The (S)word in the Autumn Stone: What Are You Reading, Fall 2022?

I don't understand any of these last few posts.

Me riffing.

Trust by Hernan Diaz
Wikipedia and Investopedia articles on fiat money

Unrelated: description of Karst from Aesop (Has anyone tried this fragrance and if so, could you please describe it in your own words?)

The LRB recently carried a marvellous review of the book TRUST.

Please allow me to try to explain. There is an old pattern that has been discussed on this borad many times before, of genre writers, because they feel stung by being ghettoized and desire access to greater prestige and $tatu$, stating that they better than (and perhaps thereby implicitly “more literary than) Literary Fiction. Which argument these days, in a perhaps less defensive form, probably pretty popular in some circles particularly within academia and this borad, I would think. But in fact it is obvious, as the mathematician said before pondering for a half hour it was obvious and concluding that it was indeed so, once one applies Sturgeon’s Law and sees that the 10% of good genre writers will be better than the 90% of brisk crap nebula writers of literary fiction who by Redd’s Rule will never be read anymore by anyone in the future. QED.

Which has a parallel in rock musicians wanting to escape their long distance information (stuck inside of) Memphian roots by appeals to classical ideas of virtuosity and lyrics being poetry etc.

So many typos such a small chat box, such dirty glasses.

So you don't write 'borad' deliberately?

Genuine question.

Poster Redd -- insofar as I grasp your argument immediately above -- I broadly agree with it and think it is, as you say, uncontroversial, among academics, ILX, and most people.

Defensive has deep roots though.

So you don't write 'borad' deliberately?

Genuine question.

Defensiveness

In other words, the fastest lion eats the slowest gazelle.

the hell's going on here

Me and the pinefox could become close friends
…
Me and the pinefox don’t see eye to eye on a
Number of things

Mr Oswald said he had an understanding with the law

Okay I’ll stop. My work is undun.

The ghettoization of genre fiction discussion is almost entirely redundant at this point— science fiction and fantasy are wildly popular, and form the basis for a great deal of popular culture. The idea that anyone as popular as Mosley would be weeping about not being taken seriously as a writer is absurd— he's laughing all the way to the bank, whereas some of the "literary" novelists who are really pushing boundaries are struggling as adjuncts working bar gigs on the side.

I agree with poster table.

I mean, Le Guin earned several Library of America volumes.

the poster is the table is otm

Even Delany, who has basically become a gay smut peddler (and GOD BLESS HIM), wins achievement awards and gains new fans of his work all the time. Will they read "Hogg" or "Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders"? No, and probably for the better. It's his science fiction that gets the attention, not the stuff that's more akin to Guyotat or Bataille or whatever.

This was two and half decades ago, so the current world-building boom of sf hadn’t quite heated up yet, but crime fiction already seemed to be treated pretty respectably, what with Black Lizard editions and film adaptations of Jim Thompson everywhere you looked, to name one concurrent indicator.

But now that I think of it, Chip Delaney was already getting some nice reissues at the time iirc.

yeah I think even within the genre in the 70s the vibe was "this guy is on a higher level"

Yeah, just proves the point even more.

He never distanced himself from the rest of sf. His critical writing on the subject speaks favorably of the same Golden Age and New Wave novels and writers that do well in ILX polls of the stuff. Not sure if this is related to what you are getting at, but his respectability also reinforced the respectability of the genre as a whole.

(poets follow form. if iambic pentameter is the most common stress pattern for your language--I am not sure this is true for any case considered--is it remarkable to write poetry that follows speech? yes?!)
(it gets painful to read the hospital scenes and reminds me of Thomas Mann and Tove Ditlevsen. who gets incarcerated? I am looking forward to trying to follow the LRB review and seeing if there is a comparable review in an American source and taking sides, like cheering for a baseball or football team when there are no stakes.)

Yeah, I said all that in response to Aimless above. Still doesn't make "because they didn't like the book" a satisfactory answer to "why didn't critics like this book", tho.

also of course genre fiction on one side and "truly pushing the envelope" on the other is a false dichotomy - plenty of sci fi writers work in experimental fiction, tho I grant you wouldn't know this from what gets pushed in mainstream outlets

Delany was in Glasgow a few years ago for this event:

https://arika.org.uk/beyond-transgression/

The audience was mostly young and queer and totally focused on Delany's sex radical writings - I don't think any of his SF stuff got a look-in, apart from Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (he gave a fantastic reading from that). So I guess one of the reasons that Delany still thrives as a public author/intellectual is that he has sustained different communities of readers, genre and non-genre, without negating one or the other, perhaps in a way that Mosley hasn't been able to. I mean I'm guessing Mosley's crime novels sold pretty well without ever crossing over to bestsellerdom, and there was a movie adaptation with Denzel Washington, but I seriously doubt that he's laughed his way to the same bank as more prolific, streamlined bestseller types like Grisham, Child, Patterson etc.

Very excited to start reading Devil House by John Darnielle.

the notion of people who are comfortably off by any normal metric remaining bent out of shape by a need for proper respect from people who likely aren't would seem to be a dominant theme of our age: they *should* be able to laugh all the way to the bank, and to log off and just be as happy as scrooge mcduck falling back into a bed of bank notes

but instead they anxiously and frantically refresh their TLs looking for glimpses of that sought-after respect but only ever find evidence of the opposite

(i don't want to project this onto mosley especially tho -- i know who he is but i've never read a word so i'm in no position to make this call)

"only ever find evidence of the opposite"

"only ever find evidence or imagined evidence of the opposite" <-- may be more accurate here

Just a note that I never said Delany distanced himself from SF, and as was guessed, I never said that SF and genre writing cannot push boundaries.

But if you look at mainstream literary fiction these days, especially the vast middle of the pack, there are a LOT of write-by-numbers novels that don’t do much that’s interesting at all. Oh, a ludicrous and unlikely character walks into a ludicrous and unlikely situation and with the help of another ludicrous and slightly different unlikely character undergoes a hero’s journey of some sort? This is most of what passes for literary novels these days, from my vantage point— it’s depressing.

As noted, I think poster table has been highly accurate on this particular topic.

My statement that maybe some readers did not like a given book was a restatement of table's commonsensical view. It was not a response to the question 'why didn't reader X like book Y?'. That would be tautological.

I think that status differences between literary and genre have been heavily rebalanced or altered - though there is still much nuance to be explored and stated there. Walk into a Waterstone's (a UK bookshop chain) and crime has its own room. But is that a ghetto of second-rated books, or is it actually the first thing you walk into, with literary fiction relegated behind it? This can vary. I went to a super independent bookshop in Ely recently, with all kinds of books, where crime was the primary thing when you walked into the shop, and SF / fantasy dominated the back room, and other fiction had to find its way amid them.

Literary mainstream authors have tried to write in genre-inflected modes (Ishiguro the evident example) - which plays into this topic, but doesn't in itself destroy the boundary between the fields.

One thing that has not been fully stated here is that many or most genre writers like being genre writers and are proud of being genre writers. They have had a strong sense of community for a long time. In the case of SF, this is at least since the 1930s when eg: there were multiple competing SF clubs in Brooklyn (cf discussions on other threads about Fred Pohl et al). Quite probably the same is true for crime, fantasy, Gothic, et al. Most genre writers, critics and fans have a very strong sense of the history and shape of the genre, its interconnections, main currents, alternate lines. Many of them would be puzzled or resistant if invited to be part of the literary mainstream, at least if it meant giving up that genre community of knowledge.

That's a good point in your final paragraph, pinefox— while people like Mosley and some other outliers exist, many who write in "genre" forms are quite proud of their genres and the communities there.

On a personal note, I am obviously quite happy to be a moderately successful "innovative" (or whatever) poet. I get paid to give readings and write articles about art and literature. The community is a big part of this— these are my people, a lot of them, and I care about them and the work that they're making. I am, in a way, proud of many of my friends and colleagues. It's small potatoes, but it's our potatoes the way we like them. It's pretty easy for me to see how this feeling extends to other forms and genres, even those that rank much higher on the popularity scale.

B-b-but what about the fellow who wrote a pocket novel called The State That I'm In? #onethread

Mark S was correct and perceptive to say that even people who should be laughing all the way to the bank also want status and respect and are frustrated not to get it. (Possibly he was thinking of Elon Musk.)

Yet my sense is that this has also been part of the rebalancing, so that eg: genre authors who are successful can also get to be treated seriously as sages with things to say. There must be scores of interviews with Walter Mosley (him again) that hang on his every word, and that wouldn't dream of not doing so because he's 'only a crime writer'. Same with eg: Val McDiarmid, Ian Rankin. When was the last time you saw anyone write or say 'This person is only a crime writer so the following interview with them or their comments on the week's cultural events should not be taken very seriously'? Never. They are virtually 'intellectuals' within UK culture.

True, there are instances like Dan Brown (whom I've never read) who make lots of money but are not respected intellectually - at least, not by the same people who respect Mosley and Delany. But take another example: George R.R. Martin (whom I've never read). Mainly a fantasy author as I understand it; vastly successful franchise; seems actually be taken seriously. Lanchester wrote about him in the LRB 10 years ago!

Where do you place someone like Alan Moore, pinefox?

I think he is hugely respected all round. Especially in a broader, sort of broadsheet cultural sphere where people only know him more vaguely.

I suspect, though, that people who are deeply immersed in comic book culture have more particularised and nuanced views of him eg: he hasn't been the same since 1990, his last series was an improvement, his second novel is better than his first, etc -- detailed and well-informed judgments that outsiders to the field wouldn't be able to make.

If the question is 'is he genre or mainstream, popular or artistic' then I think he seems a very good example of someone who has been able to have it both ways.

Sorry to interrupt, I've got a question for anyone knowledgable about the book industry:

I've read the first three books of the Yale University Press versions of In Search of Lost Time in paperback. The fourth was published in June of last year, in hardcover only. I've been waiting to see if it will be released in paperback, but now they've announced the fifth book for February on next year, also in hardcover only. Is it likely that they'll never release these later books in paperback?

It's really another thread at this point, not WHAT ARE YOU READING?, but -- my sense would be:

relations between genre(s) and mainstream have been restructured, for one reason or another, over a certain period (post-2000 at least, maybe a lot longer) -- but the effect has not been to erase boundaries and make everything a free for all. Rather, the visible boundaries are useful and are used by writers (as well as publishers, bookshops). To cross the boundary brings a kind of kudos, either way, but you need the boundary to stay visible for it to have effect. Ishiguro impressing (some) people (mainly mainstream readers, say) by apparently writing SF is again a standard instance. If SF no longer seemed separate then he couldn't produce that effect.

at the same time, the 'revolt of the genres' as though they are continually kept down by snooty mainstream people equally remains a strong rhetorical force, even though the actual rationale for it seems to have dissolved. Again it seems to be useful for everyone to have boundaries in place and in view against which they can make moves (like Bourdieu's 'position-taking in the cultural field', even, if you like), even though the number of times these moves are made would seem to invalidate the boundaries and some of the perceptions or hierarchies hitherto associated with them.

Poster Halfway, I cannot say (but just looked at Yale site), but it seems to me that a publisher would intend to be consistent and thus having released 3 in PB would release the others in PB also.

I can't keep up with editions of Proust. I made it 2/3 through the old Penguin (I think this is Terence Kilmartin?), mostly hating it; will probably never make it to try any of these other versions.

Meanwhile I return to Adichie's book of stories THE THING AROUND YOUR NECK (2009). The writing is very cool and clear. Never spectacular, never vague. Most of the action so far has been in Africa. A lot of reference has been made to African war and history and I think I'll need to delve into that to understand better. Class hierarchies, in the society described, seem strong. People (the protagonists in fact) have drivers and servants while others live in poorer conditions.

it seems to me that a publisher would intend to be consistent and thus having released 3 in PB would release the others in PB also.

Thanks pinefox, that's my thought also, but I have no idea if publishers wait more than 18 months to issue a paperback version of their titles, or if there had been a sudden shift in the industry that made hardcover the only viable format for such a book. I had been wondering if they were waiting for the centenary of Proust's death next week for a bit of extra publicity.

(I am interested in the constraints imposed by form and how writers work within those constraints. I think that is one advantage of writing a work of a known genre or form: the writer and the reader have agreed to rules for communication and it becomes a game to impress each other with what one can do to express and interpret those rules.)

(many XPs) Delany's magnum opus had a healthy amount of gay (and straight) sex in it. It just about exploded my adolescent brain the first time I read it.

there's a lot of kinky stuff in dhalgren too, and underage sex, it just about exploded my late twenty something brain the first time i read it tbh.

delany's kinks i can get behind in theory but man, fingernails, nope not erogenous for me.

nest of spiders is like neverending slash fic written by a good writer who is into the raunchy stuff, it's fun.

Yeah, Dhalgren was the one I meant. What an amazing work, and not just for the sex. It was for me kind of what Steve Jobs described LSD as being for him: an experience that opened up his mind to seeing the world differently.