I was going to say 'it should be its own genre,' but basically isn't modern literary writing the anhedonia genre?
― Abbott, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:31 (sixteen years ago) link
26) someone goes home, has mixed feelings about being home
― max, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:31 (sixteen years ago) link
27) someone remembers college, has mixed feelings about college
― max, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:32 (sixteen years ago) link
Fun fact everyone probably already knows: Anhedonia was the original title of Annie Hall.
― jaymc, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:33 (sixteen years ago) link
didn't know, but appreciate
― remy bean, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:34 (sixteen years ago) link
28) scene at an empty Atlantic beach in midwinter
29) protagonists subconsciously haunted by 9/11
― dmr, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:34 (sixteen years ago) link
30) minor act of passing kindness on final page miraculously restores protagonist's faith in humanity
― remy bean, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:36 (sixteen years ago) link
31) second home/vacation home
― Hurting 2, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:38 (sixteen years ago) link
although, in every TWENTIETH story, trailer or ghetto rowhouse
― Hurting 2, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:39 (sixteen years ago) link
32) Someone makes cultural or grammatical mistake in a charming way on final page miraculously restores protagonist's faith in humanity
― Abbott, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:39 (sixteen years ago) link
I rarely feel like the protagonist of a NY story has the balls either to renounce or regain faith in humanity
― Hurting 2, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:40 (sixteen years ago) link
@ 30: 'for there, on her desk, lay Nai Nai's jade bracelet, polished and gleaming proud for the first time the events of Nanking seventy years prior.'
― remy bean, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:41 (sixteen years ago) link
first time since
33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.
― remy bean, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:42 (sixteen years ago) link
34) people haunted by something
34a) haunted by death of family member
― max, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:49 (sixteen years ago) link
35) Dude pops boner, feels bad about it
― Dimension 5ive, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:51 (sixteen years ago) link
36) adultery
― Mr. Que, Monday, 21 January 2008 18:52 (sixteen years ago) link
there are frequent short stories in the new yorker these days that don't conform to stereotype, to be fair.
still, lol at "Claymer."
― horseshoe, Monday, 21 January 2008 19:06 (sixteen years ago) link
I never really saw anybody use "anhedonia" except when referring to the original title of Annie Hall.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 21 January 2008 19:08 (sixteen years ago) link
Does anyone remember a television commercial where there was a redneck in a hunting outfit with a shotgun walking in the woods and saying "They say a revenuer come up in the these parts, he might get better but he never get well"? You couldn't figure exactly what it was a commercial for until the very end when the Yankee (or Midwestern) voiceover man said "from the story 'Moonshine' in the January New Yorker." Like they were trying to change it up, get the naysayers to lose the scent of their trail.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 21 January 2008 21:43 (sixteen years ago) link
2) effete professor mulls lustily over graduate student and her lovely paper on Kafka.
Recommendations for actual similar stories, plz
― milo z, Monday, 21 January 2008 21:46 (sixteen years ago) link
See: whatever story of Philip Roth's became The Ghost Writer.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 21 January 2008 21:52 (sixteen years ago) link
Although I think that was in The Atlantic.
-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:42 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link
as opposed to ilx poster remy bean who saw his buddies die face down in the muck at da nang
― and what, Monday, 21 January 2008 21:53 (sixteen years ago) link
Mark it a zero, Smokey.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 21 January 2008 21:57 (sixteen years ago) link
"I never really saw anybody use "anhedonia" except when referring to the original title of Annie Hall."
i think of jarboe too. ex-swans artiste. she had an album called *Anhedoniac*.
― scott seward, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:11 (sixteen years ago) link
sadly, if it isn't by lorrie moore or alice munro, i don't read ANY short stories in the new yorker. i glance at them in every issue. my suspicions (usually) confirmed that i don't want to read whatever it is. and i LOVE short stories.
― scott seward, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:13 (sixteen years ago) link
I like the Jonathan Lethem ones that have run recently, although they don't exactly buck the NY genre.
― Jordan, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:18 (sixteen years ago) link
-- and what, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:53 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
wrong, confrontation douchebag. as opposed to considered research.
― remy bean, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:22 (sixteen years ago) link
Looks like voiceover man said "'Moonshine' by Alec Wilkinson, in the August New Yorker."
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:23 (sixteen years ago) link
37) Judgmental pet.
― Eppy, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:54 (sixteen years ago) link
38) Sex as evidence of character's patheticness.
― Eppy, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:56 (sixteen years ago) link
39) Someone running their hands through their hair.
― Eppy, Monday, 21 January 2008 22:57 (sixteen years ago) link
40) Body image issues.
41) The Unbridgeable Gulf of Class Difference
― rogermexico., Monday, 21 January 2008 23:26 (sixteen years ago) link
42) Young parent looks at her child and realizes she has already failed to be the mother she promised herself she would be.
― Clay, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 01:46 (sixteen years ago) link
43) Aging sculptor looks at a recent work and realizes he has ultimately failed to become the artist he promised himself he would be.
― Clay, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 01:50 (sixteen years ago) link
Ha, all of this reminds me that Gilbert Sorrentino is sort of the anti-New Yorker writer.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 01:52 (sixteen years ago) link
In that he kind of covers the same material but with an additional cruel and mocking godlike Fassbinderesque p.o.v that provides comic "relief."
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 01:54 (sixteen years ago) link
44) Particular form of reticence typical of character's region/ ethnicity/ gender/ generation is presented, vaguely frowned upon.
― mulla atari, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 01:59 (sixteen years ago) link
I have never read a New Yorker short story, and yet, after reading this thread, it is as if I had read them all.
― moley, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 02:05 (sixteen years ago) link
In this interview Gil S. mentions the New Yorker briefly in Item 11, but also talks about similar writing elsewhere, especially item 6.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 02:26 (sixteen years ago) link
nuance masquerading as epiphany, epiphany masquerading as peripety
― M.V., Tuesday, 22 January 2008 02:54 (sixteen years ago) link
I was going to say this in a ruder, bitchier, more self-aggrandizing way
― nabisco, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 03:05 (sixteen years ago) link
good restraint
― Eppy, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 03:07 (sixteen years ago) link
Well yeah, that's partly what I meant by this (xpost):
usually think of The New Yorker Short Story as a genre that includes the ones by lesser writers but from which the better ones are exempt
-- Hurting 2, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:14 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Link
― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 03:07 (sixteen years ago) link
What, you got a story in there, nabisco?
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 03:32 (sixteen years ago) link
I guess it's time to link to this relevant thread.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 22 January 2008 03:36 (sixteen years ago) link
45) character quietly repeats meaningless phrase to himself under his breath, as if it mattered, but he knew it did not
― J.D., Tuesday, 22 January 2008 03:39 (sixteen years ago) link
eh, New Yorker non-fiction at its best can be revelatory, although the lesser stuff tends to just sort of ramble on. I think they've been way overdoing their primary coverage. "Hillary's Latest Comeback" is just not worth anywhere near the wordage they give it.
― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 23:02 (sixteen years ago) link
im just kind of joking abt hating the nyer kind of
although i did let my sub lapse a while ago
― jhøshea, Tuesday, 11 March 2008 23:15 (sixteen years ago) link
damn son i thought we was fam
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:11 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
minstrel
― Arms, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:12 AM Bookmark
― LA CANCION MAS PRETENCIOSA DEL MUNDO... (The Reverend), Saturday, 12 December 2009 21:45 (fourteen years ago) link
This thread kind of makes me glad I don't have the time or energy to get all worked up about stuff like this anymore.
― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Saturday, 12 December 2009 23:21 (fourteen years ago) link
"10) over-developed "ethnic" backstory closely mirroring writer's own"
i swear this is a plot to get me to never read international fiction. cuz i see those stories and my eyes glaze over and i reach for a slim volume of ring lardner.
― scott seward, Thursday, 31 May 2012 15:20 (eleven years ago) link
racist
― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Thursday, 31 May 2012 15:22 (eleven years ago) link