By the drowsy standards of the undead American literary world, criticism of Fuccboi, the debut novel of 30-year-old Sean Thor Conroe, has been strangely polarised. The Washington Post hailed it as “its generation’s coming-of-age novel”; Gawker’s review, “More Like Suckboi,” claims that Fuccboi “captures nothing of our present moment”.
The novel may be a release from a major press (Little, Brown), but its author isn’t famous; nor is his offering — a fragmented piece of autofiction about a 30-year-old named Sean Thor Conroe writing a book called Fuccboi — particularly mass-market. So why the histrionics? Well, Conroe received a six-figure advance for this first novel.
Yet while such a sum will always raise eyebrows, especially envious ones, Conroe has been subjected to levels of vitriol unusual even for the literary “community”. The dope on Conroe circulating among the disgruntled (no six-figure advance) is as follows: Conroe is nothing less than a privileged, wealthy, white-passing impostor, who, Barry Lyndon-style, has passed himself off as a dejected, pitiable, impoverished victim of white supremacy (he’s half Japanese) and capitalism (he’s a former delivery boy). That is to say, he is the kind of wretch who passes as a literary idol for the publishing world’s exacting commissars.
For a time, the indie winds were in Conroe’s favour, and praise was doled out. But since that cheque — some wager, because of it — the tides have turned. In a post entitled “Fuck, Boy!”, Sam Pink, a writer and painter of working-class extraction, put his allegations bluntly: “[I’ve had] my entire work stolen from me.” To wit, Pink accused Conroe of swiping his telegraphic, slangy style — a blend of Soundcloud rap (“side bae”, “ex bae”, “editor bae”, “peripheral bae”, “autonomous bae”) and leaden Instagram self-care argot (“This sharing permitted, even encouraged, me to consider my own patterns./To even recognize, in the first place, that patterns were created by tangible actions”). Pink is disgusted by this “offensively appropriated” “fake slang from an ivy league kid.”
Conroe, predictably, claims to be speaking in his real voice. In his acknowledgments, Conroe writes:
Ty ty ty to Giancarlo DiTrapano for not only letting me write how I talk, but encouraging me to.
That shit there.
Man.
I can’t even.
For what it’s worth, Conroe does talk like that. I briefly met him when he attended a reading at my apartment, though he seemed uncomfortable and often stepped outside to smoke in the cold. As I later learned, two other guests were the respective publisher and author of an essay accusing Conroe of, basically, slumming it. The battle, as always, is about stolen victimhood, and the writers, as always, respond by punching up their “trauma” and playing down their “privilege” to stake a claim to what is, after all, an unimpressive and even grating style.
Authenticity aside, when Hanson O’Haver, in Gawker, dumps on Conroe’s use of “laundered rap slang” and Jonah Bromwich’s New York Times review includes a pro forma condemnation of the same as “cringeworthy”, one wonders: where have they been? Do they remember the Beatniks? Elvis? Norman Mailer’s “White Negro”? White and white-passing Americans appropriating African American slang is nothing new; what is new is skittishness to publish writing that does so. Surely, then, however unappealing you might find this hyper-contemporary style, his publisher deserves credit for taking on the political risk accompanying its use by a man not immediately identifiable as an oppressed racial minority (Conroe is, again, half Japanese).
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SubscribeThis is a good article. I have no interest in reading, er… Fuccboi (charming!) but I am interested in approaches to literature outside of self-deprecation / stream of consciousness / “social critiques.” As a woman immersed in writing circles, especially of the so-called ‘literary’ kind, I’ve noticed how boring contemporary literature is. The firebrands (Houellbecq, Karl Ove Knausgaard) do not write in English, and although I’m happy to read a translation, it’s hard not to mourn the dire state of Anglosphere letters. Also, I love writing men. Willing to shout this from the top of the Matterhorn. It’s helped me understand complex men in my life and in history. I dislike the taboo against ‘men writing women.’
Another interesting point this article rose relates to autism and ‘mental health’ identities. A nasty result of our diagnosis-keen culture are individuals who believe their pain is exceptional, more sympathetic and deserving greater attention than others. I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, Asperger’s, ADHD, depression and ‘low-self esteem disorder’ (Whatever that is). For a while, I believed no one could understand my pain, especially neurotypicals. I was wrong. Understanding that everyone hurts and life is not immune from suffering was a humbling experience. It actually made me a better sister, friend, daughter… and writer. The world isn’t divided into ‘neurotypicals / persecuted minority’ and ‘oppressors.’ Literature ought to assist us in navigating hardship, grief, suffering, peril.
Thanks for this article, Unherd.
It is frequently commented that men are no good at writing women, but it’s far less frequently noted that women are not much good at writing women either, nor indeed much good at writing men. Very few authors at all are capable of writing plausible children.
The usual manner of failure is that the character comes over as how the (fe)male writer assumes a (wo)man – or child – ought to think. So female-written male characters notice the female characters’ hair, clothes, and shoes, and male-written female characters notice what engine the male character’s car has, and want to shag all the time.
I’m not a writer, so I don’t get why this is so, but it is. Daisy in The Great Gatsby is really quite wooden for someone who’s in the best novel of the 20th century. Diana Flyte in Brideshead Revisited is just a version of Sebastian that Evelyn Waugh would have slept with.
My knowledge of this book will likely never extend beyond what I learned in this article, but I’m certainly struck by the quality of the article: intelligent and incisive.
That seems to be the state of modern literary fiction (I’m assuming Fuccboi qualifies as literary–even if Conroe himself doesn’t recognize it as such). Few people read the books but they spawn endless discussion and scholarship. It appears to be more important to have read the leading commentators than the original authors.
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero.
I have often thought a good book review is one that either persuades you to read a book, or persuades you not to do so. This review does a good job of the latter, not because it’s a bad review, but because it’s a good review of what’s clearly an ar53-wipingly bad book.
May I second the first two comments on this article: it’s an excellent piece and a fine example of the sort of material that persuaded me to subscribe to Unherd.
To be honest, I have always enjoyed Esther Manov’s writing, and this piece was especially fulfilling to read. Thank you for publishing work by genuinely smart and interesting people such as she: it’s hard to find these days (as the essay itself notes).
““side bae”, “ex bae”, “editor bae”, “peripheral bae”, “autonomous bae”
I’m not even 30 and these zoomers may as well be aliens to me.
I think it’s telling that most of the media discussion around this book has been about the profile and background of the author. The merit or otherwise of the book is of secondary (if any) importance. What a reflection of the age of identity.
During all the BLM protests, a thing went around Facebook asking people to support Black authors by only buying their books and not books by white authors! My response was, if the book is good I’ll buy it regardless the colour of the authors skin! Who cares about the author beyond their ability to write when reading a book?
The literary world and the acting world are on the same slippery slope. This hysteria and gate keeping needs to end as it’s destroying creative freedoms which are needed to produce great works of art!
I spent the nineties in the book trade, new and used, management and buyer, scout and counter help. And around once a year, one of the publishing houses would announce a major new talent, some child prodigy. And after the book fails to earn its advance, that author would quietly fade away. Only to be replaced by the next pretty young thing, figuratively. They are looking for the next Chuch Palanuik, Donna Tartt; someone thoughtful AND approachable. Most writers have nowhere near the skills people like that have accumulated.
I am not saying anything about the literary quality of this novel, as it isn’t something I would be interested in, but one always has to remember that literary tastes change, what the concepts of acceptable literature forms changes, and there are always going to be people pushing those boundaries. And the critics will fail to realize that what they want is not what the public wants. Which, frankly, is more SF and romance, which are the bread and butter of the publishing world, much to its horror.
Oh, and by the way, this is an excellent review. More, please!
Funnily enough, my Jacobean revenge tragedy The Senseless Counterfeit, which I wrote in 2015, features a character called Fucboi.
God this book sounds appalling, and the author and all his critics uneducated adolescents. I would be filled with despair, but I’m currently reading Olga Tokarczuk’s latest book to come out in English – The Books of Jacob – which reassures me that serious writing is still being done, albeit not it seems in the US.
Why is it that someone can be labeled half Japanese and yet not half African American?
An abiding mystery to me, too.
Good review: this book will never darken my bookshelves.
Thank you! A great article.
Love the absurd puffery of ‘this generation’. This generation, especially young men, don’t read fiction, let alone literary fiction. Why should they?
Feels like this is a good example of Betteridge’s law of headlines.
I mean, of course, a whiny pretentious author I’d never heard of until clicking this link will plausibly kill stone cold dead an activity humans have partaken in one form or another since the invention of writing.
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