May 7th, 2010 / 1:02 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Blake Butler—
What scenes or lines in books genuinely offended you?
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Meta
The scene in Ian McEwan’s Saturday where the house-invading hoodlum waits patiently through the recitation of the whole of “Dover Beach” and is derailed by same. Unbearable.
I’ve never been offended by anything in a book. I am not certain that I can be offended.
never a line. usually something subtle. scenes or overall sensibilities of some stories, if i feel like an author is judging too harshly, or satirically, that i dont think is deserved. one i cant remember was a father in a household and his family was compeltely shitting on him because we was kind of becoming distant while going through a retirement transition. the author was making him out to be a horrible and distant father and i was like give the guy a break, he just sacrificed thirty years of his life to provide for you and he wants a little space, sheesh.
I once tried to read “Lovely Bones” (don’t ask) and found it morally, intellectually, and aesthetically revolting.
The point at which I put I down for good was a scene where a girl’s murdered body is found thanks to her dog carrying a dismembered piece of it back home and that piece is recognized as “an elbow.” An elbow? This was clearly a case of the author lazily going for a certain effect without thinking through the implications of her choice. A killer hastily disposing of a body is going to take the trouble to saw through two adjoining bones and leave the joint intact?
That’s a good one. I read about that in a review and couldn’t believe it.
Hah, I did the same thing. It’s the favorite book of one of my friends (ugh), but I had to put it down at the same spot. Book was complete ass.
No specific example, but bloated and overwritten language pisses me off, especially when it comes out of English depts.
is bad writing *offensive* though? i mean i get irritated by bad writing, but i dont think i get offended by it.
Can’t think of anything. Only can think of gross out, which was American Psycho when I was 15. When he’s popping the eyeball out of the bum’s head with his knife… I quit reading. Haven’t read the rest of it.
I want offensive. Good question.
You found that part more morally, intellectually, and aesthetically revolting than when she comes back as a ghost for one day and decides her biggest priority is fucking her middle school boyfriend?
When I was the same age (give-or-take), a friend passed me his copy of American Psycho at the lunch table and had me read a paragraph that involved biting into a vagina. It was descriptive. I never revisited the book.
I read the nail-gunning-the-ex-to-the-floor scene in American Psycho and was disgusted. I wasn’t necessarily offended as much as I was disturbed. The Book of Mormon offends me.
No specific examples off the top of my head, but overtly political writing tends to offend me, or writing that seems to think I’m an idiot and explains everything.
The most interesting part of this question to me was how quickly my brain likened “being offended” with “being disgusted,” and I don’t particularly think they’re the same thing.
I’ve felt offended by books before, but scandalized more by the breathtakingness of the libel that certain authors can get away and still be thought great leading lights in their own right. Every word Martin Amis writes these days is offensive, not only for what it says but for the intellectual gloss with which it says the most gross and box-headed things. Philip Roth irks me generally, particularly the way he writes women, but his worst book is The Plot Against America, which I found an offensive book through and through – not for emphasizing persecution of Jews in America but for stealing away some it could happen here what if narrative of fascism when it was happening there, in its homegrown manner, to African-Americans, at exactly that same time, a fact the novel needs to suppress to make itself even slightly credible. Plus the way the book ends was salt to the raw wound. Total lack of integrity there. Henry Miller says totally fuck-headed things, to the point where I find the very little I do get from his books aren’t worth me toiling through the slather of shit-talk he has for almost every victimized person or group ever. He doesn’t do anything interesting with his insultingness either. But actual lines or scenes – um: maybe the description of Kurtz’s mistress in Heart of Darkness not so much for racism but because of how horror-stricken it is, as though it had encountered a sort of Pandora’s Box of colonialism in the form of this woman, which is the weird ideological kernel in the midst of all this demystification, like there was no white way back or something. And no matter how much I understand the anti-imperial and cosmic implications of Kurtz’s ‘the horror, the horror’, that other horror eats into it like a worm for me. Making it more interesting, actually, in a sort of literary-critical historical sense. So it’s never made me love the book less but it’s also really hard to handle in its swing from clarity into mire.
To turn offense around though, I think Peter Sotos offends me in a very real way that I find quite astounding and intriguing because it uses the intellectual blast of offense to achieve very sophisticated, challenging and unrelenting insightful impacts.
What about you, Blake?
Well, I personally get a little offended when I (politely) call them out on it and the snobbish “intellectual” displays a clear disinclination toward ruthlessly examining their prose. Usually they assume that what I mean by clear and elegant prose is philosophically reductive and banal prose, but in truth I’m just trying to help them develop as writers, to help progress their personal sense of stylistic self-consciousness. Many people seem to feel that if you are of a certain age or educational level, then your writing is therefore sophisticated and pristine and above any kind of sensible editing. Blargh.
Though part of this, I think, has to do with the anxieties surrounding the whole “publish or perish” thing, which probably doesn’t allow time for thoughtful composition, maybe?. . . .
And I do think that, in general, bloated writing that confuses a superficial “complexity” of word choice and sentence structure for the complexity of the work’s ideas is, at some level, an offense, or at least a certain kind of disrespect toward me the reader.
okay.
guess i dont have inclinations to call people out on styles im not into.
I suppose it’s fucking excellently written, then. It has that effect. And it’s daring you, from the title, to move away from it.
Er, well I would protest that I think it’s uncharitable to say I’m calling them out for their -style- alone, as if I can’t provide a reasonable critique for those who write different than I do. And I only provide feedback when asked to do so.
differently*
uncharitable maybe, yeah, sorry. i dont read as if im in a perpetual workshop though, anymore, i guess. nor do i write that way anymore, maybe, so i can see why people would be turned off if called out.
“No matter where you touch a woman, you touch the devil’s horns.”
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (Carl Wildman’s translation)
This has not necessarily offended me, but it’s been a fun quote to use at parties.
Everything Jonathan Safran Foer has ever written. Every thing he writes reeks of sanctimony, and he likes to insert these precocious twerp narrators into tragedies like the Holocaust and 9/11.
This is a good point.
What does reading as if in a perpetual workshop imply?
seconded! a disgusting scene
always considering the writer-reader relationship as student-teacher.
Ha ha, no, my implication that that line was the most offensive thing in the book was sort of a joke.
I didn’t make it to that awful ending (though I know about it from reviews) but the conception of a special heaven for fourteen-year-old girls where they sit around reading Glamour magazine all day was quite enough for me.
wow, i just read up on what this mcewan book was about, that’s fucked even for him
Hmmm, okay. I’ve got to say I’ve never thought of it that way, or acted in that way. It strikes me as really strange.
I love American Psycho. When I re-read it, though, I sometimes skim the murder scenes. I remember them well enough..
The scene in Ian McEwan’s Saturday where the house-invading hoodlum waits patiently through the recitation of the whole of “Dover Beach” and is derailed by same. Unbearable.
I’ve never been offended by anything in a book. I am not certain that I can be offended.
never a line. usually something subtle. scenes or overall sensibilities of some stories, if i feel like an author is judging too harshly, or satirically, that i dont think is deserved. one i cant remember was a father in a household and his family was compeltely shitting on him because we was kind of becoming distant while going through a retirement transition. the author was making him out to be a horrible and distant father and i was like give the guy a break, he just sacrificed thirty years of his life to provide for you and he wants a little space, sheesh.
I once tried to read “Lovely Bones” (don’t ask) and found it morally, intellectually, and aesthetically revolting.
The point at which I put I down for good was a scene where a girl’s murdered body is found thanks to her dog carrying a dismembered piece of it back home and that piece is recognized as “an elbow.” An elbow? This was clearly a case of the author lazily going for a certain effect without thinking through the implications of her choice. A killer hastily disposing of a body is going to take the trouble to saw through two adjoining bones and leave the joint intact?
That’s a good one. I read about that in a review and couldn’t believe it.
Hah, I did the same thing. It’s the favorite book of one of my friends (ugh), but I had to put it down at the same spot. Book was complete ass.
No specific example, but bloated and overwritten language pisses me off, especially when it comes out of English depts.
is bad writing *offensive* though? i mean i get irritated by bad writing, but i dont think i get offended by it.
Can’t think of anything. Only can think of gross out, which was American Psycho when I was 15. When he’s popping the eyeball out of the bum’s head with his knife… I quit reading. Haven’t read the rest of it.
I want offensive. Good question.
You found that part more morally, intellectually, and aesthetically revolting than when she comes back as a ghost for one day and decides her biggest priority is fucking her middle school boyfriend?
When I was the same age (give-or-take), a friend passed me his copy of American Psycho at the lunch table and had me read a paragraph that involved biting into a vagina. It was descriptive. I never revisited the book.
I read the nail-gunning-the-ex-to-the-floor scene in American Psycho and was disgusted. I wasn’t necessarily offended as much as I was disturbed. The Book of Mormon offends me.
No specific examples off the top of my head, but overtly political writing tends to offend me, or writing that seems to think I’m an idiot and explains everything.
The most interesting part of this question to me was how quickly my brain likened “being offended” with “being disgusted,” and I don’t particularly think they’re the same thing.
I’ve felt offended by books before, but scandalized more by the breathtakingness of the libel that certain authors can get away and still be thought great leading lights in their own right. Every word Martin Amis writes these days is offensive, not only for what it says but for the intellectual gloss with which it says the most gross and box-headed things. Philip Roth irks me generally, particularly the way he writes women, but his worst book is The Plot Against America, which I found an offensive book through and through – not for emphasizing persecution of Jews in America but for stealing away some it could happen here what if narrative of fascism when it was happening there, in its homegrown manner, to African-Americans, at exactly that same time, a fact the novel needs to suppress to make itself even slightly credible. Plus the way the book ends was salt to the raw wound. Total lack of integrity there. Henry Miller says totally fuck-headed things, to the point where I find the very little I do get from his books aren’t worth me toiling through the slather of shit-talk he has for almost every victimized person or group ever. He doesn’t do anything interesting with his insultingness either. But actual lines or scenes – um: maybe the description of Kurtz’s mistress in Heart of Darkness not so much for racism but because of how horror-stricken it is, as though it had encountered a sort of Pandora’s Box of colonialism in the form of this woman, which is the weird ideological kernel in the midst of all this demystification, like there was no white way back or something. And no matter how much I understand the anti-imperial and cosmic implications of Kurtz’s ‘the horror, the horror’, that other horror eats into it like a worm for me. Making it more interesting, actually, in a sort of literary-critical historical sense. So it’s never made me love the book less but it’s also really hard to handle in its swing from clarity into mire.
To turn offense around though, I think Peter Sotos offends me in a very real way that I find quite astounding and intriguing because it uses the intellectual blast of offense to achieve very sophisticated, challenging and unrelenting insightful impacts.
What about you, Blake?
Well, I personally get a little offended when I (politely) call them out on it and the snobbish “intellectual” displays a clear disinclination toward ruthlessly examining their prose. Usually they assume that what I mean by clear and elegant prose is philosophically reductive and banal prose, but in truth I’m just trying to help them develop as writers, to help progress their personal sense of stylistic self-consciousness. Many people seem to feel that if you are of a certain age or educational level, then your writing is therefore sophisticated and pristine and above any kind of sensible editing. Blargh.
Though part of this, I think, has to do with the anxieties surrounding the whole “publish or perish” thing, which probably doesn’t allow time for thoughtful composition, maybe?. . . .
And I do think that, in general, bloated writing that confuses a superficial “complexity” of word choice and sentence structure for the complexity of the work’s ideas is, at some level, an offense, or at least a certain kind of disrespect toward me the reader.
okay.
guess i dont have inclinations to call people out on styles im not into.
I suppose it’s fucking excellently written, then. It has that effect. And it’s daring you, from the title, to move away from it.
Er, well I would protest that I think it’s uncharitable to say I’m calling them out for their -style- alone, as if I can’t provide a reasonable critique for those who write different than I do. And I only provide feedback when asked to do so.
differently*
uncharitable maybe, yeah, sorry. i dont read as if im in a perpetual workshop though, anymore, i guess. nor do i write that way anymore, maybe, so i can see why people would be turned off if called out.
“No matter where you touch a woman, you touch the devil’s horns.”
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek (Carl Wildman’s translation)
This has not necessarily offended me, but it’s been a fun quote to use at parties.
Everything Jonathan Safran Foer has ever written. Every thing he writes reeks of sanctimony, and he likes to insert these precocious twerp narrators into tragedies like the Holocaust and 9/11.
This is a good point.
What does reading as if in a perpetual workshop imply?
I find it hard to be offended by anything, even Peter Sotos or Jim Goad. Or “The End of Alice.”
seconded! a disgusting scene
always considering the writer-reader relationship as student-teacher.
Ha ha, no, my implication that that line was the most offensive thing in the book was sort of a joke.
I didn’t make it to that awful ending (though I know about it from reviews) but the conception of a special heaven for fourteen-year-old girls where they sit around reading Glamour magazine all day was quite enough for me.
The cool thing about the book as technology is you can not read the book.
Still thinking…
Shitty writing has offended me. I have thrown books into ceiling fans because of shit-ass writing.
That’s it for me.
I haven’t met a subject/context that offended me.
Yet.
wow, i just read up on what this mcewan book was about, that’s fucked even for him
Hmmm, okay. I’ve got to say I’ve never thought of it that way, or acted in that way. It strikes me as really strange.
I love American Psycho. When I re-read it, though, I sometimes skim the murder scenes. I remember them well enough..
I also read “The Lovely Bones” on the advice of a friend. She kept bugging me… Have you finished it? Have you finished it? I really didn’t like that book. The thing that bothered me the most about that book was that there is a sinkhole in the vicinity of where the story takes place, where people dispose of old cars and refrigerators, etc. and nobody thinks that the girl’s body might be in there?? (Not that it was. Was it? I don’t even remember.) In any case, if the body wasn’t in there, it should have been (if I was the killer in the story and the author gave me a sinkhole outside of town where people dumped their old appliances, then that’s for sure where I’d dump the body). Stupid. Or am I just dreaming that? Now I’m feeling agitated. I’m going to stop thinking about “The Lovely Bones” right now and never think about it again!
I took a look at “American Psycho” at a bookstore once. Read something that involved nipples and a car battery, felt disgusted. Would never choose to read that book.
Can’t say I’m offended by things, tho. Can’t think of anything.
Actually, the only time in my life that I’ve ever been offended is when a self-righteous Bible-thumping old lady told me that my dogs didn’t have souls.
It is, but at the same time I wouldn’t say I was offended by JSF. It seems like there’s a distinction between perceiving bad taste in something and taking offense to it. I guess I would say I’m less offended by JSF’s actual work than its reception, if that makes sense.
I find it hard to be offended by anything, even Peter Sotos or Jim Goad. Or “The End of Alice.”
The cool thing about the book as technology is you can not read the book.
Still thinking…
Shitty writing has offended me. I have thrown books into ceiling fans because of shit-ass writing.
That’s it for me.
I haven’t met a subject/context that offended me.
Yet.
I also read “The Lovely Bones” on the advice of a friend. She kept bugging me… Have you finished it? Have you finished it? I really didn’t like that book. The thing that bothered me the most about that book was that there is a sinkhole in the vicinity of where the story takes place, where people dispose of old cars and refrigerators, etc. and nobody thinks that the girl’s body might be in there?? (Not that it was. Was it? I don’t even remember.) In any case, if the body wasn’t in there, it should have been (if I was the killer in the story and the author gave me a sinkhole outside of town where people dumped their old appliances, then that’s for sure where I’d dump the body). Stupid. Or am I just dreaming that? Now I’m feeling agitated. I’m going to stop thinking about “The Lovely Bones” right now and never think about it again!
I took a look at “American Psycho” at a bookstore once. Read something that involved nipples and a car battery, felt disgusted. Would never choose to read that book.
Can’t say I’m offended by things, tho. Can’t think of anything.
Actually, the only time in my life that I’ve ever been offended is when a self-righteous Bible-thumping old lady told me that my dogs didn’t have souls.
It is, but at the same time I wouldn’t say I was offended by JSF. It seems like there’s a distinction between perceiving bad taste in something and taking offense to it. I guess I would say I’m less offended by JSF’s actual work than its reception, if that makes sense.
I was actually offended by The End of Alice, but not necessarily by the subject matter. Rather, what was offensive to me was the utterly condescending tone that the narrator takes, the ultimate cliche of “oh no I was molested so now I am going to molest children too!,” and Homes’s prose. Of course, I read it shortly after finishing Tony Duvert’s Good Sex Illustrated (which I mostly agreed with), so the sexual relationships depicted in Homes’s book were nothing but annoying to me.
I was also weirded out by the arrival of the “n-bomb” in David Ohle’s motorman, because I couldn’t figure out exactly how he was using it. I mean I think the intention was probably something in line with decontextualizing language, as he does similar things with other words throughout the book, but considering the word itself is a signifier of so much, erasing that just struck me as lazy, or something. Otherwise I liked the book a lot though.
Eh? Why is it so bad? I just read through the synopsis on Wikipedia and am none the wiser.
I was actually offended by The End of Alice, but not necessarily by the subject matter. Rather, what was offensive to me was the utterly condescending tone that the narrator takes, the ultimate cliche of “oh no I was molested so now I am going to molest children too!,” and Homes’s prose. Of course, I read it shortly after finishing Tony Duvert’s Good Sex Illustrated (which I mostly agreed with), so the sexual relationships depicted in Homes’s book were nothing but annoying to me.
I was also weirded out by the arrival of the “n-bomb” in David Ohle’s motorman, because I couldn’t figure out exactly how he was using it. I mean I think the intention was probably something in line with decontextualizing language, as he does similar things with other words throughout the book, but considering the word itself is a signifier of so much, erasing that just struck me as lazy, or something. Otherwise I liked the book a lot though.
Eh? Why is it so bad? I just read through the synopsis on Wikipedia and am none the wiser.
The Bible offends me. The belief in a higher power, I don’t mind. It’s the belief that thinking and acting a certain way will save you from an eternity of suffering, when a lot of those thoughts and acts are hateful. Especially when people call saving their own skins faith, or a proud, vindictive being loving and forgiving.
Also, Sarah Palin. I don’t think I even need to explain that.
And Cormac McCarthy. I’ve blocked out that experience. The one thing I’ll never forget is that he didn’t use quotation marks; I’m sorry, but that’s just ridiculous.
The Bible offends me. The belief in a higher power, I don’t mind. It’s the belief that thinking and acting a certain way will save you from an eternity of suffering, when a lot of those thoughts and acts are hateful. Especially when people call saving their own skins faith, or a proud, vindictive being loving and forgiving.
Also, Sarah Palin. I don’t think I even need to explain that.
And Cormac McCarthy. I’ve blocked out that experience. The one thing I’ll never forget is that he didn’t use quotation marks; I’m sorry, but that’s just ridiculous.