Saturday, August 14, 2004
(1:12 PM) | Anonymous:
Fiction died the first time some bibliophile said "Literature's not dead!"
While on vacation, I did a lot of reading. 5 books in 10 days to be exact. And I can say this with confidence: Despite the protests of many in and around, through and about this weblog, I don't think fiction is dead. I'm in the process of giving myself something of a crash course in modern lit. Before when I've tried to read such things, it's mostly been a lie as the authors I read were near death, and thus within the next 3 years would no longer qualify. However, with the influence of a friend, I've given it an honest try this time, you know, for the gipper. And with that, I can boldly declare that Literature's not dead, it's just really screwed up.It seems like every good writer now adays is writing about people with strange sex addictions, people with mental disorders and other such. But, after World War II everyone up and decided that realism sucked, so why can't our generation suddenly decide that Normal people suck, in fact, the whole concept of "normal" sucks. It seems the basis of great literature are there - I've so far read Chuck Palahniuk, Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, Jonathan Franzen and Tony Vigorito, and all have an incredible grasp over their individual style, amazing plot, and underlying "lessons", even if the lesson is the oldest lesson - that there is no lesson to be learned. Basically, they all have whatever it is that I really like about the authors whose books I've read most of, and thus I intend to try and read each book by these guys, and it should be fun to actually watch book release dates for new novels from my favorite authors for once, rather than the occasional posthumous short story collection and the like.
So the questions are two: What do you think it is about our society which has created a literature that attempts to represent that society with mostly anti-heroes, and mostly disturbed characters. Maybe this isn't a drastic change so much. I mean, Holden, Humbert Humbert, Yossarian, Billy Pilgrim, Oedipa Maas..no one's really going to argue on the sane side for any of them, yet it seems like where formally it was strictly either a deranged person trying to find their way through a common world, or a relatively normal person trying to answer the questions of a deranged world, now the authors give us pretty screwed up people in pretty screwed up worlds. I think that's what I like so much about the books - today's heroes, Tyler Durden, Phineas Poe, Flake Fountain, John Dolan Vincent and Chip whose last name I can't remember - are obviously messed up, obviously not completely right in the head, and yet what they say seems to make an awful lot of sense..
Secondly, what modern writers would you throw in to this list for me to try on? I think some fringe members I've been discovering more lately are Stephen R. Donaldson and Terry Pratchett, but neither is really new, and both sort of stick to the side. I think throwing them in might be like adding Bradbury, Dick, Wolfe, Douglas Adams and Le Guin in with last generations main great authors. Science fiction and fantasy seems to be a topic which has to be discussed on it's own (though I love it) apart from mainline fiction. But, I need to discover more authors whose careers I can still follow, because at heart, I am just a rabid fanboy. I trust the community of the Weblog not to steer me astray.
Finally, I think you really should visit those author's homepages. Clevenger has a great article on why The Da Vinci Code might just suck (I still haven't read that book, but it moves closer on the shelf at my side), Palahniuk continues his writing workshop with the 8th installment here (click on Distinction Essay in the top bar, and then submit your own fiction), Will Christopher Baer puts up the first of 6 chapters from an early, unpublished novella. Jonathan Franzen's site isn't really interactive like the others, looks like something the publishers forced him into, and Tony Vigorito..I have no clue, he might be dead. I can find no info on anything about him, and I really, really loved his book, so if you know anything besides the site for the first book, let me know.
For the purely curious out there, I also have read most of Zizek's Ticklish Subject, Nabokov's The Enchanter, in the past 3 weeks, and I just started The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
This is in no way bragging - I think I'm on month 6 of trying to finish The Ticklesh Subject.
