I generally love your posts, but as regards fiction I found myself feeling like you need to widen your lens. I will list three recentish books below (randomly chosen off the top of my head) that contain unforgettable characters that don’t feel remotely unrealistic:
- Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel
- The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
I too read a ton of “genre” fiction and am especially well-versed in sci-fi. There are some great writers there, but the characterization and big-issue grappling is generally far less satisfying. Contemporary writers like Richard Powers, Hillary Mantel, Peter Mathiessen, George Saunders, Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner, Rachel Cusk, Denis Johnson, etc are all doing / have done things well worth paying attention to.
If you’ve not investigated Powers in particular, you should. His writing about the wonder of science and the effect of technology is incredibly powerful.
I’ve never heard of the Mars Room or The Overstory, but Wolf Hall pretty firmly fits into the categories Noah is talking about - maybe calling it ‘genre fiction’ feels like an insult to you, but I think it’s complementary, and I definitely would call Wolf Hall a genre: historical fiction. Same with Ken Follet, for example
Wolf Hall and its sequel both won the Booker Prize, so while I agree historical fiction can be considered “genre” and have read my share of Follet, Cornwall, etc, imo that recognition places it pretty squarely in the literary fiction category.
But thats just saying “if it wins a prize, it’s literary fiction; genre fiction doesn’t win prizes so literary is better”. But that’s actually not really my point - my point is that when Noah says he prefers genre fiction, a book like Wolf Hall fits pretty squarely in what he’s thinking about (or, at least, since I can’t mind-read, that’s what I think). It may not fit the way you think of literary vs. genre fiction, but that’s the way I think he’s thinking of it. Or at least, the way I think of it, because I read this article and fully agreed with it, and Wolf Hall would be one of the books that I would use to prove my point, haha (and there are plenty of sci-fi and fantasy too like that). So I think the disagreement is definitional not substantive.
I read Lolita as a warning - that it is possible to be completely obsessed with beauty and completely oblivious to cruelty, both at the same time.
Lolita catches me when I find myself relishing something Humbert wrote, when I feel myself admiring or even envying the beauty of his prose, then noticing a moment later that he was describing something horrifying. I don't find Lolita to be useful as some sort of attempted documentary, nor as a rote morality play about keeping your hands off of little girls. I find Lolita valuable as an *evocative confrontation*, something bearing an awareness that can only be gestured at rather than reductively described.
There are many such works of literary fiction, and I hope you find some that work their magic on you in the same way!
Choosing what we look like will not be felt as "a kind of freedom" by all -- if it becomes widespread, it will feel obligatory to many and that will produce even more anxiety and misery in our culture.
I feel the same way about TikTok. I have friends and coworkers who sit and just mindlessly scroll through, never finishing a video. I just find it so annoying and don’t understand what they get out of it. I do have the app but I just find it boring and unappealing.
Your criticism of "literary fiction" is not only the trope of "Don Quixote" (though Cervantes was satirizing romances, not novels), it's at the heart of attacks on of novels in the 19th century & comic books in the 1950s. It's just silly. Much of the fun of "literary fiction" is that it lets us know more about the lives of fictional characters than we can ever know about the actual people in our lives. Nobody confuses the two.
That’s a big part of it . When I read a great writer like Balzac, Melville or Dostoevsky I get a feel for how society was in 19th century France, America and Russia! And the dialogue that they wrote is another great aspect to their craft as writers!
As it happens, I am in Seoul at the moment visiting family, and just walking around the city and riding the subway, people watching, some of your observations on "beauty" stuck a chord.
The Millenial and Get Z Koreans, esp women, and even some Gen X and boomer women, seem quite consciously presenting a certain appearance: curated, fashionable without ostentation, non-attention demanding. One almost never encounters in-your-face or ironic sleaze, whole body tattooing, extreme piercing, T-shirts with slogans (in Korean), etc. The message seems to be 'sophisticated and respectable.' These are people it would be nice-and entirely safe-to know.
There is a small percentage however (5%?) of 20-something women who remind me of 90's Goths: jet black hair, paper white skin-suggestion of near pathologic/phobic sun avoidance. Rather wan, slightly affected or distracted facial expressions. Drugs are an unlikely explanation given current laws and norms. Maybe it's just an observational anomaly , but I wonder if the "ultra pale Korean" is a cultural motif in 2025?
Ok, I’ve GOT to say something regarding your literary fiction blurb here ;). I think it’s based on a couple of very significant fallacies.
1) The notion that great characters are somehow more prevalent in literary fiction vs genre fiction just doesn’t hold water. While it is true that literary fiction writers may bill themselves as character development focused, actual results do not suggest that they are in fact any better at this skill than genre writers. If you think of the great works of genre fiction - whether it’s Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes or the stories of Poirot or Miss Marple, works of Heinlein or Asimov - you will find that great books tend to have great characters (along with strong plot and other qualities). This isn’t genre-specific, it’s simply a skill of great authors, period. And conversely, literary fiction as a genre (and a marketing concept) unfortunately tends to suffer from a fair degree of pretentiousness (which is why I personally do not seek it out purely because of its classification); in actual reality there are plenty of literary fiction writers who write weak characters (often resulting in mediocre novels with fancy vocabulary), whatever they may claim in their self-promotion materials.
2) The second fallacy is even bigger - much bigger. This idea that we understand the world based on what we read in a book is just horribly simplistic. It’s akin to saying that people become violent killers because of shooter video games. This has been thrown into great relief recently for those of us who have been deeply affected by the war in Ukraine. For generations, there has been this popular notion that the great Russian literature must somehow make those that consume it better, wiser, more ethical. A person who grew up reading War and Peace will never advocate for war, went the thinking. Alas, it just isn’t true. People read for all kinds of reasons, and books do not have some magical power in educating us any more than television, music, or everyday experience. On a purely statistical basis, what we read in books is a fairly small percentage of the total information input that creates our understanding of the world. So this idea that a well-written but unrealistic character makes people misunderstand how “real people” behave is just not well-reasoned.
I think the Russian writers are a very diverse group. I like Tolstoy but I feel that Dostoevsky is a much deeper and more meaningful writer. His characters undergo very intense spiritual and psychological transformations and he gives you a sense of how Russia itself was transforming in an almost spiritual way also. And other Russian writers are great social critics like Gogol .
Gogol is actually Ukrainian ;) though hid did write in Russian. He is a favorite Russian appropriation. But yeah, Russian writers are just like those of any other language - each one unique. The point I was making is that each reader processes what they read differently, and it isn’t possible to make generalized predictive statements of the “if you read X you will think Y” kind.
I read a lot of science fiction too but find myself reading older works. I just re-read Neuromancer by William Gibson and Space Cadet by Heinlein. I'll be re-reading Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge next. Among the newer books, I have enjoyed Ramez Naam's Nexus series and Neal Stephenson's Anathem but not much else.
Despite being a technology worker, I tend to not be quite the techno-utopian Noah is, and the beauty thing is another example of this. I find the idea that someone I would be physically close to is partially made of plastic parts deeply off-putting. Too far, I guess, from our upright apes biology. Besides that anyone who invests the same time, money, and effort in fitness and basic hygiene will probably do more for themselves from a hotness perspective.
I agree and disagree about literary fiction. The interesting characters don’t provide insight, but they often provide aspiration and introspection. People typically aren’t like the characters, but can consciously try to be more like the characters. Of course, being inspired by Atticus Finch is quite different than being inspired by Humbert Humbert or pining for the antebellum South.
Apparently the video is actually from 2005, but didn’t get transplanted to YouTube until 2008. I do remember it as one of the first bits of original online video content (as opposed to clips from TV shows or someone filming their kids biting each other after the dentist or whatever) that became quite popular.
I thought maybe a novel about literary characters , who are beautiful, dress up in cosplay and appear on screen with varying products for about 5 secs. It could also be a short form long form video. Lots of clips pulled together that go on for about 80 mins . You wouldn’t have swipe.
It is good that culture and “beauty” haven’t been completely homogenized/globalized.
Certainly what Brazilians and S Koreans think of as “beauty” and worth getting cut up for (or otherwise augmented) and spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on doesn’t align with what I think of as “beauty”. To each their own.
Your take on literary fiction is very odd. I do not think that most readers of that genre do so in order to learn about what a certain type of person is like (using your example, to read Gatsby to learn about rich people) - I certainly don't. It's not an alternative to Google or Chat GPT. When I read a well-crafted novel or short story, I feel something - it may be sorrow, empathy, joy, disgust (which is not to say that I don't often learn something as well). And sometimes there is simply the delight of reading and appreciating a well-crafted sentence or paragraph.
Yes K-Pop Demon hunters is a great movie. And has really motivated my daughter, she's already working on piano adaptions of the songs, and learning the dances.
I generally love your posts, but as regards fiction I found myself feeling like you need to widen your lens. I will list three recentish books below (randomly chosen off the top of my head) that contain unforgettable characters that don’t feel remotely unrealistic:
- Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel
- The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
I too read a ton of “genre” fiction and am especially well-versed in sci-fi. There are some great writers there, but the characterization and big-issue grappling is generally far less satisfying. Contemporary writers like Richard Powers, Hillary Mantel, Peter Mathiessen, George Saunders, Percival Everett, Rachel Kushner, Rachel Cusk, Denis Johnson, etc are all doing / have done things well worth paying attention to.
If you’ve not investigated Powers in particular, you should. His writing about the wonder of science and the effect of technology is incredibly powerful.
I’ve never heard of the Mars Room or The Overstory, but Wolf Hall pretty firmly fits into the categories Noah is talking about - maybe calling it ‘genre fiction’ feels like an insult to you, but I think it’s complementary, and I definitely would call Wolf Hall a genre: historical fiction. Same with Ken Follet, for example
Wolf Hall and its sequel both won the Booker Prize, so while I agree historical fiction can be considered “genre” and have read my share of Follet, Cornwall, etc, imo that recognition places it pretty squarely in the literary fiction category.
But thats just saying “if it wins a prize, it’s literary fiction; genre fiction doesn’t win prizes so literary is better”. But that’s actually not really my point - my point is that when Noah says he prefers genre fiction, a book like Wolf Hall fits pretty squarely in what he’s thinking about (or, at least, since I can’t mind-read, that’s what I think). It may not fit the way you think of literary vs. genre fiction, but that’s the way I think he’s thinking of it. Or at least, the way I think of it, because I read this article and fully agreed with it, and Wolf Hall would be one of the books that I would use to prove my point, haha (and there are plenty of sci-fi and fantasy too like that). So I think the disagreement is definitional not substantive.
Thanks for the recs!
I've never read Mars Room. Thanks for the rec. Wolf Hall and The Overstory are amazing though.
I read Lolita as a warning - that it is possible to be completely obsessed with beauty and completely oblivious to cruelty, both at the same time.
Lolita catches me when I find myself relishing something Humbert wrote, when I feel myself admiring or even envying the beauty of his prose, then noticing a moment later that he was describing something horrifying. I don't find Lolita to be useful as some sort of attempted documentary, nor as a rote morality play about keeping your hands off of little girls. I find Lolita valuable as an *evocative confrontation*, something bearing an awareness that can only be gestured at rather than reductively described.
There are many such works of literary fiction, and I hope you find some that work their magic on you in the same way!
Choosing what we look like will not be felt as "a kind of freedom" by all -- if it becomes widespread, it will feel obligatory to many and that will produce even more anxiety and misery in our culture.
I feel the same way about TikTok. I have friends and coworkers who sit and just mindlessly scroll through, never finishing a video. I just find it so annoying and don’t understand what they get out of it. I do have the app but I just find it boring and unappealing.
Your criticism of "literary fiction" is not only the trope of "Don Quixote" (though Cervantes was satirizing romances, not novels), it's at the heart of attacks on of novels in the 19th century & comic books in the 1950s. It's just silly. Much of the fun of "literary fiction" is that it lets us know more about the lives of fictional characters than we can ever know about the actual people in our lives. Nobody confuses the two.
For me, as someone fascinated with the past, the appeal of classic literary fiction is that it is the closest thing we have to time travel.
That’s a big part of it . When I read a great writer like Balzac, Melville or Dostoevsky I get a feel for how society was in 19th century France, America and Russia! And the dialogue that they wrote is another great aspect to their craft as writers!
As it happens, I am in Seoul at the moment visiting family, and just walking around the city and riding the subway, people watching, some of your observations on "beauty" stuck a chord.
The Millenial and Get Z Koreans, esp women, and even some Gen X and boomer women, seem quite consciously presenting a certain appearance: curated, fashionable without ostentation, non-attention demanding. One almost never encounters in-your-face or ironic sleaze, whole body tattooing, extreme piercing, T-shirts with slogans (in Korean), etc. The message seems to be 'sophisticated and respectable.' These are people it would be nice-and entirely safe-to know.
There is a small percentage however (5%?) of 20-something women who remind me of 90's Goths: jet black hair, paper white skin-suggestion of near pathologic/phobic sun avoidance. Rather wan, slightly affected or distracted facial expressions. Drugs are an unlikely explanation given current laws and norms. Maybe it's just an observational anomaly , but I wonder if the "ultra pale Korean" is a cultural motif in 2025?
Ok, I’ve GOT to say something regarding your literary fiction blurb here ;). I think it’s based on a couple of very significant fallacies.
1) The notion that great characters are somehow more prevalent in literary fiction vs genre fiction just doesn’t hold water. While it is true that literary fiction writers may bill themselves as character development focused, actual results do not suggest that they are in fact any better at this skill than genre writers. If you think of the great works of genre fiction - whether it’s Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes or the stories of Poirot or Miss Marple, works of Heinlein or Asimov - you will find that great books tend to have great characters (along with strong plot and other qualities). This isn’t genre-specific, it’s simply a skill of great authors, period. And conversely, literary fiction as a genre (and a marketing concept) unfortunately tends to suffer from a fair degree of pretentiousness (which is why I personally do not seek it out purely because of its classification); in actual reality there are plenty of literary fiction writers who write weak characters (often resulting in mediocre novels with fancy vocabulary), whatever they may claim in their self-promotion materials.
2) The second fallacy is even bigger - much bigger. This idea that we understand the world based on what we read in a book is just horribly simplistic. It’s akin to saying that people become violent killers because of shooter video games. This has been thrown into great relief recently for those of us who have been deeply affected by the war in Ukraine. For generations, there has been this popular notion that the great Russian literature must somehow make those that consume it better, wiser, more ethical. A person who grew up reading War and Peace will never advocate for war, went the thinking. Alas, it just isn’t true. People read for all kinds of reasons, and books do not have some magical power in educating us any more than television, music, or everyday experience. On a purely statistical basis, what we read in books is a fairly small percentage of the total information input that creates our understanding of the world. So this idea that a well-written but unrealistic character makes people misunderstand how “real people” behave is just not well-reasoned.
I think the Russian writers are a very diverse group. I like Tolstoy but I feel that Dostoevsky is a much deeper and more meaningful writer. His characters undergo very intense spiritual and psychological transformations and he gives you a sense of how Russia itself was transforming in an almost spiritual way also. And other Russian writers are great social critics like Gogol .
Gogol is actually Ukrainian ;) though hid did write in Russian. He is a favorite Russian appropriation. But yeah, Russian writers are just like those of any other language - each one unique. The point I was making is that each reader processes what they read differently, and it isn’t possible to make generalized predictive statements of the “if you read X you will think Y” kind.
Cool I did not know that! And yes, I definitely got that part, thanks!
You're right, Christie was genius on every level of storytelling.
I read a lot of science fiction too but find myself reading older works. I just re-read Neuromancer by William Gibson and Space Cadet by Heinlein. I'll be re-reading Fire upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge next. Among the newer books, I have enjoyed Ramez Naam's Nexus series and Neal Stephenson's Anathem but not much else.
Neuromancer is terrific! And in this era of AI and robotics, other classics are Kapek RUR, Asimovs I Robot and Vonneguts Player Piano 🎹
I just re-read Neuromancer as well. Still a solid read.
Despite being a technology worker, I tend to not be quite the techno-utopian Noah is, and the beauty thing is another example of this. I find the idea that someone I would be physically close to is partially made of plastic parts deeply off-putting. Too far, I guess, from our upright apes biology. Besides that anyone who invests the same time, money, and effort in fitness and basic hygiene will probably do more for themselves from a hotness perspective.
Right, people need to work out, all of them 😎
I agree and disagree about literary fiction. The interesting characters don’t provide insight, but they often provide aspiration and introspection. People typically aren’t like the characters, but can consciously try to be more like the characters. Of course, being inspired by Atticus Finch is quite different than being inspired by Humbert Humbert or pining for the antebellum South.
I despise TikTok for this exact reason.
Also hated YouRube ever since that stupid fucking unicorn video. When my friends forced me to watch it, I questioned their sanity. Loudly.
Which stupid unicorn video was it? (There are a lot of them!)
I assume it’s Charlie the Unicorn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsGYh8AacgY&vl=en
Apparently the video is actually from 2005, but didn’t get transplanted to YouTube until 2008. I do remember it as one of the first bits of original online video content (as opposed to clips from TV shows or someone filming their kids biting each other after the dentist or whatever) that became quite popular.
Thank you. One of my college friends did the best impression of "Shun the nonbeliever! Shun!" and "Chaaaarlie!"
I thought maybe a novel about literary characters , who are beautiful, dress up in cosplay and appear on screen with varying products for about 5 secs. It could also be a short form long form video. Lots of clips pulled together that go on for about 80 mins . You wouldn’t have swipe.
It is good that culture and “beauty” haven’t been completely homogenized/globalized.
Certainly what Brazilians and S Koreans think of as “beauty” and worth getting cut up for (or otherwise augmented) and spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on doesn’t align with what I think of as “beauty”. To each their own.
I can’t help but wonder when this is going to impact North Korea
I’m sure it has impacted the rich. Everyone else is probably too poor and hungry to get their eyes done.
Kim is probably out there selling bogus Brazilian butt lifts to the unsuspecting right now to raise a little cash.
Your take on literary fiction is very odd. I do not think that most readers of that genre do so in order to learn about what a certain type of person is like (using your example, to read Gatsby to learn about rich people) - I certainly don't. It's not an alternative to Google or Chat GPT. When I read a well-crafted novel or short story, I feel something - it may be sorrow, empathy, joy, disgust (which is not to say that I don't often learn something as well). And sometimes there is simply the delight of reading and appreciating a well-crafted sentence or paragraph.
Yes K-Pop Demon hunters is a great movie. And has really motivated my daughter, she's already working on piano adaptions of the songs, and learning the dances.
Good music that gets the kids moving!