I don't read a lot of books lately. I tell myself that it's because I don't have time with Law school and whatnot, but I still find time to watch a lot of Suns games and bad tv, not to mention keeping up with the news and this blog. I've probably got time. When I do read, I stick to classics. With the exception of John Irving (at Marg's insistance) I haven't read a book less than 70 years old in several years.
Maybe I am not looking hard enough, but I feel that the novel is becoming a lost art. The nineteenth century had a huge amount of great great literature. Dickens, Tolstoy, Proust, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Austen (sort of) - all wrote multiple works of great fiction. The early twentieth century had some great innovations as well with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ernest Hemingway, and some one-hit wonders like Harper Lee, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In my humble and admittedly ignorant opinion, nothing that good is getting written now. I feel like every novel that comes out now is a gimmick. It's wonderful that people are writing about the experiences of Afghanis during the takeover by the Taliban; it does not mean that their novels are any good.
I have a theory for why this is so. I think that it is no coincidence that the what I see as the fall of the novel coincides with the rise of the film industry. Great novelists are necessarily great storytellers. So are great directors, writers and, to a lesser degree, actors. It is possible that the creative energy that used to be solely encapsulated in fiction writing has been diluted or preempted by other media.
It is also possible that I am one of the odd people that just really prefers styles of writing that have gone out of style. I don't think so though. If I can like Tolstoy, Dickens, and Hemingway, I must not be too particular about a specific style. If anyone has any examples of great (not good, but something more) recent novels, let me know and I will try to squeeze it in between episodes of The Real World and the Soup.
4 comments:
you liked jonathan safran foer.
You also liked Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which is far more recent than 70 years. I would recommend Neal Gaiman. You can start with American Gods and move on to Neverwhere and Anansi Boys if you like it. Good symbolism and they have the annoying habit of making you think. I think Jacob said that American Gods was one of his favorite books in a long time. You can borrow my copy if you like.
I think you are right, but I think it is due to the dumbing down of society. Few good novels are written because few people think, speak, or write intelligently.
You cite the great 19th century authors and forget that for every Dickens, every Hawthorne, every Austen (yes, there's no "probably" about that, and you're asking for a serious beating) there were a hundred hacks whose names are thankfully lost to history. And those authors whose works persist were not, for the most part, the ones who were most popular in their own day. The 19th century literary scene didn't look all that different from today.
The art of the novel is not lost; it's still in the process of evolving. The problem I have with your argument is that I suspect your definition of "novel" is centered on popular literary fiction, where the publishing game really is about finding the next hot thing, and getting it out there before someone else does or before public interest in the topic dies out. But this is not the only source for fiction, and some of the best novels written today are coming out of places less hidebound and restricted -- young adult fiction, mystery, science fiction, etc.
The thing is, there's really no correlation between what someone likes to read and whether or not it has literary merit. Seriously. Think how many people don't like Dickens. (Like me.) So all you're really saying here is that you aren't finding a lot of fiction you like -- which does not correlate to "no good fiction being written."
Great writers of the modern day: Michael Chabon, Douglas Coupland, Nick Hornby, Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy, Jane Smiley, Amy Tan. For speculative fiction, Patricia McKillip, Tim Powers, Brandon Sanderson, Dan Simmons, Neal Stevenson, Martha Wells. These are all names I pulled out of my reading journals from 2006 and 2007, all of them writers whose overall work is outstanding enough that I don't feel the need to cite titles (though I should admit I couldn't stand the protagonist of Coupland's latest book, so I haven't read it, and Simmons' work is brilliant but brutal).
I stand by all of these authors as great novelists of the modern age. I know at least as many more whose works I personally don't care for, but are also excellent. (Robertson Davies is one. I wanted so much to enjoy his books. Margaret Atwood is brilliant but too agendized for my tastes.) I recommend all of them to you.
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