Is the American Novel Dead?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Barty

... Franzen is mostly known for his tiff with Oprah. DFW is basically a cult figure, etc.

Quoted for truth.

[fjtorres]

Franzen? DFW?? Don't know them, don't care.
Times change and culture changes.
And in a fragmented market of abundance, one person's must read is many others' "meh".

On the other hand, everybody knows who Spielberg, Coppola, and Cameron are.
Whedon is getting close, I think.
(I'm looking forward to his take on Much Ado...)

The "Great American Novel" long ago stopped being any kind of cultural benchmark.
Like, *generations* ago.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

On the other hand, everybody knows who Spielberg, Coppola, and Cameron are.

Everybody?

Yes, the first is a film director.

I heard of the second and think he is an actor or film director.

The third is the prime minister of Great Britain, but you are obviously making another film reference.

I see about one movie a year. So shoot me.

P.S. On reflection, my post above is like that scene in Singing in the Rain where Debbie Reynolds professes to know nothing about movies and then turns out to read fan magazines. Well, I do know that Cameron = Titanic, but if there's a Jeopardy question on Who is Coppola, I am truly sunk.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Franzen? DFW?? Don't know them, don't care.
Times change and culture changes.
And in a fragmented market of abundance, one person's must read is many others' "meh".

On the other hand, everybody knows who Spielberg, Coppola, and Cameron are.
Whedon is getting close, I think.
(I'm looking forward to his take on Much Ado...)

The "Great American Novel" long ago stopped being any kind of cultural benchmark.
Like, *generations* ago.

Cameron will bring to mind the UK Prime Minister for many. Please don't mistake 'everybody' for 'Americans who follow cinema'.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Trouble is, though, that only time is the judge of who is or is not a "significant author". You can't really do it for current authors.

That was my mistake dragging "significance" into this. The blogger was using his immediate reaction to books to rank them. A book can be significant in terms of personal reaction and cultural influence. I muddled the two together, confusing the issue. Everyone pointing out that it's too soon to tell the cultural significance of new books is right, and I was confused and wrong to imply that.

However, on a personal scale, one can judge a book's importance to one's self immediately. It may not be understood, but there is certainly that feeling that a book is influential in one's world view. And I don't think it's wrong to consider whether there were more such books in one time period than another, and why if that's the case. It may be, as Elfwreck points out, that the "Golden Age" system was shaped to produce books important to a certain type of white male (which includes me), and it's a good point. But my point wasn't that things were definitely better back then, it was that, unless you can prove the blogger wrong by rhyming off a list of current authors that are important to yourself in the way he described, you can't say that his point is incorrect. Just brushing it off with "All old fogeys think things were better before" isn't good enough. How do you know they weren't? How do you know they aren't better now? It bears thinking through, and my comment was aimed at encouraging that.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by John F

...No, I was thinking of John Irving. I hate it when that happens.

Sorry. I have never read either, so I'm always getting John Irving and Irving Layton mixed up. I thought that maybe it was the same for you.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Cameron will bring to mind the UK Prime Minister for many. Please don't mistake 'everybody' for 'Americans who follow cinema'.

Uh, the topic is the *American* Novel...

The debate is about american culture's shift away from "literary" books.
Well, from the heyday of the "Great American Novel", the country has seen pulps, paperbacks, comics, movies, TV, and even video games offer up alternatives to entertainment/storytelling. The masses have plenty of choices that did not exist in the Gatsby era.
Even the "high culture" worshippers have learned to accept cinema as "iconic" culture.
As I said, diffferent times.

[JSWolf]

the American novel is not quite dead. It's just become, the great American boring smut...Fifty Shades of Why are We Reading This?

[QuantumIguana]

50 Shades of Gray may be a best seller, but that doesn't make it a classic. Some books sell well, and then are forgotten. The phenomenon of people complaining that things aren't as good as they were in the "good old days" is heavily entrenched. There is records of people making such complaints thousands of years ago. They tended to be wrong, but it is of course possible that books today really are inferior.

But since there is so heavy a precedent of people looking at the past with rose-colored glasses, I require more than just the mere possibility. It is possible that the man carrying a "The end is near!" sign may be right, but I want to see some solid evidence. Prove to me that there is nothing really good in American literature. Prove to me that you're not simply seeing the penny dreadfuls of today while you forget about the penny dreadfuls of the past. I don't need to prove the blogger wrong. I need to see proof that the blogger is right.

[InsulinJunkie72]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

the great American boring smut...Fifty Shades of Why are We Reading This?

Now, now... Fifty Shades is British boring smut.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by InsulinJunkie72

Now, now... Fifty Shades is British boring smut.

Is it? I'm afraid I've never even heard of it!

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I recently spent some 4 months thoroughly proof-reading all 11 of the "Barsoom" books; I think they're wonderful stories.

And thank you very much for that. I do want to read these and I've got your "editions" in mind.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Another article from someone who doesn't want something to evolve. Unfortunately for Byk, novels are evolving to keep up with society, whether he likes it or not.

"America" (by which he means the United States) is no longer the Great New World, trying ever-so-hard to prove how clever it could be. We are now a nation among peer-nations, trying to prove that we are still relevant, still capable of being honest and hard-working and worth looking up to. That nation is no longer interested in colorful and intricate prose that must be read multiple times to be truly appreciated... we simply don't have the time.

(And I don't have time to read the rest of the article. Moving on.)

[Joshua.P]

Like other posters have said, generally books only become "classics" long after the book is published and usually after the author's lifetime. And I think it's a little stretch of the imagination, even if the "American Novel" is dead (which I disagree with) , to attribute this to 9/11.

[montalex]

American writers are better than they've ever been. I can think of several novels written by Americans within the last few years that are brilliantly written and each unique in its way:

Heir to the Glimmering World, by Cynthia Ozick
Visit to the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
Lord of Misrule, by Jamie Gordon
Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
and, how about Michael Chabon?

Oh, and Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson. A book at least the equal of anything written by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, etc.