Franzen: s/d

this is a good piece about hating writers you've never actually read:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/08/31/on-the-pleasures-of-not-reading/

^ A nice jeu d'esprit. I liked it until the final paragraph, where the author strove to end with a flourish and instead it's just rather awkward.

all this aside it was pretty fun, the plot was exciting and interesting, i wanted to find out what was happening and why.

― dead (Lamp), Sunday, September 13, 2015 7:32 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel the same way. very entertaining read, but i didn't get anything out of it other than a good story. is it asking too much to want more from THE BEST AMERICAN NOVELISTTTTT? no
and good god he can't write about sex at all. "There's no other way to put it - she played with the dick."

hating essays about hating writers you've never actually read that you've never actually read

had to google that quote, hilarious stuff

http://i.imgur.com/0nTBGsl.png

can't remember anything from freedom apart from enjoying it, corrections was good imo

taking sex scene lessons from john updick. i mean updike.

writing about sex is like dancing about Frank Zappa

Who is narrating that passage?

Not "Leonard," right?

leonard is obv the dick

Tom Aberrant, pip's dad

i was a big fan of Great Expectations by Kathy Acker.

and i think that book also said a lot of things about...modern things. and Prince.

hated the Prince talk in Motherless Brooklyn. what's with these guys? why does my tone meter go all kerflooey with these guys?

why does my tone meter go all kerflooey with these guys?

right??

"A few days later, I stole more magazines. I liked Oui because the girls in it seemed realer—also more European, hence more cultured, intelligent, and soulful—than the ones in Playboy . I imagined deep conversations with them, I imagined them attracted to how compassionately I listened to them, but there was no denying that my interest in them died at the instant of orgasm."

"she kept alienating people with her moral absolutism and her sense of superiority, which is so often the secret heart of shyness."

i can't tell if these are being excerpted because they're meant to demonstrate some facility of franzen's or just for the lols ... ?

Just for fun...

Maybe these excerpts are meant to depict the mind of a self-absorbed, kind of silly person? Like, maybe Franzen is being ironic?

and did you keep taking literature classes once you changed your major?

wtf is that supposed to mean

do you think those passages are clearly ironic? do you think Franzen in general is good with irony?

no, i think his continual striving for the slightly-clever phrase undercuts his attempts to do this sort of thing at a micro level, as his just obviously heinous high concept plotting undercuts it at a macro level -- like i remember arguing about connie's "little clitoris of intellect, responding with firmness to a male touch" (or w/e) in 'freedom': a friend saying, ah, but this is Free Indirect Discourse! it's not like franzen actually thinks this way -- but if you don't see him high-fiving himself when he came up with that one, his little porcine eyes wet with glee, then ... well, okay, then maybe you're more generous in spirit than i am

Well, I was attempting a generous reading. I agree Franzen doesn't really come across as very playful/ironic but something like "...also more European, hence more cultured..." almost has to be parody to make sense.

anyway, I actually have a masters degree in literature - not that it gives me any special authority, but I guess I took your post as an insult

how will the male touch even be able to find the clitoris of intellect, did he take that into account

purity was fun to read. dude writes beach books, not great american novels. i want to read freedom and the corrections now. SIGH

But what is amazing is the way Fiorina's critics have suddenly become Jesuitical nitpickers. The clear goal is to conceal the fact that late-term abortions offend the conscience when discussed or displayed with anything like journalistic accuracy. That's probably why we get so little of it. Many of the media outlets that even bother to cover the videos have referred to the transferring of "fetal tissue," not "organs" — the correct term for livers, hearts and brains. ("Tissue" is less suggestive of a human being than, say, "heart.")

"Imbecile" is less suggestive than, say, "fuckface."

lol is franzen pro-life?

"And the same was true of the afternoons he spent jerking off at his powerful computer. He condemned what he was doing by the principles he wanted to believe in, but he could never hate it in the moment. Instead he resented Annagret, resented his own moral considerations, resented his other responsibilities, for standing in the way of his compulsion. And yet it was complicated, because when his watchful self stepped back from the computer over which he was hunched with his pants around his ankles, he hated what he saw. He wasn’t constituted to hate himself subjectively, but he did hate the object he was in the world. The shameful, loathsome object with which something was very wrong."

"Before he was even home again, he could see his future. He would never again make the mistake of trying to live with a woman. For whatever reason (probably his childhood), he wasn’t suited for it, and the strong thing to do was to accept this. His computer had made a weakling of him. He also had a vague, shameful memory of climbing onto Annagret’s lap and trying to be her baby. Weak! Weak!"

Oh, good lord! This crap is supposed to be deathless literature?

"jerking off at his powerful computer": shades of kinbote's powerful kramler

well fuck it that's just terrible writing

gonna start appending (probably my childhood) every time i use "for whatever reason"

fair's fair tho, no idea if i'm "constituted to hate myself subjectively" but i do get hating the object-self.

For whatever reason (probably his poor diet and lack of exercise)

For whatever reason (probably his feud with Oprah)

Franzen auto corrects to Frankenstein

Just finished it , enjoyed. Last paragraph really comes through

...comes through in a way that redeems some of the shitty filler writing excerpted above.

his powerful computer

his powerful computer

his powerful computer

like is he using a cray to visit pornhub or something

Pornography had torn him open. His balls had fallen out.

Just read this http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/h/hothouse/9781451691894_custom-5501b860e04b087a58bd3c783af0df3ae2be438b-s300-c85.jpg, and Franzen comes off like a complete cynical prick. He didn''t actually pull out of Oprah, he just dithered and dithered until she basically fired him, and then when he published his next book he wrote to her saying "Let's do a show where we make up, it'll be great TV!" and whored himself like a maniac

Hehe I remember reading abt him handling that terribly - but not that she fired him etc. Are there excerpts somewhere?

See if these links work to the relevant pages: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Vtp2R6f18xEC&pg=PA302&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&ots=g6lA33ysXd&sig=ACfU3U015ta29qtFn2n7N_M7MKTJHTKnVQ&w=685
and https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Vtp2R6f18xEC&pg=PA339&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U3iNkNrvFV2nZeJQSmkPE0Y3fleSw&w=685

had no idea he'd suggested his own time cover. can't stop the hustle.

those work great, thanks!

had no idea he'd suggested his own time cover. can't stop the hustle.

― playlists of pensive swift (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, September 30, 2015 3:35 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was kinda softened to that bc his dead dad's favorite pub was Time, and see it as a childhood dream fulfilled/making your parents proud thing...

bought Freedom yesterday and already totally sucked in