Passion is an essential element in art, we are told: passion to create, passion for the process, passion for the form. These are considered all good and well.
But let’s not get into the power of positive thinking and all that! Let’s talk about something destructive and angry. Let’s talk about your passionate hatred of certain novels and stories.
Close (and casual) readers of this space know that of late, I have spoken of certain ficciones that have made this author insane with anger, not unike telling bad things to Zinedine Zidane about his mamma. I find the offending writer on a soccer pitch and apply a chest-cavity collapsing headbutt, though I imagine I would find it quite satisfying to do so.
I tend to both love and loathe books. The best novels and story collections are worth telling everyone about, to the point of embarassment.
When it comes to prosthetyzing, I can give you many reasons why Ellison’s “Invisible Man” or Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” are wonderful books, but there is usually nothing objective about hating a book. The works in question do not posit a loathesome message (overtly, at least), and aren’t always poorly written (though often).
I recall an English professor in college get enraged when we were discussing Hemmingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
“Doesn’t this just make you furious?” she asked. Sluggos all, we shook our heads in confusion. (The teacher was referring to Hemmingway’s mysoginst tendencies in the short story, but since most of us didn’t see that or, more likely, hadn’t read the assignment, we didn’t have anything to add.)
At least the professor had a good reason for her anger. I usually don’t. My reasoning is simple: it just fucking pissed me off. Usually because I find it pretentious, slick, presumptuous, or haughty, or that I am furious with disbelief that such garbage got published, in lieu of my brilliant story, of course.
He insulted Zidane’s mother and Proust
But enough about me. Since this topic has been on my mind of late, and, since, I’ve already making asked what books make you want to sing their praises to the world, answer me this:
What books, stories, or authors turn you into an irrational mass of shaking fury?
We’re talking fiction here, so forget about “Mein Kampf,” “A Million Little Pieces,” or anything by Ann Coulter, although, if you think about it, both” A Million Little Pieces” and Ann Coulter’s entire body of work are nothing but lies. Which is fiction, of a sort.
Don’t feel you have to rationalize your anger with a “reason” — feel free to give reasons, of course, but, to paraphrase Irvine Welsh, And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’re just sodding pissed off?
Quinn,
I’m the “local twit” on your list above, right after John Grisham and Nick MacDonell.
Again, great blog!
Um, is it horrible that I find that funny?
gordon: whoomp, there it is! who knew that bookfraud could bring you and quinn together?
rebecca s.: funny as in “ha ha” funny, or “odd” funny? it’s not terribly horrible, in any case.
I just think it’s funny as in foot-in-mouth funny. But odd funny too I guess.
I would have been up in your English professor’s face over Short Happy Life, Fraud. I LOVE that story. Here kitty, kitty, kitty…
And you know how I feel about Toni Morrison, so there’s no need to re-warm that rage.
Any time I try to read Ian McEwan, I feel alienated. The rage comes when I read an Ian McEwan reviewer falling all over himself.
madame d.: when you’re 12 and you know something is complete and utter shit, it must be, by definition, complete and utter shit.
rebecca s.: you’re not banned from further discussion, though i’m considering probation.
madame d.: when you’re 12 and you know something is complete and utter shit, it must be, by definition, complete and utter shit.
rebecca s.: you’re not banned from further discussion, though i’m considering probation.
free winkie: yes! agreed. anything with self-satisfied “wisdom” is going to enrage me.
gordon: thanks for the compliment, though i don’t what “list” you’re talking about.
free winkie: yes! agreed. anything with self-satisfied “wisdom” is going to enrage me.
gordon: thanks for the compliment, though i don’t what “list” you’re talking about.
Quinn,
I’m the “local twit” on your list above, right after John Grisham and Nick MacDonell.
Again, great blog!
Quinn,
I’m the “local twit” on your list above, right after John Grisham and Nick MacDonell.
Again, great blog!
Um, is it horrible that I find that funny?
Um, is it horrible that I find that funny?
gordon: whoomp, there it is! who knew that bookfraud could bring you and quinn together?
rebecca s.: funny as in “ha ha” funny, or “odd” funny? it’s not terribly horrible, in any case.
gordon: whoomp, there it is! who knew that bookfraud could bring you and quinn together?
rebecca s.: funny as in “ha ha” funny, or “odd” funny? it’s not terribly horrible, in any case.
I just think it’s funny as in foot-in-mouth funny. But odd funny too I guess.
I just think it’s funny as in foot-in-mouth funny. But odd funny too I guess.
I would have been up in your English professor’s face over Short Happy Life, Fraud. I LOVE that story. Here kitty, kitty, kitty…
And you know how I feel about Toni Morrison, so there’s no need to re-warm that rage.
Any time I try to read Ian McEwan, I feel alienated. The rage comes when I read an Ian McEwan reviewer falling all over himself.
I would have been up in your English professor’s face over Short Happy Life, Fraud. I LOVE that story. Here kitty, kitty, kitty…
And you know how I feel about Toni Morrison, so there’s no need to re-warm that rage.
Any time I try to read Ian McEwan, I feel alienated. The rage comes when I read an Ian McEwan reviewer falling all over himself.
rebecca: foot-in-mouth disease is a grave ailment; i suffer from it daily. i do not find any humor in it.
benny: i love short happy life as well (though nowhere as much as “the killers”), but there’s no need to get in the english prof’s face, though that might be humorous.
as far as ian mcewan, i say: yes! you are 100 percent on the money. i find him totally alienating as well.
white teeth, zadie smith – the writing is slick, polished – the story well-wrought, but she and her success and the book and everything about her (how incredibly attractive she looks on her book jackets) really fucking bother me.
It seems to me that most of the anger directed at popular authors such as Grisham, Brown, Clancy, etc. is less about with the content of their work and more about how it is so grossly overrated. There is worse fiction out there, but it doesn’t have the exposure. It’s the fact that mediocre writing can nonetheless bring fame and fortune that irks everybody. Which seems a little off the point of your original question…but hey, you said no reasons were necessary, so I’ll shut up now.
nik: you are not alone on the anti-zadie train. she seems to rub people the wrong way, no matter how polished her fiction is.
language lover: right you are–writers of literary fiction hate nothing more than hacks making tons of $$$ while they toil in obscurity.
no need to shut up, we enjoy your yappin’.
rebecca: foot-in-mouth disease is a grave ailment; i suffer from it daily. i do not find any humor in it.
benny: i love short happy life as well (though nowhere as much as “the killers”), but there’s no need to get in the english prof’s face, though that might be humorous.
as far as ian mcewan, i say: yes! you are 100 percent on the money. i find him totally alienating as well.
rebecca: foot-in-mouth disease is a grave ailment; i suffer from it daily. i do not find any humor in it.
benny: i love short happy life as well (though nowhere as much as “the killers”), but there’s no need to get in the english prof’s face, though that might be humorous.
as far as ian mcewan, i say: yes! you are 100 percent on the money. i find him totally alienating as well.
white teeth, zadie smith – the writing is slick, polished – the story well-wrought, but she and her success and the book and everything about her (how incredibly attractive she looks on her book jackets) really fucking bother me.
white teeth, zadie smith – the writing is slick, polished – the story well-wrought, but she and her success and the book and everything about her (how incredibly attractive she looks on her book jackets) really fucking bother me.
It seems to me that most of the anger directed at popular authors such as Grisham, Brown, Clancy, etc. is less about with the content of their work and more about how it is so grossly overrated. There is worse fiction out there, but it doesn’t have the exposure. It’s the fact that mediocre writing can nonetheless bring fame and fortune that irks everybody. Which seems a little off the point of your original question…but hey, you said no reasons were necessary, so I’ll shut up now.
It seems to me that most of the anger directed at popular authors such as Grisham, Brown, Clancy, etc. is less about with the content of their work and more about how it is so grossly overrated. There is worse fiction out there, but it doesn’t have the exposure. It’s the fact that mediocre writing can nonetheless bring fame and fortune that irks everybody. Which seems a little off the point of your original question…but hey, you said no reasons were necessary, so I’ll shut up now.
nik: you are not alone on the anti-zadie train. she seems to rub people the wrong way, no matter how polished her fiction is.
language lover: right you are–writers of literary fiction hate nothing more than hacks making tons of $$$ while they toil in obscurity.
no need to shut up, we enjoy your yappin’.
nik: you are not alone on the anti-zadie train. she seems to rub people the wrong way, no matter how polished her fiction is.
language lover: right you are–writers of literary fiction hate nothing more than hacks making tons of $$$ while they toil in obscurity.
no need to shut up, we enjoy your yappin’.