The flattened American landscape of minor writers

[rich]

i never found much to like in McEwan's work, particularly the book
Saturday which actually made me angry at its smugness.

in any case, i wish he had said a particular type of writing embodied
by writers like Bellow and Mailer, and Roth is slowly disappearing.

rich


On 2/19/09, Carvill, John <john.carvill at sap.com> wrote:
> Updike Schmupdike!
>
> Why do these slavering articles on Updike (and Roth) in the English
> press always discount, in fact often fail entirely to mention, Pynchon?
>
> Particularly galling since TRP pitched in to defend Ian McEwan a while
> back, despite the mediocre quality of McEwan's wildly overrated work.
>
> Bellow was an immense talent, though a pretty nasty person and prone to
> cod philosophising and right-wing curmudgeonliness. Roth is great, but
> of course he has published some clunkers lately. The Rabbit books
> (execpt the final novella) were wonderfully enjoyable, but I could never
> finish any of Updike's other books.
>
> Pynchon shoulda been a contender for da Nobel, on the strength of GR
> alone. When he also produced M&D and they *still* ignored him, their
> prize proved itself to be a joke.
>
>
> << "And now this masterly blasphemer, whose literary schemes and pretty
> conceits touched at points on the Shakespearean, is gone, and American
> letters, deprived in recent years of its giants, Bellow and Mailer, is a
> leveled plain, with one solitary peak guarded by Roth. We are coming to
> the end of the golden age of the American novel in the twentieth
> century's second half."
>
> Ian McEwan, "On John Updike"
> _New York Review of Books_ Volume 56, Number 4, March 12 2009 >>
>
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