Wednesday, December 13, 2006

TDAOC: Making the awful, obvious jokes, so you don't have to

This droll observation just in from The Stranger:

This has been a dismal year for books: Even the nauseating best-of-2006 lists going up on every litblog across creation feel perfunctory. I've been fairly disappointed with almost everything I've read this year; it all felt, at best, like a witty party conversation, disposable and clever. There were no big ideas, no novelists willing to take a stand, or a chance[...]


and then blah blah this fellow, Paul, he goes on to mention the "one exception," which, okay, sounds like an interesting book, except, see, here's the thing, it took me forever to get past the opening lines up there, because, you know, ugggghhhh started going the Horseshit Alarm every time I read it, and then I realized that the common element in Paul's reading experience, the one constant in this little literary retrospective equation of all-books-equal-crap, if you will? Is Paul.

Yes. I went there.

But seriously. That quote up there? That's some serious oh-me-so-emo wank. I'm embarrassed to have sullied the already arguably low quality of my blog by quoting it here.

I mean I don't even focus on "this year" books, what with most everything I've read this year being back catalog stuff, and even I can still see no less than three titles that are almost literally prepared to jump off my finished pile straight into envelopes that are already magically addressing themselves to Paul right now. No big ideas? No risk? How can that be said about a year that's seen the publication of Mark Z. Danielewski's Only Revolutions, Laird Hunt's The Exquisite, and End of I. by Stephen Dixon (whose entire literary career can be described as one gigantic big-idea risk)? Never even mind my tepid reactions to the Danielewski and Dixon books; I can at least say I appreciate them for what they are and what they're trying to do and where they are trying to go. (Hint: in new, unique, challenging literary directions.) This isn't even counting The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, which I've got on the TBR pile, which hear-tell has it isn't exactly dull and riskless, nor the publication of a little novel by a man by the name of Thomas Pynchon, who, the kids these days say, brings the ideas like motherships bring funk. Plus there's the Brian Evenson book, The Open Curtain, I'm looking forward to reading. Oh hey! Yeah, how about The Road, by Cormac Mccarthy? Certainly nothing risky there, no way. Certainly not like he took a stand in that one. I mean, what with the book being about humanity's last stand.

Whatever. I'm angry.

3 comments:

Egoinway, The Writings of artist Jim Morana said...

You so funny...and angry. When you drink water, do you imagine it's a liquid flow of letters and words. You drink books up like they're nothing. I could never read like you do. I've never read an author so good he/she could keep me so completely. I've only met a few people in my lifetime who've read as much or more. Do you aspire to write these things(books) too?

Darby M. Dixon III said...

Egoinway: It's funny that that's an apt metaphor, as I'm also known to drink far more water during the span of a day than is the norm...

And yeah, I'd be lying if I said I don't have aspirations of my own!

Egoinway, The Writings of artist Jim Morana said...

What's holding you back? You're a fun writer, just yank the throttle back and let rip. Don't pay no mind to all the great writers in your head (which should include me). Just write, make sense of it later.