I just don't get . . .

[Michael]

Hi everyone,

We had a discussion pop up that was started when talking about Michael Cisco. Someone (can't take credit for the idea myself) had suggested a thread about writers we just don't get or have a very hard time getting. I thought I'd expand on it.

So, the question is: what writer/artist/musician (or any other aesthetic I may have missed) did you

A) really not get until some later time (and was there anything that helped you to "get it")

B) really not get, and still do not get, but feel there is something to them

C) really not get, and feel pretty confident that, yup, there's nothing there to get.

Hope it's okay if I get started. Here's mine

A) Herman Melville - I read Moby Dick and thought it was crap. Then, I read it again and thought it was tolerable. Then, I read the Piazza Tales and somehow after that Moby Dick and the rest of Melville clicked. Now I think he's probably one of the five best writers who ever put pen to paper. For me, he had a sleeper effect, like Zen. All of a sudden, BAM there it was. Weird.
An artist I never got til later was Picasso. It wasn't til I looked at his early works, and that, for some reason, helped his later, cubist, pieces click for me.

B) Still don't get Thomas Pynchon. Sorry, I REALLY feel there's something there but can't seem to break through the barrier.
The artist like this for me is Jackson Pollock. I may be entirely wrong and he may be full of it as an artist but I feel there's something there. Used to think he was in category C until I saw some of his early works at the San Francisco MOMA and thought it was brilliant. Now I'm trying to get him but can't.

C) Jane Austen. Sorry. I know I'll get flack for that but I have read every novel she wrote and the kindest thing I can say is she is the greatest writer who ever wrote about nothing. The only novel I can stand is Northanger Abbey. As a technician, she can WRITE, but God, if she hadn't written the equivalent of Laguna Beach in the 19th century she would have been awesome.
Another writer, and I say this one to see if anyone can help me, is Lautremont. Could never, ever get Maldoror no matter how hard I tried. REALLY gave it an effort and couldn't see anything in it. Feel, at this point, there isn't anything and hope I'm wrong about this one.

[DoktorH]

there's a few writers where I just don't get the appeal. Neal stephenson, with the exception of Anathem. Dr Who. A lot of Mythos writers struck me as doing lovecraft-knockoff rather than anything original with it, which I found off-putting to the point where I didn't touch non-lovecraft weird fiction for years (it was Ligotti what brought me back, and then i stuck around for Barron and Pulver so far, and this forum has given me the names of more I might like). anything with elves and dwarves and whatnot that isn't Discworld (tolkien especially). Phillip K Dick. I just don't enjoy the things and don't see anything in them to enjoy.

There's another side to this, of course. things I get that others may not. which include... My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, American Psycho, slasher movies

[ChildofOldLeech]

-One of the writers whom I couldn't appreciate upon a first reading was Sarban; in my early teens I found Ringstones in a box of paperback gothics at my grandmother's house, and despite being excited to find a title from Stephen King's list of recommendations from Danse Macabre, the subtle nuances of the book was such that it didn't seem like a horror novel at all. It was only years later after returning to weird fiction that I was able to appreciate Sarban's mastery of understatement and suggestion, and now regard Ringstones as the masterpiece of an underappreciated genius. Robert Aickman took me quite a while to come along to as well, although he's still one of those authors I have more appreciation rather than adulteration for.
-Thomas Bernhard is someone whose books I have read , appreciated and wish I enjoyed more; I quite like some of his black humor and misanthropic tone, but in terms of style his writing just comes across as flat and unengaging to me -too minimal, perhaps?
- One writer I just have no use for is James Joyce; his erudition notwithstanding, his writing comes across at best as spot-the-reference game playing, at worst, intellectual masturbation. Brian Lumley has done a few entertaining short stories, but in general strikes as the living representation of mediocrity in horror, and of the worst tendencies of Mythos fiction. Ayn Rand, because I am not an egomaniacal sociopath. Also, Hemingway, Graham Greene, Pound, and a bunch of 'canonized' writers.

[MadsPLP]

Quote Originally Posted by ChildofOldLeech

-Thomas Bernhard is someone whose books I have read , appreciated and wish I enjoyed more; I quite like some of his black humor and misanthropic tone, but in terms of style his writing just comes across as flat and unengaging to me -too minimal, perhaps? - One writer I just have no use for is James Joyce; his erudition notwithstanding, his writing comes across at best as spot-the-reference game playing, at worst, intellectual masturbation.

1) Regarding Thomas Bernhard, I have read some of his works in Danish translation and some of his works in English translations. In general, and this is not born out of any national pride on my behalf, I think the Danish translations work much better. I don't think this i only due to the fact that Danish is much closer to German than English is, but possibly due to an Anglo-American tendency to prefer so-called "readibility" over "faithfulness". In Danish, at least, his prose, though repetitious (which it is) is highly musical, but I sometimes lack this in the English translations that I've read.

2) While I think this is a criticism that can be labelled at Finnegan's Wake and, to a lesser degree, Ulysses (though I doubt I would agree, at least not regarding the latter), I certainly don't see how this could be correct of Joyce's work taken as a whole - it seems to me a very strange claim when thinking of Portrait of the Artist... and Dubliners, both of which are very far from so-called intellectual masturbation.

Oh, yes ... Lumley ... never understood any of the praise for him, though I doubt much praise is coming in his direction these day. If there is, I'll be happy to continue to be kept in ignorance about it.

[Viva June]

a) M. R. James. Read a few stories, found them to be quite boring, couldn't care less about the misfortunes of gentleman scholars who take extended vacations in the Alps just to steal things from far-flung abbeys. Then I read them again, or I read some other ones, and I began to notice the attention James gives to details, such as how a ghost's nails may continue to grow in death and after, and the sense of crafted folklore, of realistic supernaturalism, so to speak, which pervades his work.

b) Not sure about this category.

c) Lovecraft.

[Joel]

a) Clark Ashton Smith – though actually I had an initial adolescent positive reaction based on seeing him as a Lovecraft surrogate. Then, for about a decade, I thought his work was stilted and lifeless. Coming back to him in my thirties I began to see the erotic and anti-clerical subtext and was duly impressed.

b) Jonathan Aycliffe – a good ghost story writer in formal terms but his reliance on the excessively gory payoff has disappointed me twice and I'm reluctant to give him another chance. Friends with good taste have told me I'm missing out, so one day I'll try again. Moral: if you build up a literary ghost story you need a denoument that is cerebral and complex, as in Leiber's longer stories, not one that says "OK, you've read the quiet stuff, here are some entrails as your reward."

c) H.R. Wakefield – and it's maybe not that I don't get him, rather that it isn't worth climbing over the snobbery, misogyny and cardboard characterisation to get to the undeniably impressive weird conclusion. It's like being trapped in a drinking club with a retired colonel who wants to share his opinion of 'women' with you. Moral: if you have a literary ghost story to tell you have to do so with intelligence and dignity from first to last, not just when you feel like it.

[MetaMortician]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

It's important not to confuse a nation's culture with its history. They are very different. As Shaw said, "We judge a criminal by his lowest moments, an artist by his highest." Think of culture as the Artist. Culture refers to a shared (implied) exposure to and love for the refinements of art; music, painting, literature. Even manners are considered a part of culture. But a nation's history is different. No one considers slavery as an episode of American culture; that would be the criminal at his lowest point. It's not really difficult to value one's culture if you realize its a separate thing from History..

This is all very strange. I am not quite sure that I am in any way obligated to esteem any culture or any history, including my own. The human condition seems to me a vast theatre of abject horror.

But to the original post:

A) Emily Dickinson - My cursory readings of her work left me feeling that the poems were merely lonely ramblings about birds and flowers and butterflies from a puritan spinster.

Not so now. Reading her through semiotic spectacles has drawn me into her otherworldly and thoroughly sorcerizing use of language.


B) Jorges Luis Borges - I want to want to like it, but I simply lack the coordinates to navigate many of his surreal worlds.


C) My list it too vast for this space. And to scornfully deride them by name would be pathetically impolitic given my unpublished status.

[Druidic]

I don't think Joshi is an Anglophobe. He reveres Blackwood as the Best, has great enthusiasm for Campbell. I believe Mark Samuels is in a Joshi anthology. Joshi, from what I've heard, is a very fair guy. My only problem with him has always been his attitude toward August Derleth.

[Robin Davies]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

I don't think Joshi is an Anglophobe. He reveres Blackwood as the Best.

Well I did specify "recent" writers and I wasn't being entirely serious - just reacting with surprise that he could be called an "Anglophile". As a major Blackwood fan I was absolutely delighted with Joshi's glowing assessment of the great man in The Weird Tale.

[Michael]

Really interesting responses so far; thanks everyone for your input. Thought I'd make sure to give credit where credit's due; bendk had the original idea for this thread on the Centipede thread. Thanks!