The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers

[Mirabell]

Anis Shivani: The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers (PHOTOS) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/the-15-most-overrated-con_b_672974.html#s123773)

about half this list is asinine philistinism, the other half is very, very correct. very weird.

Yes, Collins, Foer, Tan, Olds and Cunningham are crap, and I tend to suspect these days that Graham is, too, and Junot Diaz sounds dire enough for me to have evaded reading him so far.

No, Gluck, Ashbery and Oliver are excellent poets, Lahiri is a very good story writer, Vendler is an excellent critic and Vollmann is a very good writer.


whatcha say?

[Liam]

Gluck, Ashbery and Oliver are excellent poetsAnd of course, we're just going to have to take your word for it, right? ;) I love Mary Oliver for her simplicity but what little I've read of Ashberry has convinced me that he's both overrated and unreadable. No great truths about the human condition here, just some boring wallowing in the intricacies of style and language that lead absolutely nowhere (except hundreds of dissertations from pretensions young poetry students).

Lahiri is a very good story writerEh. She's OK. I find her and her ilk to be thoroughly inconsequential. You may want to read her if you're living the same kind of life that she describes in her fiction, but what about the rest of us? She bored my socks off.

Vollmann is a very good writer.No thanks. I tried. Life's too short. The horror. The horror. A raging termite who produces nothing but schlock, should be thinking about saving trees instead of publishing all those mega-tomes.

One final word: Cunningham. Cunningham is neither crap nor is he overrated. To be overrated would mean to be huge. And he's not. The Hours was his only real success, due to the fact that it won the Pulitzer and was adopted for the big screen. His two previous books did not sell very well, and you don't see them discussed very often these days either. Specimen Days was received lukewarmly, at best, and his upcoming novel, By Nightfall, isn't exactly generating any furious critical buzz or attention. So we're back to The Hours.

I wish that Cunningham were overrated, because then it would mean that everybody has at least read him. Sadly, that's not the case.

Foer must be the worst writer on the list (except Diaz), I agree, although I don't feel quite as violently about this whole thing as Anis Shivani and, apparently, Mirabell do. The bottom line is: who the fuck cares? Don't like a writer? Just move on with your life. But some people have nothing better to do than write silly editorials calling attention to the entirely horrendous state of modern literature (which they've been doing pretty much since the dawn of time, :rolleyes:).

[lionel]

The bottom line is: who the fuck cares? Don't like a writer? Just move on with your life. But some people have nothing better to do than write silly editorials calling attention to the entirely horrendous state of modern literature (which they've been doing pretty much since the dawn of time, :rolleyes:).

Yeah, right. Personally, I don't think I'd have put any of these on the overrated list, with the only (but definite) exception of Tan, but I particluarly love Olds (ummm!) and Oliver. This is just Huffpo generating controversial copy. Ugggh.

The only positive thing about the list is that the most obvious shit (Meyer, Brown, etc) just isn't recognized.

BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)

[miercuri]

Is Tan actually overrated? I mean, is she actually considered a 'first-class' writer by anyone? I thought she wrote smarter chick-lit with Chinese-American characters, but that's still chick-lit.

[Bubba]

Haven't read any of the poets on Shivani's list, but I do know that Graham, as judge of a poetry contest sponsored by a university press, awarded the top prize to a manuscript submitted by a fellow poet she was in a relationship with and would later marry. Shivani mentions, in a general way, the cronyism that plagues the US literary world but doesn't bring up this particularly egregious instance of it.

I am almost as unfamiliar with the work of his overrated prose writers: I've read a little Vollman (some pretty good magazine articles, probably heavily edited, and snatches of Europe Central, which I couldn't bother reading all the way through, though the subject is of interest to me); about a third of Cunningham's The Hours, which I couldn't stand, mostly because Cunningham himself struck me as cold, cold (better, but not much, was a short story of his I read in one of those "Best American Stories" books); and a story by Junot D?az (one was enough).

It's not necessary to be "huge" to be "overrated;" if you are a worse than mediocre writer and your work merits no attention whatsoever but manages all the same to get the tiniest bit, it is, without being "huge," "overrated." Being overrated is relative. And, though it is probably not the case now, Cunningham almost certainly was overrated (maybe in the late 1990s); time is doing what it does best.

Shivani's article was a little mean-spirited, I guess, and he makes himself vulnerable to accusations of jealously, but I think such articles are necessary. I'm also glad he tossed a few barbs at that total airhead of a book "critic" Adam Kirsch.

By chance, I've read Shivani's long story "Huntsville." It appeared in a recent issue of News from the Republic of Letters (http://www.bu.edu/trl/), one of only two literary reviews I happen to get regularly. The story was pretty good, certainly better than anything I've ever read by the literary luminaries on Shivani's list of overrated writers.

[Mirabell]

the whole "unreadable" moniker has always confused me. I get "boring", which means "I am bored", but by that logic "unreadable" or "inscrutable" should mean "I don't understand it" yet the idiot journo writing the article, and lovely Liam formulate it as a reproach: what kind of reproach is that? I find Ashbery very readable, entertaining, supple, warm. I love his poetry, I find it moving, and brilliantly executed. So you don't understand it. That is the writer's fault? Really? Come on.

[Liam]

So you don't understand it. That is the writer's fault? Really?Ouch. No one's ever called Liam stupid before, except his mom when she caught him wearing her high-heels at age 12. A slap well-taken. Bitch! :p:p:p

[Mirabell]

Ouch. No one's ever called Liam stupid before, except his mom when she caught him wearing her high-heels at age 12. A slap well-taken. Bitch! :p:p:p

Honey that's not what I said, nor what I meant. You know I worship the ground you sashay on, right?

[Refus de Sejour]

Interesting; that's the second Vollmann-bashing piece I've read, and they've both focused on that opening paragraph from Europe Central, which is in no way representative of his style. I really wonder how much of his work they've actually read.

[Refus de Sejour]

Liam, have you tried Vollman's The Ice Shirt? The opening paragraph:





The story of the demon Blue-Shirt (known in His native land as AMORTORTAK) is hinted at in a variety of codices, being revealed nowhere and everywhere, like cabalistic doctrine. Explication, therefore, remains a task of almost celestial difficulty – a pity for me, as I could otherwise be drumming my fingers and peering admirably through my window bars at the driveway. But I must do my best. – In but two sources, then, has anyone found direct mention of this LORD of our secret worship: the Graenlendinga Saga, known in English as the Tale of the Greenlanders (ca. 1190), and its companion Eirik's Saga (ca. 1260) – and in both of these He appears in the form of a great glacier-mountain, which some are disposed to equate with Gunnbjorn's Peak (at 12,500 feet the highest point in Greenland), and others with the lesser glacier-tower of Ingoldsfjeld, near Angmagssalik. No traces of demonic origin were reported by the expedition that first scaled the summit in 1935; nor is Ingolfsfjeld anything more than a sky-coloured eye of ice, gazing dully out over the sea. – Where then is Blue-Shirt? – Why, nowhere and everywhere. – History being nothing more than a long list of regrettable actions, such equivocation should not surprise us. But where corpses were buried secretly, there the grass grows thick; such signs (and there are ever so many others!) may be read by those to whom truth is more important that beauty.





I confess, I find it incomprehensible that any human being could not be electrified by that opening; but then, to each his own. I just wish his critics would quote it instead of the octophone one :D

[Bubba]

Liam, have you tried Vollman's The Ice Shirt? The opening paragraph:




I confess, I find it incomprehensible that any human being could not be electrified by that opening; but then, to each his own. I just wish his critics would quote it instead of the octophone one :D

Forgive me, Refus, but I find the passage you cited very nearly as telling--and as damning--as the sentence Shivani cites. For me, it is off-putting, almost entirely unreadable, or, to put it in terms Mirabell might understand, "es l?sst sich nicht lesen," as Poe had his Germans say.

Among the things that bother me about your excerpt are its pedantry, its possible narcissism, and its needless difficulty (that thicket of parenthetical expressions to bushwhack through).

Using foreign languages or names in your writing is always going to expose you to charges of pedantry, but I think you compound the problem if, like Vollman in the passage you cite, you pause to explain the term to your readers rather than write in such a way that makes it clear from the context. And for what possible reason does Vollman write AMORTORTAK in all caps? Then there's this seemingly rhetorical question: "Where then is Blue-Shirt? [and why the hell not BLUE-SHIRT?]--Why, nowhere and everywhere." Those "thens." That "why." That "such equivocation should not surprise us." Who is this "us" Vollman is referring to? I'm for damn sure not going to be reading this book. In short, Vollman comes across here as an insufferable little schoolmaster.

And he is sententious: "But where corpses were buried secretly, there the grass grows thick."

Jarring, too, is the reference to an "I." Is it Vollman himself or merely an unnamed first-person narrator? Who really cares what this "I" would be doing (drumming his fingers, apparently) if he were not charged with the "celestially difficult" (huh?) task of "explication," as he terms it? I am also thrown by the reference to bars on a window overlooking a driveway. Is the "I" in a cell? But what prisons have driveways? In fact, it is this rather puzzling reference that intrigues me more than anything else about this passage. The term "driveway," will almost certainly evoke for Vollman, an American, the same image as it does for me: a wide ribbon of smooth concrete leading into and out of a garage ample enough for at least two of the panzer-like motor vehicles we Americans are fond of, plus a riding lawn mower or two. A basketball goal may overhang said driveway, but it is highly unlikely to be overlooked by a barred window. In the US at least, "window bars" (much less "window bars" through which one "peers admirably") and "driveways" are architectural features that simply aren't, as a rule, found together.

If Vollman's intention here is to have his readers ponder the seeming incompatibility of architectural features such as window bars and driveways, I can say with confidence that he has succeeded. Succeeded in the same way as he would have been able, had he not taken on the celestially difficult task of explicating the story of the demon Blue-Shirt, a story revealed, like cabbalistic doctrine, everywhere and nowhere, to gaze through his window bars at the driveway. Admirably, in other words.

That Vollman's audience is almost exclusively male is also telling: it speaks more to the solid powers of discernment of women readers than it does to those of men (and I say so as an admirer of some of Vollman's journalism).

There is no real merit to my ability to see clearly the many flaws in Vollman's work; it's just that in Vollman's writing I see a lot of what I don't like about my own.

[jackdawdle]

wow. some major cajones. reminds me of john simon. still i'm a firm believer that bad publicity is better than none.

[Refus de Sejour]

That Vollman's audience is almost exclusively male is also telling. . .

What makes you think that? It's hard to collect such data, but just the other day I was reading Katie Braverman (http://www.katebraverman.com/vollmann.html) praising him "as emblematic of the self-evident truths of what it is to be human and to create." Positive comments on Vollmann's Facebook fan page looks to be 2/3ds male, 1/3d female - hardly "almost exclusively" anything. Maybe woman aren't as discerning as you seem to think....

As for the rest of your comment; it's always strange when someone makes a list of 'flaws' that are, for me, pleasures. My father-in-law doesn't like the look of rainforests or jungles - too tangled and overgrown! (he prefers rolling meadows, or pines). A few days back I was praising a salmon dish at my fav. Taiwanese restaurant (so exquisitely salty!), and a friend damned it for exactly the same reasons.

As I said, to each his own.

[Liam]

flaws that are, for me, pleasures

so exquisitely salty!
As I said, to each his own.
Yeah, except one could also rightfully defend coprophagia for these exact same reasons, :rolleyes:!

I agree with Bubba. The opening paragraph of The Ice Shirt is indeed dreadful. Just stick to the sagas, Refus, which are the real thing, not some silly pomo reinterpretation of them by a Thomas Pynchon-wannabe.

No offense meant, as always, :).

[Liam]

Honey that's not what I said, nor what I meant.Relax, M, I was just trying to be funny. (Remind me, when was I ever serious with you? :p).

You know I worship the ground you sashay on, right?Right, right. Very much appreciated, but hardly necessary; my natural sense of modesty won't be able to stand it.

I remember my very first post here back in Oct (?) 2008; I believe you called it a "useless rant." So much for worship, :D.

[lenz]

Among the things that bother me about your excerpt are its pedantry, its possible narcissism, and its needless difficulty (that thicket of parenthetical expressions to bushwhack through).

I don't usually agree with Bubba, but that's exactly what I think.

[lenz]

Katie Braverman (http://www.katebraverman.com/vollmann.html) praising him "as emblematic of the self-evident truths of what it is to be human and to create."

I'm surprised at you, Refus de Sejour, accepting a pompous meaningless phrase like that as some kind of proof of anything. To "be human and to create" can mean quite the opposite of your opinion of Vollman.

[lionel]

As for the rest of your comment; it's always strange when someone makes a list of 'flaws' that are, for me, pleasures.

Dunno if 'strange' is the right word, Refus de Sejour, although it is strange for me too. We could say that the world is divided beteen realists and avant-gardists, but that's way too simple: most people just swing toward one direction or the other (and I'm sure Liam wouldn't even take a shot at that remark), but there's obviously a continuum you can hop on where you please.

Anyway, how about this from a review of David Lipsky's Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, in The New York Review of Books, by Wyatt Mason:

'Consider an interesting section where Wallace and Lipsky are discussing fictional modes. Lipsky expresses a preference for realism; Wallace, for avant-guardism: ?experimental and avant-garde stuff can capture and talk about the way the world feels on our nerve endings,? Wallace says, ?in a way that conventional realistic stuff can?t.? Lipsky suggests that ?Tolstoy?s books come closer to the way life feels than anybody, and those books couldn?t be more conventional.? Wallace holds that ?life now is completely different than the way it was then. Does your life approach anything like a linear narrative?? As Wallace continues, note that the bracketed comments are Lipsky?s, after the fact:

Life seems to strobe on and off for me, and to barrage me with input. And that so much of my job is to impose some sort of order, or make some sort of sense of it. In a way that?maybe I?m very naive?I imagine Leo getting up in the morning, pulling on his homemade boots, going out to chat with the serfs whom he?s freed [Making clear he knows something about the texture and subject], you know. Sitting down in his silent room, overlooking some very well-tended gardens, pulling out his quill and?in deep tranquility, recollecting emotion.

And I don?t know about you. I just?stuff that?s like that, I enjoy reading, but it doesn?t feel true at all. I read it as a relief from what?s true. I read it as a relief from the fact that, I received five hundred thousand discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. And how am I going to sort those out, you know?

And yet you made a linear narrative, easily, out of both our days, just now. Off the top of your head. I think our brain is structured to make linear narratives, to condense and focus and separate what?s important.

You, if this is an argument, you will win. This is an argument you will win. [Strange: competition] I am attempting to describe for you what I mean in response to your, ?I have no idea what you?re talking about.?
'The overall effect of Lipsky?s constant interruptions of Wallace?s routinely thoughtful replies is not to give the reader useful information but to show how little Lipsky seems to understand Wallace?both the man who preferred to avoid doing journalism of the variety that Lipsky has produced and the artist whose method Lipsky claims he was attempting to ape: ?the deluxe internal surveys [Wallace] specialized in?the unedited camera, the feed.? '

Interesting, and much more so than material about, er, ...

BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)

[Refus de Sejour]

I'm surprised at you, Refus de Sejour, accepting a pompous meaningless phrase like that as some kind of proof of anything. To "be human and to create" can mean quite the opposite of your opinion of Vollman.

I'm surprised at you for assuming I accept anything Braverman says. Bubba claims Vollmann's audience is almost exclusively male. Braverman is female. That is the only reason I bought her up. The content of her review is completely irrelevant.

When I respond to someone's post, I first try to make sure I understand exactly what it is they're saying. I'd appreciate it if you afforded me the same courtesy.

[lenz]

Sorry. I misread your post. I must say, though, that Braverman's comment is typical of the kind of over-rating that goes on in book reviewing (log-rolling) everywhere.

[Refus de Sejour]

Apology accepted. Her poetry isn't much good either :D

[Refus de Sejour]

Dunno if 'strange' is the right word, Refus de Sejour, although it is strange for me too. BLOG[/URL]

I find it strange because, when what seem to me 'qualities' are viewed by others as 'flaws,' that indicates such a mismatch of sensibilities it seems futile to debate the point.

Many people seem to have an immediate adverse reaction to pretension or 'pedantry' - in this case, the use of foreign terms. Using foreign terms in literature has never struck me as pretentious. The Ice Shirt is a novel about the Viking expedition to Newfoundland - or more precisely, about the authors engagement with that history and his fantasies about it . It would be odd it if didn't use foreign terms or didn't reference the various source texts through which the author connected with that history.

Again, when someone claims a text is dense and difficult - a text that I've always found as fluid as water - well, what more can be said? I don't know why I find Vollmann so readable. I certainly don't have a propensity for difficult texts; as I've said elsewhere, I've never been able to get into Pynchon. Ditto for writers like Malcolm Lowry or Faulkner.

As for questioning why a writer uses unconventional punctuation or sentence structure - that's like asking why a jazz trumpeter plays a note a certain way. It boils down to: because it works. Which, of course, is no kind of answer to those for whom it doesn't.

And, again, I like the idea of the narrator sitting in his study, looking out his window, then turning back to the page and a thousand years of history. I don't find anything confusing about the bars or the driveway.

Forgive me, Lionel, for not responding to the rest of your thoughtful post. I will consider Wallace and Lipsky later and get back to you.

[lionel]

Many people seem to have an immediate adverse reaction to pretension or 'pedantry'.

Don't I know it. I've been through this before with Lenz in some detail, but in essence I find there can be no literary progress without pretension, which, as of course in the French too, means claiming. What's wrong with claiming new literary territory?


As for questioning why a writer uses unconventional punctuation or sentence structure - that's like asking why a jazz trumpeter plays a note a certain way. It boils down to: because it works. Which, of course, is no kind of answer to those for whom it doesn't.


Quite.


I don't find anything confusing about the bars or the driveway.

No, nor do I, and I've had a few friendly (at least, I hope they were :)) spats with Bubba in the past, who chooses to use a Southern indicator, which I suppose ties in with his general love of realism, and which the South has in the past been noted for (with the exception, say, of Faulkner and Frances Newman).

I think the trouble with English literature is that - above all in England itself - it's not moved on from 1922, the annus mirabilis of modernism. And I fear that people, probably again above all in England, won't be reading Vollmann in 12 years time, but, er, Ian McEwan still: technology has made literally incredible advances in 20 years, but literature is moving back!


Forgive me, Lionel, for not responding to the rest of your thoughtful post. I will consider Wallace and Lipsky later and get back to you.

No problem, Refus de Sejour. Here's the full article about Wallace, which is well worth reading as it makes some interesting (and probably original) comments on his aesthetic:

Smarter than You Think | The New York Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jul/15/smarter-you-think/)

BLOG (http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com)

[Eric]

You know my views on lists. They are utterly worthless. Great for teenagers, useless for serious adults.

How can anyone possibly verify by whom and by what criteria and mechanisms such ridiculous lists are put together? There are a thousand ways such lists can be manipulated and twisted to suit the tastes and prejudices of those drawing them up. Are people really so thick that they believe what a tired summer journo has cobbled together.

I said to the girl in the railway station book kiosk the other day that you could simply pile up the books in a different order for those 1-10 rankings, and no one would notice. I hope she's done it this week, just to spite the stupid managers.

Any one of us could write a list of 15 names, find a few genuine quotes to make it look convincing, then lie that we have asked 4,387 people in a non-existent poll, then trumpet the results.

Wool should be pulled from over the eyes of gullible innocents. (By the way, did you know that U-Polls International have found out that worldwide 8 times more people read Henry James than Henning Mankell, despite the latter's trip to Gaza and back? And that Martin Amis is read by more Argentinians than Borges?)

Finally, comrades, this is an English-language website. Any of us that know a few other languages can show off and play one-upmanship games. But one would tend to regard him as a Besserwisser. Maybe we should all write in Esperanto - one word, one meaning, no synonyms, no ambiguities, no snide comments.

[Refus de Sejour]

Mason makes a very good point about the tendency to equate 'sprawling' with 'unedited,' 'undisciplined,' etc, and the simple fact that these kind of readings emerge from reviewers just not having the time to read the books carefully. Vollmann critics are especially obvious on this point; both the trash-reviews I mentioned assert that "nobody actually reads Vollmann," a claim I can only interpret as being a projection of their own lack of inclination.

The issue of 'difficult' literature is a tricky one. I'm a hedonist when it comes to reading. I usually don't persist with books that are difficult to the point of not giving some kind of immediate pleasure. I find Vollmann - or Rushdie for that matter, or Beckett - easy to read. Which just makes the whole "difficult lit." question kind of meaningless for me, in that difficulty/ease are highly subjective.

[Eric]

I quite agree with Refus' first paragraph. One tongue-in-cheek formula that I've heard is "read the first ten pages, read the last ten pages, and pick out a few quotes from the pages in between". Or did I just make that quote up? Because some people are so gullible, they'd believe anything.

Why go to university if you leave the institution without a built-in "shit detector" (this, I believe is a genuine term from educationalist Doug Holly from back in the 1970s)? No wonder so many Germans voted for Hitler in the 1930s. They were hungry, unemployed, and desperately wanted to believe that the F?hrer would cure all their ills. So he went ahead telling them a pack of lies. (Plus the truth about wanting to murder the Jews; always mix in half-truths with your propaganda.) And look where that got them.

So if you want to believe that 15 particular books are the worst in the world (though such ignorant journos can't read 95% of books published around the world, both on account of language and the sheer volume involved), do so. The issue is subjective. But you've got to develop I kind of nose for when a writer is a genius, albeit eccentric or experimental, or some mesmeriser that writes utter garbage but has the gift of the gab so he talks up his books on TV.

And all these well-written books which are nevertheless kids' books such as Tolkien and Harry Potter, should not be judged by the same criteria as complex novels for adults. Ditto crime novels which may amuse, but once you know who's done it, you cannot read them again with the same suspense.

There are surely a number of objective pointers as to what constitutes a good book. A combination of certain factors in differing proportions. But no one will invent a law like in physics, because the humanities don't work like that. Emotion, religion, allusion all play parts that a pull-to-bits structural analysis of a book, unless incredibly subtle, cannot really cope with.

I'm a hedonist, as Refus calls it, on and off. Sometimes, when I'm in the mood, I can push myself over that initial threshold. But with things like "Finnegans Wake" I would, again and again, stop at page ten or so.

But if you take the extreme view that it's all subjective, then no school or university could ever have a meaningful reading list, syllabus, or set of seminars on literature. Canons may be faulty, but there is often a general consensus that does not totally rely on subjectivism or putting your writer friends on the list and leaving off people equally clever.

[Bubba]

What makes you think that? It's hard to collect such data, but just the other day I was reading Katie Braverman (http://www.katebraverman.com/vollmann.html) praising him "as emblematic of the self-evident truths of what it is to be human and to create." Positive comments on Vollmann's Facebook fan page looks to be 2/3ds male, 1/3d female - hardly "almost exclusively" anything. Maybe woman aren't as discerning as you seem to think....

As for the rest of your comment; it's always strange when someone makes a list of 'flaws' that are, for me, pleasures. My father-in-law doesn't like the look of rainforests or jungles - too tangled and overgrown! (he prefers rolling meadows, or pines). A few days back I was praising a salmon dish at my fav. Taiwanese restaurant (so exquisitely salty!), and a friend damned it for exactly the same reasons.

As I said, to each his own.

Refus, or, as Waalkwriter calls you, Rufus, I don't dispute your right to enjoy Vollman's prose, but the "de gustibus" argument, as Liam and Eric have noted, can be taken to absurd lengths. It can be relied on to make it impossible ever to conclude that any one book works better than any other, for example.

Naturally, I don't know for sure that Vollman's readers are almost exclusively men, but I'd be willing to bet on it: his themes are of interest mostly to men, but, unlike, say, Jane Austen, who treats themes (matchmaking, domestic life) of interest largely to women with a wit and irony that can appeal also to men, Vollman doesn't really do anything to lend a more universal appeal to his work. In addition, I've come across several men who read Vollman; not once have I met a woman reader of his. And a Facebook fan does not necessarily a reader make; even if it does, the male/female ratio on Facebook isn't necessarily representative of the male/female ratio of all Vollman's readers.

Rare are my posts here on WLF that don't use at least one foreign term, so I should be the last one to complain about people's using foreign languages when they write in English. What's pedantic is when they pause, as Vollman does, to "explicate" the term. I detest writers who talk at me as if were a schoolboy.

Could Refus tell me, too, what pleasure he could possibly derive from his reading of Vollman's "peering admirably" at his driveway? How is it possible to "peer admirably"? What is "admirable" about "peering"? It seems to me Vollman uses the word "admirably" merely because he likes the sound of it. He likes to hear himself talk, in other words.

He also seems to think he's funny. There can be no other reason for the inclusion of: "No traces of demonic origin were reported by the expedition that first scaled the summit in 1935." I realize humor is a very particular thing (there are, for example, millions of folks who seem to think Woody Allen is funny), but that bit about the expedition's reporting no traces of demonic origin (har, har) is, for me, juvenile, clumsy, and unnecessary.

I don't work on fiction ("just as well," you may say), but if the opening to Vollman's The Ice-Shirt had come across my desk it wouldn't have left it without my striking through a good deal of it (or at the very least having addressed several pointed queries to the author). Vollman's editors are either cowed by his unearned reputation for genius or simply incompetent. There's an argument, of course, for letting the writer be himself, but such arguments don't really apply to a writer like Vollman, who, managed by the multinational media conglomerates, marketed in the four corners of the globe, translated into Lord knows how many languages, has squandered any chance he ever had of having a right to be his own man. He is, in my view, a creature of the publishing conglomerates, a moderately successful brand, and nothing more.

I think Eric's dismissal of Shivani's "list" (it's more than a mere list) is unwarranted, and I wonder if he actually read it; Shivani, as I happen to know from my reading some of his fiction, is no mere "ignorant journo." That's not to say his piece is beyond reproach.

[Refus de Sejour]

Refus, or, as Waalkwriter calls you, Rufus, I don't dispute your right to enjoy Vollman's prose, but the "de gustibus" argument, as Liam and Eric have noted, can be taken to absurd lengths. It can be relied on to make it impossible ever to conclude that any one book works better than any other, for example.

Ultimately, yes. Value judgements depend on values; when values are not shared, value judgements are not going to match. A difficult situation when concerning moral issues; I find it less distressing in aesthetics.


Naturally, I don't know for sure that Vollman's readers are almost exclusively men, but I'd be willing to bet on it: his themes are of interest mostly to men

I'm curious; what do you think Vollmann's themes are?


I detest writers who talk at me as if were a schoolboy.

I've noted that people here who react against 'pedantry' or 'pretension' seem to treat the reader/writer relationship as one in which the reader must constantly be on guard against attacks on their intelligence or education. I don't share that defensive impulse.


Could Refus tell me, too, what pleasure he could possibly derive from his reading of Vollman's "peering admirably" at his driveway? How is it possible to "peer admirably"? What is "admirable" about "peering"? It seems to me Vollman uses the word "admirably" merely because he likes the sound of it.

I like the sound of it too. Believe it or not, 'sound' - that is, rhythm, musicality - is widely thought be of some significance in literature. And, as I said above, I find the idea of the narrator in his modern domestic setting, contrasted against the deep gulf of time, a powerful one.


There's an argument, of course, for letting the writer be himself, but such arguments don't really apply to a writer like Vollman, who, managed by the multinational media conglomerates, marketed in the four corners of the globe, translated into Lord knows how many languages, has squandered any chance he ever had of having a right to be his own man. He is, in my view, a creature of the publishing conglomerates, a moderately successful brand, and nothing more.

Are you aware Vollmann gives up significant royalty/payment rights in return for complete editorial control over his books? 'Complete editorial control' meaning, in his case, that no alterations are made. It's hard to imagine a writer less 'managed' than Vollmann. I can understand why that might annoy an editor, though :D

[Mirabell]

comment on the list
Literary Critic Hates Vaginas, "Ghetto Volume" (http://jezebel.com/5608263/literary-critic-hates-vaginas-ghetto-volume)

she's not wrong.

[Refus de Sejour]

comment on the list
Literary Critic Hates Vaginas, "Ghetto Volume" (http://jezebel.com/5608263/literary-critic-hates-vaginas-ghetto-volume)

she's not wrong.

That reminds me: Shevani's condemnation of "obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance" (all questionable terms anyway, but nevermind) is a little bizarre when she equates these things to a betrayal of the "legacy of modernism." Has she actually read the modernists? Her criticisms could be applied as easily to them as to anyone.

edited to add: a lot of good stuff seems to come out of Jezebel. They have a knack of cutting through the bullshit.

[waalkwriter]

Allow me to be an asinine college boy...haha, his name is Anis ;)

Now that that Bevis and Butthead moment is out of my system, let me say to Eric that I am completely confounded by your hatred of lists. I personally never actually make them; my reading list is a vague thing in the back of my head and I'm more likely to read something on impulse or something suggested to me when I lack other ideas, and I do the same with pretty much everything else, but I am amused and interested in reading them.

As for everyone else, Vollman is simply uncontrollably dense and oftentimes he's an incomprehensible jumble of creative nonfiction, fiction, and travelogue all at the same time, leaving me unable to distinguish which is which, and as Bubba said, what very little I've had time to pick up is in incredible need of competent editing.

As far as Shivani's article, I agree with much of it, and he does present some pretty damning sentences from Vollman that paint him in an incredibly egotistical and narcissistic light which might explain the near total lack of control and editing in his work. I agree with him on John Ashberry, and he makes me like Junot Diaz a lot less with his take on his writing. I hadn't even heard of half the writers on his list though. But I digress, the main thing that bothered me was his negative tone, so pessimistic and negative I felt like just giving up on reading. No one should feel that strongly; half of it is an anti-establishment bashing that at the same time admits the establishment can't be beaten, which makes it depressing. He sounds stuck up, and far too full of himself in his criticisms of these authors. I can't quite place my finger on it exactly, but something about the way he writes makes me dislike him, even if I agree with a great deal of his observations.

[Refus de Sejour]

My mistake, I thought Anis was female. But then I guess, as Bubba claims women are better judges of good writing than men, that makes his article even more doubtul. . . :D

By the way, Waalkwriter, you currently have 666 posts. Quick, write another before the devil appears!

[waalkwriter]

My mistake, I thought Anis was female. But then I guess, as Bubba claims women are better judges of good writing than men, that makes his article even more doubtul. . . :D

By the way, Waalkwriter, you currently have 666 posts. Quick, write another before the devil appears!

Didn't you know? I am the devil! Muwahahaha. I'm also the Democratically elected supreme ruler of the universe.

[Mirabell]

comment on the list
Literary Critic Hates Vaginas, "Ghetto Volume" (http://jezebel.com/5608263/literary-critic-hates-vaginas-ghetto-volume)

she's not wrong.


she might also have pointed out the idiocy of the attack on Vendler. I was stunned when I saw that he faulted Vendler for focusing on form so much instead of high-faluting blather about philosophy or other only marginally related nitwittery. At worst, that kind of writing ends up in books like Perloff's (although Perloff's very early work is decent) which focus on many philosophers but tend not to demonstrate even a rudimentary understanding of said thinkers. Vendler's work is exhilaratingly old-fashioned. She has a knack for focusing on why poems work as they do, what makes them tick. I have waded through piles of shit about George Herbert recently, and her work, while less substantial than that of some outstanding Herbert specialists like Leimbach, stands out in terms of insight and carefulness. She has her odd moods (first championing, and then dropping Rita Dove's work), and odd taste (her championing of Jorie Graham has kept me from completely dismissing Graham's work), but there are few critics like her at work today, Christopher Ricks of course, Willard Spiegelman and a small handful of others.