About a fifth into this and it's pretty great so far, first novel in a long time I've been unable to put down (which is sort of peculiar because there's nothing particularly gripping about the prose or storytelling apart from the fact that it's gripping me). Reminds me a lot of Foster Wallace. Why don't you guys discuss this more often?
>>7817579
Because Franzen's a low-rent DFW without any of the things that made DFW interesting. He'll never escape his dead buddy's shadow.
>>7817579
Probably because people resent Franzen's insistence on returning to Victorian-style storytelling; his rejection and mockery of postmodernist aesthetics. I'm with you though, OP, I recently tore through it with great pleasure and rapidity. Franzen's sentences don't try to do too much and are enjoyable to read (this is not a bad thing: they are also very carefully written--this style is not accidental or easy to master). Franzen's dichotomy of "difficult fiction" vs fun fiction and his preference for the latter, as alluded to before, is the main reason I think why /lit/ doesn't like him. We here like to think that we like "difficult" books. But if you want to read an interesting response to Franzen's "Mr. Difficult" essay, Ben Marcus has good essay that makes the case for "difficult" books.
Anyways, I agree with you OP. I'm starting to think that Franzen was a much more mature writer than his show-offy and angsty pal dfw (who I also love btw).
>>7817595
Any chance of you being able to locate the Ben Marcus essay? Harper's won't let me read it without a subscription.
>>7817609
No problem anon friend. Not the best format for reading, but here it is:
http://www.williamgaddis.org/marcus.pdf
>>7817611
Thanks pal, I appreciate it. I'll return here in the morning with my thoughts on both essays.
>>7817595
>like to think
Found the pleb. Ulysses was legitimately one of the most fun books I've ever read. Franzen's mr. Difficult essay is just pathetic, because he assumes that if he can't enjoy certain things it means everyone else is just pretending to.
>>7817579
I'd also like to add that, in addition to the fact that he's not considered a "difficult" writer as the main reason for why /lit/ holds such contempt for him, another obvious reason why he's detested and overlooked here has to do with his image, e.g. doing things like appearing on the cover of Time magazine proclaiming him the Great American Novelist or some shit, and also with Franzen being perceived as this birdwatcher always bemoaning technology, not having meme-worthy interviews (they're relatively boring), etc. Which parts of his image I also find annoying. But I think the books (of the 3 I've read--corrections, freedom, and purity) are strong and good, and despite the fact that they are "easy," they weren't by any means easy to write. In the DT MAX dfw biography, wallace writes (in a letter to delillo IIRC) that he greatly admires Franzen's work ethic, and that he must throw away 2 or 3 novels for every one that he publishes (or something along those lines).
So basically although I think Franzen's image and style are offputting for some, I do not think he's nearly as easily dismissible as people like to make him out to be. I mean, maybe in the grand scheme of Literature and the canon, sure. But in terms of late 20th century-early 21st century American lit, I think Franzen is really really good, and is certainly a more patient and developed writer than dfw ever was.
Sorry for the long ramblings, but I've been thinking about this stuff lately.
Also, Vollmann surpasses them both desu senpai, but that's another argument for another day.
>>7817635
Ulysses is undoubtedly a blast to read. But that's also considered the greatest novel ever written by many, many people. If that's the standard that we're holding Franzen to, then I'd have to agree that he falls far short.
However, I doubt that you would say that Ulysses was enjoyable in the same way that, say, Dickens or Henry James or other Victorians are enjoyable. There's different kinds of fun I think.
>>7817666
I'm not falling for your b8, Satan.
I bought the corrections because /lit/ always shits on franzen. I see freedom at every used book store I've been to... But I wanted to read the corrections to see if I got meme'd or not
>>7817579
Is The Recognitions by Gaddis a prerequisite for fully enjoying The Corrections? I suppose the similarity of the title is intentional.
>>7817721
No. But The Recognitions is much better than Franzen's shite so you should read it anyway.
>>7817595
>We here like to think that we like "difficult" books.
This board isn't a homogeneous entity you goofy "we" poster.
>w-w-we h-here
>>7817731
Tone of that sentence was intended to be sarcastic, but I should've known sarcasm doesn't come through well in text.
However, would you not agree that there isn't some truth to it? Do you not take some small pride in enjoying difficult books? I know that I do.
See >>7817635 who immediately jumped to what many consider to be a very difficult novel just to prove that it was "fun" for him. Which I'm not saying Ulysses isn't fun. But if you're telling me that it isn't at all difficult, you're lying. And if you're telling me that, on the whole, /lit/ (not as a homogenous entity, but as a group of people with somewhat similar tastes) does not like to talk about reading difficult books, then I would say that you are wrong. Albeit, the small caveat being that almost everything said on this board is said at least half-ironically, so we don't have to ever fully commit to any position on anything.
But all this has nothing to do with the book or author. What are your thoughts?
mixed grill anyone?
>>7817756
You entirely missed the point. What makes Franzen loathesome is that he thinks something can only be fun or only be difficult. In that essay, he talks about how he was a poser who was into the idea of postmodern avant-garde fiction when he was young but never actually liked any of the books he read (until he read The Recognitions much later) and assumed no one could actually like them. He's literally on the level of those retarded goodreads reviewers who assume that anyone who claims to like Ulysses is lying because they (the reviewer) couldn't finish it.
>>7817721
no.
I think I'll post the same thing here I've been posting for like three years in Franzen threads.
This is somewhat long, and I've yet to hear any real replies.
After having read Corrections and Freedom (the former twice) I'm pretty quick to tell people not to read Franzen. It comes down to a simple argument assessing literary worth. Franzen successfully creates memorable characters in striking (and occasionally moving) situations. They, for the most part, seem like human beings, and it is fun to get to develop relationships with them as a reader and interrogate their words and deeds. He can quite effectively toy with his readers' emotions and expectations, delivering powerful, impressive punches.
But so can any good soap opera on Netflix.
Trying to separate Franzen from good television is very difficult. They are strong in the same places and share similar weaknesses. For Franzen, however, those weaknesses are much more crippling because he pretends to write "serious fiction" --it says so right on the damn cover of Corrections-- and in that category, he lacks so much.
Most importantly, Franzen presents nothing worth thinking about. His books seem to be completely lacking in original thought, and when I say they aren't challenging, I don't mean that they aren't hard to read (they aren't, but that's not necessarily bad). I mean that they never make their readers think of anything in a new way. They never challenges our beliefs. They provide almost no intellectual stimulation.
I'm not trashing "low literature" when I argue that books ought to be making a reader think deeply about their opinions and beliefs and identity. It's not only something every "classic" on this site does, even if we rarely it outright, but also something that successful science fiction or any "genre lit"' that we trash can do. Franzen, it seems, has no motivation to challenge us. He writes engaging stories. That's his thing. You don't need to compare him to Joyce to see how he falters, just look at a bookshelf and you're likely to find most books are simply more thoughtful.
I also can't abide the idea that he writes well. Any of his style defenders must come to terms with sentences like "Enid slept like a haiku." If you don't laugh at the meaninglessness and cringe at the immaturity of a sentence like that, maybe Franzen is fine for you.
I think, however, that many of us have a higher standard, as we should. It isn't about his persona. Too many books absolutely blow his out of the water.
>>7818816
He's the definition of a middlebrow hack who's taken far more seriously than he should ever be.
>>7818816
I've only read one JF book, but I think you have to ask yourself what the unique function of fiction is. If your aim is to provide a world-changing challenging idea, then you should communicate that idea in non-fiction where people can engage with it directly and compare its worth with other proposals. Original ideas should be presented as ideas, not as metaphors.
Fiction substantially is about communicating the tangible but non-concrete experience of life. Franzen can do that. Though that haiku sentence is shit.
Someone like Joyce is trying to say that the way we think "living" is actually happens to be wildly wrong. Franzen thinks most of us have it about right. They make contrasting descriptions of what lived experience feels like, and I certainly don't think either of them is anything other than a cloudy mirror.
>>7818937
Not necessarily to provide ideas, but to at least make its readers think differently. Sometimes that can be through perspective, sometimes through plot, sometimes metaphor. I don't think anything that Franzen wrote really does that in any significant way that is not better done in popular cinema/tv.
I do think often about what literature's novelties are, and I don't think his fiction succeeds.
Trying to express in a lit post to strangers a deeply held belief which I've been arguing to myself for years is no easy task. It seems I've failed.
>>7819016
Nah, I sympathise man, and am probably in the same situation. I love books which have made me walk into the world and think maybe I've had it all wrong.
Nowadays I'm inclined to feel that the radical shit mostly leans on conservative lit to give it shape. Like the radicalism of modernists presupposes knowledge of the canon and would seem bizarre to an external tradition.
>>7817579
What do you like about it so much? I thought it was not good.
>>7817595
>victorian-style storytelling
What?
>>7818816
Good post. I agree, for the most part. What made the literary world love The Corrections so much is that not only are the characters incredibly well-fleshed out, but their struggles are prosaic and commonplace but also incredibly real.
For Chip, getting his life back together and cutting through his hypocrisies is quite seriously a matter of life and death. I've been in Chip's position before and reading The Corrections I found myself clutching the pages and desperately hoping that Chip got better. It was of paramount importance that it be demonstrated that it was possible for him to change his entire life for the better. If there's hope for Chip, there's hope for me, the reader.
The last fourth of Freedom was lazy, and all of Purity was damn lazy, but The Corrections stands on its own. It's not particularly well written, the ideas presented are neither original nor deep, but the mastery of that feeling of quiet, insular desperation that all the characters have--and that is so common among people in the 21st century--is why people loved The Corrections. And I'd have to agree. The Corrections is a masterpiece of mood and tone. If that's not your cup of tea, that's fine. But any good reader should at least be able to understand why people loved Corrections so much.
>>7819160
Maybe less to do with the content of Franzen books than the content of his journalism, where he has a Dickens hardon. Like all goodhearted people.
Hello everyone, OP here after my brief sabbatical. I just finished reading Franzen's Mr Difficult and I feel like it's important to establish certainties before I go and read Marcus' response.
I don't feel as if Franzen's argument is centered around the 'enjoyment' of a text as a making or breaking condition between writer and reader but rather I feel like what he's saying is there is more to be gleaned from easier texts than there is from difficult texts that make you work for reading. Franzen has gone on record saying he feels the people who read postmodern literature like that are usually dealing with some some sort of mental dissatisfaction; that is why he reads those sorts of books. Surely the corollary following is that what one writes should be healing in some way. I believe his argument is that there is no more depth in difficult fiction than there is in easy-to-read fiction, and that it is obviously easier to glean just as much wisdom from easier texts than difficult texts.
I feel that if we're saying Franzen doesn't like reading difficult texts and therefore believes everyone else who does is just being pretentious and he just doesn't get it cheapens his actual argument. He's not detracting from difficult texts, just saying there's more to easier texts than the scholars and academics will have you believe.
What do you think?
>>7819467
No. His entire argument was "this stuff is hard so only pretentious kids pretend to like it" there's literally nothing more to it than that.
>serious intelligent discussion on /lit/
Hmmmm. Impressive.
>>7819492
I disagree. One has to delve further into what a difficult text offers in comparison to an easy text. Ease of access is not exactly a turning point.
longposter here again
>>7819111
But it doesn't necessarily have to be radical, I think, to force someone to think differently. Something as simple as the Little Prince, you know?
>>7819165
It's pretty to understand why people loved the Corrections. I'm trying to explain why I don't recommend him. It's pretty flippin' apparent that he's well loved, and it seems obvious why.
I will, however, push an issue that I think will totally lose your sympathies. I challenge just how commonplace and incredibly real that anything he writes about actually is. I know this is a critique that /lit/ hates, but Franzen is writing specifically for white upper/middle class, educated Americans and the "feeling of quiet, insular desperation that all the characters have" is a pretty particular white American problem. He captures that mid-western angst well, but a "masterpiece of mood and tone" would force that feeling onto readers, regardless of their own personal experience and their ability to relate to the characters, and I don't think Franzen does that at all. The successful author would not make his readers scoff at "white people problems," he would make those problems fucking life and death important and real and huge to every one of his readers. This, I think, was one of the primary goals and failings of Infinite Jest as well, and one of the reasons I so closely associate Big Dave with Johnny Boy.
>>7819545
not for long
>>7819564
>calling attention to race
>>7819564
What's wrong with writing about upper-middle class white people problems? Yes, Franzen's novels are shamelessly bourgeoisie but that's hardly a damning criticism. Throug history better authors than Franzen have written about bourgeoisie problems. To criticize Tolstoy or Woolf for only writing about the Russian or British upper class is to mark yourself as a philistine.
If that's what you're focusing on you're missing the point entirely. And I'm not sure the struggles of Franzen's characters are endemic to upper-middle class whites. Speaking as a poorishfag, I felt damn sympathetic with all the characters, even if they were richer than me. I'm not sure why that should matter (though undoubtedly many people think it does).
>>7817595
>I'm starting to think that Franzen was a much more mature writer than his show-offy and angsty pal dfw
He's more comfortable in his own skin, but his observations are not as sharp (though still valuable). In any case he was a better writer back in 2000 than now, Purity a shit.
>>7819552
You might disagree but that's what he literally said.
>>7819600
"Throug history better authors than Franzen have written about bourgeoisie problems" and they were able to make those bourgeoisie problems felt by different kinds of people all over the world. They succeeded in showing how and why those were mind-numbingly huge problems to the characters involved. Franzen doesn't, and that, I think, is why has failed to garner and adherents outside of those who sincerely relate to his work.
>>7817579
Just a daily reminder that Franzen said he doesn't like experimental fiction. That fiction should have likeable characters and should, essentially, be purely entertaining.
The guy is a complete dilettante who just piggybacked off of the success of other "pomo" authors like DeLillo and DFW.
His fiction is extremely formulaic and hackneyed to the point where I honestly can't tell if he actually expects people to take him seriously as a writer. His writing is a parody of post modernism and not in a good way.
>>7819645
>That fiction should have likeable characters
He literally has never said that.
>>7819645
>His writing is a parody of post modernism
In absolutely no capacity is his writing a parody of post-modernism. It's fucking realism.
>>7819656
The Corrections was absolutely a parody (albeit a slightly affectionate one) of The Recognitions. Other than that he just writes bland shite that Oprah and pals masturbate to.
>>7819656
>It's fucking realism
You're wrong though
>>7819656
Not that guy, but he certainly doesn't seem very realistic to me, at least not in the classical sense. His is a very hyperactive and exaggerated kind of social realism, in which the verosimilitude of the situations is not as important as the fact that their cultural implications are "true" to trends of American life. Not that hyperactivity and exaggeration were invented by postmodern writers, but there's certainly a connection.
>>7819677
>>7819687
>>7819696
The Corrections is 90% Tolstoyian realism and 10% Pynchonian slapstick sprinkled in. It's certainly not pomo in style or form.
>The Corrections was absolutely a parody (albeit a slightly affectionate one) of The Recognitions.
I hadn't heard that. I also haven't read Recognitions. Care to elaborate?
>>7817827
T r i g g e r e d
R
I
G
G
E
R
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D
>Franzen is a rip-off of Wallace!
no, they both sound exactly like early Pynchon and early-mid DeLillo
Denise is best girl. That's a great book.
>>7820107
He's not a ripoff, but he is overshadowed by Wallace.
>>7819705
I think his humor is closer to White Noise-mode DeLillo than to Pynchon, but this is mostly right. That whole "Circus of Value" grocery store scene is so out of place in that book and wants to badly to be DeLillo.
I think Franzen mentions the Recognitions-Corrections connection in his piece on Gaddis (you can find it online, it's called "Mr. Difficult")
>>7818816
I'm the guy from earlier who was defending Franzen and calling him a more mature writer than dfw, and yet I can't help but agree with you on many of your points.
First off, the comparison with soap operas or television I think is a really interesting one. Franzen and dfw really seemed to care about the difference between literature and tv, and what they can do for an audience. I'd agree that, say, mad men or any other good drama can get you sucked up into the characters and make you cry even if you're a big baby like me; however, Franzen's books do more than just get you hooked on plot and character. But, again, this is why I think Franzen is really an homage to Victorian literature because this is a notable strength of Victorian lit, i.e. deeply felt and evolving characters and social plots. But what Franzen does, and the Victorians did even better, was that slow, patient build. TV dramas, even good ones that evolve over many seasons, are often less patient I feel like. They have to entice you more. Plus it's visual, so tv is always dependent upon having pretty people to look at. But with literature it's much more the interiority of the characters that you're having a relationship than merely surface stuff. And I think Franzen does a damn fine job of creating convincing interior landscapes that connect with readers. Also Franzen is pretty fucking funny, which is an aspect of his books that I think is often overlooked. Or more likely you just don't find him funny. But I think he can be pretty hilarious.
So...I don't know, I used to hate Franzen. But I just think he's better than "serious" lit readers would like to give him credit for. That being said, I fucking hate that essay "Mr. Difficult" and I think Ben Marcus' essay is a million times better.
Hmm I could keep rambling on but I'll wait to see if anyone cares about any of this.
oprah
>>7820269
>I want to see if anyone cares about this
I can't contribute to this thread, but I've been following the discussion and greatly appreciate everyone's input. I have a copy of the corrections I've been meaning to read.
>>7820269
I'd like to add to my post that this reversion to more Victorian-like novels was and/or is a trend in contemporary American lit that for the most part I really really hate. Strikes me as backwards-looking and anti-progression. But I guess a lot of authors were stumped by what comes after pomo. Which was dfw's whole deal. But a whole stable of writers have rejected dfw's attempts at blending experimentalism with realism, at mixing the avant-garde with "what it feels like to be a fucking human being," and simply tapped out on trying to out-do the pomo masters by reverting to straight storytelling about social plots. I can name quite a few of these that come to mind. Eugenides' The Marriage Plot is one (this book was seriously like a straight-up metaphor for what I'm talking about); Harbach's The Art of Fielding is another one. I've only read a couple of Zadie Smith's short stories, but she seems like another one. Jonathan Lethem. Michael Chabon. They throw in references to postmodernism and sci-fi and mock it while still acknowledging it, only to offer nothing new, simply reverting back to 19th century style novels. This is why I said in an earlier post that Vollmann surpasses them all, because I think he's legitimately found a new mode of expression that blends experimentalism and earnestness, mixes hyper-intellectuality and human emotion. Another severely underrated writer who fits into this category I think would be Richard Powers. I highly recommend The Gold-Bug Variations to anyone who hasn't read it. Franzen I think is the best (and funniest) of the current authors who want to return to 19th century style novels.
I found franzen always banal and trite, and his characters to be assholes. The solution? Ready for the lamest spoiler ever? Let's have a family dinner. You know what franzen? F that. Very glad I took this out of the library instead of buying it. One of the worst modern novelists I have ever read, who just seems to do very little well and have nothing original to say. Perhaps this is the writer modern america deserves, the anti-intellectual douches.
>>7820378
Yes but the dinner goes horribly. I thought it was beautiful. The whole message (which may be banal and trite) was driven home by that scene. We endlessly try to fix things, try to live up to some ideal, but in the end everything falls to shit, no matter what you do. Plus it was funny.
>>7820369
9/10 post desu
>>7820369
Longposter from above again.
Thanks for your input. The shift towards what you call Victorianism (I actually don't know shit about cultural movements) is something I definitely got reading Americanah & Art of Fielding recently, although I didn't know what to call it. Mentally, I just thought "Franzen-y" and not particularly worth revisiting. I sort of get how the style is responding to pomo though.
Huh. Pretty disappointing place (I think) for literature to go.
Bumping this to keep it alive because I still have yet to read that guy's refutation on Franzen's essay but I plan on doing so as a means of procrastination at some point tonight.
Here's a passage from towards the end of the book that I think is pretty good, but Franzen isn't a very quote-able writer:
Alfred Lambert's thoughts:
'The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the earth and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid the price for its privileges that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself.
There came a time however when death ceased to be the enforcer of finitude and began to look, instead like the last opportunity for radical transformation, the only plausible portal to the infinite.
But to be seen as the finite carcass in a sea of blood and bone chips and gray matter--to inflict that version of himself on other people--was a violation of privacy so profound it seemed it would outlive him.
He was also afraid that it might hurt' (466).
In terms of being a sample passage that is representative of the rest of the book, this is a lousy example because most of the book doesn't read like this at all. And I could see how someone might think it's laughable and trying too hard to be 'deep' or something, but I think it's poignant and sad, and I've had similar thoughts about suicide. I like that Franzen isn't afraid to risk being corny. He's not trying hard to be edgy or poetic. It seems to me like it comes from the heart (which statement itself is quite corny, I know).
>>7821002
he's literally just stealing from schopenhauer and doing a shit job of it
Franzen will be remembered 100 years from now. His books are literary and yet easy to get into, which means he'll be taught in future college English classes, because if it's tough to get kids to read now, then it's definitely going to be way tougher in the future, and accessibility will be prized. Plus, decades from now Franzen will no longer have the stink of the new on him. He won't be a punching bag for cool lit mags and blogs, he'll be an established white guy author from the past who wrote about his times. With time, his books will take on prestige. Women in book clubs will flaunt the fact that they're reading something old, you know, one of those old novels about the way things used to be. Franzen's current visibility will also ensure his later visibility. Critics will continue to "revisit" Franzen and appraise his work. His easy realism and ambition to define the times means he'll be continually pushed by the academy and book stores as a "classic" author years down the line.
Wallace is a highly visible author right now, too, but his stuff is just too damn weird. Infinite Jest is too long to teach, and already to readers today it's so damn '90s. Nobody but the curious devoted are going to want to suffer through a lecture about videophones. IJ is a compendium of the author's life experience and obsessions and it's not going to be very interesting to most future readers. Young people will continue to see it as a cool challenge maybe, but it will never be a classic. It'll be just, "Remember that guy what hanged himself wrote that insanely long novel about tennis and AA? You ever read that thing?"
So, I think, in the long run, in the Wallace-Franzen competition, Franzen will win.
>>7821011
Please post a similar Schopenhauer passage. I'm not challenging you btw, you're probably right. It's obvious Franzen steals from everyone, from Shakespeare to Freud to Goethe, and I'm genuinely interested in seeing what Franzen took from Schopes.
But to be fair, what novelists don't steal from philosophers and the canon?
>>7817579
http://exiledonline.com/jonathan-franzen-will-rim-bobos-for-book-of-the-month-fame/
"Jonathan Franzen’s novel The Corrections, billed as a masterpiece, is a worthless fraud, a hopelessly trite story gaudied up with tedious overwriting. The overwriting is meant to conceal the fact that this novel is a simple mix of three of the most hackneyed storylines in American fiction:
The picaresque adventures of a feckless male academic, borrowed from DeLillo;
The sentimental tale of the decay and death of one’s parents as in Dave Eggers’s “masterpiece”;
The old, old plot device of the family Christmas reunion to bring the centrifugal parents and kids back together again against all odds, as in every sentimental John Hughes movie ever made and about a thousand more before him.
That, folks, is all there is to this mess: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation meets dying-parents memoir meets Manhattanite satire Lite. God help me, but that’s it!"
>>7821033
I agree actually
>>7821067
>taking that edgy striver cunt dolan seriously
>>7820369
This is a very good post, pretty spot-on, and it's undeniable that there is a swing back to more traditional forms of storytelling after po-mo. However, I don't agree with your assessment about writers such as Chabon and Lethem - I don't think they're actually mocking postmodernism; I see them more as children of the po-mo mixing of high and low culture, drawing from cultural references without irony (and while those two are possibly the most visible, there's quite a number of them). I would also add that, at least looking at the recent winners of prizes and so on, there's also been an influx of historical or semi-historical novels as a third trend (that might be subsumed in the more general return to traditional forms).
Also, I don't agree with the idea that Franzen will be remembered as the great 21st century author. He's the pet of the tradionalist critics of today (those who still scoff at the mention of genre lit) but, after the Corrections, his quality has dropped.
>>7820369
Lethem and Chabon? 19th century novels? Not sure. Also, isn't NW by Smith supposed to be Joycean?
>>7820617
I think it's a mentally and emotionally stunted response to postmodernism in that it kowtows to the cheapest, phoniest, and most banal instincts in American culture.
>>7821033
I completely disagree with you, and I think you only know the Wallace of Infinite Jest. His short stories are a lot more varied than you'd think and there's a lot more material that's ripe for analysis there than there is in any part of Franzen's oeuvre.
>>7821011
He's not stealing from Shopenhauer the character directly fucking cites Shopenhauer in his stream of consciousness. If you actually read the books you tried to bullshit about you'd know that
>>7821275
This guy >>7821180 was more on the right track than I was. I realized after I posted it that Lethem and Chabon may not really fit into the category exactly. Another guy similar to Lethem and Chabon is Junot Diaz I think. The poster I cited did a much better job of describing their writing. I think of these guys as doing like pomo-lite: it throws in pomo techniques or references while adhering to traditional storytelling. They try to have it both ways and it really bugs me.
Also, the historical fiction trend that >>7821180
cited is certainly noticeable and is something that I enjoy far more and have less of a bone to pick with than the pomo-lite crew. I don't know if Franzen falls into that pomo-lite crew. He does and he doesn't. I think he more unabashedly rejects it altogether while paying tribute to its importance. The way Franzen mocks and points to the ridiculousness and pretentiousness of some his characters seems like he's sort of making fun the avant garde. Chip Lambert is a perfect example of this.
>>7821275
nw is an impressionistic tale closer to chekov in style about mid 2000s northwest london. not joycean at all tbqhymf
for those concerned about the direction of literature i believe this article will be of some interest
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-new-fiction-of-solitude/471474/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtlanticCulture+(The+Atlantic+-+Entertainment)
>>7823857
Thanks anon. Haven't looked at it yet but I'll check this out as I am very interested in the direction of literature. But not much reading is getting done tonight; will be too drunk.
just checked out How to Be Alone yesterday, should I bother?
Bumping again.
>>7821033
I think a lot of short stories of Wallace might be discussed in lit classes like those of Faulkner are.
>>7821067
Oh please that site is just godawful every time
>>7825400
More than likely some chapters of Infinite Jest will be treated as short stories instead of individual parts of a novel. Wallace was a short story writer, not a novelist.
>>7821002
>violation of privacy so profound it seemed it would outlive him
Is this possibly an allusion to the concluding sentence in the Trial, particularly "it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him"?
I don't want this thread to die, currently been dealing with an onslaught of assignments but I will finish this essay and post about it.
>>7827420
Lol are you me
I've been procrastinating for like three solids days of not writing in this thread
Noooo I don't want to lose the only good thread on /lit/
Alright, I'm finally about to start reading Marcus' essay, thoughts gonna be posted in about half an hour I suppose.
I was reading this thread last night. It was a good thread. Bump for life support.
God damn it /lit/.
>>7817611
Finally read it, very entertaining stuff. I mostly agree with it. The swlf-insertion of the literary underdog fighting against Goliath on behalf of the masses felt somewhat contrived however. Really funny essay though, I'm going to research more of his writing.
To the poster before me - thanks for bumping the thread, I appreciate it.
>>7829358
To bad it was wasted on a shit author.
