apr 2
2008

The Diablo Cody Effect

Nicky thinks the problem with contemporary fiction is the pile of pop culture references. He calls this The Diablo Cody Effect. He's sorta right and sorta wrong.

7 comments

Sorta wrong how?

posted by taylor at 10:20 AM on April 3, 2008

Briefly....

1) I think it's historically off. I think the high-point for reference-laden fiction was when Brett Easton Ellis' Glamorama came out.

2) Blaming Diablo of course isn't accurate.

3) It's a little unfair, because to some degree we actually talk like that. If I had come up with "honest to blog," you would have heard me say it every day for months.

posted by Rex at 10:54 AM on April 3, 2008

well there's that, which is annoying, but i pretty much stopped reading fiction a few years ago when every character turned quirky. you can tell a good story without needing to have one of your characters collect something, or have tourettes, or hell, why not both? it's annoying. not sure who is to blame. dave eggers? maybe the guy who wrote "everything is illuminated?"

4 of the last 6 books on my books read list are non fiction. (cholera, civil war, astronauts, no people anymore. wow, i'm a nerd.) and 1 is a harry potter book. the other is cormac mccarthy, who barely gives any information about his characters, never mind pop culture. he does tell you what color the horses are though.

posted by kitty holmes at 2:31 PM on April 3, 2008

"quirky" -- interesting, because that's a word even more associated with film (well, independent film).

posted by Rex at 2:54 PM on April 3, 2008

A Gawker contributor earnestly bitching about the pervasiveness of the pop culture reference gets a "he's sorta right"? Sorta obvious and dated maybe. Mr. Douglas does realize that he's writing on the Internet, right? Where you can link to seemingly disparate ideas, like, really fast? Come on, Rex. What's Nick going to call out next--footnotes? Self hatred? Well, if he does, you should tell him there's this website all about what white people like...

posted by stevemarsh at 3:13 PM on April 3, 2008

B-

posted by Rex at 3:28 PM on April 3, 2008

Well, Bs get degrees. And I like any literary theory that's easy to remember. But he was so close to a real pomo breakthrough right at the end. He could've been the first to conjoin Diablo to Dane--could've beaten Klosterman to the punch and called it the "D-Bag Correlative" or something. A close, comparative reading is definitely called for at this point.

posted by stevemarsh at 3:32 PM on April 3, 2008




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