Get off my lawn
September 15, 2021 6:45 AM Subscribe
In which a guy decries Sally Rooney, praises Ottessa Moshfegh, ties himself into a knot about Philip Roth, dumps on Ben Lerner, and includes the names Toni Morrison, Raven Leilani, and Zadie Smith.
I approve of his all-consuming grumpiness.
posted by mittens at 7:12 AM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by mittens at 7:12 AM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
You forgot to mention MeFi’s own Tao Lin.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:22 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 7:22 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yeah I went in there ready to hate this and actually didn't? I'm not sure he does decry Sally Rooney in the end - or like, he starts with a pose of contempt towards her for complaining about her privilege (there is nothing I hate more than privileged people complaining about how other privileged people are complaining about their privilege) but then seems to get to the place I am with Sally Rooney: she's the voice of her generation for a reason. You may hate the world that has given rise to that hyperselfconscious, bled-dry voice - I do too, in a way -- but don't fucking shoot the messenger. She captures the doomed aridity of our internet saturated moment better than anyone else writing today. If you believe something is lost when a writer makes zero false steps, maybe you should think about how you're contributing to a culture in which the reaction to any false step is merciless. I feel the exact same thing about Jia Tolentino, actually: these are writers forged in the fire of the internet, and if they emerge covered in impenetrable armor, it's only because that's what it takes to to survive.
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 7:42 AM on September 15, 2021 [31 favorites]
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 7:42 AM on September 15, 2021 [31 favorites]
I wonder. This is interesting but it's also very slick.
1. Eventually a change in quantity becomes a change in kind, so it's not enough to say "they also had 'pose' writers in, eg, 19th century London who were famous for being famous"; some now-forgotten best-sellers with big personalities don't invalidate the change wrought by the consolidation of publishing and the rise of social media.
2. At the same time, since there's been mass publishing there have been writers whose careers were driven by publicity, fashion, scandal, etc; I think people usually forget how many best-sellers there have been which are all now lost to time unless you're doing a PhD on them.
3. The harder it gets to survive, as he points out, the harder it will be for non-elite non-connected people to become literary writers. Genre writers - that might be different. But again, genre gets forgotten. So the same-ness of literary fiction doesn't reflect the world or a mass sensibility, it reflects the sensibility of the elite even more than usual.
4. I blame David Foster Wallace, too, because a lot of this involuted meta-concern about how you appear, how you act, what people think, etc, derives from his style. His style is extremely copy-able.
5. He's trying to describe exactly what puts me off literary fiction right now, so I really appreciate this essay even though it doesn't totally nail things down. Like, I read Elif Bauman's The Idiot, which was immensely readable and which I enjoyed and which I would recommend if you like that sort of thing at all and yet the sort of elite abjection that is its theme gets really wearing after a while. It is so pervasive, so influential and so copy-able but it has so little to do with most people's actual lives and I don't think it's helpful to mostly read books with that sensibility.
6. There's something really weird about all that twitter-esque "Every day I do my dumb little tasks because I am dumb" "my ambition is to be a bimbo, yes, being hot and dumb is my goal" stuff put out by successful, credentialed, intelligent people with large audiences. It's not humblebragging but it also has this feeling of guilty feigning. Is it because they all know they'll survive the Jackpot and the rest of us won't?
A lot of ways to go from this essay!
posted by Frowner at 7:48 AM on September 15, 2021 [17 favorites]
1. Eventually a change in quantity becomes a change in kind, so it's not enough to say "they also had 'pose' writers in, eg, 19th century London who were famous for being famous"; some now-forgotten best-sellers with big personalities don't invalidate the change wrought by the consolidation of publishing and the rise of social media.
2. At the same time, since there's been mass publishing there have been writers whose careers were driven by publicity, fashion, scandal, etc; I think people usually forget how many best-sellers there have been which are all now lost to time unless you're doing a PhD on them.
3. The harder it gets to survive, as he points out, the harder it will be for non-elite non-connected people to become literary writers. Genre writers - that might be different. But again, genre gets forgotten. So the same-ness of literary fiction doesn't reflect the world or a mass sensibility, it reflects the sensibility of the elite even more than usual.
4. I blame David Foster Wallace, too, because a lot of this involuted meta-concern about how you appear, how you act, what people think, etc, derives from his style. His style is extremely copy-able.
5. He's trying to describe exactly what puts me off literary fiction right now, so I really appreciate this essay even though it doesn't totally nail things down. Like, I read Elif Bauman's The Idiot, which was immensely readable and which I enjoyed and which I would recommend if you like that sort of thing at all and yet the sort of elite abjection that is its theme gets really wearing after a while. It is so pervasive, so influential and so copy-able but it has so little to do with most people's actual lives and I don't think it's helpful to mostly read books with that sensibility.
6. There's something really weird about all that twitter-esque "Every day I do my dumb little tasks because I am dumb" "my ambition is to be a bimbo, yes, being hot and dumb is my goal" stuff put out by successful, credentialed, intelligent people with large audiences. It's not humblebragging but it also has this feeling of guilty feigning. Is it because they all know they'll survive the Jackpot and the rest of us won't?
A lot of ways to go from this essay!
posted by Frowner at 7:48 AM on September 15, 2021 [17 favorites]
I have recently re-read Marie Calloway's what purpose did i serve in your life, and when the author of this piece calls her "the most original and daring writer of her generation," I don't think he's wrong.
When he says that Calloway hasn't published a book in a decade because "the writing of the pose is anathema to originality and daring," though, I do think he's wrong. I think that Calloway's reception was characterized by virulent misogyny and jealousy and, frankly, fear: "oh, here's a very visible woman saying things in a new way! Let's duct-tape her to a chair." This was, after all, just a couple of years before Gamergate, and currents of that were already to be felt in the various streams and timelines and newsfeeds of the culture.
Some of that same misogyny is visible in the article's dismissal of Rooney and Moshfegh. I have no real opinions about Sally Rooney. I read Normal People once, and enjoyed it while I was reading it, and now remember nothing about it. But this article makes me want to read it again.
posted by what does it eat, light? at 7:51 AM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
When he says that Calloway hasn't published a book in a decade because "the writing of the pose is anathema to originality and daring," though, I do think he's wrong. I think that Calloway's reception was characterized by virulent misogyny and jealousy and, frankly, fear: "oh, here's a very visible woman saying things in a new way! Let's duct-tape her to a chair." This was, after all, just a couple of years before Gamergate, and currents of that were already to be felt in the various streams and timelines and newsfeeds of the culture.
Some of that same misogyny is visible in the article's dismissal of Rooney and Moshfegh. I have no real opinions about Sally Rooney. I read Normal People once, and enjoyed it while I was reading it, and now remember nothing about it. But this article makes me want to read it again.
posted by what does it eat, light? at 7:51 AM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
this bit (from the first link) rather nails the point, I think:
Sally Rooney is the definitive writer of the Pose. Stripping down personality is both the primary subject of her work and the foremost aspect of her style. But she is only the first among equals. Beautiful World, Where Are You appears in the middle of a great rift in language, a rift with consequences that far transcend literature. Somewhere halfway through Beautiful World, Where Are You, Rooney casually lets it drop: “I don’t think I’ll ever write a novel again.” I’m pretty sure she means it. At stake in the moment of transition is the capacity to make meaning itself.
... and thanks, chavenet, for that Rick Moody link. I read The Ice Storm (having quite liked the movie) and found it rather overloaded with author (as opposed to story). The movie was better. But I don't know if I hated it the book. I finished it which is more than I can say for way too many books. But then a while later, I picked up another Rick Moody novel and ... ... got less than a chapter in before I casually put it down maybe too close to a garbage can or perhaps a raging fire. Because again, way too much f***ing author. At least pretend to be telling me a story, please. Or be more personally fascinating than your average story could hope to be ...
Which is relevant to Sally Rooney and Stephen Marche's words about her how? I guess, based on the piece (because I haven't read any of her stuff), it's in how she manages to personalize everything (it's all author) without really giving anything away, because (quoting Merricat Blackwood now)
She captures the doomed aridity of our internet saturated moment better than anyone else writing today.
This feels like a hell of a trick. I doubt that it bodes well for the future of "literary fiction" but who cares really? If there's ever been a brain dead genre, it's the one that gets abbreviated to lit-fic.
Which is probably where I should stop because I feel a rant coming on and I learned long ago that Wednesday morning is a bad time to start a rant.
posted by philip-random at 7:55 AM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Sally Rooney is the definitive writer of the Pose. Stripping down personality is both the primary subject of her work and the foremost aspect of her style. But she is only the first among equals. Beautiful World, Where Are You appears in the middle of a great rift in language, a rift with consequences that far transcend literature. Somewhere halfway through Beautiful World, Where Are You, Rooney casually lets it drop: “I don’t think I’ll ever write a novel again.” I’m pretty sure she means it. At stake in the moment of transition is the capacity to make meaning itself.
... and thanks, chavenet, for that Rick Moody link. I read The Ice Storm (having quite liked the movie) and found it rather overloaded with author (as opposed to story). The movie was better. But I don't know if I hated it the book. I finished it which is more than I can say for way too many books. But then a while later, I picked up another Rick Moody novel and ... ... got less than a chapter in before I casually put it down maybe too close to a garbage can or perhaps a raging fire. Because again, way too much f***ing author. At least pretend to be telling me a story, please. Or be more personally fascinating than your average story could hope to be ...
Which is relevant to Sally Rooney and Stephen Marche's words about her how? I guess, based on the piece (because I haven't read any of her stuff), it's in how she manages to personalize everything (it's all author) without really giving anything away, because (quoting Merricat Blackwood now)
She captures the doomed aridity of our internet saturated moment better than anyone else writing today.
This feels like a hell of a trick. I doubt that it bodes well for the future of "literary fiction" but who cares really? If there's ever been a brain dead genre, it's the one that gets abbreviated to lit-fic.
Which is probably where I should stop because I feel a rant coming on and I learned long ago that Wednesday morning is a bad time to start a rant.
posted by philip-random at 7:55 AM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Something he doesn't mention in his p. 149 voice comparison game, which is neat, is how much shorter the modern sentences are. Feels like something that's shaped by Twitter and texting and maybe TV.
posted by little onion at 8:01 AM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by little onion at 8:01 AM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
Amanda Gorman, after her reading at the inauguration of Joe Biden dressed in a magnificent Prada yellow coat, caused Google searches for “yellow coat” to increase 1,328 percent.
Joe Biden Prada what? Oh, for the lack of a copy editor.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 8:03 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
Joe Biden Prada what? Oh, for the lack of a copy editor.
posted by See you tomorrow, saguaro at 8:03 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
I can't help but feel this article isn't about literature at all, but something surrounding it that he's simply incapable of recognizing as irrelevant and ignoring.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:07 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 8:07 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
Oh, there's a lot to unpack, all right. A lot of ways to go and very slick. I didn't immediately think misogyny while reading his opinions about Rooney, but one of the things I love about Rooney's writing is her women characters are REALLY SMART. They have thought-provoking serious discussions! And the few lines Marche chose to excerpt from her books is such low-hanging cherry-picking (to accurately mix metaphors) that, in my opinion, he forfeits any right to criticize. (My main objection to Normal People is that not for a red-hot second do I believe a teenage boy would read The Golden Notebook.)
posted by scratch at 8:08 AM on September 15, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by scratch at 8:08 AM on September 15, 2021 [7 favorites]
Joe Biden Prada what? Oh, for the lack of a copy editor.
In terms of proofreading and copyediting, Lithub is THE WORST entity concerned with writing, books and literature that I've EVER, EVER seen. THE WORST, and in fact I almost didn't post this because I don't want to drive traffic to their site.
posted by scratch at 8:10 AM on September 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
In terms of proofreading and copyediting, Lithub is THE WORST entity concerned with writing, books and literature that I've EVER, EVER seen. THE WORST, and in fact I almost didn't post this because I don't want to drive traffic to their site.
posted by scratch at 8:10 AM on September 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
interesting to read this with reference to this piece from becca rothfeld about the tensions in rooney's novels between 'normality' and success
posted by inire at 8:31 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by inire at 8:31 AM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
scratch, i was a teenage boy who read The Golden Notebook.
(or, rather, I was a teenage boy who carried The Golden Notebook around, and read parts of it, and wanted to have read it.)
posted by what does it eat, light? at 9:02 AM on September 15, 2021 [10 favorites]
(or, rather, I was a teenage boy who carried The Golden Notebook around, and read parts of it, and wanted to have read it.)
posted by what does it eat, light? at 9:02 AM on September 15, 2021 [10 favorites]
Mea culpa, light.
posted by scratch at 9:25 AM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by scratch at 9:25 AM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
how much shorter the modern sentences are. Feels like something that's shaped by Twitter and texting and maybe TV
And maybe the increasing loudness of bars and restaurants limiting physical conversations to short shouty sentences.
posted by clew at 9:55 AM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
And maybe the increasing loudness of bars and restaurants limiting physical conversations to short shouty sentences.
posted by clew at 9:55 AM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
Without wanting to lean into the generational divide thing too heavily, I think it's kind of telling that the author chose "Pose" instead of something like "Stance" for the writers loosely referred to as Millennials, as that befits the equally loosely categorized Gen X attitude very well when matched with the concept of "Voice" for those who came before. Both a pose and a stance are positions adopted under the awareness of being observed, but the pose carries an air of something contrived, artificial, frivolous, and temporary about it, while a stance is serious and purposeful alignment of beliefs to ends.
The article touches on a number of compelling shifts in writing and reading in recent years and does, I think, suggest it is part of a bigger societal change as well. While I can largely agree over there being an important shift in how the arts are considered, by both artists and audiences, I think the notion of audience and the weight of awareness over the failings of the past is closer to the heart of the problem.
One might simplify by suggesting a "voice" writer is more concerned with transmission, how they "speak" their work as the reader was largely singular in consideration, by being anonymous or understood of a more or less uniform type of critical response, that as practiced by a narrow set of academics and literary critics coming from a tradition of literary history. Writers today appear to be more aware of reception from a diverse readership that necessarily must appeal to an audience outside the traditions of literary history, as the heaviness of that tradition makes up some of the cultural weight they are so aware writing can carry. I think it is mistaken to label that awareness a pose it is an unavoidable aspect of writing now and as such must be confronted to be "true", which makes it a pose no longer, but an assertion one will be held accountable for, as holding to account is one of the favorite pastimes of life on the internet.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:59 AM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
The article touches on a number of compelling shifts in writing and reading in recent years and does, I think, suggest it is part of a bigger societal change as well. While I can largely agree over there being an important shift in how the arts are considered, by both artists and audiences, I think the notion of audience and the weight of awareness over the failings of the past is closer to the heart of the problem.
One might simplify by suggesting a "voice" writer is more concerned with transmission, how they "speak" their work as the reader was largely singular in consideration, by being anonymous or understood of a more or less uniform type of critical response, that as practiced by a narrow set of academics and literary critics coming from a tradition of literary history. Writers today appear to be more aware of reception from a diverse readership that necessarily must appeal to an audience outside the traditions of literary history, as the heaviness of that tradition makes up some of the cultural weight they are so aware writing can carry. I think it is mistaken to label that awareness a pose it is an unavoidable aspect of writing now and as such must be confronted to be "true", which makes it a pose no longer, but an assertion one will be held accountable for, as holding to account is one of the favorite pastimes of life on the internet.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:59 AM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
I get this, but I read a lot (kind of an excessive a lot) of literary fiction and my gut reaction is that 1) Sally Rooney et al are the most popular edge of literary fiction right now, in part because they are accessible and not the sort of thing you go in for if you're the sort of person looking for Ducks, Newburyport. And like, 2) there's still plenty of Lucy Ellmann --Ducks, Newburyport (and Anna Burns and Ocean Vuong and Helen Oyeyemi and Valerie Luiselli etc) who are doing weird and interesting things with language and voice and construction. And even those books are still pretty--to use a dumb 90s word, because I am also an Xer--mainstream.
posted by thivaia at 10:03 AM on September 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 10:03 AM on September 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
I want to add here that I am also a fan of Sally Rooney.
posted by thivaia at 10:05 AM on September 15, 2021
posted by thivaia at 10:05 AM on September 15, 2021
Wait, gusotterfront, did you just accuse Gen X of being sincere? A "purposeful alignment of beliefs to ends" is absolutely not a quality any of irony-riddled--when it's not nihilist or absurdist--work of Gen X that I've ever seen.
posted by oddman at 10:07 AM on September 15, 2021
posted by oddman at 10:07 AM on September 15, 2021
Heh. No, the "Millennials" as the author of the essay has them, definitely not Gen X.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:10 AM on September 15, 2021
posted by gusottertrout at 10:10 AM on September 15, 2021
lefty lucky cat: "I can't help but feel this article isn't about literature at all, but something surrounding it that he's simply incapable of recognizing as irrelevant and ignoring."
Thanks. This is what I wanted to say but hadn't realized it!
posted by chavenet at 10:14 AM on September 15, 2021
Thanks. This is what I wanted to say but hadn't realized it!
posted by chavenet at 10:14 AM on September 15, 2021
And maybe the increasing loudness of bars and restaurants limiting physical conversations to short shouty sentences.
lol, I said this as someone who grew up with instant messaging and has reflected on how it made our written communication a lot more like oral!
posted by little onion at 12:04 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
lol, I said this as someone who grew up with instant messaging and has reflected on how it made our written communication a lot more like oral!
posted by little onion at 12:04 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
I read Normal People and I thought Rooney's prose voice was interesting in its spareness. A kind of reaction to the "voice" writers that the author of this piece mentioned. Books of that era seemed very focused on calling attention to the form of the writing and the voice itself and I found in my reading of say Martin Amis that while it was distinctive it got in the way of itself sometimes.
The author came across to me as pre-occupied with the authors I assume he studied in college or were somewhat formative to him to the detriment of novels written in a different way.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 12:41 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
The author came across to me as pre-occupied with the authors I assume he studied in college or were somewhat formative to him to the detriment of novels written in a different way.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 12:41 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
There was a lot that was interesting in this essay (and I also did not hate it as much as I expected to!) but it felt a bit ungainly/messy, like the author had a lot of semi-formed thoughts that he was trying to corral into one thesis (Voice vs. Pose). A lot of tangents that hinted at much larger issues/concepts but only glanced on here. Which made for an interesting but frustrating read.
One thing I think this is about that he only barely gets into is the transition from popular art that is very focused on the individual to art that is more focused on ... if not the communal/collective, then the societal. Novels where the Voice is the prominent literary draw only work if you enjoy that voice, or at least think the voice has something important/interesting to say. I see the novels he talks about (at least the ones he's read, or similar ones I've read) as being less about a Pose, and more about positioning the protagonist within a family/community/society.
This is something I'd noticed with TV shows - the transition from shows that are centered around one person (or a small nuclear family), where the ensemble is merely a backdrop, and where social issues are either ignored, or treated as fodder for jokes or education, to shows that are ABOUT the ensemble, and where the main characters are embedded in communities, impacted by economic/social forces, etc.
I am really glad I read this because I'd never come across the Seamus Heaney poem and I just love it.
posted by lunasol at 1:09 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
One thing I think this is about that he only barely gets into is the transition from popular art that is very focused on the individual to art that is more focused on ... if not the communal/collective, then the societal. Novels where the Voice is the prominent literary draw only work if you enjoy that voice, or at least think the voice has something important/interesting to say. I see the novels he talks about (at least the ones he's read, or similar ones I've read) as being less about a Pose, and more about positioning the protagonist within a family/community/society.
This is something I'd noticed with TV shows - the transition from shows that are centered around one person (or a small nuclear family), where the ensemble is merely a backdrop, and where social issues are either ignored, or treated as fodder for jokes or education, to shows that are ABOUT the ensemble, and where the main characters are embedded in communities, impacted by economic/social forces, etc.
I am really glad I read this because I'd never come across the Seamus Heaney poem and I just love it.
posted by lunasol at 1:09 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
It seems VERY STRANGE to me that he is attributing the thoughts/words of one of Rooney's characters -- thoughts/words that other parts of the novel undermine or complicate in ways both direct & indirect -- as the words & opinions of Rooney herself.
posted by attentionplease at 2:00 PM on September 15, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by attentionplease at 2:00 PM on September 15, 2021 [7 favorites]
It seems VERY STRANGE to me that he is attributing the thoughts/words of one of Rooney's characters -- thoughts/words that other parts of the novel undermine or complicate in ways both direct & indirect -- as the words & opinions of Rooney herself.
A big takeaway from being middle aged and still learning: being a good reader purely on a "let's look at the actual words contained in this text and how they work" is a lot harder than we tend to assume.
Also, books written in "naturalistic"/twitter/internet-readable style are even harder to read closely because they trickily invite us to read them as naive streams of consciousness.
After the revolution, there should be free college for all - not so much so that we can all go to college at, like, seventeen and emerge fully trained but so that we can all just idly take classes to help us read better throughout life. I'd love to take, for instance, a close reading seminar now that I'm old enough to enjoy it.
posted by Frowner at 2:08 PM on September 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
A big takeaway from being middle aged and still learning: being a good reader purely on a "let's look at the actual words contained in this text and how they work" is a lot harder than we tend to assume.
Also, books written in "naturalistic"/twitter/internet-readable style are even harder to read closely because they trickily invite us to read them as naive streams of consciousness.
After the revolution, there should be free college for all - not so much so that we can all go to college at, like, seventeen and emerge fully trained but so that we can all just idly take classes to help us read better throughout life. I'd love to take, for instance, a close reading seminar now that I'm old enough to enjoy it.
posted by Frowner at 2:08 PM on September 15, 2021 [6 favorites]
On some level I don't know what to think of this essay, as it mostly talks about authors I have almost no opinion on. But it does seems like a really weird selection of authors to contrast. It's an incredibly strange exercise to contrast "Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Michael Ondaatje, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Raymond Carver" with Rooney, Lerner, Moshfegh, Calloway and Tao Lin.
I honestly don't know how he came up with these two lists. They've sold well, I guess? But other writers not on the list have sold well too. And say what you will about Carver, he's just as much about striking a pose as Rooney.
Actually, I'd say that those younger writers are probably Carver's children, or grandchildren through Haruki Murakami. The lack of affect is very much in that vein.
I will say, that I do agree with him about there being something about younger writers today not wishing to present a big target. It would be very natural for an author who's gone through an Iowa-style writing program, with its workshops where writers give feedback to each other, to think of potential critiques and guard against them.
posted by Kattullus at 2:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
I honestly don't know how he came up with these two lists. They've sold well, I guess? But other writers not on the list have sold well too. And say what you will about Carver, he's just as much about striking a pose as Rooney.
Actually, I'd say that those younger writers are probably Carver's children, or grandchildren through Haruki Murakami. The lack of affect is very much in that vein.
I will say, that I do agree with him about there being something about younger writers today not wishing to present a big target. It would be very natural for an author who's gone through an Iowa-style writing program, with its workshops where writers give feedback to each other, to think of potential critiques and guard against them.
posted by Kattullus at 2:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
That Normal Novels article lost me when it gave out about the scholarship that Connell won as unbelievably convenient. I went to Trinity (in the 90s, for lo, I am old) and schol isn't something Rooney just made up, it is part of the fabric of that particular university. In fact, Rooney got schol herself (other famous scholars - Samuel Beckett, Joffrey Baratheon). The contrast in the novel between someone like Connell who really needed the scholarship and the other applicants who could survive without it but do it for the prestige is a genuine issue at the university - it's a need blind process and that has downsides.
The reception of Normal People in general fascinates me - I think a lot of what people find fantastic in it and examine for deep allegory is just what being a well off, young, intelligent person going to a fancy university with other similar kids is like. Not all students are like that - I personally didn't sit schol and was a member of the science fiction society, but I did have intense relationships that allowed me to work out what I wanted and who I was. Dublin in the early 90s was poorer and scruffier but we were still lucky enough to have a period of time where we could navel gaze and find ourselves in what are very pretty surroundings. And personally I really enjoyed reading a novel that was universalising experiences very like my own (though I come from Dublin, so not exactly the same) rather than the more usual experience I have of London or New York novels being the universal ones.
posted by hfnuala at 3:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [10 favorites]
The reception of Normal People in general fascinates me - I think a lot of what people find fantastic in it and examine for deep allegory is just what being a well off, young, intelligent person going to a fancy university with other similar kids is like. Not all students are like that - I personally didn't sit schol and was a member of the science fiction society, but I did have intense relationships that allowed me to work out what I wanted and who I was. Dublin in the early 90s was poorer and scruffier but we were still lucky enough to have a period of time where we could navel gaze and find ourselves in what are very pretty surroundings. And personally I really enjoyed reading a novel that was universalising experiences very like my own (though I come from Dublin, so not exactly the same) rather than the more usual experience I have of London or New York novels being the universal ones.
posted by hfnuala at 3:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [10 favorites]
This reads like an attempt to be remembered as the writer who coined the term "the pose". I find his argument for Rooney's sparse prose being a harbinger of the end of literature a bit of a stretch, and finding three more examples (for the 149 game) of writers who also do this (naturally), and then immediately admitting that there are other important authors of this generation who do the opposite, isn't exactly a slam dunk.
I also found the bit about Amanda Gorman to be unfair. Do we really remember that day for her dress, not her poem? It's far easier, culturally, to emulate her look than to attempt to also write such poetry, but didn't we also wear glasses like John Lennon, smoke stogies like Hemingway, wear berets like so many beat poets without erasing their artistic accomplishments in the process.
Time will tell if this generation of "important" writers is capable of saying what this generation needs to say. It might take a bit of distance for us to hear their voice.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
I also found the bit about Amanda Gorman to be unfair. Do we really remember that day for her dress, not her poem? It's far easier, culturally, to emulate her look than to attempt to also write such poetry, but didn't we also wear glasses like John Lennon, smoke stogies like Hemingway, wear berets like so many beat poets without erasing their artistic accomplishments in the process.
Time will tell if this generation of "important" writers is capable of saying what this generation needs to say. It might take a bit of distance for us to hear their voice.
posted by OHenryPacey at 4:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
Dude threw some beautiful shade on the Boomers, though.
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:48 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:48 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
About Gorman and celebrity: It's not that she's celebrated because of her style rather than her poetry, it's that a person of her accomplishments is also expected to pay a lot of attention to beauty and image. I's another part of the job of being a public poet, especially if you're queer or a straight woman. It's more work. On the one hand, I'm sure that it's fun up to a point, especially if you enjoy fashion, but on the other, again, it's more work. And I do start to wonder whether it's not making writing into another version of acting and music, where women can't get ahead if they aren't conventionally beautiful and interested in their appearance.
When I think about writers that I like, I can picture most of the younger ones, especially the women, because I've seen their marketing - and sure, twitter and instagram are fun, but making sure that you have regular photogenic images of yourself in fashionable clothes so that people will know that you're hot AND you have a book, well, that's not every writer's favorite activity. I can picture very few writers who made their careers prior to about 2010, and when I can picture them it's really static - like, I visualize a tiny black and white dust jacket picture.
Sure, there were writers prior to social media whose personalities were a whole thing - David Foster Wallace doing us down once again, for instance - but the idea that you have to commodify your whole self and be very image-conscious all the time as part of the work of being a writer, that's a real intensification.
posted by Frowner at 5:47 PM on September 15, 2021 [9 favorites]
When I think about writers that I like, I can picture most of the younger ones, especially the women, because I've seen their marketing - and sure, twitter and instagram are fun, but making sure that you have regular photogenic images of yourself in fashionable clothes so that people will know that you're hot AND you have a book, well, that's not every writer's favorite activity. I can picture very few writers who made their careers prior to about 2010, and when I can picture them it's really static - like, I visualize a tiny black and white dust jacket picture.
Sure, there were writers prior to social media whose personalities were a whole thing - David Foster Wallace doing us down once again, for instance - but the idea that you have to commodify your whole self and be very image-conscious all the time as part of the work of being a writer, that's a real intensification.
posted by Frowner at 5:47 PM on September 15, 2021 [9 favorites]
Frowner, I can't imagine what it's like to be a writer and also have to promote yourself on social media to further your writing. It seems an amazingly sucky situation to me, with one aspect at odds with the other.
posted by mollweide at 6:26 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by mollweide at 6:26 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
My mouth waters when I see someone doing stylistic analysis, especially when it verges on stylometric analysis. But those six sentences he compares-- the second set are all, what? Shorter?
He comments that the second set are all grammatically unexceptionable, but the one from Mosfegh is either misquoted or not grammatical, I think. ("The show was a 'brutal success,' one critic called it.")
Personally, I think Moshfegh is an amazing writer, but more on the level of sentences and images than in the kind of summarizable things Marche seems to like. And I wonder what Marche would do with Oyinkan Braithwaite, whose writing is kind of terse and deadpan but extremely vivid.
posted by BibiRose at 7:02 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
He comments that the second set are all grammatically unexceptionable, but the one from Mosfegh is either misquoted or not grammatical, I think. ("The show was a 'brutal success,' one critic called it.")
Personally, I think Moshfegh is an amazing writer, but more on the level of sentences and images than in the kind of summarizable things Marche seems to like. And I wonder what Marche would do with Oyinkan Braithwaite, whose writing is kind of terse and deadpan but extremely vivid.
posted by BibiRose at 7:02 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
High brow literary criticism is always the Three Bears on a merry-go-round.
posted by fallingbadgers at 11:43 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by fallingbadgers at 11:43 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
High brow literary criticism is always the Three Bears on a merry-go-round.
Maybe, but then mainstream criticism is often What I Did on My Vacation slide shows.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:53 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
Maybe, but then mainstream criticism is often What I Did on My Vacation slide shows.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:53 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
I can't imagine what it's like to be a writer and also have to promote yourself on social media to further your writing.
Sort of like the eras in which a writing career could be made or ruined by your performance in a teahouse or salon or coffeehouse or hotel bar, surely? Scaled up by the risk of getting Twitter-stormed, but on the other hand not a live performance at three feet distance, either.
I’d like an essay on whether those periods produced literature with something in common.
posted by clew at 9:48 AM on September 16, 2021
Sort of like the eras in which a writing career could be made or ruined by your performance in a teahouse or salon or coffeehouse or hotel bar, surely? Scaled up by the risk of getting Twitter-stormed, but on the other hand not a live performance at three feet distance, either.
I’d like an essay on whether those periods produced literature with something in common.
posted by clew at 9:48 AM on September 16, 2021
If this guy thinks Otesssa Moshfegh doesn't write with what he calls "voice," he really, really needs to read Eileen.
I think he's confusing the specific tone of My Year of Rest... with a wider authorial style that Eileen demonstrates isn't really there.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:43 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]
I think he's confusing the specific tone of My Year of Rest... with a wider authorial style that Eileen demonstrates isn't really there.
posted by yellowcandy at 10:43 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]
Rooney is a very talented writer, she conveys much in a minimal style. Her characters are both relatable and annoying, and the annoying part is intentional. Of course she captures the current Zeitgeist of this milieu of millennial intellectuals, which is relatable for us sometimes pretentious intellectuals of any era.
posted by ovvl at 5:03 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 5:03 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
As someone who worked very hard to avoid ever taking a literature class and doesn't know anything, I'm tempted to argue the reason the serious novel today is so awful isn't a lack of voice, but a lack of plot. All the older counter examples, with the glaring exception of Phillip Roth, are different because things actually happen in them. Fear and Loathing has an interesting voice. But, it also has an interesting plot. Contemporary, serious literature is often a lot like listening to a friend tell you about their dreams; you're doing the author a favor by pretending to care. I'm not sure listening to those dreams in a well-honed regional dialect would be any more interesting.
I remain hopeful about young writers. But, I'm keeping an eye on genre fiction, where one can still sometimes sell a book that isn't entirely navel gazing.
posted by eotvos at 5:27 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
I remain hopeful about young writers. But, I'm keeping an eye on genre fiction, where one can still sometimes sell a book that isn't entirely navel gazing.
posted by eotvos at 5:27 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
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2. I worry this man has made the mistake of writing the essay instead of writing the novel; it befell J. Franzen with "Mr. Difficult"; it infuses anything by critic Dale Peck (like, say, the abuse of Rick Moody), and there are plenty of other examples. It's the reduction of reading (especially the knuckle-your-forehead recently published serious novel) to "two modes" or "seven types" or some other arbitrary categorization; interesting in its way but hardly nourishing, and not at all useful to those who read beyond the (tiny) confines of the very latest literary lights.
3. I'd wait at least a decade before looking back on the literature of 2010-2020 to see what persists, and what is revealed. [Which is not to say you shouldn't read it; read whatever the hell you want!]
posted by chavenet at 7:10 AM on September 15, 2021 [10 favorites]