Does anyone read Dave Eggars?

[IdleRich]

"Tellingly, Smith's favourite author is Vonnegut."

What do you mean by that, that he embodies those thing?
One book (actually a play) that I have read several times is Happy Birthday Wanda June by Vonnegut, although it's not considered one of his best it struck a chord with me and I've always had a soft spot for it. I think it fits more in to my first category of things I've read more than once because it's always been lying around rather than that I set out to do so.
I guess now that you point it out there are big parallels that you could draw between Nostromo and HYofS. I'm so bad at noticing things like that.

 

[old goriot]

What do you mean by that, that he embodies those thing?

I wouldn't say he embodies those things, but that he is clearly an under-acknowledged (because he largely gets ignored by the literary establishment) precursor to the style I was trying to describe. Other people have called it hysterical realism (as opposed to magical realism), but I find that to be a kind of narrow definition that only identifies certain characteristics of the genre.

"Zadie Smith described hysterical realism as a "painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown, manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth...""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterical_realism

 

[IdleRich]

"I wouldn't say he embodies those things, but that he is clearly an under-acknowledged (because he largely gets ignored by the literary establishment) precursor to the style I was trying to describe. Other people have called it hysterical realism (as opposed to magical realism), but I find that to be a kind of narrow definition that only identifies certain characteristics of the genre."

Interesting because I've been reading Pynchon, DeLillo (both mentioned in that link) and Zadie Smith recently but I wouldn't have linked the first two with her at all. I've heard the term maximalism used to describe Pynchon before and I think I can see what people mean by that - equally hysterical realism fits quite well. Even if Smith's books are, in a sense, in the same style as that of Pynchon (although I really can't see it) the relative lack of density and depth means it's maximalism that isn't as maximal doesn't it?
It's not the style that Zadie Smith writes in as such that makes me end up disliking her, it's the patronising tone that comes through at times, the problems she has thinking up endings etc I guess what I'm saying is it's not the tricks, it's the lack of anything else beyond the tricks.

 

[DigitalDjigit]

I think Dave Foster Wallace writes excellent non-fiction but I cannot stomach his fiction. I don't like his style in general but I appreciate the intellectual ambition. He is not afraid to sound smart and he covers interesting topics from a point-of-view I can identify with.

The non-fictional stuff has something to keep him grounded whereas in his fiction his style completely forces out everything else.

 

[bruno]

How often do people re-read for pleasure, as opposed to work?

never. except for heart of darkness (has anyone not read this?) and apollinaire's memoirs of a young rakehell, both of which i've read several times (pick up rakehell and you'll see why!).

 

[dubversion]

All the hype and bluster around Eggars has detracted from what he was doing with Heartbreaking.

It's almost like a blow AGAINST vapidity and pomo...

by his own admission he skirts the issue, he twats around, he plays games, he suggests you skip bits.

and then.. and then, at the end he's like, "oh right, you want to know what it was REALLY like?!"

and then proceeds to flay your fucking skin off. the last 50 or so pages of that book affected me more deeply than almost anything i can think of.

Nothing he's written since measures up, but then Joseph Heller famously had that problem too

 

[dubversion]

Yeah me three, I really enjoyed reading it and then immediately thought "what was the point?"

I'm amazed you could come away feeling that after the way the book closes.. I was in bits by the end.

 

[old goriot]

Interesting because I've been reading Pynchon, DeLillo (both mentioned in that link) and Zadie Smith recently but I wouldn't have linked the first two with her at all. I've heard the term maximalism used to describe Pynchon before and I think I can see what people mean by that - equally hysterical realism fits quite well. Even if Smith's books are, in a sense, in the same style as that of Pynchon (although I really can't see it) the relative lack of density and depth means it's maximalism that isn't as maximal doesn't it?

Yeah, as I said earlier, its not the greatest working definition, as it is often employed to lump together any new authors writing ambitious novels in lively prose. For example, Eggers often gets counted among the hysterical realists, but I really don't see how he is one. He doesn't use a great deal of the techniques identified with hysterical realism (in his first novel anyway - havent read the others). Thomas Pynchon does use the techniques, but as you pointed out, his project is quite different on a fundamental level from whatever it is that Smith or Eggers aim to do with their writing. I just feel as though a grouping that would lump Pynchon together with Eggers is a little suspect. Any way I try to look at it, the two have very little in common. As Dubversion noted, Eggers does seem almost anti-pomo and like he is at least trying to get at something that is meaningful on a personal level. I came to the conclusion that he never really gets there, but maybe I should check out the last 50 pages again (its been a good 6 or 7 years since I read it)

It's not the style that Zadie Smith writes in as such that makes me end up disliking her, it's the patronising tone that comes through at times, the problems she has thinking up endings etc I guess what I'm saying is it's not the tricks, it's the lack of anything else beyond the tricks.

My feelings exactly. I think this is the key aspect (or side effect, or cause) of 'hysterical realism' that bothers Wood, yet he fails to capture it with his definition. He never gets much deeper than criticizing the style, because, like most people, he has come to the conclusion that there's nothing beneath it. I'm of the feeling that there is something there. There's something about the tone and philosophical basis of these novels that unites them in a way that is distinct from their stylistic similarities or social novel ambitions. I have a hard time putting it into words, but its something that I feel when reading these new authors. I think the closest Wood got to describing it was as a pathological "fear of silence". It reminds me of a remark that Foucault made in an interview about measuring a great friendship by how much time you can happily spend together in comfortable silence. These books are like strangers that talk too much.

 

[jenks]

Interesting reply. I think That Smith's novels are 'noisy' but whether i see this as a bad thing, i'm not so sure.

I think Smith has a fascination with voices - she's trying to nail all the different versions of English she hears - not just the range of 'multi-cultural' voices on the streets of London or New York but also the range of discourse styles from the formality of academe to the patois of the street. In that way she is picking up on something that I think Amis said about Salinger - I love the way in which Holden's traversind the city is a traversing of the American voice, he experiences the cities through what he hears.

I like the end of On Beauty - that zooming in on the Rembrandt. However the stuff on the young son who works in the music superstore just did not ring true.

She's not my favourite novellist but i do think that she gets unfairly beaten by all and sundry. It's as if she is responsible for all the ills of the modern novel!

 

[old goriot]

She's not my favourite novellist but i do think that she gets unfairly beaten by all and sundry. It's as if she is responsible for all the ills of the modern novel!

Yeah it is unfortunate. She just happened to write a convenient literary strawman that ended up serving as the platform for a debate which had been brewing for a long time. I think she understands, from what I have read she doesn't take it too personally. Even she has joined in bashing White Teeth, calling it absurd, and going so far as to question those who gave her good reviews.

I came accross a quote in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy (I think it's a subtle jab at Goethe) that touches on what I was trying to describe. Even he admits that this cultural development is hard to describe, so I don't feel too bad fumbling for words. He was young when he wrote it, and actually calls Martin Luther a great champion of the German spirit later in the pararaph... It's so strange to hear Nietzsche sing the praises of Germans AND Priests AND Wagner (his three favorite punching bags) all in one paragraph. Things change I guess. I think the quote is also relevant to some of the discussions going on in the music forum re: dubstep, Reynolds Pazz & Jop article

"It is quite obvious that, since the reawakening of Alexandrian-Roman antiquity in the fifteenth century, we have been approaching this same condition after a long interlude which is hard to describe. On the heights we find the same excessive lust for knowledge, the same unsatisfied delight in discovery, the same enormous growth in worldliness, along-side these things a homeless roaming-about, a greedy scramble to grab a place at the table of others, frivolous deification of the present, or a dull, numbed turning away from it, all of this sub specie saeculi - of the 'here and now'; these same symptoms all suggest that at the heart of this culture there is the same lack: the destruction of myth. It hardly seems possible to transplant a foreign myth to a new place without doing irrepairable damage to the tree in the process; occasionally the tree is perhaps strong and healthy enough to reject a foreign element after a terrible struggle, but usually it becomes sickly and withers away, or exhausts itself in sickly, rampant growth."