ts big dogs 2014 edition #1: dostoyevsky vs austen

_The caucasian Big Dogs of prestige lit can’t present themselves as the universal perspective anymore. No one needs Jonathan Franzen or Martin Amis to speak on behalf of humanity.

So who are men when they don’t get to claim the status of godlike narrator?_


does Franzen do this? I thought the standard criticism of Franzen was the opposite, that he is too concerned with a narrow, white, male, middle-class etc perspective.

who the fuck cares about "prestige lit" or gets riled up enough about it to denounce it? the phrase itself strikes me as weird, and raises questions in my mind, such as where does this prestige come from, where does it go, and it is any different from self-congratulation?

xp I guess so, but I think she kind of answers her own question with the jibe about novels 'middle-aged uni professors lamenting their employer’s updated guidance on sexual harassment', she already has the answer as to what novels by straight white men about the straight white male condition would look like, it's just that she doesn't like it?

That seems terribly reductive.

I know many people in law and business who read nonfiction but no fiction. And they are NOT reading self-help or Seven Habits or whatever. Plenty of biography and history because it is "real" while fiction is "just made up."

yeah this is what i was thinking of too. there are a lot of people out there who fancy themselves polymath intellectuals devouring political bios and soft science/history books with titles like "History of Chairs: How Sitting Shaped Our Brains and Changed the World", but who still never touch novels bc that would require them to engage the consciousness of someone outside their own life experience.

(i may or may not consider those folks "real readers" either, but still definitely a separate category from ppl reading CEO books & self-help)

among the bookish people I'm familiar with I feel like there's an attitude that straight white men reading novels by/about straight white men is bad and cringe, but also if you are straight white man then novels by authors from a marginalised identities are not for engaging with, they're for Sitting Your Ass Down And Learning from, it would be presumptuous engage with them at a different level than that?

A book is a book

Why not just read what you like? I don’t recognise the part about marginalised authors at all, I assume this is some Twitter nonsense

There are sections of book Twitter that react against a de-colonial aspect of teaching literature. I see them reacting to a Torygraph piece. This functions as a way to radicalize liberals.

I think the attitude that Sarkar talks about is of white men in their 40s and 50s onwards who read mostly European men and haven't done the 'work'. But as I see it a lot of White women only read Euro women and I don't see them shouting about books from outside the continent.

But this is all to do with impressions of Twitter discourse. Ultimately a small % of the population read fiction, nevermind poetry.

I think that the thing with this article is you can write about ppl (ok, sure, men) who read non fiction but nit fiction or youcan write abt men who read genre fiction but not literary fiction but once you stick those together like they're the same thing, well, basically this ends up just being about Ash's bf.

Just saw someone complaining about the article. I actually missed Ash's thread on it. This is my favourite post.

Faced with the challenge of articulating themselves as themselves, it’s like straight white men have given up on the subtleties of the novel and said: “Fuck it – I’m doing stand up about cancel culture instead.” https://t.co/QYcBhZDL88

— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) May 17, 2022

I think that the thing with this article is you can write about ppl (ok, sure, men) who read non fiction but nit fiction or youcan write abt men who read genre fiction but not literary fiction but once you stick those together like they're the same thing, well, basically this ends up just being about Ash's bf.

Just seeing that inanity pulled out like that, for all the world to see xp

I only skimmed this, but ime lots of leftist nerds of all genders are into the exact sci-fi authors she mentioned (plus, especially, Octavia Butler) right now, and that seems like a both new and distinct phenomenon to me, not one in continuity with the whole Big Dogs thing. This is a very anecdotal and localized theory to be sure

'Caucasian Big Dog' sounds like an actual dog breed.

If my gf wrote an article about patriarchal ideas behind men reading less literary fiction cause I was reading Ursula K. Le Guin while she read Jane Austen, I’d ask for a divorce.

— ege (@egeofanatolia) May 17, 2022

just three posts later lol

Ps: This excludes YA, if your adult partner only reads YA then break up. I’m a YA hater first, book lover second.

— ege (@egeofanatolia) May 17, 2022

YA discourse on twitter is wild.

I mean, I like Ash, but the piece is dumb and frustrating, lacks proper reporting, and fails to interrogate its own biases (which might have been interesting!). Also I will forgive a lot but not talking smack about Ursula Le Guin. Still -- OTOH it's just an opinion piece for the shit, low-selling men's magazine GQ.

For me this sort of opinion writing exhibits the "most journalists are assholes" category error of understanding the world. IME a lot of journalists are unreflective assholes, who hang around and partner up with similarly unreflective assholes, and tend to assume everyone else in the world is an unreflective asshole. Everything gets analysed under this greasy prism of glibness.

I blame the defeat of that Marxist Jeremy Crumblyn for this.

fwiw I don't think Sarkar thinks she's dunking on sci-fi or non fiction in this piece; she assumes ppl go to sci-fi for different reasons than litfic, and I see no evidence that she thinks the reasons ppl go to litfic are superior, just that they have value, too.

she is still wrong tho

(wrong about ppl going to sci-fi for fundamentally different reasons, not wrong about litfic having value, lol)

i don't read fiction bcz it's all made up
i like to read abt maths, science and the law (also all made up)

This is another one of these "why are men like this?" pieces.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/09/why-do-so-few-men-read-books-by-women

An old favourite of yours for stirring shit iirc

Then you get this kind of thing as a "literary challenge". It's ok as it goes but this time the writer's brother gets it.

https://www.ft.com/content/99936410-fdf8-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e521

An old favourite of yours for stirring shit iirc

― gyac, Wednesday, 18 May 2022 bookmarkflaglink

http://2h3mh837ken53kitqv1co5fh83o.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/image1-1-1024x538.jpg

Ffs! Hate when the internet spoils my joke

I did do a year of reading only female authors myself, after noticing how few I've read. I can understand the frustration at this sort of self-improvement/micromanagement of cultural tastes taking up so much space in the discourse at the expense of looking at things from a more structural pov but I do think it's a worthwhile thing to do, on an individual level.

the writer's brother is sadly behind a paywall

If you Google the headline you should be able to read it

gendering of fiction always struck me as weird and the specific gendering in that piece is both lazy and misses the mark

that being said, in very general terms women read more than men and afaik it's been like that since the early 19th century, and those men who do not read are missing out obv

I did do a year of reading only female authors myself, after noticing how few I've read. I can understand the frustration at this sort of self-improvement/micromanagement of cultural tastes taking up so much space in the discourse at the expense of looking at things from a more structural pov but I do think it's a worthwhile thing to do, on an individual level.

Agree, I think last year was the first year I read more than 50/50 books by female authors, which is ridiculous.

I remember chatting to guy in Oxfam Books, a big novel reader, who said he didn't want to read Ferrante because he thought it would be "too much of a woman's book" and it's always a shock to meet people like that in the wild

I know a guy who's a very sweet person and a talented writer, but who doesn't read any books by women except for The Shipping News, which he loves. Very strange.

haha, so weird

reminds me of something Sigrid Nunez said:

For pretty much my whole writing life, I always felt—as did every woman writer I know—we lived in a world where if you heard “women’s fiction,” you heard “lesser fiction.” Not just male readers and male editors. Women also felt that a thing made by a man was superior to that made by women. Look at publishing—it was dominated by women. Most of the editors and agents were women, and the books that were admired most and given the most attention were by men. That’s changed. But to be honest, with books written by a woman, an older woman in particular, I’m still surprised when a man says he loves the book. I would feel like it was a hard sell.

and Nunez is obv brilliant

Ursula K. Le Guin bf, GQ essay gf

— Alexander Wells (@ajbwells) May 18, 2022

I did do a year of reading only female authors myself, after noticing how few I've read. I can understand the frustration at this sort of self-improvement/micromanagement of cultural tastes taking up so much space in the discourse at the expense of looking at things from a more structural pov but I do think it's a worthwhile thing to do, on an individual level.

"I remember chatting to guy in Oxfam Books, a big novel reader, who said he didn't want to read Ferrante because he thought it would be "too much of a woman's book""

Give him the latest copy of GQ. It's for men.

This is a good piece on the resistance young men have for reading, changes in the market, etc.

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/theres-no-hype-machine-for-selling-literature-to-dudes

I think there’s a difference between not reading women (which is dumb) and reading things that only suit your “quiet, tasteful sensibilities” (Nathalie Olah, in the link above). I think that’s ok! Being middlebrow or boring in your reading is literally no one else’s business

And the weird snobbishness (which obvs people here don’t have) about video games. I’d feel desperately sorry for someone who spent more time reading Tom McCarthy than playing Zelda. (Although having bad taste is also ok!)

Trying to get people to voluntarily read anything that doesn't appeal to them is a losing battle. Lots of readers have very narrowly defined ideas of what they want from books and they never break out of whatever narrow niche they fell into.

The best you can hope for from niche readers is that the very habit of picking up books and reading them to the end will permit them some day to accidentally read a book outside their chosen niche, enjoy it, and discover a new niche to add to their old one. If this happens more than once, they may eventually start looking for such 'accidents' and become an adventurous reader.

I've been part of a book club for about ten years now. The host for each month chooses the book. I've read stuff I never would have heard of, let alone thought to pick up, otherwise. It's been a great experience (witness its longevity).

"Trying to get people to voluntarily read anything that doesn't appeal to them is a losing battle. Lots of readers have very narrowly defined ideas of what they want from books and they never break out of whatever narrow niche they fell into."

Lots, not all. Just in this thread three posters talked about their efforts to read more women, and what that might have done for their reading. I certainly see quite a bit of that on book Twitter. Reading women, engaging with more translated literature.

"And the weird snobbishness (which obvs people here don’t have) about video games."

Yes, did overlook that as I haven't touched a game for 20 years.

Ah well.

A champion emerges. pic.twitter.com/PjzAit2mFY

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) May 19, 2022

And the weird snobbishness (which obvs people here don’t have) about video games. I’d feel desperately sorry for someone who spent more time reading Tom McCarthy than playing Zelda. (Although having bad taste is also ok!)

C was a pretty bad book, but I reckon it'd make a semi-decent point'n'click tbf