Survey: Best Modern Novels

Kelly Jones · Post by **Kelly Jones** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 9:47 am

I'm enjoying Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh". His down-to-earth style is fresh and clear. So I'm happy to call it a modern novel, despite being written in the 1870s.

Agatha Christie's "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case" was worth reading, for its idea on the totally anonymous, perfect crime.

The collection of Buddhist writings, on David's website, is modern and novel. Startlingly timeless and up-to-date. Talking to me in my own thoughts, as if sitting beside in my living-room. Can't get more modern than Reality.

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I think the value of a novel, is to hold onto a person's attention for long enough that an unusual idea can settle into their thoughts. Novel : new.

That hold arises, if a writer has struggled and truly conquered his willingness to twaddle. The writer is alone for much longer, so that the idea and its deviations have his attention for longer. It means the idea shines so much brighter. Then he can express it more simply and profoundly, and not frustrate the reader with errors and complexities.

The main disadvantage is that a novel is like a marriage, in which, if the spouse is impure and imperfect, one feels more trapped than in the single life. One feels more compelled to give into a thread of complacency, if someone else is twaddling in one's face everyday.

(How terrible if reading a book caused pregnancies ----

Yet what egotistical relationship isn't exactly the same as an over-long book, forcing one to think, "Oh, the book will improve sometime...." ----- )

Speaking for myself, I'm never intellectually satisfied with the limitations of just one personality. I am occasionally relieved to wake up in the morning and have a break from things in the fresh, unwritten moments of awareness. A fantasy suggests other fantasies, so spells its own doom.

So, since an idea settles best if one can be immersed in it, in all aspects of daily life, then.... If a potential novellist wants a kind of permanency, then perhaps everyday, spontaneous, probing discussions --- such as happen on the Genius Forum occasionally --- work better, as long as there's not too much junk food.

David Quinn · Post by **David Quinn** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:27 am

If you're looking to write a comical novel about the games between the sexes, then I would recommend:

Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, by Mil Millington.

Although it is written by a pussy-whipped man who loves women for what they are, his observations on what actually occurs within relationships are witty and on the mark.

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Trevor Salyzyn · Post by **Trevor Salyzyn** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:32 am

Just because something is made up doesn't make it a lie. I'm making up these thoughts right now and they're totally true. I may even make up some more thoughts later, who knows? Am I lying by saying that?

If you make up something fictional, then it is, by definition, untrue.

Eliza,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not technically fiction, since it is both allegory and autobiography -- as well as a definite, clear, expression of a philosophic vision. It had, and needed, only the most rudimentary plot. It is not meant to be read in a few sittings (at the speed of most books). In fact, it would be gross to find it in the fiction section of a bookstore, and not in the philosophy section. (On the other hand, I would be surprised to find The Outsider (Camus) and Nausea (Sartre) categorized as philosophy. The Bible, of course, gets its own section.)

It's very difficult to express philosophy fictionally without ruining the message. Satire, when the whole purpose is to be disbelieved, seems to be the best method. But satire is also the hardest style to write in.

Carl G · Post by **Carl G** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:48 am

Matt Gregory wrote:MG: Carl, with all due respect, you're talking out of your ass.

CG: Meaning what? I don't know what I'm talking about? I'm making stuff up?

MG: You're telling me I can't do something without much of a basis.

You don't know that, you're just talking out of your ass.

It's not like I'm proposing something extraordinarily difficult. It's not. Tons of people do it. You're just trying to ruin my fun.

If it's just for fun, then, no, it's not that hard to write a draft for a novel. Writing something marketable is another matter.

I know your game.

No, you don't. And obviously I don't know yours. Carry on. I shall cease to rain on the parade!

Shardrol · Post by **Shardrol** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:40 am

Saying that 'nonfiction' is true & fiction is lies is exceedingly naive. Just because a person is wrting about alleged facts has no bearing on whether their observations have anything interesting to say about reality. They are just trumpeting their own subjective view with the added delusion that they're being objective.

Fiction reveals the writer even more than autobiographical material because you get to see what kind of a world he creates when he can do anything he wants, what kinds of themes interest him, how he thinks people are & why they do what they do. You rarely get as good a picture of an individual's consciousness from an autobiography as you get from reading his fiction.

As far as interesting novels go, I enjoyed Vladimir Nabokov's Transparent Things, which contains a lot of interesting ideas about time. All of Nabokov's books are worth reading, in my opinion, but none of them are as idea-driven as Transparent Things.

I also enjoyed Philip K Dick's work, especially Ubik. Besides his science fiction stories & novels, he wrote several novels about men & women in the regular world, so-called 'mimetic fiction', as the science fiction fans like to call it. These are notable for displaying his tormented & hostile relationship with women or maybe Woman, though there is never any resolution to the conflict.

I don't read much fiction anymore because I don't have time, but recently I have been enjoying the Aubrey-Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brien. I now know quite a bit more about sailing vessels & the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars than I ever would have expected.
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Trevor Salyzyn · Post by **Trevor Salyzyn** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:58 am

Shadrol,

Saying that 'nonfiction' is true & fiction is lies is exceedingly naive.

It is indeed. That's why I didn't say it. I said that fiction is by necessity untrue; I said nothing about the truth of non-fiction.

Shardrol · Post by **Shardrol** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 12:12 pm

Okay, 'scuse me. I didn't even remember who said what. I accept your correction.

Howeer, I don't accept your statement that fiction is by necessity untrue, unless you are taking 'truth' to mean a flawless report of events that actually happened to real people who exist as named in the account.
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Shahrazad · Post by **Shahrazad** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 12:29 pm

Matt,

If modern means 20th or 21st centuries, then you may want to consider Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He's my favorite writer of those still alive. And he has several novels that are already classics, such as 100 Years of Solitude. IMO, anything he writes is worth reading, because even if the plot is lacking in substance, the writing style is still exquisite (for ex, his latest work, Memories of my Melancholy Whores fits this category).

I have only read him in Spanish, though. I have no comments on the English translations of his work -- sorry.

.

Trevor Salyzyn · Post by **Trevor Salyzyn** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 12:31 pm

Truth is not a virtue that fiction can possess. If I'm interested in learning the truth about any matter, I simply will not read a novel.

There are, however, other virtues to novels. They can improve your vocabulary, or assist you in learning a new language. They can inspire. They can keep a lonely or bored person company. They can show the application of principles, or hint at very interesting things that are often more fully expressed elsewhere. At this stage in my life, however, I am not interested in these things.

Pye · Post by **Pye** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:26 pm

What are the three best modern novels you've ever read?

Here's one, anyway: The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello.

A philosophically imbued novel about an attempted change in identity; at points, hysterically funny, wonderfully written; dark and bright at the same time. Modern in the sense of 20th century; there's a Nobel prize for the author somewhere in his history; I can't remember for what.

I read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake last year. It was okay.

I might go out on a limb and suggest that Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure could be adopted by anyone who's into painful and poignant exposures of the idiocy of marriage. In fact, virtually any Thomas Hardy will do.

.

Kelly Jones · Post by **Kelly Jones** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 4:33 pm

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:Truth is not a virtue that fiction can possess.

I dispute this. Both Kierkegaard and Jonathan Swift used the idea of fiction to keep pointing to the importance of truth in their writings. Gulliver's Travels is an excellent example. Swift/Gulliver mentions quite a lot that, because truth is so important to him, the reader can be assured that his account of his travels is accurate.

And anyway, things that occur only in one's imagination are not fictional. Empiricism is as much on offer in fantasy, as in any other experiences. Truth is simply that whatever appears, is exactly "what" it is.

So fiction cannot avoid Truth. Hakuin's fanciful stories are full of pointers to it. I mean, do you really think Hakuin is a Great Red Carp?

Kelly Jones · Post by **Kelly Jones** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 4:46 pm

Here's an interesting passage from Mil Millington's website:

Do you remember the thing about 'Shut up'? It's not on this page anymore but, if you're an old-timer (or, I suppose, on the Mailing List and have read through the stuff that's no longer here) you might recall it. Well, she's sort of at it again.

I was looking for something that should have been somewhere, and wasn't. I asked Margret where it was, and she said, 'It's in the bedroom.'
'No, it isn't,' I replied - having just come from searching in the bedroom for about ten increasingly tantrumy minutes.
'Yes, it is,' she repeated.
'It's not. I've looked there.'
An expression of amused indulgence came over her face the subtleties of which I can't quite convey, so I'll have to make do with the description of it as, 'absolutely bleeding infuriating.'
'How much,' she said, 'will you give me if I find it?'

OK, so this operates on two levels. The first is simple sadism. Margret knows the agony it would cause me if - after my prolonged, stomping insistence that it isn't there - she calmly walks over and places her hand immediately on it. Tauntingly, she knows that just the possibility of this happening is quite probably enough for my nerve to crack. She is well aware that if, just one more time, my frustrated raging of, 'The nail scissors aren't here. See? They're not bloody here. Do you understand? Not... Here... Look! Go on! You try to find them then! Go on! Where are they then? Eh?' receives the near-instantaneous reply, 'Here they are,' and a pair of nail scissors, then I'm simply going to have to run away to sea. Can you see the other level, the one which ties it in kind with the 'Shut up' affair, though? Have a think.

That's it, well spotted: monetary gain. If I've maintained that something isn't somewhere until I've had to jump up and down, hold my breath and squeal that she's not my real mom, then simple, human decency should compel Margret to say, 'Yes, you're right,' rather than go there and find it. Going there and finding it is what you'd expect a Colombian Death Squad to do. What separates Margret from a Colombian Death Squad - perhaps the only thing that does - is subtlety. She's awfully keen to make that bet about finding things, isn't she? Now... why could that be? Well, obviously, it's because she's rigged the deck. The reason I can't find what I'm looking for is that she's previously spotted what I'm looking for, and moved it.

I have innate positioning instincts, you see: like a salmon returning thousands of miles across unmarked oceans, right to the stream where it was born. In exactly the same way, when I've finished using it, I will place a screwdriver on top of a bedroom radiator and - when I need it again, perhaps eighteen months later - unerringly return to that spot to retrieve it. Frequently, to discover that Margret has, maddeningly, taken it upon herself to transfer it to somewhere else. My instincts, moreover, are incredibly precise. If I'm looking for a pair of trainers that my astonishingly accurate positional memory remembers putting down in the bottom left of a cupboard, then I'm not going to notice them if some fiend has moved them to the bottom right of the cupboard during the intervening four and a half years, am I? That'd be stupid. What's the point of having a gift for such specific location if your visual perception is so vague as to wander around all over the place? Eh? What's more, I place things logically. Where are you most likely to need carpet tacks and a hammer, for example? Precisely. So leaving them on the stairs is simple ergonomics.

However, for some reason, Margret is unable to respect my filing system. She spends her day roaming the house, wilfully moving things from where I've deliberately placed them. And that's why she's keen to make the bet. She's hidden my stuff, and now she wants me to pay for her to retrieve it. It's basically a form of extortion, isn't it? Let's call a spade a spade: Margret has kidnapped my stuff and is holding it for ransom. Really, ladies and gentlemen, it's a sad state of affairs when your girlfriend abducts your favourite underpants.

Lamentations of Mil Millington

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[edit italics]

Matt Gregory · Post by **Matt Gregory** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 5:25 pm

Hey Shardrol, how's it going?

Matt Gregory · Post by **Matt Gregory** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 5:30 pm

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:If you make up something fictional, then it is, by definition, untrue.

But untruth only becomes a lie if it's being passed off as truth. Fiction is understood to be untrue, so it's not a lie.

Matt Gregory · Post by **Matt Gregory** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:09 pm

Kelly Jones wrote Mil Millington wrote:I asked Margret where it was, and she said, 'It's in the bedroom.'
'No, it isn't,' I replied - having just come from searching in the bedroom for about ten increasingly tantrumy minutes.
'Yes, it is,' she repeated.
'It's not. I've looked there.'
An expression of amused indulgence came over her face the subtleties of which I can't quite convey, so I'll have to make do with the description of it as, 'absolutely bleeding infuriating.'
'How much,' she said, 'will you give me if I find it?'

This gives me an idea for a great new internet startup: A site devoted to posting stories about your lover anonymously so you don't get in trouble. I bet a lot of truth would come out of a site like that and it would get lots of traffic.

Matt Gregory · Post by **Matt Gregory** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:19 pm

I think I would blow a major nut if someone were moving my stuff from the place I put it all the time. That fact alone is enough to remain single. In fact, if I ever get the urge to desire an attractive woman again, I'm confident that I could simply picture her in my apartment moving my stuff around and the desire would immediately depart and be replaced with intense terror.

Shahrazad · Post by **Shahrazad** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:27 pm

Matt,

Why would anybody want to read stories about lovers they don't even know?

.

ExpectantlyIronic · Post by **ExpectantlyIronic** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 7:48 pm

The Stranger by Albert Camus is an excellent work of existentialist fiction that I read not too long ago. It really isn't possible to resist a novel that opens with the lines "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know."

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut is probably the best novel I've read. It centers around the life of a possibly mentally unstable survivor of the bombing of Dresden, and paints a portrait of war as something absurd, horrific, and ultimately inevitable. Although the subject matter is bleak, the tone of novel is whimsical and often humorous, which only makes the horror of that which it describes seem so much more emotionally poignant.

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem is a wonderfully well-written tale, particularly in its first half which describes growing up as white kid in Brooklyn during the 70's. The sheer ambition of the novel does make it somewhat meandering, but the prose is top notch.

HUNTEDvsINVIS · Post by **HUNTEDvsINVIS** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 8:07 pm

hey Carl G.

No, I disagree with you, honey. You see, I actually read tons of books when I was younger. I was routinely top of the class in English, and my creative writing essays were just so strange that they usually had to give me above 90% for them. My mother was a language prodigy, winning national essay competitions and loads of other academic prizes was the norm for her, and I was bound to have inherited some of her capabilities. Which is probably why I think I could write a good book or two. Donâ€™t worry, that little story of the two disillusioned geniuses is just an idea I got as I typed, my actual ideas are much more interesting.

You mentioned that I might be illogical seeing as I want to write fiction but donâ€™t read much fiction. Ah, but I do read a lot of biographies and history books. And I absolutely love them because TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION only too often, but it also has the benefits of valuable functional knowledge. Itâ€™s two for the price of one. Then again, once in a while I find a good fiction novel which is very interesting and has significant insight into certain situations. Significant insight can, however, mostly only be achieved if there is a rational process taking place, if things move rationally from one section to another. If I have no clue why a character does something that he does, I am bound to struggle to find the insight that the book is working towards, or it feels like the author was careless and forgot to tie up loose ends.

Of course after I became "ill" my life changed radically and for a long time I didn't even want to lift a book. Reading about "normal" people was too painful. Slowly I am recovering. Lots of pills. I hate pills. Nothing is crystal clear anymore.

DHodges · Post by **DHodges** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:52 pm

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I would agree with that recommendation, and Vonnegut's books in general. He's written a bunch of very good books that have also done well commercially.

Kelly Jones · Post by **Kelly Jones** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:15 pm

This thread me remindeth of sonnets in speech,
of speaking perceived as a month-long reflection.
Of crystals long-pondered and easily recalled,
Like little songs of living reflecting perfection.

Unfortunate the artist who knows not what art means,
and speaks not of absolutes, but twisteth and leaps;
Fortunate the one, who lingereth and savours and
Patiently breathes not afore tasting the deep.

[finish this sonnet]

Trevor Salyzyn · Post by **Trevor Salyzyn** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:06 am

Kelly,
There's a hundred book-writers for every good book,
more poets than readers, and more painters than art.
The problem is simple: drawing makes you lose depth,
so one who wants depth has no words to impart.

Matt,

But untruth only becomes a lie if it's being passed off as truth. Fiction is understood to be untrue, so it's not a lie.

Clever, but that still doesn't make me want to read storybooks.

Philosophaster · Post by **Philosophaster** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:34 am

Matt Gregory wrote:This gives me an idea for a great new internet startup: A site devoted to posting stories about your lover anonymously so you don't get in trouble. I bet a lot of truth would come out of a site like that and it would get lots of traffic.

Sounds like a very viable idea, actually.

Matt Gregory · Post by **Matt Gregory** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:50 am

I think it's totally viable.

Sher, who wouldn't want to read about stories of lovers? It wouldn't have to be all about negativity, either. You could have some kind of categorization system and voting system and I think it would be thoroughly entertaining.

You might even be able to get funding from Lisp badass Paul Graham through his venture capital firm.

Matt Gregory · Post by **Matt Gregory** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:58 am

Thanks for the reading suggestions, everyone! They all sound really interesting. I'll definitely try to check them all out.