Previously: My bestselling YA novel.
Some guy came over for terrible, casual sex. We had sex. It was terrible. Afterwards we rolled into fetal positions facing different directions, not making eye contact, because of these modern times we live in, with Candy Crush.
“Don’t even think about trying to connect with me,” I said. “I hate connecting, and also marriage.”
“Oh, me too, for sure,” he said. “It’s my least favorite of the institutions.”
“For sure,” I agreed. “All institutions are terrible but marriage is the most terrible.”
No one had any orgasms, for sure.
***
“This family has a lot of issues,” I said. “Let’s talk about them for forty pages, and then go on a vacation where nobody has any fun.”
***
“Our daughter’s on pills,” he said. “Just a bunch of pills. And you’re too busy texting to notice.”
***
[leitmotif]
***
I met my girlfriends at the bar. We hated each other so much, but we had similar drinking problems and all of our schedules coincided, so it worked out pretty well.
“I’m unhappy,” I said.
“Me too,” Sinara agreed. “Let’s do drugs.”
“But unhappily,” I said.
“Oh, for sure,” she said. “Let’s do drugs, but not feel any better after we do them.”
“I don’t like anything.”
Sinara threw her two-year-old out the window. “Parenthood is a prison,” she said. “I always hated that baby.” That’s the only way to reject institutions, sometimes, is to throw a baby out of the window.
“We have so many things,” Teklas said, “but we still find ways to be unhappy. I think that’s really interesting. Don’t you think that’s really interesting?”
We all did.
“Let’s all throw our babies out the window,” I said, “and then talk about what things were like when we had babies.”
We all did.
Then it was drugs time.
***
“I’m so lonely,” I said.
“I love you,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
***
“Let’s have even worse sex than the sex we had before,” I said.
“As long as it represents something,” he said. “Bad sex has to represent something.”
“Okay,” I said, getting started. “This blow job represents Syria.”
***
I wonder what it’s like to be a housekeeper. I bet it’s really interesting and authentic, probably.
***
“Let’s go to a party and be mean to people we want to be nice to,” I said.
“For sure, let’s go and have a terrible time,” he said.
“It’s complex because parties are where you’re supposed to have good times, but we never do,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Uuuuuuughhhh,” I moaned, and then all of my bones fell out because of alienation, and I flopped to the floor like a fish, and I went “uuuuuuggghhghghghghgh again.”
“Bluuuuughhhhh,” he agreed, and he was so alienated that he disappeared and stopped existing. What even is the self.
***
The natural progression of time is happening to me, and also to my parents, just like it has happened to everyone and their parents from the beginning of recorded history, but this time it’s different. My father used to be strong and bigger than me but now he isn’t, because of old age. He used to love institutions, and look where that got him: old.
“Why don’t you do the things I did,” he says to me. “Houses and jobs and institutions are good.”
“Houses and jobs and institutions are bad,” I think but don’t say to him. “I love you, Dad, even though our relationship is fraught and we can’t understand each other but really who can understand anyone else and do you really need to be understood to be loved,” I also didn’t say.
***
“I just don’t like being married at all,” he said. “Not even a little bit.”
“Life is so gray,” I agreed.
“So gray.”
“Let’s not be married to each other any more.”
***
Nothing happened, in great detail.
Tags: books, literary novels, prestige
“Let’s go wait for a bus.”
“As long as the bus is late, because Society doesn’t care about People.”
“Okay, and let’s see a black woman on her way to work and get really weird about it for like ten pages.”
“Right on.”
It never seems to occur to prestige lit to just… publish a novel ABOUT the black woman going to work. Rather than white people wondering what thoughts could be in the mind of anonymous black woman going to work. Perhaps its unknowable; like trying to recreate the inner life of a mysterious woodland creature.
“Rather than white people wondering what thoughts could be in the mind of anonymous black woman going to work.” or how anonymous black woman got her hair to stay in that shape. Or how long they need to be friends for before she can ask to touch her hair.
Random House tried, but the words just wouldn’t stay on the pages. Slid right off. You need a white man’s perspective in order to really glue the ink down.
Ahhhhhh! Yes! Science told us this would happen *tsk*
And the cover of this book uses Baskerville font because Literature!
Slap a gender neutral/male name on it, sit back, wait for awards.
His name is Greg. His wife Lisa, she was good for a while. But now she’s not so good. Like, before, it felt new? And she was 24? And now every year she keeps NOT being 24 a little bit more. Me? I haven’t changed at all since college when I was *generic athlete* or “brooding campus journalist* and yet now she doesn’t want to do the sex to me everyday. Like when she was 24. This is why I drink. Also drugs.
Hah!
I remember seeing that kind of book at a date’s place – I won’t say it killed the fledgling relationship… but I also won’t lie to you.
“I’m so lonely,” I said.
“I love you,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
PERFECTION.
‘Miserable People Have Miserable Relationships’ should be a section of the bookstore. TO AVOID.
I swear I’ve read that exchange in an actual published book… :-/
Pretty sure that’s the whole movie ‘Closer’.
Oh God, Patrick Marber. Pass the Highly Significant Cigarettes! (One good line, though, which I think they cut from the film: “Oh, darling, you don’t make me come. I make myself come; you’re just in the neighborhood, providing valued assistance.”)
I bought my first pack of cigarettes because of that movie. I’ll never forgive it.
If this is set in the past: is there a prostitute? There has to be at least one sex worker, to be a character where the other male characters can think about and judge.
Bonus: the one sex worker is the only female character in the book. If there is another female character, she is exactly like a sex worker except she has money.
*wins Booker Prize*
You and I must’ve been reading the same book recently! I was really excited to read it until I began reading it. D:
Hey, me too! Also it is sometimes acceptable to include minorities, as long as they are male and also they want revenge.
Is it worth finishing? My digital library loan ran out and I’m not sure if I want to renew.
I would say not, but I’ve recently been on a kick of not finishing things I’m not enjoying. I suppose it depends on what your policies are on completism.
I actually bought the Kindle version as a treat for getting my first freelance check. I never buy books, so I was quite put out with myself.
I’m not really big into these days; I don’t spend enough time as I’d like reading so I may as well enjoy what I’m reading. Ah well, gotta find another book from NZ to read…
As a former inveterate completist, it’s been very freeing to not feel obligated to slog through things anymore.
I suppose watching “Top of the Lake” doesn’t count as reading a NZ book. Bummer.
Can y’all tell me what the book is so I don’t bother wasting a library hold/loan for my Kindle on it?
The Luminaries, this year’s Booker winner, by Eleanor Catton.
Haha, sorry to keep the suspense going, although I was holding my breath to find out if there was another Booker winner that involves a lot of men and a prostitute.
Read “The Bone People”! Wacky as it is.
I was eyeing that Booker winner! okay then. 😀
I concur. I read it all the way, and I didn’t hate it–liked the historical and geographical description, was curious about some of the characters–but I mainly kept reading to find out how and why the opening conflict happened and guess what? That question is never answered.
Step 1: intricate plot setup
Step 2: jazz hands!
Step 3: Booker Prize
Yes, I think you’re spot on. It’s exactly “Not As Good As You Wanted It To Be”. Not enough to hate, but definitely enough to be disappointed by.
Ohhh I hope not, because that is like 800 pages of Not As Good As You Wanted It To Be.
Against my better judgement I lent it to a coworker–a busy mom who could have been reading so many other books!–but she wanted to and I did warn her and now we’re like “. . . . yeah. [sigh].”
I was reading it on my Kindle, and as I mentioned before, my digital library loan expired. OH well.
What book! What book! I’m dyyyyinnnngggg of curiosity. 😀
You missed the scene where they go on an extended shopping trip buying loads of luxury goods but feel emotionally flat because having lots of spare money doesn’t fill the *spiritual hole*.
It comes just before the bit where they romanticise poverty.
And how are you finding The Goldfinch madam?
If anyone did have good sex, I think the characters would just dissolve to Alex Mack style puddles, slide out of the story and then 128 blank pages.
Please write this book I would buy it thank you
YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED OUT TROUPE. Wealthy white malaise in the modern era is the Least Interesting Literary Topic and yet remains prestige literature / “deep” movies fav genre to mine …now HOW do I integrate “Then it was drugs time” & “This blow job represents Syria” into my daily lexicon?
“Engaging….illuminates a corner of the psyche fiction has yet to tread upon.”
“Incisive….Ortberg’s characters will make you squirm with self-recognition”
“Sweeping…Ortberg boldly answers the question, What does it mean to be human in the year 2014?”
“This book is a searing vision of the wounds our century has inflicted on traditional masculinity. It’s positively Vonnegut-esque.”
I love you.
This stunning debut lucid incandescent compelling lyrical.
I think there’s also a part where the people look at their beautiful house or beautiful apartment in great detail and remark to one another on its excellent details and its flooring and the carefully-curated collection of knickknacks from their many travels all over the world, and then think silently that their home is a cage–a gilded cage–and true freedom lies in a Third World country somewhere.
If only the African-American lady on her way to work or the actual resident of the developing country would come over and slap those people vigorously upside the head for a few hours. It would be called “Revenge of the More Interesting and Authentic Background Characters.” I would TOTALLY read that book.
…And you may say to yourself, this is not my beautiful house! And you may ask yourself…how did I get here??
Glad I’m not the only one whose first thought was that song!
This is why I read genre fiction.
Also, “This Blow Job Represents Syria” is now the name of my new hardcore album.
Also also, needs more angst by/for millennials.
Yeeeeeeeeees! I just gave myself permission not to finish Michael Cunningham’s Snow Queen and it was such a relief. Nothing happened for pages upon pages and I was so bored.
Ugh Cunningham is terrible for nothing much happening and dude malaise.
i loved The Hours and everything else was unbearable.
“This blow job represents Syria.”
I dedicate my next blow job to you, Mallory.
I hope somewhere, somehow, Jonathan Franzen feels bad about himself.
I actually just saw Jon Franzen, and he was doubled over and gasping. “It’s as though a gauntleted fist collided with my gut,” he had just enough air to say. “Emails will never attain to the sacramental quality of plain ink on plain paper. Though immaterial (because immaterial?) they can never evoke the invisible, let alone the numinous.”
Ha! The Corrections was exactly what I was thinking about when reading this
You know what’s a fun way to make Franzen even more impenetrable? Hire an equally egotistical theatrical director (sorry, _artiste_), and have him adapt “House for Sale” to the stage. For 12 voices and an organ. With authentic Minnie Mouse costumes for the finale, to represent fear of…aging? Of having to being an adult and shoulder actual responsibilities? Anyway, before it premiered in New York, they workshopped it at my college. The self-indulgent wankery knob was set to 12.
Fer sherh.
This is exactly why I hated “This Is Where I Leave You” by Jonathan Tropper aka Plopper.
“He used to love institutions, and look where that got him: old.”
imma head over to the nearest tombstone carver emporium and hand this to them because: my own epitaph.
There are FOUR cemetery-monument-carving places in my town of 10,000 people. I’m almost positive I could find you one to cut you a deal on this amazing epitaph.
You live in a town of riches. I’m sure they are all highly specialized establishments. You want fancy? Head down to Ambrosio’s Calligrative Stoneworks. On a budget? Try Discount Jim’s Carvings and Stuff.
God, I wish. I think one is actually called “MONUMENTS” and they have an ineffably creepy angel statue right in the front window, across from the Tim Horton’s, so everyone can drink their coffee and ponder their own mortality and loved ones while being watched by an eyeless angel.
This cunnilingus represents–hahaha just kidding there is never any cunnilingus.
If there is cunnilingus it is bad and she is probably thinking about the correct spelling of ‘cruel’.
There is cunnilingus, but only bestowed by the 40-something professor on the nubile young undergrad because she’d only ever had “sweaty co-eds thrusting and grunting” above her before. She is awakened by his tenderness, but he is left cold and thinking of his former wife who would shame and emasculate him at public suppers!
She pulls out her smartphone after the encounter, and O! The Generation Gap!
This is the short summary of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, I tell ya.
“David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a ‘communications’ lecturer, teaching one class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. His “disgrace” comes when he almost forcibly seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a girl named Melanie Isaacs. This affair is thereafter revealed to the school and a committee is convened to pass judgement on his actions.”
UUUUUGHHHH
I HATED that book so muchhhhh
I haven’t read it and I already hate it
Hated. Hated. Hated. And it was for a book club and chosen for its pretentiousness.
OMG this is the worst book in the world. Reading the scene where he brings a bottle of wine to his rape victim’s teetotal parents by way of apology (or payment, who knows what goes on in the mind of a boring misogynist? Read more Coetzee to find out, I guess) was one of the low points of my year that year
I can’t upvote b/c you’re sitting on 69 votes. 🙁
Lulz!
Oh man, the cunnilingus in NW — that shit stays with you. Mostly the part where he removes the tampon.
The book, having no alternative, told about the nothing new.
“I’m so lonely,” I said.
“I love you,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
amazing
Uuuuuugh. This is why I stopped reading The Corrections, although my precise reason was that it was like reading a middle aged white man’s circle-jerk. Awful. So awful.
This also reminds me of Coetzee’s Disgrace!
I usually give a book about 75 pages before quitting but about 30 pages into the Corrections it was so clear that this guy has a seriously inverted sense of what is and is not interesting
I hated The Corrections and everyone in it so much that I literally look for excuses to talk about how bad it was, so…thank you for posting this comment.
All I need to know about The Corrections I got from the recent Read It and Weep episode. I don’t need to go any further.
Franzen writes like he’s trying to up his word-count.
What. Even. Is. The self.
In a related but opposite note, I am going to the beach soon and would love recommendations for books that are NOTHING LIKE THIS. Books you can lose yourself in without getting too too emotional. Any suggestions?
Ah, I need this too!
My recommendation is from several years ago because I am not having good luck with fiction. I suggest Come, though Tortoise. It is so beautiful and perfect.
Ann Leckie’s ‘Ancillary Justice’ is fantastic. Currently snapping up all the SF awards this year. Smart, yet fast paced and readable. It’s got empires! Uncomfortable friendships! Clones (kinda)! Self-aware computers!
Or either ‘Who Fears Death’ or ‘Lagoon’ by Nnedi Okorafor. Who Fears Death is more modern fantasy, and Lagoon is near future SF. Both great: we’re privileged to be living on the same planet at that woman.
I love her! Who Fears Death is great but Akata Witch is a little bit lighter and might make better beach reading.
Never read it! I’ll have to give it a look. I actually got to have dinner with (near?) her last weekend, not because I’m important or anything, I just happened to know the chair of this talk she was participating in. All I can say is that she’s a fabulous badass. She was really friendly and gave good advice to us loser MFA students that were at the table.
oh thank you! I had Ancillary Justice recommended to me, then immediately forgot the name. But that’s totally it.
I approve of these recs! I haven’t read Lagoon yet – I had no idea Okorafor also wrote science fiction.
My last two beach-reads were Bluets by Maggie Nelson, and Rats by Robert Sullivan! I’m usually a fiction person, and neither of these were fiction, but both were pretty perfect for beaching. Bluets is poetry, really beautiful, and bits of it are surprisingly sexy. I read the sexy bits aloud to my friend over strawberries, which is an immensely enjoyable beach activity.
Rats is about the rats that live in NYC and it is *fascinating*. Like, did you know that in the early 1900’s, teenagers were trained to just run around and kill rats? Actual headlines:
“1000 teeners [TEENERS!] will spearhead assault on rats!”
“This is it! We pass ammo to troops of the anti-rat war!”
“Rat-Battlers taught to kill armies of rodents!”
BRB writing a 1900’s YA novel about girls who run away from their fancy brownstones to hunt rats and party it up in shadey rat-fighting dens run by the indomitable likes of Kit Burns.
I would read the hell out of that novel.
I second this! I think I read it four times and each time was better than the last.
If you like your beach w a side of feminist dystopia, try the “Wool” series which is about $2 on Kindle 🙂 I am also searching for literature so look fwd to comments!
Wool was a blast, but Hugh Howey seems to have some real misogyny problems: http://www.dailydot.com/culture/hugh-howey-the-bi…
I recently enjoyed reading the Magnus Flyte books (substantive fluff mystical thrillers?) and the Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley. Plus I’m working my way through the less well-known works of LM Montgomery. All of these are nothing like the above.
Just recommended it to a co-worker, so it’s on my mind, but the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire is really good urban fantasy. There’s romance but it’s definitely not paranormal romance (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
Seanan McGuire is also great and has promised to never do certain things to her characters. Which makes for good reading, given how often sexual violence is mishandled or one is not in the mood. As good as An Untamed State was, I can’t read too many books like that. Oof.
Have you read Sparrow Hill Road? I like it a lot.
I have not! But now I plan to. I have read a lot of Seanan’s work, but she is so prolific and I have so many books to read, that I haven’t even read the most recent book in the series I just recommended! I did read Parasite by her (under the name Mira Grant) which if you like horror is really good.
Wait, Seanan McGuire is Mira Grant?
Mind. Blown.
Another good fantasy one is Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy. I recommend it to everyone. EVERYONE. Assassins in a magical land who have feels. Fully developed female characters. Sass. SO MUCH SASS.
I just read The Golem and the Jinni on vacation and it was an excellent choice. Early twentieth century New York! Immigrant not-quite-human main characters!
Here are some engrossing non-heavy (but good!) reads which I have enjoyed:
1. Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle (heartbreaking, lovely, hilarious, coming-of-age)
2. Connie Willis: Passage, Doomsday Book (this one is kind of depressing though), To Say Nothing of the Dog (lighthearted romp), Blackout & All Clear (suspenseful)
3. Kate Elliott: Jaran (anthro sci-fi, feminist, 1 of 4)
4. Sarah Zettel: Dust Girl (Fairies, YA)
5. Franny Billingsly: Chime (Magic(?), Coming-of-Age, Delightfully Weird)
6. Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Coming of Age, Weird, Wonderful)
Sorry if this is too much. I am a librarian at heart, I think.
Yes! Connie Willis! Connie Willis, because time-travelling historians!!!!
Don’t read the Doomsday Book on vacation.
Aiee, you mentioned Jaran! How do we get the rest of that series back in print so Elliott can afford to finish it? How?
(I mean, you are doing your part.)
omg “Dust Girl” is about a biracial fairy teen in the early 20th century?! Why did no one tell me?! WHERE IS THE BOOKCLUB???
I Capture the Castle is PERFECTION. I love you for recommending it! One of my favourite books ever. And We Have Always Lived in the Castle is fantastic, although I prefer Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House for sheer terror.
Your list makes me so happy. “I Capture The Castle” is number one on any favourite book list I have or will ever write, but I’ve only read one of the others (Connie Willis, obvs)! Such pleasures await me! THANK YOU.
Tamora Pierce!
Just had a long chat with some friends about how secretly radical they were and remembered that they were amazing.
“Where’d you Go Bernadette” is maybe my ideal vacation book. It’s funny, and satirical, and not at all something that will weigh you down while still being smart.
Also, I just finished “Ironskin” which is a steampunk retelling of Jane Eyre, with bonus evil fairy-folk because why the hell not.
I recently read Bonjour, Tristesse on a plane and had the thought that it would be perfect beach reading.
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid is my favourite book in the world. Read that, and if you don’t enjoy it, change yourself until you do, I love her so much
“This blow job represents Syria.”
bow chicka wow wowwww
Alternate title:
White 30 Year Olds in Brooklyn
pitched as: How I loved, lost, and learned. My totally unique experience of having bad jobs and relationships and how I became the voice of my generation.
White 30 Year Olds in Brooklyn are the new White Middle-Aged People in Connecticut.
UGH YES. I find variations of a lot of this in book by women and queer and POC authors, too: the persistent and pernicious notion that happiness is neither “realistic” nor “serious.” Then I just have to go read romance or YA or fanfiction where people are allowed to have fun.
*throws out completed novel*
(does not actually throw out completed novel because of course, she’d never been able to complete anything, like her unsatisfying relationship and also her education, just like the lake property that her parents bought all those summers ago to build a house on but is just an empty frame and a pile of bricks)
THE FUCKING LAKE. NO ONE GO TO A LAKE. ALL LAKES ARE HAUNTED BY THE SADNESS OF A FADING MIDDLE CLASS.
oh, it’s not so bad once you get past the asbestos cladding. And ceiling tiles. And the black mold.
PROPERTY: harder to maintain than to win, a love story.
*lies on a bed of YA Fantasy, sighs contentedly*
omg its like you didn’t even read ‘my bestselling ya novel’
AT LEAST EVERYTHING CHANGES AND NOTHING IS THE SAME AGAIN IN YA, MALLORY.
“I just don’t like being married at all,” he said. “Not even a little bit.”
“Life is so gray,” I agreed.
“So gray.”
“Let’s not be married to each other any more.”
This, in a nutshell, is why I pretty much don’t read anything labeled “contemporary literary fiction.”
(See also this brilliant essay on the “A dog barks, someone eats a watermelon, a car drives away” school of fiction-writing.)
That article is perfect and I am going to use it to break all my bad writing habits.
What a fantastic article and WHOOPS guess who gives her fanfiction long, litfic-style titles (the answer is me)
THE WATERMELON IS A METAPHOR FOR THE FLEETING NATURE OF LOVE
What even is the self
WHAT EVEN
What even is the shelf
( o.o)
<) )
/ \
See also:
This historical and/or current atrocity is a way for me to work out my feelings about my own masculinity and hangups about women.
Reprise:
I’m a white guy writing the story of an African woman with the most stereotypical, gendered violence backstory. Aren’t I sensitive? Didn’t you cry so many tears? (cough::Alexander Maksik::cough)
I knew I recognized that name. That’s the guy who slept with his 17-year old student and then wrote a book about it, having her say he was the best lover she’d ever had. Didn’t think he’d manage to top that one, but apparently he did!
Yes! And then he wrote this emotionally manipulative novel from the perspective of a female Liberian refugee who is running from a past trauma. Think of the most stereotypical “African atrocity violence” you can come up with. Ugh, that book.
This reminds me SO MUCH of “Less Than Zero.”
A boyfriend once picked up my copy of “The Rules of Attraction” and asked me, “Is this a relationship advice book?”
I said, “Yes. I need to be having more furtive, gay hate-sex with wealthy college students.”
“I really need to vomit on you while we’re drunkenly fucking.”
Pretty much replace any last chapter with this image
Guys I got drunk the other night and for some reason bought a copy of “How Should A Person Be?” I’m loathe to start it just based on the title. Is it the worst? It has to be the worst right?
Yes, it’s terrible. The prose is nice, but the main character, ugh. No self-awareness, no emotional maturity, and supposedly is loosely based on the author herself.
When I finished it, I said on Twitter that it sucked and she favorited my tweet.
I said on Twitter that it sucked and she favorited my tweet.
WHY
I guess to let me know that she had seen it. Which, whatever. I didn’t get in her face about it by @ mentioning her, but I did use her full name and the full title of the book, so it’s not like I was trying to be sneaky either.
But why would an author be like, “Hey, I’m not going to engage with your criticism, but I want you to know that I see you.” Or is there another way to look at this? I’m mystified.
The only real possibility I can think of is passive aggression. I’d rather not jump to that conclusion, but for what it’s worth, it does totally seem like the kind of thing the protagonist of the book would do.
It’s actually wonderful. The protagonist acts like the characters in My Prestigious Literary Novel up until the end, when she realizes that that’s an overly difficult and fucked up way to be.
Not a fan; couldn’t finish.
I don’t know. I was kind of hypnotized by it. I just feel like there are tons of books where dudes are horrible people but none where women are allowed to be (in a way other than like, She was a bitch because she didn’t sleep with me!!!), and this was Heti going, I FUCKING SUCK, HAVE AT ME. And some parts about sex/art making/privilege I found uncomfortably close to home.
It read like the most insider documentation of Toronto’s art scene I have ever seen anywhere, and in that, it explicitly addresses why Toronto is so enormously boring.
It is the worst. Just thinking about it now gets me all riled up.
What book! What book! I'm dyyyyinnnngggg of curiosity. 😀
“Are there any books of that sort nowadays? The only ones I ever see mentioned in the papers are about married couples who find life grey, and can’t stick each other at any price.”
THAT IS WHAT INSPIRED THIS PIECE
When your book comes out I will shelve it with all my Wodehouse!
“Nothing happened, in great detail” is precisely how I’ve been describing The Goldfinch. Happy to hear contrasting viewpoints, though, because MAN do people want to talk about how fantastic that book is. I just felt like I kept reading with the assumption that it would build to something and then…it did not. (cue sad trombone)
You’re not alone. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/07/goldfin…
Good to know, i’m a third of the way through and waiting for something to happen. Tossed!
“Nothing happened in great detail” is the perfect summary of every literary novel ever.
Well, we all know that good plotting is for amateurs, genre novels and the 19th century only.
You know what I finished recently that was imminently satirizable was Special Topics in Calamity Physics, but I loved it anyway.
I totally agree! On both points. Have you read Night Film yet?
“Nothing happened, in great detail” should be on the next Toast shirt.
YES PLEASE
*throws the self away, goes out for ice cream and is happy*
“Okay,” I said, getting started. “This blow job represents Syria.”
That was my favorite part.
I still think a more descriptive name for one big chunk of litfic is Sad Penis Novel. Nobody has ever been confused what I’m referring to when I talk about those.
Let’s all take Jim Behrle’s advice and move out of Brooklyn. http://www.theawl.com/2012/04/how-to-write-the-gr…
yo
This looks like a really targeted parody of The Slap (Australian Prestigious Literary Novel) which I’m pretty certain Ortberg hasn’t read. If you can incisivley parody a book you haven’t read, then that is not a quality book. And yet! So highly spoken of! Seriously read this:
this reads like a parody. please tell me it’s a parody.
If by parody you mean “has won many national awards and is a perennial staple of book clubs”…
The hilarious thing is that this book has 8 different viewpoint characters, which the writer gets a lot of praise for, but they *all sound exactly like this*. The 16-year-old girl talks about her own vagina using the same words and tone this character does.
oh christ
> “If you can incisivley parody a book you haven’t read, then that is not a quality book.”
I think parody can be a great way to enjoy both terrible / shambolic works as well as accomplished ones. It’s fairly easy to satirise J.D. Salinger and I loved The Catcher in the Rye. I loved The Slap, as well. In reading the latter I felt that the eight different chapters / characters espoused distinctly different view points and were drawn with impressive complexity, and I was surprised to find myself even changing allegiances as I was rotated through the moving carousel of perspectives.
Anyway, I think there’s something to be said for “high” literature focussing on misery. Rates of anxiety and depression tend to be high in the first world and a significant proportion of marriages do fail. That marriages often end isn’t necessarily a bad thing and I think it’s a cathartic exercise to reflect on this (and other modern day miseries) and let ourselves off the hook for not finding being perfectly happy with everything even though we can feed and clothe ourselves.
I guess the author’s point is sometimes the misery can be indulged, as if it’s a sign of martyrdom and wankthink. When I was reading through the article I thought of John Irving and while he is stackloads miserable it was a bit of a relief for someone who grew up on the lies fed by Party of Five and Dawson’s Creek. Not everyone gets to fall in love, and sometimes that plain sucks. 🙂
If by parody you mean "has won many national awards and is a perennial staple of book clubs"…
The hilarious thing is that this book has 8 different viewpoint characters, which the writer gets a lot of praise for, but they *all sound exactly like this*. The 16-year-old girl talks about her own vagina using the same words and tone this character does.
every Dad loves Scandinavian murder mysteries or maybe that's just over here
oh christ
I think we need Toast t-shirts with “This Blow Job represents Syria”.
At least I know that I need it.
(Or: “What even is the Self?”)
“I met my girlfriends at the bar. We hated each other so much, but we had similar drinking problems and all of our schedules coincided, so it worked out pretty well.”
ALI DESERVES TO FIND LOVE, MORGAN!
Is this Stoner? I feel like it’s Stoner.
My dad doesn't have time for Scandinavian murder mysteries with all the Tom Clancy books still in the world! And also histories of WWII. One time I was like, "is there anything you don't know about WWII at this point?" and he was like "………maybe?" it was adorable.
Great article. Laugh out loud funny. I can’t help but notice the circular nature of postmodernism being a parody of the grand narrative, and then postmodernism itself being parodied. A parody of a parody of a parody.
See also: My Prestigious Lars Von Trier Ouevre
I want excerpts from your indie film script, Mallory.
Dammit, Mallory! Syria is some pretty serious shit, and now for the rest of my life I will have to live as an outcast because whenever anyone mentions it I won’t be able to stifle my laughter.
I haven't read it and I already hate it
i loved The Hours and everything else was unbearable.
i ALSO like Scandinavian murder mysteries. Who doesn't?
This comment. Forever.