in every 'new yorker' short story ever...

Ha. I think it was actually Zuckerman Unbound that started in The Atlantic. It's all about Alvin Pepler.

haha, I remember reading that exact SENTENCE when that story came out and going "UGH, NEW YORKER FICTION!"

I guess stuff like that doesn't bother me because 1) I'm basically illiterate so it doesn't really seem cliched to me and 2) I just skim over the boring parts whenever I read anything.

Ok wait, come on, this?
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/03/10/080310fi_fiction_kunzru?currentPage=3

This???

Sorry, starts here:
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/03/10/080310fi_fiction_kunzru?currentPage=1

We liked to do things casually. We called at the last minute. We messaged one another from our hand-held devices. Sometimes our names were on exclusive guest lists (though we were poor, we were beautiful, and people liked to have us around), but often we preferred to do something else—attend a friend’s opening, drink in after-hours clubs or the room above a pub, trek off to remote suburbs to see a band play in a warehouse. We went dancing whenever we felt like it (none of us had regular jobs), and when we didn’t we stayed in, watching movies and getting high. Someone always had something new or special—illegal pre-releases of Hollywood blockbusters, dubs of 8-mm. shorts from the nineteen-seventies. We watched next summer’s exploding airplanes, Viennese Actionists masturbating onto operating tables. Raw meat and Nick Cage. Whatever we watched was, by definition, good, because we’d watched it, because it had belonged—at least, temporarily—to us. By the time the wider world caught up—which always happened, sooner or later—we’d usually got bored and moved on. We had long since given up mourning the loss of our various enthusiasms. We’d learned to discard them lightly. It was the same with clubs and bars. Wherever we went would be written about in magazines three or four months later. A single mention on a blog, and a place that had been spangled with beautiful, interesting faces would be swamped by young bankers in button-down shirts, nervously analyzing the room to see if they were having fun.

I must make it clear that we didn’t plan for our lives to be this way. We despised trendies—fashion kids who tried too hard, perennially hoping to get hosed down by the paps or interviewed about their hair. With us, it wasn’t a neurotic thing. We put on public events—salons, gigs, parties, shows. But once in a while, in the midst of our hectic social gyrations, we liked to do something for one another, something that didn’t drain our energy, that made us feel private again.

I was confused. What did she mean, “so Raj”?

The food was simple and plain—fruit, cheeses, loaves of crusty bread—and while we ate it there was a program of entertainment. Michel read several of his poems. Hengist and Horsa played folk songs. A woman called Kevin did some kind of improvised dance, a flurry of arm-swirling that made me feel embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable. I took that as a good sign. If a piece of art makes me uncomfortable or, better still, angry, that seems to be a reason to pay attention to it.

As I’d hoped, I went home with Thanh, and for a few weeks my memories of Sunita’s party were filtered through my new relationship with her. We’d lie for hours on a rug on her studio floor, fucking and listening to music.

Cue Vampire Weekend

well at least there's some fucking in it I guess

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/thumb/9/94/Hengist.jpg/200px-Hengist.jpg

It took me a minute or two to put it together, and when I did I wasn’t happy. The bastard. The two-faced little fucker. Raj had been getting paid to take those pictures. He’d come to our party, and not just any party, to Sunita’s party, the most beautiful gathering imaginable, and he’d shamelessly used it to sell us—to sell me—a product. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became. All that trash about the vodka being smooth: his whole conversation had been a sales pitch. It was creepy. More than creepy. It was sinister. Furious, I told Thanh to come over and have a look. She peered at the monitor, doing up her blouse.

“You came out pretty well,” she said. “I like your glam-rock pout.”

“But look at it. That bastard made us into an advert.”

“Are we credited?”

“Only our first names.”

“Shame. And I look so drunk.”

“I suppose you—no, no, no! That’s not the point. I mean, don’t you feel used?”

“What are you so upset about? You don’t look nearly as wasted as me. It’s hardly fair. You were downing those shots all night.”

“But what about Raj? He never asked us whether we wanted to be on his damn vodka Web site. And all that patter about how smooth it tasted!”

“It was smooth.”

“But to talk to people and secretly be trying to sell them something—isn’t that, I don’t know, unethical? Surely you agree that it’s completely out of order.”

“He didn’t ask us to buy anything. He gave us free drinks.”

“I know, but the point was to get us to buy something later on. That particular brand. We generate buzz. We recommend it to our friends, it becomes hip, blah-blah-blah.”

“He should have given me image approval. Look at my chin! I’m going to have words next time I see him.”

“For fuck’s sake, Thanh! He was just using us. He wanted to make us into—into early adopters.”

“But we are early adopters. I got a free phone a few months ago. All I had to do was watch a film and say how it made me feel.”

“Jesus, you really are a shallow bitch.”

Hmm, does this plot device make clear my point about appropriation? Nah, I'd better have the characters explain it through excrutiating dialogue.

One thing I must admit here: I find anger tricky. Anger is a very sincere emotion. We live under the rule of cool, and we are expected to encounter the vicissitudes of the world with a certain degree of irony.

SINCERITY/IRONY

Sincerity, as any hipster will tell you, is for awkward teens and people on SSRIs.

SINCERITY/IRONY/SSRIs

HIPSTERS

that paragraph is a grand slam

Time Out New York: Harmless Toilet Reading or Used Toilet Tissue?

I still think it's amazing that an entertainment magazine in one of the entertainment capitals of the world can't think of stuff to put on its cover.

As the story continues, things start to get cray-zee! But I won't spoil it.

Late to the party, but that Gilby S (my pet name for him) interview posted above totally rocks my dick off

Also, McSweeney's gives me bloody, chunk-filled diarrhea. Someone should start a thread on that pile of used-up toilet paper.

hurting that story ... jesus

I couldn't even finish that Raj story; whenever the New Yorker and the NYT tries to do anything with "contemporary" culture, it reads like it was written by 60 year old hermits living in Upper Montclair, NJ or Westchester County, observing those "crazy kids" in New York through very powerful telescopes.

no, it reads like it was written by some young new york writer living in a brownstone

Also, McSweeney's gives me bloody, chunk-filled diarrhea

Something tells me it's not McSweeney's that's doing that.

actually he's in London, apparently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Kunzru

Well, the story's terrible regardless of origin.

Apparently he was one of Granta's "Best Young" whatevers, which is a mark of death in my opinion. They specialize in that whole "laundry room epiphany" style of fiction.

eh, Granta is sometimes a good mag. I rarely bother with anyone's "writers to watch" type lists though. I think there's just something that fundamentally doesn't work about labeling writers as rated rookies and eagerly awaiting all the homers they're going to hit a couple seasons from now. Course that usually doesn't work with baseball players either.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Burt Stanton.

trying to work out what Nabisco means by this phrase

maybe I hope he won't say

Hi pinefox!

I like yr urbane pastiches a lot, TH!

eg
15) characters with off-kilter names like "Claymer" and "Theria" whose relationship to the narrator is never spelled out; probably a cousin
-- Tracer Hand, Monday, 21 January 2008

btw what is 'Anhedonia'?

Look, why don’t you check out this band I’m working with?” He handed me a sleek little music player. I listened for a while, out of politeness.

“They’re the final wave of New Wave,” he explained. “After this, there will never be another reason to wear a Blondie T-shirt.”

Despite her eccentricities, she was no introvert, was a lively presence on various online sites and game worlds.

...

there's nothing sadder than some dude so out of touch, yet trying to appropriate what they think is youth culture. like, you're dad trying to get into hip-hop in the 90s.

No, I'm not.

where is Nabisco now?

that story people are quoting from does sound diabolical, in an entertaining way.

Actually, my dad identifying blues jams sampled in hip-hop records I liked (a useful skill) is better than average as memories go.

Hari Kunzru = top fella in many ways. You may not like the turn of his descriptions, or the weird indulgence of the story twist, but they are accurate in describing LDN '90-'96.

LolDN

Dunno, there are more deserving targets of internet playa hate than Hari - or me, for pointing it out.

23) stalwart avoidance of brand names or recognizable products and replacement with generic signifiers 'listened to his ipod' becomes 'put on some headphones'

-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:23 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

Look, why don’t you check out this band I’m working with?” He handed me a sleek little music player. I listened for a while, out of politeness.

remy ftw

Too much brands = you are Douglas Coupland. I am trying to recollect whether an author wrote a novel and asked for product placement as a lark. But remy b. correkt.

Fay Weldon!

The problem with picking on the Kunzru here is that ILX is, whether it's pro or con, largely obsessed with the kind of people the story is about -- and of course largely is the kind of people the story is about, as maybe evidenced by the implication that he's doing it wrong -- so the idea that there's something odd or embarrassing about him writing about these people isn't exactly a point that's been carried yet. It's clearly a set of social manners we're interested in, one that informs way too many arguments around here; so why wouldn't a writer of fiction try to tackle it? (And the opening paragraph lets you know straight off that it's not just scenery here, that this social class is kind of his topic.)

But of course it really is hard, and risky, to try this sort of thing, because there's a huge chance of embarrassment: we love the way someone like Waugh might write about the manners of his bright young things, because we weren't around to nitpick the cultural references, but of course it's hard as hell to do it in the moment when people are. (And magazine short stories are kinda the best place to attempt it.) That opening graph pasted above doesn't do a bad job of it at all, cataloging habits and boxing up a lifestyle in a way that'd still make sense from outside of it. There's an effective neutrality to it -- "this is what we did" -- that's a pretty good option when you're trying to do this sort of thing.

I also think it's kinda funny that there were a bunch of initial assumptions about Kunzru's relationship with the type of person his narrator is, mostly because he's taken on the necessary fictional task of treating his narrator as human. But then I also think several of Hurting's actual criticisms of the story-as-a-story are pretty dead-on.

Oh, you know what else is interesting to me, is that it seems way more common among English writers to try and honestly tackle portraits of modern-day social categories than it is for Americans! Or not even social categories: there's so much English fiction that's willing to go directly at realistic portraits of how specific types of (usually middle or upper-middle class) people actually live. Whereas the top-flight fiction of the U.S. -- or at least the stuff that gets attention -- tends way more often to be about unusual circumstances, elements of fantasy, abstractions from and metaphors for the actual stuff we do. You could say the same thing about the difference between an American crime procedural and a BBC detective show, actually, but I don't know if that means anything.

Ladies and gentlemen, Nabisco.

I haven't read the story but I think that the bits I've seen here are bad

you might like Evelyn Waugh but I don't - I think he was vile

other points re. US / UK sound interesting.

Many Britishes crazy about Fitzgerald for this very reason.

I'm finding that if I have to write a modern problem it's much easier to send it back in time a few decades and work it out like that.