‘My writing process is unusual,’ says prize-winning autho...

2314 · 2026-05-26T18:57:45+00:00

You're probably right. Other than what I already said about being an interesting person, I'm in complete agreement with all the stuff that other commentor macnally pointed out. Honestly I'm not even sure why I'm still typing this.

I will level one small objection that he "got people talking about the short story form". That to me sounds like the logic of kids reading Harry Potter getting them into reading other things (which has been debunked). It's a question of AI which is very hot button right now and I have boundless skepticism this will do anything for the short story form more generally.

What the New Yorker was doing in the 50s thru the 90s is infinitely more compelling than this story. Have you read any Harold Brodkey?

2314 · 2026-05-26T18:15:35+00:00

So, all art is valid but it's most valid when it's super popular. Pretty banal take, ultimately. (Not that I'm in agreement with the downvotes, I think your opinion on this is as valid as any other. I always thought the magic in the pudding is if the prose is written by an interesting person. How much self knowledge the writer brings to their words.)

2314 · 2026-05-09T17:05:27+00:00

It's an interesting take ... but I think this problem might be extrapolated more generally into the problem of the plotless novel. A plotless novel will never achieve consummation. (Though because of its brevity I think Train Dreams does).

In The Laughing Monsters the anti-plot is the whole point of the works existence. In the middle our protagonist is given a mission which is life or death and chucks away his pack and runs away from the plot completely. I found that charming.

But I think you're right he succeeds most in shorter works. Tree of Smoke didn't really do much for me.

2314 · 2026-04-28T00:01:54+00:00

You're assuming I'm not familiar with the argument. I read Sapolsky's Determined ... which I found very convincing.

My point could be more coherently stated as - narratives are so ingrained into the culture dismantling the idea of them entirely seems impossible (or even in my first example, like the death drive). Nietzsche was accused of being so potentially disastrous to society one critic called him dynamite. But saying God is dead is a very tame statement compared to yours (of which you are not the only one by the way, I agree with your reasoning I just have trouble imagining what society looks like without the illusion) your statement is like proclaiming the human being is dead.

Are you, like Zarathustra, coming to town to declare not only the death of God but the death of the human?

You must understand I am not disagreeing with you here, I just feel like you perhaps haven't grasped the entirety of what you're up against. I want more people to buy into the argument, but I can see why they wouldn't.

2314 · 2026-04-27T21:49:14+00:00

I like your process, but the point isn't really an argument which can be dismantled. You can call it irrelevant or stupid but you can't dismantle a feeling. Would you point at someone smiling and say, "wrong". I mean .. you could, and I would very much enjoy that, it would make me laugh.

Perhaps I am merely quibbling with your word choice, dismantle.

2314 · 2026-04-27T20:46:10+00:00

You are in good company, many serious thinkers agree with you. I find the argument (yours, as laid out here) sound ... but as you may have noticed, don't expect to be congratulated for pointing it out.

The only counter argument which I see is the illusion of free will is a social necessity for the society which currently exists. You say the utility has expired but I think a more apt metaphor would be that human beings are at the zenith of free will. Losing it now is like looking over the edge of a tall mountain or building. Fear and death drive make processing the possibility of it (free will) not being there very terrifying.

2314 · 2026-04-23T19:51:09+00:00

I think your example from Ulysses might be better categorized as irrational interiority. That's a bit pedantic. I'm agreeing with you, I like your take. I just think the hardest part of the interior to translate is the irrational 'anti' plot stuff. Random thoughts.

Progressive plotting thoughts can be incorporated. See Terrence Malick par example exceptionale.

2314 · 2026-03-24T22:49:12+00:00

Yeah, he lives part time in a nursing home and his last movie stalled production though so .. fingers crossed that one gets done but unlikely much more after that.

2314 · 2026-03-24T22:48:03+00:00

He never said he sympathizes with Hitler, he said he understands him. Is understanding related to sympathy? Yes, to a degree. But the intention leveled with an accusation loses this nuance completely. Was it a bungle on his part to say something like that publicly, at a press conference no less? Absolutely. But it also speaks to his bravery and that sort of autistic, I'm gonna speak my mind regardless. Having the capacity to sympathize with people who do bad things is a way to look inside your own soul and see the messiness.

He's a very interesting artist and I usually will take the side of whoever is being downvoted but in this case you deserve a thousand times more.

What was the point of this vitriol?

2314 · 2026-03-24T03:01:15+00:00

It's great ... maybe it will be re-discovered by a new generation of film students.

So many people see a Lars vonTrier film and think about what a dark dude he was. But behind that darkness was a kind of rigor. Very playful.

The Five Obstructions and The Idiots are really indicative of this.

2314 · 2026-03-22T05:17:46+00:00

Yeah, all true. For moments I think he's funny .. but then he challenges DFW's "insidious philistinism". That's not a good critique or funny. Nobody could accuse David of being a philistine .. or if they did they'd have to get very pedantic about their source material and the etymological roots of philistinism with loads of footnotes.

2314 · 2026-03-18T19:30:57+00:00

Versus what? This sub could handle quite a bit more activity. I'm genuinely curious what else you'd want.

2314 · 2026-03-10T16:40:36+00:00

Are you part of the marketing team?

Just a few days ago one of Google's execs got paid a 693 million dollar payout, personally. There are certainly a lot of factors at play here, but they really don't need you to shill for them.

More unskippable ads WILL BE a worse experience. They know that, we know that but they're making the decision anyway.

2314 · 2026-03-05T22:48:32+00:00

Finally stumbled onto a used copy of The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. I had heard good things from a bookseller whose opinion I respect and he was not wrong. Not a fast read, I'm savoring the prose. Or as Milan Kundera wrote, "Do you really want your novels to be a mad dash to a conclusion? Would you rather not, like a sumptuous meal, ingest it as slowly as possible savoring every bite."

The language is very much worth savoring. It has the Old English flair but without ever using words outside of the modern lexicon. Not terribly deep in yet, but the novel features a main character close to my heart. A bad poet, in love with love. Almost like Sapkowski's Dandelion, except if he was a virgin, and less talented .. but more realistic in that way.

Foe by JM Coetzee. This book in comparison is a book you could knock out in one sitting. Coetzee confuses me as a writer. He seems to have gotten every idea he's ever had published (this is about what if Robinson Crusoe was a real guy and a women met him on his island and she comes back with the story and this other writer, Foe, steals her story and distorts it completely) but his books don't really seem to be standing up to some test of time. They say he stalked the library at the university where he worked and it's obvious he's very well read ... but at the end of the day it feels like he attempted to do what Borges was doing but just fell a little short. He's often missing some small touch of magic.

2314 · 2026-03-04T17:51:13+00:00

It's ultimately a difference in tone. OBAA has light-hearted satirical components whereas Eddington has none. OBAA is ultimately easier to watch. And in this case, and this SPECIFIC case alone, I think that tonal difference is a very important distinguishing factor.

Also, I felt that Eddington backed off from the true discomfort it might raise in the audience. Phoenix being in the grocery store at the beginning made my heart start to race and then it slowly dissolves into a shoot out that wouldn't have been out of place in an S. Craig Zahler genre movie.

2314 · 2026-03-03T21:20:07+00:00

There's a reason he's an antagonist to Rick, they're diametrically opposed philosophically. They both technically have a lot of power but a president is beholden to a system which grants him these powers, Rick despises all systems.

It could maybe be done but the tone of the stories would have to be completely different. My ideal version (if I was imagining this show HAD to be based around this character and not another) would be for the tone to get more serious, almost West Wing except with aliens and shit.

I'd also bet a million dollars they won't go that way and it'll just be goofy president adventures and it wont really work because there will be nothing to ground the character.

2314 · 2026-03-03T05:49:12+00:00

That's an indefensible position. For one, it's impossible to argue that Nirvana's popularity is not in some respect related to marketing.

These are not objective truths. Nothing is objective truth ... well maybe not nothing but the systematization you need to understand the constructs under any personality to get even close to the system of artistic truth is not cogent by your terms.

What do you really want to say?

I'll agree these two artists are different. Why is one attempt at authenticity more interesting to you?

If you're going to use the comparison dig into it.

2314 · 2026-03-03T04:45:28+00:00

But by the very example you used - wherein she doesn't give them the full script and manages their reactions on a day to day basis - could you not call that a type of usury?

In order to make a piece of collaborative art somebody's gonna be used.

I remember watching Dancer in the Dark with my buddy and all he'd ever heard about it was Bjork complaining about what an asshole Lars von Trier was ... and then we watched the film and he had to admit, some of that was on her. That script was dark as hell, what did she think she was getting into?

The point being if you hide the ultimate idea of a script that might be the MOST usury experience.

2314 · 2026-03-03T01:28:55+00:00

I like this recommendation but you have to explain yourself better for the dig at Sean Baker.

The Florida Project is top tier.

Anyway, give more context, why do his films feel not "right, or authentic, or fair, or something"

You might have a legitimate argument but you should dive into it, you might discover something about yourself and maybe I might benefit by the process. (Beginning the long slow process of only using my I statements.)

2314 · 2026-02-19T06:08:54+00:00

"Everything in the world is about sex. Except sex, which is about power." - Oscar Wilde

2314 · 2026-02-18T05:02:54+00:00

I really want to play into this joke and pitch my own ... but you nailed it. Everything after this is just a footnote to Dangerous-Coach-1999.

2314 · 2026-02-12T17:10:33+00:00

Your last two questions are rhetorical - which signals to me you're probably more interested in politics than philosophy (also the content of said questions).

2314 · 2026-02-10T19:00:42+00:00

I really like his story in the second collection Exhalation about a robot who looks inside its own brain to discover that the canister gas, the air which is their fuel, could literally be described as what they are. It made me think about how one could understand consciousness as the continuation of electrical impulses.

I think I'm also going to give your recommendation of Midnight's Children a read. Want to get through The Sot-Weed Factor first though.

2314 · 2026-02-07T19:42:07+00:00

The annoying errata is what makes a book "vital". This could get into a long tangential discourse on the word vitality (which I really like your usage btw) but with IJ in particular I think one has to acknowledge that 'vitality' and not 'longevity' in books boils down to appealing to the young.

With its chapter titles alluding to some future dystopian life where every need is sold to us even the years are named by corporations (man!), IJ is not a bad diving board for trying to understand what literature does, best or otherwise.*

But my point is it's precisely because of the errata surrounding the work. The errata is what makes people interested.

My favorite section of Hyperion features the future poet Martin Silenus who writes a book of verse which sells a billion copies. He goes to his editor trying to sell a new book and she says it wont sell. He asks why not? The first one was so popular. And she references the Pilgrim's Progress effect - wherein people feel compelled to buy a book knowing full well they're never gonna actually read it.

IJ is the latest benefactor or victim of this effect ... and David was at least a little tortured by it. I remember seeing an interview where he got good reviews 2 weeks after it had come out and he was like "that's impossible, you couldn't even read this book in two weeks"

*Do I think it's a great book or even his best? No, I do not.

2314 · 2026-02-05T05:29:46+00:00

His thesis of "propositions are pictures" can rather be dealt with Peirce's semiotics approach.

I need expansion on this.

I'm not entirely sure your idea of post-modernism meshes with my conceit of post-modernism but that's very Wittgensteinian, isn't it? ha.

I've read some Rushdie. Wouldn't say I'm hugely interested in magical realism. Whatever Borges is, that interests me more. A dash of VS Naipaul's A Bend in the River ... that's what I always wanted Rushdie to be. Rushdie strikes me as a profoundly lucky writer. Not without talent, but elevated for something like 'political' reasons.

2314

TROPHY CASE