Customer Reviews

It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature: A Novella and Stories

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Yikes, Who wants to be the first to review a book but well, I'm here. I stumbled upon this book from a web bookmark in the library for Fiction Collective. Or rather FC2. I was excited. What's the state of this sort of fiction? New York. The writer has lots of credentials. Her back cover pose wreaks of I'm discussing Proust and you're not.

I haven't liked this sort of prose since Lish chopped Carver up years ago. His sort of inflated concept of word importance to the establishment of voice has left a legacy of writers who struggle (by non struggling) to define a sort of artsy cleverness instead of substance that leaves very little, rarely even a residue. (And these writers always mention how important a word in its proper place is. As if they know. Have tea with Lutz and both of you can chew on the ends of your glasses together as you lament this state of modern fiction...wasn't Jonathan's book lovely? Well, no, I'm not finished with it yet...)

I would expect, as I read the blurbs of the writers who endorsed this writer, there is a sort of cult of writers around this area of meta fiction who define humor as a nose upturned and a bit of a smirk, instead of an outright laugh.

I didn't laugh out loud once. (Where's Brautigan when you need him?)

I would suspect that this collective of writers who picked this book for publication are one, no better than her, and also deathly afraid of making a mistake in their choices. This was a safe choice. She has all the appropriate supporters, previous publications. We made the right decisions right? People just don't read fiction anymore...It has nothing to do with my dull prose, I mean, her dull prose...

I didn't find anything in these pages. A stretch for cleverness on every perfect line. The words might not be out of place but I felt like I was watching someone arrange an imaginary coffee table with bad poetry snippets. In anticipation of a 'reading'.

fiction isn't dead completely, but this is another nail.