It's rare for me to share negativity, but I was so excited to see a new #DavidJamesDuncan#novel out (his first in 30+ years) and it's..... bad. Like I have fought through some books before, and there's no way I am wasting 700 pages worth of my time on this hamfisted, bloated, unbelievable nonsense. Really disappointing, because I adore everything else he has written. Buyer beware in case you were thinking of getting it. #books#literature#NotGood
@drummmerandy Being disappointed by a favorite author or the promise of an interesting book is the worst. I used to really hate putting down books that I started, but in my older age I've become much more forgiving when the pull isn't there within the first few reads. I no longer have time for bad writing.
@wobs part of my disappointment is connected to the fact that he hasn't published a novel since the early 90s, and he is now old enough that it's unlikely he will ever write another. I just wanted it to be great, and it's not.
@drummmerandy@wobs me reading Pynchon's Bleeding Edge. It reads like a lesser writer, DFW or someone, doing Pynchon tropes as a bit. It's not terrible on a paragraph level, so I finished it eventually, but man it was really not good at all
@drummmerandy@wobs it's over a decade old at this point, but it was greeted with a nearly universal sigh, so it's faded fairly quickly into the background as a lesser work
@mrcompletely@wobs gotcha. I think Inherent Vice was the last of his I remember being released. But the last 14 years of my life have been pretty consumed with parenting children and that has come at the expense of reading.
@PaulInRainCity@drummmerandy@wobs yeah it's depressing when creators start recycling their own bits. I know I'm in the minority but I feel pretty strongly that Scorsese has been doing this for ages. I haven't finished a film of his in forever bc it all just reads as Marty Playing Marty
Pynchon stans assumed he was above that but we were wrong
@PaulInRainCity@mrcompletely@wobs totally feel the same way about HST. There's only so much savage depravity he can throw into his writing before I just wish was reading one of the first few books again.
@PaulInRainCity@drummmerandy@wobs funny I didn't think of this until now, but - have you seen the Carlin doc? It goes pretty unsparingly into the way he fully sold out in the 70s, and became exactly that self caricature, doing Himself As A Bit. Then the Second City guys started roasting him over it - and instead of getting mad he realized they were right. And that is when the last phase of his career started, all the cerebral masterpiece hour long specials that cemented his place as the GOAT
@PaulInRainCity@drummmerandy@wobs I was just discussing that with some folks on here but only now connected that with this other conversation. Nice to have an example of someone that snapped out of it and went on to do their best work.
His coked up late 70s autopilot talk show/game show appearances are absolutely cringe inducing
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