The Bitter Pill Many White Men Find Difficult to Swallow
August 9, 2022 12:23 PM   Subscribe

Maximalism is alive and well; it’s just under a wider and more eclectic stewardship from Does the Maximalist Novel Still Matter? [Archive]
posted by chavenet (65 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
When Adi protests that the novel’s point of view is in fact “truly unique,” her boss’s response is that the author “is a middle-aged cis white man who has published fiction for fifteen years. The world has heard from him before.”

Speaking as a middle-aged cis white man who has published fiction for around fifteen years, and from whom the world has heard before, I can assure you this is actually not an impediment to being published.
posted by jscalzi at 12:45 PM on August 9, 2022 [117 favorites]


I always wonder about why writers write books putting down part of their audience and then get upset when their audience doesn't like the books. Write a book with a major plot about how stupid and inferior women are and women don't like your work? Weird! A book about how young people are just oversensitive crybabies and your book doesn't sell with young people? Inexplicable!

I mean, I'm not exactly sure that I wonder; it seems pretty clear that it's a hypertrophied form of contempt - your audience is so stupid and so inferior that they don't even understand the real truth about how stupid and inferior they are and thus stupidly and inferiorly don't enjoy your book.
posted by Frowner at 12:51 PM on August 9, 2022 [35 favorites]


A young comic, after performing for a “PC crowd” that didn’t laugh at any of their jokes, would have left the stage thinking, I’ve got to be better. But some older, established, even famous comics seem to think, the audience needs to be better.

I have to admit this part is just so so so fucking accurate. I love it. If your shitty jokes suck, the onus is on you for your shitty jokes, not the people who won't laugh at them.
posted by Kitteh at 12:55 PM on August 9, 2022 [69 favorites]


Once, the publication of a maximalist novel drew much publicity and attention

I think we might need a citation for this one. Quality,no matter the length, draws attention. When Pynch or DeLillo or DFW brought something to press notice was taken, but poor Adam Levin may simply not be in their league, or need an editor to make his meganovel readable if he wants that kind of attention, length for the sake of length often brings a lot of navel gazing with it, and gets a pass from me.
posted by OHenryPacey at 1:04 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


What I couldn't pick up from the review was if the book was any good. Because there's a way to play that sort of...modern, get-your-own-substack "these crazy kids and their discourse!" contempt that could be pretty funny, right? Well, and I mean, actually funny, not "could show up in a tim allen sitcom script" funny. You could portray that contempt, push it far, far out, and look at it, poke at it, ask questions about it within the story. It could be interesting! I guess we're supposed to assume from the review that this is not interesting, though. But like, "what does the author REALLY think" is almost never, ever, ever, the right way into a conversation about a novel.

(I've been thinking a lot about contempt in fiction the past few days because I just finished Percival Everett's The Trees and found I couldn't go to another novel right after it, I had to sort of clear space to make room for the aftershocks from it in my head, and that book is contemptuous. I devoured it but it was like eating something you know is poison, you can feel it burn going down.)
posted by mittens at 1:07 PM on August 9, 2022 [13 favorites]


(I would love any recommendations for good maximalist novels if anyone has them.)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 1:17 PM on August 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


I think I’m the target reader for these - I love long maximalist novels, but I’m now at a point where I do choose novels by non-cis-white-men, over the default. I’m putting this out here: a plot point where a man “accidentally” sexually assaults someone, and that’s the thing that forces them to be a better person, give up drinking or whatnot …. No. I can’t read anymore of that.
posted by Valancy Rachel at 1:18 PM on August 9, 2022 [15 favorites]


I'm reading Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob. It's such as maximalist novel that the page numbers are in reverse order. So far it's great.

In general though, I don't seek out maximalist novels like I used to. It's not the whole reason, but I sometimes wonder if now that I live so much of my waking hours on the most maximalist corpus ever built (hi internet) that when I do decide to spend time with a finite work of fiction, I want the author to have worked hard to remove the extraneous bits and just leave what needs to be there.
posted by gwint at 1:25 PM on August 9, 2022 [17 favorites]


OMG I love Books of Jacob. I also loved I Hotel (mentioned in the article) and was pretty into Ducks, Newburyport, despite the fact that it sounds like I joke when I try to describe it to people ( maybe the point). I like big maximalist novels. I also like plenty of books that are definitively not that.

There are a lot of white dudes making money writing and selling giant maximalist novels right now. Fucking Jonathan Franzen just had a big old book (Part One of a TRILOGY, I might add) out last year. That maybe there's less of market for literary maximalism seems pretty seems like a not-surprising revelation. There was a hot minute that seemed to start with everyone in your writing class buying (if not reading) Infinite Jest in the mid-90s and kind of ended in the early 10s post- "Goldfinch" era, with something like City on Fire failing to, well, set the world on fire. But bit, complicated , maximalist literary novels have never exactly flown off the shelves. And I say this as someone who not only reads them, but Iike, just shucked out for the deluxe hardback centenary edition of Ulysses (literally my fourth copy of Ulysses) and regularly gets accused of hazing because of my book club choices. (We are who we are).

In the non-Literary (using "Literary" as genre here), it would seem to me that the world is still full of giant maximalist novels written by white dude, who are doing just fine, as well, so I don't even think my crocodile tears are needed here.

(Note: I tried to read Levin's The Instructions years ago. To me, it was nails on a chalkboard precious. I could not finish it.)
posted by thivaia at 2:01 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


"Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London."

-John le Carré.
posted by clavdivs at 2:07 PM on August 9, 2022 [26 favorites]


I would love any recommendations for good maximalist novels

Some of Neal Stephenson's books, but not all of them. In my humble opinion.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 2:25 PM on August 9, 2022 [10 favorites]


BuddhainaBucket: (I would love any recommendations for good maximalist novels if anyone has them.)

I tend not to like books like that, because as a rule they tend towards having really poorly thought through plot mechanics because the author's attentions are simultaneously everywhere else but also there's a need to fill space so the plot ends up being both busy and clumsy.

One book I read last year which I really enjoyed solved that problem by not having a plot at all, The Luminous Novel, by Mario Levrero. It's, kind of, autofiction, but the author has such well-calibrated ironic distance on himself that his insufferableness (all protagonists in autofictional novels are insufferable) becomes funny.

The book is not so much full of asides, as nothing but, as it's a diary kept as procrastination during a year Levrero had a large grant to finish the "luminous novel" of the title (what little there is of it is appended to the end and its autofictional protagonist is merely insufferable, but it's short and the jarringness is interesting rather than overwhelming).

I'm not sure I'm doing a good job of describing it, but I had a lovely time spending a year in the life of Mario Levrero, so I'll happily recommend it.
posted by Kattullus at 2:33 PM on August 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


When Apter was talking to the college students, I was reminded of Jenny Nicholson's reading of Trigger Warning.
posted by lock robster at 2:44 PM on August 9, 2022 [6 favorites]


The maximalist novel has a strong symbolic and morphological identity, with ten elements that define and structure it as a highly complex literary form: length, encyclopedic mode, dissonant chorality, diegetic exuberance, completeness, narrratorial omniscience, paranoid imagination, inter-semiocity, ethical commitment, and hybrid realism.

..k, so I googled "diegetic exuberance" and it only occurs afaict as a maximalist attribute, and the rest, is this like some kind of deep long running prank, set up to get a rise out of Mefites? Got me. Ok, back to a rip roaring scalizian space opera.
posted by sammyo at 2:47 PM on August 9, 2022 [9 favorites]


Weird, I've spent a lot of time in recent years trying to stop myself from entering encyclopedic mode.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 2:56 PM on August 9, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'd recommend Mariam Petrosyan's The Gray House as a sort of maximalist modern fantasy--over 700 pages of strange imagery, moments of wonder, and worthwhile little puzzles that involve an obscure chronology and characters who sometimes change names. I mean, it's not what I think of first when I hear 'maximalism,' but if you like long, excessive, and challenging contemporary novels that have just a lot going on, don't fit genre categories well, and reward patience with unpredictable magical delights, that's how I felt about it.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:02 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


I enjoyed Sergio De La Pava's Naked Singularity if you want a 50 page digression into the nuanced world of Pro boxing in the 50's. I think it ticks all the boxes in the maximalism category.
posted by Keith Talent at 3:03 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


I would love any recommendations for good maximalist novels

Foucault's Pendulum
posted by JohnFromGR at 3:33 PM on August 9, 2022 [11 favorites]


Moby-Dick
The Recognitions
J R
posted by chavenet at 3:53 PM on August 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


I enjoyed the article's discussion of how maximalist novels are no longer the exclusive domain of white men. Systems novels used to be my jam, and starting with Zadie Smith's White Teeth most of my favorites have been authored by women and/or POC.

I did not enjoy the characterization of Adam Levin as a reactionary jerk. I have no idea what Adam is like, but I think it's unfair to bash Adam Levin the individual based on the contents of one of his fictional works. At times, Clark acknowledges that you can't necessarily attribute a character's views to the author. But the article does just that, with the fig leaf that Levin uses a first-person "author" character at times.

I probably feel defensive of Levine because The Instructions bowled me over when I read it in 2011. In addition to all the usual maximalist stuff (big words, digressions, etc.), I thought Levin's depiction of the friendships and enmities between delinquent teenagers who are basically fending for themselves to be real, sad, and touching.

Also, contrary to the article, Levin does not just write maximalist novels. I read his short story collection Hot Pink in 2012, but thought it was just OK. I was excited to read Bubblegum when it was released in 2020, but abandoned in less than 100 pages. Could be the novel wasn't great, could be my tastes have changed.

Per BuddhaInABucket's request, here are 5 maximalist novels that I've loved:

Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace, with the caveat that Wallace was an abuser.

Underworld (1997) by Don Delillo. One of the definitive maximalist novels, it is about life in the U.S. from about 1950 to 2000. It also involves waste disposal. Still excellent on reread in 2013.

White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith. Follows the trials and triumphs of immigrants in post-World War II London. I understand that Smith is no longer in fashion, but haven't bothered to find out why.

Tree of Smoke (2007) by Denis Johnson. Johnson's Vietnam epic maybe isn't a canonic maximalist novel, but I think it fits the bill. Many would say that this sprawling, messy novel isn't nearly as good as shorter works (especially Jesus' Son and Train Dreams) . But I'd say those very faults are what make it (and his Northern California epic Already Dead) so special.

A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014) by Marlon James. A tour de force with numerous, distinct voices that revolves around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976.

Finally, thanks for chavent to posting this, and thanks to the other posters for reminding me that I need to read Book of Jacob stat. Tokarczuk's other works may not be maximalist but they sure are good.
posted by lumpy at 4:20 PM on August 9, 2022 [11 favorites]


I think neal stephenson's best work was pre-cryptonomicon and hardly maximaliat at all
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 4:37 PM on August 9, 2022 [6 favorites]


Some good really long novels that got less attention:

Divine Days - Leon Forrest
Parallel Stories - Peter Nadas
Stalingrad (+ Life and Fate) - Vasily Grossman
Celestial Harmonies - Peter Esterhazy
Abel and Cain - Gregor Von Rezzori
Prae - Miklos Szentkuthy
posted by bootlegpop at 4:37 PM on August 9, 2022 [7 favorites]


I've always been a fan of sprawling, maximalist meganovels. I've enjoyed Melville, Joyce, Pynchon, Gaddis and Gass, David Foster Wallace, Roberto Bolaño, you name it. I haven't read anything by Adam Levin yet, but he's on my list.

I think it's fair to criticize the form as being overrun by straight white men flaunting their erudition. However, I've enjoyed some stunning examples of maximalist novels written by women. They mentioned I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita in the article, but I also loved The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, and Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko.

One author whose name has always been synonymous with meganovel is John Barth, but I've always felt that his undeniably exuberant maximalist novels ran out of gas long before they ran out of pages. I recently reread his first two published works, the novellas The Floating Opera and The End Of The Road, and felt that they were his most successful and imaginative books.

Others here have mentioned Péter Nádas, and I was really bowled over by Parallel Stories.
posted by Fritz Langwedge at 5:01 PM on August 9, 2022 [9 favorites]


It depends on how you are defining "Maximalist Novel," but outside the obvious:

Anniversaries: A Year in the life of Gesine Cresspahl—Uwe Johnson
Darkmans—Nicola Barker
The Children’s Hospital—Chris Adrian
A Brief History of Seven Killings--Marlon James
Obscene Bird of Night--Jose Donoso
The Wizard and the Crow--Ngugi wa Thiong'o

I could make an argument that both Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin" and Joyce Carol Oates "Blonde" (and also "The Accursed") are pretty obviously maximalist novels, but this could be a controversial take (and they are not exactly unknown quantities).
posted by thivaia at 5:26 PM on August 9, 2022 [7 favorites]


Stephenson has several maximalist novels that are not (strictly speaking, at least) Science Fiction. Among them are The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System Of The World: a trilogy of maximalist historical novels; and Reamde, which is definitely maximalist, somewhat a techno-thriller and a lot of fun. (I wish I hadn't read the sequel, Fall, or Dodge In Hell). Cryptonomicon falls somewhat more toward the science fiction end of his work than Reamde, but not as far as Seveneves or The Diamond Age (or probably Anathem, though I haven't read it).
posted by lhauser at 5:40 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


What separates maximalist from genre novels? In reading the summary of that bit in Mount Chicago, I was struck that it sounded like a bit the self depreciation found in the Illuminatus! trilogy by Wilson and Shea. (Throughout the book, the publisher of a magazine keeps talking to his book critic who has nothing good to say about the overly long novel he is reading that he can just write anything about because no one will bother to finish it.)

But Illuminatus! is definitely science fiction, or at least, that was how I always understood it.

Given the definitions I see floating around online, Breakfast of Champions by Vonnegut also qualifies.

By placing (white cishet male) maximalist as a sub-genre of science fiction/fantasy, of course it's going to find people who are not in that category who decide to write that sort of book. And you know what? They can be better writers. This feels like echoes of the sad/rabid puppies movement back in the early 2010's. The entitlement, the arrogance that of course these novels deserve to be published because of who the authors are just bothers me.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, given my background. But sometimes I feel like I'm the only mediocre white guy who didn't get a massive serving of entitlement along with his breakfast every morning.
posted by Hactar at 5:44 PM on August 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Mumbo Jumbo - Ishmael Reed
Dhalgren - Samuel Delaney
posted by thatwhichfalls at 6:00 PM on August 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Was 253 anti-maximalist?

I love me some Ryman
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:27 PM on August 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


Middlemarch might qualify, maybe? But it might just be a big book with a lot of characters.

I recently listened to The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, which is about a group of people who are reincarnated together over thousands of years. Not only did I enjoy it, but it unlocked a tricky piece of my own writing for me (I am an essayist).
posted by Well I never at 7:43 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


Middlemarch for sure.

Where's Tristram Shandy? Winter's Tale? This isn't a really serious, informed survey. But c'mon.

Let's add Doris Lessing to the conversation, e.g. The Golden Notebook.

Ending with a Seinfeld quotation is very weak.
posted by Caxton1476 at 8:00 PM on August 9, 2022 [3 favorites]


I think there's genuine value in the type of maximalist novel that happens when an author tries to squeeze their developing understanding of relationships and society in between info dumping about their latest hyperfixation because it's a very revealing type of book.

After you read a few of those books written by white cishet dudes somewhere between their late 20s and early 40s you definitely want something different because you realise what the books are revealing is that the author is blinkered in the same ways.
posted by zymil at 8:03 PM on August 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


or probably Anathem, though I haven't read it

Anathem is a guilty geek pleasure of mine -- I've read it 4 or 5 times, despite its weightiness. I can't say the same for most of Stephenson's others, although Diamond Age is a pretty rewarding re-read.
posted by spacewrench at 9:20 PM on August 9, 2022 [6 favorites]


Off the top of my head, I can't think of an epic doorstop novel from the 21st century that really impressed me.

(people are suggesting all kinds of epic doorstops from throughout history, which I think is drifting away from the initial argument, if the argument is: "do authors write epic doorstops anymore?"
posted by ovvl at 9:41 PM on August 9, 2022 [2 favorites]


Anathem is the one Stephenson book I can say that I really enjoyed. His others are offputting in a way I find hard to describe. Cryptonomicon definitely qualifies as maximalist (I wonder how dated it is now...).
posted by zardoz at 9:45 PM on August 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


No love for A Suitable Boy?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:19 PM on August 9, 2022 [5 favorites]


Is Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell a maximalist novel?
posted by clew at 10:23 PM on August 9, 2022 [9 favorites]


The article calls White Teeth a maximalist novel, but I don’t think it is (good though!) I read Franzen’s Crossroads, 600pp and the start of a trilogy. I thought it was good! I don’t think it’s maximalist (though Corrections might be).

I recently finished Ozick’s The Book of Form and Emptiness (560pp) and I think that’s maybe maximalist. I thought it was overstuffed with ideas that were not well unpacked. I admired it but it was too many novels at once, maybe it needed to actually be longer.

I read Infinite Jest in 2001/2002 (I started it during the week before 9/11). I liked it.

I think there isn’t a big trend for big doorstop novels that are also flashy in form. The big ones are series (I’m thinking Ferrante and Knausgaard) or are disguised as genre fiction or family stories or maybe auto fiction? The formally crafty ones are smaller?
posted by vunder at 10:50 PM on August 9, 2022 [4 favorites]


The article does a great job on updating us on some white male middle aged authors.

But it says nothing at all about the state of their penises! How will we sleep at night, not knowing how their penises are hanging in there amid all this wokeness
posted by medusa at 11:27 PM on August 9, 2022 [7 favorites]


Definitions of maximalism are tricky, but Alan Moore's Jerusalem is a long and hugely ambitious novel which I enjoyed a lot. This Quietus review may help you decide if you'd enjoy it too.

[Nice use of Morrisey in this thread's headline by the way. He's got exactly the sense of sulky entitlement shown by the worst writers discussed here, so roping him in feels very appropriate.]
posted by Paul Slade at 12:44 AM on August 10, 2022 [6 favorites]


lumpy: Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace, with the caveat that Wallace was an abuser.

That needs more than a caveat. Warning, there will be spoilers.

While I’m capable of reading books by people whose actions in life I find questionable at best (e.g. James Tiptree jr.) the problem with Infinite Jest is that David Foster Wallace’s conception of human experience is so fundamentally solipsistic that he is unable to portray women as full human beings, only existing in relation to male characters, and this seems to have extended into his life.

This is most obvious and egregious in the case of Joelle van Dyne (a.k.a. Madam Psychosis). Two thirds of the way through reading it I realized that the plot of the novel hinged on the idea that she was so beautiful that men became unable to control themselves around her.

Because of that I noped out of the book back when I was reading it, but since lots of people whose aesthetic judgment I value and respect really liked that book, I always meant to go back. But once it came out that the character was based on the woman who David Foster Wallace abused and stalked for years, the badness was compounded.

I’m not saying that he was simply a monster, but his flaws as a person are replicated in Infinite Jest in a way that makes it hard not to think about them while reading.

It’s bad enough that a central tenet of toxic masculinity, “women’s attractiveness make men behave immorally”, is presented as normal in Infinite Jest, but knowing that the author lived by it, and justified his abuse by it, makes it impossible for me to go back to the book.
posted by Kattullus at 1:10 AM on August 10, 2022 [21 favorites]


I realize that not every doorstopper qualifies as a maximalist novel, but maximalist or not, I've always loved a proper brick.

One I haven't seen mentionned yet is Elsa Morante's House of Liars, sadly apparently a bit butchered in the English translation. (The German one I read is presumably better; at least it didn't just cut 20% of the pages). Set in Italy at the turn of the 20th century it is about the fall and fall and even deeper fall of a family cursed with a propensity towards completely misguided, always unrequited, quasi-religious, consummately delusional romantic devotion, that makes them behave horridly to everyone else, close themselves off towards all offers of genuine affection, and always ever only earns them contempt and further descent into oppressively oppulently painted misery. The vibe is much too mythical to fit in with the trend of social realism at the day, but the novel paints a clear picture of the role patriarchy and classism play in perverting the directions of these profound passions that curse the family members. It's a fever dream of a novel and a thrilling ride despite its mostly bleak outlook on human nature and stingy approach to grace notes. (The power of narrative is portrayed in all its perverse, menacing and redeeming aspects).
posted by sohalt at 2:20 AM on August 10, 2022 [6 favorites]


A few that immediately come to mind:

The Vorrh - Brian Catling (probably the whole trilogy I guess)
Europe Central - William T. Vollmann
posted by WhyamIhereagain at 3:07 AM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


I think Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess is probably wide-reaching enough to be considered maximalist. It's certainly worth a read.
posted by Omission at 4:07 AM on August 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Also maybe:

Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, all four volumes of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books: The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel's Game, The Prisoner of Heaven, and The Labyrinth of Spirits
posted by JohnFromGR at 4:39 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


It took me a couple of years to read Gravity's Rainbow, and it was not an enjoyable read. I only picked it up because I had enjoyed Inherent Vice, which is most definitely not maximalist. I'll read for enjoyment now, thank you very much, and novels that could damage my feet should I drop them are not on the menu.
posted by tommasz at 5:37 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


A young comic, after performing for a “PC crowd” that didn’t laugh at any of their jokes, would have left the stage thinking, I’ve got to be better. But some older, established, even famous comics seem to think, the audience needs to be better.

The hippies didn't much dig Bob Hope's material... but at least Bob didn't whine about it.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:05 AM on August 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


House of Leaves barely makes the cut (published march of 2000) for 21st century maximalist novels, but i'd say it belongs.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:03 AM on August 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


In fact, Danielewski (House of Leaves) almost deserves special mention, as he also has published five 800+ page entries into a planned 26 volume opus called The Familiar, purportedly it's about a cat.
Maximum maximalism.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:11 AM on August 10, 2022 [4 favorites]



It took me a couple of years to read Gravity's Rainbow, and it was not an enjoyable read. I only picked it up because I had enjoyed Inherent Vice, which is most definitely not maximalist. I'll read for enjoyment now, thank you very much, and novels that could damage my feet should I drop them are not on the menu.


I think Against the Day is Pynchon's only 21st century foot-damager: I found it a much easier read than Gravity's Rainbow but keep your toes away...
posted by Omission at 7:29 AM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


I actually loved Against the Day, but I 'm enough of a Pynchon softie that I'll defend Vineland.
posted by thivaia at 8:37 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


What separates maximalist from genre novels?

Great question. I don't think there's any accepted definition of a maximalist novel. Sometimes the term is used interchangeably with systems novel (as in the original article), but I'm sure that's correct either.

I'm just an ordinary reader, but for me one distinction might be that in a maximalist novel the characters are subordinate to the form rather than vice versa. For example, both Beloved and White Teeth are about racism. But I feel like Sethe and other main characters in Beloved are actual, real people who I know and love. Whereas what stuck with me from White Teeth was the overall immigrant scene and struggle in London rather than the specific characters.

Here's a description of an academic work on maximalist novels: Levey shows that while these novels are preoccupied with detail and description, they are relatively unconcerned with the traditional goals of representation.

And here is Salman Rushdie discussing minimalist and maximalist writing.
posted by lumpy at 9:49 AM on August 10, 2022 [6 favorites]


From lumpy's first link :
Whether reinvigorating the banal and trivial in mainstream culture, or soothing anxieties of human insufficiency in the age of automation and the internet, these texts model significant abilities, rather than just objects of significance, and encourage readers to develop habits of reading that complement the demands of an increasingly detailed culture.
The highbrow version of fanac? Also, a nice distinction from (say) Balzac’s work, which was systemic and detailed and long but still about objects of significance.
posted by clew at 10:23 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Illuminatus! is definitely science fiction

Nah, Illuminatus! is political satire disguised as science fiction (he said, from his vantage point in year n of the Revolution of Lowered Expectations)
posted by ook at 10:32 AM on August 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


But once it came out that the character was based on the woman who David Foster Wallace abused and stalked for years, the badness was compounded.

Mary Karr--who is the better writer of the two--also gets credit for revealing that DFW used the stories of the people who he was in a recovery program with, along with their real first names--without their permission--in IF, which led me to nope out of the book altogether.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:09 AM on August 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


There was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.
2666 by Roberto Bolaño, a book that certainly counts as maximalist in and of itself
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 1:07 PM on August 10, 2022 [14 favorites]


Oh I forgot about 2666, I need to finish that!
posted by geoff. at 2:11 PM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


(I would love any recommendations for good maximalist novels if anyone has them.)

I enjoyed The Instructions, fwiw. Not enough to keep it on my shelf, but it's a fun read. I was dubious, but it was hard to resist that many pages (in hardcover) for $2 at a used store. It was good fun.

People have mentioned Vollmann, but both You Bright and Risen Angels and The Royal Family certainly apply. Not for everyone, for sure, but definitely unique and maximalist.

I can't really say the same for the Seven Dreams books. Those are very interesting but ... something else.

Reamde, which is definitely maximalist, somewhat a techno-thriller and a lot of fun. (I wish I hadn't read the sequel, Fall, or Dodge In Hell).

... which is funny, because I couldn't stand Reamde and adored, adored, adored Dodge in Hell. 700-800 pages in, you're suddenly treated with a high-fantasy epic yarn. Really wonderful.

Mason & Dixon is BY FAR the best Pynchon book, but V, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against the Day all certainly qualify. So might Bleeding Edge (actually Inherent Vice might be my favorite). I don't think Vineland does (though it is fantastic).

Ratner's Star is my very favorite DeLillo book, but I don't think it qualifies. Underworld certainly does, and it is excellent.

And I think Richard Powers qualifies at times, too. The Time of Our Singing (excellent) and Overstory both fit the bill, no?

Gah, all old white men! I actually read mostly women now, but they're less prone to maximalism.

Joyce Carol Oates' them? Barbara Kingsolver maybe too -- The Lacuna is one of my favorites of all-time, and The Poisonwood Bible probably qualifies.
posted by mrgrimm at 3:50 PM on August 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


Two thirds of the way through reading it I realized that the plot of the novel hinged on the idea that she was so beautiful that men became unable to control themselves around her.

Hmm, it's admittedly been more than a decade since I've read Infinite Jest but this isn't what I remember to be the mechanism behind how the "samizdat" worked. Wikipedia seems to back me up, too. It says the subject of the film was Joelle "reaching down toward a wobbly 'neonatal' lens as if it were in a bassinet and apologizing profusely, her face blurred beyond recognition," in which case it wasn't her beauty that made the film cause the reaction it did. I always assumed it had something to do with James Incandenza's experimental lenses and filmmaking techniques. Also, the film didn't make only men unable to control themselves, it made all viewers "lose all interest in anything other than repeatedly viewing it, and thus eventually die." Maybe you were referring to something else though?
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 4:14 PM on August 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


Agreed on Joelle VanD. She is described as "corporeally beautiful," but I don't think it was her beauty that made everyone (not just men) lose control over their lives. It was the video in total.

I, too, always figured that it had to do more with JOI's technique than Joelle herself. I believe she was either veiled or her face was blurred? We don't get a great description b/c, you know, no one can watch it and survive. And of course, no one knows *why* it had such an effect. I guess I'll have to read it again!

Also, from Mary Karr: "Oh just read it."
posted by mrgrimm at 5:21 PM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Sorry, I should’ve been clear. I didn’t mean the macguffin as such, though it plays into it, but I was thinking about how the various male characters in the Incandeza family, and the tennis academy in general, behave around Joelle, and also the Van Dyne family, culminating in the acid attack by her mother on her father, if it happened.

Either way is bad, but it’s possibly even worse if the attack didn’t happen because then the “hideousness” she wears a veil to hide is her beauty. She needs to protect men from her face because otherwise they can’t control themselves, and ‘men being unable to control themselves’ is another way of phrasing that central tenet of toxic masculinity I mentioned before.
posted by Kattullus at 11:26 PM on August 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


I don't like this style of book, usually, so I appreciate having a label for it. Thanks for posting this.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:51 AM on August 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


I want to add Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec. It doesn't necessarily fit the category, but boy oh boy is it maximalist.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:10 PM on August 11, 2022 [6 favorites]


Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series is probably the maximalistest thing I've read in the last ten years (and I've read a lot of the books mentioned in this thread!).
posted by dfan at 12:28 PM on August 13, 2022 [4 favorites]


Yeah okay, 'Infinite Jest' (1996) was the last major epic doorstop with a wide cultural impact in our recent lifetime, not counting '2666' (2004). We haven't seen such deep footprints in the earth like that since then.

'Jerusalem' (2016) (mentioned above) is big & heavy, but it hasn't caught the imagination of a wider audience. I have mixed feelings about it (mentioned it in some of my old posts).

The 21st century doesn't quite have its own version of James Michener yet.
posted by ovvl at 6:25 PM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]


Reamde

I may be preceded everywhere by my eyebrows, but I am not yet driving the bus
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:04 AM on August 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


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