I finished _To the Friend_… and I have to say it was pretty remarkable. I’d heartily recommend it to anyone interested in autofiction, death, illness, the creative process, love, etc. Very good.
_Leave Society_ by Tao Lin is up next. I read almost everything he wrote in the early 10’s ‘alt-lit’ days. I forgot about him until I happened upon a recent interview. It was almost charming to see he was more or less the same person he was a decade ago, albeit with different obsessions. I picked up the book primarily out of curiosity.
I sure did hate alt-lit but it's been fascinating to watch how their style got gobbled up by MFA programs and New York publishing to the point that many, many literary novels coming out read as if they were written at Boost House in 2013.
@“edward”#p97041 Boost House….now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.
I didn’t like alt-lit at first, but a morbid curiosity turned into a genuine one. Lin, I think, had genuine talent.
I’m ambivalent toward alt-lit now. The affectations that became hallmarks of the ‘genre’ are more boring than anything else, but I like the idea of micro-communities existing outside the American publishing structure. Undoubtedly these communities exist in some form today, I’m just not plugged in enough anymore to know about them.
I've never read Lin, but he was definitely the reason alt lit got any attention at all, so I have no trouble believing that he was probably pretty good, or at least the best version of what alt lit had to offer.
alt lit, for me, will always be the group of young writers who were building serious followings outside of any institutional structure whose careers all got cratered because it turned out most of them were rapists or serial sexual abusers of underage girls.
Sadly, these communities largely don't exist anymore. Ten years ago, there were hundreds of independent publishers and micro-presses in the US. Now there are barely any that aren't connected to a university that people actually pay attention to (Two Dollar Radio is the most successful). Now the literary world is either stuck in academia, Big 5, or the amazon ecosystem.
I'm hopeful that we're just at a temporary downturn in independent art (especially if these antitrust cases continue) and the next decade will see a new burgeoning independent scene.
sounds like more people need to join me in The Light of Onetti
Nearing the finish line on _La vida breve_. It's real good, you have to keep at it until it picks up about 1 / 4 of the way through. The premise is more elaborate than the other handful of novels I've read, but it needs that runway I think. It's more straightforward and natural than the description suggests. And ofc it sets up the rest of the fiction.
Probably will read the short stories next although I'm looking fwd to _Juntacadáveres_ aka _Bodysnatcher_ and ofc _The Shipyard_ bc you can't help but root for Larsen am I right
I‘m about halfway through A Brief Life. It’s beautifully written. I agree, Yeso, that it picks up the pace right around 50 pages. I liked the slow intro; I needed that time to get used to the central literary device. It‘s funny - I’d say the details of who is narrating what and when don‘t particularly matter, but I find my brain cares a whole lot. Onetti makes it real clear when it does matter and there isn’t a ton of subtlety about it. The novel is gross and weird in human ways, doesn‘t revel in the details, and is not what I would describe as exploitative. There’s probably a better word for it than “gross.” Maybe it‘s just uncomfortably… intimate to be privy to someone’s private, most imaginative thoughts. Every once in a while Onetti totally floors me with a beautiful observation. There‘s a probably thematically relevant motif about Spring that, whenever it comes up, I pause and reflect on it. Gorgeous writing. One day I’ll read it in Spanish.
I think the small-press ecosystem is still alive and well in some respects, though that depends on your definition of ‘people paying attention.’ I‘m thinking of the types of books places like Full Stop and 3AM review. Are the presses connected to academia? No. Are the books read by people outside of academia? Well, that’s another story.
You are spot-on about what made alt-lit interesting--it attracted a legitimate following outside of itself. That following was as likely fueled by gossip as it was literary value, but a following nonetheless.
I think/hope it's still possible to find a small community of niche and similar tastes (not exactly a fan, but [Expat Press](https://expatpress.com/) seems to be an approximation of this), though their reach resembles the ouroboros of the usual alternative/avant-garde artistic movements.
To the point @"Gaagaagiins"#p97256 and you raised, there were a lot of sex pests in that scene. Indefensible, and no use in extrapolating. @"yeso"#p97170 I would argue alt-lit is a worthwhile subject if you're interested in tracing the American literary arc throughout the 21st century, but not more than that.
All said, that scene introduced me to Blake Butler, who in turn introduced me to Dalkey Archive, so it might have been a net positive for me.
Blake Butler! He‘s an interesting writer. I’m personally not a fan, but some of my good friends are huge fans. Dalkey Archive, though, is fantastic.
I've talked about this somewhere on this here website before, but I was fairly involved in the independent literary press scene back then and I do just feel that it's very different now and also much, much smaller with even less reach. Expat Press seems like a cool press and they're real new, so hopefully they can grow and stick around. But I had three novels come out with small indie presses in the 2010s and none of the publishers even exist anymore. I had hundreds of reviews, essays (including two separate columns!), and short stories that were published at various venues and almost none of them exist anymore.
There are a lot of reasons why the indie press community shrank to what it is now that may be of interest, though I'd say the biggest one is that people began treating indie presses as stepping stones rather than a viable alternative to Big 5 (I'd say there are probably, like, ten or twenty indie presses that are still making a go of it, and how many of these will be here in five years is often a depressing question). Clash Books is having some success (I am not a fan mostly because of the people running the press) and is gaining a following outside of the traditional paths, and Two Dollar Radio has managed to remain a boutique publisher for almost twenty years that gets reviewed in all the big magazines and sometimes even gets put up for awards.
I remain hopeful that the indie scene will rise again. The time seems right for it, since it's never been cheaper to start and run a press, and market consolidation has made a lot of contemporary literature more conformist in nature even as it becomes more diverse. So I think there are enough people who want to do something different that eventually they'll start breaking through again. Honestly, I think social media is one of the biggest impediments to independent literature.
It helped them explode in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but the way facebook and twitter changed to strangle content by independent artists, journalists, and businesses really capsized a lot of presses. But because social media is so ingrained in our lives, people still keep smashing their head against that wall and hoping something breaks through. But the truth is that we basically need to go back to how people sold books before the internet. I sold more books at a single day in-person event here in Minneapolis than I have in the last two months over social media campaigns.
I’ve been trying to sample LitRPG books which is a genre that’s exploding in popularity. It’s basically the novelization of RPGs, including announcements of level ups and status effects, which is as weird to read as you might expect. I’m reading this for research for a project that may or may not ever happen, but, man, this shit is real bad.
> >
I read a lot of bad books, though usually not on purpose (critical acclaim, perversely, is not always a standard for quality), but this genre seems so cursed.
The terribleness of this experiment led me to try out a portal fantasy written for Big Boys and not Little Babies, but, man, even this just hurts my eyes. I got this crazy opinion that people should try writing better books.
@“MoH”#p97281 All said, that scene introduced me to Blake Butler, who in turn introduced me to Dalkey Archive, so it might have been a net positive for me.
Just in case it's not totally clear, I personally certainly did not assume you were about to defend the moral character of individual figures in the alt-lit scene, and I also personally don't think you (personally) need to morally justify appreciating it. It was probably a net positive for many if not most people involved.
I mean, it's a genre, not an institution itself, right? And even if there were a disproportionately high amount of sex pests and serial grifters based on the moral sympathies of some of the pioneering figures, statistically speaking most authors were not sex pests or serial grifters (well I don't have a citation on that to be fair but I think it's a reasonable assumption to make).
If anything, it's potentially simply another sin to offload on to the central disastrous figures in the scene, that sin being a literary trend being so immediately associated with predators and exploitation, and who were surely overshadowing plenty of less morally compromised creators. And that includes people overshadowing them through outright literary skill, and, just, overshadowing them through literary skill combined with their skills in attracting media attention, or dodging accountability, silencing and dismissing criticism, and so on.
Anyway, on to more important topics of discussion,
>
@“rearnakedwindow”#p97276 That scene was maybe the most I ever laughed while reading a book.
I'm actually floored that that was in a book from the 1600s. Why isn't more of the western literary canon this much fun
i don‘t think @“edward”#1011 is going to do it, so i’m going to tell you all to go and read his latest novel, Howl.
it's a brisk, harrowing, exciting mix of horror and hope and a sort of inverted cyberpunk. it's got scenes with visual elements that will linger in your imagination.
Thanks, man! Glad you enjoyed it. Definitely an unusual take on cyberpunk, but I thought it would be funny to write a cyberpunk novel without the cyberpunk city everyone expects. I sure like it a whole lot!
I'm already 50 pages into the writing of the sequel and just cackling here at my keyboard like an absolute fool. Hoping to have it finished by the end of the month, though it won't be coming for a few months.
I have the benefit of being an idiot who makes himself laugh! Also, my wife has been busy in the evenings so I've been left to occupy myself while she does whatever normal people do.