Authors you will never read

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.

Why would I trust reviewers that spawned the careers of people like Curtis Sittenfeld?

A lot of it just seems like manufactured acclaim at a certain point, and upper middle class people with the money to blow on hardback literary fiction lap it up. It's fucking gross, and most of it is just bad.

how much serious literature is untainted by the touch of the upper middle class?

I mean you can just not feel like reading them without projecting or concocting a whole thing about it

Curtis Sittenfeld's first novel is good.

If some reviewers liked it, good for them.

Literacy is tainted by the touch of the upper middle class iirc.

There are not many upper-middle-class people in the UK.

Maybe the term means something different in other countries.

That's because you have as many words for class as the Inuits do for snow, amirite.

I think there are quite a lot of them, by the way.

I mean, how else to describe Frank Turner?

Kidding aside, Wikipedia informs me that approximately 15% of Americans are upper middle class, which I assume is a higher percentage than in the UK. There can only be one upper mississippi sh@kedown, however.

Tom D: I had to look him up. Apparently he's a punk born in 1981. Don't think I'll be investigating further.

Pomentiful: I'm surprised that wikipedia is able to give data on something so contentious. But insofar as this is possible - yes, it's very different (and higher in the US), because 'middle class' means something different here.

Pomentiful

:D

Let this henceforth be the Anglicized version of my ILX handle.

Women authors besides Rowling mentioned as fitting the original context of the thread title: Kate Zambreno, Ayn Rand, Joyce Carol Oates, Jean Auel, Donna Tartt, Leïla Slimani, Angela Carter, Deborah Levy, Jenny Diski, Lauren Oyler, Lorrie Moore, Helen Fielding (indirectly), and Bronte (which one left unspecified).

About five or six other women authors, like Anne Carson or Zadie Smith, were also mentioned in passing, but not as authors the ilxor would never read.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Friday, August 7, 2020 11:58 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

thanks shitbird