This one got away from me. I realized I was in a reading slump when it took me half the summer to finish friggin’ Palladio. Not a beach read! Can’t even use the excuse that I was tackling big ambitious books. I spent the last six weeks of the year slogging through Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano — one of the most difficult novels I’ve ever read — and didn’t get it under the wire. I’ve been microdosing Harold Brodkey’s Stories in an Almost Classical Mode since September, and I’m barely halfway through.
The books I did finish were colored by three pieces of media. The first was J. Arthur Boyle’s essay on conglomerated publishing, pegged to the publication of Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction. The premise is that western capitalism briefly enabled the proliferation of authors and ideas, only to throttle them by last century’s end. If I’m simplifying his argument, it did a number on me. I like to think American novels are morally superior to like, Marvel films, but it’s possible they’re just less lucrative. No matter how I source my books, their availability is determined by a few Swarthmore grads on Sixth Avenue, which limits my sympathies, politics, and lens on the broader world. It’s self-defeating, watered down, an insult1.
The second was this Triangle House roundtable on “The Future of Fiction,” in which Becca Schuh taxonomizes the contemporary novel. “The reason that Social Problem Novels and Gimmick Novels and Vibes Novels are generally uninspiring is because they involve a person trying to attach themselves to an idea in the hope that the idea is of enough interest to keep the novel afloat,” Schuh writes. “80% of literature today could be called ATTENTION LITERATURE. Get attention to hopefully get money, not that you will. There is no money. There never has been.”
Bang. Novelists are too refined for influencer tactics, but the preening is even more shameless because there’s no money on the table. I’m tempted to say this is a new phenomenon — that fiction was more political, more contemplative, 25 years ago — though I suppose expression had currency when you couldn’t post front-facing videos to your followers every day. ‘90s novels are slower, and more modest, and reflect a higher standard of living.
For my purposes, books can be split into two categories. There are those that reinforce, reflect, resonate, and affirm — books for the beach or vacation, books that embellish sights and settings. This is the way most folks approach music and visual art. They are Schuh’s Vibes Novels: there’s nothing wrong with them, except that they’re self-fulfilling. Then there are the books that upend or countervail, books that confer new insights. These books are rarer, and better, and they’re not necessarily great hangs.
I mostly shop at used bookstores, which should lend itself to more of the high-quality, horizon-expanding sort of reading I’ve outlined above. But even this is prone to the Vibes Novel impulse. You pick up an Ann Beattie collection, you say, well, I’ve always kinda wondered about her whole deal, her stories sound cozy, and I’m bored of Patricia Lockwood novels set entirely on Twitter. In addition to being better, the old works become more resonant; all that’s changed is the market. If they’re in a used bookstore, someone had to buy them in the first place.
Reading for pleasure is a consumptive activity, for the reasons Boyle cites in his essay. My book-buying has outpaced my reading; for the most part I read books scattered throughout my apartment. I was hoping to read more Irish fiction this year — bought a Keegan book and everything — but only have so much bandwidth for white people moping about free college and healthcare. I suffer a similar block with European novels in translation, the chopped-up sentences, narrators speaking too frankly about their feelings.
The Neglected Books Page is bookmarked across my devices2. It’s an enthralling document, not just for its recommendations, but for the perspective it lends on publishing, the arbitrariness of what gets printed and what survives. Have you ever read a book so dumb it made you regret all the lovely 1940s novels you’ll never read? I wrote last year about my love for NYRB Classics, but even that’s a tiny slice of lost midcentury literature, tip of the iceberg. I think this dovetails with Boyle and Schuh’s angles — sometimes it’s good to do your homework. Here’s the tally:
Louis Auchincloss’s East Side Story (2004)
purchased at Blackstone Library sale, Branford, CT
This was my first time reading Auchincloss, a writer who considered himself a hobbyist yet published more than five dozen books about New York’s elite. A pleasant enough read, ultimately insubstantial. Picked up a volume of his collected short fiction at Old Books Hudson a few weeks ago, will report back.Colin Barrett’s Homesickness (2022)
purchased from the publisher
Considered in Three reviews.The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher (1984)
purchased at Bruised Apple Books, Peekskill, NY
Considered in Three reviews.Rachel Cusk’s Outline (2014)
purchased from the publisherRachel Cusk’s Transit (2016)
purchased at Books & Company, Hamden, CTJonathan Dee’s Palladio (2002)
purchased at Books & Company
A mid-career attempt at DeLillo-style satire, from a novelist I’ve otherwise enjoyed. Too much speculative hand-waving, more interested in character development than world-building — Dee shortly returned to domestic narratives.Sasha Frere-Jones’s Earlier (2023)
borrowed from Seward Park Branch, New York
Considered in Infinite playlist.Jo Hamya’s The Hypocrite (2024)
advance reader copy from the publisher
Discussed in Pen Pals, my favorite installment thus far — Hamya is appointment reading, delighted to publish an interview in this space.Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York (1986)
purchased at the Book Barn, Niantic, CT
Considered in Canal Street confidential.Honor Levy’s My First Book (2024)
purchased from the publisher
Considered in Canal Street confidential.Lauren Oyler’s No Judgment (2024)
purchased from the publisher
Considered in Public intellectual.Joseph Rathgeber’s Bad Days on the Batsto (2022)
purchased from the author
Discussed in Pen Pals.Natasha Stagg’s Artless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2014-2022 (2023)
purchased from the publisher
Pitched around some coverage pegged to this book’s publication, because I find most analysis of Stagg’s work misses the mark. Ten years ago she was an astute chronicler of digital and art-world scenes; she’s since become something of a contrarian, the way “culture writers” who speak on Metrograph panels tend to be. Something to be said about how her trajectory mirrors the downtown set’s rightward swing, or whatever. Stay tuned.Natasha Stagg’s Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019 (2019)
purchased from the publisher
For the moment I don’t even feel compelled to read Sinykin’s book, because I can’t imagine it beating Boyle’s essay.
In 2022 I got super into John P. Marquand, a best-selling Pulitzer winner who’s inexplicably fallen into obscurity; 1949’s Point of No Return is one of the three or four best novels I’ve ever read. I think I wound up on the Neglected Books Page because of their thorough accounting of Marquand’s lesser works.
“narrators speaking too frankly about their feelings” is such an accurate way to describe European novels
I’ve made several false starts with Under the Volcano, most recently a few months ago with an old paperback copy that’s been on my shelf for years, but at this point in my life the print’s just too damn small, so I’m keeping an eye out for a hard cover edition.