This is trivial but I think this is the only place people will know who I’m talking about. I’ll start by saying that I liked Real Life well enough (a bit too IWW for my taste) and I haven’t yet read Filthy Animals, but I was following him on Twitter for a while and I just find him so grating. I also read some profiles on him to maybe better understand why a lot of people are so into his internet presence, and stumble on a quote where he said that contemporary fiction is so self-obsessed, which I don’t disagree with, but find kind of ironic considering the scope of his work (clearly autofictional in many ways).
Idk, am I alone in this?
Yes, agree, what’s up with that? But I confess I didn’t really like his books either :) Self absorbed, shallow characters, a little boring… not for me. I’ll admit he can put some beautiful sentences together though. I only picked them up because one of my absolute favourite authors, Garth Greenwell, was loving them but… no (and then again GG also said A Little Life was ‘the great gay American novel’ or something like that and I can’t express how much I hated that one, lol, so maybe I’ll should get my recs from elsewhere). All that said: I know many people like BT and love his writing, so to each their own, I suppose.