MIA

okay name a book you hate and i will try to come up with a book you will like by the principle of opposition

k hold on I am thinking

this is an argument for a diff't thread/board tho...

re: Horseshoe. oh let's see, Zadie Smith's "White Teeth"

not to derail this thread entirely but my problem with modern lit is that so many authors are content to just stay within these narrow confines of traditional novel narrative structures - here's a narrator, plot goes from A to B to C, the end. *yawn*

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, June 25, 2010 12:15 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omggggggggggggggggggggg shut upppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

alternately we could all drive the the nearest pencil up our respective noses.

yeah maybe we shouldn't do this here.

i haven't read white teeth but i will try to think of a book that's v different from on beauty. this might not work, i'm thinking.

honestly I just want ppl to rec. good new books so I can read them and then ignore their posts forever if I don't like them and enjoy good books if I do like the book

what can I say, in this day and age I don't see the point in writing a novel that adheres to a format developed in the 19th century

xp

g-gonna slowly distance myself from shakey mo here

can i just say that i would be totally happy to only ever read novels that adhere to a nineteenth century format?

having said that, most of the modern fiction i read does not. i mean, it is still stories about people for the most part, but apart from that...

seriously let's take this to another thread

reading people with an avowed disinterest in modern fiction trying to diagnose its supposed problems is much, much more interesting from a rubbernecker's perspective than the latest round of stale zings about m.i.a.'s inconsistent politics and non-music crits tackling band profiles.

do you hate songs too, shakey? such a played-out format.

Shteyngart vs. this: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/kill-me-now/Content?oid=4319529

I only read sexting

or sexts

what can I say, in this day and age I don't see the point in writing a novel that adheres to a format developed in the 19th century

xp

― insert your favorite discriminatory practice here (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, June 25, 2010 12:19 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omgggggggggggggggggggggggggg shut UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

and sex twitters

i think i do not have a developed enough sense of literary criticism to actually give form to this "principle of opposition" i referred to earlier.

do you hate songs too, shakey? such a played-out format.

haha if you think people are writing songs the same way they were 150 years ago I dunno what to tell you. the formal/technical qualities of producing sound alone have changed so much, a pop song produced in 2010 is almost entirely unrecognizable from a popular ditty performed in 1860.

xp

a+ trolling?

i don't even

I could write a lot about this and I sense people's urge/instant reaction to strawman me about this but I dunno if this is the place... I guess I can ruin this thread if that's what everyone wants haha

yeah go for it

is me wishing Dan Savage would die a bad thing

yes

also kind of a nonsequitur unless i'm missing something

"DJ Assault, whose lyrics I actually paid to use in my last novel"

modern fiction, all is forgiven.

i would really do anything to have ALL journalists and writers just stop talking about themselves

ah, the first person can be useful in some circumstances, it's just too often abused.

fwiw, shteyngart's short story in the recent new yorker fiction issue was great. but hirschberg's is the better mia profile by far, and not just 'cause of the truffle fries.

also kind of a nonsequitur unless i'm missing something

Matos's link and the repeated invocation of the phrase "brown-bread"

haha if you think people are writing songs the same way they were 150 years ago I dunno what to tell you. the formal/technical qualities of producing sound alone have changed so much, a pop song produced in 2010 is almost entirely unrecognizable from a popular ditty performed in 1860.

I am going to shoutily state the obvious here but THIS IS WHAT I MEAN ABOUT MUSIC VS. LIT PEOPLE

There are SO MANY TIMES on this board when someone will make fun of a book/lit person for not knowing every last obscure nuance of the music world, and then turn around and say something eighty billion times more clueless/embarrassing about the nuances or inside view of literature

And frequently, when this is pointed out, they will go on to categorically deny that there is anything to even know or understand about modern literature beyond what they've picked up from NOT EVEN READING ANY

The whole thing is completely ridiculous. Seriously, completely ridiculous. It's genuinely confusing to me how anyone can enforce elitism/snobbery about a topic they know ("this guy doesn't know the first thing about music, he failed to recognize a single quote!") and then happily turn around and not only not-know the first thing about another topic, but deny that there's even anything to know. There is no shame in just admitting that you might know less about the state and history of literature than Gary Shteyngart knows about the state and history of hip-hop. Not everyone knows everything, not everyone has to be interested in everything.

<3 nabisco send me the tab for your next gin & tonic

he not gonna like that other thread

whats funny about that 'mad at the ceiling' mia quote has nothing to do w/ the author of the piece happening to have written a book, its just the groanworthy continued push to make someone seem like a much more innovative artist than they actually are through thievery / general reliance on the ignorance of their fanbase

i mean its not like crate digging, current mainstream rap quotes are not obscure references

lol @ that quote coming from the same place as "gangsta rap yankee hotel foxtrot"

"current mainstream rap quotes are not obscure references"

you'll get old too one day

trust me on this one

i dunno how helpful it is to say "well obviously this fiction writer's music crit is ill-informed, he's a fiction writer, you don't know abt contemporary fiction either". a bit beside the point. a piece of music crit is bad, i don't care what the dude's day job is.

i demand retribution

lol @ that quote coming from the same place as "gangsta rap yankee hotel foxtrot"

― its like why GROCERY BAG and not saddam? (deej), Friday, June 25, 2010 4:09 PM (31 minutes ago)

four years later this is still kinda hilarious imo

nabisco, stop being such a bookist.

(hah! logocentrist : litcrit :: rockist : rockwrite ?)

i dunno how helpful it is to say "well obviously this fiction writer's music crit is ill-informed, he's a fiction writer, you don't know abt contemporary fiction either". a bit beside the point. a piece of music crit is bad, i don't care what the dude's day job is.

Absolutely! That's why I said it's not like people here are taking magazine assignments to write about novelists. I share some annoyance with the way music is the one topic where editors don't feel a need to use a writer who knows much about it.

I was just reacting to certain things upthread that seemed to be picking at his prose over things that are really quite normal elsewhere in the world.

yeah the "mad at the ceiling" line had very little to do with the author and more to do with mia/diplo -- there was just a bit of irony in him taking potshots at contemporary rap and then praising a line on the album that happened to be stolen from a contemporary rapper -- i wouldn't expect him (or even anyone on ilx outside of deej tbh) to even remember that line

part of the problem with the piece from my perspective is that since its in GQ it's not really aimed for me ie someone who has read tens of MIA profiles, and even more articles by white guys talking about rap music -- it was insufferable to me but i guess it would just code as inoffensive to most GQ readers or maybe even relateable/novel -- i'm sure his novels are fantastic

"insufferable" meaning the first few (online) pages -- the rest of it was fine, sometimes good

i wouldnt expect it but thats sorta my issue w/ the whole thing ... the level of invisibility for the actual creative artist vs. the overrated rip-off artist right??

i also dont really see what being old has to do w/ having taste

i mean pretty much my presence on this board in the past year has been reduced for most ilxors to being all 'you should pay attention to this rapper' & so when the #1 star child of music writers comes out w/ a song biting one of those rappers, which is then praised specifically for that line in a major publication by a noted writer, u gotta admit it makes sense i would find it lol