Novelists No One Reads Anymore

I’m not a fan of Bukowski’s misogyny but like many other awful people I find a lot of his work compelling.

You're probably not that awful, omar.

rows of Dave Barry, P.J. O'Rourke, and Erma Bombeck etc. books in the humor section of the local used bookstore make me wonder if anyone still reads old humorists of the essay/non-fiction variety if

I have a shelf that I call "cheeky bastards," reserved for mildly humorous essay/nonfiction. It does not contain Barry, O'Rourke, or Bombeck, but it does have:

Joe Queenan
Sarah Vowell
Bill Bryson
David Sedaris
Chuck Klosterman
Umberto Eco
James Thurber
Dorothy Parker

A few others I can't remember right now but you get the idea

(There is an adjacent shelf for non-cheeky creative nonfiction. It has Annie Dillard, John McPhee, George Saunders, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Sometimes the cheeky nonfiction blurs into the non-cheeky nonfiction; my categories are not perfect.)

John Edward Williams Has NYRB Classics reprints though, and has been popular around here at least for some time.

Also Stoner has 133,000 ratings, which is probably more than a lot current literary novelists

am dubious about 'popular around here' tbh

Ha. You haven’t been on ILB very long now, son, have you?

He’s so popular around here that he even has his own Loyal Opposition, of which I am proud to call myself a member.

I have only contributed recently. I would be happy to be pointed to some discussion about him. His name is comically common - John Edward Williams - and I haven't found it in a search

How are some of you so omniscient in every category and genre of culture, film, music and puzzles on ilx? It's unnerving

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPCOKoavNNA

I've read Augustus. It's good.

Looks like academia is keeping George Meredith on life support.

Fletcher, ed., Meredith Now (good luck with that), 2017
Wilt, The Readable People of George Meredith, 2015

Nobody has mentioned E. L. Doctorow, is that because he's still widely-read?

I read Ragtime three years ago (I can't remember why), but he's definitely someone who's much lower-profile now than his reputation at one point would seem to have predicted.

John Williams belongs on a different thread entirely - novelists who are read more now than when they were alive. This article describes the remarkable posthumous success of Stoner:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/international/international-book-news/article/56997-a-perfect-american-novel-strikes-gold-overseas.html

yeah stoner has sold decent amounts in the v mainstream airport bookshop in UK where I work for the last decade and a half at least.

Bukowski widely reviled by most literary types, fwiw— people find his misogyny appalling, because it is!

Biggest Bukowski admirer I know is a feminist woman who finds the insight into a misogynist mind of extreme value in a know your enemy sort of way. Which is not to say she reads him exclusively for that - she also rates him as a stylist and finds his depictions of childhood trauma moving.

but yeah 90% of Bukowski mentions I catch these days are from TikToks telling people to read YA instead

Augustus >>>>>>> Stoner

My local bookstore told me last year that they can't keep Stoner on the shelf; every time they order copies they're sold out in a few weeks. I don't have the numbers, but it might be a NYRB best-seller?

Please don’t take this the wrong way but I had you pegged as being in the pro-Stoner camp. Maybe I misremembered.

I do like it but prefer Augustus/

The only Stoner I care about is that one that played with Bob Dylan and Robert Gordon. #onethread

Bukowski widely reviled by most literary types, fwiw— people find his misogyny appalling, because it is!

Biggest Bukowski admirer I know is a feminist woman who finds the insight into a misogynist mind of extreme value in a know your enemy sort of way. Which is not to say she reads him exclusively for that - she also rates him as a stylist and finds his depictions of childhood trauma moving.

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, October 21, 2022 3:59 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not to be overly insulting, but your friend is daft— I find the misogyny so appalling and the rest of the work so totally middling that I can't fathom how anyone with any sense would like him.

Like, one good poem "The Genius of the Crowd" and that's it— the rest is dreck, utter dreck

oh i think there are plenty of people with sense who like Bukowski, flaws and all. It isn't a black and white proposition. I of course am nonsensical.

I mean, I'm not the one who likes Bukowski— I try to not yuck on others' yums as much as I could on here, but Bukowski is a line for me. It's just not very good.

He's not my favorite, I think compared to some of the others mentioned I just like him a lot more. I do definitely think he probably has some attraction from a lot of extremely flawed types of men, let's put it mildly like that. His poetry doesn't do much of anything for me.

Not to be overly insulting, but your friend is daft

lol I reserve my drawing of lines for people who harm others or espouse bigoted ideologies, find the idea that one should do so in matters of literary taste pretty daft and not worth engaging with really.

It's been quite a while since I've read them, but I remember Post Office and Factotum being pretty good realist depictions of the world of mundane work, not without insight or humour.

Post Office was fine in the one read I gave it for those reasons.

Also I read one interview w/Knausgaard where the woman doing it talked about the insight she got into masculinity from his writing. It's a thing you can read other books for, literature included.

Don't remember reading Ragtime beyond the preview in the ever-handy litmag-as-mass-market paperback New American Review, which might be good for its own thread, though was v. informative, like the non-lit-aimed best sellers of Michener and others in same era,

do remember, all too well, that his The Book of Daniel mixed info and some eually apt imagined detail re lives and fates of the doomed Rosenbergs, with hot mess of their entirely fictional daughter, and hapless version of adoptive parents---why the first, when he had a very credible incl. truth-based sensationalist aspect with the Cold War hysteria x exploitation? Well, actual Rosenberg kids were both boys, and EL felt the need for a babe in there, apparently---and if the adoptives could cope, melodrama would run into a wall, not suiting his purposes either. The sons, who had already been raised as the Meeropol brothers, were not pleased, and their adoptive father was the hardy Bronx teacher who had already gotten in trouble for writing "Strange Fruit," not really a wilting suburban sweater dad with unread New Yorkers piling up (per book)
Re later ELD, Garry Wills did a really NYRB longread on either Billy Bathgate or Loon Lake, but I (don't know why I )didn't finish it, even though I liked Wills.

My wife went to college where Doctorow was teaching--he didn't let students from the Lit dept. into his classes because he hated theory.

(Don't think xpost Dorothy Parker wrote novels, did she? Was very impressed with some of her short stories, in I think The Portable Dorothy Parker
:one in the middle of very and evidently typical tense scene between mother and daughter, another wife and husband [just before his brief leave from WWII is up], and "Big Blonde," about house party of pent-up, day-drinking wives and girlfriends of goodfellas. Pretty tough stuff, vs. sometimes cringeworthy, ritualistically self-mocking intros to reviews [but once she got going with those, could be refreshingly down-to-earth blunt about limitations of review-objects, or her own taste-barriers, in some cases]. Verse kind of a more 3-D, hungover Ogden Nash? Not bad.)

In the spirit of being positive, then, I’ll recommend the work of Mike Amnasan, whom no one reads for any number of reasons, some if which probably have to do with the coterie he was in when he was first published. In any case, he’s a writer that gets at the philosophical and abject possibilities and negativities of masculinity in a way I find interesting.

Don't remember reading Ragtime beyond the preview in the ever-handy litmag-as-mass-market paperback New American Review, which might be good for its own thread, though was v. informative, like the non-lit-aimed best sellers of Michener and others in same era

Will admit to being reluctant to read Ragtime after the Greil Marcus takedown – twinned with Nashville – that seemed pretty convincing.

Later Marcus would go to the well too many times with needless invective, as if he was attempting to turn Doctorow into the lit equivalent of his neurotic Lucinda Williams fixation.

Really want to read his Western, Welcome To Hard Times.

Wonder if anyone still reads John ('don’t confuse me with that Magus guy') Knowles’ A Separate Peace. A favorite when I was a teenager – the back cover blurb compared it to Salinger – but I think it was out of fashion even then. All I remember is lots of suppressed homoeroticism, and a guy named Phineas (not a Freak Brother reference) falling (or was he pushed??? - that's a plot point) from a tree.

Joe Queenan

Yeah! His Mickey Rourke send-up is a favorite. Find myself mumbling "sometimes you gotta roll the potato" in many contexts.

omg Marcus takedown of Nashville and Anti-Lucinda fixation make me suspect he might well be wrong about Ragtime too, although not as wrong, perhaps. My high school friends and I dug Salinger, for the most part, but considered Knowles a little too corny, right or wrong.

We were assigned A Separate Peace in school. I wonder if that still happens.

That book was assigned to The Other English Class by The Other Teacher when I was in tenth grade so I sort of read it by vicariously by reading more than one friend’s essay about it on the subway on the way to school.

"his neurotic Lucinda Williams fixation"

I've never heard of this. What was it?

I have never read Bukowski. From this position I add the impression that he is or was a writer admired by people who didn't otherwise like literature very much or couldn't be bothered with reading.

A bit like the old ILM 'people with 12 CDs', maybe.

lucinda w was for years a bit of a whipping post in GM's Real Life Rock n Roll Top Ten, as a symbolic congealing of a tendency in quasi-country that he detested? now and then it did feel a bit awkwardly if not revealingly overstated

(poster dow can correct me here but i'm not sure GM ever went after LW at greater than snarky blurb-length)

(i could google this myself but i'm doing something RN)

(Pvmic)

I have never read Bukowski. From this position I add the impression that he is or was a writer admired by people who didn't otherwise like literature very much or couldn't be bothered with reading.

I don't know about literature or reading, but he is often the poet for people who otherwise don't like poetry.

lucinda w was for years a bit of a whipping post in GM's Real Life Rock n Roll Top Ten, as a symbolic congealing of a tendency in quasi-country that he detested?

Yep. He also seemed to just think she was a big phony, because her father was a professor or something.

Recent Facebook post from Michael Moorcock:

When I was in my forties, Sir Angus Wilson was, with Iris Murdoch, the most respected name in modern English literature. Now it is a name most bookshop assistants either don't know or confuse with Colin Wilson. Only a few writers -- Christie, for instance -- seem to survive the demographics. The best of them are usually kept in print (or KINDLE) by specialist publishers. By it nature, because it reflects the tastes and virtue signalling morality of the day, popular fiction is particularly subject to the vagaries of public taste. That said, fringe writers can become pretty mainstream and can be revived to become canon. In my time both Tolkien and Peake were marginal writers at first and Lovecraft was no better known. Now Lovecraft and Howard are Penguin classics. There are quite as many works of popfic which become canon as there are litfic works and they too depend on fluctuating taste. The more enthusiasts try to promote their forgotten gods the more chance there is of them returning. Or it becomes a kind of secret lore known only to sophistiated initiates. It appears that if a book is not on college syllabuses, few recall it. There again, few newly literate 16th century European/Mediterranean readers of the latest best-sellers would believe you had never heard of AMADIS OF GAUL!

hey pinefox and gjoon1, here's some other impressions by ilxors who don't fit your dismissive impressions of people who like Bukowski:

t's been quite a while since I've read them, but I remember Post Office and Factotum being pretty good realist depictions of the world of mundane work, not without insight or humour.

― Ward Fowler, Friday, October 21, 2022 1:56 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Post Office was fine in the one read I gave it for those reasons.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, October 21, 2022

I thought of two that fit the bill when I was half-asleep this morning: Erica Jong and Jerzy Kosinski. When I was a kid, especially the latter could still be seen everywhere. I don't think I know anyone with a copy of any of either author's books.

Without searching, I think Kosinski was mentioned elsewhere on this thread, but I suspect the recent pain porn film of Painted Bird has at least kept that in print. One of Erica Jong's novels merited inclusion in Anthony Burgess's 99 novels selection (along with Angus Wilson!) but that was many years ago now and yes, it's hard to see her work making much of a comeback. See also: Looking for Mr Goodbar.

Last time I heard mention of Erica:

It must be a holiday, there’s nobody around

She studies me closely as I sit down

She got a pretty face and long white shiny legs

She says, “What’ll it be?”

I say, “I don’t know, you got any soft boiled eggs?”

She looks at me, says, “I’d bring you some

But we’re out of ’m, you picked the wrong time to come”

Then she says, “I know you’re an artist, draw a picture of me!”

I say, “I would if I could, but

I don’t do sketches from memory”

“Well,” she says, “I’m right here in front of you, or haven’t you looked?”

I say, “All right, I know, but I don’t have my drawing book!”

She gives me a napkin, she says, “You can do it on that”

I say, “Yes I could, but

I don’t know where my pencil is at!”

She pulls one out from behind her ear

She says, “All right now, go ahead, draw me, I’m standing right here”

I make a few lines and I show it for her to see

Well she takes the napkin and throws it back

And says, “That don’t look a thing like me!”

I said, “Oh, kind Miss, it most certainly does”

She says, “You must be jokin’.” I say, “I wish I was!”

Then she says, “You don’t read women authors, do you?”

Least that’s what I think I hear her say

“Well,” I say, “how would you know and what would it matter anyway?”

“Well,” she says, “you just don’t seem like you do!”

I said, “You’re way wrong”

She says, “Which ones have you read then?” I say, “I read Erica Jong!”

She goes away for a minute

And I slide up out of my chair

I step outside back to the busy street but nobody’s going anywhere.

hey pinefox and gjoon1, here's some other impressions by ilxors who don't fit your dismissive impressions of people who like Bukowski

I like Bukowski! Notes of a Dirty Old Man is a favorite.

But I was thinking of comments like this (from the Bukowski C/D and S&D thread):

My absolute favorite thing is showing Bukowski to friends who don't like poetry: I've never met anyone that hasn't been turned around by him.
― VegemiteGrrrl, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 10:22 PM (fifteen years ago)

there's a bukowski forum that i belong to, and there is an insane amount of people who end up posting there, who have never been fiction or poetry readers. but once they've been turned onto bukowski, that changes entirely. i think that's where his real power lies.
― Rubyredd, Tuesday, August 7, 2007 10:47 PM

Or this appreciation from the comics critic R. Fiore written upon Bukowski’s death titled “I Don’t Bother to Defend Bukowski":

One can only imagine the consternation of the contemporary poet fraternity, committed as it is to turgid, unreadable pap, watching helplessly as this dirty, cheating usurper writes about things that matter to people in language they can comprehend under the name of poetry. And it may well be that Bukowski’s poetry is essentially prose with an overactive return key.
[…]
When I speak of “turgid, unreadable pap,” I speak not of the handful of good poets but of the great slobbering mass who are read only when taught, who send you lunging for the dial quicker than Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz any time they’re asked to “read a little bit of their work” on NPR, their natural habitat, and who seem to be readily granted the status denied to Bukowski. Leave us not let the bad hide behind the skirts of the good; there’s not nearly enough room back there.