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Finding myself saturated with classics this bad boy was emphatically recommended to me as exemplary of what 21st century literature could muster.

Well, fuck. No wonder we are steeped in shit.
The only half-interesting passages to be dug were those of Johnny Truant's personal life, and had I been in his shoes I would have thrown Zampano's pastiche —the entire pompous-ass ''manuscript''— into the waste basket at first sight. Not because of its danger or presumed ''uncanniness'' but because how utterly bland it is, a tawdry piece of misery porn addled with shallow characters and faux-intellectual insights that skidds off on so many levels, growing shoddier and more painful to read through. I understand what it was going for, the whole metatextual blueprint of postmodernist fiction: and I respect ambition —but think of how poor and unengaging it all turned out, picture the reality TV antics of The Navidson Record against the mystic pull of Harold Incandenza's film (only to make use of a much treaded comparison) and it's hard not to feel swindled, disappointed and unamused.

What did you personally think of it?
And what novels from this century would you suggest instead? I clearly feel like I started on the wrong foot.