I share your love of White Noise and likewise read it at university. It formed part of what became my focus on the postmodern novel; a term that has been misrepresented as some kind of political movement, when it's more of a descriptive, historical category and/or style (Auster, DeLillo,, Vonnegut, Ballard, Fowles, etc). Call it postwar/late 20th Century, whatever, but it is for me the last great era of the novel.
I also have an odd relationship McEwan. Not sure why. Maybe memories of Guardian interviews as oppose to his work, the earlier part of which is magnificent. I may well go back and re-read.
I've got a Ben Lerner on the pile, but ... contemporary writing always has that inevitable sense of being on the verge of being lectured, and/or having a crowbarred in unlikely worthy female/ethnic minority character (had this in Andrew Miller recently). I don't want to throw another book across the room.
Yeah WN is probably pomo because of Baudrillard influence, but it’s also kind of a realist family novel.
I associate postmodernism in fiction with very experimental writers - Sukenick, Federman, Barthelme, Barth etc. But you’re right that Auster and others count too.
Yeah McEwan seems part of a kind of smug broadsheet world, but is actually good, if you accept his characters are all upper middle class types. His dad was actually working class initially.
Yeah Lerner threw some annoying things in there. James Frey had bit in his recent novel that were clearly to curry favour with ideological publishers, so I chucked it. I remember his ‘memoir’ being good twenty years ago.
Baudrillard is very readable and to an extent predicted the ghastly reality in which we now swim. He famously wrote an essay on Ballard's Crash, attempting to slot it into his simulacra theory, when Ballard saw it more as a morality tale or the 'death of effect'.
I suppose what I was getting at with my comment was this idea that postmodernism is a left coded movement, when it's really more of a diagnostic (Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition being the lodestone). Ballard, for example, was right wing libertarian, so for me it's more of an aesthetic in terms of art and lit.
Totally agree about McEwan. Great writer, but avoid his interviews.
Loved that Frey novel. If he'd just said it was auto-fiction (was that a thing at the time?), it wouldn't have been controversial. Probably wouldn't have sold as well, though, as I seem to recall it was the era of A Child Called It type abuse porn, so publishing was hoovering up that kind of schtick then.
I must apologise that the only fiction I read is slop, mostly Michael Connelly’s Bosch or Lincoln Lawyer books. I usually read them in between non-fiction books, the last ones being between Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and my current read of Andrew Doyle’s The End of Woke. I really should take a least some of your recommendations to broaden my horizons.
I do enjoy them though. It’s something about Los Angeles that fascinates me. I was there a couple of months ago and visited quite a few places from the books and TV shows.
Last year I did also read Animal Farm and 1984, but The Gulag Archipelago did take most of the year as I only really get to read during my 30 minute lunch break at work.
I suppose I’ve never really been a big fiction reader, unlike my wife who has an English Literature degree. I tend to mix it up with books about politics, ancient Egyptian history, the history of religion, quantum physics and cosmology. But I should try and find the time to read at least some classics. It’s about getting back into the habit and keeping at it, which is where your videos have been so good at helping.
I share your love of White Noise and likewise read it at university. It formed part of what became my focus on the postmodern novel; a term that has been misrepresented as some kind of political movement, when it's more of a descriptive, historical category and/or style (Auster, DeLillo,, Vonnegut, Ballard, Fowles, etc). Call it postwar/late 20th Century, whatever, but it is for me the last great era of the novel.
I also have an odd relationship McEwan. Not sure why. Maybe memories of Guardian interviews as oppose to his work, the earlier part of which is magnificent. I may well go back and re-read.
I've got a Ben Lerner on the pile, but ... contemporary writing always has that inevitable sense of being on the verge of being lectured, and/or having a crowbarred in unlikely worthy female/ethnic minority character (had this in Andrew Miller recently). I don't want to throw another book across the room.
Yeah WN is probably pomo because of Baudrillard influence, but it’s also kind of a realist family novel.
I associate postmodernism in fiction with very experimental writers - Sukenick, Federman, Barthelme, Barth etc. But you’re right that Auster and others count too.
Yeah McEwan seems part of a kind of smug broadsheet world, but is actually good, if you accept his characters are all upper middle class types. His dad was actually working class initially.
Yeah Lerner threw some annoying things in there. James Frey had bit in his recent novel that were clearly to curry favour with ideological publishers, so I chucked it. I remember his ‘memoir’ being good twenty years ago.
Baudrillard is very readable and to an extent predicted the ghastly reality in which we now swim. He famously wrote an essay on Ballard's Crash, attempting to slot it into his simulacra theory, when Ballard saw it more as a morality tale or the 'death of effect'.
I suppose what I was getting at with my comment was this idea that postmodernism is a left coded movement, when it's really more of a diagnostic (Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition being the lodestone). Ballard, for example, was right wing libertarian, so for me it's more of an aesthetic in terms of art and lit.
Totally agree about McEwan. Great writer, but avoid his interviews.
Loved that Frey novel. If he'd just said it was auto-fiction (was that a thing at the time?), it wouldn't have been controversial. Probably wouldn't have sold as well, though, as I seem to recall it was the era of A Child Called It type abuse porn, so publishing was hoovering up that kind of schtick then.
Ordered 2, don’t spend it all at once….
Ha, thanks.
I must apologise that the only fiction I read is slop, mostly Michael Connelly’s Bosch or Lincoln Lawyer books. I usually read them in between non-fiction books, the last ones being between Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and my current read of Andrew Doyle’s The End of Woke. I really should take a least some of your recommendations to broaden my horizons.
Sounds very grim, but then you are in the demographic publishing is actively hostile to now. I am quoted in The End of Woke at least.
I do enjoy them though. It’s something about Los Angeles that fascinates me. I was there a couple of months ago and visited quite a few places from the books and TV shows.
Last year I did also read Animal Farm and 1984, but The Gulag Archipelago did take most of the year as I only really get to read during my 30 minute lunch break at work.
I suppose I’ve never really been a big fiction reader, unlike my wife who has an English Literature degree. I tend to mix it up with books about politics, ancient Egyptian history, the history of religion, quantum physics and cosmology. But I should try and find the time to read at least some classics. It’s about getting back into the habit and keeping at it, which is where your videos have been so good at helping.