post itt writers you think are bad

someone should write an essay about how Sebaldian The Walking Dead was. Not a McDonalds to be seen in 10 seasons! or one Home Depot! its almost like a reverie of a memory of the past. in Dresden.

Rand isn't mentioned here often because no one on ILX likes her and this is a challops thread in everything but name

"Seriously, the bar is Rand. I can't think of another writer who so successfully combined execrable prose with repellent ideas, which, sadly, have gained considerable currency, largely because they appeal to the worst impulses of humans in general and males in particular."

which is why i read her in high school and then never spoke of her again!

i made it to college-age with bukowski and henry miller. then dropped them too. at least they were funny.

Maybe her local bookstore hid all the long trad novels that are still being churned out idk

the luminaries and ducks, newburyport staring at me threateningly from the shelf. one of these years

although isn't ducks, newburyport some sort of Autofiction Taken To New Levels shit tbf

actually let's make this the threemonth I finally complete Darkmans, nobody can complain there

Miller was capable of moments of brilliance, anyway, but yeah, an author most of us were able to leave behind in early adulthood.

When I was in grad school in the early 90s, the thing was "reflexive fiction." Is "autofiction" the same thing?

Ducks, Newburyport is Ulysses + Erma Bombeck.

i made it halfway through! i still have it if there is another pandemic.

i actually did a book report on ayn rand in high school and i pronounced her name "ann" and my teacher stopped me mid-sentence and said "isn't it Ine Rand...?" and i said "how the hell do i know the internet hasn't been invented yet!".

The only book of hers I read in HS was Anthem, which was mercifully short. Apart from that, the best thing I can say about it is that it inspired side 1 of 2112.

I had my week in high school of thinking The Fountainhead was the greatest book ever, before someone mercifully talked me out of it.

he most popular fiction right now looks nothing like sebald, cusk, or any of the autofiction people. its all epic fantasy or near-fantasy or doomsday or history spanning trilogies with colorful characters who do not resemble writers at all. or lurid and operatic crimes committed by beautiful people.

whenever I'm out in the general populace and overhear people talking about a novel, 80% of the time when I look it up, it was by Colleen Hoover.

JCO, bless her, went off on a rant about why is everyone writing these kinds of books instead of big proper novels with stories like what I write like.

Wan little husks! I registered wanlittlehusks.com as a result, thinking I might start a little press for stupid autofiction with that name.

i was also reading those stephen r. donaldson books at the time in high school. a friend gave me the first one and i actually read it so i kept going. i remember them being lots of long sentences a la ayn rand. so i probably just thought long sentences = genius. i had never read the lord of the rings so i had no idea how much ripping off was being done.

but, weirdly, if someone had asked me who my favorite writers were back then i would have said sinclair lewis and donald e. westlake.

someone gave us that james mcbride book for xmas and after reading that nyt article about him and how it sold ONE MILLION COPIES i might try and read it just to read a million-selling book of recent vintage. why do people like it so much? i r kurious. i haven't read anything of his before but i guess i never thought of him as a ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD kinda writer. though his memoir is everywhere around here.

I have a suspicion but... has anyone read enough of don delilo and dan brown to confirm that they are the same person?

i was also reading those stephen r. donaldson books at the time in high school. a friend gave me the first one and i actually read it so i kept going. i remember them being lots of long sentences a la ayn rand. so i probably just thought long sentences = genius. i had never read the lord of the rings so i had no idea how much ripping off was being done.

Get ready for the next episode of By-the-Bywater, then. (We're not talking Donaldson but we ARE talking Terry Brooks and The Sword of Shannara, in comparison to which Donaldson is pure originality.)

No Dan Brown is a Danielle Steele alias, like Nora Robert’s/JD Robb

xp

I have read a couple of Deborah Harkness's books. I want to like them, but they are just so . . . predictable. She manages to throw in every urban fantasy cliche. And she really cannot write sex scenes.

i will bet you a million dollars that most new writers are just influenced by department of speculation and not sebald

...and maybe also the influence of having to do live readings? Live readings are hard. I feel like this is why so many young writers add shit cutesy jokes in inappropriate places. They work for an audience (or tweets) but fall dead on the page.

i used to stare at the bros. hildebrandt art of sword of shannara. so cool. my library had the record (excerpts) and i listened to it once. or part of it. i think i TRIED to read the first book? i did finally read The Hobbit back then and enjoyed it.

(speaking of which, i probably mentioned this before but my librarian was friends with michael whelan which was cool because i loved fantasy art and he would bring his art in. i loved boris and frazetta. his wife totally looked like a fantasy novel cover model and i had a crush on her.)

I have piles of fantasy paperbacks that I picked up for free or dirt-cheap during post-pandemic times - Raymond Feist, Terry Brooks, Patricia McKillip, Charles De Lint... I'm just not able to muster the passion to start any of them. I read way too much of this stuff in the last few years.

All I really want to read these days is philosophy anyway.

you should read ayn rand then. she wrote philosophy fantasy.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/25/all-things-are-too-small-by-becca-rothfeld-review-essays-in-praise-of-excess

And here it is, Becca Rothfeld has a book out. Doesn't sound a lot better than the Oyler collection.

It's funny that we speak of autofiction but many of the authors mentioned here never mention the most recent US predecessors, who were members of the New Narrative group or their fellow travelers— Acker, Kraus, Bellamy, Killian, Glück, etc. But then again , the latter three are actually good writers, unlike a lot of the autofiction people. Dodie Bellamy is a legit treasure of US letters, and hardly anyone knows who she is.

Patricia McKillip

Forget all the others. Read McKillip if you ready any.

Not read her in a long while, but 22yr old me is stanning for Kathy Acker in that list too, tabes. What Bellamy should I read?

Chinasky, for the real auto-fiction class of Bellamy's, try The Letters of Mina Harker, in which Bellamy revives Bram Stoker's Harker as a resident of 1980's San Francisco, inhabiting the body of someone much like Bellamy herself.

Her essay collections are also stunning: When the Sick Rule the World is tremendous, and her most recent, Bee Reaved, is totally devastating. Here's an excerpt from the final piece in it: https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/we-run-for-our-lives-dodie-bellamy-2021/

I admit I am biased— she was my mentor, and the best teacher I have ever had. But she really is one of a kind. She won a MacArthur Genius grant last year.

ugh, sorry about weird autocorrect misspelt username

Hahaha, it's all good. Obviously, I'll take your recommendations but I just looked up some of her titles and the juxtaposition of 'The Buddhist' and 'Cunt-Ups' was enough to convince me.

'Cunt Norton' is also quite fun

I read Acker's Great Expectations in grad school, and reread it after. I had to conclude that I was not her intended audience.

I admit that I don't like Acker much besides Empire of the Senseless.

The best New Narrative writer, alongside Bellamy, is Robert Glück. Margery Kempe, About Ed, Elements, Denny Smith— it is literally all gold.

i have nostalgic fondness for kathy acker. i think too much is made of her non-literary life and not enough on her sentences which could be really cool and definitely influenced how i think about fiction.

man, i tried to read the topeka school by ben lerner because i kept reading about it and...i couldn't do it. it was like being stuck in a room with an eternal grad student. not my thing. it reminded me of when i tried to read franzen. bleh. but maybe ben lerner is a great poet. i haven't read his poems.

i will make a note of these names though. i don't know bellamy. or mckillip.

Ben Lerner's first book, 'Angle of Yaw,' is known among many poets as 'Angle of Yawn.' Not worth your time, scott.

damn

I mean pic.twitter.com/BW7uGbl1H1

— Adam O'Fallon Price (@AdamOPrice) April 8, 2024

trying not to enjoy myself too much

I want to read the whole thing but it's not on the website...

“the Renata Adler of looking at your phone a lot”

ouchy

review actually claims she's not even curious enough to be the renata adler of looking at your phone a lot

savage

"she doesn't discuss a single work of literature"

Maybe that's because she doesn't want to. Even though she has written many essays where she demonstrates she can.

No doubt this book is terrible (rather she reviews a book but I'm old) , but it also sounds like she is going for some other things here that some of the reviews are missing.

lit crit without the lit is probably the way to go tbh.

i'm enjoying the book also renata adler sucks lol