Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.

Weekly Updates: N/A

Hi all! Welcome to the suggestion post for r/TrueLit's twentieth read-along. Please let me know your book choice in the comments below.

Rules for Suggestions:

1. Do not suggest an author we have read in the last 5 read-alongs (Italo Calvino, Virginia Woolf, Can Xue, Jose Donoso, and Thomas Mann).
2. One book per person.
3. Please make sure your suggestion is easily available for hard copy purchase. If you have doubts, double check online before suggesting.
4. Double check this LIST to ensure that you're not suggesting something we have read in the read-alongs before.

Recommendations for Suggestions (none of these are requirements):

1. Books under 500 pages are highly highly recommended.
2. Try to suggest something unique. Not a typical widely read novel.
3. Try to recommend something by an author we haven't ever read together.

Please follow the rules. And remember - poetry, theater, short story collections, non-fiction related to literature, and philosophy are all allowed.

This is an essay the author Joy Williams read at the library of congress in 2022 about her thoughts on the modern role of fiction. I transcribed it from YouTube, and it doesn't exist in text anywhere on the internet, so I thought I would post it here.

I began thinking about this little piece as a manifesto. Immediately, I reconsidered. For a manifest is doughy, unbaked (meant to be over-baked), codified. Still, I wanted a form that could contain my beliefs that the novel and her moody sibling, the short story (which has always been more attuned to the essential and affable), is poised in this time of environmental Armageddon to become relevant. The alternative, of course, is to become increasingly irrelevant.

The novel is the most puffed up of the arts, the most exalted, the furthest from perfecting a form. It was Randall Jarrell who described it as a prose narrative of some length with something wrong with it. Henry James described novels as large, loose, baggy monsters, but he was referring dismissively to the 19th century ones.

The 20th century effort was modernism — and we all know what that was — which morphed into a noir-ly urban fretting, prior to slipping into a brief minimalism that relied a great deal on society's glut, excess, and self-regard, before veering into a woozy decadence of mad-cap neurosis, free-wheeling assertiveness, and play, play, play. That was post-modernism, and we know what that was, too — a sugar high followed by exhaustion.

Of course, there were exceptions. There are always great exceptions.

For fiction has large powers. It can change our thinking on a more profound level than journalism or nonfiction, certainly more than confessional writing. I can be more haunting and alluring, or metaphysically disruptive. Yet well into the 21st century, fiction continues to suffer from post-modern hangover and has become more than a little slack, feverish, self-involved, overly intimate, mired more than ever in human needs and wants and emotional health. Dissecting the private realm of the self and sharing it with others has become the most comfortable of comfort zones. It is, perhaps, just the stage, a last deflection, an indulgence before literature leaps into the reckoning.

For leap into the reckoning, literature must.

There is a hint of activity on the room, at the edge of this reckoning, a vague accountability, some modest venturing into new themes and methods, yet the majority of writers remain cautious of challenging the majority readers who prefer reading solely about the adventure of being human. And it could be said that even among those currently muddling about the edge, there is more opportunism than daring. Our dying Earth can contribute to the plot, even highlight the fortitude or distress of compelling characters. The human predicament remains paramount.

Publishing has already put this tendency into a category and given it a name, cli-fi, where our inevitably horrid environmental future has been accomplished but continues to be confronted by human pluck and ingenuity. There is also the more earnest eco-lit, which is more dismayed, nostalgic, and critical. This, too, has been brought into the fold of corporate acceptance, which is briskly moved to preempt the plaintive message, codify it, and place it in a minor niche.

This message, the message of ecocide, has been delivered again and again. It's rather old news, and we have been receiving it for some time. The highly edited version of being: We have messed up the Earth. Our stewardship has been spotty, at best. Henceforth, our lives will be different, perhaps unpleasantly so. This assumes that lives will continue to be lived but with fewer animals (companion or otherwise), weirder looking sunsets, and decidedly discouraging sunrises.

Less edited it is: We have salted the Earth and become unworthy of her wonders. We have crushed her wonders. What we broke is what you've bought, and you can't return it. We can't replace it either. It's not being offered anymore. At a stretch, this suggests that something will continue to be offered, something we have been primed to receive — let the dead, bury the dead, as it were.

We live in a gloriously individualistic but corporate age, and we have been convinced that this is a compatible pairing. Technology is capable of fixing what really matters, and tech has gotten better at making words mean something different than they once did. Take the word “stream.” It no longer evokes the image of fresh flowing water, does it?

Meanwhile, we can more or less continue to do what we've been doing and want to do, build, consume, raze, procreate, take and have, have and take more, repeat. As a character in Don DeLillo’s Zero K says, "Everyone wants to own the end of the world." What has been lost has become more irretrievable and irreversible by the day, as it proceeds from being lost to being gone forever.

Simultaneously, our actions, or the actions of those who claim to speak for us, continue to be irresponsible and irredeemable. These are the four frightful I’s of our time: irretrievable, irreversible, irresponsible, irredeemable. Stampeding towards us on pale horses, bearing the deathly flag of message. And we know, we know, we've heard it, seen it, felt it, and we feel we're dwelling on it far too much. Dwelling on the inevitable is not the way of humankind. It's unhealthy. We can't allow ourselves to be defeated by this new inevitable, and it's important that our children not be defeated either — important that they develop the right attitude.

A recent task force recommended that children 8 and over should be screened for anxiety. If they are found to be overly anxious — we're assured that some anxiety is perfectly normal — psychotherapy is advised. If that proves unhelpful, drugs might be necessary, carefully vetted and approved, of course. Psychotherapy, drugs, technology, engineering, re-engineering: flexibility is the key. Adaptation, invention. There are still more to be tagged, harvested, utilized, stored.

Mistakes have been made, admittedly — the construction of massive dams, for example. Those engineers were so proud. But that's how we learn.

Surely there must be something more to exploit to keep us going? The end of the line need not be the end. Think “Enjambment,” or think, “We still have time, but the window's closing,” or think, “Who needs the window anyway? Maybe there is no window.”

So, the message has been received and our reaction has become increasingly chaotic regarding it. Our minds sink and stall. We bray and posture and deflect. No wonder eight and over — and under — feel anxiety and despair. And what of the despair and anxiety of animals, or fellow beings, trapped in wet markets or fattening pens or zoos or dwindling habitats or polluted skies or oceans? Perhaps there's another word for what they feel? Or larger words? Ones that truly indicate the sorrow, the horror of those situations?

For we need such words that bond with others in holier and more enlivening ways like the molecules essential to life. Words that impact us in fresh ways, that reach us on different levels of awareness. We must find another way of being in this world. We must take up a different practice of being.

Proceed, like someone learning to skate, who practices where it is dangerous and has been forbidden. I am twisting ever so slightly some lines of Kafka here, but why not? He remains unassailable in questioning our incomprehension. He was speaking here of someone pursuing facts, but it could be similarly said of someone who pursues truth — for truth is dangerous and ruthless — are the forces arrayed against those naive enough to seek it. Joseph Brodsky said, "Should the truth about the world exist, it's bound to be nonhuman."

Even riskier then as we proceed, as we skate on the ice of nothingness, the truth does not lie within but outside ourselves, and how with the limitations of our all-too-human intelligence can we know it? Better to think it doesn't exist, or if it does, is irrelevant to our survival, our dominance? We still seem stuck, in the human-is-the-pinnacle-of all-creation grove. It all goes round and round. Our evasive reasoning fueled by hopes and fears and distorted pride, our excessive habits of being. Art alone can free us from these habits — fiction's art. An un-messaged, transformative art of conscience and daring, which will acknowledge the holy, seek it without shame.Like Kafka's skater we must practice in unfamiliar, inhuman spaces, practice more demanding, and as yet, unrecognizable awareness. Practice recognitions. Practice — as in the beautiful line of Wendell Berry’s — resurrection.

Perhaps there are the makings here of an immodest manifesto, a declaration of aims and approach, a brief if partial list of fiction's responsibilities as she confronts the reckoning with the expectation that she has the power to affect deep change:

1. Fiction is not entertainment.

2. Fiction denies the false assurances of narrative. Government, corporations, and mass media now own, shape, and manipulate the myth of the arc of progress, of narrative. These are no longer the wellsprings of fiction.

3. Fiction avows that consumerism is violence. Consumerism is terrorism. It is not an amusingly eccentric aspect of human nature. The objects of our satire are murdering us.

4. Fiction considers the nonhuman animal as worthy of attention and care, as the human one.

5. The human song that is fiction is gravely aware that the Earth's song is being extinguished. The writing of fiction and its unusual symbiosis with the reader is instrumental in reviving the wondrous song of the living Earth.

6. Fiction will energize the word, thwart conditioned reaction and expectation, invite a new gnosis, and offer a path away from the dead end of the self.

Please let us know what you’ve read this week, what you've finished up, and any recommendations or recommendation requests! Please provide more than just a list of novels; we would like your thoughts as to what you've been reading.

Posts which simply name a novel and provide no thoughts will be deleted going forward.

Friends,

Welcome to the annual TrueLit Top 100 poll (2024 Edition)! Sorry we're a bit late this year. By now, I'm sure you scholars know the drill - it's time to compare our collective taste against years past. For comparison, please see the previous year's polls: (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019).

Before anyone asks, these are the works you'd consider your all-time favorites. We are also fine if you want to treat this as "most memorable" or "greatest"; how you vote (or live your life) is up to you.

Voting will remain open until January 3, 2024. All responses are anonymous and we will be sharing the data with you once all is said and done.

IMPORTANT RULES: PLEASE READ

With respect to format, we are replicating last years format (mostly). See the rules below.

1. Only 1 Work Per Author.
2. We will NOT be accepting non-fiction, philosophy, religious texts, or graphic novels. Fictional texts which otherwise touch on the above are fine. Plays, short-stories, novels, auto-fiction, poetry, and diary format are all acceptable. If you aren't sure, please ask, though we are probably going to be a bit lax on this.
3. You will have 5 votes. If you are voting a work which was selected in 2023's top 30, you must use the click-down in selecting that novel. They are ordered by novel name. If the novel(s) you are selecting did not make the top 30 last year, select "other" and please write your vote in this format: Novel (Author Name). Here is an illustrative example: Breaking Bad (Gilligan).
4. If you select "other", you must use the English name of the work, if available - please do not use non-English characters unless absolutely necessary.
5. We are compiling sequels, trilogies, prequels, and series generally. We will not do "complete works", though. Please be specific in your options where possible or name the entire series.
6. Have fun! If you have any questions, please feel free to post in the thread or pm myself or, renowned gentlemen and scholar, u/pregnantchihuahua3. That said, publicly asking, as mentioned above, is likely best as I'm sure others likely have similar queries.

If you do not adhere to rules above, your entire vote will be thrown out.

VOTE HERE

Cheers

Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.

Weekly Updates: N/A

Hi all! Welcome to our Quarterly Book Release News Thread. If you haven't seen this before, they occur every 3 months on the 14th.

This is a place where you can all let us know about and discuss new books that have been set for release (or were recently released).

Given it is hard or even impossible to find a single online source that will inform you of all of the up-and-coming literary fiction releases, we hope that this thread can help serve that purpose. All publishers, large and small, are welcome.

Please let us know what you’ve read this week, what you've finished up, and any recommendations or recommendation requests! Please provide more than just a list of novels; we would like your thoughts as to what you've been reading.

Posts which simply name a novel and provide no thoughts will be deleted going forward.

Welcome again to the TrueLit General Discussion Thread! Please feel free to discuss anything related and unrelated to literature.

Weekly Updates: N/A

Hi all! This week's section for the read along included the last section of the book, Chapter 7: Fullness of Harmony - The Thunderbolt (pp. 635-716), along with the option to discuss the book as a whole.

So, what did you think? Any interpretations? Did you enjoy it?

Feel free to post your own analyses (long or short), questions, thoughts on the themes, or just brief comments below!

Thanks for another great read along!