Forum / "Let’s face it: Literary fiction is fucking boring."

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 30, 07:46pm

  Tough love at the SALON after Dan Chaon suggested his students should read more lit fic: «Most contemporary literary fiction is terrible—mannered, conservative, and obvious. Most of the stories in the annual best-of anthologies are mediocre, as are the stories that populate most magazines.» —J. Robert Lennon

  Full article: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/29/most_contemporary_literary_fiction_is_terrible/

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 07:50pm

  Why should literary fiction be exempt from Sturgeon's Law?

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 08:02pm

  That means only ten percent of the stories you read should be faved at all, by Sturgeon's standards. My standards, though, are much lower and I have no problem with that.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 08:04pm

  But that's among us, not a typical group of many outsiders of the mainstream. The mainstream sucks. I don't even bother with the Best of's anymore.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 08:06pm

  That's why I love lit. on the Internet.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 08:12pm

  Being my usual contrary self, I went back and read the original post (linked) that the salon piece was responding too.

  Not sure why the Salon writer got a bee up his bottom since nowhere did Dan Chaon say students should read lit fic to the exclusion of all else (or forgo family events, drunken parties, or eavesdropping, for that matter).

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 08:16pm

  Oh, then as a follower of Frankie, I take back everything I said.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 08:50pm

  Except I don't read Best stories of the year. They do bore me. I get much more stimulation here.

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 30, 08:53pm

  It's Carson Baker's fault.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 30, 08:53pm

  I also read the original article...Dan Chaon's making a mistake comparing music and literature, rock stars and lit stars, I think. The music world and the music business is a different sea from literature and from the publishing business, with very different fish. To begin with, experimentation is the guardian angel of music that has saved us from having to listen to the same stuff again and again. This cannot be said for writing: experimental writing often misses the narrative point and proves to be unreadable though interesting perhaps. The great experimenters of their time, the James and Joyce and Stein...are few in between the multitudes. In music, major experimentation leads to new styles once in a decade (or more often). Perhaps the rift goes even deeper than that...the word might follow different laws than the tone or the sound. I personally have a hard time ploughing through many magazines and I find myself returning regularly and with a sigh to those "obvious, most high profile examples" of writing. I doubt that musicians who listen to shit will eventually turn into rock stars. They'll turn into musicians who have listened to shit. If they’re also talented and otherwise informed, this might help them stay away from making shit music, but they’ll need an additional motivation, or a serious encounter with a muse, or I don’t know what…to actually do it. This I think is also true for students of literature.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 30, 09:04pm

  ...Of course, Chaon knows his students best—if he feels they need to be more engaged, so be it. The old term "littérature engagée" (was it Sartre's invention? or Camus'?) designates something else, something more specifically political and philosophical but perhaps it still is relevant to your issue: this kind of 'engagement' could, and should, with Sartre, extend to anything in and outside the realm of literary fiction.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 09:06pm

  But how different, really, is reading say, Metazen, versus going to some dive club that plays unsigned bands nobody ever heard of? Most of those bands are going to be derivative (and terrible, so terrible).

  I'm with you on not plowing through magazines; I read very slow.

  I think reading (or listening to) shit is probably an essential part in learning to discern what is not shit. I confess, I read utter shit from time to time. Sometime's it's incredibly popular shit with rabid fan bases, but it's still shit.

  Profile (or popularity or faves) do not mean something isn't shit; it's just high profile shit or popular shit.

  I think you gave me your fever, Marcus. Your influenza has gone Twitter-borne.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 09:08pm

  @marcus

  Thought:

  Engaging is different than passively reading.

  In a literary community, reading is part of engaging, but not all. To fully engage, one must also write and be read.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 09:09pm

  @Dolemite
  It always is.

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 30, 09:10pm

  , on earth as it is in heaven.

  Amen.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 30, 09:10pm

  I use the band Cream as an example - They were an experimental band - part blues, part jazz. with only a dash of rock thrown in.

  They weren't popular at first - in the pop sense - nor mainstream. They were underground sensations. Their underground following pushed them onto FM radio stations and the band, their music, and the band's comrades at arms ... such as King Crimson, Yes, and the like ... were propelled into the American consciousness. Then, they became mainstream.

  Ginsberg and Howl were certainly fringe material - then the court case, an underground following, then anthologies, then demonstrations, the National book award ... and now both are mainstream.

  Experimental is vital to both literature and music. I'm not sure which genre needs it more.

  While their ponds are similar - I agree with Marcus that lit and music do represent a different sort of fish.

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 30, 09:19pm

  "Most of those bands are going to be derivative (and terrible, so terrible)."

  But they have the undeniable advantage of drums/guitar/bass being inherently pleasurable.

  "I am pleased" to be included in this conversation of such fine writers.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 30, 09:20pm

  I love CREAM. In London we lived in Jack Bruce's (former) house. This may not be to the point. Lennon (or is it Chaon?) make the distinction between poetry and prose. I was speaking on behalf of prose where experimentation (mostly) leads to [insert your favorite famous new writer] and to yawning. But I'm a defender of traditional narratives and good ol' novels and reading fun that comes from telling a story in no uncertain terms, not to obscure or to dazzle or god knows what.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 09:23pm

  @Dolemite

  Enthusiasm makes up for a lot, in music and in literature.

  thx 4 the interact

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 09:30pm

  @marcus

  experiment -> success! popularity! -> imitators (varying quality) -> genre

  I think this is the same in music and literature.

  I don't mean to be defending the analogy, because I don't think it matters, really. The point of the analogy was that to grow as an artist in your medium you should engage in your artistic community. Quibbling over the details of the analogy doesn't undermine (or validate) the underlying point Chaon was trying to make.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 30, 09:42pm

  @frankie

  engaging in your artistic community sure is a way to grow as an artist. it certainly is a way to grow goose bumps and will help to take yourself more seriously. unless it destroys you because what you do is rejected by said community. oh well.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 09:52pm

  @marcus

  I suspect engagement in any community should be tempered with a reasonable dose of do not give a fuck for maximum profit. (and fun.)

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 10:22pm

  Marcus I think you are being too harsh on Frankie, whether she gives a fuck or not.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 30, 10:28pm

  I apologize, of course. But if you want to see "harsh" you should see some of the Facebook comments on my wall in response to this article...I could never be harsh on Frankie, I love her too much...

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 30, 10:30pm

  You are a big huggy wuggy teddy bear, Marcus, and I don't think you were harsh. I always enjoy our interacts.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 30, 10:48pm

  I wasn't aware....... I'm too literal.

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 30, 11:17pm

  Chris Okum isn't boring.

• 
  strannikov

  Mar 30, 11:48pm

  A pity Lennon didn't have space or take time to take on Chaon's two recommended mags, neither of which I've seen or heard of, either: but if Lennon had wanted to make a case, he'd've done well to've started there.
  While I generally deplore artistic and aesthetic miscegenation as much as anyone, my aesthetic purism is mitigated and hobbled by profound ignorance (lately, I've begun to threaten an essay on All the Great Works of Literature I Will Never Read): that said, no, writing ain't rock 'n' roll, but if Lennon'd wanted to try to turn criticism into performance art, he could've started by taking apart some of Chaon's recommendations publicly. Might have been entertaining.

  Today, I read introductions to translations of Titus Maccius Plautus, trying to decide which play to begin with (or whether to proceed next with Terence or resume with Lucian, assuming I first complete Juvenal's satires), until the doorbell rang and two books were delivered, one a survey of 'Pataphysics and the other essays by Rene Daumal similarly disposed: the need to prepare supper then intervened. I read nothing vaguely contemporary today in terms of literary fiction, but I usually read very little of contemporary work at all because I am not prepared to label ANY contemporary fiction (mine included) "literary": THAT appellation can only be applied by posterity, is what my reading of classical literature has begun to teach me (while recalling lessons taught by Plautus's relative contemporary, Qohelet: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity", "there is nothing new under the sun", "there is no end to the making of many books").

  I have not yet been disabused of the acquired notion that fiction cannot become "literary" until after a writer's death (an idea I picked up from both Bulgakov and his MASTER AND MARGARITA, a notion reinforced by my tentative reading of Ducasse's "Poesie I"). Assignations of literary quality and merit to contemporary works of fiction are vastly premature, to my provincial mind. I say this not to provoke or pick a fight, merely to express deep skepticism about our present contemporaneity. Or: it reflects my inability to believe that the future actually exists (astronomy confirms that only past events can be seen, measured, encountered), my belief that the past is always closer to us than any future.

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 31, 01:58am

  An amazing sentence - "Or: it reflects my inability to believe that the future actually exists (astronomy confirms that only past events can be seen, measured, encountered), my belief that the past is always closer to us than any future."

  Wonderful.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Mar 31, 02:03am

  Yeah, Sam, that is an amazing sentence. strannikov is as poetic as he is brilliant. I love how smart members of this website are.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Mar 31, 02:26am

  These days there's nothing more "fucking boring" than these halfwitted attacks on "lit fic." Granted, the writer raises some interesting points (mostly regarding the need for aspiring writers to read more broadly), but in no way successfully articulates them. The discussions that have stemmed from this flaccid piece of "writing" are vastly more intelligent and interesting.

• 
  Darryl Price

  Mar 31, 03:46pm

  If I can get in on this: read or don't read, do what you want, but work. The idea here is to create something that lives, that makes movement,whether of the heart or the feet. Who cares who your influences are? Who are you trying to impress? Write literary fiction if you feel like it, but ask yourself this question:do I really need to label what I am doing? It seems to me this is nothing more than a con game--I've read great books, look at me! I know famous writers, Look at me! I am shit deep in literature;s pastures, look at me! Who cares?Just be yourself, do what you do, you don't owe anybody any explanations or defences. Either your work will resonate or not. If it does, aren't you the lucky one. If it doesn't, will you give up or continue on? Of course you will continue on, but you don't need to join a club, or even unjoin one, to be taken seriously. Just move me--I'll take you seriously. There isn't any ultimate prize here at stake. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to be relevant--that takes care of itself inside people's heads and hearts without your trying so hard to gain entrance.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 31, 04:06pm

  Thank you for that, Darryl. I totally agree. It's so easy to get caught up...

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Mar 31, 04:24pm

  Well said Darryl, and to the point, helping us, me anyway, to move on to do the work.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 31, 05:33pm

  @stannikov

  "writing ain't rock 'n' roll"

  Musicians get better drugs and wilder groupies. Like when was the last time you heard of a crowd of nubile twenty somethings screaming and pelting John Updike (or even Dan Brown) with their panties? Yeah, never.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 31, 05:37pm

  @Darryl

  Labels are for other people to put on you. When you start labeling yourself, you're in trouble.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 31, 05:38pm

  Addendum:

  Unless it's a weird sex game involving nubile twenty-somethings and Post-Its, in which case, carry on.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 31, 05:41pm

  Addendum to addendum:

  Which doesn't necessarily mean you're not in trouble also. But it's probably worth it.

• 
  Jerry Ratch

  Mar 31, 06:35pm

  Newsflash: Dan Brown doesn't actually write his stuff. He employs a group of nubile twenty-somethings without their panties on from MFA programs to write that "shit."

• 
  John Riley

  Mar 31, 07:18pm

  I've read few GREAT WORKS that weren't boring in spurts. I don't read much contemporary "literary fiction," which is just another genre developed to make it easier for publishers to sell books without elves or vampires or car chases, but so-what if it's boring. There are worse things than being bored. The article is a bore he tried to liven up by saying "fucking." Berryman:

  "Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
  After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
  we ourselves flash and yearn,
  and moreover my mother told me as a boy
  (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
  means you have no

  Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
  inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
  Peoples bore me,
  literature bores me, especially great literature . . . "

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 31, 09:19pm

  "so-what if it's boring. There are worse things than being bored."

  Well, yeah, there's the ol' stick-in-the-eye, the unexpected punch in the face, tripping on ice and breaking yer arm, flat tire on the way to the funeral, falling off an 18' platform and dying from the resultant head-wounds, running yer finger down the cheese grater by mistake...

  ;-)

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 31, 09:20pm

  but art
  really
  should not
  be boring

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 31, 09:22pm

  without
  boring art
  hotel rooms
  would
  be
  naked

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 31, 09:26pm

  wallpaperwallpaperwallpaperwallpaperwallpaper
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  wallpaperwallpaperwallpaperwallpaperwallpaper

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Mar 31, 10:01pm

  The wallpaperwallpaper poem is very John Cage. *

  And why is it we can't fav [sic] comments in the forum?

• 
  John Riley

  Mar 31, 10:25pm

  I know plenty of people who think Mozart is boring, or would if they ever listened to him. Does that make Mozart boring? I know highly intelligent, ultra-educated people who wouldn't make it past the first page of "Ulysses" or "Portrait of a Lady" or "Mrs. Dalloway." Does that make them boring? There is no way for an artist to control for boredom. To try to do so would make for art that most of us here would find, you guessed it, boring.

• 
  Jerry Ratch

  Mar 31, 10:33pm

  Well, yeah, Ulysses! That old Greek stuff, right? I mean... sheesh!

• 
  Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

  Apr 01, 12:39am

  "...experimental writing often misses the narrative point and proves to be unreadable though interesting perhaps..."

  I love that, Marcus... it hits the nail spot on.

• 
  RW Spryszak

  Apr 01, 03:16am

  Experimental writing should be done when nobody's watching. When you're ready to release it to the world the experiment should be over, I think.

• Frankie Saxx

  Apr 01, 07:44am

  Releasing to the world doesn't mean much anymore. Not expensive. (If you already have the computer, internet connection, electricity, & so on.) Does not require approval & acceptance. Words aren't fixed by paper. Dislike that line? That paragraph? Change it. Rewrite it entirely. Again and again. If you want.

• 
  Matthew Robinson

  Apr 01, 08:19am

  Without experimentation there would be no great literature, there would be no great anything except whatever it would be that would happen. Sounds kind of nice, actually.

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Apr 01, 08:32am

  "The world is a hellish place and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering." — Tom Waits (from my wallpaperwallpaper http://bit.ly/LitQuotes)

• 
  Marcus Speh

  Apr 01, 09:17am

  Specific examples in this fun review: http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/barf-i-am-my-own-betrayal

• 
  RW Spryszak

  Apr 01, 11:35am

  I'm not arguing against new ideas or for traditional crap. I'm saying releasing one's work to the world means everything all the time unless you're "writing for yourself." Which people can go on doing all they like, just don;t expect anybody to read it and give a shit. Self-publishing is okay, and growing, but most of it is crap.

  For me, "experimental" writing is important. It has to happen. It's vital. But too often it is an excuse for not wanting to go too deep into the rewrites. Laziness. And the writer ends up blaming the stupidity of the reader for not being clever enough to "get it." I'm saying experiment all you want. Change forms. Try something new. Be different. That's how the art evolved.

  But have it fully formed before you subject it on the hapless reader. Is all I'm saying.

• 
  Jim V

  Apr 01, 03:59pm

  It doesn't surprise me that people who find literary fiction boring find literry fiction boring.

• 
  Jim V

  Apr 01, 04:00pm

  That second one should also be literary, though I like literry a lot.

• 
  James Claffey

  Apr 01, 04:07pm

  interviewer surely has a hair up his ass. seems as if he's stirring the shit, and it's a pretty pointless article, because who cares what he thinks? it's clear there are a slew of well-written, quality books out there, and his argument borders on the prelapserian yearning for life before dan brown, who probably doesn't give a shit about what constitutes "good writing," because he's got too much $$$$$ to count, and movie deals to broker. lucky fellow.

• 
  Dolemite

  Apr 01, 09:49pm

  most
  writing
  is very bad,
  worthless--people
  "expressing themselves."

  It's just a fack...

• 
  Dolemite

  Apr 01, 09:52pm

  but it keeps the machine oiled,
  ready

  for The One

  (who may
  or may not
  appear in our
  lifetime).

• Frankie Saxx

  Apr 02, 12:21pm

  Why?

  Why not write whatever the fuck I want to write and plaster it all over the internet or billboards or spray paint it on the walls of underpasses or hand print it on pieces of cardboard and tie them to signposts with ribbons? Why the fuck not?

  Everything. Nothing. There's not that much difference between the two.

  Tired of pretending words, any words, are better or worse than other words because of investment.

  Going for another iteration, why should self publishing be exempt from Sturgeon's Law?

  Self publishing has become meaningless. You're self publishing right now. I'm self publishing. Every blog post, every forum post, every witty caption on Instagram.

  Suspect publishing has become meaningless in a world where a thousand strangers can read an "unpublished" manuscript if they want, and millions more could if they were interested.

• Frankie Saxx

  Apr 02, 12:33pm

  Of course, I like the wild places on the internet, the ones full of people too gauche to know they're supposed to labor over their art in garrets, tuck it into boxes and drawers, and only send it to the world in a rarefied trickle.

  I do not mind the bad writing. I do not mind the clichéd treacle and the derivative drivel and if it's hilariously awful, all the better. Best of all when there's something raw and brilliant churned up in the surf.

  (Sometimes I'm awful too. I hope it's hilarious when I am.)

  The reader is not a captive audience. If the reader is bored, the reader may leave any time the reader wants.

• 
  Letitia Coyne

  Apr 02, 01:04pm

  Hear, hear.

  Lx

• 
  Sam Rasnake

  Apr 02, 01:58pm

  Should never write for readers or audience anyway. (This is a message to self.)

• 
  RW Spryszak

  Apr 02, 05:50pm

  Then Frankie, churn that surf.

• 
  Charlotte Hamrick

  Apr 02, 06:45pm

  Exactly, Frankie. That's what I like about the web - you can read all sorts of work from all sorts of people that would probably be ejected from the towers of conventional publishing houses. I don't want somebody in an office in NY picking my reading material for me. I can do it myself. Power to the people.

• 
  RW Spryszak

  Apr 02, 07:08pm

  Frankie, I'm not defending garrets and towers and executives and the Big 6 and all the English teachers who begged you to learn where to put a fucking comma. If people want to write to pleasure themselves they should go ahead.

  The established publishing houses wouldn't know good writing if it fucked their mother. I like to read stuff that engages me, and I have some regard for writers who think engaging me was kind of the idea. I don't know where all of a sudden that makes me the paragon of corporate conservative stasis and fuck you for trying to paint me into that corner.

  If your sticking seven random words on a signpost somewhere in Cleveland is good, I'll like it. Just, like, you know, if you're going to masturbate don't expect me to try and decipher the cum on the page, is all I'm saying.

  I mean try to at least make it look like you had the balls to control where it went, yeah?

• Frankie Saxx

  Apr 02, 08:46pm

  Made me laugh, RW.

  Fair enough.

• 
  stephen hastings-king

  Apr 04, 03:48pm

  Rock-n-roll--banal blues changes, voiced so as to only allow for tiresome little riffs that substitute for development repeated again and again over a standardized 4/4 time---that this basic form should be referenced in a critique of anything for being too convention-bound..that's kinda funny.

  But not as funny as is equating experimental work with a lack of attention to craft.

  By that awesome logic, Captian Beefheart would be one of those people who "didn't want to go too deep into rewrites."

  Keeping with the music parallel game, reading a lot of this thread is like talking to people who have listened to Ornette Coleman maybe once, couldn't hear what was going on, but who are nonetheless sure that Ornette sucks.

  You know, it's all "out of tune" because it doesn't use those nice chords you rely on to avoid having to listen.

  It's "self-indulgent."

  Because "real" art owes you, the sovereign consumer, reinforcements of the familiar.

  Clearly, any work that does not take your consumer preferences into account must be done by a narcissist.

  Because only a narcissist would not know that the world is really all about you.

• 
  RW Spryszak

  Apr 05, 11:53am

  Then again one can always resort to building a straw man when the wit miserably fails.

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