Keeping up with books

The idea of "keeping up with" current lit, be it genre or literary, in the way ppl keep up with music or cinema sounds frankly terrifying. It would take so much time, and so much of it spent reading total rubbish.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 26 November 2020 11:52 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

TV is like this now basically too imo

i once met a young novelist who quite candidly admitted that he writes autofiction because it’s deemed too problematic in the current market to write about any identity other than your own

the only possible downside to this is more books by white dudes about white dudes.

TV sucks complete ass now. the end of the ‘golden era’/prestige tv ended so swiftly with the rise of netflix and now everything is like hallmark movie quality and yet we just lap it up

Yes

you should be totally stressed about books and it sucks we’re going to die before we read all the stuff we want to. there is a notional me who is reading all the stuff i’m buying or is going on my list and they are an intellectual titan and plugged into an omniscient knowledge matrix of wisdom. rather than being someone who can’t even recount the contents of the book they read before the last one.

dow, I haven’t seen you comment directly on Stoner yet, or Stoner even.

At least TV is less likely to unfold in a starless vacuum, whereas the vast majority of published written material will forever languish in quasi absolute obscurity. The light that is periodically shed on recognizable authorial figures and their works is microscopic when set against the boundless dormant library that makes up the space of literature, which is less and less distinguishable from a virtual garbage dump with each passing year. Major publishing houses, prestigious prizes, interviews with established authors, academic canons, etc., all exist to put a face on the anonymous abyss where creative works go to die as soon as they come into being. And while a handful of remarkable specimens do indeed rise to the top, it would be risible to assume that ours is a literary (or artistic) meritocracy.

Keeping up with seldom read books, while impossible, is therefore a moral imperative, and any dent made in the writerly institutions that be (especially their more venal manifestations), any gaze laid upon their invisible margins, is a small triumph. Or so I tell myself in my more seditious moods; the fact of the matter is that it’s best not to worry about what lies beyond your control and simply go about your solitary business, which is toil enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year

otm

Great post

i somehow got a few mutual follows in a p cool corner or contemp lit twitter. mostly poets and somewhat experimental young writers. ive read some stuff by them. honestly it’s very good! mostly published by small presses i would otherwise never hear of. couple good ones i read this year:

‘not i’ and ‘49 venezuelan novels’ by sebastian castillo. both can be read in one sitting; the latter is very borges, calvino, barthelme style funny short stories, the former is like an oulipian exercise

‘alice knott’ by blake butler. blake is husband of poet molly brodak who died this year tragically at the age of 42, and who wrote an incredible memoir about growing up with a father who was a bank robber. anyways ‘alice knott’ is bizarre and kind of miserable, but also super brilliant. kind of like a mix of ‘picture of dorian grey’ and a tom mccarthy novel

Excellent post, pomenitul.

It's worth noting, for example, that when a poetry book sells more than 500 copies these days, it is considered "successful." (And no, I'm not talking about crap like Billy fucking Collins or major award winners).

I will honestly say that I just don't find much of interest in a lot of popular literary fiction— most of it is utter crap, with probably one exception on a list of 20 bestsellers every week. (Non-fiction has a higher ratio, from my ken). One of the big problems with popular literary fiction in the US, at least, is that the hegemonic power of Iowa really has infected and inflected everything, so that finding books that are actually innovative, interesting, or daring is ultimately a difficult task. But that's just me.

flopson, Sebastian is amazing, we trade emails back and forth sometimes. He recently sent me an excellent story by another writer that was composed entirely of phrases from bumper stickers.

dow, you liked that Cantu book? a friend of mine has been waging a war of words against him and getting his events cancelled wherever possible lol.

the fact of the matter is that it’s best not to worry about what lies beyond your control and simply go about your solitary business, which is toil enough.

― pomenitul, Saturday, November 28, 2020 10:34 PM

I'd like to add to this that I'm not as pessimistic as most readers about spreading the word about books we love. I'm tired of seeing people hoping for a movie adaptation as their ticket to more readers, that just keeps people relying on films but more documentaries on youtube and video essays would be nice.

flopson, Sebastian is amazing, we trade emails back and forth sometimes. He recently sent me an excellent story by another writer that was composed entirely of phrases from bumper stickers.

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Saturday, November 28, 2020 5:56 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nice :)

i really enjoyed this recent story of his http://magazine.nytyrant.com/local-favorite-sebastian-castillo/

that old n+1 piece by elif batuman where she destroys mfa-style contemporary lit while going thru ‘best american short stories of 2006’ is one of my fav essays ever

this one https://nplusonemag.com/issue-4/essays/short-story-novel/

poet molly brodak who died this year tragically at the age of 42, and who wrote an incredible memoir about growing up with a father who was a bank robber.O SHIT Molly Bordak died?! I felt like I knew her, from reading Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir, which was even more about her and her sister and mother than him and how he (maybe) got that way: pellucid and fluid and affecting---I haven't found my way into her poetry per se, but can see how her training and other experience w that came in handy prose-wise. Also some excellent tweets, her photos etc. O shit.
Came back to add The Neapolitan Novels and 2666, also Cather and Woolf and Dusty and Melville and some outcat genre heads like Simenon and Cordwainer Smith.
James, I haven't commented on Stoner because haven't read, but that quote and others I've seen do read like characterization rather than lecturing the reader etc.
Yes I liked the Cantu book; it's like the title says.

BRODAK, sorry, fuk

ya. real sad :(

Neapolitan trilogy kinda sucked imo? i loved ‘the days of abandonment’ but i really don’t get what ppl liked about the trilogy

still gotta read 2666

Not really keeping up, just forever catching up, to whatever extent, and all the ones I mentioned were read in the past 8-9 years or so. (Oh yeah and In Search of Lost Time, series ed. Lydia Davis.)(Several by Borges too.)

Neapolitan Novels=quartet. If it sucked for you, so be it.

I think i read it’s going to be 5 now?

In a feature on NPR's All Things Considered, Brodak described the ethical process of Bandit's subject, which detailed her experience as the daughter of a multiple felon bankrobber in Detroit, Michigan: "Every family has darkness and heaviness that people would prefer to not talk about. And when you choose to become the person who's going to bring light to the dark family secrets, you can sometimes be perceived as the betrayer."[5] An excerpt from Bandit appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016.[6] In 2018, she was a recipient of an NEA fellowship for prose.[7]

Brodak's poems appeared widely, including in Granta, Poetry, Fence, Map Literary, NY Tyrant, Diode, New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, Colorado Review, Bateau, and Hayden's Ferry Review.

Brodak was also the founder of Kookie House, a baking company that specializes in unique cookies and cakes. In 2018, she appeared as a finalist on the Great American Baking Show.

Death
Brodak died on March 8, 2020.[8] According to the New York Times, her husband, Blake Butler, gave the cause of death as suicide and she had struggled with depression since childhood.[9] I didn't get that kind of major depression from the book, maybe because the writing seemed such an exemplary way of dealing w such experiences, incl. thoughts. But now I almost feel guilty, like a friend who didn't see enough. I don't think of myself as naive about the curative powers of art, or anything else, but goes to show once again that you can never be too sure of these things. No great lesson learned, it's just another loss. But I'm gladder than ever for the book, that she was able to get that far (also w the relationship and baking).

(Also meant to mention Richard Wright and W.E.B. DuBois.)

Neapolitan trilogy kinda sucked imo? i loved ‘the days of abandonment’ but i really don’t get what ppl liked about the trilogy

this is my Stoner

Lol

this one https://nplusonemag.com/issue-4/essays/short-story-novel🕸/

I basically agree with Aimless and the pinefox upthread. I don’t think it is an anti-literature position, it is more of a way to free oneself of the misconception that reading a certain set of books will provide one with THE Meaning of Life or something to that effect. See also this quote from Saul Bellow’s “Him With His Foot in His Mouth.”

The heavy library doors were open, and within there were green reading lamps and polished heavy tables, and books massed up to the gallery and above. A few of those books were exalted, some were usefully informative, the majority of them would only congest the mind. My Swedenborgian old lady says that angels do not read books. Why should they? Nor, I imagine, can librarians be great readers. They have too many books, most of them burdensome. The crowded shelves give off an inviting, consoling, seductive odor that is also tinctured faintly with something pernicious, with poison and doom. Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

Is there any point in subscribing to a book summary app or is that just going to take up time one could spend reading.
I read that the book review in newspapers was introduced to provide a similar service. Allow one to have a summary of the current popular books so that one could keep up with polite conversation when with good company. Would have been at a time before other media were vying for one's attention though.

I didn't read the question as 'keeping up with contemporary lit' so much as maintaining a healthy amount of reading full stop. Whatever 'healthy' means in that context. But as the conversation has taken a turn toward the existential, in the scheme of a life, will I look back and wish I'd read more? I genuinely think I will. I mean, it's on a continuum with spending time with the people I love and walking in the hills but it's definitely right up there.

yeah I had rethought my understanding of what the question was about since first seeing it. Can't see how you could really keep up with reading if its supposed to be all the important books taht are released. Which would really seem impossible . I think there's always going to be books that books turn you onto that it's going to be difficult to catch up with.
Also read Ford Maddox Ford's The March of Literature a few years ago, copied the list of books to read and haven't really got anywhere with it. I think he can't be alone in creating a canon of books that need to be read. & catching up surely must include all of those too surely, I mean surely?

I heard after he died taht My father used to buy boxes of books and his house in his home village was full of these things. His wife gave a speech at the funeral including some despairing on the subject of books he bought and how she'd rather be in the other house they lived in .
I thought it was interesting to hear that we shared something of a trait about buying books to a degree that we'd porobably never get through.
& if you're reading one book then you're not reading another. Shame you can't osmose them really.

Are people actually living in situations where they don't have distractions from reading.

Ironically, after her excellent nonfiction book, Elif Batuman went on to write a bad novel.

poet molly brodak who died this year tragically at the age of 42, and who wrote an incredible memoir about growing up with a father who was a bank robber.O SHIT Molly Bordak died?! I felt like I knew her, from reading Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir, which was even more about her and her sister and mother than him and how he (maybe) got that way: pellucid and fluid and affecting---I haven't found my way into her poetry per se, but can see how her training and other experience w that came in handy prose-wise. Also some excellent tweets, her photos etc. O shit.

― dow, Saturday, November 28, 2020 7:08 PM (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

enormous trigger warning but this piece by blake is... one of the roughest things I’ve ever read https://thevolta.org/im-bbutler.html

I didn't read the question as 'keeping up with contemporary lit' so much as maintaining a healthy amount of reading full stop. Whatever 'healthy' means in that context. But as the conversation has taken a turn toward the existential, in the scheme of a life, will I look back and wish I'd read more? I genuinely think I will. I mean, it's on a continuum with spending time with the people I love and walking in the hills but it's definitely right up there.

Had a convo w/ my mum some time ago where she talked about how when she was a young philosophy student she got the complete works of Kant, thinking "when I'm old I'll be able to give these my full attention" and now she knows that's So Not Gonna Happen.

At least TV is less likely to unfold in a starless vacuum, whereas the vast majority of published written material will forever languish in quasi absolute obscurity. The light that is periodically shed on recognizable authorial figures and their works is microscopic when set against the boundless dormant library that makes up the space of literature, which is less and less distinguishable from a virtual garbage dump with each passing year. Major publishing houses, prestigious prizes, interviews with established authors, academic canons, etc., all exist to put a face on the anonymous abyss where creative works go to die as soon as they come into being. And while a handful of remarkable specimens do indeed rise to the top, it would be risible to assume that ours is a literary (or artistic) meritocracy.

Keeping up with seldom read books, while impossible, is therefore a moral imperative, and any dent made in the writerly institutions that be (especially their more venal manifestations), any gaze laid upon their invisible margins, is a small triumph. Or so I tell myself in my more seditious moods; the fact of the matter is that it’s best not to worry about what lies beyond your control and simply go about your solitary business, which is toil enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year

― pomenitul, zaterdag 28 november 2020 23:34 (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Putting this on my wall in a golden frame, so otm. I'm way more 'relaxed' about 'keeping up' with literature or books than with music, with which I get something akin to fomo way earlier and more stressful (which is daft, but.. true, at times). I don't ever feel 'out of the loop' with literature or books though. Where with music I'd like to keep up with what happens in at least some genres important to me, I just don't feel this w/ books. Perhaps it's also to do with the vast amount of books of yore I'd still like to read, books that are written hundreds if not a thousand years ago.

Music feels too much at times because we're (trapped) in this yearly cycle that's being rushed on by aoty-list-season (which I enjoy!) and being on the pulse way, way more than literature. Or at least that's how I perceive it.

I subscribe to five or six literary magazines (the usual suspects plus some Dutch ones), read the supplements in various papers, and on top of that get a lot of reading tips from other books! (a side-project of sorts is working through the books lauded in Huysmans' 'A Rebours', for example, I'm about to start 'La Faustin') Those will lead to other books I want to read again.

It's not 'keeping up', but knowing I won't run out of books I'd like to read, and knowing also that I probably won't even be reading the book I thought I'd be reading after 'La Faustin', because so much can entice me before I pick it up I will have changed course, is just a pleasant feeling.

Tl;dr what Pom said, learn to stop worrying and embrace the infinite amount of books, and see where it takes you next, one book at a time.

I'm way more 'relaxed' about 'keeping up' with literature or books than with music, with which I get something akin to fomo way earlier and more stressful

cosign

Part of it for me is that it's easy to absent-mindedly 'listen' to music as I go about my daily business, so I fall prey to the quixotic call of exhaustivity because it almost seems achievable, whereas with books it's so obviously a non-starter that I'd rather not go down that route at all. That said, every once in a while I will manically devour as many acclaimed contemporary-ish (published in the last five years) books as possible so I can get a better sense of what the current 'scene' looks like and tbh it does actually quench my latent FOMO because it makes me realize I don't care for the majority of it, whereas with music, gluttony just gives rise to more gluttony.

xxxxxxpost, thanks for the link, flopson! It is a grueling read, but I think I understand better now. What a brave and eloquent writer. I'll check more of his, incl. the novel, Alice Knott.

He's...okay.

What he writes about Molly is more than okay.

But if not for you, so be it.

No, I like his writing on Molly.

His other writing is just okay.

I just want to put it out there that while this isn't the case with Butler's writing on Brodak, just because an established writer loses someone in a tragic way doesn't make them writing about it "good writing." Case in point: the J0yelle McSweeney book about losing her infant daughter, which is...really rigid, unfeeling, boring even.

As someone who usually reads books fairly quickly, I would be a hell of a lot more anxious if I only read say 6 or so a year. How the hell do you decide what to read next when there are so few opportunities to choose?

i don't understand this question! there are fewer opportunities but so many books available that it's the same difficulty regardless. but times i have read only a few books in a year i've been so busy/tired/destroyed that everything was difficult so it made no difference. people who read less for other reasons such as not caring about reading as much could also have an easier time because they just never feel anxious about how many books there are.

i'm about to finish a 500 page book i started last week though so things are going much better

the number of books i’m currently “reading” but haven’t finished has risen dangerously over the last couple of weeks

just reviewed this stat myself. disastrous. utterly disastrous.

every year i say finish before you move onto the next one and every year i do that for two short books and then it all falls apart.