Delighted to see David Mitchell back in the Booker Prize hunt

[Ya Sam]

Completely agree. Look at the anemic Booker winners, if that's the standard 
of a great British novel then we're witnessing a gradual suicide of 
literature. Suffice it to mention McEwan's Amsterdam. The pathological lack 
of scope and deep exploration of ideas, i.e. the staples of the great 
American novel tradition, are spectacularly evident in contemporary British 
lit, which I am trying hard to like and can't. Nothing like Volmann, Powers, 
DFW, Danielewski has happened across the ocean. Why has it become a standard 
for a successful British novel to be a slim volume of some parochial 
moralising and nitpicking? I liked Time's Arrow by Amis, but, by the 
established standards, it's just a chapter in a Pynchon novel. And look at 
Rushdie, what a descent from the heights of Midnight's Children to the 
triteness of Fury and Shalimar the Clown.


>From: "John Carvill" <JCarvill at algsoftware.com>
>To: "Ya Sam" 
><takoitov at hotmail.com>,<tobylevy at juno.com>,<pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: RE: Delighted to see David Mitchell back in the Booker Prize hunt
>Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:45:13 +0100
>
> > I keep asking myself, what the hell has happened to British
>literature?
>
>Well, yeah, but the question I often ask is who were the British writers
>who could compare to the great American post WWII ones such as Bellow,
>Roth, Mailer, etc. and of course Pynchon?
>
>I think it was on the back of the book that someone said, re. Franzen's
>'Corrections', "no-one on this [England's] side of the Atlantic is
>writing at this picth right now" and you'd have to agree with that,
>whether or not you think Franzen is as great as he clearly aims to be.
>
>I've never had much luck with Amis, McEwan, etc. In fact my favourite
>current Brit author is Jonathan Coe, particularly 'What A Carve Up'
>(sometimes known in the US as 'The Winshaw Legacy'.
>
>Cheers
>
>JC
>
>
>
>
>
>
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