post itt writers you think are bad

My UK Picador copy of Trout Fishing in America has an endorsement from Auberon Waugh of all the unlikely ppl.

Another writer I would bracket with Robbins and Brautigan and seems even more discarded = William Kotzwinkle. His ET novelisation is p great!

I enjoyed Vollmann's non-fiction book on Imperial Valley, CA. It's of personal interest to me though since I grew up there, so YMMV.

Kotzwinkle is one of the great cult writers. It’s ridiculous that only one of his works has had a film adaptation, as they’re screaming for the big screen treatment (although Ralph Bakshi tried to make an animated The Fan Man in the 70’s)

If you like Kotzwinkle, Thomas Berger will appeal to you

I wasn't kidding about Kafka. Wherever I encounter that sort of funny/not-funny inscrutable portentous symbolism I curse his name. Give me HP Lovecraft or HG Wells over him any day of the week.

I tried reading Kafka in German but gave up because I don't know German.

Not all of his books are good, but Vollmann is excellent when he’s excellent. He is, indeed, a lovely person

I take ivys point that there should be less caping itt but a list of names with zero discussion is about the most boring thing imaginable, cf the posi thread going atm, cf also maybe the lamest thread on this website “things you don’t care about” just a series of there-I-said-it turds useless to anyone, you don’t want that for this thread

would just rather ppl not get defensive (i'm guilty re: sebald!!!). thread can be for sincere investigation and appreciation AND blunt dismissal. also thread policing is fun and stupid

the thread police : live inside my head / come to me in my bed / coming to arrest me!
oh no!!

miranda july's not obscure! she's a bestseller and a marquee name at literary festivals!

She's also got a new novel coming out next month that I am eagerly anticipating.

i've never read july. my friend lent me the first bad man a few years ago, maybe i'll finally read that next

I remember not liking her movie but "poop 2 poop" is an unimpeachable contribution to culture, and maybe that's something a "good" writer would never have attempted.

i like to move it move it

vollman brought a gun to a signing I went to a very long time ago. I can't imagine anyone doing something like that these days.

I dont know that I've ever actually finished one of his novels though i certainly have started most of them. I do like Rainbow Stories which are essays.

i remember the metamorphosis being pretty good in german, that said my german wasn't totally fluent at the time, and is terrible now

Vollmann’s An Afghanistan Picture Show would make a great film. It’s amazing how he is still alive. He’s lived on the razor’s edge more than Hunter S. Thompson

i just read that his daughter died in 2022. that's rough. his face is a fascinating thing to look at. and the cross-dressing thing. wow. i didn't know about that book. yeah, he is quite the unique character. his books always looked like they hurt. like they would hurt me. i know that sounds weird. maybe he's just too intense for me. i mean i guess i'm somewhat fascinated by violence but mostly i run from it. unless its a horror movie. or an action film.

i'm convinced that this stuff will actually drive you insane if you read too much of it but i find it mesmerizing in small doses:

“'Who's that galoot?' I asks th' dub who's slammin' carriage doors at the curb. 'Is he a married man?'

“'He's married all right,” says th' door-slammin' dub.

“Wit that I tears into him. It's a good while ago, an' I could slug a little. Be th' time th' copper gets there, I've got that jolly good fellow lookin' like he'd been caught whistlin' Croppies Lie Down at Fiftieth Street an' Fift' Avenoo when th' Cathedral lets out.”

“Well, I'm not married,” remarked the Wop, snappishly;—“I'm not married; I niver was married; an' I niver will be married aloive.”

“Did youse notice?” remarked the Dropper, “how they gets a roar out of old Boss Croker? He's for racin' all right.”

“Naturally,” said old Jimmy. “Him ownin' race horses, Croker's for th' race tracks. He don't cut no ice.”

“How much do yez figger Croker had cleaned up, Jimmy, when he made his getaway for Ireland?” asked the Wop, licking an envious lip.

“Without comin' down to book-keepin',” returned old Jimmy, carelessly, “my understandin' is that, be havin' th' whole wad changed into thousand dollar bills, he's able to get it down to th' dock on a dray.”

The Grabber came in. He beckoned Slimmy, and the two were at once immersed in serious whisperings.

“What are youse two stews chinnin' about?” called out the Dropper lazily, from across the room. “Be youse thinkin' of orderin' th' beer?”

“It's about Indian Louie,” replied Slimmy, angrily. “Th' Grabber here says Louie's out to skin us.”

“Indian Louie,” remarked the Wop, with a gleam in his little gray eye. “That's th' labberick w'at's goin' to shti-i-ick up me poolroom f'r thim fifty bones. Anny wan that'd have annything to do wit' a bum loike him ought to get skinned.”

“W'at's he tryin' to saw off on youse?” asked the Dropper.

“This is th' proposition.” It was the Grabber now. “Me an' Slimmy here goes in wit' Louie to give that racket last week in Tammany Hall. Now Louie's got th' whole bundle, an' he won't split it. Me an' Slimmy's been t'run down for six hundred good iron dollars apiece.”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51909/51909-h/51909-h.htm#link2H_4_0005

“Lishten, then.” This came from the Irish Wop, who was nothing if not political. “Lishten to me. Yez can go to shleep on it, I know all about a socialist. There's ould Casey's son, Barney—ould Casey that med a killin' in ashphalt. Well, since his pah-pah got rich, young Casey's a socialist. On'y his name ain't Barney now, it's Berna-a-ard. There's slathers av thim sons av rich min turnin' socialists. They ain't strong enough to git a fall out av either av th' big pa-a-arties, so they rush off to th' socialists, where be payin' fer th' shpot light, they're allowed to break into th' picture. That's th' way wit' young Barney, ould Ashphalt Casey's son. Wan evenin' he dr-r-ives up to Lyon's wit' his pah-pah's broom, two bob-tailed horses that spint most av their time on their hind legs, an' th' Casey coat av arms on the broom dure, th' same bein' a shtick av dynamite rampant, wit' two shovels reversed on a field av p'tatoes. 'How ar-r-re ye?' he says. 'I want yez to jump in an' come wit' me to th' Crystal Palace. It's a socialist meet-in',' he says. 'Oh, it is?' says I; 'an' phwat's a socialist? Is it a game or a musical inshtrumint?' Wit' that he goes into p'ticulars. 'Well,' thinks I, 'there's th' ride, annyhow; an' I ain't had a carriage ride since Eat-'em-up-Jack packed in—saints rest him! So I goes out to th' broom; an' bechune th' restlessness av thim bob-tailed horses an' me not seein' a carriage fer so long, I nearly br-r-roke me two legs gettin' in. However, I wint. An' I sat on th' stage; an' I lishtened to th' wind-jammin'; an' not to go no further, a socialist is simply an anarchist who don't believe in bombs.”

can you imagine? just book after book of that stuff. can you even imagine writing a few pages of it? you would have to be on some pretty strong stuff.

his westerns were just as dense and demented:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13709/pg13709-images.html

i don't even know what this is!

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/16680/pg16680-images.html

Whilst I am not going to read, it's good to see things like "sad girl" novels and the misogyny being debunked in this piece.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/11/sad-girl-novels-the-dubious-branding-of-womens-emotive-fiction

i've never heard that term before. must be a british thing. or a tiktok thing.

i just read that his daughter died in 2022. that's rough. his face is a fascinating thing to look at. and the cross-dressing thing.

― scott seward

the what

In 2008, as part of an exploration of prostitution and transgenderism, Vollmann began cross dressing and developed a female alter ego named Dolores, which is documented in The Book of Dolores.[12][13] Dolores is a relatively young woman trapped in this fat, aging male body,' Mr. Vollmann said. 'I’ve bought her a bunch of clothes, but she's not grateful. She would like to get rid of me if she could.'"[14]

ohhhhh ok

yeaaaaaaaaaah i know a lot of guys like vollman

they do tend to be pretty fucked up people

i guess i'm gonna read some of his stuff, he sounds interesting. not because he dresses. his writing just sounds interesting.

he just always looks sooooo fucking sad. but that might be his face's natural state. i found one photo on GIS of him smiling! it was almost jarring to see. Dolores does not look any happier.

i did not know that the FBI was seriously looking at him as The Unabomber. that's insane.

"After the real Unabomber was caught, Vollmann was listed among the suspects in the 2001 anthrax attacks."

yeah the picture of dolores used in stephanie burt's new yorker review is a peak "sad t-slur" photo

xyzzzz, funny that you mention "sad girl" novels, trans lit is in large part made up of "sad t-slur" novels - some folks in the trans literature scene (the only lit scene i have even the remotest knowledge of - my understanding is that it's pretty small and most of it traces its lineage back to an early '10s publisher named topside, which imploded messily) do use those words to talk about that strain of trans writing.

being a "sad tranny" is something i personally struggle with a lot. i got a melancholic temperament, i'm very much a "sad girl", and like, i got reasons. i got reasons to be sad. i mean patriarchy does play a role in it, i think, women deal with shit that men just _don't_, it makes _sense_ to be sad when one has that experience. i feel tremendous pressure to not be sad, to be a positive role model, and sometimes being sad can be a way of defying that pressure. that said, on a personal level i also work hard to not be _defined_ by my sadness. to celebrate joy in a world that often works to deny folks like me that experience.

regarding the lack of "sad boi" novels, i do think it's... i don't think people should _not_ talk about "sad girl" novels. i mean brautigan, for instance, was a sad boi. hemingway was a sad boi.

anyway it was really interesting to read stephanie burt's review from early 2014. just... the way trans people, as well as cis people like vollman, have come to understand and relate to transness. 10 years was two lifetimes ago, at least in the way i count time. so in 2014 stephanie says (fuuuuuck ok hi lou):

I am certainly a cross-dresser, which is one way of being transgender: I enjoy dressing up as a woman and being called Stephanie, I have written about it before, and I wish I could do it more easily and more often.

by 2017, she could and did. she transitioned. the longer i do this the more fraught that word, "transitioned", becomes for me. a lot of the review is stephanie talking about herself, her experiences, and fuck yeah she is, in 2014? in 2014 how often did one get a chance to talk about one's own transness? not very often. and particularly - particularly - gender is often defined by cisgender men, by cisgender men who treat it as an act of _imposture_. that's sort of the line of critique i read in burt's review.

it's interesting to read, to think about how things have changed for me and for the world. in 2014 it was important to say that the story vollman tells is _not_ the story of trans people, not how we see ourselves. in 2024...

i don't watch the videos f1nn5ter is making about his experiences with HRT, but i saw on the sidebar somebody had a video titled something like "NO MORE FEMBOYS BY 2026?!?!?! IS F1NN5TER RIGHT!?!?!" i... doubt this is an accurate representation of whatever f1nn5ter said. i say it because it's a window to a world i don't see often. femboys, i know little about femboys. i'm cool with them. i think femboys are great. that said, you know, sometimes one of them will say "oh, wait, there's something else going on here, i'm trans". i _don't_ see trans women saying "oh wait there's something else going on here, i'm actually a femboy". you see all of this anxiety and people do pressure gender non-conforming people to "transition" in a binary sense. i was doing that, fairly recently, and i do now think that was a mistake on my part, that it was my own anxieties.

it's so hard to look at other people and see them _as they are_ and not through the lens of my own experiences. that's kinda why i want to read the book of dolores now, to see what vollman says about himself in _his_ words, to not superimpose my own trans narrative onto him. maybe ten years ago, a narrative like vollman's would be imposed on us, on our experiences, and it's not like that now.

there are pictures of dolores that are less sad. but you can't... you can't tell. there's a picture of a popular rock group from a couple months before its lead singer's suicide. the lead singer is wearing makeup and rings on his fingers, he's smiling... and he's holding a gun. that picture says something to me about how _complicated_ gender is for some of us. that's the vibe i get from dolores. a very "makeup and guns" vibe. i don't really mess with either, myself, but god, it's a whole fucking mood.

---

also, how fucking insane is it that this isn't mentioned in vollman's wikipedia bio?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_roadside_attack_on_Spin_magazine_journalists

i mean uh. to me that would seem significant enough to mention in his wiki page directly rather than as a footnote at the end? but nope.

that Augustus Burroughs dude, Running With Scissors was probably the worst book I’ve ever read. Is it bad that I thought he was lying?

blurb for _kissing the mask_ (2010):

Description:

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central comes a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty....

What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extraordinary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look into the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself.

vollmann, you magnificent bastard. i sure as fuck am _going_ to read your book. what _is_ a woman? i cannot _wait_ to learn the answer.

Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.

please, sir, i want to experience your "extraordinary awareness" of "transgender". tell me more. i promise not to ask too many uncomfortable questions about your "endless curiosity".

fun fact - there is apparently _no ebook_ of _the book of dolores_. i went ahead and ordered a print copy.

i feel like this insanely long review belongs on this thread. and no i did not read the whole thing.

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/conroe-fuccboi/

"The shape of it seems to be: Conroe and Fuccboi, in unpublished manuscript form, were championed and edited by Gian DiTrapano, the beloved cult-figure publisher of indie press New York Tyrant"

Oh, well that makes sense, because DiTrapano's last big promotion was Atticus Lish, who is also bad, and (from what I can tell from this review) bad in sort of the same way that this guy Conroe, who I have not read, seems to be.

haha came here to see if anyone said conroe, having just attempted to read "fuccboi"

yeah it's very extremely terrible

i have now read at least 2× as much of people slagging off this book as i ever will of the actual book

i jumped off at i think about page 60

christ it was ruggedgoing i tellya

*(space)
*(space)

good review

Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown

Got into a thing with the Fresh Grocer lady over coffee filters.

It honestly wasn’t a biggie, but why say they’re on sale if they aren’t, all I’m sayin.

She was like This muhfucker. What aisle.

I told her what aisle and we went and checked. Together.

Well we started to, but then she told me not to follow her when she noticed me following her.

I was like Aite, fasho putting my hands up. Like I’ll hold it down. Man the reg’.

When she came back and said No du’, they ain’t on sale, I snapped.

That’s why I tried to come with! I said. To show you they are.

So we checked, actually together this time, she hemming and hawing the whole way.

Honestly can’t remember whether they were or weren’t, but I’ll never forget that incident. It connected us. It marked the start of a long, fruitful, and strictly nocturnal friendship.

This thread revive gives me an opportunity to moan. I’m currently about 60 pages into The Age of Reason by Sartre* and god damn every time a female character is involved he just seems to write about their boobs. It is seemingly women’s only real defining characteristic in his eyes. A new woman is introduced? Someone will feel on their boobs. A new woman is introduced? They’ll rub their boobs on the male character while dancing. A new woman is introduced? She’ll walk around in only a kimono and let it swing open to see her boobs. Come on mate.

*dont think he’s a bad writer tho

Misread this as "writers who you think are bald"

Thomas Berger to thread!

To the bald version, that is

Very realistic a modern 21st century gen alpha always are arguing over coupons at the supermarket

(Cyberpunkly/tiltokly): “I believe this said 20 cents off two bruh.”

reading that fuccboi review made me wonder what tao lin is up to....

Tao Lin
@tao_lin
My medicinal pet leeches may be dying of oxygen deprivation at the mail store due to Labor Day and due to me not picking them up on Saturday.
7:33 PM · Sep 2, 2024
·
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He was going to die, that was quite obvious. Hugo Langley tried to examine this fact dispassionately. The left wing of the Blenheim bomber was on fire and flames licked at the cabin. Behind him, his navigator, Flight Lieutenant Phipps, lay slumped forward over his instruments. A trickle of blood ran down one side of his face, seeping from under his flight helmet. And Gunner Blackburn was already dead, shot in the rear gun bay by the first wave of Messerschmitts. Hugo wasn't sure whether he himself had been hit. Adrenaline was still pumping so violently through his system that it was hard to tell. He stared down at his blood-spattered trousers, wondering if the blood was his own or came from Phipps.

"Bugger," he muttered. He hadn't wanted it to end this way, this soon. He had looked forward to inheriting Langley Hall and the title someday, enjoying the status in the neighbourhood as the squire, Sir Hugo Langley.

incredible work from 'rhys bowen'

Particularly enjoying '"Bugger," he muttered' with its cadence of 'Murder She Wrote'

'shot in the rear gun bay' *snort*

That was Snowden's secret, that he would never be Mayor

What's bad about that? Full of cliches, but I could get from the beginning to the end, at least.

Unrelatedly, I was going to suggest Jill Lepore, if only because she's one of those Michiko Kakutani types, i.e. a not-very-funny writer who keeps putting jokes into their copy. Also her features have that "I haven't quite worked out my main subject" thing that Malcolm Gladwell used to do so (equally) irritatingly.

i quite enjoyed mookie’s link to the dan brown review - fish in a barrel but they still taste good