cultureBy John Pistelli

Sep 10, 2024 | woman-of-letters.com | John Pistelli |Naomi Kanakia |cultureBy John Pistelli

A friend has been texting me about the new Garth Greenwell novel. My friend’s like, it's so bad! What do people see in it? I'm honestly kind of bemused by the whole exchange. Of course it's bad. Aren't hype-machine books usually bad? Does it even matter if they're actually good or bad? At this point I'm happy if they're even readable! One wants them to be plausibly good, so it's not an overt embarrassment to American letters. But...obviously nobody is reading these books for fun. Like, why would you?