Best American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?

I posted this elsewhere, but, it also fits here:

There are a couple of issues that I would like to raise.

Actually, three, but, then, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Seriously now,

1.) Many years ago, probably while I still lived in Detroit, I read a Sunday book section article that claimed that many established authors do not write their own books and that the task of writing is carried out by graduate students who are paid a stipend for the work and their silence. According to this article, an American Nobel PRize for Lit winner did not write any books beyond the initial few, which is why that un-named author's books were so different later on.

If I read it in the Free Press, it had to have been prior to 1976. Was the writer under discussion Steinbeck or Buck? There weren't many American Nobel laureates for lit in those days.

This sort of thing -- which does smack of urban legend -- drives home the point that American publishing is first and foremost business, but, it also shows how spurious the notion of canonization is. If a big time author's books can be ghost-written . . . .

2.) A lot later in time, a book critic -- this time I know it had to have been in the Boston Globe -- wrote about how healthy American publishing remains. Looking over the list of books published that year, he (? don't remember who it was: this is the Biblical he) said most were well written, as are most American books. While his list included both fiction and non-fiction, it is true that most are well written. Just how many have a spark of divine fire is another story.

Besides, a book can be well written in terms of story flow or plot but not contain much depth or art.

3.) Andy Warhol once pointed out that the great old masters painted bowls of fruit while he paints cans of soup. In other words, the artistic output matched the society it was produced for. Dutch masters feature white washed interiors with sumptious oriental carpets draped on tables and brass pitchers. Painted today, we would consider such works "retro" or just plain odd.

If we transfer that notion to books, maybe there is justification for dropping an old warhorse from the curriculum in favor of a fresh new writer whose work is -- to borrow that popular phrase from the 60s -- more relevant.

I read Victor Hugo for the first time in 2001 and loved him. When I decided to become a serious student of literature, I was too intellectually insecure to take the Foundations of the Novel course. However, in my late 30s, I began reading all those English men -- and they were English and largely male -- who created the novel at about the same time America became an independent country. I enjoyed them.

But, I read them as an adult, with an adult's taste, experience and understanding. Let's face it, we put trainer wheels on kids' bikes, why not have trainer wheel novels.

OK, now, let's take another tack. There are pieces of music that might be classified as folk or rock that are more well constructed than certain classical pieces. Just because something is old does not mean it can not be bested by something new.

I presented Zadie Smith's wonderful novel, "White Teeth," to my book group. It has depth and complexity. There are so many conscious literary devices within the novel, most prominent among them is the use of twins or the doubling of characters. Zadie SMith may develop into one of the leading novelists of the 21st C . . . if we survive global warming and global warfare.

dlowan -- Wow!!! Our avatars have to pass muster! I suppose we should find representations of the Athena in order to be taken seriously by massagatto, er, I mean bernard.

Because this venomous poster has been spewing vindictive, I checked out college curriculums as easily as he could have done, that is, if he cared for facts as much as he cares for opinions and a few sacrosanct individuals known to all whom he regards simply because he thinks they are fashionable.

I entered "Hemingway in college curriculums" into google and found almost all colleges teach Hemingway. However, not all his novels are masterpieces and many find his works too taken with his imagined self to be of much value and his choppy sentences are widely criticized for being annoying.

As for Thomas Wolfe, like many writers, he goes in and out of fashion, which should not be surprising, because literature and especially literary criticism is dictated largely by fashion.

Since when is Mailer considered anything but a joke? As a resident of Massachusetts, I have heard plenty of Mailer-on-the-beach stories and the critics were always booing his Marilyn Monroe obsession.

My son took drama as his senior English class in high school. When the teacher -- a nationally recognized SHakespeare scholar who has been awarded several fellowships to study both at the Folger Library and in Stratford -- started the class, she supposed high school kids would not want to concentrate on SHakespeare, so the class was constructed of one quarter of Shakespeare and three-quarters other works. The emphasis shifted within two years to one semester SHakespeare and one semester other.

Besides, if Shakespeare is neglected, to what do we owe the popularity of "Will in the World," by Harvard prof Stephen Greenblat (is that correct?) a runner up for the National Book Award, and the Michael Woods book and television documentary on Shakespeare?

If I were a black woman, I'd move next door to Bernard.

dlowan -- Gee! I wish we didn't have to deal with so many idiotic interruptions!

Collette! I did read Gigi. I didn't like it any better than the film. I did not read the Claudine novels, in large part because I knew what a monster her husband was. I did start, "In My Mother's Garden," but the book suffered a fatal accident and I wasn't able to replace it, and, frankly, forgot about it until you mentioned it now.

D'Art and dlowan -- I bet you do things in different ways. You know, eat, garden, wash your clothes. I bet you enjoy different types of movies at different times and different books at different times.

As I said before . . . no longer sure whether it was on this thread or not . . . there are books for different times in life.

People may elect to read books from THe Canon or the Five Foot Shelf out of curiousity or to begin a program of self-instruction. However, such books are a starting point that enable one to go out and read other books.

Some sad person on these threads savaged a book I have read three times in my life -- at 24, in my early 40s and just this spring -- THeir Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. You know, if that poster feels threatened (it was not our resident blowhard) by the intellectual and creative power of well educated black woman, that poster is pretty sad indeed. The book -- while flawed: the courtroom scene was a little perfunctory -- is literary, linguistically masterful, relevant, interesting.

I really don't think you understand,Plain Ol Me. Reading good literature is essential to a good life.

I am sure that you are aware of the HUGE array of literature, both American and foreign ,that is available to all of us in a wide variety of ways.

Life is short. One cannot possibly read all that is SUPERIOR LITERATURE.

When I saw my niece with a book-"The Devil Wears Prada" I asked her about it and tried to get her interested in better literature.

NO ONE HAS ENOUGH TIME TO READ THE GREAT LITERATURE.

Some of the writing published today is just nonsense. It is tendentious and is not written to fulfill esthetic purposes but to grind an axe--Feminism, Afro-Americanism, Homosexuality, etc.

Now, you can do whatever you like. You are the master of your own fate, But, as long as I can, I will try as hard as I can to get my 13 year old son to read Shakespeare instead of Harry Potter.

It isn't that Harry Potter is so bad, It is that my son does not have enough time to read all of the great literature he should be reading.

I would counsel my son to skip eating at McDonald's. I would counsel him to eat more healthy and delicious food.

Similarly with reading.

Great Literature is unread by the large majority of people. It is too difficult they say.

Why anyone would take the time to read a POTBOILER like "The DaVinciCode" is beyond me when there are so many great books ready to be read.

When we( all of us) tout junk, we poison the minds of future generations!!!

This is what passes as BernardR's great original thoughts:

1) No one has enough time to read the great literature.

2) Don't eat at McDonald's.

3) Ax grinding is not a worthy enterprise especially if it presents a view unlike that already held by the reader.


Joe(I am swept away)Nation

How about "Ham on rye" Bukowski?

Overrated? Too trendy?

Lol!

Sure, but he's kind of fun...if you like fish in a barrel.

I think his assumptions about me are a hoot. But, then, so were his assumptions about me on abuzz.

Mr. R has a tendency to focus his bile on certain posters, usually women. Given his slagging of female authors, a pattern seems to emerge...

How can you tell the gender of A2K posters? Would it surprise you to learn, that BernardR is a female?

HA!
We've been down that road already.

Yes, it would surprise me. People often reveal gender info in the course of their posts...

So who is Mr.R?

Could there be a less important question?

Oh!

Full name = BernardR. He likes to use the honorific when addressing others, so I thought I'd return the favor...

Miller -- Most posters adopt an avatar or nickname that definitely tells you their gender. I had reasons for calling myself 'plainoldme' here after using a decidedly female name as a poster on abuzz. One of the reasons was my amusement over the nickname, "fakename," used by someone whose posts I enjoyed on abuzz.

Why not play upon the notion of hiding one's name?

I use a cow, in part because it is the female of its species, and, in part, because I love cows. Formerly, when life was bad, I would drive into the country and watch them. While the country is out of reach, due to limited time and money, a local museum now grazes cows as part of its recreation of the Revolutionary War.

Some posters pick a gender neutral name and avatar, but, they might refer to a husband or wife in their posts, or to their preferences in bras, or something that labels their gender.

On the other hand, there are some folks whose gender can not be discovered in any way. I have read one person through abuzz and two other internet fora over several years without knowing the poster's gender. She is a woman, but it took a long time to discover it. Careful reading of her posts was actually fun, like a dectective story!

D'Art and dlowan -- Since we are all interested in an intelligent and open-minded discussion of books, why don't we just charge on through and do it?

I looked for Beloved at my local book store. There wasn't a copy to be had. The only Morrison book was one on the high school reading list. This is a school that is always in the Top Ten for Massachusetts, a state whose SAT scores are higher than the national average.