I am the least popular author on the planet who has some standing among redditors on r/literature. I have been writing my whole life without ever once receiving a royalty check. All my books are out of print. To make matters worse, both my brother and my nephew are super famous and they don't even regard me a real writer. I had to take up a shitty teaching job at a university to deflect the question of my true vocation. To make matters the worst, I am 70 years old and starved for pussy that wouldn't look at me even from the corner of the eye.
Give me one good reason why I shouldn't hang?
The image in this post is the best I could find of myself. If it weren't for the clothes, they'd think I lived 200 years ago.
 CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
 Tip Your Landlord Shirt $21.68 |
CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
Either go have a nice day or go back to plebbit. You won't find anything like that here. This is where ideas go to die and get morphed into memes if they are lucky enough.
Being a popular among plebbitors is the biggest indictment on your career and you should certainly have a nice day
As someone who once posted my writings on reddit and got an assblasting this brings me joy.
Do you still enjoy reading? that may be one reason to keep going.
Do you have children? that's another if so.
How's your money situation?
I can't be entirely sure if this is real or not, but if it is, and I came to learn you killed yourself, just from what you shared with us today, your picture and your statement, I would be sad.
What kinds of things do you write?
It is bait, he is talking about Alexander Theroux, the man in the picture. Odd that people here call him reddit, he is a hardcore Catholic, lived in a monastery for a few years and went through the seminary, got his masters and PhD in literature and then wrote a very well received novel that shits all over academia.
Kinda strange that he would do that because now I know who he is and am looking up his bibliography.
Is it common for people to post on IQfy posing as real writers?
It used to be common but it was done for the fun of it and as proof we read them and comprehended them, not out of seethe.
>Odd that people here call him reddit
people call reddit everything they don't like, I'm surprised he wasn't called also troony
Yeah, not only that but half the book he’s most well-known for (D’s Cat) is him going full “love from Kazakhstan” in the most overwritten fashion. (Of course, we should never confuse characters for their authors, but in Darconville’s cat it’s clear this is Theroux gleefully channeling a part of his own psyche that wants to let loose on modern feminism, the nature of women, and the political correctness that won’t let people say anything like that even while men and the “patriarchy” can be gleefully criticized).
Maxy Boy, I know you hate Theroux like the homosexual that you are but this is pathetic even for you.
Max is a homosexual
If the twitter homosexuals despise Theroux, can we claim him as ours? Can he be one of /ourguys/?
>wow I'm rich
>and I have a tenure job
>and I feel so bad because my siblings are even more rich and actually famous
>oh frick why did I choose to become a writer
>nobody reads books anymore
>why am I surprised that I cannot get famous or actually rich when no one is around to buy the books I write
muh+larp+liar+meds+schizo:ratio
I kinda want to read it. If it shits all over academia, and is out of print, it might actually say things about what's wrong with academia. Most books that "satirize" academia that are popular are more or less controlled-op
It’s really anti-feminist, hilariously so, and the criticisms of academia are biting (there’s some academic party/get-together scene I remember as being especially so, with the harsh suggestion that much of the men are emasculated and the female academics there and/or the men’s wives are the emasculators).
It’s a book that’s really good if you love getting lost in the beautiful, ornate style and erudition of the writer (the Burtonian/Rabelaisian/Joycean maximalist and super-erudite strain).
Wait, frick, he’s out of print now? I have a hardcover copy I bought many years back for not that extreme a price — maybe 20-30$, and looking now I see hardcover copies are going for 300$ on Amazon. I might re-read it to really savor and enjoy them sell it back and make a nice profit.
yeah, I gotta see about getting perks at a University library or something. Can't spare $200-300.
I believe there is a reprint coming out soon, maybe early 2024? Check warosu, someone was talking about it recently, gave the publisher and date.
Oh yeah., and I forgot half the reason I wrote my post — I think it’s possible Theroux’s critical neglect is due to his eccentricity and anti-PCness, I’m convinced the academic/literary reviewer cliques semi-consciously agreed to bury him in obscurity because he makes fun of them … which, in a way, isn’t surprising (making fun of/attacking the people you’re going to rely on for critical support is a good way to get them to snobbishly dismiss you, like what happened with Gaddis’s Recognitions, unless you’re just so big they can’t ignore you).
Literature is awash with writers shitting on academia, and Theroux wasn't really harsher than anyone else, just more long-winded. Up until the two major incidents that led to his exile from the literary mainstream, he was a well-regarded author of fiction with an impressive academic record. The main issue was that he was always a giant dick and the main architect of his own downfall.
Moreover, Theroux is not a Gaddis-type author and is not likely to become the subject of a Gaddis-like reappraisal anytime soon. His style, while highly enjoyable if you're on his wavelength, isn't forward-looking or influential. I do think his books deserve to be in print, but they're a "hard sell" in the current climate, to say the least. In both DC and LW, there's a constant seething disgust with anything and anyone not Alexander Theroux that makes establishment-approved doom-mongers like Bernhard or Celine look like Paolo Coelho.
Theroux already has a dedicated subreddit. Better luck next time, Timmy.
I am in the Fawks' mt. Chapter right now. His dislike of southern people is comically bad even if he is trying to be comical. The style reads like bad McCarthy from his earlier days as a writer. Maybe it's that chapter alone that's giving me the impression because I picked the book up after a long while. The other chapters didn't feel so bland by comparison.
Gaddis isn’t that influential either
Influential enough to stay in print and be hailed as the granddaddy of American pomo fricks.
> Theroux already has a dedicated subreddit. Better luck next time, Timmy.
So does Dosto. Theroux can be ours if we wanted,
Dosto is peak reddit THOUGH
An anti-semitic Christian will never be reddit.
He has 122 members on his subreddit. His name has been searched on the internet less than 200 times since 2004. Connect the dots.
Oh no … you’re right! We can’t like Theroux, because what if high-school-tier Internet drama and gossip makes us part of the “uncool club”?
I’ve been talking pretentiously about this book in the thread and never even heard of that subreddit till you mentioned it, anyway.
Frick off, troon
How is that what a troony would say?
Spoken like a true troony
I was speaking positively of Dosto
> the beautiful, ornate style and erudition of the writer(the Burtonian/Rabelaisian/Joycean maximalist and super-erudite strain)
I prefer ornate to minimalist in terms of prose. And the erudite maximalist strain, while tough sledding, is good, because you learn so much from them, a window into civilization as it were.
In what ways is he different than (or surpass) the other contemporary (or near-contemporary) writers that are commonly put into this category? You will see Gaddis mentioned in forums from time to time, so I'm surprised I've never heard of AT.
I guess it could come down to chance that he is so has fallen so greatly into obscurity and someone like Gaddis or Gass hasn't, or are there aspects of his work that would especially foreign to modern readers/academics?
Ah it seems you already got to my question before I posed it, down to the Gaddis detail !
There’s more I could say. Darconville’s Cat (and this might sound paradoxical if you’ve read or heard of it, but I find it true) is closer to the classical, pre-modernist idea of a novel, he’s not really experimenting with the structure of the plot itself (in terms of having countless characters and intricately intertwining subplots like Gaddis does), or, for instance, working with the stream-of-consciousness inspired stuff Gass does. To put it as simply as possible, it tells a straightforward story and is centered around a few recognizable main characters.
But that’s not to say he’s not toying with the constraints of the novel at all, he sometimes is, just in other ways, in more of a Sternean vein (like a chapter written as a play in blank verse, another that’s a long poetic digression on the ear, one that’s about a 20-page litany of different names of evil or treacherous woman, with some fantastical names and many others being references to traitorous or unlikable women of mythology, religion, literature, and history, and, for example, a single entirely black page to represent grief, which is explicitly a nod to Tristram Shandy), comical Dickensian names for characters, as well as bombastic, unrealistic dialogue and pseudo-Romanticist, over-erudite speeches and internal monologues of some characters (like Crucifer, especially) which read like a return to the Melville of Moby Dick except with an even more modern, ironic sensibility.
And yet, again, paradoxical as it is to say even after enumerating some of the stuff the book does, it still, again, basically is a novel with a unified, coherent plot and themes, not really as “revolutionary” in its play with structure as other authors were.
# puts it pretty well and much more briefly for me in my stead, I agree even though I loved the book
> The main issue was that he was always a giant dick and the main architect of his own downfall.
I do see this, Theroux can be a massive curmudgeon and offputting dick, you can sense that in the book and through his rare interviews.
> His style, while highly enjoyable if you're on his wavelength, isn't forward-looking or influential.
Yes and yes.
To rework a cliche, if some writers are called “writers’ writers,” Theroux is a writer’s writer’s writer (in all the history of literary criticism, I’m certain someone else has already made this joke and I’ve unconsciously stolen it, but frick it, I’m not claiming I’m original or a great wit at all).
But you have multiple books in print with Tough Poets Press, Alex
This guy is one of the most phenomenal authors alive. It's criminal how badly underappreciated he is. IQfy is sitting here complaining about how there are no great books being written anymore while Laura Warholic was published and nobody even cared.
There are textual variants between the hardcover version (published first) and the softcover version (published later)
If there’s a reprint, I wonder which edition they would choose.
variorum edition
Is one better than the other in your view?
I honestly haven’t read either 🙁
Just thought it would be nice to share what I found online. The revised text is in grey or a less black print. Here for example (left image is revised)
Submit to & Magazine™
Frick off, troon
So 14 of the total 100 who ever googled this guy are in the thread.
>70 years old and starved for pussy
Why? What would you even do with it?
Nice LARP, 70 year old's are living in the eternal golden hour sunset of being a boomer. The don't have negative thought's like that.
Apparently I am on AT's "wavelength" because I have enjoyed everything he has written. I'm not an academic or a literary critic, but an ordinary guy who enjoys reading good books. It is my belief (e.g.) that Darconville's Cat and Laura Warholic are masterpieces of the American literature canon, maybe not recognized now in the time we live in, but perhaps in the long-distant future.
>I was speaking positively of Dosto
I heard him in an interview being very critical of Israel so that could be another reason for the ghettoization of his work
Maybe things were different in the Dubya days, but being very critical of Israel is pretty much the norm among artists/creatives these days. Bands below a certain size can't even tour there because of the BDS mafia. Even the israeli writers/artists who are in favor of Israel have to dodge the apartheid question and overall be very careful how they express themselves.
Nah, he's just not that good. He has his moments but as another anon said, overwritten, long florid sentences that don't really say anything or add anything beyond 60 more words to read. If you took The Tunnel (Gass) and replaced the self awareness and willingness to explore his own seethe with adjectives and figurative language applied to what little remained you would have something fairly closet to DC.