fiction files redux discussion

I've been making my way through Larry McMurtry's memoir on books called Books: A Memoir when I came across this line:

...the fact is many writers go on writing after it would have been better for them to stop.

And it got me wondering, what authors should have stopped writing at some point but continued to do so. I can't help but feel thatPhilip Roth, who I enjoy, should have stopped before publishing Everyman.

Does the inability to stop waterdown a once great writers work? It seems interesting to me that McMurtry brings up this point after having written 30 or so novels. Maybe it's something he's noticed about himself?

I see this phenomenon quite often in music and when a once good band continues to release album after album of crap I can't listen to their good albums in the same way.

What about the authors in this group? How do you see this sort of thing playing out for you?

. . . irving has taken a nosedive since his sweet spot . . . his books are all about 200 pages too long, and his characters are getting repetitive along with his themes . . . i'd agree with roth, too . . .

I remember Tom Wolfe getting John Irving angry, along with two other writers, Norman Mailer, and John Updike with his pet names for them, My Three Stooges. I think the three writers were angry at Wolfe because Wolfe wrote about vanity in Bonfires of Vainities, and I believe machismo in Man In Full, themes thought by the other heavy hitters writers as superficial. But I am a rabid fan of Tom Wolfe's artistic portraits of douchebagism.

I don't care about the page length as long as the writer can sustain my attention.

One word: Ego.

That's all it is. And that's all it takes.

well, the circunstances that create a great book is not a mathematical formula. That is why they do not stop. They only know they should have stopped when it is too late and by then, does not matter, so they can try again.

how about they get lazy?

they will stop reading, not writing.

Jcamilo wrote: "they will stop reading, not writing."

Sick burn!

they won't stop because it's their job, and they need the money, and this is the only thing they know? maybe?

i mean, i've complained about it myself, the lesser books from great writers but really? sometimes it's worth it to me to see snatches of brilliance in something perhaps derivative of an author's previous work. and as michael said to me as we stood in the lobby of his hotel: almost every wonderful book has some unutterable audaciously bad sentence in it. :P

p.s. that was what michael said in essence. i'm paraphrasing. :)

They need to pay for college for their grand children.

I worry more about the authors who should have never started. Interesting to bring Wolfe into this discussion, since there are many patches of his work that I would prefer disappear, but even the crotchety older stuff has its moments.

I do think there is a problem for authors, once they have become successful in the way Irving has: can editors tell them what is and is not working in an MS? If you know that to some extent sales will be bulletproof, what does motivation does an editor or publisher have to tell them no? Also our perceptions about writing can be very fluid, so there can be a discussion about the effect of a passage or an idea that ultimately boils down to taste, not grammar or syntax. The expression of art, ultimately, resides with the individual, not the entity (publisher or museum) that is facilitating the work. So if a writer starts to chug, well, then they probably are not their best reader. I wouldn't hold it against someone, though. It is hard enough to write something, let alone get it published. And Roth, for one, still seems to have things to say, even if they won't match his highs.

Carlos Fuentes continues to publish new work, and the last 4 or 5 have been subpar. I keep reading them, though, because there is always a chance that he'll come out with something that's brilliant, and that makes it worth it to me as a reader, and probably makes it worthwhile to him as a writer, too.

Dan wrote: "And it got me wondering, what authors should have stopped writing at some point but continued to do so..."

In the science fiction genre an author who has reached such a dire point is described as suffering from the Brain Eater Syndrome. The classic example is Robert Heinlein, but he has partisans who will defend even a bizarre novel like The Number of the Beast as if it were a brilliant jeu d'esprit.

To each his own poison.

. . . adrian!

I remember reading The Number of the Beast. I had a hard time understanding what the hell it was supposed to be about. Far as I remember, it was about two free thinking couples flying on a space ship in a void.

Patrick wrote: "I remember reading The Number of the Beast. I had a hard time understanding what the hell it was supposed to be about. Far as I remember, it was about two free thinking couples flying on a space sh..."

That's the one. The characters spent pages & pages discussing who would alternately serve as captain of the space vessel. The females also had a morbid fear that their unwashed flesh would repulse the males.

I don't know the details, but I believe that before writing his final works Heinlein had some type of health crisis or surgical procedure that temporarily interrupted the blood flow to his brain. Perhaps it's an achievement that he completed the novels and they have a coherent structure.

An analogous case, still in the science fiction genre, might be Keith Laumer. He suffered a severe stroke but eventually returned to writing. The post-stroke fiction doesn't get reprinted as often as his earlier work.

Adrian! You know I couldn't read science fiction if you held a gun to my head, but I saw your name, so I stopped by to say hello.

Yer Pal,
Smartykate

Martha wrote: "Adrian! You know I couldn't read science fiction if you held a gun to my head, but I saw your name, so I stopped by to say hello.

Yer Pal,
Smartykate"

I was just released from a three-month stint in a clinic where semi-mad scientists experimented on my kidneys, so I currently have a science-fictional view of life.

I think you might enjoy reading Clifford Simak or Philip K. Dick. Your beloved Eudora Welty once said, "Dick makes me feverish. Oh, yes indeed!"

I think it was Eudora Welty. Maybe it was Xaviera Hollander. I get those two confused all the time.

Honestly, if those white-coated fuckers could figure out what to do with your kidneys, I would read the entire Philip K. Dick canon. So, so happy you are back - maybe we could propose a joint read of "The Optimist's Daughter" and "The Happy Hooker." I can already envision several overarching themes.