About the Reader's Manifesto rainey mentioned

theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers

Just wanted to open up a thread disscussing the article rainey posted a bit more in detail as I thought the article raised some deep, interesting, and many pertinent questions to those that inahbit these halls of ILP.

First of all, great article Rainey.

“Even the most obvious triteness is acceptable, provided it comes with a postmodern wink.” He so stole my sentiments.

B.R. Myers wrote: “That’s right: “strangled, work-driven ways.” Work-driven is fine, of course, except for its note of self-approval, but strangled ways makes no sense on any level.” I beg to differ. I understand strangled for I myself feel that the artist sometimes has to strangle my other selves to produce work. And I don’t think I’m stretching the metaphor too far here . . . strangled, work-driven ways. No sense, nonsense. Nothing baffling.

[…] she seems unaware that all innovative language derives its impact from the contrast to straightforward English" Good point.

“By putting everything in sharp focus she lessens the impact of her vivid sense of locale.” Insightful.

“The critics, however, are too much impressed by the muscles of his prose to care about the heart underneath.” Nice point.

Anyone else sharply dissagree with the critic’s assesment? I find the prose to be flat enough to not attract undue attention to itself–to the writing, writer–as B.R. Myers criticized the earliar writers for, and to take me away from the words to the images and ideas being conveyed.

It’s funny but the critic actually made me want to read White Noise and DeLillo after his barrage of literary assualts on him.

I just wanted to note that this whole buisness about “entering” a woman was theorized very interestingly in a 2000-1 essay on cyber cultures where the thinker argued for the nuanced, though facinating and penetrative, differences between entering a woman and accessing a woman. Anyone can enter a woman, she wrote, but few can access a woman. She of course developed it much better than I can recall, but it’s like having a code that unlocks a cyber account that allows one to access something, compared to anyone being able to enter a supermarket. A rapist can enter a woman, a lover can access her.

Perhaps as an Auster fan I’m predjudiced, but I find his assesment way off. Auster is deep and funny, and rarely do I find parts in his novels where I feel that my time is being “wasted.”

“Like DeLillo, Auster knows the prime rule of pseudo-intellectual writing: the harder it is to be pinned down on any idea, the easier it is to conceal that one has no ideas at all.”

Auster has no ideas at all? Reading his novels I’ve had to stop after certain chapters and walk around from the dizzying spell they produced to allow time to digest some of his magestic scenes. Namely, from the second to last chapter in The City of Illusions. And I haven’t been as depressed and intrugied by a novel, not to mention enjoying almost every page for the simplicity of the prose, of In the Country of Last Things.

On this though the critic is spot on . . . that is incredibly bad and funny for its attempt at seriousness.

“[Serious contemporary American writers ] urge us to move beyond our old-fashioned preoccupation with content and plot, to focus on form instead—and then they subject us to the least-expressive form, the least-expressive sentences, in the history of the American novel.” Interesting…

“plodding style” of Raymond Carver? You are kidding me, right? No, please . . . please tell me that was a joke. … . Bellow’s verbal restraint makes the unexpected repetition of what a difference all the more touching. And Carver’s style has no restraint!? What the phuck does this “professional reviewer” smoke?

Saul Bellow’s The Victim is quoted for an excellent scene of why a character falls in love, and, of course, Auster’s scenes of falling in love are, not uncoincidentlly, left out of this pompous manifesto. In no less respect are Asuter’s scenes any less romantic or moving, in every sense of the word.

Glad you found the article interesting, TUM. It’s actually an excerpt from the book, which I happen to have and think that anybody engaged in writing ought to have. Find it on Amazon and order it. It’s just a little thing but I think it’s a must.

Now, I’m not sure what to make of Myers’s complaints to be honest. I’ll let anybody who’s read the authors he crticizes make their own conclusions. But I just love his way of making fun of all the pretentiousness that’s out there. I think we can agree there’s plenty of it.

And he is, at times, hilarious. This description of a DeLillo passage is priceless:

“That couldn’t be rendered any less coherent if the sentences were mixed up in a hat and pulled out again at random.”

One thing that the book has, not found in the article, is an appendix entitled “Ten Rules for Serious Writers.” I post them here for your consideration and enjoyment:

  1. Be Writerly: If your writing is too natural, then there is no way it is scholarly.

  2. Sprawl: Content doesn’t matter, it’s all about size. Critics are impressed by big books, so brevity should be dismissed.

  3. Equivocate: If it doesn’t make sense, there can always be a good excuse. Truth can always be distorted as long as it makes the writer sound good. For example, the plot isn’t important because the lack of plot is what’s important.

  4. Mystify: If people think that your writing is smarter than their writing, then they will respect your writing. If you sound smart (and definitely if you are published) then you must possess a brilliant mind.

  5. Keep Sentences Long: If the sentence is not long and boring, then it is definitely not literature.

  6. Repeat yourself: Repetition of words is important. If you don’t mention your subject enough times, then the reader may not know what you are talking about. You may also use synonyms to show that you know how to use a thesaurus, and thus, must be an intelligent writer.

  7. Pile on the Imagery: Your writerly credentials will bloom to greatness if your ability to tie together multiple similes and metaphors like the wooden pieces of a Lincoln log set, never disintegrate from the fiery visage of the sun. The more literary devices that you can throw together, the better the writing .

  8. Archaize: If thine style of writing reflects an age long gone, and a world unfamiliar to the modern reader, than thou art indeed a master of the quill and the ink. This is very similar to rule number four, except you must write as if you are stuck in the past, rather than stuck in a dictionary.

  9. Bore: The word boring may as well be a synonym to the word scholarly. Along the lines of rule number one, you cannot write naturally, or make your words interesting. It is simply not scholarly. People are not supposed to be able to understand your writing, they are only supposed to realize that your writing is brilliant, because it just might be the cure for insomnia.

  10. Play the part: Remember to be as you write, scholarly, literate, practically a god. You must understand that when you seem smart, when you seem to believe in yourself, others will do the same, because, how could someone that is so smart and so pompous be wrong?

:smiley:

I could make arguments in favour of DeLillo’s prose style, but I don’t really see the point, just read him and make up your own mind.
As for Myers, I think this is where “criticism” becomes undesirable, for me, because it is so desperate to be contrarian and to tell us how things should and shouldn’t be. Indeed, it is no less posturing than might be any of the features of the writing that Myers so evidently despises. So be it, but the critic carries a responsiblity to the writing that he reviews and this kind of invective reveals nothing but his own ego.

Well it would be easier, I think, for me to dismiss Myers if he didn’t generously offer in his book counter-examples of what he regards as excellent prose (I presume the shortage of space in Atlantic Monthly made it impossible for him to do so in the article). The man is well read. It’s all very subjective, of course. But you have to see the pretentiousness that exists out there. Poetry critic Adam Kirsch does the same thing Myers does when he pokes holes in all the “great” poetry that everybody falls all over. Right or wrong, agree with them or disagree, their voices are unique and I appreciate their rare perspectives.