Can someone explain Ducks, Newburyport to me?

Submitted by Tantra_Charbelcher t3_125ytf9 in books

What the fuck is this shit? I mean really? A dozen of the most premier literary awards for 500 pages of uninterrupted word salad? Am I losing my mind? This book is completely incomprehensible. It is a test of human endurance to see how long you will stick with something based on critical acclaim. You can't do this to human beings. Like, how dare you? How dare you take your artist's journal you wrote while reading The Artist's Way, publish it, and then become a literary superstar.

How on earth did anyone edit this book? How did a book agent read this and think they had literary gold? And this isn't even the first time I've seen this happen. This is an exact copy of A girl is a half formed thing. How can you do this to people? Do you have no respect for the limited time we have on this planet? The joke is over. Ha ha, you combined 100k words at random and then convinced critics to give you what were once serious awards. I can read The Giver or The Poet X and clearly see why those books won awards. I can't finish this book because it is destroying my will to live. This is the literary equivalent of that fungus that attaches to ants and then grows into their brains and turns them into zombies.

This is gross. This spits in the face of anyone who has seriously tried to write a novel. Anyone who has struggled for years to even leave the tiniest scratch on the monument of collective literature, and you waltz in, you fucking AI drone and barf up a word slurry and become one of the most respected contemporary authors alive today. Enough. Just admit this was a massive hoax. Just admit you're screwing with us. It stopped being funny a long time ago. No one's laughing.

tl;dr, can someone please explain to me how Ducks, Newburyport is seen as an actual book let alone some gripping piece of literature that is reshaping what we know about literature?

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Samael13 t1_je6mesz wrote

You know that it's okay if you don't like a book? That doesn't make it garbage. It's okay for other people to like a thing that you don't.

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Sumtimesagr8notion t1_je79e8z wrote

I'm all for criticizing a book you don't enjoy, but it's weird to criticize a book when you didn't understand it. It always says more about the reader than the book

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Sumtimesagr8notion t1_je79fbr wrote

I'm all for criticizing a book you don't enjoy, but it's weird to criticize a book when you didn't understand it. It always says more about the reader than the book

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Samael13 t1_je7akb1 wrote

Criticism is important, but I think that there's a big difference between critique and insult.

It's definitely a thing on here for people to pretend they're doing the former when they're really doing the later. "How can anyone like this pile of garbage book? I'm just asking for an explanation. What am I missing about this shitty book that makes people think this terrible author is any good?" isn't criticism.

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Handyandy58 t1_je7d5e1 wrote

The "What am I missing about this book?" question always gets me. When it's a celebrated or popular book - as is the case with Ducks, Newburyport - there is usually plenty of writing out there explaining what people found enjoyable or impressive about the book. The answers are already out there, and I am skeptical that anyone on this subreddit is really going to provide some unique insight in this regard. As you have said, it's just a veiled way to complain about disliking the book. And it's fine to dislike books, but it is much nicer to see someone wright thoughtfully about why they dislike the book rather than just use trite, nonspecific hyperbole to disparage it.

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Sumtimesagr8notion t1_je7ase6 wrote

That's fair but I do frequently do the latter with authors like Weir and Sanderson, but I'm admittedly a little mean spirited. Don't even get me started on imagine dragons in a music discussion

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Tantra_Charbelcher OP t1_je6pujv wrote

You know it's okay to not like a book? It's okay for others to not like a book you like, that doesn't make it good.

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Samael13 t1_je6raz0 wrote

I mean, yes? I know it's okay to not like a book. That's... literally what I opened my comment with? It's okay if you don't like a book.

It's absolutely okay for people to not like books that we like. You don't have to think the book is good. That doesn't make it "a hoax," and, personally, I don't think it's particularly productive discussion or particularly civil to launch into a hyperbolic screed about "what the fuck is this shit?"

To be honest, the whole complaint mostly reads like sour grapes (I mean, really "how dare you?" to the author because they published something you don't like that got critical acclaim?) or like "I don't get this work, so there's something wrong with everyone who did get it," which kind of says more about you than about fans of the book.

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TemperatureRough7277 t1_je77nhc wrote

You didn't just not like the book though. You demanded people explain its merit to you while simultaneously concluding that it's a pile of garbage. Your post is not a critique, it's insulting the book, the author, and anyone who did like it.

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McGilla_Gorilla t1_je6peoc wrote

I mean, Ducks is actually very straightforward (imo that’s it’s problem) and readable if you meet it on its own terms on the structure. It’s sort of stream of consciousness in the sense that:

  1. Our thoughts are cyclical. We build connections between ideas or memories by repeatedly revisiting those ideas or memories with context from new ideas, memories or experiences. So the book flows in a big circle of retreading old ground with new context.
  2. The dominating feeling of contemporary America is anxiety. The news and the internet and the economy and the culture make us anxious. And our big anxieties (ie gun culture) interface with our small anxieties (ie how many pies can I sell today). The book is trying to assign form to that feeling.

You gotta commit to understanding how the prose supports these central ideas to get the benefit of the effect Ellmann is creating. Ultimately I think it’s a little too long but it’s very easy to read if you get that rhythm.

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Handyandy58 t1_je71bit wrote

When I'm not enjoying what I'm reading, I just put it down and move onto the next thing.

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DoopSlayer t1_je6n59v wrote

I'm guessing you never really got into the rhythm/mantra state of the book. It's an incredible accomplishment the way it crafts that meditative sensation. I'm guessing you would not like the film Jeanne Dielman ahaha, I think they both kinda tackle the same thing and in a similar way

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nobloodinmybum t1_je871zq wrote

That's funny, outside of the theme of routine I find them rather opposite and sense nothing common to slow cinema in Ducks.

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Sumtimesagr8notion t1_je797is wrote

I haven't read it yet but I'm excited to, I've read nothing but good things about it as a piece of experimental, stream of consciousness writing.

The people that enjoyed the book are probably more intelligent than you or at least more familiar with that kind of writing. I'm excited to start it soon

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nobloodinmybum t1_je87u5e wrote

You say this like Ellman was responsible for making the book famous. Take issue with critics and the literary establishment, not Ducks. I think the book is mediocre and flat, failing where The Pale King's fragments succeeded over a decade ago, but she definitely tapped into something that some group of people found valuable, and you can't call that an unmitigated failure of her alone.

I believe that fungus by the way makes colonies near the brain and muscles, so the ant stays cognisant (as cognisant as an ant) the entire time. The brain is fine and can only watch the body kill itself.

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ItsCoolWhenTheyDoIt t1_jeczfcw wrote

Downloaded a sample to see what the fuss was about. Agree with the top comment, it’s straightforward. If you hear women talking about, “emotional labor” this is what we mean. If you don’t get it, I’m happy for you, I guess? Also, who doesn’t love good clang associations. It’s a bop.

Edit: I was very wrong lol. Went to pick up the paper back today and I think I went blind. Holy shit it was a brick and a half. Made myself read it for 15 minutes but holy hell I couldn’t do it. I feel like I need training from a free diver on how to hold my breath for 30 minutes before I would be ready for Ducks. It was suffocating insane. Back on the shelf it went.

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ImpPluss t1_jedjeis wrote

you should check out www.netflix.com they have some good stuff that might be up your alley if Ducks didn't work for you.

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Constant_Bus7015 t1_je6n9gv wrote

Well, I wouldn’t recommend James Joyce’s Ulysses or Finnegans Wake

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sjsmac t1_je6tjqv wrote

Lucy's father wrote the definitive biography of Joyce, too.

There's a link there, or some sort of something anyway.

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StrawberryFields_ t1_je6oam2 wrote

True artists like Proust, Joyce and Woolf perfected stream-of-consciousness a century ago. This book is boring and unimaginative (which naturally reflects the mind of its writer).

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McGilla_Gorilla t1_je6qix0 wrote

Ehh I don’t think that’s fair to say. The way we think today is different than the way we thought 100 years ago - this is quantifiable in the case of things like attention span. So it’s reasonable to try and adapt the form of the novel to reflect what the author feels are new patterns of contemporary thought.

That said, I don’t think Ellmann necessarily achieved her goal. But you can point to authors like Gass or Morrison or even Faulkner and see how they use stream of consciousness in a way that’s unique and innovative vs the European modernists.

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