Roundup
Montevidayo Foerversy Dear
1. If you haven’t been following the discussions at Montevidayo, a new group blog run by Johannes Göransson, you should start now. Recent posts include Joyelle McSweeney on the Bourne Identity, Johannes on atrocity kitsch, and at least 3 posts on the mechanics of Shutter Island.
2. @ The Awl, an interesting allegation made in finding similarity between Jessica Soffer’s story “Beginning, End” from Granta and Jonathan Safran Foer’s recent publication in the NYer, “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly.” Apparently Soffer was a student of Foer’s wife Nicole Krauss, and the similarity between the stories is mmm. I personally don’t give a crap about stealing, or allegations thereof, because I think all words are words, but still, take a whoop.
3. A friend of mine compared the new Matthew Dear album, Black City, to a Talking Heads for the 00s. He may be on to something.
Tags: Jessica Soffer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Matthew Dear, Montevidayo
Reading that Matthew Dear has a new album out just made my day. I cannot wait to hear this thing.
If a more successful/visible writer steals from a less successful/visible one, whether or not wordtheft matters in the abstract, compunction stops me from praising the former for the courage to be called a fucking asshole. S/he can afford the minor risk, whereas in the other direction the burden of ability-proving seems much heavier. Maybe I admire the savvy, especially if the resultant writing’s good. Funny though that it took him a yea not to do one better (what Safron Foer takes years! to not accomplish!). But who cares about a conceit? Have at it.
Been listening to a bit of that record, and I keep hearing This Heat (Deceit).
definitely, i hear that. i think i am going to listen to this record a lot.
I like Soffer’s story, maybe not the last four paragraphs, but I like it.
other than the talking heads, the album kinda reminds me of Bowie, post Berlin. which is to say, it’s all so eno. a lot of fun tho. has anyone listened to the new mount kimbie? i think it’s grand.
Pretty damn sure I’ve written that story, too.
Actually, pretty damn sure most of us have written that story. The Awl says Krauss is an instructor at Hunter, but it doesn’t say that Soffer studied with Krauss.
Reading that Matthew Dear has a new album out just made my day. I cannot wait to hear this thing.
If a more successful/visible writer steals from a less successful/visible one, whether or not wordtheft matters in the abstract, compunction stops me from praising the former for the courage to be called a fucking asshole. S/he can afford the minor risk, whereas in the other direction the burden of ability-proving seems much heavier. Maybe I admire the savvy, especially if the resultant writing’s good. Funny though that it took him a yea not to do one better (what Safron Foer takes years! to not accomplish!). But who cares about a conceit? Have at it.
Been listening to a bit of that record, and I keep hearing This Heat (Deceit).
definitely, i hear that. i think i am going to listen to this record a lot.
I like Soffer’s story, maybe not the last four paragraphs, but I like it.
other than the talking heads, the album kinda reminds me of Bowie, post Berlin. which is to say, it’s all so eno. a lot of fun tho. has anyone listened to the new mount kimbie? i think it’s grand.
Odd. I just sent that Matthew Dear link to a coworker and he replied with “hm, sounds a little too like Knife meets Talking Heads.” His exact words.
Pretty damn sure I’ve written that story, too.
Actually, pretty damn sure most of us have written that story. The Awl says Krauss is an instructor at Hunter, but it doesn’t say that Soffer studied with Krauss.
i’ve been loving the Montevidayo blog. such great stuff covered there
Odd. I just sent that Matthew Dear link to a coworker and he replied with “hm, sounds a little too like Knife meets Talking Heads.” His exact words.
i’ve been loving the Montevidayo blog. such great stuff covered there
I was not able to distinguish them. The two stories. Now most hipster stories are written this way. In the same non-style. One brief thought per sentence. Just like technical writing. I was thinking about this today. We were in the bathroom. I like bathrooms. Bathrooms are shiny. Bathrooms are for Jonathan. Jonathan likes bathrooms. He does his best work there. Nicole does not like bathrooms. She’s stopped eating. She never has to go.
It’s the typical boring, unimaginative flash-fiction voice you see all over the Interweb (in online journals and comments sections). I fucking hate most of flash I read today because it all seems to be written in the same understated style and voice by writers who fancy themselves “experimental.”
http://staugustinian.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/introducing-ina-boyd-a-screenplaypoem/
Bitches won’t let me buy Matthew Dear here, guess i’ll just have to steal it.
I was not able to distinguish them. The two stories. Now most hipster stories are written this way. In the same non-style. One brief thought per sentence. Just like technical writing. I was thinking about this today. We were in the bathroom. I like bathrooms. Bathrooms are shiny. Bathrooms are for Jonathan. Jonathan likes bathrooms. He does his best work there. Nicole does not like bathrooms. She’s stopped eating. She never has to go.
It’s the typical boring, unimaginative flash-fiction voice you see all over the Interweb (in online journals and comments sections). I fucking hate most of flash I read today because it all seems to be written in the same understated style and voice by writers who fancy themselves “experimental.”
http://staugustinian.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/introducing-ina-boyd-a-screenplaypoem/
Bitches won’t let me buy Matthew Dear here, guess i’ll just have to steal it.
This isn’t a manifesto. It’s a response to an attack from the highest point of status culture. The contract I signed? Not to stand by when a populist pundit puts up his dull wall and says what literature can and cannot be.
-Ben Marcus, “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It”
I couldn’t’ve said it better myself.
After that quotation, I think it’s important to point out that while I disagreed with Franzen’s position and felt it was painfully flawed, not to mention highly suspicious in its arrogant finger-pointing, I do feel that I understand his reasoning, and that this reasoning at least had some grounding in thought.
Pemulis, MFBomb: I’d like to hear your defense for taking a stand on how other people should not write.
Hear, hear.
Huh? Sanctimonious much? Where did I “take a stand on how other people should write”? Nowhere in my post did I say, “people shouldn’t write this way.”
I actually enjoyed the Ben Marcus piece when it came out a few years ago. Silly that you would compare a two sentence comment in a comments sections to some of Franzen’s dogmatic positions on literature. Lighten the humorless brick load in your britches, hoss.
Owen, Mathew:
Yeah, please don’t lump me in with a whiner like Franzen. Read my post again, you’ll see it basically says, (a) Hey, I notice a trend. (b) Those stories do sound the same. (c) Nicole Krauss no longer goes to the bathroom. If you’re going to call me on something, please, let it be ‘c’!
I enjoy all types of fiction. It appears most commenters do, to. Occassionally I dwell on trends, or — oh noes! — express opinions, or — as I’ve been cautioned against in the past — questioned what makes a piece ‘experimental’ when it appears there’s a tidy tradition for all types of writing. I guess I just don’t see the controversy.
(I’m also a big fan of that Ben Marcus piece…)
P.S. Did Franzen ever say what lit could and couldn’t be? I don’t think did. I will continue to read peeps like Franzen and Wood who, while I may almost always disagree, I can at least admire as honest. There aren’t enough people talking about this stuff..
This isn’t a manifesto. It’s a response to an attack from the highest point of status culture. The contract I signed? Not to stand by when a populist pundit puts up his dull wall and says what literature can and cannot be.
-Ben Marcus, “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It”
I couldn’t’ve said it better myself.
Anyone know where I could read the Ben Marcus piece online in its entirety?
After that quotation, I think it’s important to point out that while I disagreed with Franzen’s position and felt it was painfully flawed, not to mention highly suspicious in its arrogant finger-pointing, I do feel that I understand his reasoning, and that this reasoning at least had some grounding in thought.
Pemulis, MFBomb: I’d like to hear your defense for taking a stand on how other people should not write.
if anyone wnats this essay, i have a pdf of it, email me?
Hear, hear.
Huh? Sanctimonious much? Where did I “take a stand on how other people should write”? Nowhere in my post did I say, “people shouldn’t write this way.”
I actually enjoyed the Ben Marcus piece when it came out a few years ago. Silly that you would compare a two sentence comment in a comments sections to some of Franzen’s dogmatic positions on literature. Lighten the humorless brick load in your britches, hoss.
Several years ago I put up the article on my catalog. I emailed Ben Marcus for permission, he said one month because he was putting together a book of essays. So… I put it up for a month and then took it down. I won’t distribute it because of that agreement I made with him. I’d feel like I was transgressing on his wishes since he didn’t want it displayed longer than a month.
I’m not saying this to contradict you (for all I know you and he could be friends, I don’t know), only to mention why I, personally, won’t do it. I don’t know . . . for some reason I feel I should mention it.
Long post:
Well . . . while I don’t want to be aggressive or confrontational, and I don’t want to be interpreted as saying that anybody here is a bad person merely for stating a simple opinion — which would be a pretty dickish position to take — I think the subject matter is important, even crucial, and this is why I feel that the comparison with Franzen’s comments is apt. This is about certain people trying to marginalize other people, about some people telling other people that their manner of going about things is the wrong manner, that their thoughts are the wrong thoughts, that their manner of expressing themselves is wrong.
What really bugged me was seeing two people go beyond simply saying “I don’t like this,” but actually going so far as to attack the style. That, to me, seemed inexcusable. Especially since I personally don’t see anything bad about the style (and, personally, I like Jessica Soffer’s piece, sue me), and most especially because you touched on the notion (without actually saying it, although “hipster” comes close) of what’s popularly referred to as “pretentiousness”. “Experimental writing” (an insulting, marginalizing term in itself that many nontraditional writers, strangely, still use freely) is often attacked and discredited as being “pretentious”. So… these attacks on this “non-style” style struck me just a little too close to that “pretentious experimental writing” bone of mine that has always been wrapped up in throbbing, damaged ligaments.
(I was also more than a little disturbed by that attack on Tao Lin. Not that he’s effectively ‘nontraditional’, really, but I don’t see any reason why people should be attacking him. I mean… I saw the guy read! He’s a nice, gentle guy! Why does he deserve this? Especially since his visibility is so low, relatively speaking?)
I have one question, though. I don’t know if others will find it as interesting as I do. Which is worse: A high-profile author like Franzen complaining to the New Yorker about modern writing, and naming names? Or lots of people everywhere complaining to each other about how wretched so&so’s style is?
I’ve been thinking a little about criticisms I myself have made in the past, about the vernacular writers . . . did that amount to saying that I feel that writers shouldn’t be writing in a conversational style? That it offends me? I don’t know. I mean, in my heart I can say I would never say, for example, “Chuck Palahniuk shouldn’t write the way he does”. However . . . by criticizing the way the vernacular writers write: isn’t that essentially what I’m saying? That they shouldn’t write that way?
Here, I can only conclude that if I feel I need to chastise others for running down somebody’s writing style: I should chastise myself for doing the same, and then stop doing it.
I also recall something I read once, about how, when Jack Kerouac finally got his books published, one critic slammed him by saying: “This isn’t writing, this is typing.” That’s always seemed a pretty poignant criticism, to me, and it’s always stuck with me. But… isn’t this really saying the same exact thing: “Kerouac shouldn’t write this way, he should write some other way”? When I think on that I can only conclude that such criticisms are wrong, wrong, wrong. Nobody should be making such pronouncements.
I guess the point is: we’re all critics, we all criticize, as readers and writers we all have our opinions, but perhaps we should start becoming more aware of that line that divides “I don’t like this” from “this shouldn’t exist”. It’s starting to seem to me that sometimes we end up on both sides of that line, without realizing.
It was as much what you implied as what you said.
(For full response, see below after Pemulis’ response.)
Owen, Mathew:
Yeah, please don’t lump me in with a whiner like Franzen. Read my post again, you’ll see it basically says, (a) Hey, I notice a trend. (b) Those stories do sound the same. (c) Nicole Krauss no longer goes to the bathroom. If you’re going to call me on something, please, let it be ‘c’!
I enjoy all types of fiction. It appears most commenters do, to. Occassionally I dwell on trends, or — oh noes! — express opinions, or — as I’ve been cautioned against in the past — questioned what makes a piece ‘experimental’ when it appears there’s a tidy tradition for all types of writing. I guess I just don’t see the controversy.
(I’m also a big fan of that Ben Marcus piece…)
P.S. Did Franzen ever say what lit could and couldn’t be? I don’t think did. I will continue to read peeps like Franzen and Wood who, while I may almost always disagree, I can at least admire as honest. There aren’t enough people talking about this stuff..
thanks, owen. i hadnt thought of that. just figured it would be good to get people to read it via informal sharing/friendliness. only two have asked for it anyhow. but if thats what he requested, then ill honor that.
oh and cant wait for a book of essays from him too; thats great news.
Anyone know where I could read the Ben Marcus piece online in its entirety?
but perhaps we should start becoming more aware of that line that divides “I don’t like this” from “this shouldn’t exist”
———————-
This seems to be something you’ve created yourself, rather than others. With all due respect, I’m not going to bother responding to this long post because I know my intentions were never to suggest that a particular kind of writing “shouldn’t exist,” nor do I consider myself important enough to think that such passing comments on a story I don’t like will somehow lead to laws that ban certain forms of writing and imprison their writers.
if anyone wnats this essay, i have a pdf of it, email me?
Several years ago I put up the article on my catalog. I emailed Ben Marcus for permission, he said one month because he was putting together a book of essays. So… I put it up for a month and then took it down. I won’t distribute it because of that agreement I made with him. I’d feel like I was transgressing on his wishes since he didn’t want it displayed longer than a month.
I’m not saying this to contradict you (for all I know you and he could be friends, I don’t know), only to mention why I, personally, won’t do it. I don’t know . . . for some reason I feel I should mention it.
Long post:
Well . . . while I don’t want to be aggressive or confrontational, and I don’t want to be interpreted as saying that anybody here is a bad person merely for stating a simple opinion — which would be a pretty dickish position to take — I think the subject matter is important, even crucial, and this is why I feel that the comparison with Franzen’s comments is apt. This is about certain people trying to marginalize other people, about some people telling other people that their manner of going about things is the wrong manner, that their thoughts are the wrong thoughts, that their manner of expressing themselves is wrong.
What really bugged me was seeing two people go beyond simply saying “I don’t like this,” but actually going so far as to attack the style. That, to me, seemed inexcusable. Especially since I personally don’t see anything bad about the style (and, personally, I like Jessica Soffer’s piece, sue me), and most especially because you touched on the notion (without actually saying it, although “hipster” comes close) of what’s popularly referred to as “pretentiousness”. “Experimental writing” (an insulting, marginalizing term in itself that many nontraditional writers, strangely, still use freely) is often attacked and discredited as being “pretentious”. So… these attacks on this “non-style” style struck me just a little too close to that “pretentious experimental writing” bone of mine that has always been wrapped up in throbbing, damaged ligaments.
(I was also more than a little disturbed by that attack on Tao Lin. Not that he’s effectively ‘nontraditional’, really, but I don’t see any reason why people should be attacking him. I mean… I saw the guy read! He’s a nice, gentle guy! Why does he deserve this? Especially since his visibility is so low, relatively speaking?)
I have one question, though. I don’t know if others will find it as interesting as I do. Which is worse: A high-profile author like Franzen complaining to the New Yorker about modern writing, and naming names? Or lots of people everywhere complaining to each other about how wretched so&so’s style is?
I’ve been thinking a little about criticisms I myself have made in the past, about the vernacular writers . . . did that amount to saying that I feel that writers shouldn’t be writing in a conversational style? That it offends me? I don’t know. I mean, in my heart I can say I would never say, for example, “Chuck Palahniuk shouldn’t write the way he does”. However . . . by criticizing the way the vernacular writers write: isn’t that essentially what I’m saying? That they shouldn’t write that way?
Here, I can only conclude that if I feel I need to chastise others for running down somebody’s writing style: I should chastise myself for doing the same, and then stop doing it.
I also recall something I read once, about how, when Jack Kerouac finally got his books published, one critic slammed him by saying: “This isn’t writing, this is typing.” That’s always seemed a pretty poignant criticism, to me, and it’s always stuck with me. But… isn’t this really saying the same exact thing: “Kerouac shouldn’t write this way, he should write some other way”? When I think on that I can only conclude that such criticisms are wrong, wrong, wrong. Nobody should be making such pronouncements.
I guess the point is: we’re all critics, we all criticize, as readers and writers we all have our opinions, but perhaps we should start becoming more aware of that line that divides “I don’t like this” from “this shouldn’t exist”. It’s starting to seem to me that sometimes we end up on both sides of that line, without realizing.
It was as much what you implied as what you said.
(For full response, see below after Pemulis’ response.)
thanks, owen. i hadnt thought of that. just figured it would be good to get people to read it via informal sharing/friendliness. only two have asked for it anyhow. but if thats what he requested, then ill honor that.
oh and cant wait for a book of essays from him too; thats great news.
but perhaps we should start becoming more aware of that line that divides “I don’t like this” from “this shouldn’t exist”
———————-
This seems to be something you’ve created yourself, rather than others. With all due respect, I’m not going to bother responding to this long post because I know my intentions were never to suggest that a particular kind of writing “shouldn’t exist,” nor do I consider myself important enough to think that such passing comments on a story I don’t like will somehow lead to laws that ban certain forms of writing and imprison their writers.
I was stripped of my badge and gun long ago, anyhow.
They accused me of shirking my duty. I was less interested in prosecuting people than I was in drinking and complaining a lot, and posting on forums, and using the phrase “all in the same boat” too often.
Plus, I tended to start fights with my fellow officers.
Precisely the opposite of your model literary cop.
But at least I’ve stopped drinking.
Just pick any of the above.
Of course, it was a long time ago. I don’t know where he is on this book, but I do know that the work is still being used by Harper’s as a means of selling online access.
I don’t know what kind of contract he signed with Harper’s. Distributing PDF’s privately is not the same as posting the material online, but it seems to me I’ve already unwittingly said more than I should have, so I’m going to refrain from making any online statements that might be construed as a suggestion regarding the handling of something that appears to be still under Harper’s legal ownership.
I was stripped of my badge and gun long ago, anyhow.
They accused me of shirking my duty. I was less interested in prosecuting people than I was in drinking and complaining a lot, and posting on forums, and using the phrase “all in the same boat” too often.
Plus, I tended to start fights with my fellow officers.
Precisely the opposite of your model literary cop.
But at least I’ve stopped drinking.
Just pick any of the above.
Of course, it was a long time ago. I don’t know where he is on this book, but I do know that the work is still being used by Harper’s as a means of selling online access.
I don’t know what kind of contract he signed with Harper’s. Distributing PDF’s privately is not the same as posting the material online, but it seems to me I’ve already unwittingly said more than I should have, so I’m going to refrain from making any online statements that might be construed as a suggestion regarding the handling of something that appears to be still under Harper’s legal ownership.