Novelists No One Reads Anymore

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.

Ok, thanks for clarifying, and the first 2.5 quotes make me want to check out his poetry (the second half of R. Fiore's riposte is pretty broad, if vivid, maybe goes with his commitment to comics as well as Bukowski).
I haven't read enough of him to have an opinion, but was irritated because it seemed like what had just been posted about basis of his appeal, for some, was already being ignored (as happens frequently on other boards, but I hold ILB to a higher standard). Thanks again.

Amazing quote

I dislike Bukowski, personally, but I haven’t read him in 20 years, maybe I like him now? Probably not

I was going to mention Iris Murdoch but I’m not UK so I don’t know if the sun has entirely set in that regard

Has Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance been mentioned? Can't even remember who wrote it but it was ubiquitous in the 70s

Pirsig. Robert Pirsig, I think.

Robert Pirsig, yes. Lou Reed said he read that and was inspired to take his motorcycle apart. But he had to have somebody from the shop put it back together.
wiki:

Robert Maynard Pirsig (/ˈpɜːrsɪɡ/; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991),

A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine,...Pirsig became intrigued by the multiplicity of putative causes for a given phenomenon, and increasingly focused on the role played by hypotheses in the scientific method and sources from which they originate. His preoccupation with these matters led to a decline in his grades and expulsion from the university.[7]

I am a pretty big Iris Murdoch fan fwiw.

Of her novels I think A Severed Head is a clear standout; I've read it a couple times. I like her Platonic dialogues. I have a few of her denser philosophical works but they are slow going. I think I can just about grasp the Platonism, but some of the deepest stuff... I can only grasp enough to know that it is beyond my tiny brain.

And this guy---and his readers, including sometimes me, I think, in someone else's dorm room--and followers, and his defenders, and his critics, way out West---Evis Telecom to thread:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda

I still need to try Murdoch, thanks for reminder.

The defense that Bukowski is an “everyman’s poet” is more an indictment of Bukowski and “everyman” than some of you seem to think it is, but I digress.

Yeah I am kinda with table here: "poetry for people who don't like poetry" seems tempting at first. But it can easily slide into a kind of artphobic and possibly reactionary stance.

First, beware of liking Bukowski just for shock value (that's a sugar high; it isn't nutritious in the long term).

But also, be careful about liking Bukowski for something like "accessibility" or "immediacy." That path is also tempting, but it leads to elevating Shel Silverstein (or whatever) over stuff that probably has more lasting merit.

Poetimism

Yes, such tags can be rong, or not---will approach the B. with caution, if at all.

For someone whose finest poem is “The Genius of the Crowd,” it’s kind of hilarious that he’s held up as this populist poet lmfao.

I’ve never thought of Iris Murdoch as fitting into this category. She seems to have maintained a decent rep.

Backtracking, someone described Stoner to me and it just made me want to read Elmore Leonard.

One further Iris Murdoch-related thought: my wife and I had a long-running injoke about Kate Winslet nudity. If she is in a movie there will be some skin sooner rather than later. Of course we, as literature dorks, obligingly went to see "Iris" in 2001.

In this film, Ms. Winslet is portraying a widely respected scholar, philosopher, author, and professor. A Booker prizewinner, a doctor of literature, a Dame. And (in a first) she gets conspicuously naked before the opening credits.

https://mjpbooks.com/blog/the-senseless-tragic-rape-of-charles-bukowskis-ghost-by-john-martins-black-sparrow-press/

This is a p gross article, but does make some kind of a case that lots of the posthumously published Bukowski poetry has been heavily tampered with by the publisher (I dunno myself, only ever read the prose). Just remembered I also read his much later (and far more slapdash) 'novel', Hollywood - the only detail that has stayed with me is that at he one point he meets a famous French film director called 'Jean-Luc Godard'.

Jean-Luc Modard, that should be - he only bothers to change one letter.

Teve Torbes

Has Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance been mentioned? Can't even remember who wrote it but it was ubiquitous in the 70s

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/returning-again-to-robert-m-pirsig

News to me too that it was a novel. Always thought it was one of those I'm OK, You're OK type self-help books.

I actually read it when I was 14 or 15! Can't remember anything much about it now, but I doubt it has aged well.

A precocious child with an alleged IQ of 170 at the age of nine

A 'precocious' child's accomplishments are generally negligible, because they are a child, but they are constantly told they are significant when they most certainly are not. Often this is the kiss of death for anyone's intellectual maturation. Seems to me like the only child prodigies who consistently progress in their adult accomplishments are musical prodigies.

at one point he meets a famous French film director called 'Jean-Luc Godard'.

Godard used some of Bukowski's stories for Sauve Qui Peut, and paid him several thousand dollars in cash at the racetrack for the rights.

Good to know re Iris Murdoch!

News to me too that it was a novel. Always thought it was one of those I'm OK, You're OK type self-help books.

It's at least as much the latter as the former.

absolutely fascinating article about a guy I'd never heard of but which touches on a lot of things we are going to need to start caring about quite urgently https://t.co/cMSjV3n8Av

— Crowsa Luxemburg (@quendergeer) October 27, 2022

Rod McKuen is now "a guy I've never heard of"?

I mean, sure -- names that register with 50-year-olds (or 75-year-olds) as "extremely famous, everybody knows who this is" and 25-year-olds as "I have never heard that name before" are perfect for this!

50 year olds probably mostly know McKuen as a guy who used to take up a lot of shelf space in the poetry sections of used bookstores

Also know him as the translator/lyricist for Terry Jacks’s “Seasons in the Sun.”

It says something about the 70s culture that I have this memory of him recording a reading of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, even though a Google search produces no result.

He had a line of beachy casual clothes, don't know how well that did.

He perfectly embodied some kind of variety show sitcom idea of what a poet was back in the day, just like Billy Collins does now.

Also know him as the translator/lyricist for Terry Jacks’s “Seasons in the Sun.”

He was also the translator/lyricist for Scott Walker's "If You Go Away".

Interesting. Which was also a Jacques Brel song. Wonder if there are more. Maybe Mort Shuman did some too.

Yeah, there are reasons no one has heard of him

He did all of those initial Brel translations that walker sang, that’s a lasting contribution to culture if nothing else (tho there’s also the Beat Generation song, which Richard Hell nicked)

I’ve heard some of his records, they’re all that sort of dippy mor-beatnik stuff - surprised they didn’t put him in a mad men ep, has that time capsule quality. The poetry is affable drivel