This is already a wild fucking ride and I'm only a quarter of the way in. It's a grisly animal fable about a beech marten (some kind of weasel) who is crippled and learns to read from a fox. He struggles with God and his own nature. Or something, I'm not all that far but it's decently telegraphed. Other contemporary novels worth reading? Doomposters need not apply, this is a comfy current lit thread.
HMMMMMMM.The fox is a merchant and lender with interest.
That sure is something, hmn.
>>23557139Sounds a bit like Grendel, I'll have to check it out. Thanks OP
>>23557177You got any leads on other shit written in the past few years? So far>Nobber by Oisin Fagan>Brat by Gabriel Smith>Young Skins by Colin Barrett were my most recent ones that were all excellent. The Grendel comparison is accurate, if it were svelte and italo like Calvino did things. I get a Wind in the Willows thing too, but like the dark adult literary novel version. I even laughed a little 3 or 4 times.
>>23557192Not that anon, but you should check out both of Hernan Diaz's novels. Read "In the Distance" first and then read "Trust". I think "In the Distance" is the better novel, but "Trust" definitely has a wider audience appeal. If you liked "Brat" by Gabriel (I did too), you'll really like "Trust". "Trust" is interesting because the story is almost entirely told through meta-fictional texts that the "main" character reads.
>>23557209I'll check it out. I'm trying to do one current author a month. Blackouts by Justin Torres is still in the mail but also sounds up my alley, and ties into what I personally like. All the fag shit bores you after you've fucked a few lesser men in the ass and have conflicted feelings about the whole thing, it's the rest that sounds interesting.
>>23557139>nothing matters and everything is pointless, anthro editionMore pseud lit with Paolini prose.
>>23557245Go watch tv, summerfag.
>>23557192Nobber was good. Reminded me of a western. Check out Hostages if you haven't already, I don't think either of the irishmen are novelists yet.
>>23557192Not super current, but I just read ME by Tomoyuki Hoshino and enjoyed it quite a lot. Before that I was going through some books by Sam Pink (Person, Hurt Others, Ambulance Sounds; liked Person best) and Tao Lin (Taipei) to get through some names in the 2000s alt-lit scene; I'd guess you've read these two already, or at least Tao Lin. Brat is on my list (I think I recognize your thigh), so it's good to see the recommendations from the other guy.
>>23557905I downloaded some Tao Lin and never read it, the shilled up anoncore didn't interest me back then and I had some other things going on. Anoncore hasn't quite lined up with my tastes, I tend to get solid recs from the few threads left that talk about a book or movement that is slightly off the top 100.
>>23558127I liked Sam Pink a lot more than Tao Lin, though all I've read from Tao is Taipei. Sam Pink is slightly further off the beaten path, though I don't think you could call his style in the books I listed surprising in 2024; outside of what might be called "anoncore," and I liked him a lot anyway. "Person" also has my personal recommendation, and it's short, so it'd be easy to get through whether you end up liking it or not.Got any other recent novels you'd recommend in general? Any recent movements you've found that are cool?
>>23558155I'm still working my way through what I have, and most of that older. Solenoid is in my pile, I flipped through it and every sentence was entertaining so that's a good sign. I'm tired of the whole autofiction thing after reading Aldo Busi, but I think that it solves a problem that the, I don't know what to call it, general pop fiction that masquerades as literature has, where it's trying to appeal to some imagined audience and tick boxes instead of being a dude talking about his fucked up sex life and musings on how much he hates the world, which is infinitely more human and entertaining when done well.I hear the novella is coming back into style due to market reasons, but haven't stumbled on one yet other than Susurrus on Mars, which was a Joycean, pantomime pederastic romp on a terraformed Mars that channeled quite a bit of Delany. Not for everyone, but I enjoyed lines like "raised on elbows so the inverse arch of his black slopes sigmoid down to pert plum rump, an arse made for tarse he proudly claimed" and all the stories about bitches turned into plants by angry gods. Barring Nobber, most of these novels are very short. I think that this changing wind will make for something worth paying attention to, novellas are abstract and weird with a much lower investment for everyone involved. I'm tapped out right now and need to read what I have, but the FSG back catalog keeps rewarding me with leads and older books I need to get around to. I just started reading contemporary lit again last month, after what was probably a 12 year hiatus. I still haven't found my bearings.
>>23558225Thanks for the suggestions. Solenoid has been on my radar, and Susurrus on Mars sounds fun. Any specific books you'd rec from FSG?
>>23558225My Manservant and Me by Hervé Guibert (not new but the translation is) might be up your alley.
>>23559044FSG has maintained a stable of great authors and tends towards the experimental and weird. They published, among other things, it's one of those few publishers and imprints to watch that maintains high quality and good curation. They also do a ton of literary SFF and speculative fiction that doesn't fit in the genre ghetto, too much to list. Even the topical queer and race shit isn't idpol agitprop, most of it anyway. I've heard New Directions went to shit, but used to be similar in that regard. The publisher for Solenoid handles translations and is one I need to go through. A new translation may as well be a new book. I've come to a point where I'm no longer superlative seeking for the bestest of the best, which makes one pleasantly surprised that a book is any good at all. I'm back to reading books based on a synopsis and blind faith in being the small litfic audience. There's definitely been a shift in the market over the years towards bad pop fiction disguised as a literary novel, which did discourage me from contemporary lit for years, but the quality is still there, deep down on the catalogs. >>23559190I'll add it to my winter list.
