Contemporary Fiction

[Paul Mackin]

On Sep 14, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Ya Sam wrote:

> I found Gravity's
>> Rainbow in the library at Camp Howze, a US Army
>> facility 6 km from the DMZ, in the Republic of Korea,
>> in the summer of 1973, not long after it had been
>> published and, young daredevil that I was, without
>> asking anybody for a recommendation on an Internet
>> email group, I checked it out and read it, and went on
>> to read the other books Pynchon had published, again
>> without asking for anybody else's approval.
>
> Right. That's why I'm not giving up on contemporary literature,  
> because a literary phenomenon of the scale similar to Proust,  
> Joyce, Thomas Mann, Pynchon may appear any time and I want to  
> discover this writer for myself the way you did it, without any  
> advice 'from out there'.

You are certainly correct in sticking with contemporary literary  
fiction. However it would be a mistake to think that the only reason  
for doing so is the chance of happening upon some future immortal.  
Even if the author of the book you've just read isn't  destined to  
reach that particular promised shore, he or she may nevertheless be a  
talented, imaginative, inventive writer it would be a shame to have  
missed.  In the past two weeks I've read the latest  (in one case  
only) novels of Michael Tolkin, Marisha Pessl,  and Janna Levin.  All  
talented, inventive, imaginative, writers regardless of their  
potential for greatness. In my opinion people who are not reading a  
fair amount of contemporary serious fiction are missing a  lot,

By the way including Pynchon in with Proust, Joyce and Mann is not  
doing him a favor. The jury is still out and will continue  to be for  
years. At the very least wait until he's dead.


>
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