You are fair in laying out your terms - you want to be entertained. But you are less fair from there.
For one, being entertained is a fairly limited criteria. Books are not dancing monkeys, they are coherent creative systems. They can be great without entertaining. That said neither you nor any other reader is obliged to read them!
Second, what you find entertaining is probably far away from what I do. I read “hard” and postmodern books. That doesn’t make my taste better, but it definitely allows for it to be very different.
Requiring realism is lowest common denominator, like requiring philosophy to be readable by an average 10th grader. It is arbitrary. Again, if it’s your jam, all good.
But I read Pynchon for fun. And Faulkner. I loved Ulysses and hated Finnigan’s Wake. I love love love John Barth. I hate Updike.
I also love “Trout Fishing in America,” which I suspect you would loathe. It is terribly confusing, but it is also one of the most lyrical indictments of modern consumerism I have ever read.
I also love Sebald, whose books have the dual pleasures of being ultra-real, to the point of memoir, while being totally pulled out of his proverbial a**.
Books are not just devices for recording narrative and dialog for later sharing. They are ways of using, and sometimes playing, with words to effect an experience. Some, like the recent “Aednan,” are “real” but so breathtakingly minimal that if you don’t participate, if you don’t fill in the blanks, you will be left pulling your hair out.
But if you do, if you allow the author to play, then you get a glimpse of something realism cannot do, which is to cause co-creation and responsibility for the experience. Not for everyone, but amazing nonetheless.
What Pynchon and the postmodernists or Joyce and the Modernists tried to do is accept the truth that the ground of narrative had collapsed, and used immense creative power to try to find a replacement.
And many of them, especially Pynchon and McCarthy, were deeply dedicated to science and felt it had truths to tell. Pynchon would have been a physicist in another life, and McCarthy had ties to the Santa Fe Insitute. They were deeply interested in truth.
You can think of it as a lawyer trying to parse the current situation in international law. All of what we thought was real - norms of behavior and the rule of law - was a fig leaf over power and violence. Now that we can see that, pretending that we can say something is legal or illegal internationally is callow and a bit silly.
That is what the 20th century writers faced - how can you be “real” in a world where the conventions behind reality have been stripped away.
You’re right that the modernists and post modernists added a lot to the development of literature and probably made writing realistically more possible with their innovations. Frankly, I think contemporary writers use those innovations without realizing how much the pioneers made that type of writing possible. I wonder sometimes though if reading Joyce is necessary to doing stream of consciousness well, as a writer. And as for readers who read Joyce and Pynchon and find it fun, I wish I could live inside your brain and really understand how you experience story. Actually, can I interview you on this very subject?
Is this a novel?, I remember asking myself, bewildered at the time — in a way, it’s much closer to Beckett than to short fiction, I thought. It was translated into Japanese fairly late, in 2020, which — compared to its first publication in 1988 — says something about the slowing pace of translation into Japanese.
What about Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts? I bought it because I fell in love with the book cover design, and I haven’t read it yet. It feels like a book that demands — and deserves — the utmost concentration.
Trout Fishing in America, and its first Japanese translation, was a fundamental influence on the translator of Thomas Pynchon, Motoyuki Shibata; he has spoken at length about how the book itself — and its somewhat punk translation — changed his entire sense of what literary translation could be. It was also a major influence on Haruki Murakami.
It really makes you think about how much postmodern novels have influenced different fields of knowledge, with their deliberate lack of conventional readability and their pursuit of answers that will never come. No clarity in human understanding. No clear answers.
What is amazing to me is that people *loathe* postmodernism while we literally live in the spectacle, the simulation and the panopticon while talking to symbol-generators.
That is true, but each human being is different. And because of the times we live in, escapades into anything that is easily readable are welcome. It can even be manga or comics. We shouldn’t blame people, I think. Reading “difficult” literature has increasingly become a sign of division, so understanding what is happening now also requires a certain kind of high-resolution lens.
I get that. And I don’t think I am “better” for enjoying it, but nor is it right to s**t on it just because it isn’t your cup of tea, and I see that all the time.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful and sincere post.
I’m relatively new to Substack, and since joining I’ve become aware of the different lineages of influence on the platform: Moby-Dick treated as an essential read, with anyone who doesn’t make time for it labeled lazy; Proust linked to Buddhism—a position I almost laughed at (and wrote about, because what is Buddhism, after all?); Joyce, of course; David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which gained traction especially after that New Yorker article on performative reading; academics writing with aplomb about classical syllabi while simultaneously bellowing at the gasping reality of what younger generations actually read—or don’t.
From the perspective of a non-native English speaker who has studied and worked in academia, lived in Japan for most of her adult life, and spent considerable time dealing with translation (inevitable when switching between multiple languages):
Infinite Jest has not been translated into Japanese. Gravity’s Rainbow has been so masterfully translated that it inspired me to write a note about it:
Reading from Japan adds another layer, where Pynchon has been translated by two of the country’s finest, Motoyuki Shibata and Yoshiaki Sato. Pynchon’s best-selling novel in Japan is Mason & Dixon, which Motoyuki Shibata describes as “a novel that quietly protests slavery and power while also being a comical road story, full of gags, in which the melancholic Mason and cheerful Dixon bicker on a journey readers find irresistibly funny and endearing.” This captures Pynchon: a writer whose books overflow with stories too many to hold at once, yet whose humor, tenderness, and quiet defiance linger long after.
Motoyuki Shibata is a close friend and collaborator of Haruki Murakami, who in a way represents Japanese postmodernism.
Murakami is readable—yes, he is not Pynchon and he doesn’t have his polyphonic style—but in a way, Pynchon gives multiple voices to an unstable reality, a little like Robert Altman does in his Nashville film.
All of these writers are difficult, almost unreadable, yet I think they give us space to confront a fundamental truth: stability in understanding is almost impossible, and perhaps what makes us human is that we can never fully understand. A bit like the spiraling void in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: we’re all waiting for Godot—how do we find him, do we look for him, or do we simply erase his existence?
My sincere gratitude for your insightful post. It made me think again (and again, and again) about readability (and unreadability) in our time.
Victoria thank you so much for this truly thoughtful comment. You spoke so beautifully about the Japanese translation of Gravity’s Rainbow (I read your note), it made me wish I could read in Japanese so I could check it out. And what a really interesting take on Pynchon broadly. It has me questioning whether I should give his work a second try, maybe look at Mason & Dixon. Also, it’s so interesting that you’ve been noticing these “lineages of influence” (I love how you phrased that) on Substack. It’s like the lit community has been waiting for a place to discuss these topics in a broader internet space and has finally been unleashed on Substack, leading to full throated debates in a way I have not seen in social media.
Really interesting breakdown! Thank you for dissecting this.
I’d love to dig more into why emotional accessibility matters (or doesn’t) to different readers, and how that intersects with literary value. Great piece, thanks for the thoughtful lens!
Thank you Karen! I'll ruminate on the emotional accessibility piece. It seems like some readers enjoy the intellectual challenge of reading some books, but that alone doesn't really do it for me. I need to reflect on why that is.
Finally, someone on Substack who shares my opinion on postmodernism. I can handle when postmodernist tools are used in a story which actually has a semblance of reason and meaning, like The School, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or Catch-22 (in some cases I’d call stories like those modernist or metamodernist but most others disagree) but not when they destroy the concept of a novel for some vague “Actually, life is pointless so novels should be pointless too” justification. Why should I read novels which don’t respect their reader? I don’t think I will ever understand people who enjoy it, and I hope it dies out soon.
Novels take the longest to consume and require the most attention out of any medium. Also a point about a subset of postmodernist books: in a realist novel, if the main plot dissolves in the middle of the story, it would be a bad book, so why are novels which are experimental just for the sake of it so respected instead of novels which are experimental and also have purpose (like Calvino)? I also don’t know why people think all difficult and innovative novels need to be postmodernist or vice versa.
Modernism, on the other hand, expanded on realism instead of destroying it so I love it.
Also that article about classics is 100% AI generated and probably a grift. However the sentiment isn’t terrible. In a world with so many novels, too much attention is brought to the classics. They’re great books, but more people need to read widely and understand that they’re all just books made by people and not gods. There are so many literary traditions across formats and nations, have people ever cared about those ”classics”? No book is a “must read” and no book should be treated as such unless you’re learning a specific writing technique.
Great topic, and great discussion here! I think of reading much like eating; when most of us spend the time and money to go to a restaurant, we want to order something that is recognizably food, not some weird experiment in molecular gastronomy consisting of algal foam in a puddle of seawater, or whatever. Is there a place for chefs to dream, and brave tasters to go along on the trip with them? Sure. But most of us prefer a variation on a familiar theme, with the amount of variation we enjoy seeming to be the most important spectrum.
Regarding Ulysses, if you can get past the lack of punctuation, the passages where you hear the inner thoughts and conversation are exactly the thoughts and conversations of ordinary people (in Hiberno-English). See example I cut from Gemini below. I always thought that if someone could set a hard-boiled detective chasing a serial killer novel in Dublin using the concurrent inner thoughts and dialogue of the cop and the criminal, but with much improved punctuation, it would be a big seller.
<Bloom stops in for a cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy. He encounters Nosey Flynn, a local gossip>
[Inner Thought]: Davy Byrne’s. Quiet here. He doesn't care whose money it is so long as he gets it. I’ll have a glass of burgundy and a sardine sandwich. No, cheese. Let’s see. Freshly cut. The smell of the wine. Peaceful.
— Evening, Mr Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his corner.
— Good day, Bloom said. Taking a drop?
— Just a small one, Flynn said. How's the body?
— Not so bad, Bloom said. A bit of a headache. The sun.
[Inner Thought]: He’s got a bit of a cold, that fellow. Always sniffing. Nosey by name and nosey by nature. Looking for a tip for the races, I’ll bet. Soft cheese. I like the way it yields.
— Is there anything good for the Gold Cup? Flynn asked, leaning forward.
— I wouldn't know, Bloom said. I’m not much of a betting man myself.
[Inner Thought]: Liar. You were thinking about it five minutes ago. The horse. What was the name? Sceptre? No, Throwaway. That's the one. Let him sniff it out himself.
— I hear Boylan has a good thing going, Flynn whispered.
[Inner Thought]: Boylan. My wife's... no. Don't think about that. Drink the wine. Glowing wine. It warms the pipes. A warm bit of cheese to follow. Best thing for the stomach.
Thank you! I probably pick on Joyce/Ulysses too much when I express overall angst at difficult books. You're right that there's likely a lot of value/merit to Ulysses if one takes the time to work through the difficult parts (I've heard there are good podcasts and guides to help readers). Sometimes I think my mindset is set by my days being a litigator, when after spending 10+ hours smashing my brain to bits trying to do law, I had very little mind left to disassemble dense prose and all I wanted was a story to escape into. It's different now that I'm a writer and it's my job to appreciate how other writers do the magic trick of telling a story and eliciting emotions from readers. But I still try to remember my old brain-tired self when I do my own writing, because I think the reality is that most people are like that--just want to be carried away by a good book. Fewer people are the kind that desire, and are willing to sit down with, a tome like Ulysses and really try to glean the value (that is undoubtedly) there.
Though I agree with you that it's probably not worth the effort. I reckon the majority who read it skim the vast amount of obscure material. Those who chase all the allusions are like gamer nerds following all the threads in a vast computer game - absorbing no doubt but not worth much in the end. I got half way and if I ever finish it'll because, as a Dubliner, I want to be able to say 'I read Ulysses'.
Thanks for tackling this topic head-on, Noor. And with such clarity and generosity! I do think a "different strokes for different folks" conclusion is probably the only one to draw ultimately in the world of art, but I like that you made it clear that there are different purposes and philosophies behind the various strokes.
In defense of Barthelme's The School, I will say that I fell in love when I stumbled upon it in college because it felt so playful and charming (i.e., entertaining) and then surprisingly relatable and emotional by the time I'd gotten to the children's unrealistic meditations on death, which felt like stand-ins for the tragically unanswerable questions about death that we all nonetheless can't stop asking (i.e., moving). I'm saying that's how I experienced it, not merely how I analyzed it later.
I kind of suspect all readers just want to be moved and entertained, not do homework merely for the sake of it. It's just that different styles are moving/entertaining to different readers. I've noticed that for me, as an experienced reader and student of story craft, a conventionally told "commercial" novel can sometimes get boring, not because it's inherently boring, but because I'm so familiar with the conventions that there's not enough surprise/novelty to keep me engaged. My brain decides not every individual word is worth paying attention to and I find myself skimming. I become hyper aware that I'm reading a book instead of staying immersed in the story, and I start guessing what will happen several beats ahead (but not in the satisfying just-in-time way). The right experimental technique keeps things fresh, which lets the author catch me off guard with something moving or with a recognizable human truth smuggled in somewhere where I didn't expect it. Then it hits me deep before I know what happened, because my rational brain was occupied by the experimentalism and couldn't analyze away the emotion, maybe.
In The School specifically, I would actually argue that the children's "unrealistic" pontifications are quite realistic, within the absurd premise that Barthelme has already established earlier in the story. We're shown this wildly improbable string of deaths including pets and people in a single school year, and so we get an equally improbable level of curiosity and sophistication around death from the kids as a kind of payoff for that premise. We don't exactly expect those words from the kids, but they immediately ring true in context if we've allowed ourselves to be taken in by the story up to that point. The "surprising yet inevitable" advice for designing good plot twists and endings I think applies to executing experimental fiction well, too.
In a way, you can think of an experimental premise just like a science fictional premise. If you establish at the beginning of your science fiction story that there's an infinite multiverse (like Everything Everywhere All at Once), then later you get to have a mother reach out and reconnect with her daughter in a dozen different ways across a dozen different contexts simultaneously, including as two rocks on a cliff, which is perfectly logical and internally consistent given the premise, and will also have the audience sobbing. I think a good experimental device can be of service to emotional resonance in the same way.
Given that I think about it that way, it's probably not surprising that I often do both in the same story (experimental science fiction) and the two are part and parcel of each other. I will typically start with a science fictional premise, and then find myself needing to write the story in an experimental way to honor how the premise would "realistically" work. For example, my novel The Experiment Himself is told from the perspective of a disembodied brain linked to the internet and perceiving a fragmented picture of reality via connected devices. So to honor that POV I labelled each scene with a different device and tried to stay true to what information the protagonist would have access to via that device in the narration.
*I've never read Ulysses and don't think I would enjoy it.
Takim, this is such a thoughtful comment, it deserves to be its own post. It was really illuminating to see how you experienced reading The School, that you were moved by it, not just impressed by the cleverness. I admit that there are some short stories (written with unusual techniques), that have the ability to illicit these deep emotions, and have such staying power. I didn’t particularly “enjoy” reading “The Machine Stops” by EM Forster but it did pique my curiosity and after it was done it left a permanent mark in my brain. I think about that story at least once every couple weeks. The thing about short stories, though, is that they’re short. Maybe the magic of “The School” and “The Baby” is that we’re not left hanging in narrative limbo for pages and pages without any sort of emotional satisfaction. Barthelme is like a ninja—get in, get out, leave an impression. And I can so relate to your sentiment that linear, commercial stories feel so predictable sometimes, it’s like rinse and repeat. And being a novelist kind of makes it worse for us because now bc we’re so much more aware of all the conventions. And you’re right that experimental, non linear books/stories/movies can still illicit emotion (I think White Teeth by Zadie Smith does that). The reality is that contemporary fiction has a lot to thank modernists and post modernists for, for offering fresh ideas and techniques to tell stories. I think what I get frustrated by is the whole act of canonization and how it can make people (or maybe just me) feel unworthy intellectually or somehow on the outside looking in because I don’t get what the big deal is with Infinite Jest.
You know what, I'm literally going to turn it into a post. I've been wondering what my first post of the year should be and kind of overthinking it. This is it.
I'm with you on canonization as exclusion. Not cool.
I haven't read The Machine Stops or White Teeth yet! Bumping them both higher up the TBR pile. Might actually read The Machine right now...
I disagree that The School "keeps us at arm's length emotionally." I find it to be a deeply moving story. I also find Pynchon's novels to be incredibly poignant. Crucially, they are hysterically funny in addition to being, at well-timed moments, devastating. If there is an omission that "realism" is most often guilty of, it is undoubtedly the very sort of absurd humor that both of these authors are so fluent with. Isn't life absurd? That said, I also love Alice Munro, Marilynne Robinson & Jhumpa Lahiri, and I disagree that Munro's "prose is invisible." I think you're right that she's not nearly as interested in cleverness as Pynchon or Barthelme are. But her prose shines. In fact, it is the music of her sentences more than anything else that draws me to her fiction. I guess what I'm saying is: there is room for all of this and more! People get reactive when other people come swinging at the things they love. I appreciate that you didn't do this. I also understand why some folks get defensive of the classics. Surely it is less about protecting some sanctified patriarchal canon than it is about readers' personal attachments to their most cherished experiences of reading.
It can also be argued that modernism and postmodernism were politically avoidant, whether they want to appear to be or not, and so resorted to rhetoric, of various sorts. Of course, realism can be politically avoidant too but it's far easier to point out in realism than it is as the typically more convoluted, complex, or distracting modernism and postmodernism.
Agree! I think there's something political about Barthelme's story "The Baby" but I can't put my finger on it (maybe I'm not clever enough to figure it out). The Baby is a short story that I actually really like because of the emotion it evokes in me, but I'm not sure if Barthelme was successful in making a political point, if that was his goal.
Barthelme's "The Baby" and "The School" are light-hearted sociopolitical satire and institutional satire, with a bit of a dark undercurrent, but these stories are mostly psychoanalytic. The socioanalytic is there, and it's meaningful, but it's not the focus. The stories are very much slighted to the psychoanalytic, the inward turn, as well as the rhetorical turn, which all but buries anything sociopolitical with bite. I appreciate those two stories, especially "The School," which is a great story, but the reality is that both stories are largely politically avoidant, and fleetingly or thinly political. You can see some politics in them, and I appreciate the politics that are there, but it's very limited. Especially given the aw shucks never mind tone or qualities of these stories. They are first-rate stories, especially "The School," though they are willfully politically slight or vague.
I am in agreement- mostly- about the difficulty of Joyce - 50 years ago I decided that - cause I had been a literature major I had to actually read Ulysses- so I got the 2 or 3 books about the book - I watched the movie - which actually made things worse - but then forced myself to read 5-10 pages each day - I took most of a year but I finished . There are sections I did understand but more that just didn’t make much sense to me . Was is worth all
The effort? In the same way that running a marathon just to see if you can make it to the end I guess. Then there is Finnegan’s Wake. I keep a copy I. My studio and occasionally just open it up and read half a page out loud- it still never makes sense to me . That said I had an initially similar
Experience with Gravity’s Rainbow- I started it several times and never got out of the sewer in the first scene . I decided to give it one last shot when I had a flight from LA to Amsterdam - for some reason this time the humor and the way we writes got me chuckling- I was in the Netherlands for about 10 days - my hotel had no tv that I wanted to watch so I read every evening. What really pulled
Me in was the fact that I was sitting in the place that was the launching spot for the missiles and their flight arc that the book is titled after. I just loved it. And have since read pretty much all
Of his work . So my recommendation is not to worry about Joyce it is not with the effort but give Pynchon a chance!
B) There are several basic factual errors, which I suppose you could argue supports her thesis in that she clearly hasn’t felt the need to read at least some of the books.
More broadly, shifting timelines and interior monologues aren’t some nefarious modernist plot. Both occur in “classic” literature, but the texts themselves have been canonized to a degree that sometimes makes us overlook their strangeness (which is too often seen as a characteristic of “newness”). The first time a film introduced flashbacks and parallel editing, some people were concerned that “ordinary” audiences wouldn’t understand. But of course they did, because those things are standard narrative devices, as Eisenstein showed in his analyses of Dickens.
And if you’re trying to create a believable character, isn’t presenting their thoughts, unfiltered by a narrator - let alone the other layer of the author - a potentially effective way of doing that?
But basically, it comes down to personal taste. The fact that the last pages of “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” make me cry, but they don’t you, isn’t a reflection on either the text or the reader, but the super-additive effect of the combination of the two.
Thanks John, I agree with your take. And it’s true that modernists techniques can make a story feel more real. I guess my follow up question would be: do we turn to stories for that level of reality? Like if reality was on a spectrum with improbable romances on one end, then realism, then modernism, then postmodernism, which end of the realistic story spectrum do we want to be when we turn to story as a pastime? I wonder if some of us enjoy suspending disbelief and living in a smidge of unreality when we read a book.
We turn to “stories” (in the broadest sense of the word) for different reasons at different times. I read and enjoy across genres and styles, as emotional and practical needs take me. I don’t need to - and indeed rail against - the idea of settling my life and artistic experience into a single type of reality. “Ulysses” and academic history books may be set on different points of a spectrum of some sort, but do we need consciously and arbitrarily to cut ourselves off from part of that?
That post was written by AI. It was slop. When people ask me for an example of slop, I show them that post. Is this rage bait or did you not know that?
People were understandably upset that Karen used AI to help write the article. I get that. AI is an existential threat to the entire writing industry and can blot out good writing when used to churn out bad content. In this case though, I felt like at least part of the anger towards the author was because of her opinions on certain classics. That’s the part I really wanted to unpack and understand. I hoped to do that with my post—I’m really not going for rage bait. But I get that this is a topic that gets people riled up. I’m not sure I hit the mark in trying to be thoughtful or balanced but it was worth giving it a shot.
A few of the comments you highlighted were responses to the fact that the original article was nothing but slop. The content was pretty meh, sure, but the outrage was because not only were OP's opinions dumb, she doesn't have the writing skills to convey those dumb opinions. She's saying "don't read the classics" but lacks the ability to write.
Noor, I went to read Karen's article and wow, I'm amazed by how many people have trouble reading a simple Substack post, LOL. So much defensiveness and rage. I mean, Karen did harshly criticize some of my favorite books ever, such as Crime and Punishment and The Mill on the Floss, which hurt. But I could see where she was coming from. She also explained in the intro that this is about accessibility, not about the "worthiness" of the book. She also praises each book too, not just criticizing them.
It's funny how we talk about the declining literacy of readers... Indeed. They can't even read a simple Substack post properly, sigh. What's even sadder is how many people strongly believe that it was "clearly" written by AI. LOLLL do they even know what AI-generated writing looks like? That is NOT AI-generated writing. XD The author also clarified that it's not written by AI. She brainstormed ideas and a good title, but the article itself was written by her.
Honestly I think many people were upset that their favorites were bashed, and hence they lash out at her in revenge. Since many people on the internet are unable to step back from their feelings to see what's actually on the page, as opposed to what they believe is on the page.
Thank Sieran! That was my take as well. She dissed some books I like, but I didn’t take it personally and felt like she had an interesting point of view overall. The level of angst that came out was partially about the AI but also I think a lot of it was that people took her criticism of certain books really really personally for some reason.
The so-called classics are simply books that stay relevant. And what they remain relevant to is human experience. It is entirely possible for a work of art or literature to lose or regain its relevance. Works may cease to resonate with individuals or generations of individuals. Then become relevant again due to historical events or changes. As Pound said, “No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.” I think pronouncing something as necessary when it is not relatable is a mistake common in academia. Sometimes we must be ready to read a great book. Sometimes the book must be ready for us. The idea of a compulsory read is just stupid.
So agree that it takes some life experience to appreciate certain books. Who knows, maybe when I’m older and more experienced I’ll actually appreciate Joyce and Pynchon and laugh at this-aged me for being so dismissive of difficult texts.
Most comments are ragging on her (rightfully so) for clearly using ChatGPT to write every single thing she posts on here (even comments).
The comment section for this very post is pretty slop heavy.
At least some of the criticism of that "Famous Classics You´re Allowed to Skip" post stems from the fact that it was clearly written by AI.
You are definitely a lawyer ;)
You are fair in laying out your terms - you want to be entertained. But you are less fair from there.
For one, being entertained is a fairly limited criteria. Books are not dancing monkeys, they are coherent creative systems. They can be great without entertaining. That said neither you nor any other reader is obliged to read them!
Second, what you find entertaining is probably far away from what I do. I read “hard” and postmodern books. That doesn’t make my taste better, but it definitely allows for it to be very different.
Requiring realism is lowest common denominator, like requiring philosophy to be readable by an average 10th grader. It is arbitrary. Again, if it’s your jam, all good.
But I read Pynchon for fun. And Faulkner. I loved Ulysses and hated Finnigan’s Wake. I love love love John Barth. I hate Updike.
I also love “Trout Fishing in America,” which I suspect you would loathe. It is terribly confusing, but it is also one of the most lyrical indictments of modern consumerism I have ever read.
I also love Sebald, whose books have the dual pleasures of being ultra-real, to the point of memoir, while being totally pulled out of his proverbial a**.
Books are not just devices for recording narrative and dialog for later sharing. They are ways of using, and sometimes playing, with words to effect an experience. Some, like the recent “Aednan,” are “real” but so breathtakingly minimal that if you don’t participate, if you don’t fill in the blanks, you will be left pulling your hair out.
But if you do, if you allow the author to play, then you get a glimpse of something realism cannot do, which is to cause co-creation and responsibility for the experience. Not for everyone, but amazing nonetheless.
What Pynchon and the postmodernists or Joyce and the Modernists tried to do is accept the truth that the ground of narrative had collapsed, and used immense creative power to try to find a replacement.
And many of them, especially Pynchon and McCarthy, were deeply dedicated to science and felt it had truths to tell. Pynchon would have been a physicist in another life, and McCarthy had ties to the Santa Fe Insitute. They were deeply interested in truth.
You can think of it as a lawyer trying to parse the current situation in international law. All of what we thought was real - norms of behavior and the rule of law - was a fig leaf over power and violence. Now that we can see that, pretending that we can say something is legal or illegal internationally is callow and a bit silly.
That is what the 20th century writers faced - how can you be “real” in a world where the conventions behind reality have been stripped away.
You’re right that the modernists and post modernists added a lot to the development of literature and probably made writing realistically more possible with their innovations. Frankly, I think contemporary writers use those innovations without realizing how much the pioneers made that type of writing possible. I wonder sometimes though if reading Joyce is necessary to doing stream of consciousness well, as a writer. And as for readers who read Joyce and Pynchon and find it fun, I wish I could live inside your brain and really understand how you experience story. Actually, can I interview you on this very subject?
Of course. Send me a DM.
Wonderful!! Messaging you now.
“Trout Fishing in America,” is mesmerizing, isn’t it? It changes your whole view on the world in a way!
I feel modestly more sane hearing that from you. I loaned the book to two friends who hated it (both highly educated, English majors).
I felt like I was swimming in it.
Have you read Wittgenstein’s Mistress?
I loved Wittgenstein’s Mistress.
Is this a novel?, I remember asking myself, bewildered at the time — in a way, it’s much closer to Beckett than to short fiction, I thought. It was translated into Japanese fairly late, in 2020, which — compared to its first publication in 1988 — says something about the slowing pace of translation into Japanese.
What about Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts? I bought it because I fell in love with the book cover design, and I haven’t read it yet. It feels like a book that demands — and deserves — the utmost concentration.
Trout Fishing in America, and its first Japanese translation, was a fundamental influence on the translator of Thomas Pynchon, Motoyuki Shibata; he has spoken at length about how the book itself — and its somewhat punk translation — changed his entire sense of what literary translation could be. It was also a major influence on Haruki Murakami.
That is awesome
It really makes you think about how much postmodern novels have influenced different fields of knowledge, with their deliberate lack of conventional readability and their pursuit of answers that will never come. No clarity in human understanding. No clear answers.
What is amazing to me is that people *loathe* postmodernism while we literally live in the spectacle, the simulation and the panopticon while talking to symbol-generators.
That is true, but each human being is different. And because of the times we live in, escapades into anything that is easily readable are welcome. It can even be manga or comics. We shouldn’t blame people, I think. Reading “difficult” literature has increasingly become a sign of division, so understanding what is happening now also requires a certain kind of high-resolution lens.
I get that. And I don’t think I am “better” for enjoying it, but nor is it right to s**t on it just because it isn’t your cup of tea, and I see that all the time.
So so true it makes me sad🩵🫶
Thank you so much for this thoughtful and sincere post.
I’m relatively new to Substack, and since joining I’ve become aware of the different lineages of influence on the platform: Moby-Dick treated as an essential read, with anyone who doesn’t make time for it labeled lazy; Proust linked to Buddhism—a position I almost laughed at (and wrote about, because what is Buddhism, after all?); Joyce, of course; David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which gained traction especially after that New Yorker article on performative reading; academics writing with aplomb about classical syllabi while simultaneously bellowing at the gasping reality of what younger generations actually read—or don’t.
From the perspective of a non-native English speaker who has studied and worked in academia, lived in Japan for most of her adult life, and spent considerable time dealing with translation (inevitable when switching between multiple languages):
Infinite Jest has not been translated into Japanese. Gravity’s Rainbow has been so masterfully translated that it inspired me to write a note about it:
https://substack.com/@vstokyo/note/c-191771972?r=nsotk&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Reading from Japan adds another layer, where Pynchon has been translated by two of the country’s finest, Motoyuki Shibata and Yoshiaki Sato. Pynchon’s best-selling novel in Japan is Mason & Dixon, which Motoyuki Shibata describes as “a novel that quietly protests slavery and power while also being a comical road story, full of gags, in which the melancholic Mason and cheerful Dixon bicker on a journey readers find irresistibly funny and endearing.” This captures Pynchon: a writer whose books overflow with stories too many to hold at once, yet whose humor, tenderness, and quiet defiance linger long after.
Motoyuki Shibata is a close friend and collaborator of Haruki Murakami, who in a way represents Japanese postmodernism.
Murakami is readable—yes, he is not Pynchon and he doesn’t have his polyphonic style—but in a way, Pynchon gives multiple voices to an unstable reality, a little like Robert Altman does in his Nashville film.
All of these writers are difficult, almost unreadable, yet I think they give us space to confront a fundamental truth: stability in understanding is almost impossible, and perhaps what makes us human is that we can never fully understand. A bit like the spiraling void in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: we’re all waiting for Godot—how do we find him, do we look for him, or do we simply erase his existence?
My sincere gratitude for your insightful post. It made me think again (and again, and again) about readability (and unreadability) in our time.
Victoria thank you so much for this truly thoughtful comment. You spoke so beautifully about the Japanese translation of Gravity’s Rainbow (I read your note), it made me wish I could read in Japanese so I could check it out. And what a really interesting take on Pynchon broadly. It has me questioning whether I should give his work a second try, maybe look at Mason & Dixon. Also, it’s so interesting that you’ve been noticing these “lineages of influence” (I love how you phrased that) on Substack. It’s like the lit community has been waiting for a place to discuss these topics in a broader internet space and has finally been unleashed on Substack, leading to full throated debates in a way I have not seen in social media.
Really interesting breakdown! Thank you for dissecting this.
I’d love to dig more into why emotional accessibility matters (or doesn’t) to different readers, and how that intersects with literary value. Great piece, thanks for the thoughtful lens!
Thank you Karen! I'll ruminate on the emotional accessibility piece. It seems like some readers enjoy the intellectual challenge of reading some books, but that alone doesn't really do it for me. I need to reflect on why that is.
Finally, someone on Substack who shares my opinion on postmodernism. I can handle when postmodernist tools are used in a story which actually has a semblance of reason and meaning, like The School, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or Catch-22 (in some cases I’d call stories like those modernist or metamodernist but most others disagree) but not when they destroy the concept of a novel for some vague “Actually, life is pointless so novels should be pointless too” justification. Why should I read novels which don’t respect their reader? I don’t think I will ever understand people who enjoy it, and I hope it dies out soon.
Novels take the longest to consume and require the most attention out of any medium. Also a point about a subset of postmodernist books: in a realist novel, if the main plot dissolves in the middle of the story, it would be a bad book, so why are novels which are experimental just for the sake of it so respected instead of novels which are experimental and also have purpose (like Calvino)? I also don’t know why people think all difficult and innovative novels need to be postmodernist or vice versa.
Modernism, on the other hand, expanded on realism instead of destroying it so I love it.
Also that article about classics is 100% AI generated and probably a grift. However the sentiment isn’t terrible. In a world with so many novels, too much attention is brought to the classics. They’re great books, but more people need to read widely and understand that they’re all just books made by people and not gods. There are so many literary traditions across formats and nations, have people ever cared about those ”classics”? No book is a “must read” and no book should be treated as such unless you’re learning a specific writing technique.
Thank you for summing up what I'm saying so astutely, and with examples!
Great topic, and great discussion here! I think of reading much like eating; when most of us spend the time and money to go to a restaurant, we want to order something that is recognizably food, not some weird experiment in molecular gastronomy consisting of algal foam in a puddle of seawater, or whatever. Is there a place for chefs to dream, and brave tasters to go along on the trip with them? Sure. But most of us prefer a variation on a familiar theme, with the amount of variation we enjoy seeming to be the most important spectrum.
Thank you Heather, I love that restaurant analogy! “algal foam in a puddle of seawater” lol that had me chuckling!
Regarding Ulysses, if you can get past the lack of punctuation, the passages where you hear the inner thoughts and conversation are exactly the thoughts and conversations of ordinary people (in Hiberno-English). See example I cut from Gemini below. I always thought that if someone could set a hard-boiled detective chasing a serial killer novel in Dublin using the concurrent inner thoughts and dialogue of the cop and the criminal, but with much improved punctuation, it would be a big seller.
<Bloom stops in for a cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy. He encounters Nosey Flynn, a local gossip>
[Inner Thought]: Davy Byrne’s. Quiet here. He doesn't care whose money it is so long as he gets it. I’ll have a glass of burgundy and a sardine sandwich. No, cheese. Let’s see. Freshly cut. The smell of the wine. Peaceful.
— Evening, Mr Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his corner.
— Good day, Bloom said. Taking a drop?
— Just a small one, Flynn said. How's the body?
— Not so bad, Bloom said. A bit of a headache. The sun.
[Inner Thought]: He’s got a bit of a cold, that fellow. Always sniffing. Nosey by name and nosey by nature. Looking for a tip for the races, I’ll bet. Soft cheese. I like the way it yields.
— Is there anything good for the Gold Cup? Flynn asked, leaning forward.
— I wouldn't know, Bloom said. I’m not much of a betting man myself.
[Inner Thought]: Liar. You were thinking about it five minutes ago. The horse. What was the name? Sceptre? No, Throwaway. That's the one. Let him sniff it out himself.
— I hear Boylan has a good thing going, Flynn whispered.
[Inner Thought]: Boylan. My wife's... no. Don't think about that. Drink the wine. Glowing wine. It warms the pipes. A warm bit of cheese to follow. Best thing for the stomach.
Thank you! I probably pick on Joyce/Ulysses too much when I express overall angst at difficult books. You're right that there's likely a lot of value/merit to Ulysses if one takes the time to work through the difficult parts (I've heard there are good podcasts and guides to help readers). Sometimes I think my mindset is set by my days being a litigator, when after spending 10+ hours smashing my brain to bits trying to do law, I had very little mind left to disassemble dense prose and all I wanted was a story to escape into. It's different now that I'm a writer and it's my job to appreciate how other writers do the magic trick of telling a story and eliciting emotions from readers. But I still try to remember my old brain-tired self when I do my own writing, because I think the reality is that most people are like that--just want to be carried away by a good book. Fewer people are the kind that desire, and are willing to sit down with, a tome like Ulysses and really try to glean the value (that is undoubtedly) there.
Though I agree with you that it's probably not worth the effort. I reckon the majority who read it skim the vast amount of obscure material. Those who chase all the allusions are like gamer nerds following all the threads in a vast computer game - absorbing no doubt but not worth much in the end. I got half way and if I ever finish it'll because, as a Dubliner, I want to be able to say 'I read Ulysses'.
Thanks for tackling this topic head-on, Noor. And with such clarity and generosity! I do think a "different strokes for different folks" conclusion is probably the only one to draw ultimately in the world of art, but I like that you made it clear that there are different purposes and philosophies behind the various strokes.
In defense of Barthelme's The School, I will say that I fell in love when I stumbled upon it in college because it felt so playful and charming (i.e., entertaining) and then surprisingly relatable and emotional by the time I'd gotten to the children's unrealistic meditations on death, which felt like stand-ins for the tragically unanswerable questions about death that we all nonetheless can't stop asking (i.e., moving). I'm saying that's how I experienced it, not merely how I analyzed it later.
I kind of suspect all readers just want to be moved and entertained, not do homework merely for the sake of it. It's just that different styles are moving/entertaining to different readers. I've noticed that for me, as an experienced reader and student of story craft, a conventionally told "commercial" novel can sometimes get boring, not because it's inherently boring, but because I'm so familiar with the conventions that there's not enough surprise/novelty to keep me engaged. My brain decides not every individual word is worth paying attention to and I find myself skimming. I become hyper aware that I'm reading a book instead of staying immersed in the story, and I start guessing what will happen several beats ahead (but not in the satisfying just-in-time way). The right experimental technique keeps things fresh, which lets the author catch me off guard with something moving or with a recognizable human truth smuggled in somewhere where I didn't expect it. Then it hits me deep before I know what happened, because my rational brain was occupied by the experimentalism and couldn't analyze away the emotion, maybe.
In The School specifically, I would actually argue that the children's "unrealistic" pontifications are quite realistic, within the absurd premise that Barthelme has already established earlier in the story. We're shown this wildly improbable string of deaths including pets and people in a single school year, and so we get an equally improbable level of curiosity and sophistication around death from the kids as a kind of payoff for that premise. We don't exactly expect those words from the kids, but they immediately ring true in context if we've allowed ourselves to be taken in by the story up to that point. The "surprising yet inevitable" advice for designing good plot twists and endings I think applies to executing experimental fiction well, too.
In a way, you can think of an experimental premise just like a science fictional premise. If you establish at the beginning of your science fiction story that there's an infinite multiverse (like Everything Everywhere All at Once), then later you get to have a mother reach out and reconnect with her daughter in a dozen different ways across a dozen different contexts simultaneously, including as two rocks on a cliff, which is perfectly logical and internally consistent given the premise, and will also have the audience sobbing. I think a good experimental device can be of service to emotional resonance in the same way.
Given that I think about it that way, it's probably not surprising that I often do both in the same story (experimental science fiction) and the two are part and parcel of each other. I will typically start with a science fictional premise, and then find myself needing to write the story in an experimental way to honor how the premise would "realistically" work. For example, my novel The Experiment Himself is told from the perspective of a disembodied brain linked to the internet and perceiving a fragmented picture of reality via connected devices. So to honor that POV I labelled each scene with a different device and tried to stay true to what information the protagonist would have access to via that device in the narration.
*I've never read Ulysses and don't think I would enjoy it.
Takim, this is such a thoughtful comment, it deserves to be its own post. It was really illuminating to see how you experienced reading The School, that you were moved by it, not just impressed by the cleverness. I admit that there are some short stories (written with unusual techniques), that have the ability to illicit these deep emotions, and have such staying power. I didn’t particularly “enjoy” reading “The Machine Stops” by EM Forster but it did pique my curiosity and after it was done it left a permanent mark in my brain. I think about that story at least once every couple weeks. The thing about short stories, though, is that they’re short. Maybe the magic of “The School” and “The Baby” is that we’re not left hanging in narrative limbo for pages and pages without any sort of emotional satisfaction. Barthelme is like a ninja—get in, get out, leave an impression. And I can so relate to your sentiment that linear, commercial stories feel so predictable sometimes, it’s like rinse and repeat. And being a novelist kind of makes it worse for us because now bc we’re so much more aware of all the conventions. And you’re right that experimental, non linear books/stories/movies can still illicit emotion (I think White Teeth by Zadie Smith does that). The reality is that contemporary fiction has a lot to thank modernists and post modernists for, for offering fresh ideas and techniques to tell stories. I think what I get frustrated by is the whole act of canonization and how it can make people (or maybe just me) feel unworthy intellectually or somehow on the outside looking in because I don’t get what the big deal is with Infinite Jest.
You know what, I'm literally going to turn it into a post. I've been wondering what my first post of the year should be and kind of overthinking it. This is it.
I'm with you on canonization as exclusion. Not cool.
I haven't read The Machine Stops or White Teeth yet! Bumping them both higher up the TBR pile. Might actually read The Machine right now...
It would be a great post, do it!
I disagree that The School "keeps us at arm's length emotionally." I find it to be a deeply moving story. I also find Pynchon's novels to be incredibly poignant. Crucially, they are hysterically funny in addition to being, at well-timed moments, devastating. If there is an omission that "realism" is most often guilty of, it is undoubtedly the very sort of absurd humor that both of these authors are so fluent with. Isn't life absurd? That said, I also love Alice Munro, Marilynne Robinson & Jhumpa Lahiri, and I disagree that Munro's "prose is invisible." I think you're right that she's not nearly as interested in cleverness as Pynchon or Barthelme are. But her prose shines. In fact, it is the music of her sentences more than anything else that draws me to her fiction. I guess what I'm saying is: there is room for all of this and more! People get reactive when other people come swinging at the things they love. I appreciate that you didn't do this. I also understand why some folks get defensive of the classics. Surely it is less about protecting some sanctified patriarchal canon than it is about readers' personal attachments to their most cherished experiences of reading.
It can also be argued that modernism and postmodernism were politically avoidant, whether they want to appear to be or not, and so resorted to rhetoric, of various sorts. Of course, realism can be politically avoidant too but it's far easier to point out in realism than it is as the typically more convoluted, complex, or distracting modernism and postmodernism.
Agree! I think there's something political about Barthelme's story "The Baby" but I can't put my finger on it (maybe I'm not clever enough to figure it out). The Baby is a short story that I actually really like because of the emotion it evokes in me, but I'm not sure if Barthelme was successful in making a political point, if that was his goal.
Barthelme's "The Baby" and "The School" are light-hearted sociopolitical satire and institutional satire, with a bit of a dark undercurrent, but these stories are mostly psychoanalytic. The socioanalytic is there, and it's meaningful, but it's not the focus. The stories are very much slighted to the psychoanalytic, the inward turn, as well as the rhetorical turn, which all but buries anything sociopolitical with bite. I appreciate those two stories, especially "The School," which is a great story, but the reality is that both stories are largely politically avoidant, and fleetingly or thinly political. You can see some politics in them, and I appreciate the politics that are there, but it's very limited. Especially given the aw shucks never mind tone or qualities of these stories. They are first-rate stories, especially "The School," though they are willfully politically slight or vague.
I am in agreement- mostly- about the difficulty of Joyce - 50 years ago I decided that - cause I had been a literature major I had to actually read Ulysses- so I got the 2 or 3 books about the book - I watched the movie - which actually made things worse - but then forced myself to read 5-10 pages each day - I took most of a year but I finished . There are sections I did understand but more that just didn’t make much sense to me . Was is worth all
The effort? In the same way that running a marathon just to see if you can make it to the end I guess. Then there is Finnegan’s Wake. I keep a copy I. My studio and occasionally just open it up and read half a page out loud- it still never makes sense to me . That said I had an initially similar
Experience with Gravity’s Rainbow- I started it several times and never got out of the sewer in the first scene . I decided to give it one last shot when I had a flight from LA to Amsterdam - for some reason this time the humor and the way we writes got me chuckling- I was in the Netherlands for about 10 days - my hotel had no tv that I wanted to watch so I read every evening. What really pulled
Me in was the fact that I was sitting in the place that was the launching spot for the missiles and their flight arc that the book is titled after. I just loved it. And have since read pretty much all
Of his work . So my recommendation is not to worry about Joyce it is not with the effort but give Pynchon a chance!
Thank you for this generous account of your experience! I truly am fascinated by how people experience these books, and I love that you shared that.
A) It seems to have been written by AI
B) There are several basic factual errors, which I suppose you could argue supports her thesis in that she clearly hasn’t felt the need to read at least some of the books.
More broadly, shifting timelines and interior monologues aren’t some nefarious modernist plot. Both occur in “classic” literature, but the texts themselves have been canonized to a degree that sometimes makes us overlook their strangeness (which is too often seen as a characteristic of “newness”). The first time a film introduced flashbacks and parallel editing, some people were concerned that “ordinary” audiences wouldn’t understand. But of course they did, because those things are standard narrative devices, as Eisenstein showed in his analyses of Dickens.
And if you’re trying to create a believable character, isn’t presenting their thoughts, unfiltered by a narrator - let alone the other layer of the author - a potentially effective way of doing that?
But basically, it comes down to personal taste. The fact that the last pages of “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” make me cry, but they don’t you, isn’t a reflection on either the text or the reader, but the super-additive effect of the combination of the two.
Thanks John, I agree with your take. And it’s true that modernists techniques can make a story feel more real. I guess my follow up question would be: do we turn to stories for that level of reality? Like if reality was on a spectrum with improbable romances on one end, then realism, then modernism, then postmodernism, which end of the realistic story spectrum do we want to be when we turn to story as a pastime? I wonder if some of us enjoy suspending disbelief and living in a smidge of unreality when we read a book.
We turn to “stories” (in the broadest sense of the word) for different reasons at different times. I read and enjoy across genres and styles, as emotional and practical needs take me. I don’t need to - and indeed rail against - the idea of settling my life and artistic experience into a single type of reality. “Ulysses” and academic history books may be set on different points of a spectrum of some sort, but do we need consciously and arbitrarily to cut ourselves off from part of that?
True. There are many reasons we turn to story.
That post was written by AI. It was slop. When people ask me for an example of slop, I show them that post. Is this rage bait or did you not know that?
People were understandably upset that Karen used AI to help write the article. I get that. AI is an existential threat to the entire writing industry and can blot out good writing when used to churn out bad content. In this case though, I felt like at least part of the anger towards the author was because of her opinions on certain classics. That’s the part I really wanted to unpack and understand. I hoped to do that with my post—I’m really not going for rage bait. But I get that this is a topic that gets people riled up. I’m not sure I hit the mark in trying to be thoughtful or balanced but it was worth giving it a shot.
"To help write the article" 😂
A few of the comments you highlighted were responses to the fact that the original article was nothing but slop. The content was pretty meh, sure, but the outrage was because not only were OP's opinions dumb, she doesn't have the writing skills to convey those dumb opinions. She's saying "don't read the classics" but lacks the ability to write.
Noor, I went to read Karen's article and wow, I'm amazed by how many people have trouble reading a simple Substack post, LOL. So much defensiveness and rage. I mean, Karen did harshly criticize some of my favorite books ever, such as Crime and Punishment and The Mill on the Floss, which hurt. But I could see where she was coming from. She also explained in the intro that this is about accessibility, not about the "worthiness" of the book. She also praises each book too, not just criticizing them.
It's funny how we talk about the declining literacy of readers... Indeed. They can't even read a simple Substack post properly, sigh. What's even sadder is how many people strongly believe that it was "clearly" written by AI. LOLLL do they even know what AI-generated writing looks like? That is NOT AI-generated writing. XD The author also clarified that it's not written by AI. She brainstormed ideas and a good title, but the article itself was written by her.
Honestly I think many people were upset that their favorites were bashed, and hence they lash out at her in revenge. Since many people on the internet are unable to step back from their feelings to see what's actually on the page, as opposed to what they believe is on the page.
Thank Sieran! That was my take as well. She dissed some books I like, but I didn’t take it personally and felt like she had an interesting point of view overall. The level of angst that came out was partially about the AI but also I think a lot of it was that people took her criticism of certain books really really personally for some reason.
The so-called classics are simply books that stay relevant. And what they remain relevant to is human experience. It is entirely possible for a work of art or literature to lose or regain its relevance. Works may cease to resonate with individuals or generations of individuals. Then become relevant again due to historical events or changes. As Pound said, “No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.” I think pronouncing something as necessary when it is not relatable is a mistake common in academia. Sometimes we must be ready to read a great book. Sometimes the book must be ready for us. The idea of a compulsory read is just stupid.
So agree that it takes some life experience to appreciate certain books. Who knows, maybe when I’m older and more experienced I’ll actually appreciate Joyce and Pynchon and laugh at this-aged me for being so dismissive of difficult texts.