Pretentiousness

[Dirt]

An article about modern "literary" books.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59856,00.html

I can kind of agree with the author of the book. It seems so often now (damn Oprah) that books always have to contain some kind of overt meaning (commenting on specific class, gender, sexuality issues) in order for it to be "literary". I don't think many, if any, people thought Shakespeare or Dickens were great literary writers in their own time, it was many years later that people actually found "meaning" in their works and considered them great literary masters. People have been ripping on Kelly Ripa because she is only introducing books to people that are fun, fast reads. I think that this is the perfect counter-balance to the literary snobs that Oprah has created.

[mtkafka]

We had a thread in the blue boards about that guy. Hes partly right. I agree with some of his views, its not so much that these authors are 'pretentious' but exclusive to a 'literary' readership. I don't see that a problem... but I do see the problem in leaving out some popular forms of fiction that in some instances could be just as good or even more artistic than the high falutin stuff. Its like a mensa club? I dont think Oprah's books are considered very high... just books with agenda's (feminism, racism, abuse....). Though I never read much Oprah book club books, it would be also bad to ridicule a book because its on her list...

It goes both ways though imo, theres the pop culture dorks who proclaim ANYTHING is artistic and the smug kids who proclaim anything commercial stupid... its ghey! bah.

etc

[Toddy]

Speaking of pretentious writing, I really, really liked the New Republic review of Rick Moody's The Black Veil. It's by a guy named Dale Peck, and he takes the opportunity to not only hammer Moody, but a lot of other current literati. He even points out where fiction took a wrong turn after Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. And anyone who points out that Don DeLillo's work is "stupid--just plain stupid" is a friend of mine.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020701&s=peck070102

[Ron Dulin]

And anyone who points out that Don DeLillo's work is "stupid--just plain stupid" is a friend of mine.

Your friend is a moron. Peck is little more than a literary troll, trying to make a name for himself and get some free publicity for his poor-selling novels. This whole subject has been beaten into the ground in countless other forums (and by that I don't mean message boards), but the guy went to a pretty ridiculous extreme to maybe make a point. And the aforementioned publicity.

Here's the paragraph where Peck's entire argument falls apart:

[T]hough he has never put together a single sentence that I would call indispensable, there is a true empathetic undercurrent in Moody's work. I find the same current in the work of David Foster Wallace and Jeffrey Eugenides and Colson Whitehead, but not in the work of Richard Powers and Dave Eggers and Donald Antrim and Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Lethem. I find it in Thomas Pynchon but not in Don DeLillo, here and there in John Barth and Donald Barthelme but almost entirely absent in John Fowles and John Hawkes and William Gaddis, in Lolita but not in Pale Fire, in the early Joyce, the first one and a half books, but not in the last two and a half books.

His "I like this, I don't like this" is both contradictory and silly - it's like it was written by a 7 year old. Think what you want about DeLillo, but I have trouble giving any credence to someone who would call DeLillo's work "stupid" and then lightly praise the work of John "one baby step above Robert Anton Wilson" Barth. He clearly likes "playful" deconstruction (which makes his not liking Pale Fire all the stranger), but it is the most blatant end result of what he is supposedly criticizing. It's baffling to me how he can describe writers like Wallace and Barth as "empathetic," when combined they've written some of the coldest and most calculatedly academic novels ever published.

-Ron

[mtkafka]

I like most of Don Dellilo's stuff. I think if you read Underworld first (a novel I didn't even finish it was so boring) you'll get a bad start to Delillo. I'd reccomend Libra and Mao, both those novels I think are better than White Noise and get closer to his Delillo's theme of a chaotic modern world... or something to that effect.

Anyway, yeah, that guys trying to do what the 'literary' critics do that denounce popular genre novels.... belittle them. I think its fair that he does it. I don't agree with him, but I see his point. I think the problem is that everything is categorized and criticized based on that, and not on the book itself. If so and so book isn't even read by someone from the New Yorker or NY Times Book Review or the Atlantic monthly or whatever east coast inteligentisia etc... its not literature. Or if its read by business men on a trip (Tom Clancy) its not worthy. Or on the opposite, if I don't understand it, its obviously pretentious.

etc

[Anonymous]

An article about modern "literary" books.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59856,00.html

I can kind of agree with the author of the book. It seems so often now (damn Oprah) that books always have to contain some kind of overt meaning (commenting on specific class, gender, sexuality issues) in order for it to be "literary". I don't think many, if any, people thought Shakespeare or Dickens were great literary writers in their own time, it was many years later that people actually found "meaning" in their works and considered them great literary masters. People have been ripping on Kelly Ripa because she is only introducing books to people that are fun, fast reads. I think that this is the perfect counter-balance to the literary snobs that Oprah has created.

Since when are the Oprah books indicative of what "literary snobs" read? :shock:

As the Jonathan Franzen thing suggests, most self-concious "highbrow" literary fanciers consider the vast bulk of the Oprah selections to be middlebrow soap opera stuff.

(That doesn't necessarily make them "bad", of course.)

junior allen

[Anonymous]

[T]hough he has never put together a single sentence that I would call indispensable, there is a true empathetic undercurrent in Moody's work. I find the same current in the work of David Foster Wallace and Jeffrey Eugenides and Colson Whitehead, but not in the work of Richard Powers and Dave Eggers and Donald Antrim and Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Lethem. I find it in Thomas Pynchon but not in Don DeLillo, here and there in John Barth and Donald Barthelme but almost entirely absent in John Fowles and John Hawkes and William Gaddis, in Lolita but not in Pale Fire, in the early Joyce, the first one and a half books, but not in the last two and a half books.

It's not one of Peck's finest moments in the review, but the gist of the piece -- that Moody is simply a bad, overpraised author -- is hard to argue with. And it's neat that somebody would take such a straight-ahead tack with this: too many book reviewers are afraid to take a stand, even when (like Moody) the emperor wears no clothes.

Think what you want about DeLillo, but I have trouble giving any credence to someone who would call DeLillo's work "stupid" and then lightly praise the work of John "one baby step above Robert Anton Wilson" Barth. He clearly likes "playful" deconstruction (which makes his not liking Pale Fire all the stranger), but it is the most blatant end result of what he is supposedly criticizing. It's baffling to me how he can describe writers like Wallace and Barth as "empathetic," when combined they've written some of the coldest and most calculatedly academic novels ever published.

Well, as you said, "lightly praise". Personally Barth and DeLillo share a lot, to me: it's hard to argue that DeLillo isn't a "cold" writer, for instance.

junior allen.

[Ron Dulin]

the gist of the piece -- that Moody is simply a bad, overpraised author -- is hard to argue with. And it's neat that somebody would take such a straight-ahead tack with this: too many book reviewers are afraid to take a stand, even when (like Moody) the emperor wears no clothes.

This isn't the gist of the review at all. I agree with his points about Moody, but I find it hard to agree with the man making them. It's a real issue with book reviews - they are primarily written by other writers, and it's hard to separate friendship/possible vendetta from the wheat.

And back to my original point: The gist of Peck's review is a rant against almost every critically lauded author since World War II. The Moody stuff is just a launching pad for what seems like a big baby cry of "no fair." It's interesting reading, to be sure, but pretty ridiculous in the end.

-Ron

Edit: fixed the quote, clarified a point.

[Jason McCullough]

'"David Guterson is granted Serious Writer status on the basis of Snow Falling on Cedars, a murder mystery buried under sonorous tautologies, while Stephen King, whose Bag of Bones is a more intellectual but less pretentious novel, is still considered to be just a talented storyteller," he says in the Manifesto.'

Really. More intellectual, huh?

[Toddy]

Your friend is a moron. Peck is little more than a literary troll, trying to make a name for himself and get some free publicity for his poor-selling novels. This whole subject has been beaten into the ground in countless other forums (and by that I don't mean message boards), but the guy went to a pretty ridiculous extreme to maybe make a point. And the aforementioned publicity.

Why do you see an axe being ground here? I admit that Peck has written a very nasty attack on Moody, and that he's clearly in the "Joyce was the worst thing to happen to 20th century fiction" camp, but why does that make his points invalid? Unless you're privy to information that I'm unaware of, regarding some kind of feud between Peck and Moody, or Peck's penchant for self-promotion, I think it's disingenuous at best to refute a well-argued opinion with insults. Even Peck doesn't open by calling Moody a moron.

His "I like this, I don't like this" is both contradictory and silly - it's like it was written by a 7 year old. Think what you want about DeLillo, but I have trouble giving any credence to someone who would call DeLillo's work "stupid" and then lightly praise the work of John "one baby step above Robert Anton Wilson" Barth. He clearly likes "playful" deconstruction (which makes his not liking Pale Fire all the stranger), but it is the most blatant end result of what he is supposedly criticizing. It's baffling to me how he can describe writers like Wallace and Barth as "empathetic," when combined they've written some of the coldest and most calculatedly academic novels ever published.

Ron, did you even read the passage that you excerpted? Peck isn't being contradictory or silly at all, and what you criticize him for the most -- describing Wallace and Barth as "empathetic" -- he does only in he most half-hearted of ways. And wherever does Peck indicate that he likes "playful deconstruction"? I get the impression that he's not a fan of anything so self-conscious at all, and I think that his point is very well made when he draws the line between Lolita and Pale Fire. What's baffling to you is very clear to me.

[Troy S Goodfellow]

An article about modern "literary" books.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59856,00.html

I can kind of agree with the author of the book. It seems so often now (damn Oprah) that books always have to contain some kind of overt meaning (commenting on specific class, gender, sexuality issues) in order for it to be "literary". I don't think many, if any, people thought Shakespeare or Dickens were great literary writers in their own time, it was many years later that people actually found "meaning" in their works and considered them great literary masters. People have been ripping on Kelly Ripa because she is only introducing books to people that are fun, fast reads. I think that this is the perfect counter-balance to the literary snobs that Oprah has created.

FWIW, both Shakespeare and Dickens were considered great writers in their time. This did not diminish their popularity at all. Both wrote serious fiction and both were revered by critics, colleagues and the audience. Do any modern writers reach this standard? No. But this has much to do with the fragmentation of the literary audience, the professionalization of the critic class and the enormous growth in literacy (with its accompanying diversity of tastes).

Oprah's book selections were hardly literary - most were B-list "woman overcomes adversity" triumphal literature. Her great achievement was the promotion of reading as a serious and communal activity. Books were to be enjoyed, yes, but also digested. She was not interested in pretension - Umberto Eco never made an appearance on her list. The rip on Ripa is not that just that she recommends "light" books, but that she doesn't seem to see the possibility that books can be more than fun. There's nothing wrong with fun, but at least recognize that there's something beyond.

[Doug Erickson]

I'd just like to timidly venture that Annie Proulx sucks hard and should be beaten to death with the congealed weight of her own smarmy bathos.

Never read Moody, but I hate prolix authors who spend more time obfuscating their text with heavy-handed metaphor and imagery more confusing than evocative. Great, yay, huzzah, you're clever, you drew a parallel between a cup of coffee and the Epic of Gilgamesh - now where the hell's my story? Keep the allegory subtle, the similes understated, the holistic metaphors unmixed, and most importantly keep your eye on the POINT of the whole thing.

Anyway.

[Brooski]

Why do you see an axe being ground here? I admit that Peck has written a very nasty attack on Moody, and that he's clearly in the "Joyce was the worst thing to happen to 20th century fiction" camp, but why does that make his points invalid?

This whole thing, as Ron says, has been completely beaten to death elsewhere. You don't have to like Moody's writing to see where that piece falls short as a book review. Of the about one million pieces written about this whole thing since the July 1st issue of TNR, this Salon article makes a few good points.

"Andrew Solomon ("The Noonday Demon"), who himself trounced Moody's memoir in another publication, notes, "For a disparagement to be persuasive the reviewer must recognize the merits of the writer under discussion before proceeding to his faults. By refusing to recognize any of Rick Moody's strengths, Dale Peck destroys his credibility and looks really very foolish."

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2...eck/index.html

The real issue is that Peck takes himself so completely seriously that he can't help but look like an idiot. He has done this over and over - he's a literary troll, as Ron already mentioned. I absolutely agree with Ron that the review is a launching pad for yet another litcrit manifesto, rather than a serious criticism of Moody's admittedly bad writing. Peck mentions so many other authors in his reviews that it's sometimes hard to figure out exactly which work Peck is reviewing. See another Peck review, from last year:

http://www.tnr.com/040201/peck040201.html

Every statement has some list of examples to back it up, like a top 10 things Dale Peck likes/hates. It's as throwaway as a best console games/science fiction thread, except that I subscribe to TNR and thus have to pay my own money to indulge Peck's narcissism.

Furthermore, the fact that Peck is a novelist himself makes the whole thing just embarrassing. He calls Moody the worst writer of his generation, but the unstated fact is that he and Peck are exact contemporaries, so it's like self-aggrandizement of the worst kind. They even both live in NYC.

As for the book that is listed in the first post of this thread, it's simply an expansion of this Atlantic article from last year. As Cuarto points out, there was a thread about that on the old version of the Q23 boards.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/myers.htm

[Anonymous]

the gist of the piece -- that Moody is simply a bad, overpraised author -- is hard to argue with. And it's neat that somebody would take such a straight-ahead tack with this: too many book reviewers are afraid to take a stand, even when (like Moody) the emperor wears no clothes

This isn't the gist of the review at all.

Of course it is -- I have the review in another window, and in three "screens" there's a grand total of four paragraphs devoted to writers other than Moody, and they're there to try and put Moody in context. Whether it works or not, is good or not, makes sense or not is certainly open for debate, but to pretend that the Moody review is anything other than, uh, a Moody review is to distort what's there.

I agree with his points about Moody, but I find it hard to agree with the man making them.

Which is your real complaint, right? He doesn't seem to like writers you like?

And back to my original point: The gist of Peck's review is a rant against almost every critically lauded author since World War II. The Moody stuff is just a launching pad for what seems like a big baby cry of "no fair." It's interesting reading, to be sure, but pretty ridiculous in the end.

Even in the paragraph you quote, he expresses approval for Pynchon, Foster Wallace, Eugenides, some Barth, some Bartheleme, all critically-praised writers.

junior allen

[Anonymous]

This whole thing, as Ron says, has been completely beaten to death elsewhere. You don't have to like Moody's writing to see where that piece falls short as a book review. Of the about one million pieces written about this whole thing since the July 1st issue of TNR, this Salon article makes a few good points.

Where? Not being a smartass, but where? Outside of the Salon piece and I think a mention in MobyLives (a literary website -- good one, check it out), I haven't seen it discussed anywhere. I would be genuinely curious to see other discussions of this.

"Andrew Solomon ("The Noonday Demon"), who himself trounced Moody's memoir in another publication, notes, "For a disparagement to be persuasive the reviewer must recognize the merits of the writer under discussion before proceeding to his faults. By refusing to recognize any of Rick Moody's strengths, Dale Peck destroys his credibility and looks really very foolish."

"And this is a shame, because I think Rick Moody, alone among his self-selecting generation, has something to say and the means with which to say it,"

He goes on in that vein for a while near the conclusion. I read the Salon piece you quote below, incidentally, and side with this guy:

"Dennis Schenk, a German critic who, like Peck, has been the subject of controversy for his lambasting of canonized German writers like Peter Handke and Günter Grass, agrees that the German intellectual climate is more diverse. Most American reviews, he says, "exude the unappealing stench of a high school library where students are sweating over reading reports." They suffer from "first, a purely journalistic agenda by book reviewers just in the same way a journalist would cover a fire in the neighborhood or a speech by a politician. Instead of entering into an aesthetic discussion, dreary plot summaries take up the precious space. Finally, the notion that 'we are all in this together,' that the reading public is a beleaguered small group and that 'we' should not waste our energy with squabbles among ourselves, is a sure recipe for cultural entropy."


I think Herr Schenk has it exactly right.

[Ron Dulin]

Allen: "Which is your real complaint, right? He doesn't seem to like writers you like?"

That wasn't the point of my statement. Whether or not I disagree with his taste, or even his points, has nothing to do with my reasons for distrusting his motives. He is spouting his opinion from a shaky platform, for all the reasons Bruce stated above. The review reads like sour grapes, like an attempt to slap the face of an industry that has, for the most part, ignored him. Has anyone here read a Dale Peck novel? Had anyone heard of him before this review?

I think his general point is incoherent. He dislikes the trend of writers jumping in Joyce's wake:

writers... who have long since forgotten what the modernist and postmodernist assaults on linearity were actually about, and as such have lost the ability to tell the difference between ambiguity and inscrutability, ambition and bombast; of writers who are taken at face value when they are being ironic and who are deemed ironic when they are telling it straight--assuming, of course, that they themselves know the difference. Assuming, I should add, that they actually have a subject.

... and yet he praises, however lightly, some of the most intentionally "inscrutable" authors around. He writes that a generation of writers has forgotten the original point of modernism and postmodernism, but admits he doesn't even like the book that, for the most part, started it all, or anything that followed in the style.

But then he finds "empathetic undercurrents" in some of these works, and goes on to name some very, er, unempathetic writers. It's almost as if he is confusing empathy and humor. I like pre-Vineland Pynchon as much as the next guy, but one can hardly describe his work as "empathetic." Same with Barth, and to a lesser extent, Wallace. Many of the writers he mentions tapping into this "undercurrent" have one thing in common: they tend to write humorous - at times even goofy - metafiction that references little more than itself. And isn't this the very issue he was criticized earlier? Which hopefully answers Brett's question regarding my reference to "playful deconstruction" and also explains my confusion at Peck's dislike of Pale Fire. But perhaps I shouldn't even try to find a common denominator in that list, because it's probably nothing more than a literary personal ad. "Likes: Pynchon, Wallace, some Barth, some Joyce. Dislikes: Moody, DeLillo, Eggers, Gaddis, most Joyce, my contemporaries receiving critical praise and decent-to-great sales while I languish in relative obscurity, fattys."

Allen: "I have the review in another window, and in three "screens" there's a grand total of four paragraphs devoted to writers other than Moody"

So bulk = gist? He places the whole review in the context of some "wrong turn in our culture" sparked by Joyce. And the paragraphs where he specifically delves into this idea read like something he's wanted to get off his chest for a long time, and is grateful for having found a forum to do so.

One paragraph, near the end, encapsulates everything I think is misguided in this review (italics mine):

This is not meant to malign the aforementioned writers. I don't want to suggest that they are uniformly talentless or misguided; or that there is a conspiracy among them, or among them and the editors of The New Yorker or Harper's or The Paris Review; or that they invest any of their energy in excluding others from the upper echelons of the literary world. All I'm suggesting is that these writers (and their editors) see themselves as the heirs to a bankrupt tradition. A tradition that began with the diarrheic flow of words that is Ulysses; continued on through the incomprehensible ramblings of late Faulkner and the sterile inventions of Nabokov; and then burst into full, foul life in the ridiculous dithering of Barth and Hawkes and Gaddis, and the reductive cardboard constructions of Barthelme, and the word-by-word wasting of a talent as formidable as Pynchon's; and finally broke apart like a cracked sidewalk beneath the weight of the stupid--just plain stupid--tomes of DeLillo.

He dislikes the style, and he dislikes the fact that it dominates contemporary literature. Which makes him a poor choice of reviewer. More than that, though, is that strange, italicized sentence sitting right there in the middle. That just comes out of absolutely nowhere, and though he claims to be dismissing the idea, it seems like a grudge against publishers everywhere being brought into the open.

-Ron

[Toddy]

I understand your points, Ron, and really enjoyed reading them. But I completely disagree with everything. We won't get anywhere debating this, so I'll end my part of things here. Well, I will say that Bruce Geryk is gay. But that's it. Oh, okay, one more thing--why do we have to know or care who Dale Peck is to appreciate his opinions? Why can't he have this point of view legitmately, no matter if he's riding the NYT charts or the subway to the night shift he pulls at Home Depot? I think you're making too many assumptions about his motivations here.

Anyhow, to branch this off in a slightly different tangent, what is your opinion on writers reviewing writers in general? This has been the standard practice at most newspapers and magazines for a number of years now. This month's Atlantic, for example, has a review of Martin Amis' Koba the Dread by Christopher Hitchens--despite the fact that Amis personally lampoons Hitchens for his former Marxist leanings in part of the text. If anything, the current trend is to make book reviews sensational by recruiting someone diametrically opposed to the author or subject in question.

[Anonymous]

Allen: "Which is your real complaint, right? He doesn't seem to like writers you like?"

That wasn't the point of my statement. Whether or not I disagree with his taste, or even his points, has nothing to do with my reasons for distrusting his motives. He is spouting his opinion from a shaky platform, for all the reasons Bruce stated above. The review reads like sour grapes, like an attempt to slap the face of an industry that has, for the most part, ignored him. Has anyone here read a Dale Peck novel? Had anyone heard of him before this review?

Actually, the whole question of whether writers should review other writers is interesting -- I'll talk about it in the context of the other guy's post down below.

I really just don't get the invective poured onto Peck in certain quarters. (Don't want to add to it, so this'll be my last post with you on it. ) I mean, this is what Peck says:

-- Moody sucks

-- Moody is overrated

-- Moody is part of a general trend of overrated fiction.

Whether one agrees with #3 or not, it's hard to argue with #1 and #2. I'll go so far as to agree with Peck when he says that if you don't agree with #1 and #2, you're part of the problem.

To ascribe motives to Peck -- and maybe they're all true, who knows, maybe this is part of Peck's evil plan to destroy Moody by a thousand cuts because he's jealous of Moody's "fame" -- for me proves Schenk's case, that the American literary scene is one long gay circlejerk, that the whole impulse is to go along to get along, for careerist reasons. I don't agree with everything in Peck's review, but I greatly admire his taking a stand -- in the context of his world, this took guts.

I agree with you entirely that the four paragraphs under discussion are bad paragraphs. Either they should've been cut or greatly expanded. As it stands, Peck is in the ridiculous position of praising Wallace but not Gaddis, for reasons that are at best obscure, at worst incoherent. I don't think it obviates the thrust of the review.

[Anonymous]

Anyhow, to branch this off in a slightly different tangent, what is your opinion on writers reviewing writers in general? This has been the standard practice at most newspapers and magazines for a number of years now. This month's Atlantic, for example, has a review of Martin Amis' Koba the Dread by Christopher Hitchens--despite the fact that Amis personally lampoons Hitchens for his former Marxist leanings in part of the text. If anything, the current trend is to make book reviews sensational by recruiting someone diametrically opposed to the author or subject in question.

Writers have reviewed writers since at least the time of the Enlightenment -- that's how Samuel Johnson made his mark. And there have always been writers who thought they were treated unfairly at the hands of a critic-cum-competitor.

In recent times, in America at least, that's changed, and I think, again, that Schenk's basically right as to why. There's a feeling among the self-proclaimed arbitors of "high" or "serious" culture that it's in desperate straits, adrift at sea, and therefore no one should be pushed off the life raft. The problem with book reviews nowadays isn't that it's full of sneers and controversy -- shit, I'd regard that as a sign of health. The problem is that there's a quiet clubbishness about it all.

The problem isn't that Peck is shocking. The problem is that people think Peck is shocking. (Some people, anyway. I read the letters Salon got in response to their piece and was gratified to see that they were almost all pro-being a hardass.)

Editors know this -- I read the Hitchens piece last night, in fact. Even there, I was surprised he was as restrained as he was, compared to what Amis apparently dished out (haven't read the book).

Incidentally, this is entirely a "problem" of a small little circle with a very peculiar slant on the world. It's not like you can't go to Amazon, for instance, and see countless reader reviews of Moody's book, and I'm sure they run the gamut.

junior allen

[DrCrypt]

I don't think many, if any, people thought Shakespeare or Dickens were great literary writers in their own time, it was many years later that people actually found "meaning" in their works and considered them great literary masters. .

I love this sort of propoganda. When my sexual performance is under par, I like to lay back next to my dull-eyed and belching girlfriend and smoke a congratulatory cigarette - trusting in posterity despite her plebeian critical disapprobation, secure in the knowledge that someday my "laughable" sexual techniques will be studied in universities and pantomimed by scholars.

I know someone already pointed out how false the statement was, but let's think about it some more for a second: is it really conceivable that today's slack-jawed no-brows relate to Shakespeare more than his contemporaries? Look at the most recent version of Romeo and Juliet - to even get people to sit through it, they had to put in John-Woo-esque gun-fights, tape cardboard signs that said "Sword" to everyone's gats, and then make both Leonardo DiCaprio and John Leguizamo pimp-strut around to a heavy metal soundtrack.

Shakespeare was a highly respected author in his own times. On the other hand, in the 17th Century, he was considered pretty crude. Jacques Barzun had a great quote from Samuel Pepys, secretary to the British Navy, in "From Dawn to Decadence": "Midsummer Night's Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life." Another quote from Dryden says about Hamlet: "What a pudder is here kept in raising the expression of trifling thoughts!" It wasn't until the 18th century that Shakespeare was treated a bit better.

Dickens, on the other hand, has never really been in decline. The idea that he was not highly regarded in his own time is pretty much instantly obliterated if you pick up any biography of Dickens. But a token fact is that The Old Curiosity Shop was selling about 100,000 copies per week (instalments) by the end of its run, and when the newest instalments came into ports in America, numerous people crowded the docks and crying to the passengers to know if Little Nell was dead.

Anyway, chances are good that if even your contemporaries can't relate to your Chatterbox-meets-Harvey-meets-William-Burroughs style novel, the flaccid blobs of ultra-intelligent, futuristic flesh probably aren't going to psychically-propel their hover chairs down to the local space library to find it, either.

[Dirt]

Allow me to rephrase. Yes, Shakespeare was regarded as a good writer in his own time, even literary by his contemporaries but to the masses, he was a popular writer, this can also be applied to Dickens. Their works were highly popular, but so are Stephen King's novels today; are they highly literary? Ultimately, who really knows? King could be considered more literary than Shakespeare in 300 years (please don't take this last sentence too seriously).

literary snob~=connosieur of "good literature"

[DrCrypt]

Except that the literati were praising Shakespeare and Dickens as well as the masses. Both authors are not only fun reads but show profound insight into the motives of human actions - probably the closest definition to "high art" you can come by. They weren't primarily popular writers - they were "universal" writers, in that intelligence or lack there of didn't stand in your way of enjoying it. Sure, if you were smart and well read, you were more likely to get more out of it as far as the philosophy and passions that define "high art" are concerned... but that didn't stop the average joe from being entertained by it to boot.

Compared to this sort of thing, I'm pretty skeptical that Stephen King can compare. Edgy clown murders, Body-Snatchers-rip-offs and an over-reliance on quoting the lyrics to hippy-dippy 60's rock songs doesn't really qualify. The literati won't even look at his stuff - which is either a diss or an endorsement, depending how you look at it. That's not to say that he isn't a fun writer, but he isn't writing the same sort of fiction - he's aiming for entertainment like hundreds of writers before him, not art.

Stephen King probably will be remembered a couple hundred years from now, but I think it is more likely to be in the great-entertainment stable with writers like Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard, et cetera, than he is to be grouped with Dickens and Shakespeare and writers of their ilk.

I'm not trying to sound pretentious, unless I can wear a monocle, but I think the differences are pretty obvious to even non-snobs who've read the works in question. And by the way, I just want to add that the Shining is one of my favorite horror novels after I Am Legend.

[Jason McCullough]

Edgy clown murders

.....Aaaaand we have a winner in our long-running "Summarize Steven King" contest.

[Toddy]

Compared to this sort of thing, I'm pretty skeptical that Stephen King can compare. Edgy clown murders, Body-Snatchers-rip-offs and an over-reliance on quoting the lyrics to hippy-dippy 60's rock songs doesn't really qualify. The literati won't even look at his stuff - which is either a diss or an endorsement, depending how you look at it. That's not to say that he isn't a fun writer, but he isn't writing the same sort of fiction - he's aiming for entertainment like hundreds of writers before him, not art.

Well, depending on your opinion of The New Yorker these days, King entered the land of the literati a few years back. His short stories have been regularly appearing in the magazine since the middle 1990s. His latest collection, "Everything's Eventual," includes a number of stories published in The New Yorker and (I think) in a few other magazines of good repute.

And they're universally awful. I checked it out of the library a couple of months back to see if these "literary" King stories were any good, and all I found were dreary crap like haunted hotel rooms and a kid who meets the devil by the old fishing hole. A lot of the ideas read like Twilight Zone rejects. King passed out of the "fun, guilty read" category about the time that Reagan left the White House. Still, I'm planning to re-read "Salem's Lot" when I get in the mood for horror in October. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that I first read it when I was 10, but I love that book.

[Ben Sones]

Yeah, I really haven't enjoyed a King book in a long time, and I used to be a pretty big fan, back in high school. High literature? Perhaps not, but at least he used to write books that were fun to read. I think he's run out of ideas, personally. That would explain his need to tie all of his fictional worlds together in some sort of goofy comic-like crossover format (thus you get the villain from the Stand showing up in the Dark Tower books, and characters from the Dark Tower books showing up in the Talisman sequel).

I recently picked up the Black House, sequel to the Talisman, because I loved the first book. The Black House is awful. I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. The downhill slide of the Dark Tower books is even more troubling, because I love that surreal mix of horror/fantasy/western themes.

But mostly I don't even blink any more when one of his books comes out. I'm no longer interested. Ironically, the last thing of his that I read that was worthwhile was his book "On Writing," which is really quite excellent. Maybe he should read it...

[Bub, Andrew]

The one with the Devil and the Fishing Hole won an award too. I can't imagine why. I liked the Hotel Room story though, a lot. Everything's Eventual is exactly why King needs to make good on his threat to quit writing. Just for a couple years. Let the batteries recharge. Write LESS. "On Writing" revealed he writes 8 hours a day, every day. Yow. I think the result is that his books since the mid-80's have had a "they'll print anything I write" quality to them. Also, I've read Bag of Bones (mentioned above) and it isn't literature.

I think you'll like Salem's Lot. I re-read it last October Brett. It's still pretty darn good.

Anyone have an opinion of "I am Legend"? (Not the comic books)

[DrCrypt]

Anyone have an opinion of "I am Legend"? (Not the comic books)

Since I'm the only one who decided to mention I Am Legend in a conversation about whether or not Dickens' contemporaries considered him a hack, I'll assume you're asking me.

Imagine a literary tour-de-force where socially-poignant racial allegories are powerfully illustrated by way of the device of an Orwellian "dystopia" ruled by vampires. These "vampires" have been interpreted over the years by various members of the brain-throbbing intelligentsia to represent every conceivable social group, from welfare recipients, Gothic Jews, homosexual hemophilliacs, &c. Regardless of their symbolic meaning, I Am Legend is a work where the heaven of man's conscious exercise of his own free will is powerfully juxtaposed with the hell of a blood-sucking police state and its bourgeoisie thunk-police.

I know. Like, wow. But you'll have to fling that all nonsense out the window, since I Am Legend is just a really cool, really exciting and totally functional science-fiction/horror novel about the last man on earth kicking vampire ass. George Romero was inspired by it to do Night of the Living Dead. No matter how many times I pull it off the shelf, it always excites me. The only other book I feel the same way about is "The Man Who Was Thursday" - which could use a few vampires during the hot-air-balloon and fire-truck chase at the end, me thinks. Go pick it up - it is in paperback, last time I checked.

(By the way, almost everything Richard Matheson has ever written totally rocks. He's responsible for most of the better Twilight Zone episodes, for those who don't know him. "Hell House" is another great novel by him.)

[Bub, Andrew]

Ok, yeah, it must've been you who planted that seed. It caused me to dump it in my Amazon queue, but to forget why, and so I returned to ask why. Sort of a chicken and egg thing. Sounds good to me.

Anyone else on a horror kick? Chaosium's Cthulhu anthologies (contemporary and original Lovecraft circle authors -Block, Machen, Campbell, etc.,) are all represented. The Pagan Publishing/Arkham House stuff is good too - in a very pulpy kind of way. John Tynes and A. Scott Glancy especially (that's Delta Green fiction).

I got another at Gen Con, Weird Trails, which is horror meets Western (can you hear me William Harms?) only because that sounds like a fun combo.

[Anonymous]

I got another at Gen Con, Weird Trails, which is horror meets Western (can you hear me William Harms?) only because that sounds like a fun combo.

Now we're talking--western and horror, the two genres that were made for each other. I assume you've read Landsdale's Dead in the West?

[William Harms]

No matter how many times I pull it off the shelf, it always excites me. The only other book I feel the same way about is "The Man Who Was Thursday" - which could use a few vampires during the hot-air-balloon and fire-truck chase at the end, me thinks. Go pick it up - it is in paperback, last time I checked.

"I am Legend" is easily one of the best horror novels ever written. The edition to pick up is the white softcover with the vampire horde on the front; it also contains several short stories in the back.

There's also a collection called "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", which collects many of Matheson's stories. Well worth the money as well.