More than is absolutely necessary, I don’t grieve Norman Mailer’s passing. Of all the acclaimed American writers of the second half of the last century, his popularity was the most inexplicable to me. I found Mailer’s prose dull, and perhaps for that reason, his nasty, angry, posturing sexism seemed all the more obvious and shopworn to me. I tried three times to read The Naked and the Dead, and never finished it. I know I’m not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but in Mailer’s case, yikes, it’s hard.
Mailer is in a very small group of writers whom I find so impossible that I get irked the moment I even hear their names. The two others who come to mind are, for different reasons, Ayn Rand and Kahlil Gibran. I’ve actually read the major works of Rand (she’s the only writer I’ve ever read who can both bore and enrage simultaneously), and I’ve struggled with the Prophet. I’ve done a few weddings with my mail-order minister’s license, and at one, I even had to read a long section from Gibran. I did so cheerfully and without complaint, but to hear those pretentious, gummy syllables fall from my lips was hard. (And I know a thing or two about being pretentious and gummy.) Anyhow, the best thing I’ve read all year is Alan Jacob’s delicious take on Gibran in First Things. It’s not entirely Christian in spirit, but it’s very fine, and if you’re familiar with the Prophet’s style, you’ll be howling. An excerpt:
O Book, O Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran,
Published by Everyman’s Library on a dark day,
I lift you from the Earth to which I recently flung you
When my wrath grew too mighty for me,
I lift you from the Earth,
Noticing once more your annoying heft,
And thanking God—though such thanks are sinful—
That Kahlil Gibran died in New York in 1931
At the age of forty-eight,
So that he could write no more words,
So that this Book would not be yet larger than it is.
So, folks, which writer much esteemed and beloved by your friends do you really, really dislike?
In answer to your last question,
that would have to be Hugo Schwyzer.
Signed,
Norman Mailer’s Ghost
Hah! As if the likes of Mailer would ever bother with deeply insignificant me! (And remember, the writer has to be esteemed and beloved by your friends!)
In the afterlife, you’ll read most anything.
Well, in Mailer’s afterlife, maybe.
In the afterlife I’m planning on going to, I shall sit under a beautiful tree and read Horace’s Odes and Epodes in the original Latin and I will understand them perfectly and will not need the help of my dictionary.
Hmm.
Back in high school the answer to this woudl have been Jewel.
Let me take this opportunity to celebrate a greatly under-celebrated writer: Ursula K. LeGuin. I have often found myself thinking that for all the trumpeting on the right (and hand-wringing on the left) about the supposed influence of John Galt and what’s-his-name Roak, if I had to vote for the most philosophically influential fictional character of the twentieth century, I would have to make the call for Laia Aseo Odo.
As well as her fiction, LeGuin writes about writing and story-telling with a real love for words and tales. She writes without jargon, and (to borrow her own phrase) subtlety, wit and force, and as a reader, I have often found myself pulled up thinking “wow!” I heartily recommend her essays for anyone who needs reminding that a good writer can make an essay a pleasure to read, not just a pleasure to finish.
I second that John–the creative writing department at my old University used her fiction instruction for nearly every class. There was just no escaping her words–and certainly no want to do so.
LOL! I love that little excerpt, even though I am a Gibran fan. In fact, “The Prophet” is sitting on my nighstand as I type this. Since most kids of my generation are not known for their love of reading, I would have to say that I do not understand why people think the writers/creators of South Park are so brilliant. That show took off when I was in fifth grade and everyone LOVED it. I watched a couple of episodes and was like, “Okay, this is lame.” Now, the writers of the Simpsons… those guys are geniuses.
Thank you, thank you so much! I didn’t know anyone else felt like I do!
To the simultaneously boring/enraging list I add B.F. Skinner.
Madeline L’Engle and Charles Bukowski. Oh, and I didn’t think a whole lot of the Earthsea series either, although I haven’t read anything else by LeGuin.
I find it ironic, Hugo, that you had good things to say about Jerry Falwell, of all people, and all this annoyance with a relatively harmless guy like mailer.
What can I tell you, Acer? I am a man of great charity towards most and reflexive antipathy towards a few.
@Acer:
Give Ursula LeGuin another chance. The Earthsea books are really young adult fantasy (though as a mature adult, I love them).
Try The Left Hand of Darkness. It’s science fiction, not fantasy, and won both Nebula and Hugo awards. It’s a fascinating exploration of gender.
I don’t know that there’s an author that I feel this way about, but there’s definitely a book: Anna Karenina. The train needed to arrive hundreds of pages earlier.
I, too, love LeGuin. I read The Dispossessed first when I was 15 (?) and have been re-reading it ever since. She was the first feminist writer I read and influenced me deeply. And I once had a beautiful, vivid dream about Always Coming Home…
Al Franken. He wasn’t funny on SNL, or on Air America, or in print.
John Norman. Bluaaaaagghhh. Okay, it was just one friend and that was 20 years back, but I can still recall my jaw dropping clear down to the floor. This was a man wanting to become a woman, too. I don’t know what eventually happened to him/her.
Haven’t read much Mailer and don’t know how harmless he actually was.
From my present reading, I’d have to say, Kazuo Ishiguro, especially in his last novel, _Never Let Me Go_. What could be an interesting psychological study is fraught with sledgehammer-like metaphors (which the main character, then, even interprets so the reader doesn’t have to) and largely superfluous dialogue. If I had been the editor on this, the book would be half as long and one quarter as obvious. Quite the disappointment.
Oh, but Khalil Gibran? Quite lovely (even if a tad too shallow New-Agey for me). My sweetheart swears by him, though. Which means that, since I’m married to such an undying fan, I am guilty by association. :-)
What could be an interesting psychological study is fraught with sledgehammer-like metaphors (which the main character, then, even interprets so the reader doesn’t have to) and largely superfluous dialogue. If I had been the editor on this, the book would be half as long and one quarter as obvious. Quite the disappointment.
I think I have the exact same criticisms of White Oleander. I do tire of being bludgeoned with metaphor.
Do you still pronounce it MY-LER? I’ve only ever heard people say MAY-LER except for you.
I only say “My-ler” when I feel like being Teutonic.
Whatever his name was that wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. LeGuin has a lovely take-down of that in one of her critical essays. Also, D. H. Lawrence. He may be an able portrayer of early 20th c working class attitudes, but how he cannot write women…
Is my copy of The Prophet different from everyone else’s? The one I have short, succinct, somewhat light reading. The parody, except for the quotations from the original, seems completely dense and obscure in comparison.
I can see how the truth-through-contradiction of The Prophet could be annoying, though it seems odd that Jacobs would complain so much about that after writing a book about the author of the The Screwtape Letters. Wait, actually, that makes perfect sense–that’s how C.S. Lewis always thought–only he is allowed to engage in complex moral acrobatics–everyone else is to be ruthlessly mocked for appreciating morality’s complex ironies. Mocked at best, condemned as traitors or damned to hell at worst.
Uh, Consumatopia, if 880 pages (the Modern Library version of the the Prophet) is “short, succinct, somewhat light” to you, then you really must be a first-rate graduate student!
And you know better than to claim Lewis damned anyone to hell; hell (for him) is always of our own choosing, and we are usually (ala the Great Divorce) given remarkable numbers of opportunities to rechoose.
In any event, I look forward to your next comment, when you will no doubt reveal that Rod McKuen is unjustly underrated. ;-)
Ann Coulter (why yes, I do have right-wing friends, why do you ask?) Goddammit, her writing is like shoving red hot nails into my eyelids.
Oh, while I’m at it, Tolkien, and Melville, and both for the same reason. Too much description, not enough character, and sexist and racist to boot.
I guess my copy really is different–it’s 96 pages, large print, huge margins. I’m an extremely lazy reader, I assure you. ;)
The Collected Works above is 880 pages, but it doesn’t really seem fair to complain that someone’s collected works are long and boring–that’s probably true of most prolific professional authors.
Lewis was insightful enough to see that well-intentioned impulses can lead to doom just as easily as outright sin, but it didn’t seem to occur to him that this implies sinners–even caricatured sinners–should be treated with a bit less contemptuous sneering. Actually, I’m sure that did occur to him, but that didn’t change his writing. If we are given a great many opportunities to choose Heaven once we are in Hell, we must be given even more opportunities than that to rechoose Hell once we are in Heaven.
It’s not that C.S. Lewis isn’t a wonderful writer of insight and inspiration, but sometimes his insights make it a little too easy to dismiss other insights.
Yes, to be fair, Jacobs directs his ire at the Collected Works, of which the Prophet is the most famous — but not necessarily the most egregious.
The collected works are long in their sum and painful in their particulars.
Oh dear, that Dave Eggers fella makes me wanna spit. I just don’t get it.