Jonathan Safran Foer

[Matthew Ryan]

I don't think McSweeney's is all bad. They've put out some good stuff (see:
Rising Up and Rising Down) in addition  to the faddish, hipster stuff that
people who use terms like "chick lit" and "lit fic" (sorry, I just threw up
in my mouth a little) seem to be drawn to.

On 4/18/06, jd <wescac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Matthew, great article...  I feel very similarly to what he says, it's
> just silly, trite, and simple.  I've not read Eggers, which he also
> speaks of, but I read McSweeney's (Eggers created McSweeney's)
> occasionally.  I used to love it.  People of Paper I thought - and
> still think - is a good book.  However I think McSweeney's is
> propgating this sort of sicky-sweet cheeseball emo-esque writing and I
> really hope that my generation isn't remembered for that sort of
> tripe...  reading the description of Yannick Murphy's new book I'm
> just sitting there thinking, oh god, this again?  Some is better than
> others but it's all just the same as far as I'm concerned... sick of
> all these authors essentially copying one another, feels like the
> literary equivalent of a Dashboard Confessional concert or something.
> I definitely classify it as "whiny emo writing" that is over the top
> emotional with very little substance...
>
> I saw the movie for Everything is Illuminated and liked the first 3/4
> of it... maybe only the first half...  but yeah just like in the book
> it pretty much fell apart in the end.  Foer does seem to have a habit
> of including traumatic periods of history to generate interest &
> sales.
>
> RE: marketing, I think that a poster is gentle marketing... maybe
> placing an ad somewhere in the book review section... but a big
> audio-visual event (which undermines the purpose of the novel as art
> form IMO) where you all line up to buy the book & get a shot at
> unlocking yet another marketing ploy I do think is on the shameless
> side.  I'm going because I want to see what he has to say for himself
> but I pretty much agree 100% with the review as far as Extremely Loud
> and Incredibly Close goes, though I did only read half of it and then
> skipped to the end because I just couldn't take it any more.
>
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