This interesting blog post was brought to my attention last week. I’ve seen criticism of bizarro fiction many times since I started to write in, publish in and champion the genre back in 2012 including one now prominent small press publisher of bizarro fiction imprints once dismissively calling the entire genre “retarded” in private.
Most people simply don’t understand what function bizarro fiction serves in literature, much as they didn’t understand the function of horror comics back in the 1950s.
Worse, no honest criticism of bizarro fiction has ever been allowed inside the protected walls of the genre community without the author of said criticism being ceremoniously discredited and excommunicated. (I don’t know the history of this particular author’s involvement in bizarro fiction, but it is safe to assume he was ridiculed, discredited and then excommunicated as that’s always what happens.)
Since you all are still coming to MY blog with surprising frequency, I figured I would take this opportunity to present you with some contrarian views of bizarro fiction, followed by my own commentary, both positive and negative. In other words, we’re going to have an honest look at bizarro fiction criticism.
What sets this particular critique apart from most is that the author, whom I’d never heard of before being linked to his blog, seems to fundamentally understand the machinations of the genre community, while completely misunderstanding the spirit of the genre itself.
I’m going to link directly to Dr. Joseph Suglia’s blog post titled “Against ‘Bizarro’ Fiction” which you can find here. And then I’m going to pull out quotes from the text and add my commentary under them. I encourage you to visit Dr. Suglia’s blog and read the entire piece in context before you come back here and read my critique. Sound good? Let’s get started.
“A “bizarro” is a self-published fiction writer who pays very little attention to language.”
As this article was published in 2013, I find it puzzling that Dr. Suglia would use self-publishing as his first jab, right out of the gate. He certainly makes his disdain for bizarro fiction authors known right away. I would guess that he saw bizarro, as many academics do, as a quick publishing credit. Just some literary junk food to throw out into the world, use on a resume whenever appropriate and then disavow as soon at it becomes convenient.
And then his manuscript was rejected. That’s just speculation on my part. I have no idea who this dude is, but I have been personally on the receiving end of a verbal shellacking from academics whom I’ve rejected as a publisher. They do not stomach it well. To them, bizarro is the literary equivalent of sugary breakfast cereal (and they’re not wrong.)
What they fail to realize is, if Mozart had attempted to audition for a punk rock garage band “just for the musical credit” he probably would have sucked REALLY bad at punk rock guitar. Even if he was competent on the ax itself, his attitude and personality would have probably turned off the punkers after they’d gotten just one look at him.
That’s what happens when snobbish literary types “lower” themselves to bizarro fiction. They should know better. They are not like us. They are not our kin. They do not belong here.
Anyway, so that first jab, the self-publishing insult coming in 2013 is very weak. By 2013, if you were a serious writer looking to publish and publish often, you would have been a fool not to be exploring self-publishing. That fact gets only more true as the years march on.
I personally know more authors who make a living as writers self-publishing than I know authors signed to small presses making a living as writers. In fact, aside from the owners/authors of the small presses themselves, I can’t think of a SINGLE non-self-published small press author making a living writing fiction today in 2016.
So that insult falls super flat. It’s just a non-insult. Self-publishing is where the money is and as a result, where the readers are.
“S/he has no literary background, is generally undereducated and semiliterate, “reads” comic books, plays video games, and gawks at the cinema of David Lynch and Takashi Miike.”
Dr. Suglia goes on past this with a long-winded parenthetical rant trying to make David Lynch sound like high art, which he’s not, so I’ve omitted it from this quote as it is just Dr. Suglia’s way of trying to sound like he “gets” cool cult films. He clearly doesn’t as he is FAR too intelligent to waste his time on crappy B movies.
Same with the criticism above, if you’re a cinema snob, then don’t even bother to slum it down here with us low-level douchebags who consume trashy art. We don’t want you down here anyway. David Lynch is ours.
So what he’s trying to get across here is that without literary degrees, one could not possibly be literate enough to take on the high art task of WRITING PROSE. He makes sure to point out that most bizarros are not college graduates. I’m sure as fuck a college drop out, and so are most of the dudes and chicks that I run with. And we write a shit load of books.
That fact really grinds the gears of people who spent years inside the stuffy, boring walls of academia before they felt or were seen as worthy enough by their academic mentors to try their hand at something as clearly complex as fiction writing. Think about how frustrating that is. To spend your whole life being told that you’re not good enough to write books until you’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours of your life reading 19th century Russian poetry. I’d be pissed, too!
Anyway, on to the next part. He throws up his snob quotes as he mocks bizarros for “reading” comic books. He and I agree here. Look, I love comic books. I’ve got the first volume of The Superior Spider Man sitting right next to me. But it is absolutely true that editors at the top of the game of bizarro fiction publishing houses have an OBSESSION with comic books and seemingly no interest in bizarro fiction outside of their friends’ books that they publish and make money off of.
Rappers listen to rap music. Metal gods listen to heavy metal music. Film directors obsess over film. Bizarro editors… read comic books.
I’ve just straight up asked them before on social media during some HUGE comics discussion threads where they drill down into this insane minutia of comic books spanning decades, “Dudes, why the FUCK are you not in the comics business?”
They always answer me the same way. “Comics are hard to break into.”
Which always left me with the impression that the ONLY reason they edit bizarro fiction is because it’s too hard to edit comic books and make a living. I personally find it unsettling that the very gatekeepers of the genre I adore have very little interest in it themselves.
So Dr. Suglia and I agree on that. Bizarro editors should read more bizarro fiction and lay off the comics. Or switch to the industry they’re actually passionate about. Let’s continue.
“You will never hear a bizarro intone the names Jan Svankmajer or Fernando Arrabal (“Who?”). Nor will you listen to them twittering over the work of any serious literary artist. I doubt any one of them has ever penetrated the oeuvre of Jose Donoso or Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio (“Who?”). Perhaps after reading this review, they will.”
So he’s right. I have no fucking idea who any of these people are. But before I Google their names, I’m going to guess that they’re 19th or 20th century surrealist poets. Before I get into a rant on surrealism, let me check my facts.
From Wikipedia:
“Jan Švankmajer is a Czech filmmaker and artist whose work spans several media. He is a self-labeled surrealist known for his animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists…”
Yep. Ok, next one:
“A friend of Andy Warhol and Tristan Tzara, Arrabal spent three years as a member of André Breton’s surrealist group.”
Yeah ok. I get the point. Dude names some 20th century foreign surrealists to make it seem like he has even the slightest fucking clue about what bizarro fiction is, but succeeds only in proving my above statement true. That he spent WAY too much time and money on his literary degree and can do nothing more with it than to misinterpret what function bizarro fiction serves in literature.
Bizarro is NOT surrealism. Surrealism is surrealism and nobody likes it because it doesn’t make any fucking sense to anyone. Not even to the pretentious douchebags who make it.
Some bizarro fiction, yes including Carlton Mellick’s early work, contained heavy doses of surrealism. But that fact does not define the entire genre any more than zombies or vampires define the entire horror genre. Surrealism is a literary device. Bizarro is a genre of fiction. You don’t need a doctorate in literature to figure that out. You just need to, you know, pay attention.
“Bizarro cannot be accurately described as a literary movement, since it is neither literary nor a movement, precisely understood.”
I only include this quote to show how big an arrogant douche this guy really is. Wow. Heavy stuff there, doc. Just how many manuscripts did you have rejected before you wrote this? My guess is exactly 1.
“The bizarros write for one another; the primary readers of bizarro fiction are other bizarro writers. This, among other things, makes bizarro more of a cult than a movement.”
He really nails it with this one, though. This statement makes me wonder if he wasn’t part of the initial wave of bizarro authors. Maybe he went to school with the founders and believed he was participating in an avant-garde surrealist writers club before the other authors broke out. Maybe his experimental “just for fun” stories didn’t catch on like some of the others did? I smell sour grapes from this dude.
But yeah, he’s totally right.
One of the most frustrating parts of being a bizarro author has always been the sense that I’m only writing for about 20 other people who also write bizarro fiction. I’ve often described (but never publicly till now. Sorry guys, this one’s gonna hurt! I still love you but this is an HONEST review!) Bizarrocon as a gathering of Carlton Mellick fan-fiction writers. And I don’t say that to be insulting. I say that because it doesn’t seem like the damn genre penetrates beyond the walls of that hotel!
I don’t write my books for a hand full of writers. I write them for readers who are looking for the literary equivalent of Saturday morning cartoons or 80s horror flicks. It has frustrated me to no end to find that no matter how I phrase it, market it, design it, or sell it, I always end up writing for other writers who are writing for other writers who read and review bizarro as a networking tool to gain notoriety amongst other bizarro fiction writers. It’s maddening!
It also lends itself to the idea that bizarro fiction is a cult of writers who worship Eraserhead Press and can think of NO OTHER goal in their literary careers than to be published by the sacred cow of bizarro fiction.
I’ve personally never felt the need to be published by anyone. I’ve never drank the cool-aid. I think most of the people who work at EHP are awesome and a couple of them are total douchebags. Just like any other business.
“Much in the same way that cigarette addicts claim not to be addicted to cigarettes, the bizarros habitually claim that they are not “trying to be weird,” that their fiction is not ‘weird for the sake of being weird.'”
There’s a lot of other crap around this quote. Dr. Suglia thinks it’s an insult to point out that the bizarro collective jointly decided to coin one term to describe their different styles of weird fiction. They did so as a marketing tool and it was successful enough to draw a flock of reader/writers to their movement so I don’t see the problem with it.
But then he throws the classic zinger out there. Truly lazy and unimaginative for a guy who spends a lot of this article crowing about bizarro writers being derivative and unoriginal.
I hate the idea that something is something for the sake of something. Because that’s true for everything. Religion is religious for the sake of religion. Dogs bark for the sake of barking. Scary movies are scary for the sake of scariness. Romantic comedies are romantic for the sake of romanticism.
Which is to say, weird for the sake of weird is a meaningless insult. A dumb play on words. Of course the point of weird writing is to write something weird. This idea that purity of art exists and that a trope or a style should only appear as an afterthought is complete bullshit. It’s nonsense. It’s one of the lamest literary or artistic insults there is and that’s all that needs to be said about that. Brevity for the sake of brevity, friends.
“To them, bizarreness is a false bizarreness, an ungenuine bizarreness, a programmatic bizarreness. The bizarros stylize what they consider “weird.” But nothing is “weird” anymore. That which was once considered “weird” is, paradoxically, the ordinary and the average.”
Dr. Suglia is running out of gas as he nears the end of his criticism. He’d said in an earlier paragraph that Lady Gaga is the new weird and since she’s pop culture, then all weirdness is pop culture, therefore weirdness is ordinary.
Yeah. Ok. By this nonsensical mental masturbation publishing a phone book should be the “new weird” since weird is ordinary then by definition ordinary is weird and what could be more ordinary than a list of people’s phone numbers? Nonsense.
“A diluted and unlettered absurdism, bizarro is a silly, infantile fetish. Much like sexual urination, it is a fetish that I do not appreciate and is therefore of purely sociological interest to me. An ornithologist is not a bird.”
Bizarro is a fetish. I agree with that. It’s a literary fetish and to those who wish to indulge in it, it is an exhilarating, euphoric experience. Who is this fuck to judge others for what they get off on? I used to manage a porn shop.
Pee porn was a great seller. Piss all over each other for all I give a fuck, as long as it pays my bills. An ornithologist is not a bird but he sure as fuck wouldn’t be looking at them if he didn’t love them. Books require an active effort. You don’t have to read bizarro if you don’t want to, brother. Its very existence as a genre is not an affront to your literary degree.
Then he finishes his hit piece off with this whammy:
“The bizarros ought to learn that language matters, that narrative matters, that literature is not a playground for the talentless, that writing should have to do not with the writer’s insecurities and vain desire for difference but with writing.”
There are two types of reader/writers. Those who read for language and those who read for story. We all fall somewhere in this spectrum. Dr. Suglia is contradicting himself here as language and narrative fall on different sides of this spectrum.
A reader or writer who has difficulty forming visual representations of words may find the cadence and patterns of poetic writing extremely fulfilling to read while a more visually based reader/writer will find that conjuring up imagery takes the smallest of literary cues so a strong, twisting, clever narrative is what gives them brain boners.
To call a writer with a strength in one area and not the other talentless is to discount the entire range of literature. For someone with (I presume this where the Dr. in Dr. Suglia comes from) a doctorate in literature, I find it shameful that he does not realize this.
Throwing insecurities in there out of thin air is clearly projection on the part of Dr. Suglia. He no doubt throws around his intellect as a way to mask the insecurity he feels when trying to create imaginative prose.
No amount of money and no amount of time spent in a class room can teach creativity. It must frustrate him to no end to see pure imagination flow out on the pages of great works of bizarro fiction, knowing that his photographic memory of Russian poetry is useless in the realm of the bizarre.
-Kevin Strange, college drop out, bizarro fiction author
I think you nailed the good doctor pretty well. He’s a creatively challenged grammarian, who thinks that to write one must display academe’s “highest” level of English. Few ever have; few ever wanted to; and fewer made it entertaining.
Regarding Dr. Suglia, it is apparent that he never saw many Bizarro books. While I was no fan at first and a minor one now, I rarely found the writing to be less than competent/good. Maybe to put this in some context, Suglia considers David Foster Wallace “illiterate.” On another level, I personally believe that DFW spoke of this guy, though not aware of his insignificant name, when he said that avant garde literature had become boring treatises for doctoral candidates only.
My main points are “entertaining” and the level of academically prepared English used to do that. Before any other considerations are discussed, any form of entertainment, including fictional books, must be entertaining. DUH! I have seen some indie stuff which absolutely clunks on a writing level; though most of it was not in the Bizarro genre. To elaborate on that gets too case specific for here.
Though he may not have wanted it that way; to speak of Bizarro it is necessary to speak of Mellick. Suffice to say that with one so prolific; it’s inevitable that readers will like some and not others. While I’d never characterize him as anything other than a good/excellent writer there are times he makes me laugh unintentionally. I sometimes think I detect him attempting someone else’s style and I didn’t think it worked.
Suglia is just plain wrong on the self-published thing. In the indie world the Bizarros are more “published” than the average; as there is a proliferation of low or non-paying on-line Bizarro publishers. In brief, given the state of the book business and excepting the top 20; traditionally published authors are more and more going self-pub. It makes financial sense, but that is not the topic here.
Suglia has done a few books about stalkers; and has re-written one; all of which he now “disavows” in favor of “Table 41.” Yadda, yadda. So, I could be wrong, but I doubt if he was a “rejected” Bizarro. If he was, he’d have not written some of the incorrect stupidity he did.
Yet,having said all that, Bizarro is in an undeniable decline. You’ve already hit on that as well as some of the likely reasons. A few of its participants have privately told me that they were only in it because it was the only game in town. So much for the collective artful mindset; though it’s no surprise.
Since the thrust here includes a “psychological analysis” of the writer’s possible mindset, I’ll briefly add mine. Though these kinds of commentaries are often dismissed as “attacking the person rather than the book or idea” it is considered necessary by all to know the “political party” of the reporter. So, I’m a rather educated codger, disdainful of many aspects of each characteristic; who sees Bizarro as a genre as legitimate as any; written as well as any and more entertaining than most if it stays on the horse that got it there. My dislike of pretentiousness is sometimes questioned when I goof on a dope. I don’t care.
Lastly, regarding Suglia’s newest, artistic, erudite, venture into literature; “Table 41;” I find it quite interesting, up until Table 5. It’s particularly annoying when he chooses to use words not in common parlance; then condescend to supply their dictionary meanings. A person who wants to display their “brilliance” shows their stupidity by inevitably displaying its lack.
WTF? The human body is the perfect machine for turning wine into piss. Can’t hold it. Gotta go.
I tried to avoid the ad hominems as much as possible, but the guy just leaves himself open to personal criticism with his smug intellectual elitism gushing from every sentence.
There’s plenty there to discuss on merit, but the dude’s also an asshat.
Last; I hope. I agree with you that Bizarro is not any meaningful regurgitation of definition defiant Surrealism; of which I am a fan. But, there seems no denying that it’s a regurgitation of less heralded Dadaism.
Despite the criticisms.ad hominems have attained a thus far un-recognized, but necessary place in communication. I know it’s still argued on a “literary” level, but it has become unquestioned when reading the news. The spin and the POV’s can change a story entirely.
Suglia is coming from a self-pointed elitist position. It’s just an obvious fact. It’s not the least bit personal to me. He sometimes says some interesting stuff. But in the case of Bizarro, I think it’s apparent that he was looking for an easy put down and talked about things he didn’t know. The teacher didn’t do his homework. That’s kind of the whole story to me. Maybe someday he will grace us all with an update, He has shown no aversion to doing a 180 previously
In the meantime, the practical question is “Why bother?”
Does his opinion have any effect on prospective Bizarro purchasers? No.
Is mentioning his name a benefit to him, even in detriment? Yes.
Does he serve as a convenient straw man to refute? Yes, and he even comes with some paper credentials.
And though you might not like this; does his stance against abject stupidity in literature have any merit? Yes, with the complication that everyone considers themselves smart; before proceeding to demonstrate otherwise.
This is the inexperienced world of literature; where everything is analyzed to death in perpetuity. Academe was intended to be preparatory; not a goal in itself. For this I commend Bizarro and am now off to see if I meet Stephen King’s definition of a writer; one whose monthly book income is enough to pay the monthly electric bill.
Hey, fuckheads; I ain’t bein’ over grand. Shit happened once.
Taking a break from writing. To be clear I have an MBA in Finance and have not taken any more college level English than the minimum requirement. I actually learned a lot on Goodreads and Wiki recently.
Your assessment of Suglia could well be right. IDK. He is clearly weird. So maybe he did try the Bizarro route back a bit. I often find a person’s motivation surprising. That “Table41” is terribly uncreative. Animals are roaming the streets of Chicago. Detail, detail, with no metaphor I can detect for 70,000 words. Much is over-written in the sense of his penchant to use odd words. Anybody with a thesaurus can do it, if they wanted. What’s ever more weird is that he violates some of his own rules of writing; particularly the repeating of the same word or a derivation of it. So, maybe the whole Suglia thing is some kind of joke.
As you’ve been saying, Bizarro and all writing for that matter have much bigger and more formidable problems than Suglia. I personally pick books by testing what I can preview on Amazon. But, for sake of argument let’s say I depended on reviews. I read the large periodicals and for a while now they’ve been saying that 60-80% of on-line reviews are bogus skewed toward the indie stuff. I don’t have to check much to see the same reviewer names popping up again and again. Further, it seems overly harsh, but many say that 90% of indie books are terrible.
OK; since I’m almost as much a genius as Suglia, I make the brilliant decision to stick with classics or NYTimes best sellers; because the rest is pot luck and if I wanted any there’s plenty available free.
Writers often act as if this is some big unmentionable secret; but all the buyer-readers have known this for a few years now. And I don’t have the slightest idea how it can be fixed.
Ed, if you take a peek at the Sci Fi market on Amazon, you’d be hard pressed to differentiate between indie and legacy publishing. It’s been honed and refined and with the technology getting easier and cheaper year after year. There’s really nothing legacy publishing can offer authors anymore except to take a huge chunk of their earnings.
That stigma of indie=talentless hasn’t been true for a while and I know a few guys whose bank accounts show it. As I’ve been saying throughout this series, I know ZERO small press authors making money. I know quite a few indie guys who do this for a living in both the horror and the sci-fi marketplace.
It’s true that small press and self-publishing is rife with 4 and 5 star puffed up reviews, but I honestly don’t think there’s much correlation between reviews and sales anymore.
One guy I know gets some pretty harsh 1 star reviews with each of his releases and it doesn’t stop him from paying a mortgage with his Amazon royalties.
Yes, thank you. I have read in a number of places that there is no correlation between reviews and book sales. But, you are the first writer I’ve met who acknowledges this.
I usually wind up in some long ass conversation I don’t want to be in when I say it. So, until here I stopped. Thanks again.
“Legacy” is a new word for me; so I guess it’s something like traditional. And yes again. I’ve read that the Legacy guys do nothing to sell a book anymore. In fact one of their selection considerations is to see the marketing network that the writer has set up for himself. Then they take about 80% of the e-book royalties for the big favor. Hell, what more does anyone have to know to decide to do it themselves?
Regarding the reviews; maybe the last real problem is to avoid the people who unasked send you PDF’s of their books and expect a review. It’s just a waste of time, but they still do it. Then they get all pissy if you don’t generate a bunch of five star reviews in a week. I find it fun to talk with other writers, but then this shit happens.
I was thinking of doing a book wherein I took the highest ranked GR and Amazon reviewers; and then correlated their last few five star reviews with sales; but decided not to for a few reasons including not liking loads of research.
It’s my usual pleasure to speak with you. BTW, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve seen much of five of your books. Excepting one, I’d bet that if Eraserhead had put out this kind of quality, they wouldn’t be having any problems. Further, when you feel like dazzling with the rhetoric; if someone put that alongside Suglia’s stuff; they’d think you were the guy with the doctorate.
Cheers.
Last. Suglia actually picks up toward the end; but you gotta suffer through a lot of hellaciosly un-funny stuff to get there; and even then it’s not funny, but a step away from insightfully on the issue.
I am weighing the costly option of becoming a Strange contributor versus becoming an Eraserhead fanboy.
It kind of sticks in my craw. When I started this bullshit I figured like okay, fuck it; if nobody wants to pay for it; big fucking shit. But, I’ll be goddammed if I’m gonna pay somebody for my work or SUBMIT to some 50 buck advance, piece of shit’s guidelines. When you get to the most bottom of lines, I really don’t give two flying fucks and I ain’t doing no more Bizarro shit.
Besides, if my wife found out she’d kick me square up my ass with her boots on..
Eraserhead isn’t even the only press to ever specialize in weird fiction: http://www.dedalusbooks.com/