/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1663194]

yo did this guy write anything real good besides kavalier and clay or should i just move on to someone else

[mcgregor No.1663216]

i read kavalier and clay, loved it. decided to read wonder boys. couldn't believe how shitty it was. not funny, not dramatic, full of fucking irritating pretentious people and chabon never makes fun of them.

[Anonymous No.1663224]

>>1663216
i think i have a higher tolerance for irritating pretentious characters than you do coz i kinda liked that one- but then i read mysteries of pittsburgh and it was unbearable

[Anonymous No.1663249]

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is pretty damn good

Maps and Legends is also pretty damn good, if you are a nerd

[mcgregor No.1663261]

>>1663224

probably. i was reading wonder boys and the entire time i was like "why am I reading this? i don't care about these people"

also, i just finished watching all of the wire before reading wonder boys, so i think my mood was more "i need something important and relevant"

[Anonymous No.1663279]

>>1663216
Dude can't plot for shit and is way too indulgent of his own penchant for whimsy

[Anonymous No.1663554]

>>1663279
well-put.

I'd say Mysteries of P, Wonder Boys, and Yiddish Policemen's Union are great. Gentlemen of the Road was alright. Has his flaws, but I mostly enjoy his stuff...

[Anonymous No.1663586]

He had a thing in this issue of McSweeney's a couple of months back, an annotated excerpt from a novel he trashed in the 80s which was very, very enjoyable to read. The notes that is, the book did kind of seem like it was going to turn out to suck.

[Anonymous No.1664027]

>>1663279
>>1663554
this is p much how i feel

i have a lot of gripes about his usual schtick but tbh i mostly always enjoy reading him

[Anonymous No.1664250]

>>1663261

Fuck you, dude. Wonder Boys was his best book.

[Anonymous No.1664254]

Maps and Legends is probably the best critical work on genre fiction that I've ever read. Dude gets it.

[Anonymous No.1664266]

>start reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union an hour before bed
>about to go to sleep
>read the sentence 'In the street the wind shakes rain from the flaps of its overcoat'
>convinces me to read for six more hours and skip sleep

[Anonymous No.1664271]

yiddish policeman's union sucks circumcised jew dick

[Anonymous No.1664405]

>>1663194
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
should be next on your list.

[Anonymous No.1664487]

>implying Sherlock Holmes
Read 'The Final Solution' for a short and fun old-style mystery.

[ruby vajeen No.1664488]

>The Yiddish Policemen's Union
what is it about? it seems to be isaak babel transplanted to america. if you already read isaak babel and if you are not american, could you still enjoy it?

[Anonymous No.1664492]

>>1664266

hmm

[Anonymous No.1664495]

>>1664488
not american
not jewish
loved it

[Anonymous No.1664601]

>>1664266
first i was like "..." but then i "yeah i like that"'d

[Anonymous No.1664608]

Yiddish Policeman was such a bad novel, it was basically a by the books detective novel, which is probably what he's going for, but the irony of "gruff policeman who plays by his own rules, has an ex-wife, should quit smoking and drinking" doesnt make up for it being a tired cliche

[Anonymous No.1664727]

>>1664608
I mostly just like him for his prose style, so this kind of thing doesn't bother me that much. It does make me wonder why anyone would hire him to write a movie or TV show, though.

[Anonymous No.1664765]

>>1664608
Your opinion has no value.
That book won the 3 major SF awards for best novel (hugo, nebula and locus).
That's almost like an unanimous recognition of its merits.

[Anonymous No.1664797]

>>1664765
that's more of a unanimous recognition of how easily impressed SF/F nerds are when Serious Authors deign to dick around in their sandbox

[Anonymous No.1664815]

>>1664797
>implying that the books who won the Hugo (or Nebula or Locus) award are shit

[mcgregor No.1664960]

awards are almost meaningless. the life of pi won the booker prize for fuck's sake. if they give awards to authors, they should be for the entire bibliography, or for their contribution to the medium, rather than a single work. oh wait, they have that. the nobel prize

[Anonymous No.1664968]

>>1664960
even the nobel prize is notoriously flawed, tbh. paying serious attention to any award is Dumb and Wrong

[mcgregor No.1664975]

>>1664968

not trying to start a fight, legitimately interested, but which nobel winning authors should be stripped of their award?

[Anonymous No.1664979]

>>1664975
most famously eyvind johnson and henry martinson. there's also a good argument that the award is overly-politicized, when you get someone like Borges getting passed over because of his passive support for the military dictatorship, and saramago winning one thanks in no small part to the fact that he's a communist.

[Anonymous No.1665016]

>>1664960
I don’t know, man... Who should I trust more? Let me see:
>3 different notorious organizations identifying the same book as ‘the best novel of the year’
>butthurt anonymous guy trying to force his beliefs even if they’re obviously flawed

Nope, I still don’t care for your opinion.

[Anonymous No.1665057]

>>1664960
The problem with the nobel prize is that there are too few of them to go around, so it ends getting awarded for these really bizarre reasons, and to people that even a well read person may have never even heard of.


Awards in literature tend to be bullshit because there's a lack of agreement on anything, and a lack of a singular source to go to - for example in film it's the oscars, cut and dry those are the best movies of the year. But there is no serious equivalent for literature.

[mcgregor No.1665063]

>>1665016
>obviously flawed

wish people wouldn't use "obviously" when it's not fucking obvious. unpack that claim. let's see the flaw

[Anonymous No.1665076]

>>1665016
your faith in the power of larger impersonal organizations confuses and frightens me

>>1665057
the oscars are another example of an award that is stupid and dumb. there are a lot of oscars that are frequently and at length criticized. you should not take them very seriously.

[Anonymous No.1665084]

>>1665063
read my post again >>1665016
it's a recurring argument, don't waste my time

[mcgregor No.1665092]

>>1665016

you wrote "notorious organization" i think you meant prestigious.

awards are not measurements of popular opinion, nor of technical merit. "best book of the year" even for a genre is so completely subjective as to be meaningless. a surefire way to ascribe value to a work is to stand back from it and observe it using the distance of time.

[Anonymous No.1665225]

>>1665092
>you wrote "notorious organization" i think you meant prestigious.
You're right. In my language, the similar word means "well-known", no negative connotation.
>awards are not measurements of popular opinion
Some awards are essentially polls, with very large number of participants.
>nor of technical merit
Well-known technical specialists are also involved when deciding the winner.
>subjective as to be meaningless
Awards may be subjective, but they’re way more reliable and objective than one’s opinion.
>a surefire way to ascribe value to a work is to stand back from it and observe it using the distance of time.
Agree. But what do you do when you need an immediate assessment? You could trust those Hugo-Nebula-Locus guys, because they got it right with other works, for years ago.

[Anonymous No.1665458]

>>1665092
nah, they just left the prestigious NAMBLA Bulletin Notable Books of the Year award blurb off the front cover

basically all awards for artistic achievement are silly and bogged down in some kind of politics, but nine times out of ten even the most above-it-all intellectuals secretly like winning stuff

[Anonymous No.1665619]

>>1665225
Classic example of what happens when aspies interact with art. Of course you like sci-fi.

[mcgregor No.1665705]

>>1665225
>Awards may be subjective, but they’re way more reliable and objective than one’s opinion.

nope. awards are meaningless. my opinion is just as meaningless.

>Some awards are essentially polls, with very large number of participants.

the only poll that i know of, where random people could vote, the top few books included hubbard and rand. i don't trust the public anymore than i trust the awards. i trust myself and i trust those whose opinion i respect.
IF, those whose opinion i respect end up being judges for an award, then i'll take that into consideration

(hey grammarfags, am i using the right whose? i think I am - let me know)

[Anonymous No.1665752]

Did somebody seriously say that the Oscars are less bullshitty than your average lit award

Did that actually happen in this thread, in real life

Goddamn son