Novelists No One Reads Anymore

I agree that Mailer, Vonnegut, Brautigan are less read than they were, when they were cult heroes of a generation or two. But are the other novelists of their era still read, by this thread's standards? Maybe it's really only a small sample who stay afloat. Say: Pynchon, Barthelme, Didion, Updike, Bellow ... And then dozens of names now more obscure than Mailer, Brautigan et al.

― the pinefox

i'll always remember vonnegut for what he said about semicolons. what the fuck, kurt? the only way you can think of to express your exaggerated and irrational grammatical prejudices is to fucking dump on trans people too?

huh? wha'd he say?

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. The first rule: do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.”

I do think that if he were still alive (and ancient) he would be embarrassed about that and apologise, he wasn't ever a Norman Mailer type about these things

Let's not be too hard on Mailer. Who among us hasn't stabbed his wife?

i use semicolons all the time

so it goes

who among us hasn't killed their wives with their semicolon use?

fine as long as you don't stab your wife in the semicolon with a pen knife

William S. Burroughs to thread

More of a full stop in his case.

Let's not be too hard on Mailer. Who among us hasn't stabbed his wife?

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

i never stabbed norman mailer's wife

fun fact, this is the only grammatically correct way i can construe that particular sentence

one of the books i'm reading is a book called "semicolon" about how grammarians done the semicolon dirty

i think what shocks me most about vonnegut's comment is how utterly _out of character_ for him it is. he was a humanist, not a cruel man. very strongly empathetic. it says a _lot_ about how fucked up the world was for trans people that someone like kurt vonnegut would consider _saying_ something like that, let alone believe it to be clever enough to publish. not only is it not clever, it doesn't even make any sense! the idea of a "transvestite" is sort of rooted in binary ideas of gender. to label someone or something an intersex transvestite is nothing short of incoherent.

Not to defend it but thats literally the joke?

Like he’s using an apparently self-contradicting term (person of both sexes who dresses as the opposite sex) to convey the (to him) meaninglessness of the semicolon

fun fact, this is the only grammatically correct way i can construe that particular sentence

Who among us has not stabbed his, her or their spouse, registered domestic partner, significant other, life partner, boyfriend or girlfriend (as applicable)?

Who among us has been at a wedding with Norman Mailer's son at which he made a toast in which he told the newlyweds "I have two words for you: couple's therapy"?

*Raises hand*

E.R. Eddison, Tolkien-contemporary, author of The Worm Oroboros (which was apparently the main point of comparison for LOTR when it came out) and the really peculiar Zimiamvian Trilogy. I've picked up a few of these as second-hand paperbacks over the years and it's hard to imagine them finding a contemporary audience, that and the fact Eddison had a relatively small body of work I think means he's unlikely to experience a revival anytime soon

Worm is such a wonderful and weird book -- I've been hunting down the Zimiamvian Trilogy in paperback and I think I have all 3 volumes around here somewhere now, I keep meaning to get to it. There's something so pre-modern about Worm in the way the plot just wanders here and there.

Umberto Eco seems like one who had bestseller novels that were intellectual and thoroughly researched but didn't make it into the classroom to endure.

worm is available on project Gutenberg fwiw (but only that by him)

Is Gore Vidal much read? He enjoyed a renaissnce during the Iraq War. But since his death -- nope.

Isn't Zachary Quinto playing him on stage right now?

uh yeah

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/sep/05/zachary-quinto-star-west-end-production-best-of-enemies

Had no clue.

Umberto Eco

I read The Prague Cemetery a few years ago. I thought it was quite good.

Many xps

I teach Priestley (An Inspector Calls) and have tried a few bits of late. English Journey is a decent, angry trawl around England of the 1930s (Owen Hatherley cited it as the main inspiration for A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, FWIW). Margin Released is a decent writing memoir, where he spends a good deal of time NOT writing about his WWI experiences (while writing really well about his WWI experiences). And Bright Day, which, the further I get away from, I'm convinced is a damn fine novel.

I'll be interested to see what happens to Ballard over the next 20 years or so.

Anyone still reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon?

Does anyone read Joaquin Miller anymore? Mostly a poet, but wrote some novels too.

Miller was championed, although not enthusiastically, by Bret Harte and Ambrose Bierce. In his time, Miller was known for his dishonesty and womanizing. Bierce, his friend and contemporary, said of him, "In impugning Mr. Miller's veracity, or rather, in plainly declaring that he has none, I should be sorry to be understood as attributing a graver moral delinquency than he really has. He cannot, or will not, tell the truth, but he never tells a malicious or thrifty falsehood." Miller's response was, "I always wondered why God made Bierce."

Joaquin Miller's literary works seem to have been locked into a cabinet of Victorian era curios around 1920 and largely forgotten since. He wasn't a very good poet or novelist, but he was one hell of a character with a talent for self-promotion.

I'm mentally going back through my college-era faves and realizing I haven't heard much about Margaret Drabble lately.

I hope she's still being read in the UK at least.

I enjoyed reading the beginning of some Margaret Drabble book recently but couldn't keep up the momentum, but that is more my problem than hers, haven't been able to read a novel in quite a while. Being an empty nester might change that though. *fingers crossed*

heh, I read The Ice Age after Lester Bangs mentioned it somewhere (do people still read him?)

Greil Marcus mentioned it, I think.

Is Gore Vidal much read? He enjoyed a renaissnce during the Iraq War. But since his death -- nope.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 29, 2022

Our book club just read Julian

I think hardest novel I ever actually made it all of the way through was Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. It was assigned to our book club on my recommendation and I was the only one who finished it

Yup, I'd say Gore Vidal's lease on literary life hasn't expired, yet.

Drabble > Byatt

I've got a modern translation of The Magic Mountain, looks like all the French is translated too, and it's promising to skim. I should dig it up and dig in, considering that even H.T. Porter-Lowe's old Britishy roast beef version was intriguing enough.
Ice Age and the other two Drabble novels I read in the 70s and 80s had some good bits but ran out of steam. The first was, "Yes, we are in the 70s, and the 70s are fucked, ah yes, ah yes," which was what Bangs and Marcus seemed to like about it.

Lawrence Durrell is a good answer. Robertson Davies too?

Some favourite Gissings:

New Grub Street
The Odd Women
Born in Exile
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories
By The Ionian Sea (poor George having a miserable time in southern Italy but good fun anyway)

Some favourite Bennetts:

Anna of the Five Towns
Riceyman Steps
Old Wives Tale
Buried Alive (a Borges recommendation)
The Card
Clayhanger

(why late in the week in the uk does mark s get all pynchoned out: Thomas Pynchon )

Dunno if this Magic Mountain stuff is just a tangent but I can't imagine Thomas Mann not being widely read in German speaking countries still at least.

martin amis lol.

Heh. But Money might still be good, or is that challops at this point?

well i was discussing this with an intermittent ilxor the other day and the answer was a tentative yes. but more the point was just how much he isn’t part of *anything* these days. “he hasn’t even been cancelled” was an observation.

Hah!

He wasn't even the best curmudgeon in the Amises.

yeah does anyone still read kingsley amis?

or john braine, alan sillitoe, john braine etc

all those dudes were still in the school library when i was at high school (end of the 70s) but i get the feeling i was in the last generation to read them

might be wrong

Much easier to watch the films iirc.

Because I’m out for a good time. All the rest…

no one reads either of the john braines any more

The Man with Two Braines

lol oops