Recently Justin Isis sent me a link to this story, about a seventeen-year-old boy from Alabama who recently received a lot of attention for writing a letter to The New York Times declaring that their literary gods were on the way out (DeLillo has "already had his turn anyway"). I suppose I'm glad that anyone would send in a letter to The New York Times challenging the literary status quo, and I'm also glad that there are seventeen-year-olds (at least one) in the world who care enough about literature to do so. The boy, Alec Niedenthal, wittingly or otherwise, has also, in doing so, scored a great publicity point for his own cause as a writer. It looks like he might not have too much trouble finding a publisher for his work after this, and I certainly hope that's the case, because when, as a writer, you see how barren life is without the big break, you begin to want big breaks to happen to any writer out there, if possible, even if you don't like their work (as long as they're sincere about what they do).
However, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed when I read the actual letter, and can't really work out why it caused so much fuss, unless it's simply because nobody expected any seventeen-year-old even to be reading books, let alone writing a letter to The New York Times about them. The New York Observer called the letter "incendiary". It's hardly that. All it says, basically, is that Dwight Garner's desire for a "bracing, wide-screen, many-angled novel that will leave a larger, more definitive intellectual and moral footprint on the new age of terror" will be met by someone from the younger generation rather than from the current heroes of The New York Times. Is that incendiary? Incendiary would have been to say that the whole self-congratulating New York literary scene is comprised of people who wouldn't even know what a prose style is if it kidnapped them and kept them in a cellar for seven years, subjecting them to a nightmarish ordeal of sexual abuse and physical and mental torture. Or, anyway, that would be approaching incendiary. Niedenthal's letter is actually more in the cute and lovable vein than the incendiary. This disappointment was compounded by other things. I was interested to see who Niedenthal's literary influences might be:
Right now I’m more into modern and postmodern stuff, not anything really contemporary. Like I’m reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell right now. I like William Vollmann, too … William Gaddis, Pynchon, John Barth, that stuff, mostly.
It all sounds fairly tame and conservative to me. Which is fine, but Niedenthal is looking less and less like the great hope of some wild literary revolution. If he had namechecked Kanehara Hitomi, Thomas Ligotti, Can Xue or even a snarling old fogey like Michel Houellebecq, I would have been more impressed.
Then there's Niedenthal's prose style, which is basically seventeen-year-old thesaurus prose. He is trying to write beyond his ability, which in some ways is good, because at least he's trying to stretch himself. Take the following example:
You've heard it straight from the tropical mouth of a teenager who is entirely conscientious of the metamorphoses in ideas, principles (or lack thereof) and influences being undergone right under your collective noses.
Someone should tell (hopefully has told) him that "conscientious" here is a malapropism. Good old "conscious" is the word he's looking for, though it has two fewer syllables.
There's another example here:
The literary call to arms sounded long ago (only many neglected to listen), and, Mr. Editor, well, we’ve been whiling away for a long time, persisting on raw fish and Red Bull in the frozen caverns of the blogosphere; and we don’t mean to boast, but, to be perfectly honest, we think you’ll be more than impressed.
Can't have been whiling away that fucking long if he's only seventeen. When you get to my age… (oh God!!!)… you'll know what "whiling away" is. But the malapropism in this case is "persisting". Can you "persist" on raw fish and Red Bull? Maybe. But I have a feeling that the desired word in this case was 'subsist'.
My intention here isn't to be mean and try to embarrass the guy. I mean, I'm still guilty of using malapropisms after more years wrestling with my native tongue than Niedenthal has spent breathing the air of a doomed planet. And it is always embarrassing to discover that one has been using a malapropism when one was trying to be all "bloviated" and "lofty" (I try my damnedest to be bloviated, it has to be said). No, I am not trying to discredit Niedenthal as a writer. When I was seventeen… it's hard to remember what I was writing then, actually, but it probably wasn't as good as what Niedenthal is writing now. If anything, I'm trying to defend the guy in a way. The chances that he's fully developed his writing style already are very slim indeed, and, in that sense, he really shouldn't be judged as a writer based on his current output. Also, if I were to give him some advice – use a dictionary as well as a thesaurus.
There is something else. I'm not sure to whom I would address my closing remarks. I would say that I address them to the publishers and critics who currently call the shots in mainstream literature. For instance, the critics of The New York Times, and the publishers and authors of the kind of books they review. But I don't think any of them are really listening to anything outside of their very narrow humanistic universality. If they published Niedenthal's letter it's probably because they think that, given a few years, he'll fit right in. However, if I try to imagine some scene – beyond the very limited imaginations of those associated with that scene – in which they were actually listening to the likes of me, I would say something like this: The only reason that Niedenthal's letter got published was because he is seventeen. Great. It's good that you acknowledge there is a younger generation. But there are plenty of writers older than Niedenthal who could write much better letters, without overuse of a thesaurus, without the malapropisms, and with much more incendiary material, who, I am sure, you would never think of publishing in your pages. They have been "whiling away" for a very long time indeed, and, in the process, some of them have got pretty good at what they do. But they no longer have the novelty of youth on their side, and they are too old now to start again through the right channels with the right connections in order to get the big break and be somebody on the scene, but, you know what, my own personal view is that they have much more chance of writing a "bracing, wide-screen, many-angled novel that will leave a larger, more definitive intellectual and moral footprint on the new age of terror" than Niedenthal. Even better, they might care so little about nine-fucking-eleven that they write something truly unusual and interesting in a way that neither DeLillo nor perhaps Niedenthal can ever dream of.
Yes, they do noise for nothing. This was just published because of a 17 year old boy who reads, as you said.A great shit!My 10 years old daughter have read more books than any teenager in his whole life. Who publish it?
Justin Isis writes:
I just looked back at short novels I’d written when I was 17. Here’s an example of the prose style from one of them. This is from a story called “The Heist” :”I I try to get the two corpses to mate and produce a ‘Super-Corpse’. First I take the priest and strip off all the clerical garbing which is really nothing more than a plain short and some slacks. Then I try to take the vest off the older one and pull its pants off after which I push the corpses together for a while but nothing happens. The smell of the older one is such that it is like wading through rotting blood, thickened, to come near it. Mao Tse-Tung is displeased with my failure and makes me do fifty pushups. While I am doing these the priest’s body begins to stir. I hesitate, and the priest’s head turns into a female pelvic region. It stands up, and I can see that the vagina is wormy and infected. The priest comes closer and soon the vaginal dichotomy of fleshly consistencies is more apparent as dry squamous tissue is contrasted with the naturalistic roseate softness. Several cysts mar these regions which begin to break open revealing locusts, twitching and armored, amassing. Several of them flit and spring off. I try to swat them away. -Hello, I sayThe labia minora hum and the labia majora expand and contract, but no sound comes out.-You appear to be mute, I sayThe priest draws nearer, and the decay blighting the vagina is revealed to be more extensive than I first thought, rife with purulent sludge. A necrotizing clit drops off.The priest seems to have realized its dilemma, and raises its hands, involving fingers and thumbs in the gesticulations of sign language. -I’m sorry, I don’t sign, I sayThe priest raises its middle finger to me.I begin chanting some Sanskrit in an attempt to ward it off, but the cunt-headed cleric advances on me, so I kick it in the balls. It is unfazed and a muscular tentacle emerges from the vagina and ensnares my arm, drawing me closer to it. I take the opportunity to punch the female pelvic region, but I aim too high and bruise my hand on the pubic bone. The tentacle tightens and constricts my circulation, but I reach up with both hands and begin tearing off folds of skin just as a child might tear the wrapping from a Christmas present or a man might peel an overripe orange. The tentacle whips about and trips me up, and I land hard on my shoulder. While on the ground, I grab the priest’s leg and lift it up, dropping it. While it is momentarily disabled I dash down the hall and around to the staircase leading upstairs which I take.”
Exactly!Thank God, somebody understand what I say!!People hate me because of this. All of his books are the same. Self-help!It’s so easy to write about what everybody wants in the whole world! Love, family, spirituality, self-finding and so on.I always say that I’ve to write about this. I’m gonna be rich!
Maybe she should write a letter to Jornal do Brasil complaining that Paulo Coelho has already had his turn.
Forgive my words, but PC is a complete shit. She should write exactly this.
I read The Alchemist. It wasn’t literature. It was a self-help book masquerading as literature, so I agree with you.
“I just looked back at short novels I’d written when I was 17. Here’s an example of the prose style from one of them.”I think it’s better than what I was writing when I was 17, which was basically sub-Lovecraftian sludge. When I was 13 or 14 I also wrote a novel that was sub-Tolkien sludge. Actually, thinking about it, that novel, although no doubt unpublishable, did probably show a natural feel for language that was not the kind of failed pretention of Alec N. I don’t want to lay into him or anything, I’m just musing. I was never that much of a thesaurus-monster. I was always more influenced by genre concerns of atmosphere, which are fairly organic, than with sounding intellectual. But, yeah, ‘The Heist’ looks better than anything I was producing at that age. Not as good as your current stuff, though, you’ll be glad to hear (I think). I mean, there’s stuff there that could be used, but I think there’s a lot of stuff in it that’s forced, that’s not really coming from anywhere. I think you probably know what I mean.”People hate me because of this. All of his books are the same. Self-help!It’s so easy to write about what everybody wants in the whole world! Love, family, spirituality, self-finding and so on.I always say that I’ve to write about this. I’m gonna be rich!”I have considered writing some kind of New Age pap, just to pay for my passage out of the garret, metaphorically speaking. I’ve read enough that I could probably do it. Maybe I should. What would I call it? How to be Magical on a Daily Basis in Ten Easy Steps or something. Hmm. I need something catchier. I like the image of hordes of enraged Paul Coelho fans following in your wake that I have just conjured up in my mind.
“I like the image of hordes of enraged Paul Coelho fans following in your wake that I have just conjured up in my mind.”hahahahh that’s cool!Your book should be called “Take it easy – How to expand your spiritual life and become a better person”Or “Problems – How to minimize untill finish all of them”
hehehheehheh… it’s just to give examples of how wrong that books can be.the worse is that there are people who really think it’s possible and buy it.
Or “Problems – How to minimize untill finish all of them”.Is this like eliminating your problems until you’ve eliminated your entire life?
Justin Isis writes:
“I mean, there’s stuff there that could be used, but I think there’s a lot of stuff in it that’s forced, that’s not really coming from anywhere.”I agree. And that was probably one of the more passable passages. The rest is pretty terrible. The short novel I did after that was even worse, and was written during a REAL thesaurus stage, with narration that was heavily Lovecraftian/pseudo-Victorian. Lots of “I can well attest that…” and people “asseverating” things rather than saying them. I was really obsessed with words having to do with light or jewels – “incalescent,” “coruscation,” “cymophanous,” etc. There are some uncommon words that I think are really beautiful, if they’re used well – I’m thinking of something like ‘Ulysses’, where he uses ridiculous words to good effect, or again, Lovecraft, where he builds up to great intensity with it. It usually works best when contrasted with simplicity, though, and it’s really easy to tell – as in the case of Niedenthal – when someone is using things they’ve just discovered five minutes ago and don’t really know how to use. I would be interested to see your Tolkien or Lovecraft influenced novels, though, just to see what they’re like. You should post some of them if you still have them around.
I like ‘incalescent’. I’ll have to use that somewhere.”I would be interested to see your Tolkien or Lovecraft influenced novels, though, just to see what they’re like. You should post some of them if you still have them around.”Unfortunately these were written in the age before everyone was chained to a computer, and I never typed them up. The manuscripts do exist somewhere, but I’m not entirely sure where. In fact some of my writing from the age of about eight still exists… somewhere. Unfortunately, I’ve been forced to move around so much in my life that I no longer know where anything of mine is. It’s scattered hither and thither.Anyway, I did discover the below, which is from a novel-type thing called Hubert Stays Up Late, written before anything of mine that’s been published. Unfortunately, it’s not really fair of me to post it here, as I must have been in my early twenties, I think, when I wrote this, probably at least three years on from seventeen, and perhaps more like six years on. Reading it now, I cringe. It still sounds very juvenile, even though I’m sure it’s a marked improvement on the stuff I was writing in my teens. There is probably a bit more control here, but even so, it’s… naive. Anyway, here it is:Through the scanty gaps between thronging bodies – bodies of which less than half were human – Hubert could just discern a suggestion of vistas; vistas of the Epicurean, the hedonistic. There were steps and pools, people and things lolling and partying. But the general stir of jubilation screened his vision of these things, and the terrific noise shook his attention so that he was unable to focus.
Instead he turned his eyes once more forward and saw that the gangway led to steps, and these steps curved upwards like a roller coaster, with such delirious steepness, such regal vertigo, that it seemed they curved back on themselves. At their summit was something like a cross between a boxing ring and the dais for a throne. And upon that dais waited a single figure as tall and classically elegant as the thin, streaming cascade of a waterfall. The allure and impressiveness of that figure were strongly palpable even from a distance. Hubert knew he had to reach her, but was at the same time terrified of speechlessness, felt at a loss.
Exactly how he climbed the steps is hard to say. Almost unconsciously he noted the feeling that the horizontal line of the whole place altered as he walked erect the curve of the steps, adjusting itself to the angle of his body and the line of his vision. At any rate, he attained the summit with the sensation of having recovered his balance, and as the waiting lady laid her hands on his arm he felt she had saved him from breaking his neck.
Now that he was close to her, her presence was even headier. Her clothes seemed to be a royal version of fetishist leather, including bodice, boots, gloves and cloak. The contrast this formed with her white skin was fascinating. It was as if she had been gorgeously sketched with pen and ink, the nib scratching out the jewel like detail of lips, hair, buckles, the ink flowing in wide, sensual curves to outline limbs with a blackness that was mystical.
Now that they both stood together on the same platform, she took his hand in her own and raised it high in the air as if he were a victorious champion. Silence settled upon the mass, and for a moment Hubert surveyed the panorama, rocking slightly on his heels. The place seemed to be an endless complex of bathing pools, steps, gangways, bridges and smooth, polished floors, in a chess board-like, multi-levelled patchwork. Hubert was reminded vaguely of terraced paddy-fields. He saw reptilian figures reclining in the black waters of the pools. Statues of leaping dolphins stood at the corners of stairways and waterfalls gushed from the stone mouths of cats, jackals, demons. Columns of smoke cut across the sparkling rectangles of marble. Yet for all the space and all the exotica which filled it, Hubert still caught glimpses of a visual paradox, like an optical illusion. For it seemed that this great celebration had been squeezed inside someone’s cosy living room, and now and then Hubert thought he saw walls closer than they should have been, and vulgar wallpaper and homely ornaments. And there was little doubt that he saw other objects, like sofas, standing lamps, rugs, pushed carelessly away from the centre of the room to make space, although it was somehow tricky to ascertain their true scale.
Then the lady addressed the crowd in a voice as strong and vibrant as a cello.
“The Great Emperor Hubert, to whom we owe our very existence, is among us once again. He has returned from the wanderings of a thousand years, skirting the fringes of the universe beyond our understanding. In his absence, dealing with matters of pan-galactic consequence, touring god like frontiers, it has been as if the stars in hibernation had forgotten us. Now he has come as a giant, glittering sun, to illuminate our darkness, to start time again and to witness the commencement of our celebrations.”
“the worse is that there are people who really think it’s possible and buy it.”To eliminate all problems? Yes, it does sound pretty naive. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with trying to improve one’s life or work on one’s problems, but there’s an easy-fix mentality that goes with a lot of these books and almost a kind of phobia of ‘negativity’.
Justin Isis writes:I don’t know, I don’t really see how that’s juvenile or naive – it seems fine to me, and definitely better than the standard prose of most fantasy writing.
I think the overall scene described is a kind of ‘creative diarrhoea’ in the form of a cross between the cheap whimsy of Terry Pratchet and Heironymous Bosch on auto-pilot. In other words, I’m not sure it really adds up to anything. Also you can tell that it’s written by a child (I mean, someone mentally and emotionally a child), because he refers to the queen figure as a ‘lady’, probably because he had been taught that it was polite to say ‘lady’ rather than ‘woman’, and probably thought he didn’t know this character well enough to refer to her as a ‘woman’. Interestingly, the lady about or to whom he is being polite is dressed up in fetish gear. God, I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day with this (then again, I’d have a field day with a psychiatrist). Also, I basically cringe and want to kill myself when I read anything that is trying to be sexy, and I think this probably is to some extent, and it really shouldn’t. The speech at the end is cliched and silly, too. I suppose it’s partly meant to be, but even if it’s supposed to be a parody, it’s too lazy to become full-on parody. There are other things. To be honest, I think I’m a slow developer or late bloomer or something like that. Even though I started writing early, it’s taken me ages and ages to be able to write stuff that is at all presentable. I mean, I feel like I’m only just beginning to write something that might be called … adult, or something. Then again, I’m aware that a childlike something is very much part of what I do, so I have conflicting urges. On the one hand I want to eliminate it, and on the other, I want to make a virtue of my weakness by making it the central matter of what I do. I suppose, if I’m to be kind to myself with regard to the above extract, I’d say that the rhythm of the language is good, and that this is something I find peculiarly lacking in most contemporary authors.
I like that, actually. There are only minor flaws there, I think, like the double use of ‘as’ in a couple of the sentences.
Justin Isis writes:
I’ve gone on a re-reading spree now. I haven’t looked at some of these things in like five years. Here’s some more:”Grand Arbiter Iaroslav had begun levitating, and had assumed in the air a posture of meditation. The widow and her brood remained behind him, while the chihuahua twin creature gnawed at the restraints that bound it to the wall. It was my assumption that certain combative forms of ethereal character were being undertaken by the Grand Arbiter, though the Easter Bunny remained indifferent as he produced a machine gun and trained it on the chihuahuas before him. As the weapon’s ferocious report sounded, the Easter Bunny remained still as the fusillade all but vivisected the Grand Arbiter, hurling him from the air in a pile of tattered robes and undifferentiated carnage. At the sight of this, the chihuahua pups ran out from their mother and began scavenging through it, fighting their siblings for the choicest charnel scrap to cannibalize. If the Easter Bunny distinguished between ranks he did not show it, as the pups and their mother soon fell before the machine gun’s butchering fire. As the rattling deafened us, we watched as the Easter Bunny expended his clip firing at the still-chained chihuahua twin. The rounds reduced the creature’s front to a single continuous wound, while several stray bullets mangled its ears and ruptured an eye on one of its heads. Though blind and maimed, it continued to gnaw at the chains as the Easter Bunny, with no undue hurry, reloaded. As the Easter Bunny began to fire, it became apparent that his intent went beyond execution to obliteration; round after round continued to jerk the thing’s deteriorating remains into a sickening burlesque of life long after any trace of it had departed.”
Here’s another interview with Niedenthal in which he says that he doesn’t usually do malapropisms. I thought it only fair to post the link here:http://jessandjoshtalk.blogspot.com/2008/06/alec-niedenthal-is-ready-to-take-back.html
OK, I haven’t read through all of the responses, but I needed to say this:Justin,The first excerpt from “The Heist” is almost like an alternate ending to “The Story of the Eye” as written by Peter Jackson while taking a break from making “Bad Taste”.Do you have any plans of working this up to your current standards?
You’re forcing me to revisit old posts with your comments. Don’t know why I was so hard on Niedenthal, though what I said is true. Having said that, he’s merely young and foolish, whereas I am old and foolish. However, it seems he needs wishing luck less than I do. I wish him luck, anyway.I’m not sure Justin will re-read this. I’ll pass on your comment.
Actually, I wasn’t that hard on him.
Sorry Quentin… :worried: Thank you for passing on the comment.
:ninja: :angel: :faint: 😥 :wizard: No need to be sorry.:rip:
Justin Isis writes:John,No plans to revisit it at the moment.
Justin Isis writes:Bad Taste is one of my favorite films thoughIn order to post this comment I had to type in the words “prostate abrupter”; that sounds like some kind of terror weapon, or else a sadistic roman centurion.