Oh, Oh, Love Stories Of Nemeses?

Thought I'd go ahead and scribe a quick blogpost. Thought I'd scribe it without being entirely sure of what the word "scribe" means. I know that a scribe was typically a writer of things. What sorts of things? No one knows! it's lost to history. It's lost to the sands of time.

So we move on, wondering.

The Nervous Breakdown had a pretty interesting article up the other day. It was about Joshua Ferris, more or less. It was about a writer of lesser notoriety dealing with the fact that Joshua Ferris, "Josh," had gone on to some significant authorial acclaim. That's the most superficial rundown I can think of for expressing the substance of the article, entitled "Et tu, Nemesis?". Seriously, follow the link I've provided, because I believe it's a lot more than just that, those paltry words I've used to sum it up.

I think what's most interesting about the article is the way in which its author, Abby Mims, gets to the heart of the that you cannot be a hero in your own home, because everybody knows you. They know that you leave the seat up after (or -- worse -- down during) your using the toilet (this is a very male-centric portion of the analogy, an analogy to avoid all possible confusion, is describing micturition). Joshua Ferris, acclaimed National Book Award Nominee and The New Yorker Top Twenty Under Forty recipient, did not get along with all of his peers in his college MFA program at UC-Irvine.

My initial opinion of Ferris' writing was very enthusiastic. "Then We Came To The End" is a very good, maybe great, novel. I've been less impressed by his short stories since that impressive debut. All of this is to say, I have mixed feelings about him as a writer. And truthfully I don't want this post to become all about one writer's quasi-antagonistic relationship with a now famous author. I think it's more useful as a study of human nature, and how humans operate in the occluded space of a graduate creative writing program (in part because I still entertain some small desire to enroll in one, at some intangible point).

Take a look at the article. I'm curious to hear thoughts. It's certainly a piece that inspires a lot of strongly felt reactions.

Top 20 Under 40: A Play by Play Update Deal

I haven't posted in a few days BUT I've wanted to, so in lieu of a fully fleshed out review or whatever else I normally do, I've decided to blog a bit about the Top 20 Under 40 New Yorker Lit Edition I've recently gotten my grubby hands on, smudging the pages and such. (--And yes, the preceding was a very long overwrought sentence. Would you expect any better from me? I should hope not, not by now. After all we've been through.)

And so on,

Look, I don't want to say that I hate Jonathan Safran Foer. I have several friends who are great fans of his work. And that might be the same as saying something like, "I have a lot of gay friends" and then unloading some seriously homophobic remark. But anyway, what's the deal, huh? Does his style strike anyone else as maybe a smidgen tediously bull-shitty? I confess I've only ever read the opening pages to "Everything is Illuminated" and his latest New Yorker entry, "Here We Aren't, So Quickly." But how am I supposed to feel about lines like: "We went to Tobey Pond every year until we didn't"? And it would be one thing if the story were told in a way that glossed over an unspectacular line or two, but in this one it seems to revel in them. We're all allowed to be inventive with prose, skilled writers like Safran Foer especially, but I've not recently found inventiveness that was this boring. That is possibly my fault, though.

Other than Safran Foer the only other New Yorker Top 20 Under 40 I've read is Joshua Ferris' "The Pilot" -- which I liked in certain ways, especially with regard to the dithering of the main character, who wrestled with the uncertain question of whether he was truly invited to a party or not. Without giving anything away, I'll just say my attitude is that the ending sort of fell flat when there were a lot of possibilities that might have made for a more climactic conclusion. Doesn't quite live up to his last New Yorker short story, "The Valetudinarian."