Jarett has been taking real risks and busting his ass for years. He is also very fun to talk with on the phone. I'm really glad you have given his work the attention it deserves.
Good Lord.......Did you have to write about everything.!!!??! I don't know the writer which is apparently is your point...That no one knows Kobek.....but somehow He Gets It. Always a little uneasy reading writings that slowly reveal .......everything we thought about our lived time is probably false and we have been misled. A revelatory piece. However, I've subscribed just to see what you will be up to next. I hope Kobek is grateful to you.
It's invigorating to read criticism/reviews like this. The hope for novels partly resides in those who know how to engage with them, which Specktor clearly does.... I am also a huge fan of ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, by Mailer. Love how "that fat little fuck" warned readers to skip the weaker sections. One of these days, I'd like to read HARLOT'S GHOST. Wonder if Specktor has read and would recommend it... Feel ashamed to have never heard of Kobek, and am grateful to now know of him.
AfM is garbage, but the two books on the 68 conventions are excellent -- Armies of the Night and I forget the other one. Published in one volume by NYRB.
Good God, Advertisements for Myself isn't garbage. Yes, Armies of the Night is excellent, and so is The Naked and the Dead. But Advertisements for Myself has the best stuff I've ever read by him. Like I said, I haven't read Harlot's Ghost.
300 and 1 many years ago thanks to you and I’m going to have to finally get past the first 50 pages that make me miss New York so much I have to read it with my eyes half closed and my heart in my throat.
i HATED i hate the internet--felt like it had one trick that it kept using again and again--but you're speakin my love language w all this mailer talk. you've convinced me to read the future.
I Hate the Internet is a singular read, and I swear some of its word of mouth ness stemmed from the perfect title. It was prominently featured in bookstores in its time
I had trouble reading this, it's a bit manic and upset. I sometimes think the trouble with American literature is economic polarization. The kind of stuff that routinely happens to poor people makes for good literature. But the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, and there's less upward mobility. Rich people are adept at removing friction from their lives, but without friction there's nothing to write about. If there was more exchange between high and low culture I think it would revitalize literature.
I just have to say that anyone who puts "woke" in "scare quotes" is willfully blind to the scourge of woke on the literary landscape of the past ten years -- or more.
Thanks for that, and for the mentions of Lutz, Emily Hall, Grant Maierhofer, and Cardenas. Your despair over Substack is well done, and so is your enthusiasm for Kobek--and the two mix to make an unusual flavor.
I would just like to add some observations from a different perspective. I share your misgivings about the literary scene (including its politics, but for me, mostly the sour psychology of relentless self-promotion (and by the way, I like your parentheses, but have you ever considered nesting them? (I run two reading groups, one on Arno Schmidt, who sometimes nested as manty as six (it can be a great aid to rants)))) but not so much your interest in the American novel. I don't mean I'd advocate other national literatures, but rather that there's a sense to literature that does not set out to tell the story of its cultural or national moment.
What draws me to contemporary literary fiction isn't its capacity to reflect culture, but its ponential to continue building on conversations of what fiction in modernism and postmodernism might be. Hence when you write "the storyteller in Kobek and the cultural critic are somewhat at odds," I am tempted to set the the cultural critic to one side, and when I do that, I wonder what a "storyteller" might be. I suspect that I'm speaking from another planet in the literary solar sytem when I say that I hear just as much Thomas Bernhard in your piece (and in Kobek) as Pynchon--meaning that the rant itself is the point, not the subject of the rant--and I hear the word "story" as a problem, one that has been under scrutiny since Musil.
Thanks, anyway, for a post with a cogent argument, some great affect, and lots of exact observation.
Holy shit, Matthew!
Thank you for writing this piece. I “ old school” printed it. Respect for the novel!
Jarett has been taking real risks and busting his ass for years. He is also very fun to talk with on the phone. I'm really glad you have given his work the attention it deserves.
Good Lord.......Did you have to write about everything.!!!??! I don't know the writer which is apparently is your point...That no one knows Kobek.....but somehow He Gets It. Always a little uneasy reading writings that slowly reveal .......everything we thought about our lived time is probably false and we have been misled. A revelatory piece. However, I've subscribed just to see what you will be up to next. I hope Kobek is grateful to you.
God bless you for the Kobek love. It’s well deserved.
It's invigorating to read criticism/reviews like this. The hope for novels partly resides in those who know how to engage with them, which Specktor clearly does.... I am also a huge fan of ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, by Mailer. Love how "that fat little fuck" warned readers to skip the weaker sections. One of these days, I'd like to read HARLOT'S GHOST. Wonder if Specktor has read and would recommend it... Feel ashamed to have never heard of Kobek, and am grateful to now know of him.
AfM is garbage, but the two books on the 68 conventions are excellent -- Armies of the Night and I forget the other one. Published in one volume by NYRB.
Good God, Advertisements for Myself isn't garbage. Yes, Armies of the Night is excellent, and so is The Naked and the Dead. But Advertisements for Myself has the best stuff I've ever read by him. Like I said, I haven't read Harlot's Ghost.
300 and 1 many years ago thanks to you and I’m going to have to finally get past the first 50 pages that make me miss New York so much I have to read it with my eyes half closed and my heart in my throat.
this is so great.
i HATED i hate the internet--felt like it had one trick that it kept using again and again--but you're speakin my love language w all this mailer talk. you've convinced me to read the future.
I Hate the Internet is a singular read, and I swear some of its word of mouth ness stemmed from the perfect title. It was prominently featured in bookstores in its time
Super interesting.
Finally some love for The Future Won’t Be Long! I proudly count myself among that book’s 300 readers.
Thank you for writing this
I had trouble reading this, it's a bit manic and upset. I sometimes think the trouble with American literature is economic polarization. The kind of stuff that routinely happens to poor people makes for good literature. But the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, and there's less upward mobility. Rich people are adept at removing friction from their lives, but without friction there's nothing to write about. If there was more exchange between high and low culture I think it would revitalize literature.
I just have to say that anyone who puts "woke" in "scare quotes" is willfully blind to the scourge of woke on the literary landscape of the past ten years -- or more.
Nope. Your head is sufficiently far up your ass that you can no longer perceive reality. It's you, not him.
I am well schooled in your kind of narcissistic projection. Your comment reveals that you are, ineffably, an asshole.
Thanks for that, and for the mentions of Lutz, Emily Hall, Grant Maierhofer, and Cardenas. Your despair over Substack is well done, and so is your enthusiasm for Kobek--and the two mix to make an unusual flavor.
I would just like to add some observations from a different perspective. I share your misgivings about the literary scene (including its politics, but for me, mostly the sour psychology of relentless self-promotion (and by the way, I like your parentheses, but have you ever considered nesting them? (I run two reading groups, one on Arno Schmidt, who sometimes nested as manty as six (it can be a great aid to rants)))) but not so much your interest in the American novel. I don't mean I'd advocate other national literatures, but rather that there's a sense to literature that does not set out to tell the story of its cultural or national moment.
What draws me to contemporary literary fiction isn't its capacity to reflect culture, but its ponential to continue building on conversations of what fiction in modernism and postmodernism might be. Hence when you write "the storyteller in Kobek and the cultural critic are somewhat at odds," I am tempted to set the the cultural critic to one side, and when I do that, I wonder what a "storyteller" might be. I suspect that I'm speaking from another planet in the literary solar sytem when I say that I hear just as much Thomas Bernhard in your piece (and in Kobek) as Pynchon--meaning that the rant itself is the point, not the subject of the rant--and I hear the word "story" as a problem, one that has been under scrutiny since Musil.
Thanks, anyway, for a post with a cogent argument, some great affect, and lots of exact observation.
You should investigate Raymond Roussel if you like nested parentheses
Have! Love his images too https://writingwithimages.com/roussel-new-impressions-of-africa/
I would say this gave me a lot to think about, but I have no idea what the fuck I just read
Yes. I had to stop.
I'll come back when better prepared for meandering, but this piece needs an editor and a stronger focus.