Who /mcelroy/ here? Why is this guy not bigger? I know experimental fiction suffers from a lack of readiability, but why is he excluded where Pynchon and Gaddis aren't.
"For hear us falling. Toward the horizon albeit oblique, for we imagine it isn’t our natural state. We are some power to be here and to have changed toward life even to think distinct from these angels lately to be heard speculating in us as if they were learning to hope. We deserve to know what is in us."
I'm reading The Letter Left to Me right now. Father/son stuff, real powerful stuff. He has a short story too, about this thing, where a father and baby learn to share a language and the whole thing blew me away. Every section of W/M does the same as well.
So what gives?
hello! let me explain to you, /lit/ is a part of 4chan. 4chan is inherently meme-versed and only meme-versed. mcelroy's talents, while good, are not meme-worthy. you seem to have confused discussion-worthy with meme-worthy. glad to have cleared it for you though.
>>7742378
>but why is he excluded where Pynchon and Gaddis aren't.
Probably because he's actively preventing the publication of his most famous book?
>>7743442
you raise a good point.
See I read stories like Night Soul or his book The Letter Left to Me and it feels like reading Delillo. Some kind ineffable thing not being expressed because communication is flawed, it feels like his stories are about what moves them more so than the plot itself. He just seems ahead of his time, but ultimately ignored.
Like another poster said, Women and Men is out of print. Nobody here can afford to pay 100 bucks for a shitty used copy
what's his best book that isn't w&m?
WE
WERE
WOMEN
AND
MEN
>>7743806
The Letter Left to Me, Plus, Night Soul and Other Stories, and Cannonball are good entry points. all are easy to get.
Lookout Cartridge is really good as well, but very long.
>>7743763
its available digitally.
>>7743763
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/foreignfiction/index.php?s=McElroy+Joseph&f_lang=0&f_columns=0&f_ext=0
Problem solved
>>7742378
Probably because he is hard as fuck to read. I mean, there wasn't a page of Cannonball that didn't knock me on my ass.
>>7745227
You don't love that feeling? It's like a performance piece
>>7745810
I love it a lot, actually; but I can see why most people don't.
>>7742378
He never gained as much traction as Pinecone who has a very consistent formula that he sticks to, or Gaddis whose built his reputation on being extremely angry and extremely difficult to read.
He could be great for all we know, he just doesn't have any sort of mystique or personality as an author that attracts people who haven't read him to his books.
>>7746302
McElroy is much harder than Gaddis, tho.
>>7746321
Maybe, but Gaddis fostered that reputation for years and that whole "Fire the Bastards!" thing helped build it up. Pinecone has that whole quirky recluse thing going on. McEllroy feels like a nonentity outside his writing, which even with experimental writing is a surefire way to get ignored.
>>7746340
Fire the Bastards is seriously good, as a side note.
As it stands I'm working my way through Letter and his shorter works. I'm trying to get a hold of what books of is I don't have. (Hind's Kidnap, A Smuggler's Bible.) Does anyone have any idea why this guy is so against publishing?
>>7746975
Last I heard, he was actually attempting to get Women and Men back in print.
>>7746982
Spring of 2015, then for some reason its been pushed back to "2017 eventually"
Just bought Hind's Kidnap
