Authors I should like & don't

[nebula]

It's about vision

I hardly attacked anyone for not having the same literary taste as I, but what's more peculiar is how it's even possible to speak of a homogenous literary tendency when the only author I mentioned in my post was Dostoevski?

I'm not interested in petty reactions, such as that my views of literature annoy you. Is that productive? What I expressed was a more open approach to reading literature considered difficult, which is far from homogenous; if anything, it couldn't be more heterogeneous.

What is unsettling, and it truly is, is how easily certain literary works are dismissed. Is it possible to speak of a book which one hasn't even finished reading? I'm not discounting feeling altogether, or one's inclinations or sense for things or the world; that is necessary and meaningful and personally informative. A book should clearly resonate with one on some level, should captivate one, or at least grip or make one shudder. As readers, and you may disagree, but I think it's important to be able to move beyond our personal interests, beyond our often circumscribing tastes, and be able to or at least willing to read what is outside our, generally small, circumference of desire. It's dismissing a novel which an author has sacrificed his life for, if he or she is a serious author, based on a subjective response that I find questionable and truly disturbing. Our assessments, especially when based primarily on feeling or mood, which are ambiguous and fleeting things to base any decision on, are simply wrong.

I could have phrased a few remarks of mine differently and should have. It's not that I think FSF is pure crap, but more that he as well as Salinger are simply extremely overrated. FSF is a competent and able writer, but I don't think more than that. Why are he and JDS more well known than a writer such as James Purdy - precisely because of a homogenized sense of taste, which is the guiding rule in this country. You say I should respect people who like different books than I do (though I hardly gave a list) but then denounce anyone who likes DHL as an idiot. I have yet to read DHL so can't speak of him, but why not adopt your own tenets? To return to Purdy, just to give one example, in Europe, where there is more of a heterogeneous sense of literature, he is very well known. He is a real visionary, but America discounts its visionaries.

The fact as you point out that JDS wrote little is not cause for critique, certainly not. Rimbaud wrote two slim volumes of poetry, but they were revolutionary and they prefigure much of modern literature. But JDS' is far from Rimbaud and that he had very narrow stylistic range, quite the contrary, clearly is cause for critique. What is the vision of the literature? How is he transforming the word? Or any writer. What is being done with language? And what is the writing saying about humanity?

It's not that one need use an advanced vocabulary; I agree with you precisely - the use of complex or "difficult' words doesn't make something more relevant or poignant as you said, but that really isn't the point. What is being done with those words - that's the point. I don't have a fervor for Hemingway, far from it, but his writing is as stylized as Lautreamont, though he uses the simplest of words. Yet, he transformed literature. It's difficult to discern nowadays, but his writing was quite revolutionary. Knut Hamsun's Hunger had a decisive influence on Hemingway, as much of the early 20th century literature in America and Europe, but Hamsun's impact and influence on other writers is not well known nor has it been explored much, which is probably due to moralistic condemnations of him as a Nazi sympathizer.

 

[slimedog]

I think writing, and any art, is just the artist expressing himself to the best of his abilities and only if something in his art speaks to your sensibilty will you accept it, and I think that's fine.

I'm more knowledgeable concerning music and their are many fine musicians say in jazz history that are respected, and I respect them too, but they just don't say anything to me. Others in jazz that I love.

I like Fitzgerald, I like Bukowski and many others and I dislike a lot of respected writers, too. Do the writers I dislike suck? Do I suck for not liking them? No, to both because it's just a matter of taste. An artist is only for themselves and then only for those who can relate to him.

 

[nebula]

Intellectual writers?

Rubyred, you'd really call Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (I haven't read Nabokov) "intellectual writers"? It is a serious mischaracterization.

Yes, they are studied by 'intellectuals' or academics, but that hardly makes them intellectual writers; their use of language is quite simple, far from intellectual, and if there are any two writers opposed to such, it's Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, both true writers 'of the people.' Dostoevsky in particular despised intellectuals. When I think of intellectual novelists I think of the more university-bred contemporary writers, like Danielewski (House of Leaves). Or someone like Pound, to mention a poet.

Have you ever read Notes from the Underground (which should really be translated Memoirs from Under the Floor or Memoirs from a Mousehole)? It's a stunning work and the opening is infectious:

I AM A SICK MAN.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well -- let it get worse!

I have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years.

 

[nebula]

I hardly think writing or any art is as simple as you claim, Slimedog. It's hardly that accidental, and what comes "naturally' is far from natural in some organic sense which people find purer than other modes of creation - the age old dispute about conscious versus unconscious writing, of feeling over intellect, of sense over geometry. What is born naturally or through inspiration is the result of practice, of the refinement of a craft, of long hours of contemplation.

Since you mention jazz, Coltrane, in struggling to express himself to the best of his abilities to use your phrase, engaged in continuous hours of practice everyday, as did Mingus, Dolphy, and Clifford Brown. Coltrane's music is the result of a serious discipline, of studying other forms of music, of his search for the perfect mouthpiece, and truly struggling to express a vision.

I hardly believe that one should accept something simply because it's respected, but I intimated nothing of the kind. No one sucks for not liking anything, you miss the point. Writing or work of any kind isn't of any value just because someone likes it. There are countless people who appreciate Kenny G, but that doesn't mean his music is worth serious consideration. He may be technically competent, but his music is completely generic. It's a matter of expression and of expressive ability, of the intensity of expression; of whether an artist expresses something well, or in an inferior manner. Of whether one has a singular vision, or if one is merely blindly aping others or aping oneself ad infinitum and in discovering something which "works' continuing to do the same thing over and over again instead of boldly risking oneself in the abyss.

 

[justine]

nebula: if you're talking about an author's ability to utilise a language in the most eloquent and expressive way possible, to transform it and make it more than inked lines on paper, the first example that comes to my mind is fitzgerald's 'the great gatsby'. the density, the layering and the compactness of that story blows my mind. for me, fitzgerald vividly demonstrates the atmosphere as i imagine it must have been in post-war america: his characters act out of a nervous and restless energy that springs from an awareness of the massive loss of lives incurred during WWI; their frivolity, nihilism and hedonism aren't simply individual personality traits. the buchanans, jordan baker, gatsby all embody what must have been an overwhelming awareness of the brevity of life. there's a great critic on this subject (scott donaldson) who probably sums this up better than i can:

"the 1920s seen through the prism of fitzgerald's novel becomes a strange distillation of unlimited wonder and opportunity foundering on human excess and waste, a heightened and yet insubstantial carnivalesque moment in which personal and national desire give way to resplendent emptiness..."

so while you may think he is merely 'competent and able', i think he is astounding in his ability to convey to me - a new zealander who is generations away from him and his context - the sense of post-war american/new york society. if this is not conveyed to you when you read this novel, i can't argue with that. i can't say you're 'wrong', but that works both ways. i think you missed my sarcastic tone when i wrote that lawrence was rubbish - if you read a few more posts down, you'll see i was just trying to make a point (although somewhat inadequately).

my use of 'intellectual' when referring to dostoyevsky and others, was deliberately placed in scare quotes. as you point out, they would never have self-identified as 'intellectual'. but i think you're still missing my point: an author can be a genius, and can hone his art to the finest degree, but this will never guarantee that every reader will interpret his story the way he intended it. what i wanted to emphasise is that reading is nothing without the subjective response; the author can never provide a singular interpretation of his work (even though i'm pretty sure wordsworth tried to). once the words are on paper and released to the public, they no longer belong entirely to the author.

arrrggghhh... i feel like i'm talking in circles and not really saying what i want to say. so i'll end with this: for me - and i speak only for myself - that connection with a story and its characters must come first. critique, analysis, discussion, a new awareness - these things may eventuate without that connection, but they feel hollow and dry and empty. i apologise for coming off sounding snarky; i happen to think your later posts were interesting and well-articulated, even though i may not entirely agree with them.

ok guys, i'll shut up now.

 

[kelly]

Funny thread ; P Got me thinking, sometimes it's not so much the "Authors" I dislike but the people I stereotype as thier readers that gets to me. For example, in Thailand last winter I bumped into some fellow traveller looking the stereotype part CARRYING around "On the Road" .. (Wouldn't you think if ya are wearing a backpack around Bangkok you'd keep the book inside it while your weaving thru crowds... just my silly brain..) Then a few days later I run into the same guy AGAIN carrying "On the Road" in his hand as he was walking down Sukhumvit.

I like Kerouac. My high school creative writing teacher introduced me to "The Subterraneans" 12 years ago...but I haven't been able to crack open one of his books since I came back from Asia cause in my head I just see a mangy guy walking around Bangkok looking for cheap sex carrying around a book...

But this is also coming from the girl who just checked "Classical Music For Dummies" out at her local library. :rolleyes:

 

[Olaf]

kelly, wise words, I remember telling I woman I loved Bukowskis books and poetry and she said, don't tell me, your a young man nearly 20, I bet you drink a lot and think it is great to be antagonistic. (She was right, but it had nothing to do with Bukowski).

But she categorised the Buk reader quite well, i.e. young disillusioned men, or older men who try to remain fierce and 'defiantly' young even in their oldness. I am amazed how many people that read bukowski imitate him in many respects.

I'm a postman for fucks sake! haha! But, bukowski had nothing to do with it! HAHA! And the guy who maintains the bukowski myspace, well, if you look at his personal site, he has many images, and if you ask me, he is playing at being bukowski. Place littered with alcohol, he has buk tats, and takes lots of pictures trying to look profound or charismatic, or insightful.

Odd, how we attach so much to the Image and Icon of our writers...the thing I love about bukowski is how unspectacular he is...how obviously just a man he was...his opposition to genius...his streetwise sense...his observation.

Anyway, interesting thoughts kelly, come by my house some time.

 

[rjwink666]

Thats quite interesting. The imitation of Buk. He has the iconic image, or at least a created an extention of himself with Chinaski. However its another classic case of disillusioned males looking for icons, be in on screen with Nicholson or Dean or even in literature with HST and Palahniuks nihilistic Tyler Durden.
There are few leaders, the rest of us are looking for someone to follow.

 

[kelly]

aaahhh..... Tyler Durden. I do have a soft spot for Palahniuk. Another story, not now.

For those (us or just myself) looking for whatever.... In Palahniuk's words.

"The greatest consensus in modern society is our traffic system. The way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them traveling without incident. It only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy."

And now, I should really get back to work... I'm starting to like this forum too much. :D

 

[slimedog]

I hardly think writing or any art is as simple as you claim, Slimedog. It's hardly that accidental, and what comes "naturally' is far from natural in some organic sense which people find purer than other modes of creation - the age old dispute about conscious versus unconscious writing, of feeling over intellect, of sense over geometry. What is born naturally or through inspiration is the result of practice, of the refinement of a craft, of long hours of contemplation.

Since you mention jazz, Coltrane, in struggling to express himself to the best of his abilities to use your phrase, engaged in continuous hours of practice everyday, as did Mingus, Dolphy, and Clifford Brown. Coltrane's music is the result of a serious discipline, of studying other forms of music, of his search for the perfect mouthpiece, and truly struggling to express a vision.

I hardly believe that one should accept something simply because it's respected, but I intimated nothing of the kind. No one sucks for not liking anything, you miss the point. Writing or work of any kind isn't of any value just because someone likes it. There are countless people who appreciate Kenny G, but that doesn't mean his music is worth serious consideration. He may be technically competent, but his music is completely generic. It's a matter of expression and of expressive ability, of the intensity of expression; of whether an artist expresses something well, or in an inferior manner. Of whether one has a singular vision, or if one is merely blindly aping others or aping oneself ad infinitum and in discovering something which "works' continuing to do the same thing over and over again instead of boldly risking oneself in the abyss.

I agree with almost all of this but I wasn't talking about creating art I was talking about enjoying it-and it's as simple of who or what you relate too.
I'm well aware of Coltrane's life since he is my favorite musician but if someone likes Sonny Rollins or Dexter Gordon I wouldn't argue with them. Many artists have different methods and styles, it's whatever works for them and whatever works for you. Most gret jazz players did study and play as hard as Coltrane did.

I like Coltrane, don't like Charlie Parker. Do I think Parker's on par with our friend Kenny G, of course not.

 

[Chromiak]

Rather than get all heavy and deep, I'm just going to list authors that everyone says you need to like and I don't.;)

Most Hated Author that everyone says is classic- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Also: William Burroughs (he wasn't a writer, he was a junkie)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Great Gatsby blows)
Everything by Kerouac except "On the Road"
Dostoyevsky (talk about dense)
Dean Koontz (but that's a no-brainer)
George Bernard Shaw

I like Shakespeare, but I definetly understand why people hate him. Same with David Mamet.

 

[ProfessorRiffs]

kelly, wise words, I remember telling I woman I loved Bukowskis books and poetry and she said, don't tell me, your a young man nearly 20, I bet you drink a lot and think it is great to be antagonistic. (She was right, but it had nothing to do with Bukowski).

The first time I read Bukowski, I was already a young man, nearly 20, drank a lot, and thought it was great to be antagonistic. Reading his stuff clicked with me on such a massive scale, I was blown away. He taught me to say a lot of things that I often thought before I knew he existed, but had previously been too timid to say. So maybe it isn't always emulation. Maybe a good number of those folks (as well as ourselves here) like him more because we identify with his character. A character I'm sure more people would like to let out more often.

p.s. the guy who showed him to me is a guy with a Buk tattoo that acts nothing like him.:D

 

[nebula]

Final Words on Gatsby!

GG is clearly a "well written' novel and I found it interesting; your points about it are persuasive and clearly convey your sense of the book. I simply don't think it accords the kind of mania which it has garnered, which seems due in part to it having been canonized early, thus a book everyone in the West has to read. Or that FSF himself as a writer doesn't garner the kind of awe that people have for him for there are other writers with a much more expansive vision and scope of work. We will not agree about this, but that is no longer the point, nor was it ever necessary. Agreement isn't illuminating.

I feel your appreciation of it is deeper than most people's and different than most peoples and surely, part of that is your not being an American, which is another reason why the book is probably more interesting to you than I. One of the reasons why I do think the book has so much appeal though is for precisely what FSF is critiquing, or seems to be, but I have questions about that. To clarify, it is the perfect book for a fame-obsessed culture which believes in the world of the book and idolizes it instead of seeing into itself.

To make a particular critique, I found the metaphor of Long Island as the Valley of Ashes evocative and striking and full of tremendous potential; however, I thought it didn't figure as powerfully throughout the novel as it could have, especially since it suits the vision of the book. It's not just Long Island though but America itself which is a Valley of Ashes (a paraphrase clearly of the Biblical Valley of the Shadow of Death). But it was quickly discarded, raised only in a few other moments when it could have been used in the most devastating manner and made the book epic.

I think Gatsby's books (like Eckleburg's disembodied face, which one might say represents the hollow self that trumps substance) unlock the secret of Nick's own book in a sense, the book about Gatsby - his entire library is a lifelike façade. Built like a Hollywood set, but more real, for they are actual books though they are books which have never become books and remain but effigies. "If one book was removed the whole library was liable to collapse." Fitzgerald's book doesn't come to me as written for the single reader, but for a public, for the mass, and for glory; what the book condemns, Fitzgerald seeks - the writer condemns himself as he is writing and the single reader is caught in a silent circle that collapses upon itself.

This brings me to the previous statement about homogeneity; if anything, the idea of making books accessible to all and readable to all comes to me as nothing less than the homogenization of literature. It's akin, in a sense, to turning literature into television, which is to destroy literature.

 

[nebula]

On Dostoevsky +

I missed the scare quotes around intellectual but, nonetheless, even with such, I think it's a mischaracterization and the more I thought of it the stranger I found it. What makes it particularly odd is that Dostoevsky's work were serialized, thus far from what is considered intellectual writing. In fact, his writing style is quite fluid and he doesn't use any obscure or overly-complex words or stylistic devices, as does Joyce, who one could clearly say is more of an intellectual writer.

I am not sure if you clarified what you meant, but it seemed like you were claiming, from what I can decipher from your post, that a writer is intellectual if he tries to have his readers interpret his work the way he intends it to be interpreted. To me this isn't what makes writing intellectual, but that might not have been what you meant. I don't think any serious writer has such a desire, let alone believes that it is possible anyway. To me it reads like a death sentence. I would hardly want what I write to be interpreted as I interpret it; in fact, the myriad other perspectives which a book may yield, if it is a rich book, are far more valuable and fulfilling to encounter. One of the things which may make a work "great' is the fact that it yields a multitude of perspectives and that it can sustain continual rereading, which is something I don't feel with Gatsby. I don't want to harp on this but it comes to me as a book I couldn't "enjoy' reading more than two or three times, that I would in a sense "exhaust' the book after those three readings. Now you're probably ready to kill me!

Have you ever by the way read Cioran's essay on Fitzgerald? It is predominantly concerned with The Crack-Up, which is probably the most interesting, and original thing FSF ever wrote. And have you or anyone else here read Knut Hamsun's Hunger?

 

[Digney in Burnaby]

Baudelaire
Rimbaud
Jean Genet
Just didn't/don't "get" those French guys.
When I took a pile of them to a used book store to sell the proprietor was quite excited. Hopefully he made some money and those books were sold to somebody who still has, and loves, them. I know I wasn't likely to then, and still not now. No doubt a horrible lacking on my part that I have no desire to correct.

Soon to go will be the pile of Henry Miller. Don't "get" him either. Maybe he stayed in France too long?

I remember writing a review of a book for a punk rock rag (an offshoot of the Georgia Straight) and stating that I didn't have much use for the books/authors that I was supposed to like then -- X-Men, Heinlein, etc. -- so I did a review of a couple UK pulp novels by Richard Allen who had done stories titled Skinhead, Skinhead Returns, Skinhead Kung Fu during the 1970s. They were cheap (and how!) little morality plays as I remember (they're still around here somewhere). And entertaining to a point.

Entertainment, that's what was missing from the stuff called "literature" those days. And these days.

 

[Rob.]

'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury works on the same themes as '1984' but it much better written and much more subtle. read that instead, rob.

Finished it last night. I enjoyed it quite a lot. It was surprisingly light reading for such a heavy subject.

The printing I read included an afterword from 1982. The insight it provided led me to draw comparisons between the way books were seen in the novel and how faith is percieved in the world today. I don't know if that was even in Bradbury's mind at the time, but it is definitely there for me.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Good to see noone has mentioned Camus yet. One of my absolute favorites. I also really like Dostoyevski, Kafka, and (most of) Kerouac. Not so much Fitzgerald, and really not Hemingway or Faulkner.

But who really cares? You can like what you like, and what I don't and vice versa. My reasons for liking or disliking a writer are irrelevant.

 

[Ninjerk]

Kafka

I'm afraid I really don't like Kafka that much. I think I feel asleep when I had to read Metamorphosis, and I bought The Stranger myself.

Whilst reading it I kept saying, "C'mon, it can't be this obvious."

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Whilst reading it I kept saying, "C'mon, it can't be this obvious."

Not sure if you're referring to The Metamorphosis or The Stranger here.

To me, Kafka and Camus are very similar. They use layers to depict our struggle as they see it. On the surface, the stories are quite simple, but there are layers of allegory and symbolism underneath.

For example, Camus' The Plague is about the city of Oran, Algeria being besieged by plague, but the real meaning is intended to be how Camus' France reacted to the German occupation during WWII. It can be read as a book about how a terrible disease affects a city, or on other levels.