Authors you will never read

If we're talking about "female authors that just don't work for us" it's Renata Adler for me. I think it's impossible not to enjoy Joan Didion but I'm probably the least-enthusiastic of all the people I know. Unhip female authors I unabashedly love: Heti and July.

I feel a desire to type my favourite authors, scanning through my bookshelves just now: Baldwin, Barthes, Borges, Bowles (Paul and Jane), Calvino, Carson, Carver, hooks, Joyce, Le Guin, Lovecraft, Melville, Mishima, Nabokov, Flann O'Brien, O'Connor, Oe, Strugatskys, Vidal, Joy Williams, Wolff.

Fave ever is prob Barthes and Joyce, Mishima continues to rot in my brain I still love that horseshit, O'Brien and Gore Vidal less so but still important, Joy Williams is my go-to "recommend something new to people" choice. Any holes? I could use an intervening recommendation these days, I'm looking at my "next up" pile and it's a re-read of Lydia Davis short stories and a couple Hollinghursts I haven't read. I could use a recommendation. Maybe I should finally read Cheever like people have been telling me to

Constance barnett, or at least so far. Still wondering how accurate a translation it is in terms of mood etc.
May eventually rethink but have never progressed far into her work cos it just seems so genteel.
Wish I read russian though

Which Murdoch have you attempted? There's an awful lot of it and the quality varies wildly.

The Black Prince

Yeah, just from experience, I've read two Murdochs - Under The Net and The Sandcastle - and would never have guessed they're even by the same writer. Sandcastle very much is dons with neuroses - Under The Net is a madcap comedic novel.

Speaking of clunky prose tho I soldiered through The Disposessed, and did enjoy it for its ideas, would never dismiss LeGuinn entirely she's such an obviously great figure, sci-fi is full of writers with less than stellar prose styles, disclaimer disclaimer, but anyway on the evidence of that book a great stylist she wasn't.

Oh good, so I'm not alone in failing to gel with Le Guin's prose style. I'll give Left Hand another try sometime. Maybe I was expecting something different.

I tried my first McCarthy like a month ago (All the Pretty Horses), and bounced off of that too. Another time.

Yeesh, the aura around this guy in his time is hard to comprehend.

The reaction to the incident in the literary community to which Mailer and Morales belonged has been judged by many observers to be remarkably mild. As Mailer later noted, his friends "closed ranks" behind him. He remarked to New York Magazine in 1983 that "the reactions were subtle as hell. Five degrees less warmth than I was accustomed to. Not fifteen degrees less—five."[8] Many of his counterparts saw the assault as an artistic, even literary act; James Baldwin a writer and friend of Mailer, characterized it as an attempt to free himself from "the spiritual prison he had created with his fantasies of becoming a politician," "like burning down the house in order to, at last, be free of it".[9] Diana Trilling later recalled being told by her husband, critic Lionel Trilling, that the stabbing was a "Dostoyevskian ploy" allowing Mailer to "test the limits of evil in himself."[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Adele_Morales_by_Norman_Mailer

See also the killing of jean vollmer constantly described as something Burroughs “never got over”, like - I would fucking hope so tbh! People always talk as though it’s something that happened to him

Norman Mailer’s son was a guest at one of my best friend’s wedding. He was married at the time to the sister of the bride. He stood up to make a toast, I think he claimed it was going to be in French but really what he said was “I have two words for you: couples therapy.”

Another illustrious guest at the wedding was Alfred’s favorite, Billy Collins.

Shame on you for not killing Collins when you had the chance.

If you only knew.

There were lots of creepy old dudes of his age there, hard to single out one.

I'll give Left Hand another try sometime. Maybe I was expecting something different.

It might help to know that the second half of Left Hand is vastly different from the first half. The first half is all politics and world-building and serves to set up the second half, which is much faster-paced and more emotionally charged.

one of my best friend’s

xp The last 100 or so pages of Left Hand are extraordinary - as good as anything I've ever read.

That does help to know, thanks. I didn't get to the second half.

I will never read Richard Ford or Elizabeth Strout; they look so deadly dull.

I've only read some Ford short stories, but I thought they were pretty decent.

The Lay Of The Land and Independence Day are both incredible imo. Terrible endings iirc. But the observation and language are just tremendously pleasurable.

Elizabeth Strout is not dull. She's good.

I changed my mind about this thread.

I agree with Matt DC.

This is the second spike I’m worried about pic.twitter.com/TUQQkWLENj

— Sebastian Milbank 🥀 (@JSMilbank) August 7, 2020

Patrick O'Brien. I think he's a terrific writer but I can't get through the sailing jargon.

I think a less snotty way of looking at this thread would be "Authors you will never read again", because then at least you've tried and failed, rather than dismissed without evidence -- but I wouldn't want to prudishly deny anyone the true pleasure of snottiness.

Authors I wouldn't want to read again: McEwan, Ford, Chia Melville, Hemingway, Barnes, Scott Lodbell

If I'd only read "The Man in the High Castle", I probably wouldn't want to read PKD again; thank god for Ubik

Inferno good to read. The rest of it is just okay, tbh.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table),

Purgatory's the dullest part, but I loved each one of the blessed's description of how h/she earned a place in it.

*earned a place in Paradise

the thread-shift to "authors you will never read again" is doubtless inevitable but distinctly less interesting, kudos chairman alph for asking the real questions

Agreed.

Never read? I'll be real: I've never read Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, or Jonathan Franzen.

I will never read them. With the exception of Mailer, whose macho aura repels me, the remainder of them just seem to write novels that are lauded by critics but aren't actually very good, as not many people I know have read through them...and I don't really hang out with a lot of people who don't read a lot, for better or for worse.

uh oh gooblar to thread

I'm curious though, if you've never read Rushdie/Roth/Franzen, yet know they are lauded by critics, how do you come to the conclusion that they aren't actually very good? Esp when you don't know people who read them! No trust in the critics?

Rushdie is such a dickhead it's hard to imagine him writing anything worth reading. And, yes, I know dickheads have written great novels in the past.

Never going to read a novel by anyone who appeared on Late Review

Now you're talking.

I think w/Rushdie...I've yet to a see a sentence from him that tells me this is good shit (and on twitter any ppl will screenshot a page or make a bot and I haven't seen anything, and if I have it certainly hasn't resonated w/me because I don't remember).

Sadly the noise of his circumstances needs to clear up, too. Wouldn't surprise me if one of the early novels might be ok. But at this stage in proceedings I'm not looking for ok either. I have a good pile of stuff and I know the voice I'm looking for.

You're missing out not to read The Ghost Writer, at least

Rushdie has a fun tendency to invent words iirc, but otherwise did not need/enjoy

Reading Rushdie is like an exhausting Robin Williams routine

There are a few Late Review / UK literati writers who I like on the page but can't stand as celebs (of course there more I dislike in both cases) - so I'm glad I didn't dismiss them all out of hand.

Only writers I have not read anything by and never would are the writers of epic multi-part series which I don't have the time for - Robert Jordan, Catherine Cookson, James Ellroy, etc.

I'd stan for Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe novels. Their politics are questionable and there is a dullness about them but still. And Roth is a hoary old fucker but I'm glad for Sabbath's Theatre, American Pastoral and The Ghost Writer.

I had a like/hate relationship with the Late Review Show and it was hilarious reading that thread on here and I wish I had been here back when the show was on (though really, a good internet diet cancels out my television watching). But I do plan to read China Mieville, Kim Newman and Jeanette Winterson (admittedly they weren't regulars) and wouldn't be against John Carey because I found him quite likable and he once pulled the best look of exasperated bewildered disdain that I've ever seen and I wish there was a gif of it.

Tom Paulin was kind of funny too. I liked how his eyes blinked separately.

Would like to try Hari Kunzru too.

I've recommended paulin's essays on northern ireland to ilxors before now, a novel is going way too far tho

I read Disgrace and said "Coetzee is kinda bad" to a friend and he gifted me a copy of Waiting For The Barbarians and I got halfway through it and called him and said "no he's actually really bad"

I'm ashamed to admit that I read The Elementary Particles and Platform and Possibility Of An Island in my early/mid 20s and enjoyed them but when I think about reading them again I shudder

I can't make shitposts without balancing them with some positivity: pulpy authors I adore include Hollinghurst and Iain Banks

This thread has become: "Authors, of every kind of writing, that you have read, or not read, or that you like, or don't like, or a bit of both".

Authors, why are they so bad and hated, or are they?

Rushdie is such a dickhead it's hard to imagine him writing anything worth reading. And, yes, I know dickheads have written great novels in the past.

― Udo Starmer (Tom D.)

i haven't either but i will rep for the disco song he wrote for the burnley building society in 1979

Philip Roth I think of as Celine but not as good. Sabbath's Theatre is a book that I would've read at 25-30, maybe. But I did not, so there.

Mailer I think I will read. I've said once on ilx that Harlot's Ghost has potential xps = my thread...my beautiful thread

I'm curious though, if you've never read Rushdie/Roth/Franzen, yet know they are lauded by critics, how do you come to the conclusion that they aren't actually very good? Esp when you don't know people who read them! No trust in the critics?

― Scampidocio (Le Bateau Ivre), Sunday, August 9, 2020 5:01 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Very little, tbh. I will read NYRB or LRB on occasion, and read a number of poetry reviewing sites, but if I see that it received a good review in the Times, I generally assume it's garbage.