UKC

or are there new and exciting writers out there?

Was wondering if someone like Joyce would get published today where it seems to be about tweaking the plot of fifty shades of Harry Potter and passing it off as something new

https://www.google.com/search?q=klara+and+the+sun&oq=klara+&aqs=chr...

Never been easier.   Your comment surprises

I agree an innovative writer

I guess I get disillusioned by writers who say you have to write to a particular genre if you want to get anywhere

Is that a thing? Surely that's something publishers would say, rather than writers? 

Er yes... How hard have you looked? Obviously a genuinely new and exciting style that actually works and stands up to time is a rare event, just as it always was. Personally I can't be bothered with a lot of it (or Joyce for that matter), but if you want it, it's out there.

And as ALN has just helpfully linked, a fuddy duddy old Nobel prize winner can demonstrate that  the novel is definitely not dead.

Come to that, why are they called novels?  It's not as though it hasn't been done before, there's loads of them.  Hardly novel, is it?

T.

No I've met a lot of writers who say that too

Is this post the writing equivalent of "there's no good music anymore" which basically translates to "I'm old and don't like new things"?

Yes there's plenty of great writers out there, and always will be, just need to actually look for them.

Do you mean aln? 

No. You can say the same about music and movies but there's always good stuff out there, it's just a case of finding it

True.

I suppose in some ways I think music and movies are easier to market as they are quite easy to digest. A musical piece is generally a few minutes to an hour depending on what it is and most films come in under a couple of hours. Where as even a short novel requires a longer investment of time (unless like my wife you can read really quickly) and requires a more active role from the reader.

I rather suspect that your comment could have been 20, 50 and 100 years  ago.  Most work is derivative of a genre of its time.  There are plenty of rubbish faux Waughs for example. 

 Be wary, especially with music of assuming your opinion of 'good is universal.  Tastes differ

I do, dunno how that got capitalised! Must be an acronym I've used before somewhere.

I loved Klara and the sun too, although I do think it's very much in the style of Never let me go. Not that that's a bad thing at all, but this is a thread about the lack of new ideas. I read an interview with Ishiguro recently in which he admits to reworking the same idea in several novels to see if he can improve it.

Good is a subjective term when I comes to creativity I find

I envisioned it not so much about the lack of new ideas but more where those new ideas are?

Since lockdown I have been ploughing through some of the old classics that I never read but always knew about The Odyessy, Ulysses, Heart of Darkness, etc. But was interested in what is new in literature.

I have been writing myself and going on various writers forums but got a bit disenchanted by their obsession with adhering to genre (so as not to confuse your audience) and all the tricks to turn yourself into a best selling author. (I honestly don't see myself being one, it is just something I wanted to do)

I think I read the same interview. It reminded me of the band Spiritualised, they've basically made the same album over and over,  improving it up to the pinnacle of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, then with diminishing returns for subsequent albums. 

Ishiguro on the other hand is probably still getting better. 

I actually like Pure Phase and Let it Come Down, more than Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. And that's not to be a contrarian, especially as I have the double vinyl Ladies and Gentlemen autographed by the band ON THE VINYL (silver pen on the runout grooves)  

That jumped out at me. 

I like those albums too, a lot, but I still think Ladies and Gentlemen is Jason's peak. It might be something to do with the gig at the Barrowlands in Glasgow on the L+G tour. The full band, with a string section and a choir, there must've been 30 people crammed onto the stage. With the lighting etc, it was a transcendent experience that's stayed with me. When Cop Shoot Cop reached some kinda melodic noise nirvana I just about came in my pants. As I blabbered to various randoms on the way out, it was the best gig since The Clash at The Apollo in 78.

Ha! Cop Shoot Cop is the shining example of what I found to be the “annoying” aspect of that album - the indulgent noodling guitar squalls 😃 To each their own of course, and I often like an indulgent guitar squall but when it’s basically bad The Doors, it’s a no thanks. And then there’s 7 minutes of meandering space jazz outro 😃 Maybe just maybe I need to revisit this one? 

The 60's band fronted by Jim Morrison? I'm not seeing a connection with Spiritualised or Cop Shoot Cop. The Doors were absolutely not known for guitar squall. 

not guitar squall as such, but general indulgent psychedelic blues-jazz po-faced poetic noodling with enigmatic frontperson 😃

I am really just bitterly kicking myself for not taking the opportunity to see them at Shepherd’s Bush on the Pure Phase tour with seefeel and Angel Corpus Christi supporting, and also an invitation to the album launch party at Dingwalls that I would have received as one of the first 200 to buy a ticket....because £8.50 was a bit much 😃

For something recent in British writing that's innovative and challenging you could try Will Self's trilogy, Umbrella/Shark/Phone, the last of which came out in 2017. I always take the fact that some people will dismiss something as unreadable as an excellent sign. Interestingly, Self has been critical of creative writing courses that are unduly concerned with genre. I love big experimental stuff that you have to work at, so unsurprisingly, Self is my favourite contemporary Brit writer.

Something like joyce is probably being published. The question is does anyone care?

No

I don't see why not. After all, lots of us care about cutting-edge climbs being put up, despite the fact that the huge majority of us will never do them. Just because they're not for everyone doesn't mean they don't matter.

If you were looking for real innovation these days you'd probably find it in game development rather than novel writing.  

A video game like GTA has a huge amount of highly creative world building and the story mode is like an interactive movie or novel with experimental features like switching between characters.

I don't know about writer's forums myself, but I imagine these are not the places to look for innovation! People desperately trying to get published are looking to use the established methods.

I think the big publisher's marketing departments are responsible for the sea of dross that is out there. They are not interested in originality, they just want to publish the next 50 shades / Harry Potter. They also want to pigeonhole writers into a genre, as genre readers are easier to sell to. 

It's also important to remember that a list of classics spans hundreds of years. There simply aren't very many truly original books that deserve classic status published in any particular year. So if you find one recent one you're doing OK.

Exactly this, thank you (and I think you alluded to it in an earlier post).

Duncan, to his credit, did acknowledge this early in the thread. Certainly (without wanting to insult or patronise Duncan) looks like a case of "he's interested in starting to write, looked at some forums and courses, and found an echo chamber of jaded cynicism saying that you have make Hollywood style pitches like 'it's like Jack Reacher but a young black woman'". 
As others have said, exactly the same has happened across all art forms forever. It doesn't mean original voices are being squished. 

I wonder if that is a perception on the part of the writers that it is necessary to write to an identifiable genre in order to be picked up by a major publisher. Identifiable genres are much easier to market and sell than truly innovative works which cannot easily be labelled. And, if you want to make money from writing novels, you probably do need the help of a major publisher

Nevertheless, I do believe that there are writers who are writing outside genre boundaries - David Keenan's 'This is Memorial Device' comes immediately to mind. This doesn't mean their work is necessarily 'better' than more derivative work, or that it is any more noteworthy. I'd also suggest that writing within genre boundaries isn't necessarily a bad thing - Susanna Clarke's 'Piranesi' fits comfortably into the fantasy genre, but is a wonderful read. 

This came to mind when I first saw the OP  

youtube.com/watch?v=-KNyf9ExMxQ&

Well Duncan, the Magic Theatre is not for everyone. Perhaps you might find some joy down the dance hall. Go on, pick up The Da Vinci Code - are you worried you might love it?

I just meant that most cutting edge art has a pretty small audience.

If anything I think that more good novels are being published than at any time in the past. The problem is that the reduced barriers to entry (ability to print short runs) mean that there are also lots and lots of low quality novels. This makes it hard to find the good stuff, so it is easy to default to the familiar which guarantees quality.

That's interesting. I have not read much Ishiguro. I think I will look up more of his work

Thanks for the heads up on Will Self. I have heard of him but not read him.

Me too I like experimental writing (as well as entertaining writing in the same way that I like Art house films but also blockbuster Marvel romps)

One I really enjoyed was Ella Minnow Pea bu Mark Dunn which gradually reduces the letters availible to the writer as the novel goes on. Brief synopsis : Nevin Nollop left the islanders of Nollop with the treasured legacy of his pangram the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. But as the letters begin to crumble on the monumental inscription, the island's council forbids the use of the lost letters and silence threatens

Interesting.

I suspect that gaming has moved on a way since I last indulged

Cheers for that. You are right about writers forums in the main. Which if fine if you want to make it a career but stifling if you want to discuss being creative.

True with regard to classics. As Chris Brooker says, there are seven basic plots that comprise all stories. In regard to classics I was surprised by how readable the Odyessy was in comparison to the Iliad (which as I recall followed the pattern of a lot of classic early literature by listing heroes and their deeds, along with all their lineage etc.)

That's it exactly.

I have Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in my to read pile.

And i do agree that writing within a genre isn't necessarily bad and can be a good discipline. It is only the slavish adherence to it that I disagree with.

I always wondered about writers who go off piste, as it were, whether they have other financial means that allows them the freedom to experiment without the need to turn a profit? That being said a lot of what are now classic writers Poe, Dickens, etc were very popular in their day.

Thanks for the heads up on David Keenan

Brilliant.

I cited Keenan as a writer doing things outside genre, but I found 'This is Memorial Device' very frustrating and disappointing, and not really very good. It seemed as if he had an interesting grain of an idea for structure and variations in style that couldn't ultimately be extended for a full novel. 

Indeed. Sorting the wheat from the chaff can be time consuming.

Ishiguro is one of those rare writers who takes on whatever genre they feel like, and produces a classic. Because although the book appears to belong to a genre, it's really just an Ishiguro. The only problem is that he hasn't written very many books, and I've read them all.

Another writer who's very good at this is Margaret Atwood. You can have any genre in one of her books, but it will always be worth reading.

Look at the Goldsmiths Prize - "established in 2013 to celebrate the qualities of creative daring associated with the University and to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form."

Lots of new and exciting stuff in there - not all to my tastes but they're certainly not playing safe.  Great to see M.John Harrison (who wrote the brilliant Climbers) won last year so it's not just new fashionable writers.

https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-prize/about/ 

T'is true.

Aside from the obvious Handmaids tale I enjoyed Oryx and Crake and it's follow up the Year of the Flood

Ooo I like that.

It isn't that I particularly like weird off the wall stuff. But I do like things that make me think.

As Moorcock said once, “I think of myself as a bad writer with good ideas, but I’d rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas…”

Thanks for that. I didn't know Harrison had a new book out, I'll have to read that. I'm a big fan, Light is in my top 10 favourite books. 

These may not all be to your taste (which O don’t know about) but in terms of separating wheat from chafe, as an academic working in English lit I’m privileged enough to be made aware of lots of great more contemporary novels! Try Eimear McBride ‘A Girl is  a Half Formed Thing’ if you like Joyce, definitely takes up the Irish Modernist style and runs with it. Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark’ is another you might enjoy if a fan of Ulysses. Other great books in quite different styles I rate as highly as some of the classics you mention include ‘Flights’ by Olga Tocacurk, ‘Outline’ by Rachel Cusk, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie and ‘on earth we’re briefly gorgeous’ by Ocean Vuong. Octavia Butler and John Crowley are both worth seeking out if you like Sci-fi and fantasy too.

Thanks I'll check those out.

Always good to have more to explore

I'll chuck in Max Porter's 'Grief is a thing with feathers' and 'Lanny' - a critics darling but both interesting and short novels.  Paul Kingsnorth's 'Wake' is an odd book - written in cod middle english (it needs to be read aloud to make sense) about the Norman conquest from a point of view of a Saxon peasant.  Not an easy read but a haunting book.

Cheers