Saturday, January 10, 2009

B.R. Myers's "A Reader's Manifesto": I agree with him, but why do these authors sell?

B.R. Myers wrote A Reader's Manifesto in 2002. The subtitle, An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose, pretty much sums it up. The chapter titles themselves are satirical bits of lit-crit-speak: Evocative Prose, Muscular Prose, Edgy Prose, Spare Prose, and so on. It's a fast, entertaining read and -- unlike the lengthy quoted sections he takes from famous current authors -- it's well written. His basic premise is that much of what is praised as great current literary fiction is actually laughably mediocre.

Myers asserts that fiction, and the literary culture that surrounds it, has become pretentiously high brow and and that celebrated writers have come to ignore basic precepts of clear narrative story-telling in order to mystify and scam their readers.

It's easier to produce a gushy incomprehensible word soup than swift, thoughtful prose. Readers have to accept it or risk being considered unsophisticated. Myers pretty well demolishes Annie Proulx, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Paul Auster, and David Guterson, using them as examples of what is bad, and yet critically praised.

When Myers quotes from novels, he's devastating. And after he has blasted each writer in turn, he makes the rubble bounce.

Myers: "Sure, Proulx has plenty of long sentences, but they are usually little more than lists:"

Annie Proulx (from a piece of her fiction): "Partridge black, small, a restless traveler across the slope of life, an all-night talker; Mercalia, second wife of Partridge and the color of a brown feather on dark water, a hot intelligence; Quoyle large, white, stumbling along, going nowhere."

I did start to feel sympathy for these writers, they're so thoroughly gutted, and their quoted excerpts so terrible. I've tried to read Annie Proulx, and found her constant stream of disconnected images too much. I've tried reading DeLillo, and felt bored. The others I haven't read.

I'm surprised Myers didn't make more of the academic background of literary fiction. Many contemporary "serious" writers have (or had) academic positions in English and Writing departments (by necessity). I think these writers find it hard not to write for their academic colleagues and their literary agendas -- a writing professor is naturally interested in gaining the esteem of fellow professors and department chairmen, and not necessarily that of readers in Butte, or Buffalo.

I agreed with a lot of what Myers says in this book. And I see the parallels to some of the theater we've seen produced in the last ten years. Yet, I wondered -- how do these writers keep getting published? I know that some people really like Annie Proulx, McCarthy, and the others. Can it really be that it's lit-crit cultural pressure and bullying that's making people buy their books?

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