What does /lit/ think of McElroy? What can I expect from this book?

Where did all this interest in McElroy of late come from?

>>9527415
Me. McElroy poster. All you have to do is post the name of an author a bunch of times and it gets into people's heads without them even noticing. It's quite nifty.

>>9527415
Visited his interview yesterday.

>>9527425
better than the Witzposter.
or the Tolstoy is a rapist poster.

>>9527415
He was memed hard about a year or so ago. He's just the flavor of the month. Next month maybe it'll be Gaddis again, or Gass, or maybe even John Hawkes.

>>9527425

Good, keep it up.

t. interested party

>>9527474
I am also witz poster lmao and the instructions poster rofl. I used to be Gass poster.

>>9527480
I won't let my father down this time.

>>9527476
But the trouble with this kind of dismissal re: the changeable and somewhat superficial favors of /lit/, what's in, what's out, what has been tested and tempered by abiding assent, what is merely a "forced meme," is that actual questions of quality and relevance devolve into contrarianism, into this gotchyaism or tu quoque, where you somehow win by pointing out that something is, in a sense, a meme. I will tell you that whether or not something is being spammed on /lit/ is no metric of its value, literary or otherwise. Instead, I suggest, do what people do, what real people do in real life. I have this friend—a bit autistic, clinically diagnosed—with a rare and authentic passion for literature. I read, not nearly as widely or deeply as him, and so when he has a suggestion I listen up. If sometimes he fails, misreads my tastes and interests, it is only because his interests are so broad. But generally because he actually attends to what I'm saying, to my opinions, he gives me good recs. And even when I balk he continues because he has this passion, this lost knowledge of the transformative and quietistic power of literature, and a genuine urge to impart this to those he cares about. He told me to read Theroux, to read McElroy. And though it took me about a year I did it, got around to it, and I will be forever grateful.

>>9527497
oho, well, i just so happen to be the tolstoy slave rapist poster. so you're in good company.

>>9527518

Any other good autist buddy recs?

>>9527408
I really enjoyed ancient history. It was captivating. I couldn't tell whether Cy was actually responsible for doms death or not. The stories he told made him seem like a good person but what he's doing is wrong. The ambiguity was masterful. I also loved how mcelroy played with time in the novel. One of the ways he manages to put the relationality of multiruptive bodies is by taking the synchronic aspect of the time (which also makes for some tough reading experience) - "Into the regular arc of my legible but distinctive hand so many rates of time collapse: a month in a phrase, interruptions to raid the icebox or listen, a Fred-Eagled hour in three long pages, four summers in the one word 'quarry,' and now a nearly instant thirty-word response to thirty seconds. Collapse into paraphase."

>>9527534
Here is what he has been reading in the past year or so (haven't read all of it):

>Paul Metcalf (descendant of Melville, does these travel writing pastiche things, deals heavily with history)
>Novel Explosives (some newish novel)
>Guy Davenport
>Robert Creeley
>Robert Walser
>W.G. Sebald (calls him a European Metcalf)
>Shakespeare's Perjured Eye (book using Lacanian principles to analyze the sonnets)
>Spinoza
>Edmund Spenser
>Roger Penrose
>Tom Stoppard
>Deleuze
>Wallace Stevens

But really we're only 22 and he's read probably thousands of books, it's unreal

>>9527518
Alexander Theroux? I can't find his book. I will order it eventually.

>>9527577

you're lucky to know such a voracious reader

>>9527578
Yeah he's got a few. My friend leant them to me and I've since gotten some from university libraries. Darconville's Cat is just this wonderfully humane examination of love and hate and yet simultaneously high Nabokovian satire.

>>9527586
I know it. And it's just like a total throwback—he practically speaks in prose, and yet completely relatably. Really has improved me as a reader and a person generally

>>9527408
I'm 100 pages into it right now. It's amazing. The way he plays with time is great; at times I feel like I'm staring at a mosaic rather than reading a story. Great prose, too - very dense, but pretty easy to get hold of after the first couple chapters.

>>9527577
You read Creeley's poetry or his prose fiction? I love his poetry. I might suggest checking out Charles Olson, starting with his essay Projective Verse. His poetry isn't great a lot of the time but his ideas are exceptionally interesting. Creeley and Olson were great friends. The influence Olson has had and continues to have is impressive. If you can find it, read "The Thing Was Moving".
You should check out Thomas Bernhard if you haven't already. Big time influence on WG Sebald. They're both two of my favorite prose writers.

>>9527497
>I used to be Gass poster.

Come back

>>9527605
Haven't read Creeley but I have read some other Black Mountain poets. Definitely will get to him soon. I love Sebald. I actually came to him through Bernhard, by way of Gaddis. I would definitely exhort you to read Metcalf, especially Genoa.

>>9527607
He no longer needs me my child.

Can't wait for water

>>9529559
are there any articles about this? when i google it all i ever find is random tweets and such