Something else I've noticed is the lack of rhythm or cadence in writing now. I'll see things that are "technically fine" but there's no auditory appeal to them, which, in my opinion, causes the work to fall flat. I feel as though my own writing vastly improved when I started studying syntax and applying it.
Totally. I’m reading a memoir that is just plodding along with absolutely no rhythm. It’s boring because there is no pacing and no emotion in the sentence structures.
I think we should understand that an important part of the context of such contemporary writing is that its products are not, and are not intended to be, works of art: they are, and are intended to be, credentials, in particular, academic credentials. It’s highly significant that almost all the writers producing such fiction today are academics of some sort in creative writing, English, or other departments in what used to be called the Humanities. The purpose of this literary output is not to entertain, to enlighten, or even to amuse, it is to provide its author with a credential which will support that author’s career goals of getting fellowships, teaching positions, standard literary awards, and, eventually, the blissful ease of tenure.
Accordingly, the standards which shape these works are those of the academic literary class.
The situation is even worse with poetry, which I don't think it is much of an exaggeration to say is dead in our time.
As someone born and raised in a cult I’ve started recognizing the cultish aspects of all of this. Both radical left and right. Identity politics can be just as stifling and fascist as what they tout as—what, liberation? How ironic.
You could write the same analysis of the radical right. Sorry. I mean. I could go on a rant with their beliefs. That they’re imposing on us all. Same as the radical left.
The radical right has its own rigid identity politics and enforced orthodoxies:
* America is fundamentally a Christian nation, and law should reflect conservative Christianity.
* Abortion should be prohibited for everyone, even when others hold different religious or moral beliefs.
* Trans people should be forced into officially prescribed identities and gender roles.
* Women’s proper role is heterosexual marriage, motherhood, and submission to male authority.
* LGBTQ+ relationships and families are threats to the social order.
* Books, curricula, and historical accounts that challenge the preferred national story should be suppressed.
* Immigration threatens the country’s racial, religious, or cultural purity.
* Mass deportation and collective punishment are acceptable ways to preserve that purity.
* White Christians are the nation’s “real” or rightful citizens.
* Loyalty to a leader or movement matters more than democratic norms or factual evidence.
* Elections are legitimate only when their side wins.
* Political opponents are not merely wrong but corrupt, evil, or enemies of the nation.
* Gun ownership is virtually sacred and should override competing concerns about public safety.
* Climate science, public-health expertise, and other inconvenient knowledge can be dismissed as ideological conspiracy.
* Teachers, librarians, doctors, corporations, and local governments should be punished when they resist the movement’s moral rules.
* State power is objectionable when used by opponents but justified when used to impose their own beliefs.
The beliefs aren’t identical to those of the radical left. The similarity is in the structure: ideological purity, moral certainty, forbidden questions, identity-based sorting, public shaming, loyalty tests, and the conviction that coercion becomes liberation when our side is doing it.
An equivalent list of radical-left beliefs would be:
* Identity determines whose knowledge and speech are legitimate
* Unequal treatment is justified when used to produce “equity”
* Biological sex is subordinate to self-declared gender identity
* Others should be required to affirm someone’s chosen identity and language
* Disagreement with identity doctrine constitutes harm or violence
* Speech considered harmful should be censored or punished
* People inherit moral guilt or innocence through racial identity
* “Whiteness” is inherently oppressive
* Western civilization and its literary canon are fundamentally colonial
* Art should advance approved political and social aims
* Cultural borrowing across identity groups is appropriation
* Police and prisons should be abolished
* Borders are inherently oppressive
* Capitalism is inherently exploitative and should be dismantled
* Private property is a mechanism of oppression
* Israel is an illegitimate colonial state
* Political violence may be justified when committed in the name of liberation
* People who depart from the ideology should be shamed, ostracized, or denied platforms
Not every person on the left believes these things, just as not every person on the right believes the radical-right list. These are the absolutist versions—the beliefs that become cultish when treated as unquestionable and imposed on everyone else.
As someone who grew up around people who adhered to extreme right-wing ideology, later floated around far-left circles, and is now a classical liberal and traditional feminist (belief in equality before the law and equality of opportunity for women and men, and ending gender-based discrimination and violence), I have been trying to explain this to people on both sides for years. Thank you for putting it so succinctly!
You are pretty spot on when it comes to the excesses of the far right, except, I'm afraid to say, for immigration. Considering what is happening in Europe right now, the way you expressed this concern may not be the most fitting, though I also recognize that it is from an American perspective. (As for the far left, the only one I somewhat object to is the point regarding Israel, given its complicated history).
Certainly this was a quick pass; none of these are written in stone and whole books could be written about each point on both sides. Thanks, Fairy Tale Geek, for contributing.
While in the past I have disagreed with some of Ms. Libes' essays I feel this one is dead on target. I am in full accord that the writing is uniformly dreadful, pretentious, and vulgar. But safe to say she has not saved me the pain of reading these nonsensical efforts as I would have avoided them on principle. But I have one regret: where was she when I need saving from Percival Everett's "James"? All I can say is, yikes!
I know a woman who just went out of her way to get Mr. Everett's autograph on her first edition copy of "James". Apparently this is already a book of great value and will become practically priceless once the author dies.
Something insidious about pulling apart snapshots of someone’s work as a representation of their ability and overall quality. Some of your points stand, like the one on the clunkiness of sentences, but without a full dissemination of theme, structure, or style, and on the work in its entirety, I find it hard to side with you on how these are examples of bad writing. Worse, it’s reprehensible the disdain you refer to these writers, as if they spent no time on their craft, or as if the conversations they are adding to aren’t worthwhile because of their proximity to queer culture. There’s no evaluation in your piece on the consequences of ideology, such as the platforming of a right-leaning book, only that it is bad that there is inherent bias on the judging panel, which I don’t disagree with. But it makes one wonder about the lengths a reader will go to enjoy good literature. If it means, for me, I miss out because an author (alive, spending their money) wrote a good book and does with their earnings problematic things, then so be it. It’s good you’ve pointed it out. But what’s the alternative? I imagine an apolitical judgment panel, filled with critics holding perspectives across the political spectrum, dissecting a piece of work diplomatically and fairly, sharing work without consequences, remaining neutral throughout on any political stance to their public. How wonderful! Call me, when it exists. I can’t wait!
I think the rhetoric of your piece comes from a conservatism in literature at the expense of the merit of what contemporary writing offers. Yeah, Nabokov wrote well, but was he not also guilty of the same vulgarity you’ve showcased? Or is it only forgivable because he could seamlessly join a bunch of clauses? I’m being facetious. I understand that his writing contained a lot more depth than his ability to meander in a sentence, which leaves me wanting a critique that references Nabokov to evaluate the content with equal thoroughness, which your piece did not do.
The national "literary" establishment, both the academics and publishers, consists of hive-minded ideologues with zero interest in literature, zero interest in STORY-TELLING, and complete indifference to structure and form. Their sole focus is politicized propaganda. Like all leftists who take over institutions, they have hollowed out literature and ripped out its soul.
You’ve put into words something I’ve been doing almost unconsciously for years: I now tend to avoid books precisely because they’ve received certain major literary awards. Which is a pretty extraordinary reversal when you think about it. An award was once supposed to tell a reader, “There may be something remarkable here.” For some of us, it has begun to say simply: “Avoid.”
And I think you’ve hit on the real problem. It’s not that literature has become political, sexual, transgressive, or concerned with identity. Literature has always been all of those things. The problem begins when the “right” subject matter becomes, in itself, evidence of literary merit. At that point, we’re no longer judging what literature does with an idea; we’re rewarding the presence of the idea itself.
This is something I think a lot of people miss - or rather, each side of the aisle is willfully blind to part of it.
All art has the right to be political, transgressive, identitarian, anything.
The right doesn't want to believe this, because a lot of art is very left-leaning.
Those whose social status allows them to judge and gatekeep art - be they editors, publishers, agents, reviewers, award committees, whatever, it doesn't matter - have the moral responsibility to judge based on artistic merit, not subject matter or political alignment.
The left doesn't want to believe this, because the publishing elite in the first world are very left-leaning.
Art can be political, although it does not need to be. Art should not be judged on its politics.
Exactly. That distinction is crucial: art has every right to be political, but politics should not become a substitute for artistic judgment. And I think your last two sentences put it particularly well — art can be political, although it does not need to be. Ultimately, it should be allowed to stand on its own and find its audience.
I’m curious about you thoughts on Faulkner. I’m trying to make my way through the Sound and the Fury for the first time, and it’s a slog for all the reasons you elucidate: choppy writing, deliberately poor grammar, spelling, and syntax, stream of consciousness style that makes it difficult to tell what is happening and when, characters who don’t seem worth the trouble to get to know.
Granted, I’m (at best) a literary amateur, so I’d like to know: what (if anything) distinguishes him from his modern-day analogues?
It's considered a classic for those reasons, which means that bad books have been getting praise for a lot longer than we like. I'm glad I never have to read that book again. The stream of consciousness is supposed to be one character losing his mind, but it simply came across as irritating and dull to me.
Back when I used to work for a well-known bookseller with two names, I was part of a committee that selected titles for awards. The process was painstaking, and all of us had opinions on the way authors wrote, how they approached their topics, how they connected or failed to connect with the reader, and so on. No one agreed with anyone on anything, and at the end of the day, there were books that I didn't enjoy that still won awards.
That's the beauty of literature: Just because groups of people say a book is good doesn't mean it's good for everyone. It doesn't even mean that it's good for members of the group that picked it! The awards - like for the Emmys, the Oscars, the Grammys, etc. - are all part of the industry, all promotion, all more for the sake of money than they are for highlighting great works of art. The books might be good. They might stink to high heaven. At the end of the day, people will read them if they want to read them, and won't if they don't, awards be damned.
But regardless of all that: How are your books coming along, LL?
Something else I've noticed is the lack of rhythm or cadence in writing now. I'll see things that are "technically fine" but there's no auditory appeal to them, which, in my opinion, causes the work to fall flat. I feel as though my own writing vastly improved when I started studying syntax and applying it.
Totally. I’m reading a memoir that is just plodding along with absolutely no rhythm. It’s boring because there is no pacing and no emotion in the sentence structures.
I think we should understand that an important part of the context of such contemporary writing is that its products are not, and are not intended to be, works of art: they are, and are intended to be, credentials, in particular, academic credentials. It’s highly significant that almost all the writers producing such fiction today are academics of some sort in creative writing, English, or other departments in what used to be called the Humanities. The purpose of this literary output is not to entertain, to enlighten, or even to amuse, it is to provide its author with a credential which will support that author’s career goals of getting fellowships, teaching positions, standard literary awards, and, eventually, the blissful ease of tenure.
Accordingly, the standards which shape these works are those of the academic literary class.
The situation is even worse with poetry, which I don't think it is much of an exaggeration to say is dead in our time.
I was going to comment that the situation in poetry is even worse than in novels. Thank you for your comment—it’s nice to know I’m not alone.
The intense descriptions in The Disappearers is uh… well, to quote C.S. Lewis, “one of the most effective anti-aphrodisiacs.”
As someone born and raised in a cult I’ve started recognizing the cultish aspects of all of this. Both radical left and right. Identity politics can be just as stifling and fascist as what they tout as—what, liberation? How ironic.
No, not radical left and right. This is 100% on the left.
You could write the same analysis of the radical right. Sorry. I mean. I could go on a rant with their beliefs. That they’re imposing on us all. Same as the radical left.
The radical right has its own rigid identity politics and enforced orthodoxies:
* America is fundamentally a Christian nation, and law should reflect conservative Christianity.
* Abortion should be prohibited for everyone, even when others hold different religious or moral beliefs.
* Trans people should be forced into officially prescribed identities and gender roles.
* Women’s proper role is heterosexual marriage, motherhood, and submission to male authority.
* LGBTQ+ relationships and families are threats to the social order.
* Books, curricula, and historical accounts that challenge the preferred national story should be suppressed.
* Immigration threatens the country’s racial, religious, or cultural purity.
* Mass deportation and collective punishment are acceptable ways to preserve that purity.
* White Christians are the nation’s “real” or rightful citizens.
* Loyalty to a leader or movement matters more than democratic norms or factual evidence.
* Elections are legitimate only when their side wins.
* Political opponents are not merely wrong but corrupt, evil, or enemies of the nation.
* Gun ownership is virtually sacred and should override competing concerns about public safety.
* Climate science, public-health expertise, and other inconvenient knowledge can be dismissed as ideological conspiracy.
* Teachers, librarians, doctors, corporations, and local governments should be punished when they resist the movement’s moral rules.
* State power is objectionable when used by opponents but justified when used to impose their own beliefs.
The beliefs aren’t identical to those of the radical left. The similarity is in the structure: ideological purity, moral certainty, forbidden questions, identity-based sorting, public shaming, loyalty tests, and the conviction that coercion becomes liberation when our side is doing it.
An equivalent list of radical-left beliefs would be:
* Identity determines whose knowledge and speech are legitimate
* Unequal treatment is justified when used to produce “equity”
* Biological sex is subordinate to self-declared gender identity
* Others should be required to affirm someone’s chosen identity and language
* Disagreement with identity doctrine constitutes harm or violence
* Speech considered harmful should be censored or punished
* People inherit moral guilt or innocence through racial identity
* “Whiteness” is inherently oppressive
* Western civilization and its literary canon are fundamentally colonial
* Art should advance approved political and social aims
* Cultural borrowing across identity groups is appropriation
* Police and prisons should be abolished
* Borders are inherently oppressive
* Capitalism is inherently exploitative and should be dismantled
* Private property is a mechanism of oppression
* Israel is an illegitimate colonial state
* Political violence may be justified when committed in the name of liberation
* People who depart from the ideology should be shamed, ostracized, or denied platforms
Not every person on the left believes these things, just as not every person on the right believes the radical-right list. These are the absolutist versions—the beliefs that become cultish when treated as unquestionable and imposed on everyone else.
As someone who grew up around people who adhered to extreme right-wing ideology, later floated around far-left circles, and is now a classical liberal and traditional feminist (belief in equality before the law and equality of opportunity for women and men, and ending gender-based discrimination and violence), I have been trying to explain this to people on both sides for years. Thank you for putting it so succinctly!
You floated so many non-existent strawmen and false premises there, it's difficult to know where to begin.
You are pretty spot on when it comes to the excesses of the far right, except, I'm afraid to say, for immigration. Considering what is happening in Europe right now, the way you expressed this concern may not be the most fitting, though I also recognize that it is from an American perspective. (As for the far left, the only one I somewhat object to is the point regarding Israel, given its complicated history).
Certainly this was a quick pass; none of these are written in stone and whole books could be written about each point on both sides. Thanks, Fairy Tale Geek, for contributing.
While in the past I have disagreed with some of Ms. Libes' essays I feel this one is dead on target. I am in full accord that the writing is uniformly dreadful, pretentious, and vulgar. But safe to say she has not saved me the pain of reading these nonsensical efforts as I would have avoided them on principle. But I have one regret: where was she when I need saving from Percival Everett's "James"? All I can say is, yikes!
Thank you for your service.
I know a woman who just went out of her way to get Mr. Everett's autograph on her first edition copy of "James". Apparently this is already a book of great value and will become practically priceless once the author dies.
I can only assume you write in jest.
I am quoting her. She was not joking.
I understand signed first editions of Garfield also command high prices. And Cabbage Patch Kids.
Well, of course, Garfield.
Cheers.
Excellent writing about bad writing.
So much crap posing as literature.
Something insidious about pulling apart snapshots of someone’s work as a representation of their ability and overall quality. Some of your points stand, like the one on the clunkiness of sentences, but without a full dissemination of theme, structure, or style, and on the work in its entirety, I find it hard to side with you on how these are examples of bad writing. Worse, it’s reprehensible the disdain you refer to these writers, as if they spent no time on their craft, or as if the conversations they are adding to aren’t worthwhile because of their proximity to queer culture. There’s no evaluation in your piece on the consequences of ideology, such as the platforming of a right-leaning book, only that it is bad that there is inherent bias on the judging panel, which I don’t disagree with. But it makes one wonder about the lengths a reader will go to enjoy good literature. If it means, for me, I miss out because an author (alive, spending their money) wrote a good book and does with their earnings problematic things, then so be it. It’s good you’ve pointed it out. But what’s the alternative? I imagine an apolitical judgment panel, filled with critics holding perspectives across the political spectrum, dissecting a piece of work diplomatically and fairly, sharing work without consequences, remaining neutral throughout on any political stance to their public. How wonderful! Call me, when it exists. I can’t wait!
I think the rhetoric of your piece comes from a conservatism in literature at the expense of the merit of what contemporary writing offers. Yeah, Nabokov wrote well, but was he not also guilty of the same vulgarity you’ve showcased? Or is it only forgivable because he could seamlessly join a bunch of clauses? I’m being facetious. I understand that his writing contained a lot more depth than his ability to meander in a sentence, which leaves me wanting a critique that references Nabokov to evaluate the content with equal thoroughness, which your piece did not do.
Linguistic imprecision, political sermonizing, transgression for its own sake -- the Holy Trinity of postmodernism.
The national "literary" establishment, both the academics and publishers, consists of hive-minded ideologues with zero interest in literature, zero interest in STORY-TELLING, and complete indifference to structure and form. Their sole focus is politicized propaganda. Like all leftists who take over institutions, they have hollowed out literature and ripped out its soul.
You’ve put into words something I’ve been doing almost unconsciously for years: I now tend to avoid books precisely because they’ve received certain major literary awards. Which is a pretty extraordinary reversal when you think about it. An award was once supposed to tell a reader, “There may be something remarkable here.” For some of us, it has begun to say simply: “Avoid.”
And I think you’ve hit on the real problem. It’s not that literature has become political, sexual, transgressive, or concerned with identity. Literature has always been all of those things. The problem begins when the “right” subject matter becomes, in itself, evidence of literary merit. At that point, we’re no longer judging what literature does with an idea; we’re rewarding the presence of the idea itself.
This is something I think a lot of people miss - or rather, each side of the aisle is willfully blind to part of it.
All art has the right to be political, transgressive, identitarian, anything.
The right doesn't want to believe this, because a lot of art is very left-leaning.
Those whose social status allows them to judge and gatekeep art - be they editors, publishers, agents, reviewers, award committees, whatever, it doesn't matter - have the moral responsibility to judge based on artistic merit, not subject matter or political alignment.
The left doesn't want to believe this, because the publishing elite in the first world are very left-leaning.
Art can be political, although it does not need to be. Art should not be judged on its politics.
Exactly. That distinction is crucial: art has every right to be political, but politics should not become a substitute for artistic judgment. And I think your last two sentences put it particularly well — art can be political, although it does not need to be. Ultimately, it should be allowed to stand on its own and find its audience.
Reinforcement here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/opinion/national-book-awards-dei.html
I’m curious about you thoughts on Faulkner. I’m trying to make my way through the Sound and the Fury for the first time, and it’s a slog for all the reasons you elucidate: choppy writing, deliberately poor grammar, spelling, and syntax, stream of consciousness style that makes it difficult to tell what is happening and when, characters who don’t seem worth the trouble to get to know.
Granted, I’m (at best) a literary amateur, so I’d like to know: what (if anything) distinguishes him from his modern-day analogues?
It's considered a classic for those reasons, which means that bad books have been getting praise for a lot longer than we like. I'm glad I never have to read that book again. The stream of consciousness is supposed to be one character losing his mind, but it simply came across as irritating and dull to me.
Back when I used to work for a well-known bookseller with two names, I was part of a committee that selected titles for awards. The process was painstaking, and all of us had opinions on the way authors wrote, how they approached their topics, how they connected or failed to connect with the reader, and so on. No one agreed with anyone on anything, and at the end of the day, there were books that I didn't enjoy that still won awards.
That's the beauty of literature: Just because groups of people say a book is good doesn't mean it's good for everyone. It doesn't even mean that it's good for members of the group that picked it! The awards - like for the Emmys, the Oscars, the Grammys, etc. - are all part of the industry, all promotion, all more for the sake of money than they are for highlighting great works of art. The books might be good. They might stink to high heaven. At the end of the day, people will read them if they want to read them, and won't if they don't, awards be damned.
But regardless of all that: How are your books coming along, LL?
I guess I don’t see your point in writing this long piece… To show what a better writer you are maybe?
Her point is crystal clear and explicit. The literary establishment has abandoned good writing and storytelling for politicized tripe and propaganda.
I'm sorry that your brain cells suffered abuse during your examination of these pieces of "literature", but I appreciate it. I so enjoy your humor!