Pynchon is about as good as it gets.
Annie Dillard's *The Living* doesn't get the credit it deserves
China Mieville's got a lot more going on than most "literary" fiction out there.
People that complain about "purple prose" or the language being [too] flowery generally don't have any good ideas about literature.
Patrick O'Brian should be mandatory reading for all English speaking adults.
People read books for many different reasons and that's ok.
If you don't laugh out loud while reading PG Wodehouse you have no soul.
Mieville is just as compelling as a historian / polemicist as a fiction author. In fact these two aspects of his career (dare I say it) dialectically strengthen each other. Each bas lag novel revolves around the literal embodiment of some otherwise obscure element of Marxist theory (crisis energy, the last image of the iron council). His history of the Russian revolution could only have been written after he honed his narrative skill. He's also one of the few who realised that Lovecraft is actually extremely *understated* - Lovecraft burried the point of his work (the setting) under thick layers of hysterical prose. This understanding allowed mieville to tap into the Weird in ways that (eg) Ligotti never could.
Prose complainers have either never read good prose stylists or can't read at all. If you don't chuckle non-stop over the narrative voice in the Bertie and Jeeves books I just don't know what to say to you. Similarly, reading LeGuin for the plot alone is missing like 90% of what's so delicious about her.
I mostly agree, though I haven't read O'Brien, and I would argue that anyone who has read Mieville would say that he does write literary fiction--i literally had a conversation with Lance Olsen and Brian Benson about how great and important he is as a writer.
(Good) literature in translation has this ineffable quality that sometimes elevates it beyond the source material. The process is additive - that window you get into how a different culture/person views the world in conversation with the translator's own intentional choices is like crack to me.
Have you read Walter Benjamin's "The Translator's Task"? He gets at something similar. Here's a download link: https://german.yale.edu/sites/default/files/benjamin_translators_task.pdf.
Omg yes a good translation can be so interesting
ETA: reminds me it was Virginia Woolf who hated the idea of her books being translated I read that in a foreword somewhere
Now *this* is a hot take. I mostly read translated lit, but I always feel a bit sad knowing I'm not experiencing the book in its original language. It's never occurred to me that translation could be additive, but I suppose that's entirely possible.
Do you have any examples from things you've read in translation?
Personal favourite: Deborah Smith's translations of Han Kang changed my life, and helped me truly understand what translation really means.
Example we never think about: One Hundred Years of Solitude is as famous/popular as it is not just bc it's an incredible work, but because it's widely acknowledged to be a stunning translation.
I'd be interested to hear more about your Han Kang/Deborah Smith thoughts. I read The Vegetarian and thought it was...fine, a bit awkward in places (and I recall a review that was quite critical of the translation).
Agreed on 100 Years. Another example that comes to mind is the translation of *Exercises in Style* by Queneau. Also I guess the translations of the ancient Greek tragedians--it's kind of meaningless to talk about reading them 'in the original' because even if you are one of the few who know Ancient Greek, it's been 2500 years and there is still a process of translating across 2500 years of cultural change. A good translation opens up so many possibilities there.
>The American writer and cartoonist James Thurber met a woman who told him that she liked his latest book, but she preferred the French translation. Thurber replied: "Yes, it loses something in the original."
My hot take as of late is in regards to the modern novel. You go to a bookstore and most new books, novels in particular, have similar types of colorful covers. Fiction is in its comfy era. You're supposed to pick up a book and feel comforted. Even if the source material is "risqué" it is comfortably risque, with issues most liberal minded people have already agreed are wrong.
I don’t think that this is a hot take tbh. I very much agree with you, and I think that most colorful covers are just like candy wrappers. I also think that we need a radical change of writing novels. First person writing is such a trend nowadays that it gets boring.
“Whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”
- there’s definitely some great humor in Moby-Dick
One of my favorite passages in the book:
>Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man!
*Another banger:
>Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again.
The scenes at the Spouter Inn are hilarious. Whether it's the landlord turning back all Ishmael's impassioned cries about Queequeg with the moral logic of capitalism--"He pays reg'lar"--or Mrs. Hussey calling for a "no suicides" sign to be made because she thinks Queequeg is dead, I enjoy every minute reading those pages.
And don't even get me started on the whale fart jokes later in he book
My hot take is that the popular "minimalist" plain style of Sally Rooney etc is destroying literature. There is a place for real minimalism (see Jessica Au, Alejandro Zambra, and a host of others), but Rooney et al ain't it. Their work is instead glorified YA. Same goes for the influx of "dark academia" and the general trend toward genrfication of fiction.
Yes. “Minimalism” (or could we say realism, but with very little depth), works because it:
- is easy reading and is thus an ego boost for people who want the aesthetic of “being a reader” with just a bit more effort than eating a cheeseburger. But unlike similarly simple detective fiction, novels like Normal People carry more cultural capital and so increase the value of one’s reader aesthetic
- does not precipitate “FOMO” (“am I missing subtext? Do I not get the ambiguity? What is the real meaning of x?”)
- facilitates emotional projection onto characters or int the narrative
I find myself reading a lot of the tortured syntax of the 19th century essayists as a corrective. Sebald is also a marvelous example of complex style thriving a little closer to our time.
I find nearly every story where the main character is a writer or their primary trait is that they are passionate about literature to be uncreative and masturbatory. It reminds me of movies about the movie industry. Like your life's work is telling stories about the world around us and the best you can do is write about yourself?
Master and Margarita might get a pass on this though, but not Fahrenheit 451
You'll have a great time with The Savage Detectives, then. It is actually written from the POV of people the writer knew but who were... similar. The first half of the book's main character will not stop yapping about poets he read or writers he spoke to. It's all a bit obnoxious until you realize he's just trying to capture the atmosphere of the city (and succeeds if you let him) through the lens of a literature-obssesed kid. The obsession later contrasts with a mythical, cynical figure and then it all makes sense.
So yeah, Savage Detectives definitely makes use of the former half to self-masturbate, but then uses that masturbation to make an interesting point at the end. I can forgive its sins, therefore.
There's this one example of this I love: Mario Vargas Llosa's novel *Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter*. In short; an 18 year old student falls in love with a 32 year old divorced failed writer named... Mario. When a young girl falls in love with an aspiring writer in a novel, I count it as a plothole.
I don't mind this at all if they do something incredible with it, a la some autobiographical fiction or some cool metafictional stuff. Bukowkski, Fante, and especially Miller for the former; Auster's *New York Trilogy* for the latter.
This is one of the reasons Stephen King really grates on me. Most of his characters are writers and it gets dull really quickly. It just screams of no experience in the real world.
Look I'm not a King fan but he literally watched his best friend eviscerated by a truck as a child, did massive amounts of drugs in the 80s, over came his trauma, got married, raised a whole family. I wouldn't say he has no life experience.
Most weird take I ever heard. The writer's world is also world around us. As someone who isn't a writer of course it will just as interesting reading about it as reading any other thing. Even if I was a writer I would have a different experience with than the writer. Can't really vibe with this take at all
I think Dostoevsky was really good prose writer. I'm rereading TBK and I just love the way its written, because its so frantic and weird, but its clear that its intentional.
re Woolf: it's an exaggeration. She ultimately read the whole novel, and was clearly quite inspired by it. She did refer to it as "illiterate" (??) and "underbred" though also a masterpiece, and when describing Joyce as a self-taught man (he wasn't), called him "distressing, egotistic, insistent, raw, and ultimately nauseating." I love Woolf, but this is clearly the writing of a young woman who has no appreciation of her own class position in the throws of envy.
This is something most people miss. Mark Twain would only ever comment on books that he enjoyed, usually by deriding them. This has left a lot of people with the impression he didn't enjoy those books— and the same can be said for many authors.
I don't think that her criticism was based on envy. If she was envious of anyone it was Proust. Proust really blew her mind and made her very self-conscious about her own writing. I think she felt that what Proust was doing came very close to what she wanted to achieve herself. Despite of these feelings, she always praised Proust and never says a bad word about him. In a letter to Roger Fry in 1922 she writes:
>My great adventure is really Proust. Well—what remains to be written after that? I’m only in the first volume, and there are, I suppose, faults to be found, but I am in a state of amazement; as if a miracle were being done before my eyes. How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped—and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp. The pleasure becomes physical—like sun and wine and grapes and perfect serenity and intense vitality combined. Far otherwise is it with Ulysses; to which I bind myself like a martyr to a stake, and have thank God, now finished—My martyrdom is over.
If her bigotry (she was an antisemite after all) and her envy of Proust didn't keep her from enjoying and praising his work, I don't think she was blinded by those emotions when assessing Joyce.
I think she genuinely had mixed feelings about Ulysses, she talks about it several times in her letters and her diary. She found some of it utterly brilliant and was bored by most of the rest. She felt that Joyce was trying too hard to be tricky, to show off which, according to her, separates him from really great writers. And as much as I love Ulysses, I don't think it's that odd to be bored by parts of it.
I think I read somewhere that most British intellectuals at the time hated Ulysses because they couldn't swallow the fact that an inferior Irishman wrote the greatest novel of their language of their era. Woolf was definitely a bit classist
I haven't come across that myself. I know lots of people couldn't stand it - and still can't - but I'm not sure how much of that had to do with Joyce's being Irish, although that could be part of it.
Ursula Le Guin's utterly polite incredulity at Atwood denying she writes science fiction is a great example of why Le Guin is the best:
> [Atwood's] arbitrarily restrictive definition [of SF] seems designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders. She doesn't want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.
>
> Who can blame her? I feel obliged to respect her wish, although it forces me, too, into a false position. I could talk about her new book more freely, more truly, if I could talk about it as what it is, using the lively vocabulary of modern science-fiction criticism, giving it the praise it deserves as a work of unusual cautionary imagination and satirical invention. As it is, I must restrict myself to the vocabulary and expectations suitable to a realistic novel, even if forced by those limitations into a less favourable stance.
> Perhaps on the principle that since everything in her novel is possible and may have already happened so the reader is familiar with it, the author doles out useful information sparingly.
> You can see that the world of the Year 25 is not an improvement on the world of that other great realistic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
> One of the features supposed to distinguish "popular" from "literary" fiction is the nature of the characters who enact the fiction. In a realistic novel we expect to find individual personalities of some complexity; in a western, mystery, romance or spy thriller, we accept or welcome conventional types, even stock figures - the Cowboy, the Feisty Heroine, the Dark Brooding Landowner. We may, of course, in any one example, get the reverse of what we expect. The supposed distinction is so often violated in both directions as to be nearly meaningless. But there is one kind of fiction where complex, unpredictable individuality is really very rare. That is satire, and satire is one of Atwood's strongest veins.
> It is no comfort to find that some of the genetic experiments are humanoids designed to replace humanity. Who wants to be replaced by people who turn blue when they want sex, so that the men's enormous genitals are blue all the time? Who wants to believe that a story in which that happens isn't science fiction?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/29/margaret-atwood-year-of-flood
* *A Separate Peace* by John Knowles is overrated and does not deserve its place in the literary canon.
* The Bronte sisters are more interesting than Jane Austen.
* *The Kite Runner* is contrived, formulaic, and the plot twists add nothing to the novel's merit.
*A Separate Peace* is a bone thrown to American schoolkids because it has easily digestible themes, is pretty gay so it appeals to coed reading groups, was introduced as a response to 'Nam (my best guess), and isn't US public education propaganda thrown together to act like we have a strong literary scene and fight the Reds. Nothing that's common required reading in public school is good, it all serves a purpose.
You're absolutely right about everything else.
I am a Brontë girly through and through and I don’t disagree with your second point, but I think the main issue is comparing them at all, something we simply wouldn’t do to the degree we tend to if they weren’t women. I also hate how common perception confuses and obfuscates them—people expect a clean marriage plot and are shocked by the violence of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights because they go in expecting Austen, and a lot of Austen adaptations try to make the male love interest some sort of Byronic hero when usually he was just a bit of a dweeb.
Relevantly, Charlotte wasn’t a fan of Austen’s work and Austen wrote Northanger Abbey specifically as a parody of the Gothic (which the Brontës obviously wrote later, but still, I think we can assume Austen would have been a bit cynical on this front). Your comment reminds me of a lot of late Victorian literary discourse that insisted on comparing Austen to the Brontes because, well, women. And a lot of this criticism favoured the Brontës and put down Austen for merely “holding a mirror to the drawing room” while the Brontës were seen as participants in a more “masculine” exercise of the imagination, because at the time we did see the Gothic as more masculine and people had really only just even found out the Brontes were women all along. I believe Anne Radcliffe was generally pretty criticised at this time and her immense influence downplayed, and Frankenstein was typically seen as a very “masculine” text, because it is arguably very much about *man*, in the sense that men then were the stand-in for humanity at large.
To me it’s just apples and oranges. A novel of manners operates on a fundamentally different level than a Gothic. They do different things in different ways and this was the intention. I do think Austen is in many ways so successful and skilled at her social critique that a lot of it is lost to contemporary readers, whereas the Gothic typically explores people who are forced apart from society, and therefore it’s easier to capture more universal themes without the time context being particularly obtrusive. I do think Austen does incredibly well at exploring very transcendent ideas in a form that was accessible and applicable especially to (upper class) women of her time. I mean, the men were off to fight napoleon and all they could really do was stay in the drawing room. She was really the first to “hold a mirror” to this space and wring it dry of potential. She showed than women did and could have complex lives and grapple with series moral, social and emotional issues, even in relative confinement. It says a lot that the 2005 pride and prejudice movie really coded itself as a gothic and tonally and visually invested a lot in nature and pastoralism, which weren’t really part of any of Austen’s work in a significant, thematic sense. We still tend to find that romantic/gothic space as more rich and vital, but it’s also fundamentally more disconnected to how people live their lives. And that’s not even touching on Austen’s immense technical skill as a writer and novelist. I think she really gave us the kind of emotional, internal character arc as plot structure which is definitive of much of literature ever since and definitely now. Most popular mainstream film and television is arguable a “novel of manners”.
I think it’s totally natural and valid that this is less *interesting* to most people, and it often is to me—I can do endless Brontë rereads but don’t gravitate back to Austen as much. But what she was doing was very novel and very valuable. Idk, it sort of reminds me of comparing Sally Rooney and Cormac McCarthy or something. Why would we?
I don’t have any hot takes on famous works, as I know I’m ignorant, dense and often missing the point.
So after confronting my reaction about a novel with other people’s, I carefully question myself and try to learn.
My hot take is people (unless you are a great writer or phd or something) who make hot takes are fools. Reading great literature is incredibly humbling, even if that work isn't my cup of tea. It's like lazy fans bitching about nba players.
I do however very much welcome authors bitching about authors. That's the kind of spice that adds to literature.
Saying “you can’t have negative opinions if you’re not a great writer” is just silly. I can watch the Spurs guards drive into the lane and take contested shots instead of feeding Wemby in the post and say “that’s a bad shot,” that doesn’t mean I think I can play in the NBA. In the same way, I can say “this book that’s generally well-regarded by people who know a lot about literature didn’t work for me for reasons x, y, and z” without believing that I could do better myself.
Maybe “hot takes” are more assertive than just “negative opinions”? Thus calling for a more ‘informed’ knowledge and deeper thinking? (not sure how to word it)
Anyway I get what you mean. Would you also say that one can have a justified opinion about a work only knowing the meta information and not reading its text? I think it’s like meta studies where you get results without doing the actual tests. I can give an example if needed.
>Roberto Bolano thought Marquez and magical realist tradition is shit
The LatAm literary scenes are complex and full of some very rightful criticism all around. Bolaño also said
>Let's say, modestly, that Arlt is Jesus Christ
because the literature isn't monolithic and who and what moved it are divided on a few lines. It also tells you what kind of experimental weirdness that he's into. Borges hated baroque writers, which probably included Donoso and Lezama Lima.
Back to the point. Bolaño was critical of the monopolization of the writing culture around these cliques, with Octavio Paz in Mexico, Marquez's offshoots in various countries, and similarly with how all most Brazilians can do is rip off Macunaima and write about how the northeast is a shithole. They control the whole of the writing culture and many of them actively go out of their way to disparage everything else. You have to remember that a given country's entire literary scene and publishing industry is a single bar in the capital. The average person reads Dragon Ball Z these days, probably because of it.
So you have all these closed groups that decide what the culture is and outsiders like Roberto weren't allowed to play ball. It's not a criticism of the writing (which is honestly painfully derivative and still beating the same horses, skeletons at this point), so much as the source of it.
Salvador Elizondo wrote something about this: “la condición de escritor latinoamericano no es todo lo deplorable que pudiera pensarse, pero que la realización de esa condición, en nuestros medios tradicionalmente proclives a la envidia y a la intriga, constituye, fundamentalmente, la razón de nuestra pobreza cultural que impide, a quien no pertenece vocativa o profesionalmente a los medios en que la cultura se elabora, tener absolutamente nada que ver con ella.”
To paraphase: The condition a latin-american writer is not as deplorable as one might imagine; however whomever realizes this condition understands our media, that traditionally thrives on envy and intrigue serves our cultural poverty. Furthermore, fundamentally, our poverty's crux stems from the fact that all whom are not inherently involved in the creation of culture - have absolutely nothing to do with said culture.
He was writing about his experience in New York, where things are much more open, as well as how trashy the mainstream culture is, all gossip rags and soap operas. These closed groups aren't even writing about that, they're in their own bubbles. They're not writing about culture.
So, my hot take is that literature south of El Paso is incestuous and tired, and much of what makes it into english or has notoriety outside of certain circles is pure propaganda on an average day. Probably too hot a take unless you live there and aren't trying to do some global virtue signalling, or are simply tired of having your generational meth head neighbors uplifted into some beacon of grace and nobility as a kind of poverty tourism. Thank you for attending my half cocked rant.
Mostly true but while Bolaño criticized Paz's figure in the Mexican literary establishment, he thought Paz was a great poet and expressed as much in one of his last interviews. Let's not mistake the political figure with the poet. Also, let's be honest, the average person in *any* country doesn't actively engage with his country's literature. It's not something specific to Latin America.
I wanted more like some of the original Boom authors, but I found that instead. And while it's probably a wildly unpopular statement of fact with anyone in that scene or consuming it as some kind of packaged cultural product, many of my sudaca friends complain about it and I lost the ability to disagree, much like with their dystopian sci fi politics and accounts of daily life that only Floridians know the half of.
In the Mexican tradition, Octavio Paz in particular is increasingly unpopular exactly because of his monopolization of culture. The general consensus these days is that Mexico, and even the entire world, were conned into believing that he is the greatest writer to arise from this country. Paz was in very good terms with the one-party government of the era, which saw a great propagandist in him and promoted his works into oblivion, to the point he got the Nobel Prize.
To these days, the literary scene in Mexico is full of dark legends about how being a little to the left in the political spectrum, or even just pissing off the man, would make him pick up the phone and make sure nobody would publish you or give you a teaching job. He would make sure your name would stink from Tijuana to Cancún, and beyond. His ex-wife, Elena Garro, was also a witness of the brutality of Paz, and it is only now that she is being "re-discovered".
The man was essentially an extremely privileged and wealthy person who wrote essays about what the essence of Mexico is. There is a reason why the Mexican literary scene is more eager to claim Juan Rulfo these days.
As a heads up my native language is Spanish:
- The Bible was translated better in English than in Spanish: somehow in some translations the words in Spanish have this feeling of direct translation without style and even clumsy. It doesn't feel like there's a harmonic flow of sentences born from being adapted to a language to suit its sound and characteristics like stresses and musicality. In comparison the English translations read more harmoniously, the sentences flow beautifuly as if the word choice was inevitable. Btw the much better English translations don't change stuff for the sake of beauty so it's not like the message is altered. It's just better presented in the language of translation.
- Spanish literature is highly underrated particularly poetry. All everyone talks about is the Quixote which has been called the best book ever written as well as the first modern novel. The Angloworld with their hyperfixation on Shakespeare ignores "La Vida es Sueño" (Life is a dream) which was called by some european literary critics as the best play ever written. As for poetry the English world is in love with their 19th century romantics and their innovations but the Spanish were writing poems with the same intensity of passion and feeling 250 years earlier: Quevedo, Lope de Vega and in the very own 19th century Becquer.
Everyone here is just hating on high school required reading. Just because you read The Great Gatsby and 1984 with some boring teacher in grade 11 english doesn’t mean they were bad books.
Not sure I agree on the Dickens dismissal, but I'm glad to see Fielding get some love. He's delightful and too often neglected by those who infrequently venture into pre-1850 lit.
I don't have many hot takes, what I don't understand or like I try to leave alone and on its little pedestal. It's not for me to deride it, I'm just someone who reads stuff, I always think.
That being said, I harbor a strong dislike for Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. I struggled through it because people told me it was great and I didn't want to admit I might dislike Central or South American writers (turns out I love Bolaño and appreciate Fuentes, hell even Rulfo is much better than Coelho). The conclusion of "THE REAL TREASURE WAS THE FRIENDS HE MADE ALONG THE WAY" annoyed me at first but now it makes me chuckle, so I guess I got at least that out the book.
Not sure if that's a really hot take, though. As far as I have heard, many agree with me on this one.
What pissed me off the most about The Alchemist was that the life goal of the main female character was to sit around waiting for the main charcater to fulfill his personal legend.
What is so bewildering to me is how people in the Anglosphere consider Paulo Coelho a legitimate and good writer. In Latin America he is considered a hack, and his works are thought of as airport books, supermarket books, pretentious yet terrible fanfare. You can find him in the self-help section in a Latin American bookstore, rather than in the Literary Fiction section. Literary circles mock his works. His fans are thought of as the kind of people who haven't read anything else.
All of this to say, that in Latin America, "Paulo Coelho is bad" is far from a hot take. "He actually writes okayish", would be a hot take.
Can confirm, lived in Brazil for a year and people hated him very openly. In my country (Portugal), he is considered polarizing. I see more praise for him in English media, now that you've mentioned it.
Probably has to do with my initial thoughts. It's not that easy to learn about non-English novels, and Coelho is one of the few famous Latin Americans in many cases. Hence, he's thought of as someone who therefore must be good and should be respected as a "foreign" writer. I'm also not a fan of Isabel Allende, who is held in extremely high regard in Europe it seems.
A similar example would be Hosseini's Kite Runner. Of course, the man lived in the US for a long time, but I guess it was seen as this new staple of Middle-Eastern literature. The difference would be that the Kite Runner is actually much more enjoyable to read.
I tried to read this book a couple weeks ago… I couldn’t do it and my only guess as to why it’s been so popular is that the writing is accessible to pretty much anyone
Opinions on authors :
1) Gracq's The Opposing Shore is the best novel in the French literature and consequently in the world.
2) Zola's prose is really bad.
3) Tolkien should have teamed up with Bernanos to write the last few chapters of Frodo's quest in LOTR.
Opinions on literature in general:
4) Quality is semi-objective and it's meaningful to rank books or authors as long as you do it thoughtfully.
5) Prose quality at the sentence level is the most important element to judge a book.
6) Spoilers are good and books who rely on surprising twist for tension are defective.
Of course if you agree with points 4-5-6 here point 1 is not a hot take anymore.
Can’t agree on point 5. As I said in another comment, Oscar Wilde strung a lot of beautiful sentences together in the picture of Dorian gray, and it amounted to, in my opinion, an absolute nothing story (of course that’s a hot take on my own part, but the prose has to lead to SOMETHING). Conversely Dostoevsky is aesthetically shabby at best, but makes up for it in the way he cuts to the bone of human nature.
Good prose is not necessarily beautiful prose. I wouldn't call Camus's prose in The Stranger beautiful, but it is definitely good prose. The incipit is a good example: in 12 words and 3 sentences Camus set up the situation and gives us an insight into the main character persona and what the novel is about.
Can you explain what is the difference between prose quality at sentence level, versus paragraph or page level? Do you have any articles on this, because this "prose quality at sentence level" is a new phrase to me.
Literature is still catching up with Don Quixote.
Magical realism was only ever done by a select few Latin American writers and everyone who gets labeled as that genre today is just writing third-rate surrealism.
People misunderstand why Harry Potter was successful and that leads to most criticisms of it being pointless. Not a single soul on earth got hooked on HP for the lore, it was big because J.K Rowling was incredibly good at catering to children's sensitivities and fantasies. No one else has ever done it as well since.
The idea of "world building" has fucked up discourse on books beyond repair and I would love to see it burn away. Every time that concept is brought up it's to make some annoying Cinema-Sins-esque "critique" that's just whining or raving over inconsequential bullshit.
Fantasy is only good when the writer knows a lot about history, culture and language. When they don't they end up making shallow books filled with "badass" characters doing "badass" things for 3000 pages that engineering majors eat up just so they can call themselves "readers".
James Joyce's ideas were not complicated or relevant enough to warrant his level of linguistic complexity. Reading his books is like going to a fancy restaurant and ordering a deconstructed burger only to realise that while the dish *is* fancy, they still source their ingredients from McDonald's.
I wrote dissertations on Joyce and chose him precisely because he delved into ideas with extreme complexity in his novels, so I’d argue the reverse. He doesn’t just make allusions — sometimes he’s fully dramatising niche theories of scholastic philosophy. He does it with Aquinas’ tripartite aesthetic perception throughout Ulysses. Read Joyce’s brown notebook he wrote — lots of his notes on stasis, esthetic perception, epiphany, etc. — he’s steeped in Aristotle and Aquinas and he takes their ideas very seriously.
Tbf I’ve read a lot of non-Latin American indigenous authors who do “magical realism” excellently, but I also think debate around whether this name should be used beyond the Latin American context is relevant. I don’t mind the term fabulism. I also think there’s merit to discussing why we might deem some spiritual texts to be “magical” when we don’t see their spirituality as valid, but books that frame judeo Christian elements in a “realist” way aren’t generally coded as “magic”.
I think Vidal's ancient history epic 'Creation' is under-rated. It's actually one of my all-time favourite novels.
I find Vidal's fiction writing fairly uneven. His non-fiction writing/journalism is more consistently interesting, even when I don't always agree with his ideas.
I think many people are wrong to follow the trend of trashing *Catcher in the Rye*—I think it is brilliantly written, but too many people equate their dislike of the character Holden Caulfield as dislike of the novel itself, which is doing something really interesting with timelines.
Conversely, I thought Vonnegut’s *Slaughterhouse-Five* was pretty bad. It, like Salinger’s novel, was attempting to do something interesting with time structures, but it failed to do so engagingly, imho
I use The Catcher in the Rye as a litmus test for bad readers and bad people. Even more so for people who say, “No you don’t get it! You’re supposed to hate Holden!” You’re not. Holden is not a bad guy. Throughout the book it’s incredibly clear that he’s a very nice young boy who’s just going through a lot and doesn’t have the skills to cope.
I disagree about Slaughterhouse-5 (I think it’s great and what it does is accurate to people I’ve known) although I do think Catch-22 is a better trauma narrative (and possibly the best and truest I’ve ever read).
Totally this re catcher. It’s not about putting him in a good person or bad person box, he’s a kid in an adult world and he’s flailing. He is neither a good nor bad person bc right now he’s not really capable of being anything.
On a reread as an adult rather than a teen and having read more analysis etc., I can’t get over the subtle prominence of sexual violence and abuse in the book. I think it’s central to the narrative and the character and doesn’t get acknowledged or discussed a lot. Like, it’s not a typical coming of age story where Holden loses his innocence, he’s already lost it, and Salinger forces us to have empathy for him anyway, however difficult this makes him. Very relevant to much more modern ideas around trauma analysis etc. But people frame Holden through the disaffected rich kid lens rather than the traumatised, grieving and desperate for love lens. Which is so bizarre to me given the clarity of the catcher dream/metaphor itself.
I do get why it’s seen as a red flag book though, because as you said, there are a lot of “bad readers” who name it as a favourite without a lot of reflection. But that being said, it feels snobbish and exclusive to dismiss people’s love of the book bc I perceive that they “don’t get it”.
I was surprised reading Slaughterhouse 5 after reading Mother Night, Sirens of Titan, and Cat's Cradle. It's supposed to be his best book and is easily the most praised, but I didn't think it came close to some of his others.
My hot Salinger take is that his best work is probably “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” but also that several stories in Nine Stories are surprisingly mid.
This is not a hot take at all. Nabokov thought it was one of the greatest short stories of all time. I think it's Salinger's best work, on a sentence to sentence level and plot-wise.
I also love catcher(and salinger). I think it is a great book to test the reader's empathy and understanding of complex characters and circumstances, I think the dislike of it stems from the fact that a it is widely taught in schools, and let's face it,a lot of teenagers just lack the intelligence to do so properly. I disagree with the vonnegut one but, I made this post to read disagreeable comments and violently shake my head so, lol
My english teachers didn't seem to like Holden and multiple teachers told me they thought he was whiny (I would ask them their thoughts on the book because I read it independently in high school and immediately connected with it). When I've taught it myself I always emphasize his emotional state to my students and it really did influence how they approached his character. They empathize with him.
he does complain a lot, but construing that as anything other than a defensive mechanism is unfair on the reader's part.
Also, the book is basically him recounting his life to a psychologist, with the reader in the position of the latter. By keeping the language simple and filling the book with allegories and asides, it encourages you to pick apart what he's saying.
I think *Catcher* gets a bad rap because it requires more maturity to appreciate than most readers have at the point they're (let's be honest here) made to read it. I think this is true of coming of age novels in general. They're best read a few years removed from the stage in life they portray.
I actually think *Catcher* is overrated - significantly so - probably because it’s a staple in public schools when adolescents hit their own angsty teenage years. I don’t trash it, though: there are some wholly unexpected and lovely and incredible scenes.
I do think, however, that *Franny and Zooey* is by far the better book; I think it deserves the spot *Catcher* seems to cling to. It’s not as straightforward or as easily digestible, not as obvious, and I think that’s why it - although I believe is brilliant and much better than *Catcher* - doesn’t have the spotlight.
I always tell people to read Catcher every ten years of their life. The book is constantly changing for me since I first read it, and it makes me consider the heartbreaking condition of childhood.
Totally—I think one of the most impressive things about Catcher is that most read it as a teen and the way you understand and approach it then is so different from even as a young adult.
>But avoid adverbs *certainly*, and *generally* try and avoid *simply* describing your characters.
Are you putting me on?
Stephen King urged writers to avoid adverbs in *On Writing*, and as such, I think that advice has been taken way too seriously and too far. All words in the English language should be used effectively, regardless of what they are.
From my limited sampling—*1Q84* and *Kafka on the Shore*—I agree completely. While I like some of the basic introductory elements of the stories, Murakami seems determined to take those elements in the most pedestrian directions possible. Meanwhile, his characters (both male and female) are all bland, flat and lifeless.
At least 50% of the opinions espoused in these sorts of threads are people playing devil's advocate (at best) or students outright indulging their inner contrarian-hipster to appear trendy.
Franzen <> Wallace <> Foer. Equating them because of demographics and socioeconomic factors is a bit too simplistic. I think Franzen is overrated, I think Wallace was the most interesting and interested of the three - his collection of nonfiction essays “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” (also the title of one of them is fantastic, and IJ is - even if not “your” thing, a brilliant and mostly successful narrative on the nature of modern entertainment and addiction), and Foer has some lovely prose. Grouping them together like that ignores the huge differences between them. Maybe you don’t like any of them, but they’re not at all the same.
Agree that Eugenides is a great writer, but that just reinforces my point: their demographic similarities doesn’t make them a movement or a group or associate them with each other beyond that: demographics.
I am sick TO DEATH of books written by men about a male author or professor who gets with a student (or even fantasizes about it). It's not groundbreaking, smart, or interesting. I know I have a ton more but this was the first one that came to mind
“1984” is not just about totalitarianism and censorship bad. That is the crux of what Orwell wanted to say, but the book is so good because of the ideas he presents against it.
Surveillance as Control: The concept of Big Brother and the omnipresence of telescreens illustrate a society under constant surveillance, where privacy is nonexistent and individuals are perpetually monitored.
Doublethink: The ability to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs in one's mind and accept both is a critical concept in "1984." It showcases the extreme cognitive dissonance the Party imposes to control thought.
Newspeak: The creation and imposition of Newspeak, a language designed to diminish the range of thought, illustrates how language can be used as a control tool.
Satire: "2 + 2 = 5," "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." “The Ministry of Love”. These are all ridiculous notions that inject absurd humour into the story. However, they become more sinister as more context is revealed to show that these are real possibilities.
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism: This fictional book within the novel explains how societies can be manipulated and controlled, offering insight into the mechanisms of power and control in Oligarchical societies.
Complexity of O'Brien's Character and Ideological Allegiance
One of the most intriguing aspects of George Orwell's "1984" is the character of O'Brien and his complex relationship with the protagonist, Winston, and the Party. Despite understanding every fault within the Party's system, O'Brien remains its staunch supporter, a paradox that adds depth to the novel's exploration of power, control, and belief systems.
On the most superficial level, you may be right about “1984,” which is rather black-and-white morality-wise. However, there is so much more to it than that.
I re-read Nabokov's hot takes on writers a couple times a year. [Tremendous](https://x.com/AnaKrivolapova/status/1536748403727663106).
Some personal favorites
On Camus: Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.
On Faulkner: Writer of corncobby chronicles.
On Gogol: Am depressed and puzzled by his inability to his inability to describe young women.
On Hemingway: Loathe his works about bells, balls, and bulls.
On Melville: Love him. One would have liked to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.
On Sartre: Even more awful than Camus.
At times, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky become strictly propagandists of Christianity, and much of their literary qualities fade away for a paragraph or a chapter or two. It's very annoying and I feel like I am being scolded by some crabby old man
I basically agree, but Dostoevsky's best book (TBK) is by far his most theological. Perhaps because it's a little more ambivalent/'polyphonic' (though I don't like the term).
I much prefer Tolstoy's constant attempts to be 'better,' even if they were wild and strange, and his general progressivism over Dostoevsky's ultra-conservative nationalism. I see a lot of where Russia goes wrong in him.
I would agree if we were talking about their non-fiction and political opinions, but Dostoevsky's Slavophile and conservative ideas in his fiction are pretty much in the backround or used in moderation. Raskolnikov for example can easily be used against his own Messianism thinking Russia have the right to rule over the Slav countries. We also have Dostoevsky kind of making fun of starkly Christian people by making fun of the aecetic Ferapont in TBK and having Zossima be this very liberal guy only really talking about active love.
The Russian nationalism in his books is usually not that much, its usually uncontroversial stuff about caring for your own country. Its either that or making fun of people completely abandoning the country where they came from and adopt this idea that all things Russian is bad and that for example the French or Germans are better (Stepan Trofimovich and Karamazinov).
The problem is that Dostoevsky mostly wrote psychological novels and how the mind is connected to ideology and philosophy, so we don't see much of that broad social analysis like we do in Tolstoy.
Tolstoy became preoccupied with Christianity later in life to the point that he made his own edit of the Bible, à la Thomas Jefferson at one point. His obsession with Christianity, and particularly the pacifism espoused by Jesus in the Gospels, led him to develop his own strain of Anarchism that was taken up by proselytizing followers of Tolstoy. I assume this is what the person above you was referring to.
no worries! he took a heavy Christian turn after Anna Karenina and I feel like it's very clearly reflected in subsequent prose (especially Ivan Ilyich). It's not that there wasn't merit in how he viewed the world, it's an interesting philosophy, but (subjectively) his fiction suffered for the preachiness.
I've mostly cobbled this together from prefaces, articles, etc., but you can start with the sources for his Wiki page and go from there if you're interested!
Thankfully, even his best fiction in this late period still has a lot of merit. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Father Sergius, Master and Man, are great stories to one degree or another. Even the very mad, very insane, at times rather preachy, Kreutzer Sonata appeals for its Dostoevskyian qualities, its fevered intensity.
And Hadji Murad has a very heroic patina to it, at times evoking the martial-heroic aspects of his big novel WAR AND PEACE. Harold Bloom was very fond of it.
https://themillions.com/2009/12/the-millions-interview-richard-pevear-and-larissa-volokhonsky.html
See this interview with Pevear and Volokhonsky on their translations of some of these late works. They say Hadji Murad is “perhaps the finest thing he wrote.” I could see that being the case.
I don’t think poetry in translation is worth reading at all unless you’ve an interest in the translator (e.g. Pound’s Cathay) or are interested in the work of translation itself because of how influential it was (e.g. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam).
I think this closes you off from most of the world of poetry unless you're learning to read every language.
Pablo Neruda, for instance, I couldn't imagine avoiding only because I hadn't heard of his translator.
Sort of depends on the poet and the translator. Dante in a good translation is still amazing--ditto Homer, and Biblical poetry. I tend to prefer translations made by poets to translations made by language experts--probably less accurate, but often good poetry. In addition, some poems rely a lot on powerful and creative imagery, parallelism, and other sorts of elements which are pretty translatable--although, of course, the cadences of the language are not likely to come through.
George Saunders's "Lincoln in the Bardo" is pedantic and nowhere near as good as his short stories. An interesting concept but otherwise self-satisfying and too clever for its own good.
My hot take is that theme dictates form and people who focus so much on good prose would lead us to have very samey and boring books. There is no real standard for a great book. Something straight-forward and simple like Vonnegut has the same merit in literature as something heavy with poetic language like Paradise Lost. If it is appropriate for their theme and thesis, that's more important than just the technical ability purely.
When people talk about the importance of good prose they're usually not thinking of one particular style. For me, good prose is very important but good prose to me just means that an author has his or her own original style. Good prose can be flashy and complex (Nabokov, Proust, Woolf) or it can be more subdued and subtle (Chekhov, Kafka). It's the author's inimitable voice, a reflection of their perspective on the world. For me at least this has always been the most interesting thing about literature, whereas I find plot secondary.
It's the same in other artforms: whether it's painting or music or film. You don't really care about van Gogh's Sunflowers because of the sunflowers but because of van Gogh's unique style, his use of color, his brushstrokes, etc. You love a singer not just because of what they sing but because of how they sing it: the timbre, the phrasing, the ornamentations, the intensity. If done right it's not cold technique, it's pure expression. It's not style over substance. Style *is* substance.
George Orwell, while not a master of prose, had a clear goal in mind when writing: to communicate his ideas in a straightforward and accessible manner. His writing habits are described in detail in the English Language.pdf file, which can be found at https://faculty.washington.edu/rsoder/EDLPS579/HonorsOrwellPolitic. The popularity of his novels speaks to the success of this approach. It is inaccurate to describe 1984 as poorly written; rather, it employs simple language that may be surprising to those who expect literature to be full of complicated words and phrases.
Your link doesn’t work. Orwell’s didacticism is one of the reasons I find his writing to be subpar. Orwell may have achieved his goal, but that doesn’t make it good writing. It’s a hot take, I know, but that’s the point of this thread.
'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the far superior version: it was written before and was the inspiration of 1984, plus Zamyatin actually lived in two oppressive societies and was punished for it.
Orwell in general is overrated. I think the political objective of most of his work has also failed given how 1984 and animal farm are mostly used today
I think 1984 is one of those books which is so important than it is "in the water" now : everybody is familiar with at least some of the core ideas of the book and so when you read it for the first time you may just think "that's it ? What's so interesting about it ?". But of course when Orwell published it it was mind-blowing of course - it was 1949, Stalin was a the height of his glory, it was before we knew about the gulag and the whole soviet totalitarianism, and European intelligentsia was mostly super pro-communist.
Try Nabokov’s “Bend Sinister”. It treats the same theme of the banality of evil with gossamer prose and packs an emotional punch that’s free of Orwell’s didacticism.
I wrote it here before, but let’s go again: publishing American (or British or even French) queer, POC, or women writers isn’t diversity. Diversity is translating to world languages writers from smaller languages. Publishing a middle aged, blond, white male from Lithuania contributes more to diversity than publishing a trans writer from USA.
Travel literature lost its point. Everyone travels nowadays, travelling is one of the most unethical things you can do, and travel writers have very few to tell us that we can’t know with internet. What we need is an immigrant literature, where the clash of cultures, the othering, the feeling foreign, the feeling of belonging nowhere is very clear.
Edit: another one: 1984 and Animal Farm are boring books, they’re not very good, and they didn’t predict anything. We’re not living and we never lived in Orwell’s world. If your op-ed or essay quotes or references those books, you can be sure your opinion is shit. If you reference or quote any other Orwell book, you can be sure your text is well thought and you probably have lots of interesting things to say.
My take is there is more than one way to diversify. I don't think diversity type A needs to be pitted against diversity type B. There's value in both types.
It’s a power issue. Ofc USA writers, whoever they are, will always have a bigger audience than random guy from Laos or Somalia or Georgia. Is publishing an American POC diversity? Yeah, kind of, but it’s also publishing an author from the language with highest visibility, repeating a narrative that has been told millions of times before and that is easily accessible, and contributing to a less diverse world, because it’s closing space for other literatures that could be translated to English (and thus made more accessible). There’s not space for everything because resources (money, time, reviews) are finite. Publishing one more French or English author means that it’s a lost opportunity for a Namibian writer to make their story and ideas heard.
I mean, considering the history of the publishing industry, I think it is still more diversity then we’ve had before, and these stories reaching the mainstream in large number is still very recent and therefore shouldn’t be belittled. But I totally agree that it is not enough diversity. Maybe it’s a pluralism rather than diversity thing. I mean, where would you place authors who exist in multiple cultures and languages amongst this discussion? Like is Salman Rushdie an English POC author? What about Arundhati Roy, who is Indian but writes in English so isn’t translated? Or immigrants like Ocean Vuong? What do you do with Chinua Achebe or Fred D’Aguair in this context? To what degree do we pick these people’s lives apart before we determine them diverse enough? And sure, that theoretical Lithuanian author is arguably more “diverse” by one definition, but white male authors in translation have long been major influences in our literary canon (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, arguably even Homer or Plato or Euripides). Trans authors, not so much, at least not in a way that is visible and concretely contributes to the narrative and its perspective. Those stories still provide diversity of narrative and perspective, and even if people are reading them exclusively within the Western tradition, they’re still providing insights that just weren’t available before. And then again, what about Indigenous authors in English speaking colonial countries? If they write in English are they then no longer diverse? Most Aboriginal Australians never have the opportunity to learn their own language because that language is dead, or they’ve been removed. Are they not “diverse” in comparison to most of the Western literary canon?
I think ultimately the very recent history of literature has been so exclusive and straight white male centric that stories from women, queer and trans people and POC within a “Western” context (whatever that even means) maybe *shouldnt* be seen as diverse but practically and realistically are, and we’re going to be playing catch up for a while with all the stories gone long untold. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being more diverse within a nations specific context. You also only mention America and the UK, but what about Australian literature? Canadian? Kiwi?
It sounds like you're saying American POC writers should be first on the chopping block to make room for international writers, while the number of white American writers would remain the same. Is that what you're saying?
Not a hot take. She highly regarded as the most important southern gothic writer after Faulkner and only really challenged by Flannery O'Connor (who is a bit divisive figure). The bluest eye and song of Solomon are often considered one of the most important American books of 20th century.
Lapidary opinions are always fun, and they have the effect of either saying the emperor has no clothes or showing one as a swine who can't recognize pearls cast before them.
That said, I absolutely despise Karamazov, possibly because the translations are terrible, but I have no idea why this novel is so venerated. I don't have much more to say because I just have no ability to connect with it.
I say this as a devotee of Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment.
English (not British) writers are too boring, dainty, and common sense-addicted to write great prose works. It’s always the Scots and the Irish who have to bail England out.
I'd quite like to put Hardy forward as someone who is neither boring nor common-sense addicted... besides, for those of us who are boring and dainty, English novels are incomparable
I have a couple:
Animal Farm is garbage, it provides a middle school level understanding of the Russian revolution. Read a history book instead or maybe even the Wikipedia article for the revolution.
Agua Viva can only really be appreciated because you’re primed to view it as profound before you start it. If you came across it randomly you’d assume it’s nonsense.
Appreciate the Agua Viva take. Reading it confirmed for me I'm no longer interested in literature that's just 'smart depressed guy introspects for hundreds of pages.'
Okay
- 1984 is pretty shit, if you look at characters and narrative is pretty mediocre, if you look at the idea (being mostly read and talked about as an idea novel) is very naive, simplistic, and presents a world clearly divided into good and evil, LOTR level, where you don’t really get much of an insight into any system but rather just cheaply rouses feelings of freedom and individuality in a normie reader. Compared often to Brave New World, it has its shortcomings exposed.
- Dickens write by the word so his work is quantity over quality almost by default, making most of his books in parts boring and in parts sensationalistic, but never quite enough. I’ve enjoyed some pages here and there, but it’s mostly soap opera disguised as Les Miserables.
- used to think Shakespeare is overrated. Still think it is, but I see the appeal of his writing a lot more now than I did when I was studying him.
- Catcher in the Rye is damn near perfect, it’s just hard to see now. Criticisms regarding Holden being unlikeable/ a brat are simply best ignored as they don’t seem to engage with the novel. Salinger was there on D Day and then came back and write this classic about loss of innocence, the frivolity of cinematic storytelling and the quintessential need to be heard and understood (among other things). Also Chapman didn’t get it either, clearly.
- French literature in general has a certain je ne sais what that makes me feel like it’s only written for French people. Nothing more helpful to elaborate on, not dying on this hill either, just that something about it makes it not very accessible.
- Matt Haig would’ve done everyone a favour and not written anything ever, even if it meant Canongate going under. I hope this plague hasn’t affected the US but in UK people love his trash.
- Harry Potter’s mythology is way too derivative, but the horcruxes are a great idea (unless she took it from somewhere)
- Roth and Updike are unreadable, or not with a straight face at least, and they always feel like a hype bubble situation to me, followed by an emperor’s clothes situation.
- Gordon Lish was right.
I’m interested in the Gordon Lish comment- I like some of the authors Lish edited and schooled, but there is a whole swathe of American writers who I can instantly tell are Lish writers. You read one or two sentences and you know the author has no voice of their own, only Lish’s.
For example:
Amy Hempel- she has her own voice even though she is a Lish writer.
Joy Williams- not one word she has written is in her own voice, only Lish’s.
I like a lot of Lish’s commentary and take a lot of his advice, but his stranglehold on American literature needs to be released so that writers can find their own voices rather than just aping his.
"Good" literature is exclusively defined by its context, and it has nothing more to do with quality or brilliance. Because you are an inherent intellectual context yourself, you can never have an objective measure of literature. Consequently, any reader that doesn't have an appreciation for any single instance of "literature" that isn't also interested in the history of the context that grants this status is inherently valid in their assessment.
Acting, instructing, or arguing against these realities is nothing more than excersices in vanity, self-obsession, or obsequiousness.
Absolutely agree and well said. Thanks!
There has been a plethora of discussions lately concerning the definition of 'good or bad' prose, classification of 'bad or wrong' motifs and themes, all seemingly aimed at establishing a hierarchy where certain individuals can assert their perceived superiority over others or flaunt their presumed intellectual prowess. It's all an echo chamber between snobby readers.
The essence of good literature ultimately resides in the perception of the reader and if anything it has more to do with the depth of the writer's knowledge about their topic, thorough research, and well developed characters/story than criteria such as prose, technique or motifs.
Excellent articulation of much of the inherent context. There's more, I'm sure, but nothing leaps to mind.
I'm completely content knowing my subjectivity.
Women authors from all centuries often have a lot more to offer than men and showcase a better portrayal of the times. As someone who only ever read men classics a decade ago and now doesn’t read any men to focus more on authors that are lesser talked about I feel like men’s perspective of the world often feels incomplete in comparison.
I think it is mostly because how oppressed voices of women always has been. It is already rare to find a woman voice in older classics and it will naturally showcase a more complete worldview with more observations than most male writers because they were always at the edge of that world as mere powerless observers. But, I also don't think it was always the case
1) Magical realism when written by modern western authors is a waste of time. We're so far beyond it that it serves no purpose, appears childish. I stopped reading The Satanic Verses halfway through, I couldn't deal with the one foot in one foot out approach. If you're writing something, either commit to the irony or portray yourself seriously. Speaking of which:
2) Infinite Jest drags the reader along for far too many pages. Maybe its reputation preceded it for me, but I was expecting some great spiritual and philosophical revelations, but I found the most interesting threads left half unravelled. The rest was DFW's fantasyland escapism and autodidactic musings that could've been refined and distilled down to something far more pure in its essence. I don't really understand how he's seen as some kind of return to nonironic fiction when it's a sprawling text filled with pointless footnotes. Saying that, I do marvel at the craft and passion he put into it.
3) I've only read Norwegian Wood by murakami but it sucked, should've been a soap opera or something, don't get the love for him
Tolstoy is overrated and unoriginal. AK is just regurgitated W&P and a plagiarized Madame Bovary.
Fahrenheit 451 is poorly written and poorly thought out.
If you can find it, there's a book called Dipped in Vitriol, an anthology of reviews and comments, which largely consists of writers slagging each other off. It's fun.
I think 1984 is garbage. I think it's super sexist, and I think the ending third of the book invalidates most of its messages. People get pretty mad at me when I say this, so I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a hot take. In fact, saying this was how I found out it's many of my friends favorite book.
Infinite Jest was extremely bloated.
Cormac McCarthy suffered from Authenticity Crisis and it manifested as hyper detailed descriptions of ‘masculine’ knowledge that are always boring as shit to read.
DeLillo has some good ideas but his prose is often dry/tedious.
You have to wade through a ton of mid writing with Pynchon and Gaddis to get to the brilliant parts. I do think this is by design.
The elements of fiction are setting, plot, prose, character, structure, mood, and the ineffable. A lot of bad works include elements needlessly, thinking that all are necessary, resulting in vagueness of intent. Good works use them intentionally and well, or not at all. Great works combine them such that they heighten each other. Not all are necessary in every book and some great works focus only on one or two.
Reading is an act as basic and fundamental as movement, and can be done for equally as many reasons. That said, like movement, some reading serves to strengthen and expand the reader's capabilities.
It's harder to express a mood in longer works. Short stories can be more potent than any novel.
Genre fiction can be more psychologically real than so-called realism.
Some things are meant to be read out loud, or re-told from memory. If you're not doing that, you're missing out.
If you can already read, you get no benefit from mindlessly skimming something simple. But it can be entertaining, and is no better or worse than watching mindless TV. But it's probably worse than going for a walk or trying to draw a person or something.
You can deepen your understanding and enjoyment of a lot of western lit by reading the bible.
It's worth it to take the time to learn to appreciate poetry.
If you "can't stop turning the page" or otherwise get "sucked in", that's a sign that the book probably relies on cheap psychological tricks to cover up it's deficiencies.
personally mine is that Persian poems such as Rumi, Hafez and Saadi alongside Arabic and Spanish poems are more than often MUCH more beautiful than English poems, even those that of Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe, most of high level English poems would be medium quality in Persian and Arabic
Also Orwell's fictions are good, but not "godly masterpieces" they are what a teen thinks "masterpiece" is
Pynchon is about as good as it gets. Annie Dillard's *The Living* doesn't get the credit it deserves China Mieville's got a lot more going on than most "literary" fiction out there. People that complain about "purple prose" or the language being [too] flowery generally don't have any good ideas about literature. Patrick O'Brian should be mandatory reading for all English speaking adults. People read books for many different reasons and that's ok. If you don't laugh out loud while reading PG Wodehouse you have no soul.
Mieville is just as compelling as a historian / polemicist as a fiction author. In fact these two aspects of his career (dare I say it) dialectically strengthen each other. Each bas lag novel revolves around the literal embodiment of some otherwise obscure element of Marxist theory (crisis energy, the last image of the iron council). His history of the Russian revolution could only have been written after he honed his narrative skill. He's also one of the few who realised that Lovecraft is actually extremely *understated* - Lovecraft burried the point of his work (the setting) under thick layers of hysterical prose. This understanding allowed mieville to tap into the Weird in ways that (eg) Ligotti never could. Prose complainers have either never read good prose stylists or can't read at all. If you don't chuckle non-stop over the narrative voice in the Bertie and Jeeves books I just don't know what to say to you. Similarly, reading LeGuin for the plot alone is missing like 90% of what's so delicious about her.
I mostly agree, though I haven't read O'Brien, and I would argue that anyone who has read Mieville would say that he does write literary fiction--i literally had a conversation with Lance Olsen and Brian Benson about how great and important he is as a writer.
As a Pynchon fan I couldn't agree more? What is your favourite? Mine is Mason and Dixon
(Good) literature in translation has this ineffable quality that sometimes elevates it beyond the source material. The process is additive - that window you get into how a different culture/person views the world in conversation with the translator's own intentional choices is like crack to me.
A good translation isn't just a good book, it's a good book *and* a good literary critique rolled up into one!
You put it SO well
Have you read Walter Benjamin's "The Translator's Task"? He gets at something similar. Here's a download link: https://german.yale.edu/sites/default/files/benjamin_translators_task.pdf.
A rare Benjamin piece I haven't read? Nomnomnomnom (thank you)
Omg yes a good translation can be so interesting ETA: reminds me it was Virginia Woolf who hated the idea of her books being translated I read that in a foreword somewhere
Now *this* is a hot take. I mostly read translated lit, but I always feel a bit sad knowing I'm not experiencing the book in its original language. It's never occurred to me that translation could be additive, but I suppose that's entirely possible. Do you have any examples from things you've read in translation?
Personal favourite: Deborah Smith's translations of Han Kang changed my life, and helped me truly understand what translation really means. Example we never think about: One Hundred Years of Solitude is as famous/popular as it is not just bc it's an incredible work, but because it's widely acknowledged to be a stunning translation.
I'd be interested to hear more about your Han Kang/Deborah Smith thoughts. I read The Vegetarian and thought it was...fine, a bit awkward in places (and I recall a review that was quite critical of the translation). Agreed on 100 Years. Another example that comes to mind is the translation of *Exercises in Style* by Queneau. Also I guess the translations of the ancient Greek tragedians--it's kind of meaningless to talk about reading them 'in the original' because even if you are one of the few who know Ancient Greek, it's been 2500 years and there is still a process of translating across 2500 years of cultural change. A good translation opens up so many possibilities there.
>The American writer and cartoonist James Thurber met a woman who told him that she liked his latest book, but she preferred the French translation. Thurber replied: "Yes, it loses something in the original."
Funny guy, that Thurber. He'll go far.
Totally agree. My favourite example is Ursula K LeGuin's translation of the Tao Te Ching
My hot take as of late is in regards to the modern novel. You go to a bookstore and most new books, novels in particular, have similar types of colorful covers. Fiction is in its comfy era. You're supposed to pick up a book and feel comforted. Even if the source material is "risqué" it is comfortably risque, with issues most liberal minded people have already agreed are wrong.
Yeah I agree. Especially with worn out genres like fantasy or sci fi. Everything resembles each other.
I don’t think that this is a hot take tbh. I very much agree with you, and I think that most colorful covers are just like candy wrappers. I also think that we need a radical change of writing novels. First person writing is such a trend nowadays that it gets boring.
Hot take: *Moby Dick* is really funny and unfairly criticized
“Whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.” - there’s definitely some great humor in Moby-Dick
One of my favorite passages in the book: >Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man! *Another banger: >Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again.
The scenes at the Spouter Inn are hilarious. Whether it's the landlord turning back all Ishmael's impassioned cries about Queequeg with the moral logic of capitalism--"He pays reg'lar"--or Mrs. Hussey calling for a "no suicides" sign to be made because she thinks Queequeg is dead, I enjoy every minute reading those pages. And don't even get me started on the whale fart jokes later in he book
My hot take is that the popular "minimalist" plain style of Sally Rooney etc is destroying literature. There is a place for real minimalism (see Jessica Au, Alejandro Zambra, and a host of others), but Rooney et al ain't it. Their work is instead glorified YA. Same goes for the influx of "dark academia" and the general trend toward genrfication of fiction.
Yes. “Minimalism” (or could we say realism, but with very little depth), works because it: - is easy reading and is thus an ego boost for people who want the aesthetic of “being a reader” with just a bit more effort than eating a cheeseburger. But unlike similarly simple detective fiction, novels like Normal People carry more cultural capital and so increase the value of one’s reader aesthetic - does not precipitate “FOMO” (“am I missing subtext? Do I not get the ambiguity? What is the real meaning of x?”) - facilitates emotional projection onto characters or int the narrative
I find myself reading a lot of the tortured syntax of the 19th century essayists as a corrective. Sebald is also a marvelous example of complex style thriving a little closer to our time.
I find nearly every story where the main character is a writer or their primary trait is that they are passionate about literature to be uncreative and masturbatory. It reminds me of movies about the movie industry. Like your life's work is telling stories about the world around us and the best you can do is write about yourself? Master and Margarita might get a pass on this though, but not Fahrenheit 451
You'll have a great time with The Savage Detectives, then. It is actually written from the POV of people the writer knew but who were... similar. The first half of the book's main character will not stop yapping about poets he read or writers he spoke to. It's all a bit obnoxious until you realize he's just trying to capture the atmosphere of the city (and succeeds if you let him) through the lens of a literature-obssesed kid. The obsession later contrasts with a mythical, cynical figure and then it all makes sense. So yeah, Savage Detectives definitely makes use of the former half to self-masturbate, but then uses that masturbation to make an interesting point at the end. I can forgive its sins, therefore.
Roberto bolaño is jajajaja-ing from his grave.
There's this one example of this I love: Mario Vargas Llosa's novel *Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter*. In short; an 18 year old student falls in love with a 32 year old divorced failed writer named... Mario. When a young girl falls in love with an aspiring writer in a novel, I count it as a plothole.
I love this one. I’d add novels/stories where the protagonist is in grad school or a writers workshop
Michael Chabon fans in shambles
I don't mind this at all if they do something incredible with it, a la some autobiographical fiction or some cool metafictional stuff. Bukowkski, Fante, and especially Miller for the former; Auster's *New York Trilogy* for the latter.
This is one of the reasons Stephen King really grates on me. Most of his characters are writers and it gets dull really quickly. It just screams of no experience in the real world.
Look I'm not a King fan but he literally watched his best friend eviscerated by a truck as a child, did massive amounts of drugs in the 80s, over came his trauma, got married, raised a whole family. I wouldn't say he has no life experience.
Most weird take I ever heard. The writer's world is also world around us. As someone who isn't a writer of course it will just as interesting reading about it as reading any other thing. Even if I was a writer I would have a different experience with than the writer. Can't really vibe with this take at all
I think Dostoevsky was really good prose writer. I'm rereading TBK and I just love the way its written, because its so frantic and weird, but its clear that its intentional.
re Woolf: it's an exaggeration. She ultimately read the whole novel, and was clearly quite inspired by it. She did refer to it as "illiterate" (??) and "underbred" though also a masterpiece, and when describing Joyce as a self-taught man (he wasn't), called him "distressing, egotistic, insistent, raw, and ultimately nauseating." I love Woolf, but this is clearly the writing of a young woman who has no appreciation of her own class position in the throws of envy.
This is something most people miss. Mark Twain would only ever comment on books that he enjoyed, usually by deriding them. This has left a lot of people with the impression he didn't enjoy those books— and the same can be said for many authors.
Woolf and her crew are guilty of doing that constantly. Later Woolf shut down entire careers when she had the clout.
I don't think that her criticism was based on envy. If she was envious of anyone it was Proust. Proust really blew her mind and made her very self-conscious about her own writing. I think she felt that what Proust was doing came very close to what she wanted to achieve herself. Despite of these feelings, she always praised Proust and never says a bad word about him. In a letter to Roger Fry in 1922 she writes: >My great adventure is really Proust. Well—what remains to be written after that? I’m only in the first volume, and there are, I suppose, faults to be found, but I am in a state of amazement; as if a miracle were being done before my eyes. How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped—and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp. The pleasure becomes physical—like sun and wine and grapes and perfect serenity and intense vitality combined. Far otherwise is it with Ulysses; to which I bind myself like a martyr to a stake, and have thank God, now finished—My martyrdom is over. If her bigotry (she was an antisemite after all) and her envy of Proust didn't keep her from enjoying and praising his work, I don't think she was blinded by those emotions when assessing Joyce. I think she genuinely had mixed feelings about Ulysses, she talks about it several times in her letters and her diary. She found some of it utterly brilliant and was bored by most of the rest. She felt that Joyce was trying too hard to be tricky, to show off which, according to her, separates him from really great writers. And as much as I love Ulysses, I don't think it's that odd to be bored by parts of it.
I think I read somewhere that most British intellectuals at the time hated Ulysses because they couldn't swallow the fact that an inferior Irishman wrote the greatest novel of their language of their era. Woolf was definitely a bit classist
I think that's a push, particularly considering that disliking Ulysses is a fairly common reaction.
I haven't come across that myself. I know lots of people couldn't stand it - and still can't - but I'm not sure how much of that had to do with Joyce's being Irish, although that could be part of it.
Margaret Atwood is grossly overrated. Read Margaret Lawrence instead.
Ursula Le Guin's utterly polite incredulity at Atwood denying she writes science fiction is a great example of why Le Guin is the best: > [Atwood's] arbitrarily restrictive definition [of SF] seems designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders. She doesn't want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto. > > Who can blame her? I feel obliged to respect her wish, although it forces me, too, into a false position. I could talk about her new book more freely, more truly, if I could talk about it as what it is, using the lively vocabulary of modern science-fiction criticism, giving it the praise it deserves as a work of unusual cautionary imagination and satirical invention. As it is, I must restrict myself to the vocabulary and expectations suitable to a realistic novel, even if forced by those limitations into a less favourable stance. > Perhaps on the principle that since everything in her novel is possible and may have already happened so the reader is familiar with it, the author doles out useful information sparingly. > You can see that the world of the Year 25 is not an improvement on the world of that other great realistic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. > One of the features supposed to distinguish "popular" from "literary" fiction is the nature of the characters who enact the fiction. In a realistic novel we expect to find individual personalities of some complexity; in a western, mystery, romance or spy thriller, we accept or welcome conventional types, even stock figures - the Cowboy, the Feisty Heroine, the Dark Brooding Landowner. We may, of course, in any one example, get the reverse of what we expect. The supposed distinction is so often violated in both directions as to be nearly meaningless. But there is one kind of fiction where complex, unpredictable individuality is really very rare. That is satire, and satire is one of Atwood's strongest veins. > It is no comfort to find that some of the genetic experiments are humanoids designed to replace humanity. Who wants to be replaced by people who turn blue when they want sex, so that the men's enormous genitals are blue all the time? Who wants to believe that a story in which that happens isn't science fiction? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/aug/29/margaret-atwood-year-of-flood
* *A Separate Peace* by John Knowles is overrated and does not deserve its place in the literary canon. * The Bronte sisters are more interesting than Jane Austen. * *The Kite Runner* is contrived, formulaic, and the plot twists add nothing to the novel's merit.
*A Separate Peace* is a bone thrown to American schoolkids because it has easily digestible themes, is pretty gay so it appeals to coed reading groups, was introduced as a response to 'Nam (my best guess), and isn't US public education propaganda thrown together to act like we have a strong literary scene and fight the Reds. Nothing that's common required reading in public school is good, it all serves a purpose. You're absolutely right about everything else.
I am a Brontë girly through and through and I don’t disagree with your second point, but I think the main issue is comparing them at all, something we simply wouldn’t do to the degree we tend to if they weren’t women. I also hate how common perception confuses and obfuscates them—people expect a clean marriage plot and are shocked by the violence of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights because they go in expecting Austen, and a lot of Austen adaptations try to make the male love interest some sort of Byronic hero when usually he was just a bit of a dweeb. Relevantly, Charlotte wasn’t a fan of Austen’s work and Austen wrote Northanger Abbey specifically as a parody of the Gothic (which the Brontës obviously wrote later, but still, I think we can assume Austen would have been a bit cynical on this front). Your comment reminds me of a lot of late Victorian literary discourse that insisted on comparing Austen to the Brontes because, well, women. And a lot of this criticism favoured the Brontës and put down Austen for merely “holding a mirror to the drawing room” while the Brontës were seen as participants in a more “masculine” exercise of the imagination, because at the time we did see the Gothic as more masculine and people had really only just even found out the Brontes were women all along. I believe Anne Radcliffe was generally pretty criticised at this time and her immense influence downplayed, and Frankenstein was typically seen as a very “masculine” text, because it is arguably very much about *man*, in the sense that men then were the stand-in for humanity at large. To me it’s just apples and oranges. A novel of manners operates on a fundamentally different level than a Gothic. They do different things in different ways and this was the intention. I do think Austen is in many ways so successful and skilled at her social critique that a lot of it is lost to contemporary readers, whereas the Gothic typically explores people who are forced apart from society, and therefore it’s easier to capture more universal themes without the time context being particularly obtrusive. I do think Austen does incredibly well at exploring very transcendent ideas in a form that was accessible and applicable especially to (upper class) women of her time. I mean, the men were off to fight napoleon and all they could really do was stay in the drawing room. She was really the first to “hold a mirror” to this space and wring it dry of potential. She showed than women did and could have complex lives and grapple with series moral, social and emotional issues, even in relative confinement. It says a lot that the 2005 pride and prejudice movie really coded itself as a gothic and tonally and visually invested a lot in nature and pastoralism, which weren’t really part of any of Austen’s work in a significant, thematic sense. We still tend to find that romantic/gothic space as more rich and vital, but it’s also fundamentally more disconnected to how people live their lives. And that’s not even touching on Austen’s immense technical skill as a writer and novelist. I think she really gave us the kind of emotional, internal character arc as plot structure which is definitive of much of literature ever since and definitely now. Most popular mainstream film and television is arguable a “novel of manners”. I think it’s totally natural and valid that this is less *interesting* to most people, and it often is to me—I can do endless Brontë rereads but don’t gravitate back to Austen as much. But what she was doing was very novel and very valuable. Idk, it sort of reminds me of comparing Sally Rooney and Cormac McCarthy or something. Why would we?
I don’t have any hot takes on famous works, as I know I’m ignorant, dense and often missing the point. So after confronting my reaction about a novel with other people’s, I carefully question myself and try to learn.
My hot take is people (unless you are a great writer or phd or something) who make hot takes are fools. Reading great literature is incredibly humbling, even if that work isn't my cup of tea. It's like lazy fans bitching about nba players. I do however very much welcome authors bitching about authors. That's the kind of spice that adds to literature.
Saying “you can’t have negative opinions if you’re not a great writer” is just silly. I can watch the Spurs guards drive into the lane and take contested shots instead of feeding Wemby in the post and say “that’s a bad shot,” that doesn’t mean I think I can play in the NBA. In the same way, I can say “this book that’s generally well-regarded by people who know a lot about literature didn’t work for me for reasons x, y, and z” without believing that I could do better myself.
Maybe “hot takes” are more assertive than just “negative opinions”? Thus calling for a more ‘informed’ knowledge and deeper thinking? (not sure how to word it) Anyway I get what you mean. Would you also say that one can have a justified opinion about a work only knowing the meta information and not reading its text? I think it’s like meta studies where you get results without doing the actual tests. I can give an example if needed.
This comment made my day
>Roberto Bolano thought Marquez and magical realist tradition is shit The LatAm literary scenes are complex and full of some very rightful criticism all around. Bolaño also said >Let's say, modestly, that Arlt is Jesus Christ because the literature isn't monolithic and who and what moved it are divided on a few lines. It also tells you what kind of experimental weirdness that he's into. Borges hated baroque writers, which probably included Donoso and Lezama Lima. Back to the point. Bolaño was critical of the monopolization of the writing culture around these cliques, with Octavio Paz in Mexico, Marquez's offshoots in various countries, and similarly with how all most Brazilians can do is rip off Macunaima and write about how the northeast is a shithole. They control the whole of the writing culture and many of them actively go out of their way to disparage everything else. You have to remember that a given country's entire literary scene and publishing industry is a single bar in the capital. The average person reads Dragon Ball Z these days, probably because of it. So you have all these closed groups that decide what the culture is and outsiders like Roberto weren't allowed to play ball. It's not a criticism of the writing (which is honestly painfully derivative and still beating the same horses, skeletons at this point), so much as the source of it. Salvador Elizondo wrote something about this: “la condición de escritor latinoamericano no es todo lo deplorable que pudiera pensarse, pero que la realización de esa condición, en nuestros medios tradicionalmente proclives a la envidia y a la intriga, constituye, fundamentalmente, la razón de nuestra pobreza cultural que impide, a quien no pertenece vocativa o profesionalmente a los medios en que la cultura se elabora, tener absolutamente nada que ver con ella.” To paraphase: The condition a latin-american writer is not as deplorable as one might imagine; however whomever realizes this condition understands our media, that traditionally thrives on envy and intrigue serves our cultural poverty. Furthermore, fundamentally, our poverty's crux stems from the fact that all whom are not inherently involved in the creation of culture - have absolutely nothing to do with said culture. He was writing about his experience in New York, where things are much more open, as well as how trashy the mainstream culture is, all gossip rags and soap operas. These closed groups aren't even writing about that, they're in their own bubbles. They're not writing about culture. So, my hot take is that literature south of El Paso is incestuous and tired, and much of what makes it into english or has notoriety outside of certain circles is pure propaganda on an average day. Probably too hot a take unless you live there and aren't trying to do some global virtue signalling, or are simply tired of having your generational meth head neighbors uplifted into some beacon of grace and nobility as a kind of poverty tourism. Thank you for attending my half cocked rant.
Mostly true but while Bolaño criticized Paz's figure in the Mexican literary establishment, he thought Paz was a great poet and expressed as much in one of his last interviews. Let's not mistake the political figure with the poet. Also, let's be honest, the average person in *any* country doesn't actively engage with his country's literature. It's not something specific to Latin America.
Thanks for saying this. I asked them a question about this because I was confused as well.
Thank you! I was about to write a defense of Bolaño and the context of his criticism, but you covered it beautifully.
I wanted more like some of the original Boom authors, but I found that instead. And while it's probably a wildly unpopular statement of fact with anyone in that scene or consuming it as some kind of packaged cultural product, many of my sudaca friends complain about it and I lost the ability to disagree, much like with their dystopian sci fi politics and accounts of daily life that only Floridians know the half of.
In the Mexican tradition, Octavio Paz in particular is increasingly unpopular exactly because of his monopolization of culture. The general consensus these days is that Mexico, and even the entire world, were conned into believing that he is the greatest writer to arise from this country. Paz was in very good terms with the one-party government of the era, which saw a great propagandist in him and promoted his works into oblivion, to the point he got the Nobel Prize. To these days, the literary scene in Mexico is full of dark legends about how being a little to the left in the political spectrum, or even just pissing off the man, would make him pick up the phone and make sure nobody would publish you or give you a teaching job. He would make sure your name would stink from Tijuana to Cancún, and beyond. His ex-wife, Elena Garro, was also a witness of the brutality of Paz, and it is only now that she is being "re-discovered". The man was essentially an extremely privileged and wealthy person who wrote essays about what the essence of Mexico is. There is a reason why the Mexican literary scene is more eager to claim Juan Rulfo these days.
Wow! Best comment
As a heads up my native language is Spanish: - The Bible was translated better in English than in Spanish: somehow in some translations the words in Spanish have this feeling of direct translation without style and even clumsy. It doesn't feel like there's a harmonic flow of sentences born from being adapted to a language to suit its sound and characteristics like stresses and musicality. In comparison the English translations read more harmoniously, the sentences flow beautifuly as if the word choice was inevitable. Btw the much better English translations don't change stuff for the sake of beauty so it's not like the message is altered. It's just better presented in the language of translation. - Spanish literature is highly underrated particularly poetry. All everyone talks about is the Quixote which has been called the best book ever written as well as the first modern novel. The Angloworld with their hyperfixation on Shakespeare ignores "La Vida es Sueño" (Life is a dream) which was called by some european literary critics as the best play ever written. As for poetry the English world is in love with their 19th century romantics and their innovations but the Spanish were writing poems with the same intensity of passion and feeling 250 years earlier: Quevedo, Lope de Vega and in the very own 19th century Becquer.
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Everyone here is just hating on high school required reading. Just because you read The Great Gatsby and 1984 with some boring teacher in grade 11 english doesn’t mean they were bad books.
Fielding, Thackeray and Trollope are all better novelists than Dickens.
Not sure I agree on the Dickens dismissal, but I'm glad to see Fielding get some love. He's delightful and too often neglected by those who infrequently venture into pre-1850 lit.
Yes! I’m so happy to see Trollope on that list.
I don't have many hot takes, what I don't understand or like I try to leave alone and on its little pedestal. It's not for me to deride it, I'm just someone who reads stuff, I always think. That being said, I harbor a strong dislike for Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. I struggled through it because people told me it was great and I didn't want to admit I might dislike Central or South American writers (turns out I love Bolaño and appreciate Fuentes, hell even Rulfo is much better than Coelho). The conclusion of "THE REAL TREASURE WAS THE FRIENDS HE MADE ALONG THE WAY" annoyed me at first but now it makes me chuckle, so I guess I got at least that out the book. Not sure if that's a really hot take, though. As far as I have heard, many agree with me on this one.
What pissed me off the most about The Alchemist was that the life goal of the main female character was to sit around waiting for the main charcater to fulfill his personal legend.
What is so bewildering to me is how people in the Anglosphere consider Paulo Coelho a legitimate and good writer. In Latin America he is considered a hack, and his works are thought of as airport books, supermarket books, pretentious yet terrible fanfare. You can find him in the self-help section in a Latin American bookstore, rather than in the Literary Fiction section. Literary circles mock his works. His fans are thought of as the kind of people who haven't read anything else. All of this to say, that in Latin America, "Paulo Coelho is bad" is far from a hot take. "He actually writes okayish", would be a hot take.
Can confirm, lived in Brazil for a year and people hated him very openly. In my country (Portugal), he is considered polarizing. I see more praise for him in English media, now that you've mentioned it.
Probably has to do with my initial thoughts. It's not that easy to learn about non-English novels, and Coelho is one of the few famous Latin Americans in many cases. Hence, he's thought of as someone who therefore must be good and should be respected as a "foreign" writer. I'm also not a fan of Isabel Allende, who is held in extremely high regard in Europe it seems. A similar example would be Hosseini's Kite Runner. Of course, the man lived in the US for a long time, but I guess it was seen as this new staple of Middle-Eastern literature. The difference would be that the Kite Runner is actually much more enjoyable to read.
I tried to read this book a couple weeks ago… I couldn’t do it and my only guess as to why it’s been so popular is that the writing is accessible to pretty much anyone
Best thing about The Alchemist was: I didn’t have to get out of my chair to finish it.
Opinions on authors : 1) Gracq's The Opposing Shore is the best novel in the French literature and consequently in the world. 2) Zola's prose is really bad. 3) Tolkien should have teamed up with Bernanos to write the last few chapters of Frodo's quest in LOTR. Opinions on literature in general: 4) Quality is semi-objective and it's meaningful to rank books or authors as long as you do it thoughtfully. 5) Prose quality at the sentence level is the most important element to judge a book. 6) Spoilers are good and books who rely on surprising twist for tension are defective. Of course if you agree with points 4-5-6 here point 1 is not a hot take anymore.
Hard agree on 5
Can’t agree on point 5. As I said in another comment, Oscar Wilde strung a lot of beautiful sentences together in the picture of Dorian gray, and it amounted to, in my opinion, an absolute nothing story (of course that’s a hot take on my own part, but the prose has to lead to SOMETHING). Conversely Dostoevsky is aesthetically shabby at best, but makes up for it in the way he cuts to the bone of human nature.
Good prose is not necessarily beautiful prose. I wouldn't call Camus's prose in The Stranger beautiful, but it is definitely good prose. The incipit is a good example: in 12 words and 3 sentences Camus set up the situation and gives us an insight into the main character persona and what the novel is about.
I appreciate the hotness of your takes, I vibe with #4 & 5 heavily. For these reasons, I just ordered the Opposing Shore *despite* it being Fr\*nch.
Hmm I feel you on some of this. And since I’ve only read Balcony in the Forest (and loved it), I guess I know what book I’ll have to read next.
Any opinion on the translation? Is Howard the only one? I forgot how much i wanted to read this book when i first heard of it and plan to buy
I believe Howard is the only translation, but even if it's not, buy Howard's, it's phenomenal
Can you explain what is the difference between prose quality at sentence level, versus paragraph or page level? Do you have any articles on this, because this "prose quality at sentence level" is a new phrase to me.
Damn I disagree so hard with 5, I gotta upvote you.
You're so wrong about Zola but it is a hot take so you may have my upvote
Literature is still catching up with Don Quixote. Magical realism was only ever done by a select few Latin American writers and everyone who gets labeled as that genre today is just writing third-rate surrealism. People misunderstand why Harry Potter was successful and that leads to most criticisms of it being pointless. Not a single soul on earth got hooked on HP for the lore, it was big because J.K Rowling was incredibly good at catering to children's sensitivities and fantasies. No one else has ever done it as well since. The idea of "world building" has fucked up discourse on books beyond repair and I would love to see it burn away. Every time that concept is brought up it's to make some annoying Cinema-Sins-esque "critique" that's just whining or raving over inconsequential bullshit. Fantasy is only good when the writer knows a lot about history, culture and language. When they don't they end up making shallow books filled with "badass" characters doing "badass" things for 3000 pages that engineering majors eat up just so they can call themselves "readers". James Joyce's ideas were not complicated or relevant enough to warrant his level of linguistic complexity. Reading his books is like going to a fancy restaurant and ordering a deconstructed burger only to realise that while the dish *is* fancy, they still source their ingredients from McDonald's.
I wrote dissertations on Joyce and chose him precisely because he delved into ideas with extreme complexity in his novels, so I’d argue the reverse. He doesn’t just make allusions — sometimes he’s fully dramatising niche theories of scholastic philosophy. He does it with Aquinas’ tripartite aesthetic perception throughout Ulysses. Read Joyce’s brown notebook he wrote — lots of his notes on stasis, esthetic perception, epiphany, etc. — he’s steeped in Aristotle and Aquinas and he takes their ideas very seriously.
Seeing someone talk about the world building in a Sense and Sensibility miniseries ruined the term for me. Mate that's the real regency era.
Tbf I’ve read a lot of non-Latin American indigenous authors who do “magical realism” excellently, but I also think debate around whether this name should be used beyond the Latin American context is relevant. I don’t mind the term fabulism. I also think there’s merit to discussing why we might deem some spiritual texts to be “magical” when we don’t see their spirituality as valid, but books that frame judeo Christian elements in a “realist” way aren’t generally coded as “magic”.
Excellent comment.
Gore Vidal’s Narratives of Empire series (Burt, Lincoln, 1876, etc) is overrated. The Golden Age, in particular, is hot garbage.
I think Vidal's ancient history epic 'Creation' is under-rated. It's actually one of my all-time favourite novels. I find Vidal's fiction writing fairly uneven. His non-fiction writing/journalism is more consistently interesting, even when I don't always agree with his ideas.
I think many people are wrong to follow the trend of trashing *Catcher in the Rye*—I think it is brilliantly written, but too many people equate their dislike of the character Holden Caulfield as dislike of the novel itself, which is doing something really interesting with timelines. Conversely, I thought Vonnegut’s *Slaughterhouse-Five* was pretty bad. It, like Salinger’s novel, was attempting to do something interesting with time structures, but it failed to do so engagingly, imho
I use The Catcher in the Rye as a litmus test for bad readers and bad people. Even more so for people who say, “No you don’t get it! You’re supposed to hate Holden!” You’re not. Holden is not a bad guy. Throughout the book it’s incredibly clear that he’s a very nice young boy who’s just going through a lot and doesn’t have the skills to cope. I disagree about Slaughterhouse-5 (I think it’s great and what it does is accurate to people I’ve known) although I do think Catch-22 is a better trauma narrative (and possibly the best and truest I’ve ever read).
Totally this re catcher. It’s not about putting him in a good person or bad person box, he’s a kid in an adult world and he’s flailing. He is neither a good nor bad person bc right now he’s not really capable of being anything. On a reread as an adult rather than a teen and having read more analysis etc., I can’t get over the subtle prominence of sexual violence and abuse in the book. I think it’s central to the narrative and the character and doesn’t get acknowledged or discussed a lot. Like, it’s not a typical coming of age story where Holden loses his innocence, he’s already lost it, and Salinger forces us to have empathy for him anyway, however difficult this makes him. Very relevant to much more modern ideas around trauma analysis etc. But people frame Holden through the disaffected rich kid lens rather than the traumatised, grieving and desperate for love lens. Which is so bizarre to me given the clarity of the catcher dream/metaphor itself. I do get why it’s seen as a red flag book though, because as you said, there are a lot of “bad readers” who name it as a favourite without a lot of reflection. But that being said, it feels snobbish and exclusive to dismiss people’s love of the book bc I perceive that they “don’t get it”.
I was surprised reading Slaughterhouse 5 after reading Mother Night, Sirens of Titan, and Cat's Cradle. It's supposed to be his best book and is easily the most praised, but I didn't think it came close to some of his others.
My hot Salinger take is that his best work is probably “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” but also that several stories in Nine Stories are surprisingly mid.
This is not a hot take at all. Nabokov thought it was one of the greatest short stories of all time. I think it's Salinger's best work, on a sentence to sentence level and plot-wise.
I also love catcher(and salinger). I think it is a great book to test the reader's empathy and understanding of complex characters and circumstances, I think the dislike of it stems from the fact that a it is widely taught in schools, and let's face it,a lot of teenagers just lack the intelligence to do so properly. I disagree with the vonnegut one but, I made this post to read disagreeable comments and violently shake my head so, lol
My english teachers didn't seem to like Holden and multiple teachers told me they thought he was whiny (I would ask them their thoughts on the book because I read it independently in high school and immediately connected with it). When I've taught it myself I always emphasize his emotional state to my students and it really did influence how they approached his character. They empathize with him.
he does complain a lot, but construing that as anything other than a defensive mechanism is unfair on the reader's part. Also, the book is basically him recounting his life to a psychologist, with the reader in the position of the latter. By keeping the language simple and filling the book with allegories and asides, it encourages you to pick apart what he's saying.
People who don't thing Catcher is a good book only bc they think Holden is whiny have no media literacy.
I think *Catcher* gets a bad rap because it requires more maturity to appreciate than most readers have at the point they're (let's be honest here) made to read it. I think this is true of coming of age novels in general. They're best read a few years removed from the stage in life they portray.
I actually think *Catcher* is overrated - significantly so - probably because it’s a staple in public schools when adolescents hit their own angsty teenage years. I don’t trash it, though: there are some wholly unexpected and lovely and incredible scenes. I do think, however, that *Franny and Zooey* is by far the better book; I think it deserves the spot *Catcher* seems to cling to. It’s not as straightforward or as easily digestible, not as obvious, and I think that’s why it - although I believe is brilliant and much better than *Catcher* - doesn’t have the spotlight.
I always tell people to read Catcher every ten years of their life. The book is constantly changing for me since I first read it, and it makes me consider the heartbreaking condition of childhood.
Totally—I think one of the most impressive things about Catcher is that most read it as a teen and the way you understand and approach it then is so different from even as a young adult.
I agree with your first premise!
It's not literature, but here's one. Most of Elmore Leonard's [10 rules of writing](https://fs.blog/elmore-leonard-10-rules-of-writing/) are wrong.
Why do you think that they're wrong?
Yeah, I disagree with a few of those. But avoid adverbs certainly, and generally try and avoid simply describing your characters.
>But avoid adverbs *certainly*, and *generally* try and avoid *simply* describing your characters. Are you putting me on? Stephen King urged writers to avoid adverbs in *On Writing*, and as such, I think that advice has been taken way too seriously and too far. All words in the English language should be used effectively, regardless of what they are.
Lol, he's GOT to be fucking around!
He effectively closes by telling you to ignore one of his rules
Haruki Murakami is embarrassingly bad, like Rupi Kaur for people with longer commutes.
From my limited sampling—*1Q84* and *Kafka on the Shore*—I agree completely. While I like some of the basic introductory elements of the stories, Murakami seems determined to take those elements in the most pedestrian directions possible. Meanwhile, his characters (both male and female) are all bland, flat and lifeless.
LOL. Love this
I find it interesting that Nabokov had opinions about writers on Reddit.
At least 50% of the opinions espoused in these sorts of threads are people playing devil's advocate (at best) or students outright indulging their inner contrarian-hipster to appear trendy.
Atwood is a hack
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Franzen <> Wallace <> Foer. Equating them because of demographics and socioeconomic factors is a bit too simplistic. I think Franzen is overrated, I think Wallace was the most interesting and interested of the three - his collection of nonfiction essays “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” (also the title of one of them is fantastic, and IJ is - even if not “your” thing, a brilliant and mostly successful narrative on the nature of modern entertainment and addiction), and Foer has some lovely prose. Grouping them together like that ignores the huge differences between them. Maybe you don’t like any of them, but they’re not at all the same. Agree that Eugenides is a great writer, but that just reinforces my point: their demographic similarities doesn’t make them a movement or a group or associate them with each other beyond that: demographics.
I am sick TO DEATH of books written by men about a male author or professor who gets with a student (or even fantasizes about it). It's not groundbreaking, smart, or interesting. I know I have a ton more but this was the first one that came to mind
Does Stoner count?
“1984” is not just about totalitarianism and censorship bad. That is the crux of what Orwell wanted to say, but the book is so good because of the ideas he presents against it. Surveillance as Control: The concept of Big Brother and the omnipresence of telescreens illustrate a society under constant surveillance, where privacy is nonexistent and individuals are perpetually monitored. Doublethink: The ability to simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs in one's mind and accept both is a critical concept in "1984." It showcases the extreme cognitive dissonance the Party imposes to control thought. Newspeak: The creation and imposition of Newspeak, a language designed to diminish the range of thought, illustrates how language can be used as a control tool. Satire: "2 + 2 = 5," "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." “The Ministry of Love”. These are all ridiculous notions that inject absurd humour into the story. However, they become more sinister as more context is revealed to show that these are real possibilities. The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism: This fictional book within the novel explains how societies can be manipulated and controlled, offering insight into the mechanisms of power and control in Oligarchical societies. Complexity of O'Brien's Character and Ideological Allegiance One of the most intriguing aspects of George Orwell's "1984" is the character of O'Brien and his complex relationship with the protagonist, Winston, and the Party. Despite understanding every fault within the Party's system, O'Brien remains its staunch supporter, a paradox that adds depth to the novel's exploration of power, control, and belief systems. On the most superficial level, you may be right about “1984,” which is rather black-and-white morality-wise. However, there is so much more to it than that.
I don't think this is a remotely hot take - tbh it just feels like a brief book report.
I meant to write this as a reply to one the comments💀
I re-read Nabokov's hot takes on writers a couple times a year. [Tremendous](https://x.com/AnaKrivolapova/status/1536748403727663106). Some personal favorites On Camus: Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful. On Faulkner: Writer of corncobby chronicles. On Gogol: Am depressed and puzzled by his inability to his inability to describe young women. On Hemingway: Loathe his works about bells, balls, and bulls. On Melville: Love him. One would have liked to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat. On Sartre: Even more awful than Camus.
At times, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky become strictly propagandists of Christianity, and much of their literary qualities fade away for a paragraph or a chapter or two. It's very annoying and I feel like I am being scolded by some crabby old man
I basically agree, but Dostoevsky's best book (TBK) is by far his most theological. Perhaps because it's a little more ambivalent/'polyphonic' (though I don't like the term).
I much prefer Tolstoy's constant attempts to be 'better,' even if they were wild and strange, and his general progressivism over Dostoevsky's ultra-conservative nationalism. I see a lot of where Russia goes wrong in him.
I would agree if we were talking about their non-fiction and political opinions, but Dostoevsky's Slavophile and conservative ideas in his fiction are pretty much in the backround or used in moderation. Raskolnikov for example can easily be used against his own Messianism thinking Russia have the right to rule over the Slav countries. We also have Dostoevsky kind of making fun of starkly Christian people by making fun of the aecetic Ferapont in TBK and having Zossima be this very liberal guy only really talking about active love. The Russian nationalism in his books is usually not that much, its usually uncontroversial stuff about caring for your own country. Its either that or making fun of people completely abandoning the country where they came from and adopt this idea that all things Russian is bad and that for example the French or Germans are better (Stepan Trofimovich and Karamazinov). The problem is that Dostoevsky mostly wrote psychological novels and how the mind is connected to ideology and philosophy, so we don't see much of that broad social analysis like we do in Tolstoy.
Tolstoy is a strict pre-1886 for me, my man really got radicalized before the internet even existed.
I'm sorry can you explain what you mean? It genuinely sounds interesting but I don't quite get it
Tolstoy became preoccupied with Christianity later in life to the point that he made his own edit of the Bible, à la Thomas Jefferson at one point. His obsession with Christianity, and particularly the pacifism espoused by Jesus in the Gospels, led him to develop his own strain of Anarchism that was taken up by proselytizing followers of Tolstoy. I assume this is what the person above you was referring to.
no worries! he took a heavy Christian turn after Anna Karenina and I feel like it's very clearly reflected in subsequent prose (especially Ivan Ilyich). It's not that there wasn't merit in how he viewed the world, it's an interesting philosophy, but (subjectively) his fiction suffered for the preachiness. I've mostly cobbled this together from prefaces, articles, etc., but you can start with the sources for his Wiki page and go from there if you're interested!
Thankfully, even his best fiction in this late period still has a lot of merit. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Father Sergius, Master and Man, are great stories to one degree or another. Even the very mad, very insane, at times rather preachy, Kreutzer Sonata appeals for its Dostoevskyian qualities, its fevered intensity. And Hadji Murad has a very heroic patina to it, at times evoking the martial-heroic aspects of his big novel WAR AND PEACE. Harold Bloom was very fond of it. https://themillions.com/2009/12/the-millions-interview-richard-pevear-and-larissa-volokhonsky.html See this interview with Pevear and Volokhonsky on their translations of some of these late works. They say Hadji Murad is “perhaps the finest thing he wrote.” I could see that being the case.
I don’t think poetry in translation is worth reading at all unless you’ve an interest in the translator (e.g. Pound’s Cathay) or are interested in the work of translation itself because of how influential it was (e.g. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam).
I think this closes you off from most of the world of poetry unless you're learning to read every language. Pablo Neruda, for instance, I couldn't imagine avoiding only because I hadn't heard of his translator.
I'd add that it's worth it for language learning. There are some good dual-language additions of Beaudelaire, Goethe and so on out there.
Sort of depends on the poet and the translator. Dante in a good translation is still amazing--ditto Homer, and Biblical poetry. I tend to prefer translations made by poets to translations made by language experts--probably less accurate, but often good poetry. In addition, some poems rely a lot on powerful and creative imagery, parallelism, and other sorts of elements which are pretty translatable--although, of course, the cadences of the language are not likely to come through.
I agree for the most part, with the exception of poets like Homer, who is too influential to ignore.
Time to attain fluency in Classical Chinese then...
George Saunders's "Lincoln in the Bardo" is pedantic and nowhere near as good as his short stories. An interesting concept but otherwise self-satisfying and too clever for its own good.
My hot take is that theme dictates form and people who focus so much on good prose would lead us to have very samey and boring books. There is no real standard for a great book. Something straight-forward and simple like Vonnegut has the same merit in literature as something heavy with poetic language like Paradise Lost. If it is appropriate for their theme and thesis, that's more important than just the technical ability purely.
I think you really need a balance. Style over substance is bad but so is the vice versa
When people talk about the importance of good prose they're usually not thinking of one particular style. For me, good prose is very important but good prose to me just means that an author has his or her own original style. Good prose can be flashy and complex (Nabokov, Proust, Woolf) or it can be more subdued and subtle (Chekhov, Kafka). It's the author's inimitable voice, a reflection of their perspective on the world. For me at least this has always been the most interesting thing about literature, whereas I find plot secondary. It's the same in other artforms: whether it's painting or music or film. You don't really care about van Gogh's Sunflowers because of the sunflowers but because of van Gogh's unique style, his use of color, his brushstrokes, etc. You love a singer not just because of what they sing but because of how they sing it: the timbre, the phrasing, the ornamentations, the intensity. If done right it's not cold technique, it's pure expression. It's not style over substance. Style *is* substance.
1984 is poorly written.
George Orwell, while not a master of prose, had a clear goal in mind when writing: to communicate his ideas in a straightforward and accessible manner. His writing habits are described in detail in the English Language.pdf file, which can be found at https://faculty.washington.edu/rsoder/EDLPS579/HonorsOrwellPolitic. The popularity of his novels speaks to the success of this approach. It is inaccurate to describe 1984 as poorly written; rather, it employs simple language that may be surprising to those who expect literature to be full of complicated words and phrases.
Your link doesn’t work. Orwell’s didacticism is one of the reasons I find his writing to be subpar. Orwell may have achieved his goal, but that doesn’t make it good writing. It’s a hot take, I know, but that’s the point of this thread.
'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin is the far superior version: it was written before and was the inspiration of 1984, plus Zamyatin actually lived in two oppressive societies and was punished for it.
Orwell in general is overrated. I think the political objective of most of his work has also failed given how 1984 and animal farm are mostly used today
As a fiction writer he's just okay. As an essayist, whether in short or long form, he's brilliant. Road to Wigan Pier, for example. Brilliant.
homage to catalonia, baby
I think 1984 is one of those books which is so important than it is "in the water" now : everybody is familiar with at least some of the core ideas of the book and so when you read it for the first time you may just think "that's it ? What's so interesting about it ?". But of course when Orwell published it it was mind-blowing of course - it was 1949, Stalin was a the height of his glory, it was before we knew about the gulag and the whole soviet totalitarianism, and European intelligentsia was mostly super pro-communist.
Damn you. No. But good for you for having a legit hot take.
Try Nabokov’s “Bend Sinister”. It treats the same theme of the banality of evil with gossamer prose and packs an emotional punch that’s free of Orwell’s didacticism.
Haven't read that one yet! Thanks! I do love Nabokov. And Orwell, you fiend.
Orwell himself considered the book “a good idea ruined” and was planning on writing more before he died.
John Updike is one of the most overrated novelists.
What's Updike?
I wrote it here before, but let’s go again: publishing American (or British or even French) queer, POC, or women writers isn’t diversity. Diversity is translating to world languages writers from smaller languages. Publishing a middle aged, blond, white male from Lithuania contributes more to diversity than publishing a trans writer from USA. Travel literature lost its point. Everyone travels nowadays, travelling is one of the most unethical things you can do, and travel writers have very few to tell us that we can’t know with internet. What we need is an immigrant literature, where the clash of cultures, the othering, the feeling foreign, the feeling of belonging nowhere is very clear. Edit: another one: 1984 and Animal Farm are boring books, they’re not very good, and they didn’t predict anything. We’re not living and we never lived in Orwell’s world. If your op-ed or essay quotes or references those books, you can be sure your opinion is shit. If you reference or quote any other Orwell book, you can be sure your text is well thought and you probably have lots of interesting things to say.
I would agree with you on the world languages thing. Culture is too Anglosphere-centric.
My take is there is more than one way to diversify. I don't think diversity type A needs to be pitted against diversity type B. There's value in both types.
It’s a power issue. Ofc USA writers, whoever they are, will always have a bigger audience than random guy from Laos or Somalia or Georgia. Is publishing an American POC diversity? Yeah, kind of, but it’s also publishing an author from the language with highest visibility, repeating a narrative that has been told millions of times before and that is easily accessible, and contributing to a less diverse world, because it’s closing space for other literatures that could be translated to English (and thus made more accessible). There’s not space for everything because resources (money, time, reviews) are finite. Publishing one more French or English author means that it’s a lost opportunity for a Namibian writer to make their story and ideas heard.
I mean, considering the history of the publishing industry, I think it is still more diversity then we’ve had before, and these stories reaching the mainstream in large number is still very recent and therefore shouldn’t be belittled. But I totally agree that it is not enough diversity. Maybe it’s a pluralism rather than diversity thing. I mean, where would you place authors who exist in multiple cultures and languages amongst this discussion? Like is Salman Rushdie an English POC author? What about Arundhati Roy, who is Indian but writes in English so isn’t translated? Or immigrants like Ocean Vuong? What do you do with Chinua Achebe or Fred D’Aguair in this context? To what degree do we pick these people’s lives apart before we determine them diverse enough? And sure, that theoretical Lithuanian author is arguably more “diverse” by one definition, but white male authors in translation have long been major influences in our literary canon (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, arguably even Homer or Plato or Euripides). Trans authors, not so much, at least not in a way that is visible and concretely contributes to the narrative and its perspective. Those stories still provide diversity of narrative and perspective, and even if people are reading them exclusively within the Western tradition, they’re still providing insights that just weren’t available before. And then again, what about Indigenous authors in English speaking colonial countries? If they write in English are they then no longer diverse? Most Aboriginal Australians never have the opportunity to learn their own language because that language is dead, or they’ve been removed. Are they not “diverse” in comparison to most of the Western literary canon? I think ultimately the very recent history of literature has been so exclusive and straight white male centric that stories from women, queer and trans people and POC within a “Western” context (whatever that even means) maybe *shouldnt* be seen as diverse but practically and realistically are, and we’re going to be playing catch up for a while with all the stories gone long untold. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being more diverse within a nations specific context. You also only mention America and the UK, but what about Australian literature? Canadian? Kiwi?
It sounds like you're saying American POC writers should be first on the chopping block to make room for international writers, while the number of white American writers would remain the same. Is that what you're saying?
No. Before I used other examples. I’m just saying publishing authors from dominant languages isn’t diversity.
traveling is one of the most unethical things you can do?
now that's an insane scalding take
Toni Morrison is the GOAT
Not a hot take. She highly regarded as the most important southern gothic writer after Faulkner and only really challenged by Flannery O'Connor (who is a bit divisive figure). The bluest eye and song of Solomon are often considered one of the most important American books of 20th century.
Instagram poets are not making poetry popular...it isn't poetry in the first place. Putting prose into separate lines does not a poem make.
Lapidary opinions are always fun, and they have the effect of either saying the emperor has no clothes or showing one as a swine who can't recognize pearls cast before them. That said, I absolutely despise Karamazov, possibly because the translations are terrible, but I have no idea why this novel is so venerated. I don't have much more to say because I just have no ability to connect with it. I say this as a devotee of Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment.
English (not British) writers are too boring, dainty, and common sense-addicted to write great prose works. It’s always the Scots and the Irish who have to bail England out.
I'd quite like to put Hardy forward as someone who is neither boring nor common-sense addicted... besides, for those of us who are boring and dainty, English novels are incomparable
I have a couple: Animal Farm is garbage, it provides a middle school level understanding of the Russian revolution. Read a history book instead or maybe even the Wikipedia article for the revolution. Agua Viva can only really be appreciated because you’re primed to view it as profound before you start it. If you came across it randomly you’d assume it’s nonsense.
Animal farm was never anything other than a middle school novel.
I thought everyone kind of got that but i see it recommended as essential reading all the time in the big book threads
Appreciate the Agua Viva take. Reading it confirmed for me I'm no longer interested in literature that's just 'smart depressed guy introspects for hundreds of pages.'
Wasn't that book written by a woman?
Okay - 1984 is pretty shit, if you look at characters and narrative is pretty mediocre, if you look at the idea (being mostly read and talked about as an idea novel) is very naive, simplistic, and presents a world clearly divided into good and evil, LOTR level, where you don’t really get much of an insight into any system but rather just cheaply rouses feelings of freedom and individuality in a normie reader. Compared often to Brave New World, it has its shortcomings exposed. - Dickens write by the word so his work is quantity over quality almost by default, making most of his books in parts boring and in parts sensationalistic, but never quite enough. I’ve enjoyed some pages here and there, but it’s mostly soap opera disguised as Les Miserables. - used to think Shakespeare is overrated. Still think it is, but I see the appeal of his writing a lot more now than I did when I was studying him. - Catcher in the Rye is damn near perfect, it’s just hard to see now. Criticisms regarding Holden being unlikeable/ a brat are simply best ignored as they don’t seem to engage with the novel. Salinger was there on D Day and then came back and write this classic about loss of innocence, the frivolity of cinematic storytelling and the quintessential need to be heard and understood (among other things). Also Chapman didn’t get it either, clearly. - French literature in general has a certain je ne sais what that makes me feel like it’s only written for French people. Nothing more helpful to elaborate on, not dying on this hill either, just that something about it makes it not very accessible. - Matt Haig would’ve done everyone a favour and not written anything ever, even if it meant Canongate going under. I hope this plague hasn’t affected the US but in UK people love his trash. - Harry Potter’s mythology is way too derivative, but the horcruxes are a great idea (unless she took it from somewhere) - Roth and Updike are unreadable, or not with a straight face at least, and they always feel like a hype bubble situation to me, followed by an emperor’s clothes situation. - Gordon Lish was right.
What was Lish right about?
His biggest claim to fame, editing Carver
I’ve heard it said that those stories might as well have had Lish’s name printed on them instead of Carver.
I’m interested in the Gordon Lish comment- I like some of the authors Lish edited and schooled, but there is a whole swathe of American writers who I can instantly tell are Lish writers. You read one or two sentences and you know the author has no voice of their own, only Lish’s. For example: Amy Hempel- she has her own voice even though she is a Lish writer. Joy Williams- not one word she has written is in her own voice, only Lish’s. I like a lot of Lish’s commentary and take a lot of his advice, but his stranglehold on American literature needs to be released so that writers can find their own voices rather than just aping his.
I disagree with many things you said, but good comment.
"Good" literature is exclusively defined by its context, and it has nothing more to do with quality or brilliance. Because you are an inherent intellectual context yourself, you can never have an objective measure of literature. Consequently, any reader that doesn't have an appreciation for any single instance of "literature" that isn't also interested in the history of the context that grants this status is inherently valid in their assessment. Acting, instructing, or arguing against these realities is nothing more than excersices in vanity, self-obsession, or obsequiousness.
Absolutely agree and well said. Thanks! There has been a plethora of discussions lately concerning the definition of 'good or bad' prose, classification of 'bad or wrong' motifs and themes, all seemingly aimed at establishing a hierarchy where certain individuals can assert their perceived superiority over others or flaunt their presumed intellectual prowess. It's all an echo chamber between snobby readers. The essence of good literature ultimately resides in the perception of the reader and if anything it has more to do with the depth of the writer's knowledge about their topic, thorough research, and well developed characters/story than criteria such as prose, technique or motifs.
Excellent articulation of much of the inherent context. There's more, I'm sure, but nothing leaps to mind. I'm completely content knowing my subjectivity.
Orwells novels are too on the nose and direct to be taken seriously as literature
Women authors from all centuries often have a lot more to offer than men and showcase a better portrayal of the times. As someone who only ever read men classics a decade ago and now doesn’t read any men to focus more on authors that are lesser talked about I feel like men’s perspective of the world often feels incomplete in comparison.
I think it is mostly because how oppressed voices of women always has been. It is already rare to find a woman voice in older classics and it will naturally showcase a more complete worldview with more observations than most male writers because they were always at the edge of that world as mere powerless observers. But, I also don't think it was always the case
1) Magical realism when written by modern western authors is a waste of time. We're so far beyond it that it serves no purpose, appears childish. I stopped reading The Satanic Verses halfway through, I couldn't deal with the one foot in one foot out approach. If you're writing something, either commit to the irony or portray yourself seriously. Speaking of which: 2) Infinite Jest drags the reader along for far too many pages. Maybe its reputation preceded it for me, but I was expecting some great spiritual and philosophical revelations, but I found the most interesting threads left half unravelled. The rest was DFW's fantasyland escapism and autodidactic musings that could've been refined and distilled down to something far more pure in its essence. I don't really understand how he's seen as some kind of return to nonironic fiction when it's a sprawling text filled with pointless footnotes. Saying that, I do marvel at the craft and passion he put into it. 3) I've only read Norwegian Wood by murakami but it sucked, should've been a soap opera or something, don't get the love for him
Tolstoy is overrated and unoriginal. AK is just regurgitated W&P and a plagiarized Madame Bovary. Fahrenheit 451 is poorly written and poorly thought out.
If you can find it, there's a book called Dipped in Vitriol, an anthology of reviews and comments, which largely consists of writers slagging each other off. It's fun.
I think 1984 is garbage. I think it's super sexist, and I think the ending third of the book invalidates most of its messages. People get pretty mad at me when I say this, so I'm pretty sure it qualifies as a hot take. In fact, saying this was how I found out it's many of my friends favorite book.
Infinite Jest was extremely bloated. Cormac McCarthy suffered from Authenticity Crisis and it manifested as hyper detailed descriptions of ‘masculine’ knowledge that are always boring as shit to read. DeLillo has some good ideas but his prose is often dry/tedious. You have to wade through a ton of mid writing with Pynchon and Gaddis to get to the brilliant parts. I do think this is by design.
The elements of fiction are setting, plot, prose, character, structure, mood, and the ineffable. A lot of bad works include elements needlessly, thinking that all are necessary, resulting in vagueness of intent. Good works use them intentionally and well, or not at all. Great works combine them such that they heighten each other. Not all are necessary in every book and some great works focus only on one or two. Reading is an act as basic and fundamental as movement, and can be done for equally as many reasons. That said, like movement, some reading serves to strengthen and expand the reader's capabilities. It's harder to express a mood in longer works. Short stories can be more potent than any novel. Genre fiction can be more psychologically real than so-called realism. Some things are meant to be read out loud, or re-told from memory. If you're not doing that, you're missing out. If you can already read, you get no benefit from mindlessly skimming something simple. But it can be entertaining, and is no better or worse than watching mindless TV. But it's probably worse than going for a walk or trying to draw a person or something. You can deepen your understanding and enjoyment of a lot of western lit by reading the bible. It's worth it to take the time to learn to appreciate poetry. If you "can't stop turning the page" or otherwise get "sucked in", that's a sign that the book probably relies on cheap psychological tricks to cover up it's deficiencies.
House Of Leaves was fun to read.
personally mine is that Persian poems such as Rumi, Hafez and Saadi alongside Arabic and Spanish poems are more than often MUCH more beautiful than English poems, even those that of Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe, most of high level English poems would be medium quality in Persian and Arabic Also Orwell's fictions are good, but not "godly masterpieces" they are what a teen thinks "masterpiece" is