readers advisory for all discussion

so oriana reminded me in her hatred of these gentleman that I really really love minimalist styling. Does anyone know of other authors along the same lines?

jasmine - tell me more about what you think is good about them, because i have not read the german and i have only read the tao lin poem about MEEEE, so do your part in this RA relationship, and gimmie something to go on.

oh I meant to do that but I got busy.

they are both very minimalistic (and I'm talking shoplifting from american apparel tao lin not so much Bed). They are both very faced paced and slow paced at he same time. they are doing a lot in the books but nothing they are doing really is anything. So the books cover a large span of time, but they do it without sort of the plot mechanisms of a normal book.

there is an absence of emotional content (especially in german) but I think it works to part of the character development. it isn't that the book is written shallowly it's that the book is written about characters that live in today's shallow world. And in most cases there is a sort of active sort of black hole in the book of what are you doing, what are you thinking.

Basically the books are very dissociated.

as far as the feeling of the books they are on the apathetic side of depressed, and usually very hopeless.

better?

yes! lemme make some grilled cheese, and think on this.

i wish I had grilled cheese.

Wow. I have never heard of either...but Jasmine's description kind of reminds me of Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland.

is that anything like the song eleanor rigby?

where is greg he's read tao lin and coupland hasn't he?

Yes. It is. She sits alone and is lonely with her thoughts. And then one night...something happens that really isn't all that something at all. It is quite "well then" instead. You think something will happen and prepare for it, but then.....zzzzzzzzzz.

But good writing.

james greer's new one about a slacker robber in LA is in that style The Failure

the failure was a victim of bad cover design I'm glad you've pointed out to me it isn't chick lit.

greg was going to recommend this to you, but then he called out with emergency oral surgery:

Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs

is he okay?

oh neat.

Douglas Coupland is similar-ish to Tao Lin, but in a slightly dated Generation X way, but I'd try Generation X if I were you. I haven't read the one Jen is talking about.

I was thinking that you might want to try the "n+1" authors, like All the Sad Young Literary Men and Indecision.

Going old school into the minimalist absurd malaise you can try Samuel Beckett. You could probably almost picture Tao Lin as one of the characters in Waiting for Godot or as the man wallowing in pig-shit in Molloy.

cool thanks greg. I've read half of all the sad young literary men then lost it in one of my many moves so I'll keep an eye out for it, and I'll look into the beckett that isn't the one I own that confused me out of reading it.

Shane Jones?

I love him.

I wouldn't read How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive for this style. I think we were talking about how this might fit at work last Saturday, but it's something very different from the land of Tao Lin.

oh I bought that cause I thought it would be like how to fail but it's more like the history of history but not serious. It's not like this at all.

What about Jean-Philippe Toussaint? The only one I've read is "Camera," and it was good, not great but still made me want to read more of his stuff. Also, Whatever by Michel Houellebecq seems like a good fit.

karen wrote: "greg was going to recommend this to you, but then he called out with emergency oral surgery:

Peace, Love & Petrol Bombs"

I want to say I totally forgot about this recommendation but I bought this book yesterday cause I thought it looked like my style.

I shall actually read books in this thread and report back unlike my usual slacking.

thank you. ♥ my class starts soon, so i am going to be needing some feedback.

I'm doing it I'm doing it. I started generation X today.

I read something that was recommended in one of the other threads, or tried but I didn't like it so I stopped reading it.

so I finished generation x and I like it but it wasn't what I was looking for here. It has a weird back to nature catcher in the rye thing going on, but much less annoying than catcher in the rye. I kind of see it as the anti-ellis I mean it's sort of a search for morality or goodness or something I feel like even with the vandalism or a search for place.

I don't see shoplifting from american apparel and eat when you feel sad like that. I think that these contain a conspicuous ambivalence and nihilism. I think with the coupland we are looking at a progression towards or a looking for meaning. But when you read german you are looking at an assumption that there is no meaning there is simply life. It's almost sisyphisian is a camus kind of way, for them it feels like the character is just repeatedly pushing the rock up the mountain everyday and waking up to find it at the bottom again. In coupland it feels more like the "drop out and tune in" culture where they think by the way they act they have achieved something particular and fascinating.

so I'm looking for something with a similar amount of action, but less directionality and belief in progression. Also probably something more urban, but I have no actual proof that would have any effect, I just am not on board with the back to nature.

the other thing about coupland is he inhabits a nostalgia that there is something worthwhile that exists if you could just get it that I don't think you get in german at all.


I think these are examples of the kind of writing I'm looking for here

Amelia gray: http://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/38...

Zachary German:
"Robert looks at his cat. He puts on shoes. He puts on a light sweater. He looks at his apartment. He walks out of his apartment. He walks down the stairs. He walks outside. He walks to a thrift store. He looks at a children’s book about time. He looks at a vintage LaCoste tennis shirt. He touches the shirt. Robert walks outside. He walks to his building. He walks upstairs. He walks into his apartment. Robert walks into his bedroom. He looks out the window. Robert closes the curtains. He lies on his bed. "

Tao Lin:
""what is wrong with us," said Sam. "Should I email Shelia. Or wait until she emails me. I have no car, phone, bike. I'm going to add more people on MySpace." "we are so weird," said Luis. "we met online a year ago. and we are up a year later being weird as shit." "One year" said Sam. "this is weird." "I feel like my chest is going to explode," said Luis."

Also I'm now going to read another of gregs recommendations because somehow he got priority over everyone else in the thread. sorry people

I see what you mean with Coupland, especially with the quotes from German and Tao Lin as contrast. Good luck.

okay so I finished peace love and petrol bombs, it was definitely the idea I was looking for if not the writing style. Although it's about organizing it's really about burn out and not believing in the future and simply existing. It's really present in the modern nihilism and depression. It was a great rec.

I hated this book, but I think it might have the sort of narrator / feeling you are looking for, An Underachiever's Diary: A Novel. Have I recommended you this before? Part of me is now thinking I might have lent you the book at some point, if not I'll see if I still have it and you can have it.

hmmm... I think at some point I was going to buy it and you gave it to me, but I have to look through my shit to be sure.

you...ate it??

What about Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity!? I find his writing quite apathetic and nihilistic without being depressing. Tao Lin reminds me of Haruki Murakami in terms of quiet setting and character psychology as well.

so you read two of the recs?? you are the most awesome at following through with reading suggestions, by the way.

yeah I did and I bought waiting for godot to reread, but I've been busy with teen fiction.

okay, no worries - you have contributed so much and i thank you!

Jasmine wrote: "okay so I finished peace love and petrol bombs, it was definitely the idea I was looking for if not the writing style. Although it's about organizing it's really about burn out and not believing in..."
i'm reading this too right now, i would recommend to all for a really good modern story

I agree it's good, but i'm against blanket recommendations. I don't think Karen would like it, I think it's too much in the Ellis and hard love vein for her taste

Ann Beattie's novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, is a very good book that is written in a minimalist style.

cool! I actually just bought a joyce carol oates book that looked like a good crime novel called Zombie.

Haven't read Zombie, but it looks like she based the protagonist on Jeffrey Dahmer.

cool. I have always avoided her like the plague, but it just seemed like such a good concept.

I figured it out from the description of the book on Amazon. Then I checked Dahmer's wikipedia page and felt a little foolish that the book was mentioned there (and how it was pretty much the first thing mentioned on the wikipedia page that's devoted to the novel) considering I thought I was pretty clever to figure it out once I saw this sentence in the description on Amazon: "Convincingly presented as Quentin's diary of his pursuit of the perfect "zombie" (a handsome young man to be rendered compliant and devoted through Quentin's lobotomizing him with an ice pick)"

She's really good, but she totally annoyed me years ago back when I was really into reading literary journals and she had a story in nearly every single issue of a literary journal that I bought. I was like, "Hey, editors and Joyce Carol Oates! Give another writer a turn!"

oh, god, i hated zombie. which means you will probably like it, jasmine! we are the most different!

ha. I totally thought this was a different thread when I started talking about crime novels. probably karen it doesn't sound like a book you would like.

Jasmine wrote: "so oriana reminded me in her hatred of these gentleman that I really really love minimalist styling. Does anyone know of other authors along the same lines?"
jasmine, i forgot all about lyndia davis and trinie dalton. they might be good books for you and minimalism lit


Varieties of Disturbance, davis also has novels.
Dalton i think only has 2 books (i think), this one is great, but disturbed and disturbing, and this new book of short stories Baby Geisha

gary lutz too is a minimalist, so i've heard, but i haven;t read any of his books, yet, Divorcer

I think my idea of minimalist writing is a lot different than other people's ideas of it. When I think of minimalism, I think of clarity. An author can use as few words as possible to express an idea, but they fail as a minimalist if the reader has no idea what they're talking about.

I found Gary Lutz's writing challenging. For example, I found it more challenging than all the books that I've read by Faulkner (including Benjy's section in The Sound and the Fury which I guess you classify as minimalist writing if you stretch the definition). Gertrude Stein is also referred to as a minimalist by some people, which I would also disagree about considering the little that I've read by her made no sense whatsoever.

Lydia Davis' books are pretty alright. I checked Varieties of Disturbance out from the library and it had this awesome gimmick cover that had a fly on it. And it looked like a real fly. So anyone who saw the cover of the book, including myself, slapped the cover in a futile attempt to kill the fly (and I made various attempts to do this).