Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Back to Basics

I heard some Blondie/New Wave music yesterday. Classics like “Hanging on the Telephone” and “Atomic.” For a time, pop music had a remarkable ability to keep reinventing itself. Just as things were stagnating with pretentious album-oriented rock in the 70’s, punk and new wave hit the scene in reaction. Bands like the Ramones went back to basics. They simplified the art and made it exciting again.

This is what needs to happen with the literary scene. Forget over-pretentious overwritten sluggishly slogging tomes by the likes of Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace. This fails to excite the general public. Writing can be exciting again if it simplifies itself, stripping itself down so all that remains is the plot, the movement, the punch.

It’s what I’m attempting to do with my new ebooks. Check them out. (Soon up: The McSweeneys Gang.)

5 comments:

  1. Maybe you should strip yourself down to the point where you aren't talking about the same three writers over and over and over and over and over and over and over

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  2. In "The McSweeneys Gang" I cover more than a dozen. Now on sale. Have you read it?

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  3. Judging from the Amazon sample it appears to be basically the same thing you put on your blog some years ago, mocking various writers you don't like. How revolutionary! Yawn.

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  4. Ha! Actually I heard of you while I was reading about Magic Hours. But judging from your archives you've been at it a long time. Is this really what you think literature should be about? Mocking and taunting more successful writers?

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