A Reader's Manifesto

I started a thread about it about a year and a half ago. I can't find it, though, so it's just as well someone started a new one. It deserves to be read.

I have no intention of reading it. He calls out Delillo and McCarthy as examples. As a reader, I've spent many enjoyable hours reading their novels so I'm pretty sure he and I are very different readers.

Also I have no manifesto or agenda, I just like to read without being chastised for my taste in fiction/literature.

The reason I enjoyed the Manifesto is that Myers can be pretty funny, if too much of a smartass for his own good. However, occasionally he'll give credit where it's due. For instance, I agree with him that The Orchard Keeper is a minor masterpiece. It's a fine book, and one that McCarthy fans shouldn't miss out on.

You're right, however, that you shouldn't have your reading tastes mocked. The point of the book, as I understood it, is that the competitive spirit shared by book critics has led to some fairly substandard literary criticism in the past two decade or so. Readers can enjoy whatever the heck they want, but a literary critic should be honest enough that he wouldn't give a glowing review just so he could be quoted on the blurbs page.

Well, I see that as a kind of sorry excuse for a book to be honest. I'd read an essay, but not an entire book about the state of literary criticism.

John Irving quote. Emphasis, mine.

So when I write a book review, I feel that as a novelist I have to work overtime. Because I'm not just writing a review of a book I like -- and I don't bother, I don't waste my time writing about anything I don't like -- every book review I write has to be a model of the form.

In other words I not only have to read that book, I have to read everything that author wrote and I have to read things that are similar to it. And people always say, "I love your book reviews, you should write more of them," and people have asked me if I want to collect my book reviews, and that's a book I might do 10 years down the road, when I feel I've gotten to the point where I've written my last book review. I'd like to write an essay about why I've written my last book review and publish my reviews as a way of saying, "If you're going to write a book review, get it right. Do your fucking homework and get it right." So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying (thrusts a middle finger into the air) this is how you ought to do it.

I like to rub their noses in it. It is hard and it should be hard because if you're dealing with a book somebody spent two, four, five or six years on, you shouldn't turn this thing around in five or six days. This isn't college, it's not a late paper. This has been somebody's life for four or five years and you don't have to like it, but you do have to respect it.

I have no reply to that. I think you've made your point far better than I could have come up with a counterpoint.

As a side note, I've never read John Irving, but that quote makes me respect the guy.

The problem is most book reviewers don't put that kinda time in their work. They choose the most "sophisticated" wordy and "cogent" passage, quote it, and glorify it whether or not they even understand/like it so other equally "literary" people agree with them and invite them to dinner parties where they all jerk each other off.

No disrespect to you or Irving. That is a great statement. The populace does not follow it...even the literati. And that is the problem.

And yes, he does pick on DeLillo and McCarthy, but only where they deserve it. You shouldn't flat out ignore an argument just because you know you'll disagree with it. Read it, understand it, so that you may better attack it.

No disrespect taken at all. I don't read much literary criticism, because I am too busy reading books for my own pleasure.

You say he picks on DeLillo and McCarthym but only where they deserve it. I find that a little funny because right away he sounds like a bully just trying to be outrageous. Of course, I can't say for sure because I haven't read it.

I'm not interested in attacking it or refuting it. Like I said earlier, I don't need anyone's approval of my reading habits.

I read that it was originally an essay in The Atlantic, maybe I'll try to scrounge that up.

Here's the essay: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers

I read part of it, and will finish it later. I jumped right to the part about Cormac McCarthy. Surprise.

I read for my own pleasure as well and never take what any critic says to heart. But after being a literature major for four years and being force fed shit and then being told that it's gold just because the New York Times review or Norton says it's good...it starts to piss me off quite a bit. And Meyers points all of that out. And it's not just liking the books...that's subjective. It's the fact that publishers and critics are so easy to embrace anything just because so and so author write something. When Stephen King or Vonneguts son can get published just because they're daddy can write, there's a problem.

According to the article I read Meyers doesn't seem to like anything that's been published since 1974.

Does he mention any contemporary authors that are well received that he does like in his book?

EDIT: Several of the passages he cites as awful in books are parts I liked and that worked for me. At the end he cites a bunch of obscure books and authors that should be read instead. I got the feeling that he's the pretentious one.

First off, I'd like to say that I haven't read, or even heard of the book until I clicked on this post. I think this is a great discussion, and it's one that I see both sides of. When Harold Bloom says that there are only four living writers worth reading at all (Delillo, Pynchon, Roth, and McCarthy), I just want to slap him in the face because what's the point in reading contemporary lit if there's only, at most, four books a year worth reading. At the same time, I do see why he thinks these writers are so good, just like I understand the why the selections for the Norton Anthology are what they are.

The problem, for me, comes when critics try to make it seem like theirs is the only possible opinion. It's limiting for me, as a reader and writer, and a big fuck you to the breadth of human imagination. Like I said, I haven't read the book(I'll read the article later), and I probably wouldn't completely agree with his opinion or any critics opinion, but I'm not going to hold a grudge against him for it. I bet he's very pretentious, but he can't possibly be as bad as Harold Bloom. Can he?

Opinions are fine, and we can debate what makes good writing til we're blue in the face. But at the end of the day, there has to be standards. For example, I do not like Gatsby at all. I hate it. I think it's overrated and wrong to force on students. But I can understand it. I see why other people enjoy it. But when you have people like Eco, whose work can be best described as a combination of a baby playing with the special edition pompous ass magnet poetry as the great literary author of our time, there is something very, very wrong. Authors, especially "literary" authors spend their time using as many words without saying a god damn thing.

Now that I've read the article, I can add some more.

I disagree with a lot of what Myers says in his article(I haven't and don't plan to read the book). First off, I don't believe there is any more pretentiousness in the world of literature today than there was in the time that Myers exhorts. I think Henry James is about as uppity as it gets when in comes to lit. I also take exception to the way he attacks the readers and writers of the novels he hates so much.

Anyway, what I didn't realize going in is that his quibble with today's lit is mostly stylistic. I was expecting an attack on the state of the novel/short story/whatever as it is now, how it has evolved since the golden olden days, etc, etc.. Maybe the book is like this. jd_james, can you fill me in? He attacks writer's for using words that sound good -- I don't have a problem with that. He attacks them for short sentences -- again, what's the problem? He should probably take some of his own advice (how many times does he use the phrase "unaffected prose" in this short article?).

Again, I'm not trying to knock Myers(or anyone who agrees with him) for his opinion, I'm just pointing out why I disagree with him. I actually agree with his argument on Proulx and part of what he says on Auster (completely disagree on McCarthy and DeLillo). Maybe Myers should open up his own writer's workshop, and in ten years we'll see a new "Myers-school" of brilliant writer's emerge. Who knows? It's a fun conversation to have, though.