Giving bad writers a kick, Part II: The Kickening

I absolutely love this review / hatchet job of The Fountainhead, courtesy of a LT reviewer:

The Fountainhead is best read before you're fifteen. That way, if you conclude "Dude, Ayn Rand is an awesome writer!", adults will merely smile - and ask you to turn your baseball cap around so that the brim points forward. And to concede a point, when you're an adolescent, a 695 page rant IS awesome.

But if you're older, and aware that life is nasty, brutish, but principally and always SHORT...improvise this Cliff Notes-multimedia-crack pipe hit instead:

1) Load your iPod with four or five versions of "My Way" (start with Sinatra, and end with Sid Vicious) , while listening

2) Google a dozen or so images of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings,

3) oogle a bit of soft S/M fetish porn, preferably with red haired male and leather booted female,

4) scan through the Lady Chatterley's Lover Wiki, pausing at the "Themes" section, AND

5) finish off your intellectual foray with a rock of crystal meth.

Your "head" should now be spinning in the same place as if you had spent three or four days slogging through The Fountainhead. The elation will be almost unbearable. Don't let it turn to pain. Find a cliff, get naked, laugh, and jump off.

And don't forget to check for the water-filled quarry, Dude!

More on the Ayn Rand theme, thanx Cintra Wilson:

http://www.cintrawilson.com/dregs/2007/06/preventative_reading.php

LOL. Priceless. If Ann Coulter could read I'm sure Ayn Rand would be her favorite author. They have so much in common.

I just finished reading a review of a new book about the war in Iraq , and though I´ve just chucked the paper and couldn´t tell you the name of the book, I can tell you that the reviewer basically considered the author well-intentioned but pretty much incomprehensible, and he finished the review with; ´It´s just a pity that this is the kind of book that makes you wonder if you´ve forgotten how to read.´

That's a great line. There have been a number of books I've read that provoked similar sentiments...

Poetic justice. I read Kerouac's On The Road and was not impressed. I'd got the book from bookmooch.com, and it was in excellent condition. I just sold it on eBay for £4.

I read it in high school (or early college). Like Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Rings, these are books best consumed while young and impressionable. That said, I had my Kerouac and Hermann Hesse stages. I loved Burgess's subtle take-down of Hesse in Earthly Powers I might check out The Glass Bead Game eventually, but it's not a high priority these days.

Here's a masterful take-down of Atlas Shrugged:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-menaker/the-leader-approved-guide_b_173205.ht...

I know several people who are great Randians and I never fail to ask them when they are going Galt, and would they please hurry up so the rest of us can get on with building the country we want without their whining. Generally, this shuts them up.

Speaking of Rand, I just finished reading Beggars in Spain the other day. As an SF novel I enjoyed parts of it quite a bit. But one of the threads was radical individualism of the Randian sort that drove one of the groups. In the book this was not seen as a good thing, but as an indication that gaining sleeplessness had cost them a part of their humanity, An interesting take, unfortunately, it was generally presented with the same quality of prose that Rand used in laying it all out.

Oh, well, back to my perpetual motion machine. I just need this one more adjustment ----- here, ugh! Oh, shit, it just disintegrated right here in my hands! Oh, the humanity!!!!

8: I read through the first para thinking you were kswolff. :) Sounds like I won't be putting "Beggars" on my already too long TBR list.

I'm not a big fan of Kress--and if I recall, Monsieur Sales ain't either.

So...caveat emptor.

On the topic of Ayn Rand, I entered an essay contest regarding Anthem. If I get nothing out of reading that ridiculous thing and writing that ridiculous paper, I will be very sad. The book is very thin (not to mention the type is huge), and it still took me months to slog through it. Unbelievably painful prose, ideas that don't add up... Nauseating. (I'm completely fine with people being selfish bastards, by the way, but her portrayals and explanations do not make sense!)

And yet, I might read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged for the sake of essay contests, too... I'm either a masochist or I love money just that much. I'm inclined to believe it's the latter.

Or a really depraved sense of humor.

If you've seen or read Angels in America, one of the best lines (among many) was, after Joe Pitt and Louis Ironson get into a really bad fight:

JOE: I never hit anyone before, I ...

LOUIS: But it'd really be for those decisions. It was like a sex scene from an Ayn Rand novel, huh?

***

For your essay on Anthem, did you say "I" a lot? Seems like the Randian simpletons would go for that sort of cheap parlor trick.

Depending on my pain threshold, I might take a whack at Atlas Shrugged and Battlefield Earth, which are essentially the same novel, since both are beloved by water-brained cultists.

i dunno - it's probably hopeless to criticize Aynnie (get your gun?) to her cultists. And no one else cares. Of course when her cultists include the longterm former chairman of the Fed, there will be blood.

>12 kswolff: - A depraved sense of humour I just might have. It's a good thing.

I'll have to read Angels in America sometime... Into the wish-list it goes.

I didn't say "I" a lot, but I praised the crap out of Ayn Rand, her "philosophy," and Anthem. Felt disgusting yet hilarious writing it. Horrifyingly forced bull. Also, the structure of the essay was bad because I essentially spent one day writing the majority of it and I'm not very good with essays anyway. I'll get better, though.

Even if I win nothing this time around, I'll still qualify to enter it again next time. Youth is so useful like that.

Is Anthem the one in which a man and a woman (boy and girl) go Galt and wind up having a mountaintop epiphany of the concept of the ego?

If yes, I read that many, many years ago and thought it pretty silly. I think narcissism is the central requirement for understanding Rand.

>15 geneg: - I love your terminology - "mountaintop epiphany" indeed. Yes, that's Anthem, all right.

Oh, come now, that gives narcissists a very bad name. People may love themselves for the exact opposite reasons, after all. Loving oneself doesn't mean being a silly little bigot.

Unrelated to Rand, but I just found a piece of God-awful writing that I hope Cliff, with his hatred for similes, will see: http://vandonovan.livejournal.com/1088311.html I don't think I've ever seen such horrible similes or metaphors...

I can think of fewer things more uncomfortable than a ferret attached to the inside of my mouth.

What tripe!

>18 geneg: - What ISN'T sexy about having a ferret wriggling all through the inside of your mouth, its fur, teeth, and claws everywhere?

Anyway, considering what the rest of that woman is like, I would want to be nowhere near her. Beyond monstrous. I'm not even sure if a man having sex with her would be safe, considering the author never elaborated on exactly what that general area is like; after all, if her tongue is a ferret, her breasts are by turns citrus and soft cheese, and her ass is bread...

That ruined my appetite.

>20 kswolff: - Sorry 'bout that.

I...I...I can't think of anything suitably insulting to say about such rancid prose.

>22 CliffBurns: - I don't think anyone really can, it's just that horrible. Worse, in fact.

Heh. I am acquainted with Ron Miller. He publishes his books on lulu.com, although I think he has had one or two published by a major publisher. He's seen as something of an expert on the lulu forums. I never realised his fiction was so bad. He is a good illustrator, though, and his The Dream Machines is an excellent reference work.

hmmm. maybe a better trick would be to skim through books we like a lot and take (out of context) a wretched sentence or paragraph.

>24 iansales: - "He's seen as something of an expert on the lulu forums."

Scary. I guess writing fiction just isn't his forte. At least we know he's good at something, though.

>25 bobmcconnaughey: - That would be fun. Too bad I can't recall anything to look for.

Another dreadful writer: Cornell Woolrich. Even his short stories seem long.

Fascinating and troubled man but as a writer...

Didn't he write Rear Window?

That's the guy. Complete oddball.

Here's a piece on him from TIME and apologies, in advance, for the stupid symbols throughout. There's also a Wikipedia entry, of course:

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/corliss/article/0,9565,557218,00.html

I love this thread... and am grateful that I missed out on an Ayn Rand phase of childhood.

Many may, and will, disagree but one contemporary writer who really deserves a good kicking round the entire coastline of this small island is Ian McEwan. If only to save innocent metaphors from the torment of being stretched, twisted and flogged to death in one of his novels.

I think another Ian--Sales, that is--might go along with that. Drag on a pair of steel-toed ballet slippers and commence the kickin'.

I'll forgive McEwan for some of his misses, mainly because I like his early work (CEMENT GARDEN, for instance) and BLACK DOGS so much...

Oh I like the idea of steel-toed ballet slippers.

Cliff I'll give you The Cement Garden, not read Black Dogs though - but Atonement and Saturday are crimes against humanity I can't forgive.

While the ballet slippers are on can I take a couple of swipes at Henry James - I've never really recovered from being forced to read Portrait of a Lady for my degree.

I don't like what little of James I've read either--but, beware, plenty of snobs on this thread LOVE James. Doesn't mean we're wrong, just that THEY'RE dumb...

Give BLACK DOGS a shot sometime; it's sublime. McEwan's later stuff got dull (while still being technically well-crafted).

Well bring on the dummies...

checks watch, waits for Karl...

... I'm waiting for Ian McEwan to join the likes of William Saroyan and John Dos Passos. Is there any other reason to see the movie adaptation of Atonement besides the scene where Keira Knightley is wet? Other than that, why bother?

I hated On The Road, to me it was a bit contradicting of freedom, they treated women, for example like sex objects and I kept thinking about how it would be completely unacceptable for a WOMAN to go out and drink and have sex etc (and do all the things that the characters do to eptomise their freedom), if that were the case, the book wouldn't have been taken so well.

What it meant was, Freedom for men, really. For me it was simply areminder of how it was a man's world

>37 RedRightHand94: - There are plenty of things women can do acceptably that men cannot.

Besides, a lot of women see a guy and immediately go on about how "hot" he is; isn't that a sexual reference? If said male is recognised primarily for his "hotness," then he is basically a sex object as well. That's perfectly acceptable. Twilight fans do it all the time, and no one cares. It's a given that both sexes look at the other (or the same) as sex objects. There aren't many exceptions to that.

Also, freedom is relative. Complete freedom is an illogical concept; thus, I can't consider On the Road's "freedom" contradictory.

>32 riverwillow: - I'd love to know what criteria you use to evaluate writers. I noticed that your favourite writers include a number of hacks like Jim Butcher and Anne Rice. Perhaps you are disappointed that James and McEwan didn't use their genuine talent to write an endless (and pointless) vampire/supernatural/detective series.

You have to read ON THE ROAD before you're twenty. That first flush of youth. After that, you start picking apart the prose, the dreadful pseudo-poetic, hipster writing. William Burroughs was the only one of the Beats I have any respect for an an artist. Kerouac became the figurehead of the Beats but Burroughs was its bright and shining intellect.

>39 Jargoneer: - they are just following in the footsteps of Bram Stoker and Wilkie Collins, as two examples of 'hack' vampire/supernatural/detective writers that I see in your library (and yes they are in mine)

As you will have read on my profile I am not ashamed that I am an indiscriminate reader and do feel that this enhances my appreciation and understanding of good writing - at least these are writers who know their place and have something to say (however strange and weird it is) unlike Mr McEwan whose main criteria seems to be writing to please those weirdos who award literary prizes.

I notice from your profile that you haven't any favourite authors listed - too scared to put your neck out?

>41 riverwillow: - they are just following in the footsteps of Bram Stoker and Wilkie Collins, as two examples of 'hack' vampire/supernatural/detective writers that I see in your library (and yes they are in mine). Bollocks. They are following in the footsteps of Varney the Vampire and Fu Manchu.
To claim that they have something to say and McEwan is saying nothing is inane. McEwan has his flaws but he is technically and intellectually on another level to hacks like Rice.

Jim Varney the Vampire?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXCUTDEc27c

I guess that's like saying "Ernest Scared Stupid" is in the grand tradition of "Nosferatu" and "Children of Paradise."

Indiscriminate reader? What, pray tell, are you doing in this group then? Snobbery requires a little discrimination on the part of the reader. It's like Ray Charles signing up for sniper school with the Army Rangers.

>40 CliffBurns: - There are plenty of points I don't like in Kerouac's writing, stylistic things, et cetera. I'm okay with it now that I've gotten used to it; still not my favorite, and never will be, but I'll appreciate it for what it is and leave it at that.

On the topic of Burroughs, I'm hoping the Library of America will pick him up. I can't fathom why they wouldn't besides copyright issues.

>41 riverwillow: - I'm not sure what to say about that comparison.

>42 Jargoneer: - I assume this means that Varney the Vampire and Fu Manchu are not good, yes? I've never heard of them, so I'd like to know whether they are to be avoided.

>43 kswolff: - I've never heard of an indiscriminate snob. I don't believe they exist, either.

Have you ever read any Burroughs? He may be a bit scat-a-logical for them, if you catch my drift. It wouldn't hurt my feelings at all if they left him out. His crap can be found elsewhere.

>44 Irieisa: - the beat writers haven't aged well as a group. That's often the problem with attempting to be cool and hip.

Varney the Vampire is a penny-dreadful from 1845-7 detailing the adventures of the eponymous hero/villain (his status changes throughout the work - consistency wasn't high on the writer's list). It is massive - over 1000 pages - over-the-top and overblown. (Much like the genre today).
It can be read online but here's a taste of it from near the beginning -

The figure turns half round, and the light falls upon its face. It is perfectly white -- perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back, and the principal feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth -- the fearful looking teeth -- projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like. It approaches the bed with a strange, gliding movement. It clashes together the long nails that literally appear to hang from the finger ends. No sound comes from its lips. Is she going mad -- that young and beautiful girl exposed to so much terror? she has drawn up all her limbs; she cannot even now say help. The power of articulation is gone, but the power of movement has returned to her; she can draw herself slowly along to the other side of the bed from that towards which the hideous appearance is coming.

But her eyes are fascinated. The glance of a serpent could not have produced a greater effect upon her than did the fixed gaze of those awful, metallic-looking eyes that were bent down on her face. Crouching down so that the gigantic height was lost, and the horrible, protruding white face was the most prominent object, came on the figure. What was it? -- what did it want there? -- what made it look so hideous -- so unlike an inhabitant of the earth, and yet be on it?

Now she has got to the verge of the bed, and the figure pauses. It seemed as if when it paused she lost the power to proceed. The clothing of the bed was now clutched in her hands with unconscious power. She drew her breath short and thick. Her bosom heaves, and her limbs tremble, yet she cannot withdraw her eyes from that marble-looking face. He holds her with his glittering eye.

The storm has ceased -- all is still. The winds are hushed; the church clock proclaims the hour of one: a hissing sound comes from the throat of the hideous being, and he raises his long, gaunt arms -- the lips move. He advances. The girl places one small foot on to the floor. She is unconsciously dragging the clothing with her. The door of the room is in that direction -- can she reach it? Has she power to walk? -- can she withdraw her eyes from the face of the intruder, and so break the hideous charm? God of Heaven! is it real, or some dream so like reality as to nearly overturn judgment forever?

The figure has paused again, and half on the bed and half out of it that young girl lies trembling. Her long hair streams across the entire width of the bed. As she has slowly moved along she has left it streaming across the pillows. The pause lasted about a minute -- oh, what an age of agony. That minute was, indeed, enough for madness to do its full work in.

With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen -- with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of her hair, and twining them round his bony hands he held her to the bed. Then she screamed -- Heaven granted her then power to scream. Shriek followed shriek in rapid succession. The bed-clothes fell in a heap by the side of the bed -- she was dragged by her long silken hair completely on to it again. Her beautifully rounded limbs quivered with the agony of her soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous satisfaction -- horrible profanation. He drags her head to the bed's edge. He forces it back by the long hair still entwined in his grasp. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth -- a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous repast!

>45 geneg: - I believe I read a small bit, not much at all. Like Kerouac, I don't dislike him, and his isn't my favorite kind of writing. Since he's American and well-known, I'd think they would include him at some point.

Ah, well. Either way's okay.

>46 Jargoneer: - True, they haven't aged well. Ironic, in a way.

"Over-the-top and overblown" is an apt description. Very, very apt. Thanks for finding that.

45: Burroughs knew how to push people's buttons in the 1950s. I consider Naked Lunch and Lolita as the two greatest novels written in the 1950s. In much the same way Raging Bull and Blue Velvet were the two greatest movies of the 1980s.

Burroughs definitely isn't for everyone. Experimental, sexually explicit -- both gay and straight, abundant drug use, aliens, ultraviolence, etc. The Greatest Generation would rather read their Saturday Evening Post, act like good American Protestant patriots, and stay silent on the whole "civil rights" thing, nestled snugly into their suburbs with restrictive coventants oddly reminiscent of requirements to get into the SS and/or South Africa. Ah, the Good Old Days, when one didn't have to soil one's eyes with the sight of Negros and Jews in one's neighborhood. Martin Luther King was a Communist agent anyway. Nazis weren't all bad, they helped in our intelligence programs and our space program. Too bad the Soviets had their Nazis too.

(Since I'm a historian, I admire WSB all the more, since the 1950s weren't some Archie-and-Jughead/Happy Days wet dream people want to think it is.)

Hooper: Archie was the bitch and Jughead was the butch. That's why Jughead wears that crown-looking hat all the time. He the king of queen Archie's world. -- Chasing Amy

Kerouac doesn't age well; but Ginsberg's "Howl" and "Kaddish" still stand the test of time. Not so much his other poetry, which can be hit or miss.

48:

I'm a little unsure how everything after the second sentence in paragraph 2 makes a case for Burroughs.

I agree completely that he "knew how to push buttons", and that he presented a much needed alternate view of society. Yet pushing buttons, regardless of how necessary or deserved it might be, isn't an indication of greatness in literature. Ann Coulter has made a nice little career for herself by pushing buttons. Her books are not, however, consequently great.

I'm sure you have other reasons for holding Naked Lunch in such high esteem. Aside from it's 'transgressive' and 'subversive' subject matter, I'd like to hear what about the novel you found remarkable.

As you can no doubt tell, I'm not a particular fan of Burroughs (So you don't think, however, it is Burrough's subject matter I find so off-putting, I'll disclose my fondness for Jean Genet's writing). I do hope you can elaborate more on your admiration for Burroughs.

Not sure what I'm not communicating, since I made it rather obvious in my post. Sometimes it is the time of publication that makes a piece of literature all that more remarkable. Granted, vulgar and transgressive are both rather passe in our pornotopia Internet culture. The most grotesque sexual perversions Burroughs wrote are no only a Google search away.

The same can be said for the Marquis de Sade, who was also one for transgression and sodomy. All the more shocking, since he wrote his stuff in the 1790s and was imprisoned by Revolutionary and Napoleonic governments. Considering Napoleon's atrocities in the Peninsular Campaign (see Goya's "Disasters of War"), I'm not sure what the little Corsican found so shocking about Sade, apart from his well-argued atheist philosophy and penchant for blasphemy. So if you commit the same acts in the name of Holy Mother Church, Napoleon would be OK with that? Great literature makes us ask hard questions.

50:

What I thought you made obvious was your delight in the many ways that Naked Lunch might have offended those you derided in your second paragraph - if, of course, they had ever encountered the novel.

Yet, I didn't see any basis for placing the novel on equal footing with Lolita. You write: "Sometimes it is the time of publication that makes a piece of literature all that more remarkable." I couldn't agree more - Naked Lunch is a fine period piece. I would only add the word "seem" after the word "literature" to this sentence of yours. For outside of the moral constraint and hypocrisy of the 1950s that you decry, Naked Lunch really is no more than a literary footnote.

For if the novel's claim to literary greatness resides in its "grotesque sexual perversions", then once the perversions lose their uniqueness and ability to challenge conventional taboos, the novel must either stand on literary, rather than sociological, merits or risk deserved dismissal.

There is no shortage of novels that speak to their "time of publication". Yet great literature is relevant to generations beyond its creation. If its power to shock and subvert is minimized by societal changes and our "pornotopia Internet culture", then what else can Naked Lunch offer. I say - not much.

I don't agree. I think NAKED LUNCH far more timeless, sophisticated and intelligent than anything the Beats put out; Kerouac is especially dated and increasingly silly as the years go by. NAKED LUNCH isn't, to my mind mind, a "period piece", it's a surreal and macabre classic, vicious and funny and just as relevant and interesting today as it was when it was spewed out all those decades ago. But it's CITIES OF THE READ NIGHT where Burroughs really shines. All of his power and originality is evident in that novel and if I had to pick one of his works that's a "must read", I'd put that one ahead of all the rest...

I know I'm not reading it as you intended, Cliff, but I agree completely with your second sentence. Saying Naked Lunch is more "timeless, sophisticated and intelligent than anything the Beats put out" is damning with faint praise indeed.

The controversial aspects of Lolita made Nabokov rich and famous and move to Switzerland, but it is one of the greatest novels because of the language.

Not sure about Burroughs. He's so overshadowed, in my experience, by the stories ABOUT him rather than those by him. I couldn't make out a word of Naked Lunch when I tried to read it, though I was very young. Read the first few pages of Cities of the Red Night just now on Amazon though, and it seems much more readable; I may pick it up.

I wouldn't think of damning Burroughs with faint praise: he's one of my literary heroes and inspired me to push beyond the boundaries of conventional narrative, eschewing "cookie cutter" prose. I have in the neighbourhood of fifteen of his books in my collection. I always considered him affiliated with the Beats only peripherally, solely because of his personal friendships with Ginsberg and Kerouac. In terms of talent, thematic and stylistic innovation, intellect and originality I believe he leaves them in the dust.

Cliff, I'm not criticizing Burroughs. As you say, he wrote many works other than Naked Lunch - a novel, in my opinion that has earned its renown more for its ability to shock than the writing.

For myself, to say that a book is better than the Beats is almost meaningless. So many books and authors qualify, that such a comparison tells me very little.

To reiterate, no problem with Burroughs, only Naked Lunch.

Cheers

NAKED LUNCH is in the upper echelon of his work (in my view) but it is not of the quality of CITIES. I commend WORD VIRUS (THE WILLIAM BURROUGHS READER) to those seeking an intro to the man's work and life (like all great artists, the two were indistinguishable). The book comes with a CD of Burroughs reading and it's a great buy, at any price.

I suspect this may be one of those "agree to disagree moments".

Cheers

Absolutely. Burroughs isn't for all tastes, for a variety of reasons. Keep readin', that's the main thing.

Burroughs definitely speaks to a specific subculture. I would recommend his "sci fi" trilogy; Nova Express, The Soft Machine, and the Wild Boys. They are masterworks of hallucinogenic imagery and homoeroticism.

De Sade was far ahead of his time. He went beyond good and evil a century before Neitzche. His writing is subversive on a level unsurpassed even today. De Sade had great contempt for authority of all kinds and he was eloquent and charming, which is why he is so loveable.

Bang on, Dave. Thanks a bunch. Grove sells a lovely single volume edition that includes all three Burroughs novels. Don't read it all at once or the walls will start melting and reality f ade s a wa y

>61 CliffBurns: - Got a link to it? I can't find it.

Here you go, lass. These wouldn't be my STARTING point for Burroughs--some of the material is composed using his "cut-up method" and, like all experimental fiction, it can be off-putting.

http://www.librarything.com/work/128315

I don't know about you, Dave, but I really got into Burroughs when I started listening to him READ his stuff. There's a terrific CD titled "Call Me Burroughs" I highly recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/Call-Me-Burroughs-William-S/dp/B0000033FX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UT...

Whoops, Burroughs' CD "Dead City Radio" is also damn fine:

http://www.amazon.com/Dead-City-Radio-William-Burroughs/dp/B000001FYF/ref=pd_sim...

>63 CliffBurns: - I won't start with them, then, but I might as well toss 'em in the wish-list. Thanks for the link; I'm amazed at the prices Amazon marketplace sellers are trying to get for it new.

I'm thinking of writing an 'urban fiction' tale set in the Vatican, starring vampires. It will be written badly and quickly and won't make much sense, but the vampire priest hookers on the front cover will be sexy.

Ok, you can kick me now..!

As far as Burroughs goes, I always recommend The Soft Machine.

>66 inaudible: - Vampire priest hookers, you say?

66: Are you Dan Brown? ;)

64: Dead City Radio rawks! Burroughs did have a penchant for modern rock and roll music. On Dead City Radio, there is a song "Dr. Benway" performed by Sonic Youth and he had a spoken word album with Kurt Cobain He also had a cameo in Drugstore Cowboy

I would suggest either Naked Lunch or Junkie (or even Queer) as a starting point. The cut-up trilogy isn't necessarily read so much as experienced visually, like some demented sci fi & gay sex eye-massage, complete with aliens, conspiracies, and hard drugs.

Haven't read any of Burroughs's later stuff, but I want to read Cities of Read Nigh, since it is part of his late-period trilogy (along with The Place of the Dead Roads and The Western Lands) The late-period saw a return to a more conventional narrative style.

James Joyce and Burroughs both didn't get the Noble Prize for Literature.

As always:

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_RUapR6Npg

Great stuff, Dave!

And here's his appearance on "Saturday Night Live":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw1U4EJdtgs&feature=PlayList&p=FDE92953FF...

I almost posted that one instead. I'm glad Burroughs has other fans out there. I think he deserves remembering. He was a true decadent.

Here's a piece from today's GUARDIAN on Burroughs and NAKED LUNCH (courtesy Gord):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/20/william-s-burroughs-naked-lunch

Great article! Thanks.

Another Burroughs fan here. He was a visionary and a true artist, who transcends his time. He combines a hardboiled voice with great lyricism, an ear for the vageries of American speech with roots in the visionary Europeans of Baudelaire and De Quincey. His conflation of sci fi, Western, and Chandleresque private eye with cut up and other modernist tricks created a voice that is uniquely American, as American as Saul Bellow, perhaps, and a world that is completely original.

What I love about his writing is its sense of outrage. He wants to outrage us out of our complacency:

Can you deny your purple-assed Doppelganger? This is the time of Witness, when every soul stands with a naked hard-on in the Hall of Mirrors under the meat cleaver of a disgusted God.

The cadences of a baptist preacher with the sensibility of a revolutionary and images out of Francis Bacon. Works for me every time. The parallel with De Sade is excellently noted.

As well as the works quoted above, for first time readers of Burroughs I would recommend Interzone, a collection of very early pieces which contains 'Word', a long piece where he really found his voice, and Port of Saints.

Other good collections are The Burroughs File and The Adding Machine Another gay visionary -- also prone to some clinkers -- is Gore Vidal I've mainly read his non-fiction essays, but I want to get around to reading his fiction. He has a unique vision that combines the prose control of Henry James and an iconoclastic view of history closer to Howard Zinn. Much like Sade and Burroughs (the son of the typewriter mogul), Vidal is a patrician rebel and iconoclast. An interesting combination class-wise, since -- especially with the recent financial melt-down and Bush Lite on the Presidential Throne -- it's easy to make the stereotype that rich people are apologists for the Establishment while the working class will be the salvation of the nation. Palin's Oswald Mosley-in-drag act during the recent election exposes the truth behind the misplaced idealism.

It's important that folks remember he (Burroughs) was a satirist and his "routines" are often hysterically FUNNY. There's that hard-boiled element, the sexuality, the science fiction and hallucinatory elements...and why are we discussing the ol' Mugwump on a thread supposedly devoted to BAD writers?

>77 CliffBurns: - These things happen; people love talking about writers they love. They also love talking about writers they hate, but in another way.

>76 kswolff: YES YES YES YES Gore Vidal is totally brilliant!!!!!

Shall we start a Gore thread? the old man would love it, and we can return the thread to its original topic.

>77 CliffBurns: I think Dr Benway spiked the cocaine with Saniflush and we veered wildly off topic.

This thread is becoming a pantheon of my personal saints.

Saint Gore Vidal is my hero. I love that man.

Here is an homage to Saint Jean Genet's(another of my heroes) Miracle of the Rose, from The Wild Boys by William S. Burroughs.

"Red fumes envelope the two bodies. A scream of roses bursts from tumescent lips roses growing through flesh tearing thorns of delight intertwined the quivering bodies crushed them together writhing gasping in an agony of roses."

That was the cleanest qoute I could find.

Miracle of the Rose is an homage or expansion of themes and symbolism from Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and the Rose. Burroughs is continuing a homosexual literary tradition.

I think that qualifies him for gay sainthood. I hereby consecrate him Saint Bill.

76. Strap on Myra Breckenridge sometime. You will love it.

Have you read Our Lady of the Flowers? It's magnificent. Querelle and Funeral Rites are minor classics in the Genet canon, but still worth reading.

I have read all of his novels and plays. Jean Genet is my patron saint.

Fassbinder's brilliant film adaptation of Querelle introduced me to Genet in the early eighties.

Divine of John Waters fame got her name from Lady Divine in Our Lady of the Flowers by the way.

I even made a pilgrimage to Barcelona and stayed on Las Ramblas near the Barrio Chino where much of The Thief's Journal takes place. The statue of Columbus is still there and so are the tranvestite prostitutes.

Sartre considered Genet the greatest writer of the twentieth century and I quite agree. To me Genet is more than a writer. He is a prophet. I have lived my life outside of society.

79. Perhaps we should start a Gore Vidal appreciation group.

This possibly should be placed in another thread but I thought some of the posters here would be interested on reading Will Self's introduction to Junky.

Ten years ago I would have agreed that Burroughs was an indisputably great writer but now I'm not too sure. These days I probably side more with Martin Amis' assertion that Burroughs is a writer of great bits.

Martin who?

I have Genet's PRISONER OF LOVE.

Dave, what's the best English translation of THIEF'S JOURNAL, one of those books that's been on my "wishlist" for ages? Your pilgrimage to Barcelona to visit Genet sites impresses the hell out of me.

Jargoneer, old chap: will check out Self's intro. As for Amis' comment, I can tell you CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT is, in my view, great all the way through.

Here's John Crace reading from THIEF'S JOURNAL from the GUARDIAN page:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2009/mar/10/digested-read-genet

Here's John Crace (also in the Guardian) putting Junky through the digested classics treatment. Sharp as always.

Junky by William Burroughs

>86 CliffBurns: - just noticed your link takes you to JOHN Crace giving Thief's Journal the digested classic treatment.

Yup, except I screwed up and said the piece was read by "Jim Crace", not "John".

To get this thread back on track -- although the hagiography of dissidents, rebels, and deviants is much appreciated -- Stephanie Meyer and Lauren Conrad still suck.

>89 kswolff: - Should I be glad I don't know who Lauren Conrad is?

>90 Irieisa: - she's a young media celebrity - looks good on the author photograph.

Lauren Conrad is the author of the seminal groundbreaking novel L.A. Candy. I work in a book store and have to fetch copies of Twilight for giggling nymphoids all day long, which hurts my soul.

Bernard Frechtman's translations of Genet's Novels for Grove Press are great and were translated with input from Genet himself.

Junky is my least favorite of Burrough's works. Some of his works are better than others, but when he shines, he shines very brightly I think.

Thanks for the tip re: the best translation of Genet. I'm on it, pardner...

Olympia is The Travelers Companion Series which originally published the Bernard Frechtman translations in England a few years before Grove press published the first American editions.

So same translator...hmmm, and there's that Olympia rep, the distinctive covers...have to think that one over. The two translations are very close in price, at least on Amazon.ca...

There are plenty of inexpensive first editions by both publishers available on abebooks. FYI.

I have been collecting the Grove Press first editions. Now I feel I must collect the Olympia editions as well to complete my Jean Genet shrine.

Edmund White's exhaustive bio of Genet is great. Sartre wrote a book about Genet entitled Saint Genet. Genet stopped writing after Sartre wrote an entire book analyzing him, until writing Prisoner of Love years later towards the end of his life.

I like Burroughs a good deal and also Allen Ginsberg (though I haven't read either in a while) but it seems to me that the one beat who has never succumbed to the sloppiness and self-indulgence that even the best of bunch, from time to time, fall prey, is Gary Snyder: an artist and craftsman of absolute integrity.

Somewhere around here I have a copy of Snyder's TURTLE ISLAND. It won the Pulitzer, didn't it?

98: I grew up reading that (one of my mother's favorite poetry books). I didn't have any context for the poetry I grew up liking - up until right now I didn't even think of Snyder as a member of the beat movement.

Did we agree about Wyndham Lewis and Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein?

What about Charles Dickens and Scott FitzGerald? Not that they were terrible writers, but their superfluity of salable works kept their noses in the trough. Perhaps less money and fame might have yielded much better books. The same might be said for Daniel DeFoe.

That sounds like the Vincent Van Gogh Artistic Integrity Fallacy to me. I'm of the opinion more along the lines of David Bowie -- total sellout in the 1980s allowed him to get complete artistic freedom in the 1990s and beyond. And if a Great Writer makes a bundle on a particular book, good for him or her. Poverty and/or unpopularity doesn't make something inherently better. Otherwise we'd all be reduced to hipsters, waxing euphoric about the latest obscure thing and then lamenting when it becomes popular.

Stein, while a Modernist innovator, wrote unreadable novels, regardless of the generation that read them.

Diane DiPrima is another underrated beat writer.

Back on subject...Dan Simmons.

Vastly over-rated author. One or two good books, the rest of his body of work less than stellar.

My wife was pretty impressed with the Terror, but then again, this is the person who convinced me to read The Stand. That was a major mistake in my literary career. I've read one Stephen King novel and feel qualified to pronounce on him from that one encounter, which of course is BS. However, having read that one novel, I cannot bring myself to read more of his work. So I guess I will go on bloviating about that which I do not know. There are people out there who will tell you that's my favorite modus operandi.

Simmons' CARRION COMFORT was nearly as long as THE STAND...and five times worse, trust me. I think CC won the Bram Stoker Award (best horror novel) the year it came out too. Which goes to show you that horror fans have dreadful taste. Like we needed more evidence...

>101 kswolff: - that argument doesn't make any sense - Bowie's 80s albums sold less than his 70s albums with the exception of Let's Dance, which should have been an excellent album but Bowie forgot to write more than 3 songs. His work in the 90s and beyond has seen attempts to get back to his commercial peaks (Black Tie, White Noise - Nile Rogers; Outside - Eno; Heathen & Reality - Visconti).

>100 snickersnee: - Fitzgerald needed to keep producing fluff - he may have making a lot of money (in 1920s terms) but he was spending even more. It didn't help that the reading public ignored The Great Gatsby - that's what caused the real crisis in his career.
To accuse a pre-20th century writer of pursuing money is to miss the point - the vast majority of them were out-and-out commercial writers, or writing for satirical and political ends; very few saw themselves as artists.

Well, Charles Dickens sure set the bar awfully high for hackery!

Think I'll stay out of this whole debate of writing for loot/to support your GOOD work. I've seen that one go around and around on other threads/groups. Personally, I've always deplored the notion of writing for some franchise ("Star Wars", "Trek", etc.) to support your REAL work (particularly when a pseudonym is employed to disguise your hackery). But I know some pretty good writers who feel the opposite...and so I'll let that one lie exactly where it is...

Amen, geneg - I only wish he had been paid by the word as the common misconception has it. That way there might have been more of him.

>108 CliffBurns:/9 - there seems to be some misconception that I was calling Dickens (and others) a hack while I was merely responding to another post (#100) which declared Dickens would have better had he spent more time on his work. I wasn't making any judgement on quality, merely pointing out that novel writing was still seen as more of a commercial than artistic pursuit until later in the 19th century. People looked to poetry and, to a lesser extent, essays for art in writing.

yes that post in 100 was pretty silly coming from someone who professes to be a literary snob.

Dickens was not a hack, and his books are peerless. Perhaps if he hadn't been so obsessed with his public readings, he might have lived longer and written more. I wish that he had al least finished Drood.

>106 Jargoneer: - The point about Bowie in the 80's is that he was self-consciously chasing chart success in a way he never had to previously in an attempt to replicate the commericial success of Lets Dance. The results were largely dire wheras the 90's material was produced with pleasing himself in mind, and they are all the better for it.

Have you heard Outside? Commercial it ain't, but I play it (and the more pop-oriented Black Tie, White Noise) quite regularly, whereas I still only have my old vinyl copy of Let's Dance. Heathen is terribly overrated, but I'd recommend Reality to anyone.

I know this is off-topic, but I don't get to discuss Bowie much!

>112 IanFryer: - I own all Bowie's albums. I'm not saying his 80s stuff was good (Never Let Me Down is the worst album he released) but in the 90s he was not releasing stuff to please himself, he was trying to recapture past glories. The albums can be linked as Let's Dance - Black Tie White Noise; Outside - Lodger; Earthling was a desperate attempt to get down with the kids; Hours - Hunky Dory; Heathen/Reality - Scary Monsters. Don't get me wrong, I still listen to most of these albums (the exceptions being Hours which is rubbish, and Earthling which sounds better in 1/2 track bites). If he was seriously pursuing his own agenda why didn't he release the proposed follow-ups to Outside or Toy in 2001?

I agree about discussing Bowie though!

ps...at the same time Bowie was releasing crap albums in the 80s he was still releasing decent singles: Absolute Beginners, When the Wind Blows, This is Not America, & the Baal EP.

Love the track he did with Reznor--"I'm Afraid of Americans". Nice thump to that one.

A few years ago I snuck into a county fair near Los Angeles, and some bad county fair rock n' roll band there covered that song. It was so out of place and excellent.

Dickens wasn't a hack but he wasn't adverse to upping his word count with padding.

Balzac is probably a better example of someone who wrote potboilers to subsidize his better work.

Good to see people pick up on what geneg started in the previous thread at #69. Ayn Rand could have done the whole world a favor if she had killed herself (and I mean it) before she ever set pen to paper or fingers to typewriter. The Fountainhead is as horrible as Atlas Shrugged--terrible plots, wooden characters and elitist nonsense interspered with pages and pages of monotonous self serving rants. White Hats vs. Black Hats taken to the extreme--just drivel. How anyone could take her crap seriously is beyond me but she has adherents all over the world--such as Alan Greenspan. I haven't ever read The Turner diaries but that's probably the closest comparison I can think of.

>116 justifiedsinner:: You have any evidence for that?

All the evidence I've seen tends to show that he had to cut to keep himself within the bounds of the episodic format.

Ayn Rand shouldn't be kicked, her body should be disinterred and ritually violated by a horde of Maoist lesbians. And her fan club, including economic "maestro" -- in the same sense that Adolf Eichmann was good at logistics -- should be taken to Gitmo, tortured, and then thrown into the sea. In a word: off-shored with extreme prejudice.

117: The Turner Diaries was at least mercifully shorter and had decent action scenes. I would compare Atlas Shrugged to Battlefield Earth, since both are overlong, badly written literary abortions adored by hordes of functionally retarded fame whores (Hollywood and DC are fun-house mirrors of each other). People being possessed by dead volcano alien ghosts is about as sensible as free-market capitalist utopianism. Even the overlong, tedious, repetitive horrorshow of Juliette by DAF Sade is far better written and espouses a coherent rational philosophy. Sade at least doesn't burden his philosophy with any moralizing, since it is all about naked power and the amorality of Nature. Rand's philosophy can be paraphrased thus: "Anyone not making $600,000 a year is a weak pansy!" Funny how her biggest fans are weaklings and simpletons who would lose an arm wrestling fight with a cuttlefish.

But wait, they're all going to be making at least $600,000 a year soon and when they do they'll all go Galt if we don't elect Sarah Palin President. So, blech to ya, squirt!

>116 justifiedsinner: This is rubbish. There is nothing in Dickens which is padding. And Balzac saw his work as a coherent whole.

Thankyou.

Re Dickens: The work of Robert Graves (The Real David Copperfield). As explained in the following article:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,747273,00.html

Re Balzac: Balzacs potboilers were not part of his Comedie Humaine and were published under pseudonyms e.g. Vicaire des Ardennes as Horace de Saint-Aubin

#101, etc. Dickens and FitzGerald were best-sellers, the Browns and Clancys and Kings of their times. Most of their work was (well-paid) rubbish. I see no reason to contemn Hailey and Crichton for the usual faults in popular fiction while acceding to the same faults in others.

I just threw up on my keyboard.

Because the Graves edition has received such acclaim. I've been reading Dickens for 40 years and I've never even heard of it.

And it still isn't proof that Dickens padded, only that Graves disliked his prose style. Some of us like the gargoyles as well as the architecture.

Dickensians - the usual test: please name three books which are not rubbish.

The last Dickens I read was in high school. It was Hard Times, which wasn't rubbish, so much as omnipresent soot and suffering. After reading Milton and Conrad, reading that little volume was pure masochism. I also read -- and mostly forgot -- Great Expectations

That said, I'm willing to give Dickens another shot. I want to check out Dombey and Son and Barnaby Rudge, the latter about the anti-Catholic riots that happened in the 1830s.

Just because writers actually made money and were popular shouldn't make us condemn them. I love the occasional dip into Balzac's Human Comedy and even Literary Uber-Snob Henry James wrote serialized fiction for exchangeable currency.

I'm a snob, not a goddamn hipster.

Caveat: "Popular" needs its usual qualifiers. Today we live in a world hypersaturated with many forms of media and are also in the latter-days of Merger Mania. In the time of Dickens and Balzac, there were less opportunities for literary achievement. Today, there are thousands of small presses, the Random House Leviathan, blogs, and the Interwebs. Today, there are niche markets, narrowcasting, and quality self-published works. In the 1950s, there were only 3 TV channels; today, there are 100s of channels, ironically owned by roughly a dozen conglomerates.

Dan Browns exist because there is a multimedia behemoth supporting him and creating a market share from synergy. The book, the movie, the breakfast cereal, the flamethrower ("The kids love it!"), etc. In Dickens days, there was a book, magazine serialization, and maybe a play.

Equating Dickens to Dan Brown is "bull in china shop" reasoning. We need a more nuanced discussion, unless we want to come across as ill-informed hipsters.

Comparing Dickens and Balzac to Dan Brown is ludicrous beyond belief and not even worthy of discussion.

I have read:

Bleak House

Great Expectations

A Tale of Two Cities

David Copperfield

Oliver Twist

A Christmas Carol

The Haunted House

All of these are masterpieces of great storytelling, with a rich wealth of wonderful characters and masterful plot development.

Dickens was the bestselling author in nineteenth century England. He was dedicated to social reform and deserves credit for calling attention to the miserable plight of the poor, particularly children. Laws bringing about reform in things like child labor during the industrial revolution were passed largely due to popular opinion created by Dickens' novels.

Dickens and Balzac have already stood the test of time. They were bestselling authors in an age when everyone read books, television had not been invented yet. Today we have Twilight and L.A. Candy. The comparison is a sad commentary on the decline of literacy in our time.

I have recently picked up The Pickwick Papers and am about to embark on a read of Dickens complete works in chronological order. I am also reading selected works from Balzac's Comedie Humaine.

Karl, I've not read either Dombey and Son or Barnaby Rudge, but let me recommend Our Mutual Friend if you want to read a mature, tightly written 900 page work by Charles Dickens. I was surprised and amazed. He kept me interested (not always easy across 900 pages), involved, and engaged. This is what I recommend to readers of mature tastes when I recommend Dickens.

#127 - I don't understand the question. Am I to name three Dickens novels that are not rubbish (David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers, Our Mutual Friend) or general fiction (The Sea Wolf, Middlemarch, The Cabinet of Curiosities)?

129:
I didn't read the Haunted House but I have read Hard Times and Nicholas Nickelby in addition to all the others that you name. The only criticism I have to make of Dickens novels is the "unlikely coincidence" factor that ties many a plot together. This device sometimes makes the willing suspension of disbelief a little hard, at least for me. However that does not mean that I didn't really enjoy these books. The characters are rich and there is a lot of humor in the situations, great dialogue, wonderful descriptions. Cannot be compared with a writer like Dan Brown at all. Your comments about his commitment to social reform are also really germane here. How can one compare someone who is interested in making a lot of money off of someone else's tired and worn conspiracy theories, with someone who was trying to use his novels to shake the Victorian middle class out of complacency in order to reform society for the sake of the poor and oppressed?

The fact that Dickens also was a wonderful impresario who had huge audiences spellbound by his dramatic readings of his own novels also sets him head and shoulders above the crowd of 20th-21st century bestselling hacks.

>127 snickersnee:

Nice try. It's becoming tiresome to listen to those readers who, because they have difficulty with Dickens, trot out the old and tired "he was just a commercial hack" routine.

Its a rather odd turn of events that as our society's attention span decreases, so too increases the general clamour to label Dickens as "rubbish". To find a more sympathetic group for your "Dickens as rubbish" thesis you may want to head over to the less thoughtful thread titled "Awful Classics". http://www.librarything.com/topic/849

I think the question you might want to ponder instead is why you find Dickens so difficult.

Oh,

Our Mutual Friend, Hard Times, Bleak House

I think the beef a lot of people have with Dickens is that they were forced to read him in high school, and Great Expectations is hardly best judged by a 9th grader who'd rather play videogames.

Now, while I didn't particularly care for Great Ex, the man has written such amazing stories as A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol that I've got to give him his propers. I'm not entirely sure that I'm going to go through most of his stuff, as I think some of his prose is a little too old-fashioned to really engage me (and he seems to have a penchant for telling orphan stories) but I do respect the guy.

>130 geneg:

I'll enthusiastically second your recommendation of Our Mutual Friend; without qualification my favourite of Dicken's novels. A genuine masterpiece.

Can we add every romance writer now living? Several of my chums and I want to write a romance novel together that parodies the genre. And paranormal romance? That's the greatest! I read one about a buddhist monk who gets seduced by a vampire in the fourteenth century. Completely ridiculous!

Plus they have the most purile euphamisms for genitalia.

And don't forget some of the fabulous author names: Karen Moning, Susan Sizemore...

And the covers!!! Okay, I need to stop....but have a look at this: http://worldoflongmire.com/features/romance_novels/

>124 snickersnee: and 127 I'm always highly gratified and amused when readers rush forward in such haste to fervently parade their ignorance and bad taste. It reminds me of George Eliot's highly ironic dictum:

Is it really to the advantage of an opinion that I should be known to be the holder of it?

When I was a young boy, I was advised to sit quietly in the corner and listen to the grownups, and learn. Perhaps this advice, or following it, is no longer fashionable.

Dickens and Balzac did indeed write bestsellers and were hugely popular in their day, largely due to a combination of factors, not least of which was the rise of literacy and the popularity of illustrated weekly and monthly newspapers, the rise of leisure time among the middle classes and the increased spending power of women, who were the main audience. However, even the most cursory glance at any Dickens or Balzac novel compared with Brown or Clancy will show that D and B had a much more sophisticated control of language, character, plotting, sustained concentration, energy of imagination, power of metaphor, breadth of humanity and sheer craftsmanship than Brown and his ilk could ever manage. It is simply silly, yes silly to display ones illiteracy in so cavalier a fashion (to put it kindly) by putting them on the same level artistically just because they are on the same level commercially.

Dickens in particular is the victim of three canards beloved of the great unwashed (this is the literary snob group, so allow me to be very snobbish here):

1. That he was paid by the word and was therefore fond of padding
(in fact, Dickens's personal and professional finances, and the economics of Victorian publishing were vastly more complex than this. I humbly submit a link for those interested in this highly fascinating topic:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/04/fragment-2304_23.html

and as for the question of padding, well, some do call it padding, but the proof of the pudding is in the stuffing, as they say, and I would rather have Dickens's padding over Brown's anaemic watery gruel any day.)

2. That people are put off by Dickens because they were forced to read him at school.
(To which one can only say, get over yourself and grow up)

3. That if Dickens were alive today, he would be writing soap operas for TV
(This is to completely misunderstand the nature of Dickens's gift, which was essentially linguistic and verbal, quite alien to the visual nature of TV, and to Dickens's social conscience, quite alien to the commercially motivated and socially safe nature of TV. Again, a conflation of Dickens's popularity with his genius)

And as for the weedy little 'test' mentioned in 127, I have read every word of Dickens, many several times, including many things by him that you have probably never even heard of, and none of it, none of it is rubbish. He has his weaker moments, to be sure, and moments of floundering about, especially in the journalism of the 1850s, when he was trying to meet rushed deadlines, but certainly not in any of the novels, even Hard Times, which is is his weakest. To call them rubbish is to say more about yourself than to offer a reasoned and nuanced critique of Dickens. Hence my gratification and amusement.

So I will not name three -or any number of - books which are not rubbish, because a list of Dickens' complete works will no doubt tax your already highly stretched reading skills.

I leave you with another quote from George Eliot:

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, refrains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

>128 kswolff:, I second Geneg's recommendation of Our Mutual Friend. D's last completed novel, it shows him at the very apex of his mature art, magnificently dark, complex and impassioned.

Barnaby Rudge is an early work, with some stunning writing, especially of crowd and riot scenes which will take your breath away, and some wonderfully hilarious characters. Look out for the perfectly passive aggressive Mrs Varden.

Dombey and Son is a middle period masterpiece, offering fascinating views of the environmental and social turmoil caused by the coming of the railways, and one of Dickens's most brilliantly inspired comic creations, Colonel Bagstock.

Happy reading!

And here I'd thought we were past the gotterdammerung. Apparently some of the old believers are still adhering to their idols.

Dickens was rubbished by Henry James and Virginia Woolf, serious writers both, for writing sentimental twaddle.

God save you, every one.

I want to see if I laugh when I read about Little Nell dying?

I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing."

Congratulations on your use of a multisyllable word!!!!!!!! A Tchermann one at that!!!!! (It should have a capital letter, but perhaps that's too taxing for you.)

Your reading of Henry James and Virginia Woolf on Dickens is unnuanced and crude. But I am still amused and gratified. What wonders will we see next? I am in eager anticipation.

This is becoming as tedious as James Joyce's Ulysses.

At least the Circe section had hookers, sex, and swearing.

Let's try two more tests:

1) Can you imagine Boz sitting on Oprah's couch, spruiking his latest book or play or magazine?

2) Has a good book ever been turned into a Broadway musical?

It's interesting to see little support for FitzGerald, who wrote one goodish book and much of another.
And none at all for Lewis, Dreiser, Anderson, or Stein.

1) By spruiking, does he get to keep his pants on?

2) Does Les Miserables count? It does go on a bit, but all those French people seem to like it for some odd reason.

#145--Les Miserables flat out sucks. I even read an abridged version of it and I know I'm never reading anything by Hugo again. The aforementioned Rand as it happens was a big fan. Enough said. Contrast it to some of Zola's better works--The Earth, L'Assommoir, Germinal, The Debacle--that IMO is much better territory for the 19th century French novel.

>146 lriley: - And Tolstoy hailed Les Miserables as one of the world's greatest novels, if not the greatest. Does this mean that Tolstoy is on the same level as Rand?

An old housemate of mine was obsessed with Les Miserables. He actually got the protagonist's prison ID # tattooed on the back of his neck...

It's a fantastic novel.

Iriley, have you been practising your fuettes?

Did you read it in an abridged version only? Abridgements are for the neurologically challenged. How can one form an opinion of a book read only in an abridgement?

I have an MP3 of the old Mercury Theater radio adaptation of "Les Miserables"--directed by and starring the great Orson hisself. Must be six or seven hours long. Haven't gotten around to listening to it...still debating if I should read the book first.

Oh, I'd say listen to Welles' version first. Then you'll have his voice in your head the whole time as you read, and I can't imagine anything better than that.

146: Are you aware that there are different literary styles (with different demands and conventions)?

Hugo was a Romantic; Zola was a Realist. Apples and oranges, dude.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment and Picasso's Guernica Comparing which one is "better" strikes me as dithering philistinism.

Sorry. You don't pass GO. You don't get $200. And I think everyone in the audience is dumber for your answer. May God have mercy on your soul.

Thanks for that, Wolfie.

>113 Jargoneer: - Sorry to be so long replying to this - I went down with gallstones and have been variously in hospital and convalescing.

Anyway, I certainly agree with you on a lot of points. Hours is definitely rubbish, with the possible exception of The Pretty Things are Going to Hell. In fact even the worst of the albums (for me it's a tie between Never Let me Down and Tonight) have one outstanding track: Day In Day Out and Blue Jean, respectively.

I liked Earthling, but eventually came to the conclusion that there was too much Reeves Gabriels guitar apocalypse and the songs should have been given some room to speak for themselves. God, but Little Wonder was a thrilling single, though!

BTW, how are you managing to italicise words?

#149--it happened to be the copy I had--a paperback picked up at a library sale and not noticed as an abridged book until after--reading the entire thing I expect would have only prolonged the misery as I wasn't impressed with it at any stage--neither the plot nor the characters--nor the overtly emotional tones sometimes bordering on hysterics. If you liked it--I'm happy for you (wish I had one of those smiley things) but IMO it completely sucked.

You folks must be asleep at the wheel. A soon as I hit the "submit" button, I expected the "Broadway musical" test would be rubbished. A couple of self-counter-examples: West Side Story (is Shakespeare still listed as author?) and Man of LaMancha. I'm told "The 39 Steps," "Blithe Spirit," and "Waiting for Godot" are all playing this season.

OK, OK, I'll give up on Dickens. I can see the lingam will be buttered, and I won't stand in the way of anyone else's orthodoxy.

What about D.H. Lawrence? Hemingway praised one short story, but what about the rest?

Haven't read enough D.H. Lawrence to be able to pass credible judgement. I DO know that a number of years ago, I read an article in some hoity-toity publication which stated with absolute assurance that the two greatest English language short story writers of the 20th century were D.H. Lawrence and V.S. Pritchett.

I personally prefer Lawrence's stories to his longer works. He shows more discipline in the shorter form than in his novels.

158: I agree. I was not impressed with Lady Chatterly's Lover, but his short story The Rocking Horse Winner was marvelous. It was unfortunately made into a movie, which forces a literal interpretation of the story. I submit that he was not actually riding a rocking horse:)

Henry James critiqued the "style" of 19thC English language novels in general - calling them "great, baggy monsters." On the other hand he realized that they WERE a legit stretch along the road to a more "modern" novel. As I've mentioned before, the "modern" novel is the most recent of important literary forms. Very sophisticated poetry & drama had been around for centuries - but (ignoring the picaresque and travelogue novels - which, by defn. are "great baggy monsters") the modern English novel began evolving ~ the latter half of the 18th C. (I KNOW there are counterexamples - but as a generalization, this is roughly true. And, as such, structure/form/style had a LOT of growing up to do in a relatively short time). One side consequence of the relatively late development of the genre was its relative accessibility to women writers (even though a few of the most famous began their publishing career under androgynous or male pseudonyms). But i don't think James was saying the 19th C novels were w/out worth - more that writers had to move on and become more "sophisticated."??

In part Austen was reacting to the simplistic forms of the gothic horror novel which had been so successful w/ English (mostly female) readers. James was arguing for narrative complexity and tightness as a counterpoint to the novels that followed in Austen's wake. The industrial revolution made mass marketing of "big" books possible and accessible throughout GB; GB, among much else, tied itself together w/ a RRoad network (distribution) about as early as technologically possible. And a literate, sizable "bourgeois" audience was also available to suck up new books/serials. (The RR stations were one of the major distribution points for serialized novels, in particular, by the time Dickens became a legend in his own lifetime).

Exactly Bob. Nowhere does James say Dickens is 'rubbish', and ditto for Woolf.

#160 Great post and a great summary of the situation. The trend, I think, continues with the decreasing free time people have, the influence of film and McLuhan's observation that we are becoming less verbal and more visual.

Less verbal and more visual. What a terrifying development. Is that evolution, do you think, or its opposite number? Does this mean a more superficial society? Are there positive aspects that can come out of such a change in human perception? Questions, questions...and I should be working...

It might depend on how novels (and literature) is written. David Foster Wallace wrote a wonderful essay on the subject, "E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction." I won't even attempt to summarize, just read the essay. It is in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Again, his collection of essays.

My problem isn't with fiction that becomes commercially successful so much as badly written commercial fiction, especially Extruded James Patterson Product (TM). Like the sci fi genre is much more than Star Wars tie-in novels and whatever Kevin J. Anderson happens to excrete this week.

I'm all for genre fiction, provided it is well-written. Even by the very loose standards of proper grammar and decent storytelling, James Patterson can't even succeed on that level, which is the real sad part.

In the past, novels and plays were the only forms of entertainment. Now wordsmiths have to compete for those declining entertainment dollars with TV, movies, Netflix, and the Internet. Instead of broadcasting there is narrowcasting, niche marketing, and a wholesale fragmentation. It's not that the mainstream is so bad (don't worry, it still is ... for the most part), it's that every subculture has its own place marked down and they become more possessive and insular in protecting their turf (see sci fi fans as an example).

On the other hand, if entertainment dollars are short, you don't need to actually BUY the book, you can go to the library and check it out. My girlfriend and I watch quality TV via Netflix, a far more sensible option than wasting money on cable packages and having to endure commercial-ridden, censored, repetitious programming.

My two cents on the matter.

The nineteenth century was the golden age of the novel. Literature, like the other arts, is long dead. The opinions of people who do not understand this are not important.

And yes, Netflix is a godsend.

I disagree that the arts are dead. It's that you can't make a living from them anymore. Long gone are the days when Tennyson could become rich from writing poetry. The short story went next (as a good income generating activity), then theatre, the novel is virtually there, film will be replaced by the video game.

I don't think art prospers as a part-time activity or by being subsidized with the academic careers of its practitioners but at least it survives.

Long gone are the days when Tennyson could become rich from writing poetry. The short story went next (as a good income generating activity), then theatre, the novel is virtually there, film will be replaced by the video game.

And then all forms of media, art, and entertainment will be sucked into the black hole that is called the Internet.

And then all forms of media, art, and entertainment will be sucked into the black hole that is called the Internet.

I salute your witty use of irony.

I agree that it is still possible to create art. But impossible to make a living at it.

We are all on the same page here I think.

I have a theory that James Patterson's novels are now being generated by a computer program.

David Foster Wallace was one of the few really good authors in publication. His death was a very great loss.

Nowadays the million monkeys with a typewriter have become, in the pulp world, one monkey with a word processor.

I think of James Patterson less as an author than as a brand. He's really good at selling James Patterson (TM). As a business man, I salute him. As a reader, I'm not going to waste my time. While marketing is integral to any writer "making it," Patterson has turned himself into a disposable commodity. Any bets on how many of his books will be in print one year after his death? There's no soul or individuality in Patterson, no voice that differentiates him from the myriad other thriller writers. He just has a better promotional apparatus attached to him.

People seem to like him, then again, these are the same people that re-elected Bush.

Here's some sage and vulgar words from Saint Bill Hicks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv2qLOiioPc

Cussler has gone the same way. When he started out, he deliberately copied Alistair Maclean's writing style... and as a result his books were entertaining potboilers. But since hitting the big time, he's turned into a factory. I stopped reading his books 8 years ago because the quality had sunk so low I could no longer continue. Last week, I wandered into Waterstone's and saw three entire shelves - about fifteen novels - by Cussler that have been published since I stopped reading him. He must be churning out 2 or 3 a year.

Has anyone here actually kicked a bad writer? For a long time I've tossed around the idea of "applied literary criticism" but haven't been able to recruit any foot soldiers.

It says something for Patterson that even Stephen King describes him as a 'terrible writer'.

King said the same of Stephenie Meyer.

And Steve's a paragon of good taste, the very epitome of literary excellence...

Sort of if Bush Jr. were to call Palin a dumb bimbo.

Which doesn't alter the fact that both Patterson and Meyer are shite writers.

I think Stephanie Meyer and Sarah Palin have the same amount of foreign policy experience and both are murderesses of the English language. Now if they just made a porn tape together, we could rid the planet of both of them in the ensuing scandal.

Just planting seeds ...

Perhaps a remake of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS?

>173 inaudible: inaudible... No, I haven't actually kicked a bad writer, but I do like your idea of applied literary criticism.

#180, Ilsa gets my vote. Who would play her? I think Dyanne Thorne might even be dead and in any case she would be too old.

I vote for a straight to video remake of Mulholland Drive. The girl on girl action was the only thing that made that film watchable. Knowing Palin's base, though, she might just get more votes.

173: Why kick bad writers when they can just keep writing? Insert foot in mouth, shoot self in foot.

The Fantasy Novelist's Quiz:

http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

185: Wow, harsh. I sent it to my kids.

Wow,

The members in this group are harsh.

Hm. Let's see... I'm a liberal who likes Ayn Rand (and Objectivism), Atonement is one of my favorite movies... and I honestly really loved reading Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.

Perhaps you want to revoke my Literary-Snobs-Card.

Ah well...

>187 LheaJLove: - Methinks part of being a snob is being harsh, having strong opinions, et cetera.

...perhaps, perhaps.

I wonder if others would judge me as a snob? I don't think of myself as one... but these days I don't think the world would agree...

187: Ayn Rand is just De Sade with boobs. Same philosophy, same atheism, same long-winded speechifying, and same level of characterization. Full disclosure: I thoroughly enjoy DAF Sade.

Given that Ayn Rand's fandom -- Allen Greenspan, etc. -- are directly and unambiguously responsible for our current bout of economic entropy, a few harsh words here and there are in order. Insert Hitler reference. Insert reference to Pol Pot

Or more eloquently stated:

http://blog.badtux.net/2009/07/in-libertopia-everything-is-unicorns.html?widgetT...

From a reader's point of view, I think Ayn Rand's inability to write is a more serious problem than her philosophy. I just can't fathom why even those who agree with her don't dismiss her as a generally bad writer.

". . .Ayn Randʻs fandom-- Allen Greenspan,
et (al.)... kswolff

Iʻm reminded by this reminder of the mild shock I experienced when Greenspan first came to the fore, I think it was in the Ford Administration, and was called a follower of Ayn Rand. (Ford was being or was soon to be challenged within the GOP by Ronald Reagan.)

I believed at the time that even Ronald Reagan wouldnʻt resort to Randians. (He was, in fact, later said to have more Harvard Alumni in his administration than John Kennedy had had.) So it struck me that those who shared my distrust of RR, often called him "not even a good actor!" were wrong. I thought he must be a VERY good actor, if he can convince people that heʻs more conservative than Gerald Ford.

All politicians are good actors. People are gullible, emotional herd animals. Politics is like sports, except it is filled with more morally reprehensible scumbags. Sports just has Terrell Owens. Politicians are glorified race-horses, bred by patrician windbags and their corporate puppet masters. Sort of like the Bene Gesserit's breeding program. We had George W. Bush who is like the Kwisatz Haderach, the Universe's Super-being, except the exact opposite in every way.

As far as Ayn Rand's writing and her philosophy, I think that her inability to write shows the utter weakness of her "philosophy." She was a water-headed utopian blowhard ... just like Stalin. And her badly thought out ideas, 70 page word-vomitings on selfishness, and Patch Adams-like subtlety has created various global catastrophes and endless suffering ... just like Stalin. If there is an Afterlife, I'm sure Stalin and Rand are sharing the same condo in Hell.

Libertarians, like unreconstructed Communists, are utopians and mental infants.

Yes, it would be nice to have all the creative people form a rough-sex commune and get away from all the leeches and parasites dragging society down. It would also be nice for my car to run on rainbows and dreams.

I donʻt agree that "all politicians are good actors." Though I admit, its hard to think of a consummate "non-actor" in politics. Former governor, Ben Cayetano of Hawaiʻi was such. Possibly also former V.P. John Garner (D TX). Was he just putting on an act of self-deprecation when he famously disparaged the office that he didnʻt mind holding for 2 terms?

Iʻm reminded of what a critic of Newt Gingrich (and a critic OF his criticsʻ language usages) once said: "Newt Gingrich isnʻt "mean-SPIRITED"; heʻs just MEAN."

Politicians do always need some help from establishment types. That isnʻt the same as being "bred by patrician windbags".

A good example, however, of "patrician windbag" breeders of a politician (in the later stages of his career) was suggested by a classic pol. sci. article in the "Atlantic":
To the effect hat Jimmy Carter was "bred" by David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.

I don't agree that all Politicians are 'good actors'... although I think that the successful ones are. (Or, become one... over the course of a successful career...)

And, for the record I never said that Rand was a great writer. And I don't think writing ability has anything to do with the 'strength' of one's philosophy.

>190 kswolff: Great link! Sent it to a libertarian acquaintance of mine. I'm hoping he can come up with an equally snarky yet logical critique of socialism for me. I doubt one exists, since socialism is so darned logical itself. At least I've never read a good critique. If anyone here knows of one, I'd be interested. (No David Mamet, please!)

to holcombjmarie:

Just curiosity: About the caveat on Mamet: What is the connection between David Mamet and a "critique of socialism" --or between Mamet and socialism at all?

197: Rand's Objectivism is no different than socialism, since both are prefaced on existing in a magical unicorn-infested fantasyland utopia. Unfortunately, most libertarians can't get their thick heads past anything more complex than Glenn Beck shouting on the radio. To experience true Libertarian Paradise, I would encourage them to "Go Galt" and move to Somalia

My only Ayn Rand experience is Anthem. If I remember correctly, the first line is "It is a sin to write this." By the time I got to the last line ("The sacred word: EGO." or something like that) I was in complete agreement with the first line.

>200 Leseratte2: - That had me giggling; it's so true!

198> David Mamet has been quite outspoken about "brain-dead liberals." He calls NPR "National Palistinian Radio." Etc. If you are interested, here is an essay: http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-11/news/why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-libe...

Palestinian...sorry!

Ah, Davey, say it ain't so.

I still love the story about him (Mamet) literally burying his father. Taking off his jacket after the funeral service was over, grabbing a spade and tucking in. Man, that says something...

To me the classical liberal does not believe people are good hence the rule of law, the importance of an independent judiciary etc. Social conservatives seem more inclined to that belief; charitable donations and faith based organizations stepping in to solve society's ills. The Founding Fathers, who I take to be classical liberal, seemed to set up a society designed to counter peoples wicked ways.
Mamet describing himself as a liberal seems rather disingenuous anyway, for years he has been gravitating towards the right wing Zionist position.

Depending on the issue, my political leanings and views wander all over the place. Liberal on social issues but when it comes to crime (particularly crimes of violence), I'm a lot more right-wing. As I get older, previously clear, bright lines have begun to blur.

Of course, that may have to do with needing progressive lenses...

(I think there's an unintentional joke there somewhere but I ain't touching it.)

Conservatives and Liberals alike relate to the Judicial system the same way. When it supports their position they hail it as impartial and independent. When the decision goes against them they want to corral those activist judges.

Here's a proposition. The next time you are at a tea-bagger event ask people this question: "Do you believe Federal Judges should be appointed or elected. My guess is these conservatives will be all about electing Federal Judges. So much for an independent judiciary.

As you may have figured out, I am opposed to electing any judges.

What exactly is the difference between Randian individualism and Sadeian individualism? Both espouse a morality that is similar if not identical -- the powerful shall remain powerful; vitriolic atheism; defense of hierarchy; the use of rape as metaphor for life-affirming goodness; seeing selfishness as a good thing. At least Sade was a better writer and kept his character soap-boxing to a decent level. It's like the summary of Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt? And when he shut the hell up already?

In order to properly follow Ayn Rand's ethos, one has to punch babies, rape women, and accumulate wealth. A morality that would make Sauron and Draco Malfoy smile.

It's a pity really, because Ayn Rand and Amon Goeth could have made a decent anti-Bolshevik power-couple. A well-run extermination camp is the apotheosis of the Randian philosophy.

Rebuttal from the Non-existent Ghost of Ayn Rand(TM):

"Then again, extermination camps were government projects and you can't have any of that. Oh yeah, and the whole ethnic cleansing thing. Leave that to private corporations and enterprising freelancers. I'm sure they could get it done better."

In terms of extermination camps, many of our prison systems throughout the US are owned and operated by private companies on contract from the state. It is always less expensive to hire people to do things you used to do yourself, especially when it opens a whole new level of kickbacks and corruption. Just one more special interest to take the decision making out of your hands and given to the robbers. Profits come from head count, so it is in no ones interest except the tax payer to reduce either the number of offenses that result in jail time, the length of sentences, or the number of people incarcerated for non-criminal "crimes".

We have Blackwater, or Xe as it is currently known, to do the ethnic cleansing dirty work for US. Just look at some of the accusations being leveled at Eric Prince over their stellar work in Iraq.

Once again, we are a nation that has sold its soul and the bill will come due.

Since when are private corporations less expensive and less corrupt than the government? And isn't the whole "either/or" premise espoused by the usual gang of bourgeois parasites a flawed premise? Both are extremely corrupt and reflective of each other.

Blackwater just gives the US Govt the cover of plausible deniability(TM), not financial efficiency. The average US soldier gets paid $19,000 per annum while a Blackwater butcher gets paid $15,000 a month, which we pay for anyway, since Blackwater got its contract through a no-bid process more reminiscent of Soviet nomenklatura than actual, you know, capitalist competition.

What is the difference between Crony Capitalism and Soviet Corruption? Are there even differences besides surface superficialities? Let me know if you find any.

I thought throwing in the bit about how it's always less expensive to pay someone to do what you have been doing yourself would have set off the sarcasm alarm but I guess it didn't.

The difference between Crony Capitalism and Soviet Corruption is the availability of markets to make the corruption so much worse. Soviet style corruption was a babe in arms when compared to market driven corruption. Don't you know, markets make everything more efficient, even corruption!

To geneg et al.:

I just happened to be reading (for the first time?) a reference to the phrase "Crony Capitalism".

It was said, in an unsigned "The Economist" article, to be the system of Communist politician named Voronin, in Moldava, said by the articles to be quite favorable to Russia, the big capitalist country of "former" COmmunist background.

The opposition is led by another former(?) Communist named Lupo.

If you know "The Economist's" quietly conservative
politico-economic tendencies, you can imagine how
little they commend the choice of leadership that Moldava, "the poorest country in Europe"*
has at the moment.

*poorest... They must be; we have the Economist's word for it!

212: All depends on how one defines corruption, since the Romanovs weren't exactly pinnacles of virtue and selflessness -- at least between the horse-sex and not giving their troops shoes. Peter the Great was the lone exception in that family of inbred hemophiliac nitwits and morally bankrupt thugs. All that Russian Communism did was lop off the monarchy and create a Communist-style monarchy, since the absolutism, repression, and wealth accumulation were about the same. The Bolsheviks blew up the churches but not the palaces, which is a telling sign. The serf was replaced by the worker, but received the equal inhuman treatment.

The Bolsheviks were more efficient than their royal predecessors in a number of areas, including executions, state-sponsored terror, and prison camp creation. In those fields, they were more efficient than the decadent self-interest of parliamentary democracies still under the swoon of modern capitalism.

And looking at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, the US has made innovations of Soviet inventions like extralegal prison facilities and state-sponsored torture.

Then again, one only has to read Crying of Lot 49 to understand that there is no real difference between the extreme left and the extreme right. Just a superficial horrorshow to keep the docile masses entertained while they are slowly boiled like frogs.

Mazel tov!

214 -- indeed, one of the things that strikes me when I read, say, Dostoevsky is that the revolution seems not to have changed Russia much.

That is because Russia as a government is very much like Russia as a climate. Cold, Frozen, and Harsh. On the upside it is because of their dystopian political situation that we have the gift of their exquisite literature. Profit from the troubles of others.