complaining about her Goodreads reviews