• author totally misunderstands Internet in way that sounds profound

September 9, 2016 12:41 PM

Here is a list of things that I am including in this book. Please send me my seven-figure advance.

• affluent family lives in suburb. The husband (who is a professor but also a novelist) is cheating on his wife, but he thinks it falls into a moral gray area because he is a Great Man

posted by griphus (175 comments total)

I just read "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith and that first bullet point made me laugh.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 12:43 PM on September 9, 2016 [13 favorites]

Anyway to dodge the paywall?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:45 PM on September 9, 2016

You should always include whale facts, just in case.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 12:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [34 favorites]

So, seeing as how this resonates with me way more than it should, what do fine Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this. Because I think I have a thirst for whatever the opposite of this is.
posted by selfnoise at 12:47 PM on September 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

• bird (metaphor)

*snorts coffee all over keybaord*
posted by Fizz at 12:47 PM on September 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

(honestly I think a fear of this sort of nonsense has kept me away from literary fiction in a way that's probably not productive)
posted by selfnoise at 12:50 PM on September 9, 2016 [24 favorites]

Anybody watch the recent tv show "The Affair"? It is itself one of these novels AND the male protagonist gets rich and famous off writing one of these novels.
posted by bleep at 12:51 PM on September 9, 2016 [12 favorites]

Does her Twitter link work, EC?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:51 PM on September 9, 2016

So, seeing as how this resonates with me way more than it should, what do fine Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this. Because I think I have a thirst for whatever the opposite of this is.

You should definitely read: Marilynne Robinson. She has a trilogy of books that are interconnected but can be read in any order: Gilead (2004), Home (2008), Lila (2014). They're beautifully written and are set in Iowa. It will be a nice contrast to the kind of book(s) that are being satirized in the linked article of this post.

Also, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner.
posted by Fizz at 12:52 PM on September 9, 2016 [50 favorites]

So, seeing as how this resonates with me way more than it should, what do fine Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this. Because I think I have a thirst for whatever the opposite of this is.
posted by selfnoise at 8:47 PM on September 9

I read Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt recently and it was perfectly unlike this in almost every detail. And utterly brilliant, too, and the funniest thing I've read in ages.
posted by dng at 12:53 PM on September 9, 2016 [21 favorites]

• they expected that their lives would be different than they are, and this makes them snap at each other with words that cut deep and carry a history, which they did not used to do when they were young and in love and the world held out its hand to them and said “COME!”


This becomes confusing, however, because they almost certainly spell the world's words that way (c-o-m-e) when they sexual pleasure themselves on doorknobs or whatever because they are not pornographic, but Classy.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Metafilter: 60 pages about whales, just in case
posted by lalochezia at 12:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [26 favorites]

While we are shopping lit-fic recommendations: authors who are intensely analytical and even a bit cruel like Brian Evenson or Jesse Ball, but with a feminist and/or queer perspective? (Cooper almost does it)
posted by idiopath at 12:57 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

have you ever thought that JSF is not desperately out of touch (!) with womanly wanking technique, but subtly shilling for Suburban Home Depot, doorknob/handle section?
posted by lalochezia at 1:00 PM on September 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

So I'm like ... maybe an hour? I don't know, I hate e-readers because it's hard to talk about Pages ... into a recent highly-praised literary novel (starred review in Kirkus!) and while I was reading at lunch today, as I ran across yet another of these lit-fic tropes, I thought, don't I have better things to do than to tread this ground again?

And now this shows up in my life. It must be fate. But this is a very long book. Maybe this is ironic troping. Maybe it will pan out. And so I'll read.

(metaphor)
posted by uncleozzy at 1:01 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

• 16 pages imagining how a woman feels about something that perfectly explain why the author is now divorced
posted by beerperson at 1:04 PM on September 9, 2016 [37 favorites]

I think there's a movie of this--I keep seeing a thumbnail for it on Netflix. It's just one picture, a montage with Salma Hayek and Jessica Alba staring dreamily at Pierce Brosnan, but it manages to wordlessly communicate that Alba is the younger 'aggressor'; Salma Hayek is the character whose role as Sex Trophy For Main Character is in jeopardy because she's old and borderline-unappealing like, uh, Salma Hayek isn't; and Brosnan is the blameless professor who just doesn't have enough dick for all the people who want some, and who learns Valuable Lessons About Life And Love. I haven't watched the movie, but every time I see the thumbnail I think about unsubscribing from Netflix, and every third time I see it I consider resigning from human society altogether.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:08 PM on September 9, 2016 [54 favorites]

Oh, I think I read this Philip John Saul John Bellow Cheever Roth Updike novel!
posted by leotrotsky at 1:10 PM on September 9, 2016 [24 favorites]

Missing:

• More references to the protagonist's penis than named female characters
posted by beerperson at 1:10 PM on September 9, 2016 [29 favorites]

60 pages about whales, just in case

Couldn't get through the whole article without a dick joke, huh?
posted by CaseyB at 1:11 PM on September 9, 2016 [24 favorites]

I ran across another book about Frenchwomen (who are white, straight, cis, femme-presenting, and between the ages of 20-25) today and rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out. This was after reading an article written by an American woman yesterday about how the French love. Because she met a Frenchman (white, straight, cis, male-presenting) and has never yet actually lived in France but speaks French so she knows France.

we need a parody of these as well

"my cat is French. she eats snails. raw. and meows and purrs. French cat love is entirely different from American cat love, because French cat love is metaphorically historically complex and beyond mortal feline understanding unless you're French and Americans well we all know what American felines are like. They have fur and can only think about belly rubs. Which is on an entirely different and less philosophically profound level than French cats."

otherwise there are the same tropes over here yep. oh shit i just broke the myth.
posted by fraula at 1:11 PM on September 9, 2016 [16 favorites]

Anybody watch the recent tv show "The Affair"?

*glumly raises hand, mumbles something about my job, mumbles something further about how everyone on that show is an awful person*
posted by infinitewindow at 1:11 PM on September 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

The Internet at that time was this big, exciting place where you could anonymously spill your guts about gender and discomfort and heteronormativity and how weird male privilege felt and lots of other things, except back then she didn’t really have language for it so she just went like: everything sucks and I am totally sad. Just over and over and over and over, with minor variations and the occasional cuss word.

Holy shit this is so true! I was a really, REALLY angry teenager and my husband asked me recently "what exactly was it you were angry about in high school?" and my answer as basically "the patriarchy, only I didn't know how to articulate it at the time. Also the fact that no one took me seriously. So, like, the patriarchy."
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:12 PM on September 9, 2016 [80 favorites]

*glumly raises hand, mumbles something about my job, mumbles something further about how everyone on that show is an awful person*

Aw, Pacey's not so bad.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:15 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

I hope the Kirkeproust passage is also about whales.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:16 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hah! Alexandra Petri is the literal best.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:19 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

THEN THE ENTIRE BAFFLING CAREER OF JONATHAN FRANZEN WILL HAVE BEEN WORTH IT

FALSE
posted by beerperson at 1:19 PM on September 9, 2016 [31 favorites]

Finally! A list I can follow for my own opus!
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 1:22 PM on September 9, 2016

This is fantastic, although I'm a little bummed that she lumps David Foster Wallace into this category, since he too wrote a fantastic takedown of this kind of bullshit:

Maybe the only thing the reader ends up appreciating about Ben Turnbull
is that he's such a broad caricature of an Updike protagonist that he
helps us figure out what's been so unpleasant and frustrating about this
gifted author's recent characters. It's not that Turnbull is stupid -- he
can quote Kierkegaard and Pascal on angst and allude to the deaths of
Schubert and Mozart and distinguish between a sinistrorse and a
dextrorse Polygonum vine, etc. It's that he persists in the bizarre
adolescent idea that getting to have sex with whomever one wants
whenever one wants is a cure for ontological despair. And so, it
appears, does Mr. Updike -- he makes it plain that he views the narrator's
impotence as catastrophic, as the ultimate symbol of death itself, and
he clearly wants us to mourn it as much as Turnbull does. I'm not
especially offended by this attitude; I mostly just don't get it. Erect
or flaccid, Ben Turnbull's unhappiness is obvious right from the book's
first page. But it never once occurs to him that the reason he's so
unhappy is that he's an asshole.

posted by Ragged Richard at 1:22 PM on September 9, 2016 [69 favorites]

Can anyone name 5 books like this from the last 10 years that are not by Franzen?
posted by thelonius at 1:23 PM on September 9, 2016

Is my memory betraying me or is this pretty much Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:23 PM on September 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

Anybody watch the recent tv show "The Affair"? It is itself one of these novels AND the male protagonist gets rich and famous off writing one of these novels.

Sorta, if you take it as being from his perspective? I mean I've only watched it intermittently but I hardly thought they were trying to disguise that he (or anyone else) sucks.
posted by atoxyl at 1:25 PM on September 9, 2016

The Great American Novel or the Best-selling American novel?

My own Great American novel will include:

• All the letters of the alphabet (no Georges Perec, I!) and maybe more.
• Boulevards.
• No husbands.
• No wives, either.
• Handbags.
• Several paragraphs to demonstrate that I have read the works of Outcault and Herriman.
• A cornucopia of wry chuckles.
• Flowerpots.
• A family of very annoying children, of the kind you're likely to have seated next to you at a restaurant.
• A much younger student who very much wants to sleep with this incredibly handsome and distinguished whale.
• Big bags of sand.
• Couple of gum wrappers.
• That smap chat thing.
• And a sub-sub-librarian.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:25 PM on September 9, 2016 [34 favorites]

'Pierre used to be a jockey in college. He loves to have rice pudding with his tea. He loves solving animal murders. Pierre has two horses, Jacques and Paris France, both girls. He rides Paris France on the brick roads in London, looking for mysterious things. He rides Jacques for pleasure.'
posted by ian1977 at 1:26 PM on September 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

Just finished reading this essay from The Baffler that contains this delicious nugget: Once you spot Franzen’s ego at work, you’ll remember it forever, like a rare species of bird in the wild. It chirps in his every essay and short story and novel.
posted by blairsyprofane at 1:28 PM on September 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

I found that once I got into a career that was nearly 100% reading and writing I stopped reading fiction for pleasure, aside from the occasional mystery novel, and to be honest I really don't miss it. This list is partially why.
posted by codacorolla at 1:29 PM on September 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

All criteria for a John Fowles masterpiece. Except...

-whips, chains, and novacaine.
-leather
-spooky island dudes
-anthromorphic masks
-silicone nodes
-Michael Caine
posted by clavdivs at 1:31 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

I wondered once why all Islington novels seemed to be about writers in North London committing adultery.

Then I moved to Islington and started meeting the authors.

I wondered no more.
posted by Devonian at 1:31 PM on September 9, 2016 [31 favorites]

He rides Paris France on the brick roads in London, looking for mysterious things.

I'd read that book.

(I must put more mysterious things in my novel.)
posted by octobersurprise at 1:31 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can anyone name 5 books like this from the last 10 years that are not by Franzen?

I cannot recall the specific titles but Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Michael Chabon have all at various times dipped into this specific pool of tropes.
posted by Fizz at 1:32 PM on September 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

Where are the brick roads of London?
posted by biffa at 1:32 PM on September 9, 2016

Can anyone name 5 books like this from the last 10 years that are not by Franzen?


Believe it or not, and trust me, I found this baffling too, Jonathans Franzen and Safran Foer are 2 different people.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:33 PM on September 9, 2016 [64 favorites]

Can anyone name 5 books like this from the last 10 years that are not by Franzen?

The piece is, from what I can tell, written in response to Foer's new novel.
posted by griphus at 1:33 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

That was very close to the plot of White Noise.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:34 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

-spooky island dudes ... -Michael Caine

And in the absence of money or time, those parts could be combined.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:35 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Maybe it's just my local bookstore being good, but I don't see that this kind of thing dominates contemporary fiction at all.
posted by thelonius at 1:35 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

The piece is, from what I can tell, written in response to Foer's new novel.

A normally-functioning human body will spontaneously generate massive amounts of snark as a self-protective mechanism when stimulated by news of a new JSF novel.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:36 PM on September 9, 2016 [13 favorites]

Metafilter: totally misunderstands Internet in way that sounds profound

Also, this list is why I have stopped reading Literature and now only read literature.
posted by bluejayway at 1:36 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

This sort of thing makes me feel OK about staying in my genre fiction ghetto.
posted by GuyZero at 1:39 PM on September 9, 2016 [28 favorites]

Believe it or not, and trust me, I found this baffling too, Jonathans Franzen and Safran Foer are 2 different people.

I like the idea that "Jonathan Franzen" novels are actually written by twin brothers named Jonathan and Jonathan.
posted by selfnoise at 1:41 PM on September 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

Also, this list is why I have stopped reading Literature and now only read literature.

But, see this is what frustrates me. There is so much more to Literature than just upper-class white male authors. Plenty of women and persons of colour who write just as well if not even better. It's just a matter of seeking writers, reviewers, book editors who champion those other writers who are so often overlooked or forgotten.

Maybe consider taking up a reading challenge over the next year to only read books written by women or by people of colour or immigrants, etc. It would broaden your reading habits so that you're not locked into reading books from straight white men who live in Manhattan.
posted by Fizz at 1:44 PM on September 9, 2016 [30 favorites]

The tiresome writers we all hate are bad. And what's the deal with airline food
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 1:44 PM on September 9, 2016 [14 favorites]

which airlines still serve food?
posted by beerperson at 1:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

Amen, Fizz. Following Fizz's posts on books would be a great way to build a reading list.
posted by gladly at 1:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

plz back the kickstarter for my new indie film venture, Franzen/Foer: Double Jonathandemnity, where the two literary giants star as mismatched police detectives who are also university professors and sensitive adulterers
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:46 PM on September 9, 2016 [55 favorites]

And what's the deal with airline food

Buy a ticket, get a soda and a bag of peanuts?
posted by octobersurprise at 1:48 PM on September 9, 2016

poor Jonathan Letham, always left out of the Jonathan conversation
posted by beerperson at 1:49 PM on September 9, 2016 [21 favorites]

Can anyone name 5 books like this from the last 10 years that are not by Franzen?

Super Sad True Love Story was called out in this article, I think. It's got more imagination than most literary fiction, but it has a bad case of white-dudeness. Naturally there will be a movie out soon.

The tiresome writers we all hate are bad. And what's the deal with airline food

I get what you're saying. Most of us are in agreement here, so it should be a soft target and therefore not of interest. But out there, outside of Metafilter, these books are still getting written, still getting reviewed, and so this is still punching up. People are venting.

Does anyone remember the name of that guy who got a puff piece interview in the New York something or other a while back about how male sexuality is demonized these days, and he's really pushing back against that with his novel about a man who wants to sleep with many women? It was just embarrassing.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:50 PM on September 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

griphus, between this and the New Yorker short story thing you had on facebook a few weeks ago I think you might really like the book Crome Yellow.
posted by phunniemee at 1:51 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

poor Jonathan Letham, always left out of the Jonathan conversation


He's the Chris Pine of Literary "Hunks".
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:51 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Hmmm
posted by clavdivs at 1:52 PM on September 9, 2016

outside of Metafilter, these books are still getting written

Inside of metafilter, it's too dark to read.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [93 favorites]

poor Jonathan Letham, always left out of the Jonathan conversation

He's apparently got a book coming out in October so I guess we'll see what happens. But! Lethem got his start in genre fiction which I think is sort of a vaccination a lot of Great Literary Men stuff. I haven't actually read any of his non-genre stuff, unless Motherless Brooklyn counts.

I think you might really like the book Crome Yellow.

Huxley's? I think I have a copy somewhere back-to-back with Brave New World that I never read that part of. Maybe I can dig it up.
posted by griphus at 1:54 PM on September 9, 2016

This sort of thing makes me feel OK about staying in my genre fiction ghetto.

yes thank god there are no problematic tropes in SF/F novels
posted by beerperson at 1:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [62 favorites]

Can we include the usage of the word "coed" to describe a woman?
posted by explosion at 1:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [61 favorites]

I thought briefly of Wonder Boys too but I think Chabon was trying to turn the cheating professor trope on its side, if not upside down. It might be interesting to hang with Grady but he certainly does not come off as heroic.
posted by Ber at 1:55 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I like the idea that "Jonathan Franzen" novels are actually written by twin brothers named Jonathan and Jonathan.

They're actually both called Jonathan Franz, Franzen is just the plural. It's been staring us in the face the whole time.
posted by eykal at 1:56 PM on September 9, 2016 [42 favorites]

I heartily recommend Crome Yellow. I like his earlier, funny ones.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:59 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

in my Great American Novel the protagonist's long-suffering wife does a sex thing with airline food
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:02 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Anyway to dodge the paywall?


Switch browsers.

I start every month on Safari, then Chrome, and then finally Firefox.

If I run out of articles on all 3, then it's time for the Tor Browser.
posted by ocschwar at 2:03 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

The 60 pages about whales just in case struck me as especially funny because I am currently re-reading Moby Dicka and am right in the middle of Chapter 74: The Sperm Whale's Head—A Contrasted View.
posted by not that girl at 2:04 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

A close friend of mine once remarked that all New Yorker poems could be fitted into one of the following four categories:

1. Homage To A Well-Known Poet
2. On The Borders Again
3. Something Amazing Happened To Me In The Garden
4. Me And My Second Wife Have Great Sex
posted by verstegan at 2:04 PM on September 9, 2016 [42 favorites]

That list is a tour de force.
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:05 PM on September 9, 2016

This is fantastic, although I'm a little bummed that she lumps David Foster Wallace into this category, since he too wrote a fantastic takedown of this kind of bullshit.

I totally agree! Also, I don't understand in what direction the irony is cutting in the first couple of sentences - does she or doesn't she believe that those are good novels? Is she lampooning the idea of a great novel, or the context of the ones of the past twenty years (Updike, Roth, Franzen).

The bullet points are great, but but I think the opening shows how easily you can lose control of what you think is an ironic tone.
posted by Eyeveex at 2:11 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think there's a movie of this

I'm pretty sure it was American Beauty, but although I started it 3 or 4 times because everyone kept talking about it, I could not get more than 30 minutes in.
posted by bongo_x at 2:12 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

APOTHEOSIS AMONGST THE LEAVES

There are many
     layers to men like frost whitman hughes willams but -
as I sit tending to my
    cucumbers
    pears
    and one lone plum
I
can't help but
     feel like I
 am nineteen again and traveling europe and not waiting
    for Susan to get home from
teaching
                   Yoga
so we can fuck

                                                    -Chad-Allan Scrum
posted by griphus at 2:14 PM on September 9, 2016 [80 favorites]

sex scene containing one bizarre detail that makes you worry a little bit about the author, not in a judgy way, just in a does-he-actually-think-this-is-how-that-works?-how-has-he-been-married-for-six-years? way

Hello, Golden Shower parts of "Rabbit is Rich".
posted by The Gooch at 2:19 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

does she or doesn't she believe that those are good novels? Is she lampooning the idea of a great novel, or the context of the ones of the past twenty years?

Whether they're good or not is a bit beside the point - she's less taking a position on quality (for the most part) than satirizing the trope of the Great American Novel and what type of book gets included in it.
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:21 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this

Anything by Joy Williams? "99 Stories of God" made me laugh out loud often.
posted by kneecapped at 2:22 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

So, is The Emperor's Children like the respectable version of this?
posted by Captain l'escalier at 2:25 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I cannot recall the specific titles but Philip Roth, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Michael Chabon have all at various times dipped into this specific pool of tropes.

I am still mad at whatever spoilsport deleted the chart of recurring themes from John Irving's Wikipedia page, as it is a thing of beauty and he is the patron saint of relationship-fail literature.
posted by psoas at 2:37 PM on September 9, 2016 [50 favorites]

Switch browsers.

I start every month on Safari, then Chrome, and then finally Firefox.

What? Incognito mode on Chrome.
posted by lumpenprole at 2:37 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

This sort of thing makes me feel OK about staying in my genre fiction ghetto.

I was just going to say the opposite - half the reason I read science fiction is because I didn't realize other fields had many authors with enough guts to do things like stuff sixty pages of whale facts into the middle of their novel.

Other than Melville, of course, but I guess I always assumed there would be unreliable narrator problems in that case. "From Hell's heart I stab at thee, while commenting on thy circulatory system which my vivisection reveals" wouldn't flow well.
posted by roystgnr at 2:40 PM on September 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

Not just the realm of men; half of these apply to Ali Smith's The Accidental as well.
posted by tofu_crouton at 2:45 PM on September 9, 2016

Also I have to echo those who thought of Wonder Boys immediately, but more generally re:

• young female character with twee name has a college experience that sprung fully formed from the head of a middle-aged op-ed writer

...didn't Chabon (whom I will go to bat for ON END) introduce characters named "Phlox" in multiple books? as if what oh come on man.

Because I think I have a thirst for whatever the opposite of this is.

I think Ruth Ozeki, for one, has a pretty good track record of writing Literature that doesn't fall in any of these weird traps.
posted by psoas at 2:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

I am still mad at whatever spoilsport deleted the chart of recurring themes from John Irving's Wikipedia page, as it is a thing of beauty

You are not wrong. Years ago I was bedridden with a serious illness and read the entire John Irving collection (up to whatever was most recent – A Prayer for Owen Meany, I suppose – and to this day they are fused into one massive novel about an adulterous writer who was a college wrestler until he went to went to Vienna and had finger bitten off by a bear. I enjoyed them all well enough, but if the lives of loved ones hung in the balance, I could not sort them out.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [35 favorites]

"IF EVEN ONE PERSON READS NEVADA AS A RESULT OF THIS THREAD THEN THE ENTIRE BAFFLING CAREER OF JONATHAN FRANZEN WILL HAVE BEEN WORTH IT"

I have read Nevada and speaking as a cis-het white dude there were some passages that fixed some shit in my head that while okay maybe it was not necessarily broken it certainly wasn't working correctly 100% of the time. I have loaned my copy to multiple people and eventually one of them turned into a perma-loan and now I no longer have a copy.

and when I told Imogen that on Twitter the other day she said, and I quote, "pirate an ebook!" so that's authorial endorsement right there for anyone who is currently reading these words to go grab yourselfs a copy.
posted by komara at 2:46 PM on September 9, 2016 [12 favorites]

"and to this day they are fused into one massive novel about an adulterous writer who was a college wrestler until he went to went to Vienna and had finger bitten off by a bear. I enjoyed them all well enough, but if the lives of loved ones hung in the balance, I could not sort them out."

If you'll permit me to link to my previous commentary on this subject ...
posted by komara at 2:48 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

I thought of Wonder Boys as well but most of this doesn't actually apply to it (there's the younger student who wants to sleep with him but it's not a big deal and he might be playing that up in his head a bit anyway and it's more that Grady's self-destructive life has patterns and he's learning to finally break them a bit and anyway Hannah comes off well as a person with her own life and ambitions.)

I Am Charlotte Simmons probably contains a lot more of these and for less reward.
posted by Navelgazer at 2:53 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is fantastic, although I'm a little bummed that she lumps David Foster Wallace into this category, since he too wrote a fantastic takedown of this kind of bullshit.

I read the line on DFW as being a joke about length, i.e., somewhere in those 1500 pages is an actual novel.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

• man stares at something and thinks sex thoughts

To be fair, this is at least 25% of the word count of a good two-thirds of all novels written by men.

Maybe more.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:58 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Excepting the novels of J.G. Ballard, where it would be:

• man stares at something somewhat inappropriate and settling and thinks extremely clinical sex thoughts
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:00 PM on September 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

very precocious children who sound like the Glass family (not the one from Salinger, but the family that I imagine Ira Glass has based on his voice and radio persona)

Today we bring you a bedtime in three acts:

Act 1: I take a bath with a toy boat made from wood reclaimed from the rafters of an abandoned factory in Red Hook.

Act 2: Sarah Vowell tells a bedtime story about how Grover Cleveland really doesn't get enough credit.

Act 3: I ask you to look under the bed for monsters, but sometimes I wonder if we aren't the real monsters.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:07 PM on September 9, 2016 [77 favorites]

Previously. In which Jonathan leaves his wife for Natalie Portman, who turns him down.

He's a bit of a dick.
posted by adept256 at 3:08 PM on September 9, 2016 [12 favorites]

There's lots of contemporary literary fiction that doesn't read like this, don't worry! In fact, almost all of it. Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad just hit #1 on the New York Times best seller list. #1! It is not about this stuff. It's still at #2, just ahead of Danielle Steele. Who's more likely to win the National Book Award, Whitehead or J S Foer? Nothing but nothing has been more beloved by lit-fic types lately than Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels. OK I admit there's some divorce. But those books don't do the lazy shit Petri describes. They are good as hell.

Meanwhile, the last book I read about a deep-thinking professor whose younger female pals can't help falling for his deeply felt sorrow and childhood trauma was the decidedly non-literary City of Mirrors, which apart from the professor/pals sections is about psychic vampires who eat the earth.
posted by escabeche at 3:18 PM on September 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

'The crap ad links inserted inline are exquisite irony:

_____excerpt follows___________

...
• exhortation about briefness of life and impossibility of human connection

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Thought-provoking opinions and commentary, in your inbox daily.

• major historical tragedy, perfectly timed for the plot

• page where instead of just words there is SOMETHING ELSE
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posted by hank at 3:22 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

I just slogged my way through Purity, and I believe it has all of these.

In other news, what happened to Franzen?
posted by panama joe at 3:26 PM on September 9, 2016

P.S. If it is a problem that my name is not Jonathan, I can easily change it.
posted by theora55 at 3:30 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

So, seeing as how this resonates with me way more than it should, what do fine Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this.

Moo by Jane Smiley is a wonderful, biting parody of the Great American Novel. It has a lot of these themes, but taken to such an extreme that you're in on the joke. It's one of my favorite books ever.
posted by miyabo at 3:52 PM on September 9, 2016 [9 favorites]

If you want a great novel that isn't all of this, you're running out of chances to say you read Jami Attenberg first. The Middlesteins is being adapted for Showtime and Helena Bonham Carter is bringing Saint Mazie to tv as a miniseries.

Also, she's one of the more delightful people on social media.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:53 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Also by future mefi-favorite Alexandra Petri: How Hillary Clinton Can Get That Presidential Look.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:58 PM on September 9, 2016 [10 favorites]

>You should definitely read: Marilynne Robinson.

I agree with that. Also: "McKay's Bees" by Thomas McMahon.
posted by acrasis at 4:07 PM on September 9, 2016

I mean, The Corrections was good. 27th City was good, if convoluted. Freedom was flawed, but still enjoyable. Purity was ... excruciating. Reading it, I experienced an emotion that doesn't have a name, but should -- feeling empathetically embarrassed for somebody who doesn't have the sense to be embarrassed for themselves. Kind of the opposite of schadenfreude.

All of that aside, I would love to just place an official moratorium on books about writers, songs about musicians, and movies about anyone involved in the film industry. It's like, fer crissakes, you're supposed to be a creative person. Try going just a little outside your comfort zone, willya?
posted by panama joe at 4:08 PM on September 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

Moo by Jane Smiley is a wonderful, biting parody of the Great American Novel. It has a lot of these themes, but taken to such an extreme that you're in on the joke. It's one of my favorite books ever.

Oh my god, I hated Moo, but I think you just made me realize that the problem was that I was way too young when I read it. Might be time to give it another go.
posted by Ragged Richard at 4:11 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'd be in absolute heaven if the world of contemporary literary fiction could switch out its tired, Updike/Cheever chassis for a fresher, sportier, Heidi Julavits-based model. So instead of always having Sad Boner Professors and Kierkegaard, we could have:

(1) Fundamentally phantasmagorical research programs, usually in some real or imagined psychological sub-discipline, that study human subjects, preferably a in a distinctly-sketchy-yet-evocative location, such as an ancient health-spa, or a three-star hotel.

(2) Allusions to Dione Fortune, or the Dionne Quintuplets, or both.

(3) Smart female characters learning to survive and thrive within Kafka-esque institutions.

(4) Convoluted and/or dangerous relationships between sisters, or between mothers and daughters.

(5) Doppelgangers, unreliable narrators, and unreliable Doppelgangers.

(6) Sympathetic, funny, and clear- eyed depictions of crippling personal befuddlement, followed by well-earned triumph over the befuddlement's more harmful effects, if not necessarily over the befuddlement itself.

Seriously: Heidi Julavits. Her writing is all I want in the world right now.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 4:20 PM on September 9, 2016 [18 favorites]

So there was this thread the other day about people being round or pointy (bear with me) and the time I realized this is just not a very meaningful concept is when somebody declared as an aside how those categories (round or pointy) mapped to cats or dogs. I don't remember which was which in their mind or mine, but I completely and naturally disagreed. And if two reasonable people don't agree if a cat is pointy or round, well. Words are for transferring thought, and this one looks like it ain't doing it.

The great american novel is starting to seem like such a concept.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 4:27 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Reading it, I experienced an emotion that doesn't have a name, but should -- feeling empathetically embarrassed for somebody who doesn't have the sense to be embarrassed for themselves.

Franzenfreude
posted by Fizz at 4:29 PM on September 9, 2016 [24 favorites]

what do fine Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this. Because I think I have a thirst for whatever the opposite of this is.

Read books by women. Read books by people of color.

Can't tell you how happy it made me to see that the first several recommendations people had in response to this question were books by women. And without even any prompting. You made me well up a little, Metafilter.
posted by triggerfinger at 4:48 PM on September 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

manic pixie lit fic dream girl
posted by limeonaire at 4:50 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

>Reading it, I experienced an emotion that doesn't have a name, but should -- feeling empathetically embarrassed for somebody who doesn't have the sense to be embarrassed for themselves.

Franzenfreude

Franzschämen.
posted by Lexica at 4:56 PM on September 9, 2016 [15 favorites]

I decided around a year ago to stop reading books by straight white men. I've made a couple of exceptions (mostly for my book club), but have generally stuck to it and it's been a great way to be more thoughtful about what I choose to spend my time engaging with. I'm probably going to move away from it a bit in the next few months, but I highly recommend it as something to do for a period of time.
posted by une_heure_pleine at 5:00 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Reading it, I experienced an emotion that doesn't have a name, but should -- feeling empathetically embarrassed for somebody who doesn't have the sense to be embarrassed for themselves.

fremdschämen

(reflexive, informal) to feel ashamed about something someone else has done; to be embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed himself (and doesn't notice)

The Germans have a word for everything.
posted by adept256 at 5:47 PM on September 9, 2016 [14 favorites]

Franzschämen.

Franzen Glädjé!
posted by octobersurprise at 5:49 PM on September 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes Nevada is amazing everyone read it.

I mostly sidestep these tropes by only reading books by women/queer people/poc, preferably by authors that check at least two of those boxes.
posted by (Over) Thinking at 5:50 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love books that when I read the descriptions I think what an interesting person about the author.

This never happens with this sort of novel Petri describes because the authors are fundamentally not interesting. There's no hook to them, yeah? The tropes are embodied rather than written, and it does get pretty obvious when that happens. They might have been interesting in the time of Kurt Cobain and the public angst over Courtney Love's validity of everything/anything -- or actually, Lennon and Yoko Ono, similar navelgazey what-ifs, but that time is long past.

Bring on the interesting people! Who don't describe women as "tasting fishy" (good god man stop, she needs a doctor), who don't describe a movie script as brutal agony perfectly contrastible with assault or genocide when it's more like a sunken cake (ACTUAL disaster, but no risk to life and limb), who don't spend so much time dwelling on the internal state of things that they lose track of, variously, the time of day, the number of limbs present, the name of the woman (always singular unless jealous) present, the dividing line between the narrator and the creamless coffee cup that is just the thing to brood into unless they want to make creepy skin-colour comparisons to a sexy mixed-race barista they think would sleep with them if they breathed on her (no).

These are not interesting people, is my point. If they want to make a chain of pulp that is exactly as pulpy and repetitive as the Mills and Boon rack, go ahead -- but they need to drop the pretension that they are not also selling the same romances sliced diagonally. Be as self-aware as Mills&Boons! (Actually, the self-awareness of M&B authors is brutal; Johnath(o/a)n might not be capable.)

Additionally, all you fine people who have recommendations for books not in this mould or who read books like that generally, please talk about them in the Seasonal Reading thread over on MetaTalk if you haven't already!
posted by E. Whitehall at 5:58 PM on September 9, 2016 [8 favorites]

I mostly sidestep these tropes by only reading books by women/queer people/poc

How do you do that? Flip to the bio to check which minorities they belong to? Personally, I judge authors by their writing.
posted by adept256 at 5:59 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I mostly sidestep these tropes by only reading books by women/queer people/poc

How do you do that? Flip to the bio to check which minorities they belong to? Personally, I judge authors by their writing.

It's not difficult to find out if the author of a particular work is a person of colour or a female or writing as someone who recently immigrated into the country or whatever. Most books have a small biography and/or the Internet is a great source of information.

And I don't think that anyone is saying that simply by the very fact of a person belonging to a certain demographic that they're better. It's more that reading from these types of POVs or experiences broadens the reading and literary life. Too often, it's the same privileged POV that is perpetuated in literature. It's good to read different things, to read out of comfort zones.
posted by Fizz at 6:18 PM on September 9, 2016 [19 favorites]

It just bothers me that someone would sidestep my book because 'oh straight white guy, don't bother'. Are we really judging authors by race/sexuality/gender here?
posted by adept256 at 6:37 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

So, seeing as how this resonates with me way more than it should, what do fine Mefites recommend for recent novels set in the United States that are like the anti this.

How recent? All of the following are good and not like this, though maybe not anti-this:

The Blue Guide to Indiana by Michael Martone
Cigarettes by Harry Mathews
The Plains by Gerald Murnane (partially set in an "America" that's basically Australia; Murnane is weird)
Open City by Teju Cole
Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson

Probably anything published by the Dalkey Archive?

… this is really making me realize how infrequently "recent" and "set in America" come together in my novel-reading. But one thing that is really no-fooling true from the linked piece is that Moby-Dick is fucking amazing.
posted by kenko at 6:43 PM on September 9, 2016

A whole bunch of literary novels by younger women writers seem to be about upper middle-class MFA types finding themselves, so I'm not sure you can automatically expect to get a broader perspective by following such a formula.
posted by thelonius at 6:45 PM on September 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

It just bothers me that someone would sidestep my book because 'oh straight white guy, don't bother'. Are we really judging authors by race/sexuality/gender here?

Hmm, what you say is a bit unfortunate but I think that happens with all kinds of genre. I know plenty of people who refuse to read books that have been translated because they feel as if there is some fidelity that is lost in the translation. I know a few people who think that fantasy is nothing but dragons and people waving swords, and if you ask any fan of that genre, they'll tell you there is so much more. I also have a friend who won't read books that have to do with time travel because as she says: “That time-wimey stuff is too out there, and gets overly convoluted and hurts my brain.”

People make all kinds of sweeping judgements when it comes to books. The most that you can hope for is that someone gives you a chance. All that being said, there is no lack of writing from the white male perspective, history has made sure that this one demographic pervades.
posted by Fizz at 6:49 PM on September 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

fremdschämen

(reflexive, informal) to feel ashamed about something someone else has done; to be embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed himself (and doesn't notice)

The Germans have a word for everything.

adept256 is my new hero.
posted by panama joe at 6:59 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mostly sidestep these tropes by only reading books by women/queer people/poc

I don't think the problem with these ersatz "Great American Novels" is necessarily that they were written by straight white men. I think the problem is twofold. One, that works by non-straight, non-white, non-men have oft been ignored in favor of these reheated leftovers. And two, they assume that the very possibility that a straight, white, upper-middle-class man could be dissatisfied with his life is somehow a risky or heretical notion. They project an air of edginess without actually being edgy. They don't challenge us or any of our assumptions. I think we should all read more books by women, queer people, and people of color. But they are not the only people who write good books.

(also, if one REALLY must read a dissatisfied white man book, why not go with the original, Babbit? Or go further back and read some of the great "superfluous man" novels of late-19th century Russia? Pechorin, Bazarov, and Raskolnikov await...)
posted by panama joe at 7:20 PM on September 9, 2016 [7 favorites]

This never happens with this sort of novel Petri describes because the authors are fundamentally not interesting

Not interesting to you. I mean, Franzen and Foer and Updike have never charged me up, either; and I like DFW's non-fiction more than his fiction. But I like Cheever and Louis Auchincloss and Edmund White and a lot of DeLillo and some Pynchon and I adore Henry James. (As well as many more, men, women, anglo, writers of color, etc.)

I think sparkly vampires and fan-fics are fundamentally uninteresting, but I'm cognizant that a lot of people disagree with me there.

It just bothers me that someone would sidestep my book because 'oh straight white guy, don't bother'.

It's gonna happen. Life is short and people are going to choose books like they choose clothes or favorite foods: based largely on what makes them comfortable and on what makes their social circles comfortable. Adventurous readers are a small minority and even they probably aren't as adventurous as they'd like to imagine.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:21 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I mostly sidestep these tropes by only reading books by women/queer people/poc

How do you do that? Flip to the bio to check which minorities they belong to? Personally, I judge authors by their writing.

Speaking for myself personally, I just go to AskMe and say, "I'm looking for recommendations for books not written by white guys."

And I mean, hey, check out that question. It's tailored for me. I said, "Here's a list of white guy authors that I like" and then people made recommendations for non-white-guy authors that I might like. Easy as cake. There are only so many books I can read in a [day/year/lifetime] so why not deliberately take the opportunity to expand my horizons a bit?
posted by komara at 7:25 PM on September 9, 2016 [11 favorites]

It just bothers me that someone would sidestep my book because 'oh straight white guy, don't bother'.
There are more books in the world than I can possibly read in a lifetime, even if I did nothing else with my time. I'm going to have to sidestep most of them. For me, avoiding straight white male authors is in the first instance a heuristic to look around for a different set of perspectives than I might otherwise get from the media I would consume by default, since straight white men are much more likely to end up getting on bestseller lists and award shortlists and review pages. It's not a blanket ban - if someone whose opinion I respect tells me that a particular SWM author is worth my time, I'll happily consider it. And I won't read things by women/POC/queer writers just because of the author's identity - there needs to be something else that grabs me. But I don't need to accept the default.
posted by une_heure_pleine at 8:22 PM on September 9, 2016 [19 favorites]

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey, or Train Dreams, Denis Johnson. Two that come to mind off the top of my head that I really enjoyed recently. I also just finished Bone Clocks, and David Mitchell wrote such a great spoof of the writer writing about the middle aged male divorced writer, distance between people, etc...at least I think it was a spoof...
posted by branravenraven at 9:03 PM on September 9, 2016

This list is pretty much all of John Irving, except that it lacks the weird dancing bears and the creepy obsession with rape.
posted by sarcasticah at 9:54 PM on September 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can we talk about Chabon?

I really liked Wonder Boys, and I want to believe it was because he was gently and kindly upending the trope, within the framework of a compelling storyline (he's not afraid of a compelling storyline!) but... am I deluding myself?

I never read the Jonathans or most the 70s/80s White Men of Literature (jesus don't start me on Philip Roth I do not understand how he is considered a great novelist) but I did really, really love John Irving when I was in high school. I read the Hotel New Hampshire like five or more times and stayed obsessed through about Cider House Rules I think before I kind of lost interest. I do think he was at least for a while interested in women in a way that was a bit different than a lot of straight male authors but also yes problematic, and I think part of why I like Chabon is he scratches my old familiar John Irving itch.

Anyhow, Wonder Boys - Great American Straight Whiteguy Novel of Suckage or smart subversion of the genre? Please tell me it's the latter.
posted by latkes at 10:16 PM on September 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

latkes, over the last decade or so, I've lost most of my ability to tolerate novels of The Caucasian Weiner In Middle Age, and I still love The Wonder Boys with all my heart. I really do think it's a cut above.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 10:21 PM on September 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

I enjoyed this takedown of Safran Foer's latest in The New Republic.
posted by painquale at 12:33 AM on September 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

See, right now I am writing this novel.

Only this is 2016, we're living in the science fictional future we were given instead of the one we wanted, and I get this dirty, happy feeling in my pants when I unzip and do something unspeakable to a cliché ...

... So I'm writing it as space opera.

Because everything is better with exploding space battleships, insane Cosmist space monks ("kill them all, the Basilisk will know its own after the resurrection"), and alien sex scenes that will make Franzen throw up in his mouth a little (if he ever reads it).

(Makes note to add doorknob sex. What do doors on spaceships (which dilate) have instead of doorknobs, anyway? That would be suitable for fucking?)
posted by cstross at 1:54 AM on September 10, 2016 [14 favorites]

satirical made-up thing that is actually tamer than its real-world equivalent

This one seems to happen a lot in the sort of books we're talking about here. Points to a sort of bubble these dudes live in, which on some level is probably necessary to write fiction.

There is no shame in writing about what you know, it's when you expect people to care or take you seriously just because of who you think you are that it gets obnoxious.
posted by cell divide at 2:15 AM on September 10, 2016

(Makes note to add doorknob sex. What do doors on spaceships (which dilate) have instead of doorknobs, anyway? That would be suitable for fucking?)

Do they have to dilate all the way all the time? A partially dilated door, depending on rigor and strength and materials, could be quite good for a great many uses; not only the obvious glory-hole sort of thing, but also if it's not a door with those sharp pinchy edges, but one of those more organic elastic ones, that pinching seal could be used to stabilise quite a few things -- toys, people, objects. If you have, say, a character with a leg issue and the dilating door closes up at the right height to support if they put their leg through it, then it would ease things for them at a lot of angles and positions, for example. (Room for tickling fetishes, also, if one wants.) The partial dilation can be used as a prop to hold onto, as well. If the leaves overlap in some way, that overlap could potentially be used to wedge in things as well -- I seem to remember a series where the doors closed in an overlap a bit like a flower, and those edges would be marvellous for serving as a way to cram in fingers or toys and make sure they have a good seat (depending on the edge contact; if the base can be used with a slight suction on the door material, it would be an even better secure attachment than just wodging it in). Depending on the size and shape of that central furl, it could very well be a spaceship doorknob in itself!

This is all of course assuming the general bipedal configuration. I can picture a door dilation being very useful for arranging, say, tentacles so they are all in range of something sexy without having to be manipulated all along their length for the entire duration. Say the edge of the dilation is quite thick or the edges are quite tactile and can be suckered onto or both, and from there it would be less exhausting for said tentacled person to fuck another being, presumably, since they could use the surrounding familiar material as a way to conceptually prop their elbows on.

And, you know, so on.
posted by E. Whitehall at 2:41 AM on September 10, 2016 [10 favorites]

It just bothers me that someone would sidestep my book because 'oh straight white guy, don't bother'. Are we really judging authors by race/sexuality/gender here?

So I'm a straight white male (SWM), but I'm trying to mainly read books by women, POC, and/or queer authors. (Though I'll make exceptions for SWM writers from smaller or non-English speaking countries). Maybe my thought process will help?

In the past I've tended to default to reading mostly books by SWMs. It's become obvious that to change that I needed to consciously force myself, I couldn't rely on it just happening. SWM writers get more publicity and are a greater part of our popular consciousness, so if I don't seek out works by others, I won't find them.

This has benefits - I'm getting a wider range of perspectives, of stories, maybe of styles. Which is good. I'm also avoiding repetition - I don't really need to read another novel about a middle-aged author insert having relationship problems or having affairs with his students. I've read so many of those already.

Finally, I'd argue that in a sexist etc society, books by women and minorities that have actually made it into print and into my awareness are likely to be better on average than books by SWM, because they have to be. Publishers, reviewers, etc already judge books by race/gender, and favour SWM. Consciously reading books by others just serves to redress the balance.
posted by Pink Frost at 3:14 AM on September 10, 2016 [12 favorites]

Alexandra Petrie is a treasure.

Every genre has its problematic tropes and authors.

It's good to have more than straight white male authors in your reading list, and I fully endorse this practice, but remember to come round to some of us again from time to time, please.
posted by jscalzi at 3:16 AM on September 10, 2016 [5 favorites]

Can't believe the list and MetaFilter missed the most important thing:

-Entire book set in Autumn.

because tight sweaters.
posted by sexyrobot at 5:49 AM on September 10, 2016 [7 favorites]

Wonder Boys is great. Disgrace by JM Coetzee is a fantastic shagging professor novel that's really a super dark meditation on patriarchy and white guilt. Some of the Philip Roths in that category are ok but The Human Stain was the weakest from that part of his career.

I took the piece to be ragging on Franzen’s Purity which was incomprehensibly awful.
posted by Mocata at 6:51 AM on September 10, 2016

Thank you, Pink Frost and une_heure_pleine and Fizz. You said exactly what I meant and articulated my position better than I would have.
posted by (Over) Thinking at 7:38 AM on September 10, 2016

Anyway to dodge the paywall?
Switch browsers.

Go incognito and paste the link into the address line. If it works at all, it will work every time without need to switch browsers.
posted by pracowity at 8:28 AM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would have to say that my favourite Shagging Professor novel has got to be The Necromancer's House by Christopher Buehlman, in which we get a pitch-perfect re-run of the entire tired bundle of tropes, right up until the point at which the Professor's horrible past catches up with him ... in the shape of Baba Yaga and a posse of zombies, because necromancy. Absolutely side-splitting, if you're willing to roll with a slow-burn deadpan deconstruction of literary cliche.
posted by cstross at 8:51 AM on September 10, 2016 [9 favorites]

Wait the JSF book actually contains doorknob sex?
posted by atoxyl at 10:37 AM on September 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Not really following US-novels, or reader of that that kind of literature in general, I have not been aware Jonathan Franzen. Now I have to check some book by him, both for the chuckling shared here, and also, as I think I might genuinely enjoy it as I haven't really been exposed to those tropes that much. Story about the life and relationships of an middle-aged professor in US suburbs, with whales? Haven't read one yet, might as well, could be interesting. Thanks for the head's up.
posted by Arkki at 11:13 AM on September 10, 2016

This thread jogged my memory that I read Franzen's The Corrections when I was like 16 or 17, mostly due to the frisson that it got from the Oprah controversy. I'm pretty sure I hated it, but slogged through anyway. Reading about the college aged love interest for the gloomy professorial type, there was this totally bizarre detail that I remember to this day, where to show that she's hip, the girl puts in a trip-hop mixtape or something, baffling the gloomy professorial type, but conveying to the audience that college aged love is interest is a current college co-ed or something. Even at the naive age of 16 I realized that this was a strange way to get that across.
posted by codacorolla at 11:18 AM on September 10, 2016

I wonder how Thomas Pynchon found success by dodging these tropes entirely, in favor of his own bizarre genre unto its own.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:21 AM on September 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, while DFW doesn't do Sad Boner Professor (I love that nomenclature, BTW, and am totally appropriating it), Infinite Jest definitely falls prey to nearly every drug lit trope. He really does promulgate some harmful, false, and depressingly common ideas about hard drug use, which may stem from the fact that never actually did hard drugs himself. That's not to say that I enjoy IJ, or that it wasn't a good book. But yeah, he really does fall back on the tropes quite a bit.

And can we please talk a bit more about how bad Purity was? Because I really, really, really hated it. It's like Franzen took a bunch of Franzen Tropes and threw them in a blender along with a bunch of non-even-slightly-veiled celebrity references. It was really sad, watching him try and ape an early version of himself writing The Corrections. Purity was a bad, bad, bad book. And, oh god, the chapters where we get into Andreas's head and he starts talking about being The Killer. Reminded me of that really terrible, exploitative chapter of The Corrections where he goes into the dad's diaper dementia reverie. Still, I tolerated that chapter because The Corrections was a good book and had strengths in other areas. Purity was devoid of any saving grace. I can't say a single good thing about it except for the fact that it's over. I used to really like Franzen, but now I don't know if I'll ever give one of his books a chance again.
posted by panama joe at 1:08 PM on September 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

I kept thinking I would at least give Franzen a try, but then I read about Purity, and a feminist who is so feminist she makes her husband pee sitting down

and I don't

we don't

who believes this

in the depths of radfem Twitter you can probably find a couple of women who think men should live in camps or something but I bet even they wouldn't give a damn how men pee

I love a lot of straight male authors and I always will, but what I don't have time for is unquestioned insecurity
posted by Countess Elena at 1:18 PM on September 10, 2016 [9 favorites]

I've got a friend who probably wouldn't even describe herself as a feminist who makes her husband pee sitting down.
posted by Mocata at 1:32 PM on September 10, 2016

With a lot of men, it's probably easier to convince them to pee sitting down than to convince them to wipe off the rim of the toilet once in a while.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:42 PM on September 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

a feminist who is so feminist she makes her husband pee sitting down

The Germans have a word for this: "sitzpinkler." The Germans have a word for everything.
posted by octobersurprise at 3:04 PM on September 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

And then there's the problem of Anabel. Every other principal character gets a POV chapter, but not her. Probably because she's such an absurd caricature, there would be no way to do a chapter from her POV without devolving into unintentional self-satire.
posted by panama joe at 4:44 PM on September 10, 2016

Absolutely side-splitting, if you're willing to roll with a slow-burn deadpan deconstruction of literary cliche.

I appreciate what they're trying to do to this stodgy pretentious genre, but isn't the stock formula of adding zombies to everything itself a played out cliche that should be lampooned by now?
posted by Apocryphon at 5:30 PM on September 10, 2016

(5) Doppelgangers, unreliable narrators, and unreliable Doppelgangers.

Lovely!
posted by clockzero at 10:58 PM on September 10, 2016

On Library Thing, amongst all the 4 & 5 star reviews of Moby Dick, there was once a simple one-star review that tersely stated "Too much information about the whales!"
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:02 PM on September 10, 2016 [7 favorites]

I knew I had to switch out of my English major when all the dudes turned in writing assignments that involved a hungover man waking up after his latest bender and smoking and gazing stoically out a window, reflecting on his life.

I imagine modern lit fic is what happens when they grow up.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 12:24 AM on September 11, 2016 [8 favorites]

Alice Munro beautifully lampoons the Sad Boner Professor trope in a couple of paragraphs in the middle of The Bear Came Over the Mountain.
posted by Kattullus at 3:58 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

This thread has freed me.

For many years now, I've had a copy of A Convergence of Birds, which is an anthology of short pieces inspired by Joseph Cornell, published in 2001, and edited by JSF. The book's a really beautiful object, with illustrated end-papers and tipped-in plates, and some of the contributors, like Mary Caponegro and Joanna Scott, are truly wonderful writers whose work isn't published or read nearly enough. Indeed, the look of the book and the TOC were impressive enough that I bought the thing on impulse, full price and in hardcover, during a time when I was quite broke.

And I've held onto the book through several moves. Apart from its mildly offputting intro-- wherein JSF acts like Joseph Cornell is this obscure and marginal figure, whose talent he, JSF, is now heroically bringing forth into the light, (when really, by any measure, Joseph Cornell would have to be counted as one of the most famous American artists of the 20th century) -- the book is extremely, extremely nifty.

So the year after I got it, when Everything is Illuminated came out, I got that too, right away-- and I tried to many times to read it, but I just couldn't latch on. Same with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close-- it was exactly the sort of thing I was supposed to like (Family secrets! A mysterious key! A flip-book!) and it felt like the entirety of the English-speaking literary world was eagerly telling me just how much I was supposed to like it, but nonetheless-- meh.

And of course I thought it was my fault-- that maybe I was a shallow and inattentive reader; or that I was all full of sour grapes, because JSF was so young and so successful, and maybe I just couldn't read his novels because I was unable to rise above said grapes-- but you know what? I'm done with all that.

He is a man of doorknob masturbation. Worse-- he is a projector of doorknob masturbation onto others.* And through this ridiculous projection, he is demonstrating that he (a) has no idea how real women function and think; and (b) doesn't especially care to learn.

So fine, new rule: If you don't care about women, but you nevertheless insist on repeatedly writing WTF-ish things about them, then your prose is officially ineligible for this woman's attention. I'm not going to flagellate myself about my failures as a JSF reader anymore.


*If he were writing about himself, and owning his own doorknobs, that'd be different. Then he'd be in R. Crumb territory and I could view him, and any bits of architectural salvage in which he managed to find warmth and solace, with basic, human fellow-feeling.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 4:38 AM on September 11, 2016 [10 favorites]

After reading Everything Is Illuminated, I was surprised to learn anybody liked it or wanted to read other books by him. A more malignant abuse of "magical realism" I cannot possibly imagine.

However, I must ask that we please leave poor Jonathan Lethem out of the Plague Of Jonathans. It's not his fault that's his name, and his books (at least the two I read) are really good!
posted by panama joe at 9:00 AM on September 11, 2016

(Family secrets! A mysterious key! A flip-book!)

Kind of sounds like what you really want to be reading is Southern gothic.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:57 AM on September 11, 2016

I hated Everything Is Illuminated. But it was an important book for me to read because it crystallized something for me. If a writer of fiction is borrowing his pathos from the holocaust, then I have no time for that novel. I didn't read Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud, but it made me realize that the same was true for other tragic real life events not undergone by the author.
posted by Kattullus at 11:20 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]

I now have an impulse to write a short story where the Important Male Writer attempts to seduce a college age woman to ease his ontological despair (and get material for his next book), only to find out too late that he's actually only a minor side character. It's her story, and it's actually urban fantsy.

Of course to do that properly, I'd need to go back to reading some Great White Penis novels. Pray for me my friends.
posted by happyroach at 12:24 PM on September 11, 2016 [10 favorites]

Happyroach, I love that! (The story concept, not the part about having to do Penis Novel research.)

Inspired by this thread, I just re-read Laurie Colwin's short story, "A Road in Indiana," which is about what life is like for the Manic Pixie Dream Coed after she actually marries the Sad Boner Prof. As you'd expect from Colwin, it's both wrenching and completely hilarious. (Professor Husband works for two hours every evening on a novel called Pain in Its Simplicity.)

But a story where the woman has even more agency, that's also full of urban fantasy niftiness? That sounds even better! I don't care that you've only just come up with the idea. I want to read it now.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 1:13 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

What's especially frustrating about the Sad Boner Professor genre is all the guys writing in it probably recognise Nabokov as a great author but they haven't noticed that Lolita is already a brutally scathing deconstruction of their genre.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:37 PM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

Speaking of great literature, tonight's CometTV MST3K is Attack Of The Giant Leeches featuring my favorite line: "This is more like Night Of The Iguana than Attack Of The Giant Leeches."

It is the best Tennesee Williams play he never wrote.

("Oh, great, the leeches have a little fort!")
posted by octobersurprise at 6:36 PM on September 11, 2016

Humans other than white, privileged, American men do write novels, you know.
posted by brand-gnu at 10:39 AM on September 12, 2016

WHAT
posted by beerperson at 12:08 PM on September 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

the sad-dick discourse
posted by Eideteker at 1:25 PM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

B.R. Myers on Franzen.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:56 PM on September 12, 2016

“Every architect has fantasies of building her own home, and so does every woman.”

What even does that mean.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:57 PM on September 12, 2016

" who don't spend so much time dwelling on the internal state of things that they lose track of, variously, the time of day, the number of limbs present, the name of the woman (always singular unless jealous) present'

What books are like this? I want to find more authors afflicted by this curse of spending so much time in their heads they forget how linear time works.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 9:51 PM on September 12, 2016

Well, that's literally Proust's whole schtick, innit?
posted by tobascodagama at 5:42 AM on September 13, 2016

Just finished reading this essay from The Baffler that contains this delicious nugget: Once you spot Franzen’s ego at work, you’ll remember it forever, like a rare species of bird in the wild. It chirps in his every essay and short story and novel.


I'm reading this and the first half was incomprehensible to me, and then when he started critisizing specific authors and passages I realized it was because the author of the essay had the assumption that there exist things that aren't just fodder to be incorporated into one's own personality/personal symbol-system/personal mythology. Which I guess means I'm the perfect product of things he dislikes? I've even done the 'tried to incorporate parts of nature into my worldview', which mostly involves doggo memes.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 8:33 PM on September 13, 2016

Soooooo is anyone else checking this thread for recommendations of what to read instead of Jonathan Franzen?
posted by beekept at 4:55 PM on September 14, 2016

I've already bookmarked Nevada for my next bookstore trip, yeah.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:47 PM on September 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

IF EVEN ONE PERSON READS NEVADA AS A RESULT OF THIS THREAD THEN THE ENTIRE BAFFLING CAREER OF JONATHAN FRANZEN WILL HAVE BEEN WORTH IT

I want to live in a world where Imogen Binnie gets advances the size of Franzen's, and Franzen gets advances the size of Binnie's.

COME ON INTERNET, WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 3:00 PM on September 15, 2016 [1 favorite]