One of my favourite bits from weird twitter was when people would insist their favourite novel was Fight Club by Brett Easton Ellis and then refuse to be corrected
I think that the pixel-block orca sculpture pictured in this post is badass. It's the juxtaposition with the tiled deck and the natural beauty of the aquatic parkland scene in the background that gets it all working. The balance of all of those elements in the composition. Granted, it may be that it's the photo that I like the most, more than the sculpture itself. But that may be an element of its genius, as a commentary on the age of ubiquitous digital images, and digital imagery. The pixel orca wants to be immortalized, for its low-res performance of showing out. Showing out like Shamu in some 1980s video arcade game. Super Mario goes to Marineland. In Legoland.
I'm with you on this one (though the artist's statement is demented: the colours represent the diversity of workers at the harbour?! Which of the them are fucking GREY!).
In my case, it's closer to the mark to blame the pernicious influence of California Funk Art for my dubious & suspect taste in sculpture. Wayne Thiebaud.
Also, Jeff Koons. Bizarro World Jeff Koons. Instead of a 40 ft. tall version of "Puppy", a ridiculous building block sculpture of a killer whale. From Bizarro World, the land of blue kryptonite, where all curves and arcs are modified into angled corners. Like some world where slopes based off of the square root of minus one just can't quite manage to resolve into smoothed curves.
how many of us are anywhere close to the stark black or white of the orca color scheme, for that matter?
maybe the allusion to "workers" referred to cetacean species. Like, dolphins are gray, narwhals are white, some other kinda whales are black, orcas are both.
Hilarious, did not know that. I just read it and it's honestly more embarrassing than that infamous The Oatmeal post. He literally says it's okay for Elon Musk to mistreat his employees "because he's smart" [citation needed].
I liked JPod when I read it 15 years ago. I thought Generation A was fun. But please write more of these teardowns of Can Lit icons. They are so fun to read.
I hate to be too fair, because I'm an asshole, but if forced to give my fully honest appraisal of JPod I would concede that it does have its charms. The characters are inviting and fun and the entire premise of effectively making the whole thing a "sitcom" was intriguing enough to keep me through to the end (and it's not a short book iirc). It's painfully stupid and indulgent a lot of the time, and I think pales in comparison to the insight of Gen X and Microserfs, but it is at least a fun read. His mid period stuff is all generally like that I think -- fun reads, but dumb and indulgent. As it's progressed, the dumb and indulgent has now very much eclipsed the "fun."
In that mid-80s flurry of Gen-X novels about Gen-Xers, I always thought “In Country,” written by Boomer Bobbie Ann Mason, was better and more lasting, for all of its focus on the Vietnam War’s 1980s echoes.
I enjoyed this piece for its biting tone and brutal commentary. Funny. But you stick with an entirely white crew. What about Packer and Whitehead and Jones, etc? Colson’s work seems to have aged well It still plays
Happy to see another Lethem hater. But at least Ames has Bored To Death (figures that his greatest accomplishment is a TV show, carried mostly by Ted Danson).
Feeling very vindicated by this after seeing a Coupland exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery when I was thirteen and getting so mad at how stupid it was. (It was rooms and rooms of hundreds of canvases printed with his Dumb Fucking Aphorisms About Technology). Also I have to see that orca every single day when I go to work and it pisses me off.
Chuck Palahniuk wrote a couple of short books 17 years ago and that’s the basis for your totally unfounded, if not defamatory allegation that he’s scamming publishers by deliberately inflating word counts to land book deals? And your evidence is…? Seems more like you decided on a narrative and needed to shoehorn Palahniuk into it. Since 2020 alone, he’s written three novels and a book about writing, in addition to his work on Substack.
Firstly, did you actually click the link? Palahniuk wrote a book where he bizarrely increased the font size and the margins until the book just so happened to meet the general novel cutoff length. Secondly, like most of these comments, it's a comedic exaggeration of one aspect of Palahniuk's life and career, retard. But yes, I'm sure he's hustling, he even put out a couple colouring books back when that was a big fad, whatever pays the bills.
“Palahniuk scams his publishers by inflating his word counts” isn’t a comedic exaggeration. It’s a specific, baseless allegation, and you’re now the published source of it. Cool.
Yes, and Brett Easton Ellis' brain has ACTUALLY moved to Mars, Tama Janowitz was ACTUALLY my Uber driver, and the worst things going for DFW and Wurtzel these days is that their complexion has gotten worse. "Noscitur a sociis," the sentence's intention may be known by its associates, sorry it gave you a sperg meltdown I guess.
I have something planned on Wallace for next year to coincide with the anniversary of Infinite Jest, but I just wanted to take one out on Coupland for the time being. As for Wallace, a spoiler ahead of time: I think he's "fine." I think Infinite Jest is "alright," I think the fans have always been too overly-enthusiastic but I think the backlash I also don't entirely agree with. But certainly one of the worst things about IJ is its Gen X hysteria -- all that bombastic satire stuff in the book is so tiresome and juvenile, including the "subsidized time" gimmick. That and it's AA propaganda, an organization that probably deserved a more critical eye.
His fiction doesn't really do it for me but a number of his essays are I think quite good -- "E Unibus Pluram" was a big influence on me as a young person, I've cited it once before here and I have a draft deep in my dozens of drafts where I cite it a second time. I think he had a pretty good idea of where literature was and where it was going, even if I think his writing itself was sub-par. Of course it's worth mentioning that he was also a creep, something I'm surprised it took people so long to clue into -- that Lipsky book on Wallace all the fans like so much really makes Wallace look like such a pathetic and insecure person, and one of the very first things he does in the book is talk to Lipsky about his sexual proclivities.
Ha. I once met Wallace in the Harper’s Magazine office on 666 broadway. He loaded his lip with Skoal and shed some flakes on my desk. Poor man. God bless you for making it thru IJ, which was beyond me.
I admittedly haven't read any McBride, but didn't think he was so pigeonholed as being such a Gen X writer especially. I have more to say on Wallace at a later time (I got into it in more detail in response to another comment on this article), but for now I thought just hitting him with that line was amusing.
One of my favourite bits from weird twitter was when people would insist their favourite novel was Fight Club by Brett Easton Ellis and then refuse to be corrected
I think that the pixel-block orca sculpture pictured in this post is badass. It's the juxtaposition with the tiled deck and the natural beauty of the aquatic parkland scene in the background that gets it all working. The balance of all of those elements in the composition. Granted, it may be that it's the photo that I like the most, more than the sculpture itself. But that may be an element of its genius, as a commentary on the age of ubiquitous digital images, and digital imagery. The pixel orca wants to be immortalized, for its low-res performance of showing out. Showing out like Shamu in some 1980s video arcade game. Super Mario goes to Marineland. In Legoland.
I'm with you on this one (though the artist's statement is demented: the colours represent the diversity of workers at the harbour?! Which of the them are fucking GREY!).
I am with neither of you but I'm glad you have your voxel Redditcore sculpture
<3
In my case, it's closer to the mark to blame the pernicious influence of California Funk Art for my dubious & suspect taste in sculpture. Wayne Thiebaud.
Also, Jeff Koons. Bizarro World Jeff Koons. Instead of a 40 ft. tall version of "Puppy", a ridiculous building block sculpture of a killer whale. From Bizarro World, the land of blue kryptonite, where all curves and arcs are modified into angled corners. Like some world where slopes based off of the square root of minus one just can't quite manage to resolve into smoothed curves.
how many of us are anywhere close to the stark black or white of the orca color scheme, for that matter?
maybe the allusion to "workers" referred to cetacean species. Like, dolphins are gray, narwhals are white, some other kinda whales are black, orcas are both.
The glibbest generation
surely you saw his article on how cool elon musk is (2021, way too late for even the dumbest libs to think elon musk is cool)
Hilarious, did not know that. I just read it and it's honestly more embarrassing than that infamous The Oatmeal post. He literally says it's okay for Elon Musk to mistreat his employees "because he's smart" [citation needed].
I liked JPod when I read it 15 years ago. I thought Generation A was fun. But please write more of these teardowns of Can Lit icons. They are so fun to read.
I hate to be too fair, because I'm an asshole, but if forced to give my fully honest appraisal of JPod I would concede that it does have its charms. The characters are inviting and fun and the entire premise of effectively making the whole thing a "sitcom" was intriguing enough to keep me through to the end (and it's not a short book iirc). It's painfully stupid and indulgent a lot of the time, and I think pales in comparison to the insight of Gen X and Microserfs, but it is at least a fun read. His mid period stuff is all generally like that I think -- fun reads, but dumb and indulgent. As it's progressed, the dumb and indulgent has now very much eclipsed the "fun."
In that mid-80s flurry of Gen-X novels about Gen-Xers, I always thought “In Country,” written by Boomer Bobbie Ann Mason, was better and more lasting, for all of its focus on the Vietnam War’s 1980s echoes.
Will def check it out
harsh but fair.
Man.... all my favorite writers committed suicide...
I enjoyed this piece for its biting tone and brutal commentary. Funny. But you stick with an entirely white crew. What about Packer and Whitehead and Jones, etc? Colson’s work seems to have aged well It still plays
Happy to see another Lethem hater. But at least Ames has Bored To Death (figures that his greatest accomplishment is a TV show, carried mostly by Ted Danson).
Feeling very vindicated by this after seeing a Coupland exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery when I was thirteen and getting so mad at how stupid it was. (It was rooms and rooms of hundreds of canvases printed with his Dumb Fucking Aphorisms About Technology). Also I have to see that orca every single day when I go to work and it pisses me off.
Brilliant.
Chuck Palahniuk wrote a couple of short books 17 years ago and that’s the basis for your totally unfounded, if not defamatory allegation that he’s scamming publishers by deliberately inflating word counts to land book deals? And your evidence is…? Seems more like you decided on a narrative and needed to shoehorn Palahniuk into it. Since 2020 alone, he’s written three novels and a book about writing, in addition to his work on Substack.
Firstly, did you actually click the link? Palahniuk wrote a book where he bizarrely increased the font size and the margins until the book just so happened to meet the general novel cutoff length. Secondly, like most of these comments, it's a comedic exaggeration of one aspect of Palahniuk's life and career, retard. But yes, I'm sure he's hustling, he even put out a couple colouring books back when that was a big fad, whatever pays the bills.
“Palahniuk scams his publishers by inflating his word counts” isn’t a comedic exaggeration. It’s a specific, baseless allegation, and you’re now the published source of it. Cool.
Yes, and Brett Easton Ellis' brain has ACTUALLY moved to Mars, Tama Janowitz was ACTUALLY my Uber driver, and the worst things going for DFW and Wurtzel these days is that their complexion has gotten worse. "Noscitur a sociis," the sentence's intention may be known by its associates, sorry it gave you a sperg meltdown I guess.
You bring up and dismiss David Foster Wallace in your screed and then focus on Copeland- why don’t you try it with Wallace?
I have something planned on Wallace for next year to coincide with the anniversary of Infinite Jest, but I just wanted to take one out on Coupland for the time being. As for Wallace, a spoiler ahead of time: I think he's "fine." I think Infinite Jest is "alright," I think the fans have always been too overly-enthusiastic but I think the backlash I also don't entirely agree with. But certainly one of the worst things about IJ is its Gen X hysteria -- all that bombastic satire stuff in the book is so tiresome and juvenile, including the "subsidized time" gimmick. That and it's AA propaganda, an organization that probably deserved a more critical eye.
His fiction doesn't really do it for me but a number of his essays are I think quite good -- "E Unibus Pluram" was a big influence on me as a young person, I've cited it once before here and I have a draft deep in my dozens of drafts where I cite it a second time. I think he had a pretty good idea of where literature was and where it was going, even if I think his writing itself was sub-par. Of course it's worth mentioning that he was also a creep, something I'm surprised it took people so long to clue into -- that Lipsky book on Wallace all the fans like so much really makes Wallace look like such a pathetic and insecure person, and one of the very first things he does in the book is talk to Lipsky about his sexual proclivities.
Ha. I once met Wallace in the Harper’s Magazine office on 666 broadway. He loaded his lip with Skoal and shed some flakes on my desk. Poor man. God bless you for making it thru IJ, which was beyond me.
Hope you saved some of those flakes, they're probably very valuable to the right buyer
David Wallace is dead is the only critique you come up with?
James McBride is holding up pretty well.
I admittedly haven't read any McBride, but didn't think he was so pigeonholed as being such a Gen X writer especially. I have more to say on Wallace at a later time (I got into it in more detail in response to another comment on this article), but for now I thought just hitting him with that line was amusing.
Which one? If memory serves he's written a thousand so far this century
Then why bother mentioning it, 'tard?