That would be Monty. He simply judges the cover.
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said without irony or self-awareness this constitutes a complete lack of understanding of him. Look at the subject matter and the people he depicts and tell me that he’s writing and aiming exclusively for an audience of exclusively college kids and PhDs?
now how exactly he can be simultaneously for the ‘driveling masses’ and for the M.A. litbros is a wild contradiction, but is also totally what he manages to do. And that is that the beauty in the austerity of his prose and the situation the characters find themselves in are relatable or identifiable for the masses and analytically relevant for M.A. students. If you can serious see such little merit in his style and writing, idek what to say lol
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Recently read Jonathan Fenby’s “Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost.” By all means more a popular history (I do not use this term in the derogatory, just as a descriptor), and probably my new gateway drug for people interested in learning more about China’s history during the republican period and for developing interest in Taiwanese history. The book, as the title implies, focuses mostly on his time in China; only a few pages are spared to give the general layout of the remainder of his career and the subsequent move towards democratization under Ching-kuo and those who followed him.
The strength of the book really lies, in my opinion, in the characterization of the warlord era and the general lack of competent administrative authorities throughout the country; the steps of modernization are always contrasted and countered by the militarism of the era. It really does convey the chaos of the era well, and how even the most well-intentioned and begun plans eventually sink to the lowest common denominator of inhumanity around them. It’s never said explicitly though. He does a really good job of demonstrating how the early KMT in Guangdong - while lacking prowess in administrative affairs - was at least capable of being militarily humane at the start by largely using well-trained and disciplined Whampoa troops, but how, as time goes on, these troops end up the ‘administrative’ apparatus of their new, ‘Republican’ warlord, Chiang. The party too is instrumentalized; purges take place that would not seem out of place under Stalin and the inevitable power struggles driven by the tyrannical desire to consolidate power in oneself. Dai Li rises through the ranks by serving as Whampoa thought police; allies of convenience - like Du Yuesheng and the Green Gang - end up effectively running Shanghai in exchange for policing it. Both of the aforementioned export the brutality of the regime to it’s constituents in a way no different from that of the warlords. Wang Jingwei, once the poster boy of the KMT left but purged by Chiang, ends up a collaborationist with the Japanese. Rich corporatists literally marry into the government, some even with progressive aims, but end up being made a tool of the military. As the book progresses, the descent of the once ambitious aims of the KMT parallel the very cliques and warlords the KMT fought to re-establish China as a coherent entity. Sun Yat-Sen’s ‘successor’ forgets democracy, the people’s welfare is sacrificed to military necessities, and nationalism is rabid only when the Communists aren’t at their back. And as the KMT begins more and more to resemble what proceeded them and expel progressive elements, the consolidated remains of the left increasingly share aspects of their authoritarian Nationalist counterparts, with power struggles, thought policing, mass brutality, and generally ineffective administrative campaigns.
A bleak view at times, but Fenby’s a great writer and makes a grand narrative of it which provides more than enough drive to make for a compelling read.
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I am not sure if you, “cdn1234” understand how the world of “professional creative writing” works at the university level.
At any given time, there are always a handful of contemporary and currently popular “non-commercial” authors whom students encounter, usually in the class curricula and by word of mouth from their instructors.
These popular writers usually teach in universities and enjoy fellowships, grants and residencies at the same time they are being held up as examples during their productive lifetime.
At the peak of his popularity among the creative writing university crowd, Carver was taken as a prime example to emulate for literally thousands of young, aspiring writers.
That is all I am saying.
It is a fact of history. The student writers imitated his style and did so mostly in a purely formal way by paring down their vocabulary to something as minimal as the 350 to 500 different words (and no more) that Sydney Sheldon admitted into his inimitable, childlike lexicon.
In other words, the aspiring writers influenced by Carver were dumbed down because they merely wrote after the manner of Carver in a banal boring copycat way. Carver was like a tremendous windstorm stripping the leaves and flowers off the trees.
Yawn, sleep, and say goodbye to art, thought, metaphor, music, poetry, insight, color, feeling, depth, etc…
The English language has over 1,000,000 words. Most people get by with a vocabulary of less than 2,000. Most literary authors also seldom rise higher than 3 or 4,000… Nowadays, most authors self-censor their lexicon to keep it simple for the stupid and the lazy…
Today’s literary world is mostly a sterile, drab commercial desert of stultifying, boring dross …
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William Boyd is another good writer. “Any Human Heart” is superb.
Are we not publishing our word count? lol
30758
It said I was proficient. What’s that mean?
Great book:
One of these rare volunteers for the Nationalists was Peter Kemp, a young British law student. Kemp, despite having little training or command of the Spanish language, was moved by the Nationalist struggle against international Communism. Using forged documents, he sneaked into Spain and joined a traditionalist militia, the Requetés, with which he saw intense fighting. Later, he volunteered to join the legendary and ruthless Spanish Foreign Legion, where he distinguished himself with heroism. Because of this bravery, he was one of the few foreign volunteers granted a private audience with Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
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Yeah, and he represented the people he wrote about. A lot of it was autobiographical. I like him as that’s the language I would use to best describe my rural, poor, difficult upbringing. The people with the words he didn’t write used them to fill in the space he left with ambiguity. In both cases, the readers had a solid bridge to the work.
Anywho, I just finished the first unedited story, Why Don’t You Dance?" Carver wasn’t wrong to want the manuscript back. The changes his editor made steered the story and knocked the characters off the arcs Carver had given them. His is hands down better.
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Giving your work to an editor is basically synonymous with relinquishing your artistic integrity. I am speaking from my point of view as a voluntary recluse from the public world of art and it’s requisite social ladders. Commercial success or public visibility does very little to improve artistic creativity. In fact, it forces too many “artists” into repetitive formulas and same-old gimmicks…
Carver is not my cup of tea. Who cares.
As for what I am reading these last few scattered days …Trying to read the key points of a Panasonic instruction manual for a digital camera I bought by mail order from a private dealer in California that hasn’t arrived yet …
And one of the 2,ooo plus books I stole via z-library last year because there is no other way to get books where I live, and I’m too much of a loser to buy them off Amazon, etc…
Privacy and pleasure comes with money, as do books, I guess. They have babes behind charcoal glass and on the backs of motos. World war 3 can begin, I don’t care…
Anyway, trying to start reading “A Sad Affair” by Wolfgang Koeppen, too…But my new job at the newspaper is gobbling up too much time…
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Carver’s biography spoke about that at length. He wanted fame, and his editor got it for him. In return, his editor wanted to be the brains behind the talent. Who’s wrong? Carver is still around and I will surely buy his next set of unedited works.
Yay, and bummer. Where you at?
No surprise – about Carver wanting fame. It’s psychic fallout from the disco daze of imagining one is destiny’s child or somethin’… It goes with the territory.
When I was a kid back in Canada my writer friends used to crack jokes about the system… “Publish or perish” was the cynical but true motto of the worldly-wise and clever calculators who knew how to game the scene, or actually, who had already shrugged, given up and realized something was wrong and maybe they weren’t quite the right nepo-baby in the right arms of the right prof, etc.
Though some of my schooly girlfriends tried. But Jacquie lost her rare and beautiful poetry manuscripts by accident …I had a copy somewhere, but it got lost, too… I had a habit of keeping everything I wrote in boxes in the basement of my parent’s house. Eventually I scanned it all into pdfs, including rough drafts for uni essays and all my few early plays, stories and poems…
Anyway, as you may recall from earlier posts, I couldn’t stand the cold when I went to visit my family in Canada about 2013 after leaving Taiwan.
So I’m in Cambodia. 36 degrees for the next 6 weeks until rainy season kicks in…
Carver would get drunk and write about how god-damned hot it was.
Brutal.
I am really enjoying this. Smooth writing replete with five and ten dollar words. Artists turned writers are the best!
And I saw this in the bookstore. Nope.
That’s interesting
