BUGGY WHIPS— AN UPDATE

(For free downloads of the Hot Plate! show, please email karlstraub@hotmail.com. He'll respond pret-ty quickly, unless he's in the shower or something. Even that loophole will close soon, as he's looking into a new app that allows extreme entrepreneurs to retain full phone functionality even in the shower.) 

There’s no joy in it, but I dutifully maintain a list of authors whose work I avoid daily. 

The newest addition to the cast is Jonathan Franzen, of whom I’ve heard nothing but positive things. No matter. He’s out. 

  It’s not clear to me exactly what he did to land in this bin of infamy. I sometimes try to figure out why I dislike so many living stylists of English prose, but the attempt never leads anywhere. 

  It’s not because I don’t think there is any good writing around these days. In my search for modern authors who can be elbowed into my snooty routine, I’ve discovered many prime specimens. Usually they’re of advanced age by the time I hear about them, but as long as a guy can still hold a pen without dropping it, I don’t care how close to the grave he may be. He still counts as modern. 

  I don’t make any effort to flush out any current American or British writers, as I generally find that one of my few friends who publicly admit to reading for pleasure will bug me about their discoveries sooner or later. This is how I found out about George Saunders, as well as other luminaries like David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Lucia Berlin (died minutes before I’d heard of her), Denis Johnson, Harry Crews, Thom Jones, Joan Didion, and probably a few others. 

  Once in a while, I flip through the NYT Book Review, with a bored air worthy of some behatted and begloved Oscar Wilde character. I’ve given up on the goal of finding current American writers this way; at this point my main objective is to find reasons to hate the authors they interview there. Usually this is because they say they didn’t like some book that I did like, but I can also sometimes work up a loathing for them because of some observation of theirs about writing or reading that strikes me as pretentious, or dubious in some way. (“Every five years I treat myself anew to the wonderful works of Josephine Blow, about whom it’s often observed yadda yadda.”) When I’m very lucky, I find out that some author harbors ludicrous superstitious beliefs. Usually this is Sally Quinn, who recently wrote a book that was fifty percent about who she had sex with, and fifty percent about people she had put curses on. Occasionally her two interests became intertwined, and she cast malefic spells on people she had had sex with. She’s published books in various sizes and shapes over the years, if you’re interested.

  Once in a blue moon, I’ll read about some writer I hadn’t heard of, and the prose excerpts will get my attention. (I’m not interested in content, for the most part. Certain “genres” are always waving to me from across the room, like crime and horror, but even with that stuff I tend to dismiss the vast majority of available work due to glibness or inanity. It’s style that I care about.)

  Sometimes the author reviewed will lead to a cold trail, but other times a writer I stumble upon will point me to others. This is what happened with Roberto Bolaño (died a few days after I’d first heard his name). I read one of his fiction books, and then I read a book of his essays, many of which mentioned other authors, and I started investigating these others, and eventually I realized that Latin America had produced a slew of marvelous writers. Many of them are currently deceased, and the ones who are not are limping along, one feeble step ahead of the Reaper. I suppose this is sad for them, and for any friends they’ve managed to acquire during a bookish life, but what of it? All I know is that it will take me years to plow through everything by Cesar Aira and Javier Marias. Marias runs long, and Aira sits in a sidewalk cafe and writes a slim novel every few weeks. And they’re just the most modern examples— the tireless recommendations of Bolaño, as well as those of the master Borges, will keep me busy forever. Just reading the work of writers that Borges drank with can fill up your days, and that’s before you even start wondering why he was so fired up about Robert Louis Stevenson, G.K. Chesterton, and others who sound dull but are not. 

  There are a few publishing houses that are reliable excavators of good prose. I particularly like the NYRB imprint, whose honchos haven’t steered me wrong yet. (I’ll admit that they haven’t entirely convinced me I need to read Renata Adler, though I’m trying to keep an open mind there. I’ve read a shockingly scanty group of woman authors, so I can’t really afford to blow off any that have caused a stir. And a few that I have read are among my top drawer favorites. Feel free to judge me a misogynist, if that’s a parlor game you enjoy, but in the meantime check out Silvina Ocampo and Clarice Lispector.) 

  When I’m in the mood for something that the New York Review of Books hasn’t noticed, I like to turn to the Neversink Press. They traffic in lesser-known works by lesser-known authors from lesser-known countries, generally long dead authors rather than the freshly dead ones. 

  I think my obsession with Georges Simenon (from Belgium!) led me to Neversink, but now that they’re on my radar, I try to keep up with their attempts to resurrect extremely dated fiction. Some of their books are by writers I’ve encountered elsewhere, but many are by long-forgotten authors who answer the question, what would a “beach read” be like, if it was written in a country that didn’t have beaches? If the culture is geographically distant enough from mine, I don’t even realize how dated the books are. For example, I don’t really know if they still have “peasants” in Russia, and frankly I don’t want to know. What business is it of mine? I assume that at some point there were a bunch of them, sleeping it off on the tops of stoves, and exchanging gossip with rheumy midwives about the social climbing of titular councilors in St. Petersburg. (Chekhov, Gogol, and the sainted Babel were crouching nearby, recording the dialogue.) 

  Also— I’ll read anything with a governess in it. 

  I know a lot of you are biting your lips at this point, itching to ask why I don’t love Jonathan Franzen. 

  I can’t promise you’ll agree with my logic, but I CAN guarantee that the answer will be either boring or annoying. 

  Franzen’s prose, which I’ve spent roughly ten minutes with, is chock full of authorial intrusion. This concept is, for many, an irredeemably damning trait. Since I recently became aware of it, by reading interviews with Elmore Leonard, I’ve tried to achieve critical balance by applying the same standard completely differently to different writers. The idea, as explained in plain speech by Leonard, and with more cracker barrel folksiness by Steinbeck, is that you shouldn’t notice the author. An author should get his big feet the hell out of the way and let the characters dance, drink, shoot guns off, or whatever it is they feel like doing.  

  Maybe. With authors I like, this phenomenon never bothers me. Poe blocks my view of his characters to the point where all I can see is the tops of their heads, and Borges talks over them so much I suspect that his wiser characters don’t even bother to show up for work half the time. 

  On the other hand, we have the widely praised Franzen, who starts showing me the bones and entrails of his process in the first paragraph, and by the third page in I’m wondering why I’m not reading Thomas Mann instead. I tried to read a Franzen essay today, which was apparently the rare essay that’s actually about essays, and his writing reminded me of my rule about authors. I like an author who makes me want to keep reading even when I totally disagree with him. With Franzen, I didn’t doubt anything he was saying, I just didn’t want to keep hearing him say it. 

  I’m aware that I may have been entirely unfair to the man. I certainly don’t say he can’t write— that’s not the issue at all. It’s sort of the Oscar Peterson Dilemma— it’s impossible not to notice that he knows his way around a piano. I just prefer Sonny Clark. 

  I don’t expect Jonathan Franzen to care overmuch about my take on his work. But if enough Franzen fans (known in the trade as “superfrans”) browbeat and dragoon me into it, I’d be willing to give The Corrections another try. And if he ever gets desperate enough to make some adjustments in order to lure me in, I’ll say this. I’ll read anything by Jonathan Franzen that he can manage to shoehorn a governess into.