#641
Post rating: ~
iirc I wrote things for both books but the reviews were pretty superficial and mostly hinged on how neat it was to read them on the L or w/e.

and i think i gave both 5 stars? which looks bad on amazon when your dumb looking self published book only has one review and its 5 stars cause ppl automatically think "oh thanks for the rec, jonh christy's mom."

so i will give this new one a 4 at most and try to write something considered...
#642
Post rating: ~
or call you a rapist i guess if thats what you want
#643
Post rating: ~
yeah U did. thanks. i dont really care what goes in there as long as it's legit, i guess?
#644
Post rating: +

Impper posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Impper posted:
last time i put a book here i gave it to 30 or so people and asked for reviews, if possible, since i didnt care about the piddling amount of money, but would have liked reviews. i got 0 reviews that shit was kewL
I’m sorry I’m lazy Impz, I just don’t know how to do like, proper criticism and review.

I did actually buy F&D though.
that is not exactly the point of an amazon review. it is ostensibly a conversation with other customers more than literary criticism. i got a review on fuck and destroy that alleged that i'm a rapist with no writing ability and since then i've sold a lot more books than i was before that one.



You're right, I was lazy. Late, but i've just submitted this for publishing:

"What does it mean to be a man in today’s society? What does it mean to be young? It’s a question that’s often asked, and usually answered with a torrent of waffling…equivocation…guilt. At worst a command for castration or hysterectomy, at best a goal achieved through consumption and capitalist-imposed ritual.

Author John “Christ” Christy not only cuts out the middleman, he slays him from throat to navel and tosses his corpse into an abandoned south-side lot.

I will say that this is the best American novel I’ve read in a long time. Most American writers dream of nothing more than a spot on the NYT best-sellers list and a sticker from Oprah, and they craft their novels accordingly. Christy doesn’t engage in this obfuscatory game, the folksy nonsense likely to get you a seat opposite Garrison Keilor.

Instead what we have are the story of three lost young people. John, an office worker and twentysomething who lives his life in a daze with dreams and goals that are unobtainable in the modern paradigm. April is a richly drawn bipolar wildchild who offers him everything he is not. Thrown into this dynamic is Mel, John’s room-mate and the most tenderly, richly drawn character of them all.

Together they navigate the anti-human dystopia of the modern metropolis in the last days of the dying West. It’s hard to escape the deadening pulse of individualism but, bouncing and joining like molecules, they attempt to forge what Houllebecq called the “little shared spaces of subjectivity”, the pockets of love and entanglement that elevate us beyond our stultifying environments.

I was gripped. If you are a young thinking man you will love this book. If you are a young woman who wishes to understand why your lover or boyfriend so often has that distant, absent look in his eyes, you will find it rewarding indeed.

It is controversial, it does not pull punches. At times it is bleak but it is always compelling. Since when was literature supposed to be safe? If you want to fit in, seem normal, then go and read Franzen. If you want to Fuck and Destroy, please read this book. You will not be disappointed. "

#645
Post rating: ~
Got rejected because of the name of the novel lol: i redid it, fixed some typos, submitted it
#646
Post rating: ~
aaww, thanks, that's a really good review. but they will reject it because you used the word Fuck, interestingly enough.

you can't use *s either to masquerade the word. it's funny and ridiculous, but alas. pretty sure you can submit it again without the fuck...
#647
Post rating: ~

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

Got rejected because of the name of the novel lol: i redid it, fixed some typos, submitted it

ah, beat me to the punch. loL

#648
Post rating: ~
what a bizzarrerie that u asked what does it mean to be a man in today's society. the name/working title of the book i'm writing now is How to be a Man

it's an intensely strange book
#649
Post rating: ~
no worries dude, it was a good book, i should have written something up a while ago.
#650
Post rating: ~
what's the title to the french one
#651
Post rating: ~

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

no worries dude, it was a good book, i should have written something up a while ago.

yeah. the feeling of gratitude for someone writing a review seems like some kind of a symptom of how writers are treated in the culture, or at least writers of my ilk. if i did not feel grateful i would probably be successful. that seems to be how it works

#652
Post rating: ~

tentativelurkeraccount posted:

what's the title to the french one

a french book

#653
Post rating: ~

Impper posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
no worries dude, it was a good book, i should have written something up a while ago.
yeah. the feeling of gratitude for someone writing a review seems like some kind of a symptom of how writers are treated in the culture, or at least writers of my ilk. if i did not feel grateful i would probably be successful. that seems to be how it works



Was there ever a writer who truly, genuinely didn't feel gratitude at people appreciating their work?

#654
Post rating: ~
i think i'm thinking of the sort of writers who biliously reject praise, reviews, criticism, and even appreciation, usually from a kind of privilege or entitlement that's generally reserved today for Real Artists, and certain writers like franzen for instance, i heard delillo acts like that too, and i'm sure a lot more are like that.
#655
Post rating: ~
I'm certain that most of that is just an act. There's a huge difference between rejecting the fawning of the press and establishment and being genuinely indifferent to a normal reader who just appreciates their work.

why else would they publish?
#656
Post rating: ~
so they can afford rent boys?
#657
Post rating: ~
also i'm reading back through this thread to get some idea how to format what i'm writing: ken, your zarathura in a nursing home thing was fantastic lol
#658
Post rating: ~

EmanuelaOrlandi posted:

so they can afford rent boys?



degenerates like that don't need money to fuck boys, they're the kind of vulgar rotted bohemians who can manage to find kid-dick anywhere at any time.

#659
Kurdt
Post rating: ~

Impper posted:

i's releasing a new novel soon. im not giving any away, i guess i don't expect anyone to buy it either. O well. i'm writing another one too

i celebrate youre entire catalogue

#660
[account deactivated]
#661
Kurdt
Post rating: ~
my lifes ambition is to find a 3 second yourtube clip of paulie walnuts saying "dont get cunty", suitable for embedding
#662
Post rating: ~

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

I'm certain that most of that is just an act. There's a huge difference between rejecting the fawning of the press and establishment and being genuinely indifferent to a normal reader who just appreciates their work.

why else would they publish?

i think you're right. i had something to say about this but i forgot.

#663
[account deactivated]
#664
[account deactivated]
#665
Post rating: ~
delillo's thing isnt quite like franzen crying about the oprah sticker on his book. imo.

wait....what....what's this?

it's tom....he's back from the grave....he says he has a ghostly message for us....it's a william gaddis quote....let's listen....

This passion for wanting to meet the latest poet, shake hands with the latest novelist, get hold of the latest painter, devour ... what is it? What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he's done his work? What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.



#666
[account deactivated]
#667
Post rating: ~
i dont like that gaddis quote
#668
[account deactivated]
#669
Post rating: +
i think it's fair.....that sort of thing is why kurt cobain killed himself, or at least it created the frayed conditions in which courtney could kill him
#670
[account deactivated]
#671
Post rating: +
Ok so I wrote this dumb thing, it's kinda part of a larger dumber idea and it would be cool if some of my 'zzoner pals read it and gave me some tips: subject matter, characters, prose, structure, ideological Incorrectness, whatever:

___________________________________________________________


"My family came over on the very very first tanker you know, the Kalamata."

She paused to sip her tea and tuck a lock of hair under her scarf. There was nobody else in the cafe now.

"We were lucky that we lived near the port; my dad worked there and knew people who could pull some strings. It was before the poison really started flowing down the river and most people had convinced themselves that it was all still a long way away. Three of our ships left together and the original plan was to go to Dubai but they quickly made it clear they didn't want us. In fact, they were trying to send our nationals back if you can believe it?"

I nodded. I could.

"I don't remember much of the trip, I was pretty young. Our beds were near the engine room and it was always stifling hot. Most of the other passengers were good people and helped each other out....not everyone though. My parents were constantly trying to stop my brother and I going up on the deck too much, especially to the front of the ship. I didn't really see anything but i knew that bad things happened there. People would go up there and come back with that idiotic opium look on their face. Occasionally a child would run below deck crying and their fathers and uncles would grab machetes and storm off while the women tried to distract us. Over the next few days you'd notice that there was one person or another you didn't see around anymore, i suppose they just went over the side..."

She trailed off for a few moments before catching her train of thought

"But like i said, most people were good. They were exhausted and frightened, tempers flared, but we all shared food and took turns watching over the younger children. We spent five months on that ship though, steaming slowly through the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, the Pacific. Nobody wanted to know about us. Whenever we got anywhere in the vicinity of a port a detachment of fighter jets would repeatedly swoop frighteningly low over the deck, it sent the little ones crazy and the message was pretty clear. I was worried about my brother; after a while he stopped eating and would wet his bed at night. I was growing tired and cynical. You can imagine how ecstatic I was when i learnt that we had found somewhere that would take us. I knew very little about this country, just that it would be solid, stable land; somewhere my brother and I could walk around without running into pipes and pylons and obnoxious rust-orange livery; Maersk...I grew to hate that word. I spent three hours praying to God to thank him and urged him to continue looking after us. Several days later I was down below doing laundry when a man ran in yelling that we had arrived. I rushed up on deck with my brother, we were crushed up against the railing and several people nearly fell through. I held on tight to him.

"It was sunset and stretching out in front of us was a long, low coast. Yellow beaches rose up into rocky cliffs and back down to more beaches. There were huge swathes of green, I had never seen so many trees before. Tall buildings were dotted around but most of what we could see of the city sat low above the ground, I could just make out the shapes of the houses. I couldn't stop smiling, it was the happiest I had ever been in my life. My father appeared next to me and squeezed my hand so tightly it hurt, but I didn't mind. He lent down and kissed me on the cheek and I beamed at him. I was proud that he had done this for us; the adults only allowed us to hear little fragments of what was happening back home but I could tell from their whispers and faces that it was very bad. As we approached the gap between two headlands, i looked up to my right and saw hundreds of people standing on the cliff. I start waving at them and yelling; "Assalam-u-alaikum! Assalam-u-alaikum!"

My body language must have betrayed me as she abruptly stopped speaking. I was looking down and scratching the back of my wrist.

"What is it?" she asked, her tone quieter and firmer than before. I lit a cigarette and sighed.

"I was up there", I confessed after a moment's silence.

She was taken aback. This was clearly a personal, formative story and the notion that I had been present for it must have been disconcerting. A whiff of voyeurism seemed to waft over the table. I drew deep on my cigarette and fidgeted with my wrist again.

"Well?" she said.

"Well what" I replied, a touch defensively, "Like I said I was there, but you go on..."

She leant forward inquisitively. "No come on, tell me what happened, I'm not going to judge you or anything.”

Doubtful...but we'd only just met and she was clearly opening up to me, it would be churlish to leave her hanging in the breeze. I took another drag of my cigarette and started talking.

"I think it was late autumn right? April or May, it was still pretty warm. I had a friend who lived in Manly and we walked up to North Head together, it was all over the news. I wasn't really political and had no strong feelings on the matter one way or another, but the way we were raised we didn't exactly have much in the way of community events; religious gatherings, public hangings...shit like that."

She narrowed her eyes. I considered making a comment about gallows humour but decided against it.

“There were hundreds of people walking up the hill. Some were locals but i could see when i looked behind me that ferries were disgorging many more from other parts of the city. There were flags and babies in prams, I remember a lot of people wearing white t-shirts. Many of them were struggling with the steep incline, stopping every fifty metres or so to bend over with their hands on their knees, catching their breath. A boy of about eight dropped his ice cream and was slapped by his mother. There were a lot of young people as well, in high spirits. It was a carnival sort of atmsphere, like they were going to a Test match or something. Get enough people out on the street with the same sort of mindset and a certain electricity forms you know? I'm sure you've seen it before..”

She nodded.

"Anyway we made it to the top of the plateau. There's only one way in and the narrow loop road was jammed, entirely gridlocked. Little clusters of people were sitting with beer coolers and blankets. Some far-sighted entrepreneurs had arrived early and were flogging burgers and sandwiches from their back of their trucks. I saw men pissing against a line of shrubs, chatting to each other or yelling across to the food line for their mates to grab them a sausage. Behind another line of small trees was where the women were urinating. They didn't have any pretenses about covering themselves. I remember one of them, her pale arse covered in goosebumps as a torrent of piss splashed onto the ground. Her daughter had run off into the bushes and she was calling her name, Jaycee i think it was. I felt embarrassed and all of a sudden fatigued washed over me. I didn't want to ruin my day so i tried to rationalize it; apparently it's pretty normal in France...."

She wrinkled her nose with distaste.

"Yeah well, exactly" i continued. "My friend and I mucked about for a while and got something to eat, it was about four when we first saw the ships and I was on my way to getting pretty drunk. We had brought a bottle of Jack Daniels and were getting through it pretty quickly. A wiry little ratfaced guy sold us a few MDMA caps and we swallowed them down with the spirits. I noticed that a few police were present but they were just hanging around, joking with the crowd. The food had run out by now but the guys in the pick-ups and utes were now selling beers from an endless supply of kegs, I have no idea where they kept coming from. People were yelling and screaming at the ship which was still a couple of miles away: Fuck off!.....this is Australia!.....turn around cunts!....go home..... raghead terrorists!. A good call got a round of laughs and everyone was trying to outdo each other. I remember laughing and formulating a string of epithets before bellowing it out into the wind. A lot of people cracked up, some big guy slapped me on the back and called me a legend. The sea breeze was warm and I felt good...."

I realized I was looking at my feet and raised my eyes to meet hers, embarrassed. Her face didn't give much away. She didn't seem angry but she certainly wasn't smiling.

"It was dark by the time your ship passed beneath the cliff. My capsule had well and truly come on and my vision was getting fuzzier. My friend was wearing one of those yellow construction helmets he’d found somewhere .There was some kind of dancey music playing; Black Eyed Peas or some shit like that. People were howling now, picking up stones and chunks of sandstone and hurling them off into the blackness while others began lighting fireworks; they soared into the air in a in a dozen different trajectories“

"I remember that", she said. "A few of them flew right above us and exploded. I was scared by the noise but it was beautiful".

"Well if there's one thing this city does well it's fireworks.....although I'm pretty sure they were meant to hit you." I hazarded a weak smile and received one in return. Glancing at her hands, i saw that her nails were painted a deep burgundy.

“There was so much energy in the air. Groups of louts worked frantically to set up their little armouries in the best spots; "Nah bro put the Master-Blaster over here" or "Oi go get Shane he's got the lighter! He went off with that chick with the nose", stuff like that. The temperature was perfect, the texture of the air was like being immersed in a warm bath; It never really gets cold there right on the edge of the sea. We were dancing, passing around joints. Someone cut the music and after a few jeers we were easily roused for a deafening chorus of "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!, OI! OI! OI!"...everything around me was crackling with static. One guy stood at the edge of the cliff, unshaven with a bulky jacket, shorts and crocs on his feet. He pulled something from a sportsbag and the people around him started cheering. The sky was pitch black at this point and between the lights and the stuff i’d swallowed I couldn't focus properly. Only when he fired the first round did I realize that it was a rifle....”

She wore a wounded expression and I flinched.

"He was aiming vaguely at the ship but i doubt he hit it" I said, as if this excused anything. "He let off a bunch more rounds; ten, maybe twelve. The noise was impossibly loud and each time he pulled the trigger the drugs surged further and deeper into my extremities; my limbs were tingling. The cops had heard the shots and several of them started running up towards us. They shouted at him to drop the gun and the commotion kicked up a gear, equal parts booing and cheering. A beautiful dizziness filled my head. The cops shouted again and this time the guy must have heard something because he started to swing around, the rifle still in his hands. I heard a shout: “TAZER! TAZER!” and they fired it pretty much immediately. As the darts buried into his chest the rifle flew from his hands and off the cliff. He collapsed and nearly went over with it. Two of the cops dragged him back from the edge and tazed him again repeatedly on the ground; Drive-Stun Mode is what they call it. He was convulsing and white froth was forming at the edge of his mouth. Some sections of the crowd had turned on the police and three of them were furiously using their pepper spray to keep them back; one had a hand on his glock. A dude with a bandana and an extremely hairy chest was screaming about how dare they do that to a patriot, they should be out stopping muslims from raping women, they were traitors; his eyes were wide and his voice boomed with the kind of infantile sincerity you only ever hear from a drunk or a revolutionary. But all this was happening over to the side of the wider throng, an isolated disturbance is probably what the police spokesman would call it on TV the day afterwards. Someone must have restarted the music; i clearly recall the gunman being dragged away in a chokehold to the strains of Dee-Lite’s Groove is in the Heart. I lost track of him when a fat drunk girl came up from nowhere and kissed me on the mouth. She tasted like gin and sweat and we made out for a while before her friends dragged her away; I fell over and then ran into the bush, I forget why.

"I lost track of time and don’t remember much in the couple of hours after that, At some point I started to feel sick. I called my friend but there was no reception so I decided to leave. As I made my way back through the mass of people the wind suddenly strengthened and everything became bright. I looked up to see a couple of helicopters passing low above us. I tried to see whether they belonged to the Police or some TV news crew and became agitated when I couldn’t, I’m not sure why it was so important to me. They swept their spotlights over the area and I could make out quick little glimpses of what was happening. A couple of guys were fighting, next to them a girl was lying on the grass, not moving. Another group of guys had their shirts off, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, trying with all their might to sing over the din of the helicopter blades. I noticed that several of them had tattoos of the Southern Cross on their backs or legs. Off to my right near a toilet block there was a man with his pants around his ankles, fucking a girl on all fours. She turned her head towards me, face contorted, and vomited billously ont the dirt. The guy hesitated but she motioned for him to keep going and he grabbed her hips and started pounding furiously. I was still nauseous but the peak from the last hit of MDMA had only just begun to work. I was queasy and giddy, as if any moment I was going to either ascend to heaven or collapse in a fit. I leant against a post and caught my breath for a while before I resumed walking unsteadily back towards my friends house. A gang of miscreants were ripping peoples letterboxes from their lawns and throwing them through the windows of parked cars, I kept to the other side of the road. When I got to the front door I stuffed my fingers in my throat and spewed on a bunch of his mum’s azalea's before letting myself in. I found my bed and passed out instantly.

“In the morning I awoke to find myself covered in dirt and scratches. I went upstairs and found my mate sprawled out on his bed, fully clothed. I shook him gently and he moaned and mumbled before he gradually grew lucid. I noticed that his jaw was black and swollen; a deep dark pillow of flesh that ran from his chin to up near his ear. He told me that on the way home the night before, he panicked when he couldn't find his phone. Drunk and excitable, he had begun accosting passers-by, convinced that they'd taken possession of it. He tried numerous tacts, occasionally breaking from the inquisition to "be real" and tell them in a confidential sort of tone that if they just gave it back, he wouldn't press the matter and they could all go home. He must have been too insistent with the wrong person because they had decked him pretty hard, knocking him sideways straight onto the concrete. Luckily, he'd still been wearing the hard-hat. In fact, he was wearing it as he told me this story. I pulled my mobile out and dialed his number. He jumped as his jacket pocket started ringing, then groaned and buried his face back in the pillow..."

I paused, I didn’t know where to stop this story, I didn’t know what, if any, part of it was significant.

"You probably think I'm a piece of shit" I said apologetically.

"Well...yeah, a bit" she replied sincerely. "But that was a long time ago right?"

She stopped to think, i remained silent.

"You know.." she continued. "I genuinely thought all those people were up there to greet us. It seem so naive now. I think my dad knew what was happening but he chose to indulge me, I never really thought about it until you told me all that. It's funny though....you guys didn't do a very good job of getting the message across did you?"

She smiled wanly at me. I stubbed out my cigarette.

It certainly was funny in that stupid, ironic, tragic kind of way; a delicious farce, a comedy of errors. But that wasn’t really the crux of it. What happened up on the headland wasn't about a bunch of muslims on boats; we could just as easily have been denouncing seagulls or punching waves, it wouldn’t have mattered. We danced and sang and lit fires to keep the darkness at bay, to ward off monsters and assert our identity, affirm our existence under the universe. It was hardly a ritual without precedent:

On the 6th of February, 1788, two weeks after the founding of the colony, the convicts of the first fleet were finally allowed to disembark. It was a hot and humid summer day and the weather soon turned violent, the officers and bureaucrats retreated to their quarters to watch proceedings from afar. It was an inauspicious beginning to a new nation. The prisoners, setting foot on terra firma after more than eight months in a floating, stinking dungeon, fell upon each other like rats in a flood. As lightning and rain lashed the scrubby clearing, the mass of pallid and emaciated flesh descended into a vile orgy. I visualized the scene in my mind: Hundreds of mother England’s lowest specimens rutting like hogs in the wet grass, tearing their flesh against jagged rocks as their bodies collided to a symphony of crashing thunder and the alien fauna of an unknown continent; the smell a heady mix of eucalyptus, rum and semen. Ship surgeon Arthur Bowes Smith wrote in his diary that he simply could not express such a sight in words. Leg irons and the cat-o-nine-tails were deployed to restore order the next morning. The establishment, if it could even be called that in such a primitive place, were shaken and horrified. I can only imagine that anybody in a similar position looking over the headland the night the tankers came in would have felt exactly the same. Such people however, were nowhere to be found.

Edited by Ironicwarcriminal ()

#672
penitent
Post rating: ~
thats a really cool conceit... the initial sense of disorientation is good, it leaves you scrambling to situate yourself much in the manner of the refugees themselves, & i like the kinda ironic tone you have in telling the story from both perspectives..... obviously when your characters talk to each other it doesn't sound a thing like real speech, nobody says 'biliously' when telling an anecdote, but that doesn't really matter at all imo, its obviously very stylised, event- rather than character-based.... for that reason i might consider shifting it into the third person, when you introduce an 'i' then the framing story kinda loses some of its anonymity and i think the fact that you don't really know exactly who these characters are now lends it a kind of Timeless Import..... also the last two paragraphs do feel kinda tacked on, they're a bit over-editorial.... maybe move the last to the start of the piece and ditch the penultimate one, iono. kool stuff tho
#673
Post rating: ~
ty dude, duly noted I was considering moving it to third person but i write easier in first. The editorial stuff is a bit tacked on and needs some work....the best writers manage to move seamlessly between having characters talking to each other and also commenting on the world or adding historical details.....all while keeping the dialogue believeable....i've only just really started doing some writing and it's hard ay

I also kinda want to make sure that even with the dialogue being a bit stagey, the girl comes across as relatively real rather than just a board to bounce my shit off

Good ideas though bro: they will be taken on board

PS the scene in that last paragraph is actually totally true btw
#674
Post rating: +
also i considered posting this in Creative Convention, took a look and holy moly..............maybe if i redo it into a postcyberpunk western fantasy sci-fi about a group of slacker metalheads then i'll post it there
#675
penitent
Post rating: ~
writing realistic dialogue is basically impossible and i don't think anyone has even bothered attempting it since like the days of high modernism.... basically it's just a matter of Stylisin' Wit Confidence. & i think you manage it here... like the girl's voice is very distinct, she has a more wistful tone while your dude is a lot more cynical... if you want it to sound more like actual people talking (which shouldnt really be that much of a priority imo) you could have more interruptions, have details like, iono, what drugs people were on and where the guys phone was or w/e be offered in response to questions..... but i don't know if that would make it a better piece really
#676
Post rating: ~
change toms username 2 BABY FAT
#677
penitent
Post rating: ~

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

also i considered posting this in Creative Convention, took a look and holy moly..............maybe if i redo it into a postcyberpunk western fantasy sci-fi about a group of slacker metalheads then i'll post it there



lol i fuckin love that place, it always makes me feel 200x better about my own writing

#678
[account deactivated]
#679
Post rating: ~
cc is astonishing now and it always shocks me how they can manage to become even more who they are. it's too bad they took the erotica thread out of there
#680
Post rating: ~
i like the story. there's a funny idea in there about going to the crowd and becoming whatever it is regardless of your intent. the switch in tones was hilarious, i thought, as far as it going from a folksy immigrant cheese story into a pair of bros following the energy and taking drugs. i found it hard to read the second part. it does need a line edit it seems, but i don't know why that would matter.

the dialog does need to be worked on. there's a certain kind of writing-realistic-dialog that is missing............ it's a difficult concept to explain, maybe. the goal in writing is never to get realistic dialog that might be heard in real life, but to be entirely what a person might say, stylised and compacted, and working perfectly. most of the time you have it but there r a lot of specific parts where it falls short