No sacred cows--bad books by good authors

Okay, even our favorite geniuses can deliver the occasional clunker. Swallow your pride, boys and girls and 'fess up.

I'll start with Anthony Burgess ANY OLD IRON.

What was he thinking?

Hey, this look like it might just be the group for me!

Anyway, as much as I revere Pynchon (and I do), I will have to say that Against the Day, coming as it did on the heels of the masterful Mason and Dixon, seemed less original and more reliant on the same ol' bag of tricks. One of the very very few books that I have put aside without finishing. I will withhold final judgement, however, until such time as I get back to it, which I inevitably shall.

Any Old Iron is not that bad. MF is worse. Burgess had to publish an essay explaining that book because no one got the jokes.

Re: ANY OLD IRON--maybe my expectations were unrealistically high after reading Burgess' absolutely masterful EARTHLY POWERS (still the finest novel I've ever read).

Warning, anecdote ahead:

Years ago I met a fellow during a long train trip to Ottawa. I think he worked as an engineer at the Chalk River nuclear plant. He was a book nut too and I told him of my enormous respect for EARTHLY POWERS. He gave me a funny look and proceeded to quote the first line of the book verbatim. No shit.

Here's that line:

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

I should add that to the thread "Wish I'd written that..."

I know you're a big fan of this book, Ian, so I'm preaching to the converted but EVERYONE who loves fine writing should read EARTHLY POWERS.

I've got a first edition hardcover of AGAINST THE DAY (and MASON & DIXON), which I stare at longingly...but...yes...the intimidation factor...

Yes, Earthly Powers has one of those lines that's ripe for quoting... Like Banks' The Crow Road ("It was the day my grandmother exploded.") and John Varley's Steel Beach ("In one hundred years, the penis will be obsolete."). I once had a drunken conversation with Banks in which we tried conflating the two lines. I think we eventually ended up with, "In 100 years, my grandmother's penis will explode." Or something.

Great lines.

I've been thinking about playing around with some Gysin/Burroughs type cut-ups as a writing and relaxation exercise--taking a number of classic books, slicing up the pages and randomly shuffling them together.

What happy juxtapositions might result...

Because I mentioned it on another thread, I have to say Paul Auster's TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM was a dreadful, self-indulgent offering from a fine author.

Paul, Paul...this is one (to paraphrase Wm. Burroughs) you should have buried in someone else's garbage...

i am a loyal steve king fan, but he must be really hurting for originality to publish BLAZE. there IS A REASON you didn't offer it for almost four decades, Steve, and I wished you had stayed smart enough to keep it buried.

Haven't read a King book since MISERY.

It's become a point of pride with me.

I thought his early novels and some of the short stories were very good. THE SHINING, especially, was terrifying but also one of the most authentic depictions of the mental dissolution of a man I'd ever read.

Another one that might go on the re-read pile some day...

i'll go browse through my shelves when i get home..I find Iain M Banks very up and down..when i like a book of his, i like it a lot, when i don't The Algebraist i can barely get through 50 pages.

I'm with you on Banks--when he's good, he's amazing (EXCESSION, CONSIDER PHLEBAS) but when he's off the mark...er...

I didn't bother with ALGEBRAIST and gave up on MATTER.

Our mutual crony Mr. Sales knows Banks better than I do, so I cede the floor to him...

The Algebraist was disappointing, as were Dead Air, The Business and Song of Stone. I quite liked Matter - it wasn't a full return to form, but it was close to the Banks we know and love. The Crow Road is excellent, and I really enjoyed Whit and Espedair Street. My favourite of his "M" novels is Against A Dark Background, but that's because it's a piss-take romp through numerous space opera and quest fantasy clichés. I've yet to figure out if it was knowing or unknowing. Also very good are Consider Phlebas, Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Excession. Incidentally, his novella 'A Gift from the Culture' is one of my favourite pieces of short sf.

Re: "A Gift from the Culture", where can I find that? In a Connie Willis Christmas story anthology (ho ho ho, Sales, gotcha!)

I liked ESPEDAIR STREET too, for it's evocation of an era--Banksie clearly loves music too. Not one of his better known mainstream efforts and that's too bad. Usually I prefer his SF to his "straight" stuff.

By the way, the other day on eBay I picked up the new Metallica, cheap. Produced by Rick Rubin, so I took the chance. I fucking HATED their last three albums. And, folks, just so you know, Ian Sales' tastes in music are utterly bizarre so don't listen to a word of rebuttal he tosses my way on that subject.

It is not bizarre - see.

Aaaaaaaaa!

'Nuff said.

But, seriously (please!), where can I find the fucking Banks novella?

COLDHEART CANYON by Clive Barker. Gave it a shot awhile back and thought it awful, awful, AWFUL. Got 60-70 pages in and that was it. If it hadn't been a library book, it would be warming my toes this winter.

COLD MOUNTAIN by Charles Frazier. Ack! Ack!

And I hear his next novel, THIRTEEN MOONS, completely tanked, despite an astronomical advance. Which shows you he had one smart agent and one STUPID publisher.

nice to know other people besides myself disliked Cold Mountain.good friends, with good taste (ie we generally agree)..not to mention my wife..loved it so wtf. In re the movie (i've not seen it): one good friend is an avid birder and was totally put off by the birds being central European and not NCarolinian..another who's a both a geographer and big civil war buff was totally PO'd at the misrepresentation of the battle scenes topography.

I was just pissed off by the crappiness of the writing--and COLD MOUNTAIN beat out DeLillo's UNDERWORLD that year for the National Book Award. Christ, you have to wonder who the boneheads were on the jury...

Just one more way too much knowledge gets in the way of pleasure.

Does that mean smart people have a harder time getting laid?

Cliff, we're having just that discussion here.

as a male American who's lived many decades, I can affirm that smart people do NOT HAVE trouble getting laid if they either/or:

1) go with smart women or

2) dumb down (reding tom swift or the bobbsey twins before you go on a date with the airheads is recommended. then you keep your conversation that simple, too).

o yes, then there are the women who just want to have fun. i like them!! there are not enough of them.

The Bobbsey Twins ! My oh my what fond memories! Life seemed so full of possibilities then, Where have you gone?

I always had a crush on Nancy Drew. Especially as realized by one of the all time great thespians, Pamela Sue Martin.

http://www.pamelasuemartin.com

Anybody who says anything the slightest bit nasty about her and I'll...

Gene, your discussion on "Pro and Con" should be red flagged. You...pervs.

I'm not smart so I can't comment on the sexual practices of the semi-intelligent. I have trouble masticating food and blinking at the same time...

cliff, it's not hard. just blink at the same time you chew. you'll get in the habit quickly. if you habitually blink at a constant rate, i'm told one can actually get through ulysses and understand a half of it.

ULYSSES--that one I had to work for. Read every Joyce biography, even bought the companion book that Stuart Gilbert wrote (with Joyce's approval and cooperation). Ten years ULYSSES sat on the shelf before I felt I was ready to tackle it--and, yup, even with all that preparation, I'm sure I grasped far less than half. I immediately recognized that it was a novel of vast talent and intellect and some of the scenes were surprisingly earthy and out-and-out funny. But it is not an easy read, not an entertainment, it requires commitment from the reader and I had to give it all I had to make it through.

I'm glad I did though--it gave me enormous respect for Jimmy Joyce's brain and devotion to literature. It also provided a humbling perspective on my own talent and made me realize the bar was far, far higher than I ever suspected...

damn it cliff. if you can do it, well, so can i. i will SOMEDAY make time to tackle the SOB. I liked "dubliners" well enough and wondered how the same man can go so far out (I have tried it a time or two).
i have no idea what "chick-lit" is. someone mentioned jane austin. she is a classical female writer but i wouldn't call it chick-lit. Maybe Harlequin romance novels are chick-lit? someone may enlighten me if they would. i'm personally genrephobic. i try to do my books about different subjects and from different approaches. I do not want to be categorized as a mystery/horror/sci-fi/crime/whatever writer.

Of course for all you accomplished Joyceans there's always Finnegan's Wake with which to while away the hours.

Now THAT one, I suspect, will always be beyond me. One gets the sneaking suspicion that it was all an elaborate joke on Joyce's part--"how far out can I take this?".

The great unanswered question for me is: where would Joyce have gone from there? Would he have made a complete circle and returned to more conventional literary forms? After all, he was only 59 when he died and had a lot of writing ahead of him...

i was really disappointed by Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, i usually really enjoy his novels, particularly American Gods.

I liked CORALINE but, for the most part, Gaiman doesn't really grab me. Just bought his GRAVEYARD BOOK for my kids for Christmas--hope they like it.

And, of course, I'll never forgive Monsieur G. for having ANTHING to do with "Beowulf: The Piece of Crap Movie"....

I don't get the Cult of Gaiman. I've read some of his short fiction and found it very ordinary.

Short stories and poetry quickly reveal a writer's weaknesses. You can hide faults in longer works but shorter efforts are like holding a magnifying glass over your prose...

I think it's his imagination that grabs me more than anything else, I'm a huge fan of his Sandman series. Graphic novels are definitely more of his medium.

I think you're right--his style does seem more suited to a visual medium. We also have his WOLVES IN THE WALLS collaboration with Dave McKean and it's a lovely volume...

I agree on the graphic novels. His novels always make me feel like something small but important is missing. Sandman, however, was my only foray into the medium of graphic novels, and I thought it was fantastic.

Regarding smart men getting laid, I recommend the smart women approach. I get hit on more than I would like by men who dumbed down when they got married and are now unhappy. It is very uncomfortable. I love smart men, and I am not picky about looks, but I am picky about marital status.

Re: smart men & smart women.

That's an interesting take--I see an Ann Beattie type story or novel in there somewhere. In the tradition of CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER, one of best "relationship" books I've ever read. Or maybe Richard Russo could do the notion justice.

I've always said, people should try to marry someone smarter than them. I recall that hilarious episode of "Seinfeld", where Elaine is dating a really stupid guy but he's so CUTE. "I know he's a mimbo," she protests, "but he's MY mimbo..." Or words to that effect.

I got lucky--my wife is a freakin' genius (now working on her Master's in arts education) and thanks to her genes, my sons don't drool and wear bib overalls (cue theme from "Deliverance", please).

I've made the comment elsewhere: when the Burns family gets together we have to hold our reunions in the monkey cage of a zoo...

for me, the Gaiman novels that work the best are those that also translate very well into graphic form...Stardust, Neverwhere are both "graphicized" - Stardust by Gaiman with Charles Vess and Neverwhere by..someone else, but very nicely.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein. Crap on a stick -- but in space! Atrocious dialogue, and the entire novel seemed to be wonky meetings. It was supposed to be about the Revolution on the Moon, but it read like TPS Reports.

Stranger in a Strange Land was good though.

I read Neverwhere by Gaiman and liked it, but I didn't really feel the need to take it further than that.

As for marrying someone smarter, doesn't someone in that relationship lose out? Someone has to be less smart, so isn't that a step down for the smarter person? Or is this like trying to explain time travel fiction, where your head just spins and you take it with a grain of salt? I grew up with a Mensa genius for one parent and a rather average other parent. It had a tragic end.

Well, see there's different types of smart. I'm smart in a socially inept and thoroughly impractical way and my wife covers the rest of the bases. So far it's working.

I'll try to remember that formula. If the shoe fits!

>34 CliffBurns:
This seems plausible to me, especially in the case of poems, but can you offer any particular examples of short fiction exposing an author's weaknesses (other than Gaiman's short stories vs. his graphic novels, or at least go a little bit deeper on that front, if it strikes you as a particularly good case)?

I ask because I've always thought of short fiction as a more rigorous test of an author's skills. It seems to me that there are far more major novelists than there are major writers of short stories. This may have more to do with the tastes of most critics, but is that really the only reason?

Jonathan Carroll is a writer who leaps to mind--some of his novels are self-conscious and can come off as contrived; and, as Charles DeLint noted in a thoughtful review, he's notorious for coming up with lousy endings. This is all evident and magnified in his shorter fiction.

The best place to start with Hemingway is his short stuff--if you can't handle that, forget about SUN ALSO RISES, etc.

Stephen King used to be a pretty good short story writer but his tales got progressively worse as his novels did. Sloppy, inconsequential.

The best possible introduction to Richard Ford's oeuvre is his short story "Rock Springs".

Howzat?

I absolutely agree that short fiction tests an author's abilities. And while some keep pointing to the impending demise of the short story, I draw hope from the fine prose of Jim Shepard and George Saunders. Their tales stand with the best of any time, any place...

Well there's also what does a reader want? Usually i want a novel...or a novella, some time to get involved w/ plot, character etc. I think absurdist and "tricksy" styles work better in short story form as the format doesn't go on long enough to become annoying. CF..I really liked Pelevin's short stories..but even the modest length novella the life of insects became tiring and predictable after 50 pages. And i do get my short story quota in each month w/ F&SF...

None of you have mentioned any really great authors except for Joyce. I'll throw one out there. Charlotte Bronte's The Professor.

I have never been so disappointed in my life. However, as was her first novel, I make allowances. Professor was a warm up.

I dunno if I consider Aldous Huxley a "good" writer any more--after reading BRAVE NEW WORLD and, over the past few days, THE ISLAND, I am deeply unimpressed. As a fiction writer, he'd make a very good librarian.

Still, as a book to shut down my brain and put me to sleep after a hard day of going mano-a-mano with my cruel taskmaster of a muse, it worked like a charm.

Talk, talk, talk. Everyone gives speeches in THE ISLAND. Why the western world is mad and how much it would improve things if everyone gobbled mushrooms and was tolerant of each other.

As far as depictions of Utopia go, I'd say this one was ineffective and unconvincing, at least in my case. Everyone on the island in question is mild and self-righteous. Most of the time I wanted to throttle them in mid-sermon.

Nope, in terms of Utopia, this one seems more compelling and believable to me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRLwV2xafpk

Actually that title is wrong, innit? No article.

ISLAND it is...

Sounds like Huxley went to the Ayn Rand school of writing, Or was it the other way around?

I thought Brave New World was a bit pants. Orwell's 1984 was vastly better.

Rand never went to a school of writing. And it shows.

Rand should have ended her days in a Gulag.

It amuses me so that nearly in this group despises Ayn Rand with a passion.

She's a talentless, crap writer. That much should be obvious.

The quality of Rand's writing is on a par with her ideas. However, they are not linked. Her writing is barely literate all on its own. Her subject (or object) doesn't contribute one way or another to her writing beyond, as I said elsewhere, her inability to make her points come alive in the story.

That's why I likened her to a Soviet propagandist in my review of The Fountainhead She's basically a free market Stalinist, her writing talent about as subtle as a North Korean political poster.

On the other hand, I'd like to hear her justifications of the AIG bonuses.

#54 - why? it's not as if she were one of the problematic cases (eg a fascist w/ lots of talent - eg Pound). She was an ideologue w/out any talent.

Hacks without talent:

*Ayn Rand
*Stephanie Meyer
*The dude that wrote Eragon
*Stephen King
*James Patterson

54: Are you always amused by the obvious?

>59 kswolff: - don't agree about King - his early novels and, especially, short stories are actually not bad. His decline came about when his publishers stopped editing him and let him publish anything he felt like.

I only read the uncut edition of The Stand, so my views are rather biased. I agree, sometimes having an editor is a good thing.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtectionFromEditors

And what happens after the end of Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif

It's only funny to me because I'm still pretty young and my exposure to lit. is all rather recent. That and most of my lit./English teachers have been conservative and would recommend Rand without blinking.

English teachers who recommend Rand should have their teaching licenses revoked.

Officer Barbrady: And then I read this: 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of s(beep)t I'm never reading again!

From the South Park episode: "Chickenlover."

Is there a good writer, SF or otherwise, who can represent the Randian position? One who knows how to write?

I'm rather surprised that there are any politically or economically conservative English teachers. It's rare enough that one be academically conservative; there aren't very many Harold Blooms.

Robert

Hard to treasure art which is (among other things) the advent of the new and different when one is a conservative. I hardly consider Bloom a conservative in any meaningful way----his reaction against the School of Resentment should not be characterized as conservative. Bloom wants a better America and doesnt think we have to have contempt for the present institutions (free press, voting rights and all that) in order to institute change. There are some things that the liberals in America got right.

Are we confusing Harold Bloom with Allan Bloom?

64: There's an entire school of "libertarian SF." I myself would rather not waste my time on the stuff, be it Heinlein or Cory Doctorow Warhammer 40K has hints and suggestions of political conservatism, but it's mainly fascist, genocidal, and insane. And that's only the good guys.

66: What about Anglo-Catholic royalist TS Eliot? Or the acid comedies of Evelyn Waugh -- another Anglo-Catholic royalist. A Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin can also be considered "conservative." Fortunately or unfortunately -- depending on where you waste your vote every four years -- conservatism has devolved from the elitist heights of William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk to the insane creationist, pro-life, racist, fascist, Christian suprematist, Larry the Cable Guy-lovin' pig ignorance of Sarah Palin and Ron Paul It would be damn amusing if that lot weren't so dangerous and keen on bombing federal buildings, abortion clinics, and gay clubs. Kind of like how liberalism devolved into tie-dye and giant puppets at anti-war rallies. Puppets? Really? That'll sure scare 'em at Ye Olde Military-Industrial Complex. You can find more trenchant political analysis reading MAD Magazine than the op-ed page of your local paper.

Great Literature didn't always come hand in hand with liberalism. Just look at Ezra Pound, Ferdinand Celine, and Wyndham Lewis I think there will be a major "transvaluation of values" (to borrow Nietzsche's line) up ahead as organized religion, politics, and capitalism are all exposed to be fraudulent, morally vacant, and corrosive to the soul. I'm coming at it from the opposite direction as Ferdinand Celine, since he had the same criticisms, since I'm all for a renewal of personal decadence and the worship of physical pleasure. Right after those AIG guys get what's coming to them.

67: Havent read Waugh, Helprin, Pound, Celine or W. Lewis; but I'll take your word for it.

And yeah, rdurick has to be talking about Allan Bloom. the Closing of the American Mind and that stuff.

I don't think Ron Paul fits in the same category as "the insane creationist, pro-life, racist, fascist, Christian supremacist, Larry the Cable Guy-lovin pig ingnorant" Sarah Palin and the constituency she represents. Palin's people are way more interested in what you and I are doing in our private lives to accommodate Ron Paul.

Personally, I like Ron Paul on the social issues even if his economics doesn't make sense to me.

He is not a racist, he voted (not just spoke against later, when it was cool) against both wars, he is most decidedly not a fascist, or really any of those other things mentioned. He is an out and out, flat-out libertarian.

Ron Paul rejects both the daddy and mommy governments. Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, the neocons, etc. are all daddy government, all the time (except when it comes to them, personally).

I don't know, this sounds disturbingly Palin-esque, even though it was penned by Saint Ron Paul:

http://www.freedomunderground.org/newsite/view.php?v=3&t=3&aid=23794

Ron Paul is implicitly racist and anti-semitic... or if you go back and look at his newsletters, explicitly:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca

It was disturbing to watch Paul receive so much support since he is essentially a neo-fascist. I say that not as hyperbole but as an honest appraisal of his politics.

Round up the immigrants, militarize the borders, build up resentment against finance capital (what do you think he means by "international banking interests"?), give a nod to neo-nazi groups (he accepted money from stormfront and others), promote far-right conspiracy theories about the "north american union", pal around with neo-confederate scum, push the usual law and order racism ("black criminals!!"), etc etc.

I do not understand how otherwise intelligent people fall for his bullshit.

Generalize, exaggerate, and fear-monger. It's in the GOP Playbook, Rule #5418, right next to how to successfully disenfranchise minority voters.

I think most people latched onto his anti-Iraq War stance and the superficial differences between him and the Neocon Establishment. He's the ultimate Randian Rebel (GOP Playbook, Rule #667 -- "When all else fails, look like you're against something. The plebes eat that right up.")

In the land of the Neocon Hivemind, the Individual Crackpot is king. He manufactured a mythology that made him look like the Right's Dennis Kucinich, when in reality, he was just another Texan nitwit who read Ayn Rand and The Turner Diaries

I understand the antipathy towards the banks, especially now, but the conspiracy theories are just that ... theories, like Intelligent Design and Hollow Earth People need to understand how money and capital works. The first thing in that educational program is to stop listening to neo-fascist cranks like Ron Paul.

I thought I was safe on this side of the channel but thanks to that article I now know the Dutch Queen wants to enslave me so she can turn herself into a supercomputer-human hybrid in order to travel the cosmos.

72: Buchanan also works from the same playbook and I guess it has worked for him. I don't understand why people give these types more credence than they do to someone like David Duke.

"Never underestimate the intelligence of the American people." -- Somebody, probably HL Mencken

The fact that Twilight is an uber-popular book among the non-thinking masses, it only makes sense that politicians should use the Lowest Common Denominator as a vote-getting tactic. Sparkly Mormon vampires make about as much sense as Ron Paul's economic theories.

In response to 67 and 68 where they speculate about my 65, I meant Harold Bloom who hasn't much liked what's been going on in English and Comparative Literature departments. He is the offspring of his mentor, M.H. Abrams.

Robert

Alan Bloom doesn't much care for what's been going on in English and comparative Lit either.

I read The closing of the american mind when I was in college, and my only thought was "what a curmudgeon."

I don't see why people can't read both the traditional "canon" AND works by women and minorities.

Because women and minorities threaten old, frightened, white men. Heaven forbid we should learn they are people, too, and that their ideas may be just as valid as those of the aforsaid OFWM.

But it's QUALITY that's final arbiter, isn't it? A "classic" is work of sustaining power and influence and topicality, regardless of whether it was written by someone white or black, male or female.

The canon is whatever makes us what we want to be, they are tools to use for the formation of our moral sensibility. Although, often times authors in the canon are reminders of the unprofitability of pursuing certain lines of thought (for example, a lot of Alexander Pope's thought on politics or morals are pretty ridiculous; or more to the point, Plato sure has had the West waste a lot of time trying to answer some useless questions).

The canon should evolve to be more inclusive, because there are a lot of good ideas out there, ways of living we might want to give a try.

82: Yes on getting through classic canon works and thinking, "OK, but this really doesn't mean much to me given the changes in outlook from their society to mine." In this regard I actually think the Greeks have aged better than some other thinkers. Although I found that reading Plato's Republic was really worthwhile and thought-provoking (though I didn't see it as a useful model for modern society, it got me to think about things I had not thought about), I didn't feel the same way about Hobbes' Leviathan.

I see the Canon (Western or otherwise) as a rough guideline, although some -- probably academics in English departments like Harold Bloom -- see it as a stone-walled fortress of All That is Good and Beautiful. Camille Paglia -- before she became a joke -- expanded the Western Canon to include everything from Ancient Egypt to Elvis, as well as including neglected works like DAF Sade, who deserved a high place in the Canon.

It depends on how one sees the Canon -- exclusivist fortress or inclusive festival.

Reminds me of this dialogue from Angels in America:

Roy Cohn: under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death Can I ask you something, sir?
Belize: going along with it "Sir"?
Roy Cohn: What's it like? After?
Belize: After...?
Roy Cohn: This misery ends?
Belize: Hell or heaven?
Roy Cohn: ...heh...
Belize: Like San Francisco.
Roy Cohn: A city! Good! I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.
Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.
Roy Cohn: Isaiah.
Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.
Roy Cohn: And Heaven?
Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.
Roy Cohn: The fuck it was!

So the Canon can't forget the Decadents, the Rebels, and the Lunatics. A Canon full of gender confusion and racial impurity sounds about right.

84: "It depends on how one sees the Canon -- exclusivist fortress or inclusive festival.

So the Canon can't forget the Decadents, the Rebels, and the Lunatics. A Canon full of gender confusion and racial impurity sounds about right."

What do you (and you too, anna) see as the purpose of the canon?

(And this fits in with the original subject of the thread, bad books by good authors. Plato, while imaginative, inspired intellectuals to proceed down a rathole and has ended up being a dead end. SO I would list the Republic as a bad book by a good author. Another example would be all of Nietzsche's crap about Will to Power---bad book good author)

Check what I wrote before: I consider the Canon to be nothing more than general guidelines. There might be some core works we can all agree upon, but out at the edges things get more blurry. Overall, it's all subjectivity and clout.

Case in point, Golden Age Sci Fi writers (Asimov, Heinlein, etc.) -- indispensable founders of the genre and creators of many common sci fi tropes. Unfortunately they write like utter crap.

In the Sci Fi Canon, I would also include other unlikely writers like Thomas Pynchon and Samuel Beckett.

I don't try to moralize too much about the authors and their works. It devolves into preaching and then I tune out. But I also see these works as products of a specific time period, a specific socioeconomic background, and the author's own family, religion, personal quirks, etc.

I'm particularly attracted to bad books, though not badly written books. There's a Counter-Canon filled with such luminaries like DAF Sade, Antonin Artaud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine -- writers shouting out against the mediocrity and tedium of the status quo.

85: Do you think people would learn more from reading, or read better books, in the absence of any form of consensus on what is worth while to read? It's an intriguing idea. However, in the absence of a formal canon, which I would argue is already the case (I mean, we already don't really have one), we create our own by listening to other people who we respect (i.e., me listening to others on this very list) for recommendations on what to read, because, otherwise, it's a shot in the dark based on what? The cover art? And there is just so much time in one's life. I hope that more of my time is going to be spent reading things that have some intrinsic value than not, and the only way to game the system would be to ask those who have gone before.

I see the Western Canon (dead white hetero guys) as a starting off point. There's also well-respected writers (Austen, Hemingway) that I personally can't stand, but that is a matter of taste, not of talent. Plus I like reading the occasional piece of escapist trash just to keep things exciting. After I read my Warhammer 40K book, I'm now reading some erotica, and when I'm done with that, it's Henry James and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. I keep a relatively short reading queue, mainly to remind myself that I have good books I need to read. Something I'm thankful for LT, since a lot of my books are buried behind other books.

86: "I don't try to moralize too much about the authors and their works. It devolves into preaching and then I tune out. But I also see these works as products of a specific time period, a specific socioeconomic background, and the author's own family, religion, personal quirks, etc."

I would take the attitude of the first sentence quoted if I was just reading escapist fiction (who-dunnits, sci-fi) whose author's only purpose is to entertain, but even then it is hard to avoid ANY moral import.

But literature (snobs sit up in your chair!) should have a moral element. You are meeting new people McCarthy's Judge Holden, Hemingway's Jake Barnes, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, that one should deliberate about---are these people I'd like to be, are they people I would want to avoid emulating, or can I extract something from them I might use to form my self-image. The author's job is to portray them vividly, and some do it better than others.

I completely agree with your second sentence above, nobody can escape time and chance and write from some neutral point of view.

And kswolf, you say the canon is a guideline, but you still havent said for what. Why read these books?

87: Anna, actually I agree with you. The old folks have to recommend books to the younger ones, try to interest the young in things the older folks found beautiful or helpful. It would be nice if my son grew up to appreciate the Rolling Stones, you know? It would be a moral failure if the older folks didnt recommend anything.

89: I think reducing science fiction to "mere escapism" does it a disservice. It simplifies an entire canon of literature. I wouldn't call whodunits and sci fi escapist. It's too big a generalization. As far as moralizing, both of those genres have it in heaps.

Why read these books?

*Why not?
*Because they're there.

A canon is just a general guideline so I don't sound too dismissive when I say, "I read whatever I damn well please."

All this talk about morality and purpose, you'd think Dr Phil or Rick Warren was ghostwriting. To be honest, I don't read literature or whatever for any overriding moral reason. I like pretty sentences. I wouldn't put too much stock in being a moral failure to the younger generation. "Children are our future," yadda yadda yadda. I see Great Literature as a gateway drug -- seductive and dangerous and hopefully corrupting. Remember that Sade dedicated Philosophy in the Bedroom to young girls to use a teaching tool. It's a lot more useful than that "abstinence education" claptrap our sanctimonious authority figures keep whinging on about. My moral advice to the young and impressionable: read Sade, read Bakunin, and read the Bible (to fight the theocrats and sexual terrorists on their own turf). And also read between the lines.

Also, I'm getting tired of standing on this rickety soap box.

I was wrong to parenthetically add whodunit and scifi, I wish I would have just said escapist.

You can get down off your soapbox, but you need to keep talking because I want to understand what you're arguing. Why don’t you put too much stock in being a moral failure to the younger generation? Literature is dangerous to what? What (or who, I cant tell) is hopefully being corrupted? What is the usefulness of Philosophy in the Bedroom, how does it help to fight theocrats and "sexual terrorists"? And for that matter, what is a "sexual terrorist"?

You're just going to have to read them. I'm tired of trying to explain myself.

The point, I think, is to be widely read while exhibiting discerning taste. I have little use for "niche" readers (or "niche" writers or publishers, for that matter), folks who stick to one narrow perspective and never leave their comfort zone. A good reader should be a fearless explorer, courageously approaching works that have daunting reputations or come with warning stickers because of controversial or unpopular content.

Challenge your preconceptions, accept nothing as given truth or dogma, don't be afraid to have your mind changed, your sense of reality altered.

Good authors/writing should leave you trembling, confused, shocked...and exhilarated...

And people describing a writer's work as "edgy" should get a boot in the chest ;)

I thought "edgy" was the new "bland".

If anyone remembers the show Daria:

Daria Morgendorffer: As far as I can make out, "edgy" occurs when middlebrow, middle-aged profiteers are looking to suck the energy - not to mention the spending money - out of the "youth culture." So they come up with this fake concept of seeming to be dangerous when every move they make is the result of market research and a corporate master plan.

Just about covers it, I think.

Cliff wrote: "Challenge your preconceptions, accept nothing as given truth or dogma, don't be afraid to have your mind changed, your sense of reality altered."

So if I look at it from the writer's view, am i correct in interpreting this as indicating what she should be providing the reader? She should be challenging the reader's (or culture's) preconceptions; that her work should offer up alternatives for readers to consider as they adjust their self-image or worldview.

It seems a little bit silly to talk about what any given writer "should" do. On the other hand, I once read that 'important' literature should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I don't know where that comes from, and like most pithy aphorisms, you can nitpick it, but it rings about right to me. Notice, however, that it's phrased as a sort of litmus test for literature, not a how-to for wannabe-important-writers. I think that, as a writer, you make what you can, and then others make of it what they will. "Importance" has as much to do with everyone who reads a work of literature as it does with whoever wrote it.

So, in other words, re 97: Yeah.*

*Sort of.

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,'
'I don't know where. . .'
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

***

'No, no! The adventures first,' said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: 'explanations take such a dreadful time.'

***

'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?'
'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

***

'Who cares for you?' said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'

Alice in Wonderland

98: I would agree, Sutpen, there are at least as many reasons to write a book as there people on the earth.

CliffBurns was proposing a fictional person for us to try to emulate: The good reader.

I would argue deciding what to do with our lives, what books to read, what books to write, are moral choices because you are deciding what kind of person you want to be. Cliff's good reader might say, "I'm the kind of person that reads all sorts of challenging things about strange people with different views about the world; and who knows maybe I'll decide it's not so weird and do it myself." That's someone I could admire and want to be like.

Now are the books in the literary canon (the ones you are assigned to read in HS and college) there to encourage us to be that sort of person? Is that why we should read them?

I think you're letting the whole morality thing cloud the obvious. If we have to read them in HS and college, it isn't a moral thing, it's a power thing. If you don't read them, the teacher will get you a whopping fat F. I've read my share of the Bible, but I have gotten different lessons from it than, say, a fundamentalist killjoy. Between the genocide, incest, and attempted child-killing, there isn't much there. Nothing that couldn't be gleaned from a dog-eared copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

"...strange people with different views about the world"
This could be interpreted in a few different ways, but in light of some of your previous comments, I take it you're mostly referring to a variety of quasi-political constituencies who still haven't broken into the academic canon in a big way. (I didn't mean that to sound crass, just matter of fact--I acknowledge that it's an issue worth considering)

I would suspect that, for the most part, books in the literary canon are not there in order to provide the 'different views of strange people' that you're (I think) talking about. It probably has more to do with tradition/pedigree/etc. After all, these books have been taught for a long time, and the kind of reasoning you're employing in your question is pretty contemporary.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure how important it is to multi-culturalize our literary canon. I don't, as kswolff apparently does, read purely for aesthetic pleasure. That's a pretty big part of it, but not all. I agree that there is a moral element in play. But neither do I, for the most part, draw direct moral lessons from specific characters or plots, as you suggested above. Rather, reading widely and attentively (snobbishly, if you like), for me has enabled me to establish a kind of...benign skepticism (?). A kind of patient curiosity. I'm proud of this attitude. It's taken a while to cultivate, and it wasn't a conscious goal, which makes it more valuable in some way.

So when I said I wasn't sure how important it is to multi-culturalize the literary canon, it's not because I don't think those other view points aren't important. It's because studying literature isn't like parsing a holy text for lessons. For me, it's more a matter of engaging with other people's minds through their writings, and realizing how vastly different *any* given person's perspective is from mine. It's to establish a certain attitude that is as critical, and simultaneously as open, as I can make it.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm trying to suggest that you could establish such an attitude with practically any group of books.

After reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and getting migraines over the terrible, terrible writing and "Ayn Rand ... in space" monologues about the free market, I'm making an effort to read things that are well-written. I try to avoid the Liberal White Guilt trap. And that all depends on your definition of "liberal" and "white" -- both of which are fluid to the point of chaotic. Multiculturalism for the sake of multiculturalism seems a bit empty and shallow. That said, Ralph Ellison and Naguib Mahfouz are great writers. Is this all centered on a misplaced sense of entitlement? Look at the recent trend to make people in the Western Canon either black or gay. Whitman's poetry is still powerful, beautiful, and groundbreaking, regardless of whatever PC box you put him in.

There's also different "sensibilities" with each PC permutation. What is the gay sensibility? What is the black sensibility? What is European sensibility? (That encompasses everything from Greece to Scotland and from Byzantine Christianity to Scots Calvinism. A pretty wide swathe and I haven't even gotten into cuisine and architecture.) At root, we're trying to forge new generalizations to assuage our sense of shame for the crimes and atrocities our ancestors have committed. Good luck with that.

I read for pleasure because pleasure is good. Too often we read out of obligation or duty, making an enjoyable literary experience into a literary teeth-cleaning. That's not very fun.

i read mainly for the excellent writing. example: Flann O'Brien. there are any number of bad writers to go around, i would rather not bring them into the discussion. what's the point. i think Sutpen, of all those here, is probably closest to the mark. we read to understand, and as best as we can, to know.

102: Benign skepticism and patient curiosity are admirable virtues. No argument here.

"But neither do I, for the most part, draw direct moral lessons from specific characters or plots"

Wouldnt you agree that you are forming some moral judgment of the character or of what he is doing? I would suggest that you couldnt read Moby Dick without forming some judgment about monomaniacs (dangerous, get people killed, crazy, etc.).

101: I was thinking more of setting the reading syllabus for a course than the simple power order you describe. I think there is an intention to teach the student, form them, rather than just providing a Sasuke obstacle course because its in the teacher/department/school board's power to do so. There is more to it than Dance, monkey, dance! What we teach our youth is pretty important.

103: "Multiculturalism for the sake of multiculturalism seems a bit empty and shallow."

I dont know of a better way to escape our provincial attitudes and worldview other than by reading books produced by other cultures (On second thought maybe intermarriage would be better). I dont see what's shallow about that. What would be your program to make us more liberal, more open to the new?

I agree with some of your sensibility argument. Generalization has only limited utility; the individual is what should be cherished, not the bin you place that individual.

Regarding reading out of duty: I dont believe anybody in this group does so---well, maybe finishing Rand qualifies for some sort of masochistic merit badge. The poor souls on LT that read out of obligation are the 1001 books before I die crowd.

Looking at reading syllabuses for colleges

UCLA, English 85, American Novel. Hawthorne, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Ellison, and Morrison.

Yale, English 291b, American Lit since 1945. Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, Edward P. Jones.

Univ of Texas, English 316k, Masterworks of American Lit.
We will be particularly interested in women and minority writers, and certain longer texts--by Crane, Plath, O'Brien, and McCarthy--will provide special opportunities to study the relationship between a particular work and the history and culture in which it is grounded.

>102 Sutpen: "I would suspect that, for the most part, books in the literary canon are not there in order to provide the 'different views of strange people' ".

No, I suspect the canon and its defenders are there to exclude different views of strange people, while working overtime to sanctify the right thinking views of Western Civilization.

>106 semckibbin:: It's too bad Melville isn't on those lists.

I think the divide between reading books by 'marginalized voices' (because of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc) and reading 'good books' is a false one. Clearly, there are innumerable well written books by women, people of color, lgbt people, etc, and I think it makes sense to search those books out, as they have been pushed to the side historically.

105: "Wouldn't you agree that you are forming some moral judgment of the character..."

Sure, I guess so. But (though I haven't read it) it's my impression that not many people think of Moby Dick as being an admonition against monomania. I've just never heard anyone cite "Ahab as example for the rest of us" as a contributing factor to Moby Dick's status as "Great American Novel". "Moralistic fiction" is a pejorative for a reason, and I don't believe that "great" literature escapes this label only because it makes its morals more palatable somehow.

I don't think worthwhile literature functions as fable. I mean, I really don't think it does on any level; at least not for adults. I think it gives us the tools to get ourselves as far away from black and white thinking as possible by interacting with other people's consciousnesses (I know, the new-age-iness is giving me a headache too, but at least it's concise), and that distance gives us all kinds of space to assume many different perspectives. If anything, a great novel should make us question whether we should dismiss monomania as horrible out of hand. I'm not talking about complete nihilism--just giving everyone(/character) a fair hearing, however unlikely it seems that they have anything going for them.

I recognize that it sounds like I'm proposing a single moral for all great literature to carry. I guess the distinction for me is that it's not a calculated effect of any one book. It's something you can slowly unearth over time via the new-agey mind meld stuff (which I hope is sufficiently clear. It's tough to articulate).

107: Hi, gene. The reading lists I posted seemed inclusive: blacks, women, homosexuals, drug addicts. And I think the liberal social welfare democracies of Western Civilization are good things, worth seeing continue.

108: concur on Melville, but to be fair i was just randomly checking courses at schools in the West, South and East.

109: Sutpen, I think you're picking me up by the wrong handle. I'm not recommending "didactic fiction" or a book with "moral in tow", the types of books that Nabokov famously scorned. Dont get me confused with moral lessons that stem from religion or proscribing one morality for all.

Moby Dick is resistant to reductionism, there are many different ways to read it. All I was offering up was one small part for moral reflection. Another could have been Melville describing the despicable savagery and barbarism of killing a whale (Chap 61) and feeling sympathy for the whale. There is moral import there but I wouldnt call it moralistic fiction.

Gene, I don't think the canon and its defenders are there to exclude different views of strange people, while working overtime to sanctify the right thinking views of Western Civilization. (Well, some of its defenders maybe, but ...)

The canon is nothing more than what has lasted, what can still be read with pleasure and profit. New books always welcome. All they have to do is last.

If you're including other races, genders, orientations, et al, ad nauseum just because they are physically different with no account of talent, reputation, etc., then you're spitting in the wind. And I agree with 108, it's a false dichotomy.

And speaking of neglected authors, where are Sade and Sacher-Masoch on those lists?

Inclusion isn't a bad thing, but where (or how) does one stop? It can't be a canon if one includes everything written, from Joyce down to the lady who writes the mysteries with the cats. Who do we exclude from our liberal democratic group hug?

110: And I think the liberal social welfare democracies of Western Civilization are good things, worth seeing continue.

That is to laugh. Don't muddy the waters by bringing politics into this. Especially the reductive liberal vs. conservative divide, which will only confuse things. If the Canon is about "liberal social welfare democracies," then there's no place for TS Eliot, Edmund Burke, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Ezra Pound, Anton LaVey, and many, many others. We have to contend with the Dark Side of the Canon -- writers whose insanity, extremism, and personal nastiness bleeds into their brilliant work. Ferdinand Celine would see the welfare democracies as decadent and idiotic; while Burke would espouse small government and hierarchy. Stop thinking liberals have an innate monopoly on the Literary Canon. It's just as bad as cultural conservatives thinking they have the moral high ground. In the words of Clueless: "As if."

110: Fair enough. Though I'd still suggest a little sympathy for the crew might be in order. That's why I tend not to think in terms of "moral reflection" on particular episodes--it's almost always too complex to pick sides, which is what it seems like you're doing.

Back to the OP (not that the political discussions were exciting),
many good writers have written bad books. Good farmers have bad years. Some names:
William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, D.H.Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, Thomas Hardy, F.Scott Fitzgerald. Daniel Defoe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

113: It is nice talking with you. Is Sutpen your real name or is it a nod to Faulkner?

112: "If you're including other races, genders, orientations, et al, ad nauseum just because they are physically different with no account of talent, reputation, etc., then you're spitting in the wind."

You know, you might learn something by listening to somebody just because she is different. Perhaps you'll hear the narrative of a slave or the story of a 13-year old Jewish girl hiding in an attic.

"Don't muddy the waters by bringing politics into this. Especially the reductive liberal vs. conservative divide..."

I mean liberal like J S Mill. But anyway, politics is all over like grass in my front lawn. Everything, even the things you thought important (talent and reputation), are up for grabs and change with time. To bring up Melville again, he disappeared for 70 years until critics with new thoughts about what talent is gave him a new reputation.

"Stop thinking liberals have an innate monopoly on the Literary Canon."

I dont know about innate, but care to guess who is developing those reading syllabuses?

115: I've enjoyed it too. And the handle's a nod to Faulkner. I think I'd just read Absalom, Absalom when I signed up for the site. Speaking of syllabuses, there's a novel I wish were taught more often. Though it's hard to fault profs for picking The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying.

114: Speaking of Faulkner, care to suggest one of his "bad books"? I've read 'em all, and I think they're all great. Light in August doesn't *quite* knit together completely, in my opinion, but it has enough going for it that I'm willing to forgive that.

115: You know, you might learn something by listening to somebody just because she is different. Perhaps you'll hear the narrative of a slave or the story of a 13-year old Jewish girl hiding in an attic.

God's wounds, you're presumptuous and condescending. Look at my library before throwing around accusations and acting holier-than-thou.

So men who wrote about the Holocaust -- like Elie Wiesel -- aren't worth reading? I like having my reading not determined by arbitrary quotas.

How many novels have you read by albino midget hunchback quadriplegic Inuit transsexual lion tamers?

Enough with your cheap point-getting. You've officially become tedious and lame.

#116 Yes, Intruder in the Dust is something akin to the Hardy Boys meet Miss Marple. The stream of consciousness portions have a healthy reek of brandy.

To throw something sort of related into the mix - Melville's take on colonialism is interesting and ahead of his time. I was blown away when I read Typee.

"God's wounds, your presumptuous and condescending. Look at my library before throwing around accusations and acting holier-than-thou."

I assume you meant to use "you're" here?

For me, a work can only make the canon (if there's a such a thing) by virtue of its universal appeal. Shakespeare's work can be comprehended by everyone, regardless of where they hang their hat. One of Kurosawa's last films was "Ran", virtually a retelling of "King Lear". Hell, Shakespeare is even made an honorary Klingon in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country".

A work directed toward a narrow interest group or which is the product solely of its time, probably isn't going to make the cut. Its appeal is not ageless, its message does not translate across the decades/centuries. For it, the scrapheap of history...

A French website recently asked writers to nominate their favourite writers - the top Anglo writer, and second overall, was Faulkner; the next four Anglo writers were Woolf, Joyce, Malcolm Lowry, and Shakespeare.

You can see the lists here - French Fancies. (It is in French but it's easy to understand the lists).

116: In college I was taught The Unvanquished. The prof had published on Faulkner and emphasized a close reading: what Ringo actually means when he says "a even two hundred and forty-eight", how big a Civil War regiment was, figuring out the timetable of events, that sort of thing.

118: I'll fully admit that Intruder in the Dust isn't quite up to Faulkner's best work, but I'd suggest that if it seems like "the Hardy Boys meet Miss Marple," that's only in comparison with his other work, which sets quite a lofty bar.

123: Had you read any of Faulkner's other stuff at the time? I want to say The Unvanquished was the sixth Faulkner book I read, and I found it to be most interesting as a book that reached back and explained the history of Yoknapatawpha after the county and its denizens already had a shape and flavor for me. It was fun to get some belated backstory.

it's more a failure of mine than of WmFlk (patron saint of Oxford MS where my sis in law has worked/lived for the last 15 yr and he IS a god there) but i just find his style totally puts me off. The inverse of Hemingway who ALSO puts me off. I'm just a fussbudget.
I'm a lot more generous w/ stylistic manipulations in poetry.

There are writers who employ a dense/baroque style whom i like a lot (Valente) and writers who use a terse, to the point style whom i also like (cf Jack Womack) so i think it's the easily parodied extremes that i have a hard time working through.

Andrew Vachss has a very terse style, which is fitting, since he writes hard boiled detective stories. His subject matter is equally bleak -- an ex con hunting down child molesters. He is also hit or miss and can get repetitive. His novels are like Chuck Berry songs. That said, Flood, Shella, and Footsteps of the Hawk are stand out stories.

As far as Faulkner, I enjoyed Wild Palms -- Godard's Breathless even quotes it -- but my response to As I Lay Dying was a giant "WTF?"

Never lived down south, eh, wolffie. I've grown up with people who wouldn't bat an eyelid at carrying a corpse around the back woods and hollers for weeks.

EDT - Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery, anyplace with a city larger than 20,000 people within a hundred miles does not qualify for "living in the South" or at least Faulkner's South.

I had a 3-month internship in Sarasota, FL. Does that count? Things did occur at a leisurely pace. Mainly because it was 90+ degrees and 90+ humidity everyday.

I'd say something about carrying a corpse being a metaphor for the Lost Cause, but that would be rude ;)

124: Yeah, it was my first exposure to Faulkner. But the prof inspired me and I have continued on reading WF. The prof's insistence on detail carried through too: when I was reading Go Down, Moses last year I had a splendid time drawing family trees and figuring out calendars for the characters in the stories.

The Unvanquished is much more readily accessible than TSATF or Absalom, Absalom! or say Part 4 of The Bear. Of the 6 or 7 I've read I thought AA! and AILD were the best, and Light in August the worst.

Check out Faulkner A to Z and Reading Faulkner: The Unvanquished

I need to reread As I Lay Dying sometime. The first time around, I just didn't get it. I got the literary technique, but the large number of narrators got me confused. I loved Wild Palms -- wonderful writing, surreal settings, and the two parallel stories seemed strangely interconnected on a subterranean level.

130: James Hinkle was my prof. That book is the summary of what he taught in the course. Every class there was a quiz about detail in the book and Cliffnotes werent going to help you.

Hinkle passed in 1991. His son Lonny was a pro golfer.

129: Well, given your predilection for making sense of Faulkner's tortuous chronologies, etc, you might appreciate this website, put together by a professor I had in college.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/absalom/index2.html

#127 - a hiking/reading friend and i had quite a "southern" scare last summer hiking in an obscure part of Duke forest. Lovely, but not so easy to get to. There'd been a couple of (supposedly) gang related murders recently and as we were walking along one side of the creek we saw what looked like a blue tarp, tightly rolled up, just the right size for a body. We both kind of freaked...a few days later Mike was talking to one of the park maintenance people and it turned out there were a few of those "corpses" that were intended to serve as anti-erosion devices. As (on a few rare occasions) mike's job, which involves appraising large tracts of timber or wildwood lands, often in the middle of nowhere..except for moonshiners and pot farmers, people have pulled a gun on him asking him wtf he was doing skulking around their property on the odd occasion. The excitement of working for ..say, the Nature Conservancy.

Mike's favorite warning sign was on a large tract bought by a couple of (presumably) gay NY lawyers. The signs, in pink, said:"Trespassers will be violated; survivors will be shot" - combining the best of two psychic worlds.

Made me howl this morning, Bob. Thanks, pardner...

Huxley's Island let him down. Rushdie's worst is Grimus, but that was his debut novel, so he can be excused. I've enjoyed all of Italo Calvino's books except the Castle of Crossed Destinies, which I could barely finish, despite it being particularly short. Can't think of any more.

Rushdie's Ground beneath her feet sucked to high heaven. I found As I Lay Dying a confusing mess. I don't know if I wasn't paying attention, but there were too many narrators combined with the usual Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness. Not his best, at least to me.

135: Thanks for bringing up Rushdie: for me the bad one was Rushdie's Satanic Verses, I found it unreadable after struggling through 20 pages or so. This was after I had been swept through Midnight's Children and thought it was one of the top ten novels I had ever read in my life. Boy was I disappointed.

I read Satanic Verses a long time ago and don't remember too much about it. I do remember more of Midnight's Children and Moor's Last Sigh both works of tremendous genius.

"Satanic Verses" had more hype than literary heft. It's like the hubbub over the Cruel Intentions movie. When I saw it recently, I was like, "What's the big deal?"

Satanic Verses is my joint favourite Rushdie novel alongside The Moor's Last Sigh. I Liked it more than Midnight's Children, its so much more fantastical and imaginitive, and compelling. As for Ground Beneath Her Feet, that's the only novel of his I haven't read, mainly because the plot sounded uninspiring. If anything, I think Midnight's Children is the over hyped book, but evidently a lot of people disagree as it is the one that's won the most prizes. Just a matter of personal taste I suppose.

makifat: Actually, I would have scooted Mason and Dixon into the "bad" pile. I finished it dutifullly, but probably only because I paid for the hardback. Pynchon has, for a very long time now, just been imitating himself.

I'm coming late to this discussion, and the discussion seems to have mostly moved beyond the original question; but I recently read Moby Dick for the first time in about 15 years, and it was clear to me that the book is not as good as people like to think (or as good as I remembered). There are great PARTS, but it's generally a repetitive, cheerless, humorless slog that loses its way pretty much right after the Pequod gets to sea. (Before that, for the first 50 pages or so, it's great.) The 20 or so pages of "Bartleby the Scrivener" are worth more than the entirety of Moby Dick.

141 : I loved "Bartleby the Scrivener". It is definitely one of my favorite short stories of all time. I've never read Moby Dick - it intimidates me and I feel like it would defeat me (i.e., I would not be able to finish it).

Don't forget his other novels! Melville's Typee is one of the most underrated works of all time.

Yep. I don't disagree.

i do want to try midnight's children - i happen to REALLY like Freakangels, a comic that is surely an homage of sorts to MKids. But i disliked the Satanic Verses so much i have't brought myself to try it out yet.

141: Really.

In Moby Dick Melville invents an entire fantastical fairy tale world, and describes it so that the reader can inhabit it. Nearly every sentence of the book is poetry and contains a bit of the mystery that Melville believes enfolds all things. It is impossible not to quote from the book continuously. Opening the book at random:

It was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery silence, not a solitude: on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Chapter 51

Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed. Chapter 52

I find Moby Dick the acme of artistry, to which I measure all other work.

Of course opinions vary.

I enjoyed Israel Potter as a fine romp through colonial life both in America and England. I would not consider it a boffo example of the high literary art. It was an excursion into a kind of 19th century picaresque, sort of.

Pierre suffers from the datedness of its central story. However, the language is superb.

I've been defeated by Moby Dick more than once, but have never surrendered and see it in my future yet one more time.

The Confidence Man is very episodic.

146: I can't argue with the passages you quote. They're beautiful. But Melville spends a lot more energy spinning out that type of sententious observation (usually in near iambs, often with Shakespearean rhythms he really wants you to notice, almost always self-consciously) than he does telling a story. The book is often beautiful, but it's barely a novel. And his observations always amount to the same five or six ideas, and they're oppressively repeated, and these ideas don't evolve through the last 80% of the book. The narrative structure of the chapters is tediously repetitive too: beginning with some distantly reported minor exchange between characters, moving to a few passages of minute speculation about what might have motivated the exchange, elevating to an observation about human types, and ending in a bit of forced philosophy. Over and over, my reaction was, "OK, you've proved that you're well read and intelligent, and you can write like an angel, but would you please stop trying so hard?" The whole effort (after, as I said before, the Pequod launches) just feels hysterical, desperate.

148: Hi, Geoff.

I was thinking the narrative structures of the chapters were their strength. It's funny how people differ, huh?

I was taken by Lawrence Buell's observation of how the elements in the cetology chapters work together. If you got a minute, I would like to repeat much of it here (Buell's example is from Chap 86, The Tail):

1. substratum of cetology data ("the compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes")
2. Rhetorical intensification ("Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it")
3. Metaphorization (compares whale's tail to elephants trunk)
4. mythification of data ("Out of the bottomless profundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen Satan thrusting forth his colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell")
5.Complication of mythification to introduce possibility of solipsism ("But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels")
6. Comic disruption (the joking image of whales praying with peaked flukes)
7. Self conscious proclamation of scribal inadequacy ("The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it.")
8 Ambiguous reformulation of whale as mystery ("Dissect him as I may, then, I go but skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face will not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face.")

I guess that could be tedious, and maybe what I just transcribed is tedious, but another way to see it is Melville using structure to manifest his artistic purpose. But it really doesnt matter.

Tell me about The Age of Wire and String, why is that one of your favorites? What should I hope to get out of it?

Thanks for the notes from Buell. They make perfect sense and definitely echo my memory of the movement of M's chapters. The structure isn't tedious per se; it's just that it gets repeated so often that, for me, I start to feel like I can see the 'strings' being pulled. There's something a little too smug about it. But, as you said, tastes are going to differ, and I'm obviously in the minority.

As for The Age of Wire and String, I find it fascinating for the extent to which it sweeps away and reinvents the rules of fiction, and even language in general. If you like A Clockwork Orange for the audacity of its language-world, you'll probably also like the Marcus. But it's really sui generis.

149: Mmm, makes me want to make a third attempt at finishing it.

150: Okay, now you have me interested.

Granted they are only rules that Marcus himself follows, but what do interpret those new rules of fiction to be?

And even more interesting to me, what do you guess he considers language to be (or what it should be)?

And whether your views on Moby Dick are in the minority or majority doesnt matter; what matters is you read it critically and artistically.

152: Wow. I hate to punt, but with two weeks left in the 4th quarter (I teach high school), I'm not sure my brain is equal to the questions you ask. I guess I might--if typing quickly, without forethought--say that he's trying to find out whether he can draw a reader into a world where there are very few common denominators with reality: parts of speech are destabilized, syntax has different (or additional) rules, physics and states of matter aren't set or much like we know them, and there are no characters. And then to describe this world in a faux-technical language that is (to me) more successful as poetry than most of the poetry I see. (I probably wouldn't want to read a book that was described in those terms, but I think the description is accurate.) It's an incredibly perverse set of restrictions to set on yourself. But like most of my favorite books, this one can't really be adequately described; the phenomenon of it is in the reading of it.

So I checked out excerpts of The Age of Wire and String on amazon. Is it possible he is just playin' everybody, that it is just a big put-on? It seems like he would be pretty easy to parody:

Bathing obsidian in marsupials, observed during certain periods of halitosis and after long ocean smells of lawnmower virus. The marsupials are positively organized yet still require thumbcuffs. The obsidian must be stopped, but the obsidian desires extinction as an act of acetic purity. Begun as a prank in Upper Silesia and Lower Berth, reaching mature erection in Harvard Square, the bathing takes place under bright skies of crystal and beside solid orgasms of viscera and the obsidian's screams for justice.

I'm being a little flip. I think I would have to read the whole thing to see how it hangs together---it might just do it.

154: Yeah, you might think that from this excerpt. And of course on some level he is playing. The book isn't humorless at all. I often find myself laughing at it, but laughing in the way I laugh at writers who do things with words I can't imagine doing myself: DeLillo, Wallace, (sometimes) Pynchon, F. Seidel, (dare I say) Shakespeare. Those are all guys for whom the language itself is a big part of the story.

154: Wow, and here I was thinking parts of Joyce were inaccessible. That reminds me of some of the theatre of the absurd stuff I read in college.

154: Again, my guess is that Marcus has to be read whole, not in snippets. But the italics in 154 are my parody, so its inaccessibility is solely my fault, not Marcus's. I misspelled ascetic, too. :/

Oh, Marcus definitely isn't as difficult as Joyce.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Agreed. What crap.