My favorite genre
August 5, 2015 5:46 PM Subscribe
Recommendations for fiction books about (among other things) middle-aged dads and dead marriages...Basically stark, non-whitewashed Real Life?
This might sound weird, but I'm really into reading about "plain people lives," like married couples who are only together for the kids, college students who don't fit into their sorority, etc. I don't want any cute romances that don't happen in real life. I want alienation, immorality, and existential loneliness. But not in a poetic sense.
BEFORE YOU TELL ME THAT'S CRAZY, here are some of the books I like a lot:
Little Children by Tom Perrotta: The characters in this intelligent, absorbing tale of suburban angst are constrained and defined by their relationship to children. There's Sarah, an erstwhile bisexual feminist who finds herself an unhappy mother and wife to a branding consultant addicted to Internet porn. There's Todd, a handsome ex-jock and stay-at-home dad known to neighborhood housewives as the Prom King, who finds in house-husbandry and reveries about his teenage glory days a comforting alternative to his wife's demands that he pass the bar and get on with a law career. There's Mary Ann, an uptight supermom who schedules sex with her husband every Tuesday at nine and already has her well-drilled four-year-old on the inside track to Harvard.
Average American Marriage by Chad Kultgen: "I can feel something hot twisting and burning in the pit of my stomach. For a fleeting moment I think back to a time when I was with Casey, my girlfriend before Alyna....I tried to initiate something by grabbing her tit and kissing her when we walked through her front door. She turned to me and said something about how our relationship didn't always have to be about sex. I remember how much I wanted to smash something when she said that, how much I wanted to scream in her face that our relationship was only about sex....Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the sh*t is incidental."
Men Women and Children by Chad Kultgen: [The book] explores the sexual pressures at work on a handful of troubled, conflicted junior-high students and their equally dysfunctional parents. From porn-surfing fathers to World of Warcraft-obsessed sons, from competitive cheerleaders to their dissatisfied, misguided mothers, Kultgen clicks open the emotionally treacherous culture in which we live.
And my favorite:
The Lie by Chad Kultgen: Brett, the rich hedonist whose appetite for sex is matched only by his contempt for women; his best friend, Kyle, the brooding science geek whose good intentions lead him to one disastrous decision; and Heather, the social-climbing sorority girl who has the power to destroy them both. As this devil's triangle plows through four years of college, Kultgen offers a astonishing take on the wild and amoral universe of college today: a frathouse world where sex is social currency, status means everything -- and winner takes all.
Any time/place is appreciated, but I'm especially interested in contemporary US.
This might sound weird, but I'm really into reading about "plain people lives," like married couples who are only together for the kids, college students who don't fit into their sorority, etc. I don't want any cute romances that don't happen in real life. I want alienation, immorality, and existential loneliness. But not in a poetic sense.
BEFORE YOU TELL ME THAT'S CRAZY, here are some of the books I like a lot:
Little Children by Tom Perrotta: The characters in this intelligent, absorbing tale of suburban angst are constrained and defined by their relationship to children. There's Sarah, an erstwhile bisexual feminist who finds herself an unhappy mother and wife to a branding consultant addicted to Internet porn. There's Todd, a handsome ex-jock and stay-at-home dad known to neighborhood housewives as the Prom King, who finds in house-husbandry and reveries about his teenage glory days a comforting alternative to his wife's demands that he pass the bar and get on with a law career. There's Mary Ann, an uptight supermom who schedules sex with her husband every Tuesday at nine and already has her well-drilled four-year-old on the inside track to Harvard.
Average American Marriage by Chad Kultgen: "I can feel something hot twisting and burning in the pit of my stomach. For a fleeting moment I think back to a time when I was with Casey, my girlfriend before Alyna....I tried to initiate something by grabbing her tit and kissing her when we walked through her front door. She turned to me and said something about how our relationship didn't always have to be about sex. I remember how much I wanted to smash something when she said that, how much I wanted to scream in her face that our relationship was only about sex....Relationships between men and women are only about sex. The rest of the sh*t is incidental."
Men Women and Children by Chad Kultgen: [The book] explores the sexual pressures at work on a handful of troubled, conflicted junior-high students and their equally dysfunctional parents. From porn-surfing fathers to World of Warcraft-obsessed sons, from competitive cheerleaders to their dissatisfied, misguided mothers, Kultgen clicks open the emotionally treacherous culture in which we live.
And my favorite:
The Lie by Chad Kultgen: Brett, the rich hedonist whose appetite for sex is matched only by his contempt for women; his best friend, Kyle, the brooding science geek whose good intentions lead him to one disastrous decision; and Heather, the social-climbing sorority girl who has the power to destroy them both. As this devil's triangle plows through four years of college, Kultgen offers a astonishing take on the wild and amoral universe of college today: a frathouse world where sex is social currency, status means everything -- and winner takes all.
Any time/place is appreciated, but I'm especially interested in contemporary US.
have you read something happened by heller? wish i hadn't...
posted by andrewcooke at 5:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by andrewcooke at 5:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Rabbit Remembered by John Updike in his Licks of Love anthology is a great way to dip your toe into Updike.
posted by Nevin at 5:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Nevin at 5:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by carmicha at 6:04 PM on August 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
Almost everything by Anne Tyler.
posted by amro at 6:13 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by amro at 6:13 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
· Most of Richard Yates's work, Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade
· John Williams's Stoner
posted by enn at 6:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
· John Williams's Stoner
posted by enn at 6:15 PM on August 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
Seconding amro - The Accidental Tourist (wiki link - spoilers!) is a good start.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:25 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:25 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also Jonathan Franzen writes of stultifying marriages, you might take a look at his work.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:26 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 6:26 PM on August 5, 2015
Alissa Nutting's Tampa, is a cutting satire on suburban life, a kind of American Pyscho of middle America, and it's sexual politics is really complicated (really an apologetics for a kind of female centered pedestary), with one of the mosts amoral endings in recent memory. It's very good, and will squick you out.
posted by PinkMoose at 6:29 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by PinkMoose at 6:29 PM on August 5, 2015
The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian
May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes
This Book Will Save Your Life by AM Homes
Seconding Stoner by John Williams
The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Waking the Dead by Scott Spencer
Seconding The Risk Pool by Russo
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:32 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes
This Book Will Save Your Life by AM Homes
Seconding Stoner by John Williams
The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
Endless Love by Scott Spencer
Waking the Dead by Scott Spencer
Seconding The Risk Pool by Russo
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 6:32 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
It's a complex interwoven story, but We Are Water deals with a lot of existential married suck, and it's not glamorized at all. Hurts to read in places.
posted by ftm at 6:53 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by ftm at 6:53 PM on August 5, 2015
Have you read JK Rowling's A Casual Vacancy? That's immediately what I thought of reading the summaries of those books in your post.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:57 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:57 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
J.F. Powers's Morte d'Urban shakes up the 60s-dead-end-life genre by being about a priest in a dead-end religious order, but the fundamental twist of the story is how mundane religion becomes for the characters—the story presents Fr. Urban and his order in the same way another novel from the same time period would present a middle manager and his soul-crushing corporation. (One of the funniest, bleakest pieces of the story is how fixated Urban's superior is on producing a flashy new brochure that will explain to people how calm and meditative the retreat house is.)
It won the National Book Award, but Powers wrote so slowly (two novels and two story collections in 25 years) that he never built an audience. He's little read now, which is a shame.
posted by Polycarp at 6:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
It won the National Book Award, but Powers wrote so slowly (two novels and two story collections in 25 years) that he never built an audience. He's little read now, which is a shame.
posted by Polycarp at 6:58 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara might do it for you. It is 700+ pages, following the adult lives of four college roommates. One of my criticisms, which might make it unsuited to your preferences, is that the characters are a little too remarkable (really, they all become famous in their individual fields?), but it is off the charts for alienation and suffering.
Per the New Yorker review, "what makes the book’s treatment of abuse and suffering subversive is that it does not offer any possibility of redemption and deliverance beyond these tender moments."
I thought it was brilliantly written, and it was just long-listed for the Booker Prize.
posted by teditrix at 7:06 PM on August 5, 2015
Per the New Yorker review, "what makes the book’s treatment of abuse and suffering subversive is that it does not offer any possibility of redemption and deliverance beyond these tender moments."
I thought it was brilliantly written, and it was just long-listed for the Booker Prize.
posted by teditrix at 7:06 PM on August 5, 2015
Came in to mention the exact same two Richard Yates books. Brutal.
On the other hand, I gotta say, I just looked at an excerpt of one of those Chad Kultgen books, and if that's what you're looking for, I think most of the recommendations on this thread are wrong. (i.e. they are more like Perotta, less like Kultgen.) Then again, I wouldn't say the Kultgen has very much to do with Real Life. (Appeal from authority: I actually am a middle-aged dad.)
If you want something more like Kultgen, try A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley.
posted by escabeche at 7:24 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, I gotta say, I just looked at an excerpt of one of those Chad Kultgen books, and if that's what you're looking for, I think most of the recommendations on this thread are wrong. (i.e. they are more like Perotta, less like Kultgen.) Then again, I wouldn't say the Kultgen has very much to do with Real Life. (Appeal from authority: I actually am a middle-aged dad.)
If you want something more like Kultgen, try A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley.
posted by escabeche at 7:24 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This Is Where I Leave You is very funny, but generally the narrator is a hapless beta male dealing with a recent separation.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:37 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:37 PM on August 5, 2015
it just struck me - "my struggle" by karl ove knausgaard, the big literary hit of the last year or so, is in a sense all about this. it's a "warts and all" autobiography. since it's roughly chronological the first book doesn't focus on the middle aged (although the rendering of his father is rather bleak). but it is nicely written, amusing, and absolutely, blisteringly "non-whitewashed".
posted by andrewcooke at 7:50 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by andrewcooke at 7:50 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Someone above mentioned AM Homes and it reminded me that Music for Torching might be appropriate. Also, Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation might work. It's not a traditional novel, but it's definitely a portrait of life and difficult marriage.
posted by vunder at 7:53 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by vunder at 7:53 PM on August 5, 2015
If you like Chad Kultgen, check out Tucker Max.
posted by Clustercuss at 7:55 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Clustercuss at 7:55 PM on August 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh or Jason Starr - his early noir stuff like Cold Caller or The Follower
posted by Clustercuss at 8:01 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by Clustercuss at 8:01 PM on August 5, 2015
Andre Dubus. The father, not the son.
posted by Diablevert at 8:49 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Diablevert at 8:49 PM on August 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I finished Summerlong by Dean Bakopoulos about a month ago and I think it would be right up your alley. Check out this review from NPR. Bleak enough?
posted by holmesian at 9:15 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by holmesian at 9:15 PM on August 5, 2015
The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis. (Forget anything about the movie. The book is fantastic.)
posted by SisterHavana at 10:27 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by SisterHavana at 10:27 PM on August 5, 2015
With a grain of salt, since it isn't contemporary U.S., but Waiting, by Ha Jin.
posted by Mchelly at 11:33 PM on August 5, 2015
posted by Mchelly at 11:33 PM on August 5, 2015
'Intimacy' by Hanif Kureishi.
posted by HandfulOfDust at 1:02 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by HandfulOfDust at 1:02 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you can find Piers Paul Read's A Married Man, read it! He's the author who wrote Alive: the Story of the Andes Survivors. A Married Man is a deeply weird book; I discovered it accidentally when catching sight of an old BBC production of it and going, "Whoa, what the hell is this I'm watching?"
Raymond Carver might do it for you too. John Cheever. An awful lot of the short stories published in the New Yorker, especially before about 2000.
posted by BibiRose at 4:34 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
Raymond Carver might do it for you too. John Cheever. An awful lot of the short stories published in the New Yorker, especially before about 2000.
posted by BibiRose at 4:34 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
I strongly suggest Andre Debus. Dancing After Hours is a good introduction.
posted by bdc34 at 6:49 AM on August 6, 2015
posted by bdc34 at 6:49 AM on August 6, 2015
Thirding Anne Tyler.
You'd also like Richard Russo, I think. Nobody's Fool is my favorite of his (not so crazy about his novels where the protagonist is an academic).
posted by Kriesa at 7:25 AM on August 6, 2015
You'd also like Richard Russo, I think. Nobody's Fool is my favorite of his (not so crazy about his novels where the protagonist is an academic).
posted by Kriesa at 7:25 AM on August 6, 2015
There is also Alice Munro. She won the Nobel Prize for writing about this stuff.
posted by Nevin at 7:45 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Nevin at 7:45 AM on August 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
Read it a long time ago, but loved Jernigan.
posted by whistle pig at 8:29 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by whistle pig at 8:29 AM on August 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
Omg. I know this! On phone, sorry for no links, will probably think of more.
Us by David Nicholls
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
A Widow For One Year by John Irving
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Also the short stories and novels on John O'Hara
posted by mibo at 9:53 AM on August 6, 2015
Us by David Nicholls
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
A Widow For One Year by John Irving
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Also the short stories and novels on John O'Hara
posted by mibo at 9:53 AM on August 6, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:53 PM on August 5, 2015