The flattened American landscape of minor writers

[János Székely]

I just remember an exam in American literature (late 70s) at Budapest
University , where an associate professor asked about my contemporary
favorites. I mentioned Updike, among others. Her response was, "Oh,
critics don't really like him, they say he's slick. You know what that
means? The latest star is this man called Pynchon. Have you heard
about him?" I said yes.

More seriously, this is a canon problem. For people who consider
Updike a great writer, Pynchon often falls on a blind spot and vice
versa. Updike is almost always a pleasure to read (McEwan a bit less
often), but greatness, that's another matter. Doesn't fully correlate
with individual taste.

Janos


2009/2/18 Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
>
>
> "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
>
>
> Thinking of petty Tom and poor Willie,
>
> Heikki