Writers you hate

Ian McEwan's early short story collections were bracingly nasty; The Cement Garden is pretty pungent. A Child in Time is an affecting portrait of a mutilated present, a society becoming very much like the one we live in now. But then there was Black Dogs, which did that icky liberal thing of using historical atrocity as a plot device for talking about Big Themes of evil, love, redemption etc in ways that were much less profound than the author imagined, and couldn't really support the weight of the Big Historical Horror bearing down upon them. After that he went from bad to worse.

Graham Swift, once considered a peer of McEwan's, has held up rather better I think.

I tried reading a novel of Will Self's once and was genuinely surprised at how bad the writing was, having enjoyed his appearances on Shooting Stars.

Some writers I dislike the idea of, and have simply never wanted to read. DFW absolutely falls into that category. I've read some bits of his prose, and just find him long-winded and earnest. That's an American thing though. Even the supposedly "ironic" authors are so fucking earnest about being ironic.

IdleRich said:

In fairness, I read Post Office, thought "this is bollocks" but later I read Factotum and enjoyed it even though it's exactly the same

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I think those 3 (post office, factotum, women) are the best things. I re-read them all recently and thought women was the best one

craner said:

Mordecai Richler is better than Roth, and sometimes Bellow.

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Solomon Gursky, Barney's Version, Duddy Kravitz, St Urbain all great- I'm not sure i'd agree he's better than those two but I am aware I'm in a minority here in liking them, and McCarthy and DeLillo...

Mr. Tea said:

Yeah, I remember Black Dogs being pretty creepy. I liked The Child in Time too. Maybe his reputation would be better around these parts if he'd suddenly died or something ca. 1995?

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Absolutely - Child in Time was his last half decent book - writes great openings but that incessant Hampstead dinner party set piece stuff is just utterly execrable.

jenks said:

Solomon Gursky, Barney's Version, Duddy Kravitz, St Urbain all great- I'm not sure i'd agree he's better than those two but I am aware I'm in a minority here in liking them, and McCarthy and DeLillo...

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I think he’s better than Roth, but I love Bellow the most. I was reading an essay about Updike recently (a female critic defending him, of all the things) which pointed out how low Bellow’s stock has sunk, he is effectively, predictably, cancelled. As she said, his own rhetorical question “Was I a man, or was I a jerk?” has largely been answered for him by the contemporary consensus “You were a jerk.” (Or the more niche and campus fresh: “You were a man, therefore a jerk.”)

Ishiguro - i cannot stand - i know others who love him but i find him finnicky and awkward
McEwan - already eviscerated here as has Self.

I cannot stand Anne Carson's poetry

For each of these writers, it's not that i just dislike them but that they are trying to pull the wool over my eyes, as if they have something that i should like but that the lack is in me - it's not - they are just not any good despite having facility with language and a rich and obscure vocabulary

I didn't want to read "Remains of the Day" as an undergrad, was forced to and adored it. I read "Artist of the Floating World" after that, which was good, but not as good.

That's a good test afaic - liking something despite wanting to dislike it, it flattens your defences. Applies with music too.

Am I right in saying that both Ishiguro and McEwan were products of the creative writing course at UEA? I was accepted onto that course myself but didn't go for it. Probably the right decision.

Jenks wrote a great piece about McEwan on his blog a while back, which articulated what I never liked about a lot of his stuff.

Probably heresy, but I never thought David Peace was all that (except for The Damned United). I find McCarthy a bit samey, but don't know if I'd say I hate either of them. Similarly, some of the worst books I ever read were by Bidisha, Peter Sotos, Jane Owen and that twerp Sartre, but it'd be a stretch to say I hated any of them.

So here's two I do. Homer - how did he manage to turn a rip-snorting revenge epic into such dull waffle? I'll never read it again, but seem to remember vast chunks just being about his wife and son putting up with a load of drunken squatters. The hero's off fighting cyclopses and shape-shifting witches and Homer writes it up like a financial report, but keeps cutting to his wife moaning as she opens another bottle of wine for some warlord who's trying to bed her and her son shouting futile curses into the wind. A terrible book.

Also Jonathan Frantzen - somebody once insisted - demanded - I read that fucking pile of shit "The Corrections" and every page was torture. Somebody did a good hatchet job of this online, but I remember actually wanting Frantzen to violently choke to death on an artisinal brioche at his next dinner party. Even when I saw the Amazon burning I thought, "Oh well, at least they didn't end up in a Frantzen novel". What a cunt.

martin said:

Also Jonathan Frantzen.

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Yeah, spelled his name wrong, big whoop.

I struggled with the Odyssey. But then, it is a poem, so doubtless translation robs it off all sorts of language effects. The best bits were the famous bits - Cyclops, Sirens, Whirlpool, etc.

Still, nuff respect for picking him (if there was a him) - go big or go home(r).

I like a lot of Ishiguro.
Also DFW is a pretty bad writer... except for IG, it's weir, it feels like he somehow fluked a thousand page masterpiece.
Cement Garden was ok I guess... I'd forgotten it was him (McEwan I mean). Isn't there a film? Don't think I've seen it though.

This thread is the second time I've seen someone here slag off Murakami for his style. Now I've read three of four of his books and quite enjoyed them - I guess I have a higher tolerance for magical realism than some people - so I'm not unbiased in asking this question. But is it really fair to judge a book on the style of its prose when it's been translated, especially between languages as totally dissimilar as English and Japanese? Surely some part of what you like or don't like about a book like that is due to the translator?

Martin Amis. Absolute shitehawk.

alot of usual suspects on these kinda lists surprised nobody has brought up Easton Ellis,Miller or Hemingway yet

DFW is funny to me becuase he ended being grouped in with the kind of writers that he critiqued the kind that people stereotype as being popular with white guys and all that

I cant say ive run into any i hate but EL Doctorow and Jane Austen dont do anything for me i respect them more than i like them

ive thought about reading that Houllebecq guy but he comes across as the kind of hyperbolistic "nothing matters or means anything anymore kind of french writer" him getting cussed out by his mother was funny

I really like Houllebecq... though I didn't like his last one much to be honest. I keep meaning to see the film he's in when he gets kidnapped.

I fucking hate everyone