Thread 24662068

Let's talk about people putting out work right now, set right now. Not pre-smart larp. New writers with balls to try to say something real in this globalized hellscape.

I'll start with Caleb Caudell and a passage from his latest "Hardly Working" auto-fiction.

>I shouldn’t even call them days. It suggests an unreal unity. A day lurches from moment to moment and never meets itself. Gone before it arrives, sliding past its seconds. They call them seconds because there’s no firsts; time is imaginary addition, a recounting. The original experience missing.

Terrible, faux sentiment that undoes itself. Hope for Caleb's sake that this is just the result of your stripping context.

>>24662555
Nice digits. I liked
>They call them seconds because there’s no firsts
I'd keep reading.

>>24662555
You could say that about anything imo. But sure. Any current writers you think I should read? I have already read everything from Caleb and would love more.

>>24662068 (OP)
I don't think I've ever seen any straight male authors born after 1985 be advertised (to me). I don't even think I could name a single one.

>>24662654
I don't think I've ever seen any straight male authors from any time period. I can't name a single one.

>>24662658
I think that Mishima guy was one

>>24662068 (OP)
Slick prohs but reads like a 1970 narrator's NY pastiche; is this its intent ?

>>24662068 (OP)
>autofiction
>ultramodern
mdr

>Top G or not Top G,
>That is the question.

All recent literature sounds like topical cringe forced into a classic framework.

>>24662764
mdr is more 2010's imo

>>24662832
And autofiction is even older

>>24662068 (OP)
I fucking hate the post-sincerity, mid-trustfund, pro-Israel, ketamine-induced NYC-speak more than words can ever possibly describe bros.

>>24662844
Have any alternative authors writing right now? And not Pynchon tier 70's or earlier settings that are a huge cop out.

>>24662863
Yes, my friend Barbosa. He lives in Singapore. Unfortunately no-one else sees his vision and understands his voice but me. But give him time.

There's a book written by an anon, whose thesis, one of them, rests on the idea that all of humanity's problems stem from our differences in creativity and that if you don't understand the book's message--by droning on about how convoluted or cryptic it reads then you also suffer from this problem. It's blaming the reader--by placing the protagonist in situations he can only get out of through absurd means--for not doing enough work to empathise with him. I've seen it shilled here but will not mention any names because I don't want to be accused of self promotion.

>>24662068 (OP)
>child clocks me at bodega checks your path
>still unrefuted
What do?

>>24662873
I am waiting...

>>24662844
plvtonivm trvth nvke

>>24662997
He only shares his writings with me and one other person. He doesn't write for the living. When he dies, he says, then other people should read. I share the same philosophy.

>>24663005
k

>>24663005
no one will remember you or your writings existed after you die

>>24663017
That's totally fine. As I said, we don't write for the living.

Does Scott McClanahan count?

>>24663045
Give us an example, anon.

>>24663048
I’ve only read The Collected Short Stories and Crapalachia, the latter of which is from 2013, but both were quite good

>You scan the code on the flyer and their webpage opens. The website’s slick like all slick business websites. When did it become the slicker the website the more pungent the bullshit? It’s just something you’re aware of, another sense, like how you know something is sharp by looking at it. This sense guides you like a trained mine-sweeper the safe path for your cursor clicks on a free-to-watch movies website. It can tell the difference between human and AI fingers. It knows when reviews are just made up. You feel sorry for the suckers who fall for this shit. Usually all five stars is a red flag because mistakes and imperfections are the fingerprints of human activity, although, this makes you sad, again, because shit=human and perfect=AI is the exact sort of epistemological dichotomy perpetuated by the Commonwealth and Them Inc. Predictably, Whitestone Estates has only five star reviews. From people such as David Smith, James Johnson, and John Miller. You lament how shit and lame the world is. You click through to MEET THE TEAM. A page of staff members with circular profile photos beside text you can tell was written by AI. You can imagine the prompt: Write me a bio for my job profile + make it personable, yet professional + be funny but respectful + smart but down to earth + oh mention I love dogs and films and music.

>You start to think whether or not that woman was real, the mouse-brown at the door with her shiny forehead. She’s not on the MEET THE TEAM page. You look through their pages and you don’t recognise any of these people yet you know them, these faces, fake faces - that man was not once a boy, those eyes contained nothing of humanity, lacking spirit’s hue, unbuffed by beautiful things – the empty eyes, perfectly imperfect, the arrangement of features and bangs, accurately asymmetrical – these algorithmic faces, a diverse corporate visage, are employed by 90% of all small-to-mid businesses using website generators installed with Growth Package AGI including Unlimited Virtual Employees (profile picture, biography, Voice, Chatbot) [You know this from your own brief sojourn into the dropshipping scene.]

>>24662844
Facts

>>24662068 (OP)
>auto-fiction
dropped it right there

>>24663052
is that why its so shit

>>24663052
>>24662068 (OP)
/Lit/ will always be more /his/ and vice versa

novels are a dying medium
the next great work of art will be expressed in a series of instagram reels

>>24662068 (OP)
I read the preview of one of his collections after someone was talking him up here last year and wasn't impressed. I may as well just repost what I said then:

Here's the stories I could get out of the Amazon preview. I already didn't like Celibacy, but here are the next two. They all feel like scenes extracted from noir films, by which I mean they feel cliché and incomplete, as if there's a lot of missing context. I feel like he's generally trying to sell some kind of metafictional premise in each.

In A Chain of Uneventful Events it's the doubled story-in-a-story thing, where I think ultimately he's trying to place the reader in the position of the woman character of each segment while maybe also trying to highlight something about alienation in writing from reality (or about alienation in uniqueness of experience in particular). The reducing of each segment was sort of interesting, but ultimately the third is just a completely stripped down version of the second, and feels repetitive and somewhat nonsensical. It also feels vainly self-deprecating for how he writes the author-insert in the first segment, especially when the audience is placed as the skeptical-but-encouraging woman: I'm wasting my time but my intentions are pure, and you don't believe in me yet you've bought my book. It's more or less a neutered way for him to discuss his own writing.

1/2

>>24664569
In Blinded By Color it's about surprising you with your own bias while constantly reminding you that you have one (along with everyone else) and what exactly it is. I think this was the most effective of the three stories, and it worked on me in that I was surprised, but it feels telegraphed and on-the-nose in a way that reads more like padding or excusing himself, which I'm sure he did somewhat deliberately but he didn't do a good job of anyway (or he had some other intention I'm not seeing). There's supposed to be surprise, and there is, but it still feels obvious, so there's no real payoff for me.

Celibacy is the only one of the three where I couldn't really pick up on an underlying idea or motive other than the typical loner fantasy that he's plucked from seventy years ago and is hoping gets close enough to incel territory without actually being it. Maybe he wants the reader to reexamine incels more broadly? Wants to sell that position as something more universal and less topical? Put it in a context where we're not reading the standard cues so we can appreciate it differently. But still, it's just a story about a loner that feels very shallow and goes nowhere.
[Re-reading this one now it's obvious he was trying to show that its the loner's lack of ambition and misguided sense of what makes success dragging him down; it's a pathetic picture, and not very novel or insightful.]

Speaking of all three, I don't think his writing is good enough style-wise to carry any of the ideas. If you're going to write for the purpose of feeding an idea to the reader, it should be presented with some amount of finesse, and none of these do that. His choosing to write about "average lives" and with fairly simple language is obviously deliberate, but at least in these three stories he never writes something satisfying, complete, or engrossing that way.

I'm a little curious about whether he paints a bigger picture from all of his stories, but I wouldn't want to pay for it.

2/2

>>24662068 (OP)
Can we discuss Lewis Woolston without the haters sperging out? He's doing original and interesting work and deserves some recognition.

>>24664784
Can you give a link and maybe an extract? I'd love to read more current authors.
>>24664569
>>24664580
I also am a little underwhelmed by his published books, honestly. His substack blogs somehow feel a lot better written. Have you read any of his substack work?

>>24665229
Try this, it's him reading one of short stories

https://youtu.be/GlNtSjRGMmU?si=q1-p6JaqMtYUkW_-

>>24665563
>Australian accent

>>24664784
He is one of the great Australian writers working today.

>>24662068 (OP)
Derivative of St. Augustine

>>24665566
What did you expect?

>>24665572
I don't know. I've read some of his stories but I somehow assumed he was from elsewhere. The horrors of the Australian accent never penetrate text, somehow, thank God. I'm sorry. I'll kill myself with heavy metals.

>>24662068 (OP)
The total state by auron macintyre

>>24665229
No sorry I'm allergic to Substack.