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JDK1962 · 05-13-2012, 10:24 AM

The original article seems to mix up different topics, and talks about the "American novel" like it's this static thing that was a constant up until recently.

Is the American novel dead? Well, probably in the sense he meant it (i.e., big important author coming out with big important book that pretty much everyone who loved books would take a stab at reading)...sure, because, as has been pointed out, the publishing industry that produced both the authors and the books no longer exists.

The question of whether the American novel is dead is a different question. Does he mean writers writing books that say something significant about America and the era the author is living in (e.g. The Great Gatsby)? That's probably a definite "no"...just as an example, there seem to be plenty of contemporary non-genre novels talking about post-9/11 America (e.g., Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or Waldman's The Submission). I have no doubt that, in the future, we'll have plenty of "classics" that come from the present, and that will survive 50 or more years. But, like HarryT, I agree that it's retrospective. If a book comes out now and you hear "classic," it's marketing hype.

(Unfortunately, the upswing in self-published books makes it harder, by an order of magnitude, to separate the wheat from the chaff in what was already a pretty subjective process. Yes, a few great books might get published that might have been overlooked in the old regime...good luck finding them amongst the several hundred thousand that probably should have stayed in the slush pile.)

Personally, when I'm reading, I might choose to read a novel because of the time and place in which it's set--I'm a sucker for novels set in Europe between the wars--but the nationality of the author is meaningless to me because it has little or no bearing on the goodness or badness of the book. Books belong to authors, not countries. Native-born authors can have an advantage of having marinated in their time and place, while authors from elsewhere can have the advantage of fresh eyes, seeing what the locals are blind to.

05-13-2012, 10:24 AM	#24
JDK1962 Groupie Posts: 154 Karma: 2054094 Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Boulder, CO Device: Kindle Voyage, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (for PDFs)	American novel? What? The original article seems to mix up different topics, and talks about the "American novel" like it's this static thing that was a constant up until recently. Is the American novel dead? Well, probably in the sense he meant it (i.e., big important author coming out with big important book that pretty much everyone who loved books would take a stab at reading)...sure, because, as has been pointed out, the publishing industry that produced both the authors and the books no longer exists. The question of whether the American novel is dead is a different question. Does he mean writers writing books that say something significant about America and the era the author is living in (e.g. The Great Gatsby)? That's probably a definite "no"...just as an example, there seem to be plenty of contemporary non-genre novels talking about post-9/11 America (e.g., Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or Waldman's The Submission). I have no doubt that, in the future, we'll have plenty of "classics" that come from the present, and that will survive 50 or more years. But, like HarryT, I agree that it's retrospective. If a book comes out now and you hear "classic," it's marketing hype. (Unfortunately, the upswing in self-published books makes it harder, by an order of magnitude, to separate the wheat from the chaff in what was already a pretty subjective process. Yes, a few great books might get published that might have been overlooked in the old regime...good luck finding them amongst the several hundred thousand that probably should have stayed in the slush pile.) Personally, when I'm reading, I might choose to read a novel because of the time and place in which it's set--I'm a sucker for novels set in Europe between the wars--but the nationality of the author is meaningless to me because it has little or no bearing on the goodness or badness of the book. Books belong to authors, not countries. Native-born authors can have an advantage of having marinated in their time and place, while authors from elsewhere can have the advantage of fresh eyes, seeing what the locals are blind to.