Literary Clusterfucks 2013

Ah, gotcha, thanks for the explanation.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/07/feminist-retelling-of-nineteen-eighty-four-approved-by-orwells-estate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TN-kDEKxF0

This author is like Amanda Palmer and Pomplamoose [insert yr other ILX faves here] rolled into one.

But perhaps this is an injustice to her sui generis originality or lack thereof.

I thought about it a lot, and questioned my position, and etc But after a while

and etc

getting some sort of initial success as a writer must be very much like cocaine

I still can't believe the Pomplamoose guy is the CEO of Patreon

ugh, things i didn't know i didn't want to know

of course he is

like least surprising thing ever

To be fair, in the new one the men don’t all die, they vanish and go elsewhere and behave alarmingly and are visible through unclear means and then at the end they come back.

Haven’t read anything else by her, though.

So are you…recommending it then? You got an advance down under copy?

Basically a worldwide boys' weekend?

Go elsewhere and behave alarmingly

it’s written in a goofy made-up lingo by someone who has never heard more than 30 seconds of someone speaking AAVE but thinks they are an expert in it

― castanuts (DJP), Monday, March 7, 2022 4:17 AM (twelve hours ago)

it's like she tried to do a version of the Belter slang from the Expanse novels, which was set in space in the future and combined with enough other linguistic elements to not be racist-cringe, but, she set her novel on Earth, in America, and added in some "pastoral" elements, and it reads like someone took "Uncle Tom's Cabin" ran it through google translate for Expanse Belter and then translated it back to racist-cringe

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/434970724/the-wake-is-an-unlikely-hit-in-an-imaginary-language

I accidentally bought this without realizing it's written in a (much less offensive) invented version of (I guess) 'old English.' The only way I made it through ten pages was to read out loud and then I decided it wasn't worth the effort.

how did it compare to Game of Thrones?

Less incest presumably. But maybe not.

I accidentally bought this without realizing it's written in a (much less offensive) invented version of (I guess) 'old English.' The only way I made it through ten pages was to read out loud and then I decided it wasn't worth the effort.

If you know any Nordic languages it helps. Lots of the words are just misspelled/modified Scandinavian words. Which of course makes sense (the Danes were there before the French). Anyway, it's a really good book.

So are you…recommending it then? You got an advance down under copy?

Yeah, got an advance copy. I liked it, but having read it after watching the Y The Last Man TV series meant it wasn't exactly fresh (though it did do a number of different things with the premise). To be honest my main problem was the plot relies on one character being an incredibly charismatic natural leader lots of people are irresistibly drawn to, and it did not sell me on their charms.

Paul Kingsnorth of The Wake has his own problems, being an anti-vaxxer let-everything-fall-apart accelerationist.

Basically, my advice is forget everything else in this thread, everyone should read RIDDLEY WALKER, which is brilliant.

haha i like hoban but couldn't deal with that patois either

Saw that stuff about Kingsnorth elsewhere.

I see that Sandra Newman got some good reviews for The Heavens, maybe I will check that one out.

Kingsnorth may be an accelerationist and a former-conservationist-turned-IRL-prepper (IRL in both senses lol) (also, didn't know about the antivaxxer stuff?) but The Wake is too brilliant a work to flippantly dismiss, and one which very much allows its reader to take a different moral viewpoint to its narrator's

Without giving away any spoilers. And also without giving away any spoilers, lol milo

International Rugby League?

He now lives in rural IReLand! Waiting for the climate apocalypse

Kingsnorth seems about as crazy as Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke (who I believe moved to Iceland at one point, to wait out Y2K). The Wake remains a very good book.

have you summoned the fire?

can anyone (tables is tables?) explain the clusterfuck around sean thor conroe's novel? saw some vague allusions to it on twitter but couldn't traceback. i like his podcast

The fact it's called "Fuccboi" seems pretty explanatory tbh. Aside from that someone (Sam Pink) claims he ripped off their style.

It sounds like the novel equivalent of the Anne Hathaway vehicle Havoc (directed by Barbara Kopple of Harlan County, USA fame!)

ok ya just read this https://neutralspaces.co/blog/post.php?id=1136

p good lit drama

can't say sam pink comes off particularly well there, and the drama undoubtedly gave the book some free promo lift

James, can you spoil how the novel deals with trans ppl (if at all)?

I really enjoyed Sandra Newman's The Heavens fwiw - strangely moving story about a 21st century dystopic woman who believes she is also Amelia Bassano aka Shakespeare's Dark Lady. Had no idea about her previous books.

Fuccboi gets a slightly prudish ("my understanding is that it’s a slang term, about a decade old, for young American men in cities who conduct a caddish heterosexual sex life" it begins, adjusting its monocle) but generally positive review from Christian Lorentzen in the latest LRB https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n05/christian-lorentzen/how-tf-was-i-privileged

even since lorentzen used the word poptimism in a lazily incorrect and negative sense i have enjoyed imagining him being chased round the room w/a cattleprod to improve his critical thinking one zap at a time

I will keep that image in mind when I imagine you reading Grimey Simey Reynolds on Talcy Malcy Maclaren in the same issue of the LRB!

i expect it will be food for thought *adjusts monocle*

lol:

"And while you a fkn legend to mfkrs who know, it baffles me how many of these so-called literary fucks don’t know your shit. So many people who read my shit are like Yo, that style you doin, how figure that out? To which I’m like, Sam Pink, bitch! Read Sam Pink you New Yorker Paris Review fuck."

can anyone (tables is tables?) explain the clusterfuck around sean thor conroe's novel? saw some vague allusions to it on twitter but couldn't traceback. i like his podcast

― flopson, Tuesday, March 8, 2022 1:30 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

The clusterfuck seems to be from any number of sides. One side, the snooty bougeois liberal progressives, think the protagonist is offensive. Another side, the more actually left literary types, think that another stylized novel about a terrible man looking for fucks and redemption is the last thing anyone should ever have to read again. And more conservative types are like, "good heavens, a book not written in the queen's English, by crum!"

I mostly don't care, fwiw, because in interviews, Conroe comes off as the most obnoxious asshole I can possibly imagine, an actively disgusting human being, and the excerpts from the novel look like utter shit.

And the dude got a $200,000 advance, so there's the "guy imitates others in the indie ranks to take major-label money" angle.

Like seriously, look up excerpts from the book and you'll find that it is the clunkiest, cringiest straight male "voice of authenticity" that you've ever read. That would be fine if there was an ounce of self-awareness, but there isn't.

If you want to read a guy who is writing in a toxic masculine voice that is actually interesting and aware of itself, read Mike Amnasan.

The money thing isn't surprising, money begets money and Conroe is clearly from a well-to-do background.

having a podcast probably didn't hurt

I don't really understand the phenomenon of podcasts, I don't listen to them and don't see that changing. If assholes and charlatans keep getting book deals from them, to me that means that they're even less worthy of attention.

for a writer I'm sure they provide more exposure than a reading at a small bookstore does

I liked Sean Thor Conroe more when he was called Atticus Lish