Parochial Plea

[Tore Rye Andersen]

alice:
 
> Well, an American certainly, but a writer who, with his very first
> novel goes after the world. His are Big books that take on lots of
> lands. South America, while not as important as North America is
> certainly a part of the landscape. Places like Malta and Islands
> between Brasil and Africa ...Egypt ...Japan . . .TV-Land . . .P's
> fictions are, as all American Literature is, Modern, Recent, and
> International if not Multinational or Global. 
 
Spot on, with the possible exception of "as all American Literature 
is": It seems to me that an increasing number of American novelists 
have directed their attention inwards, at least since 1990 or so.
I think the opening line of Underworld is symptomatic:
 
"He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye
that's halfway hopeful."
 
It's pretty clear whom DeLillo is talking to here, and in the rest
of the novel it's pretty clear what he's writing about: America.
The few excursions outside of America in the novel (to Russia), feel
forced and embarrassingly stereotypical.
 
David Foster Wallace's vast and encyclopedic Infinite Jest mostly
takes place in a small (fictive) part of Boston, and when Jonathan
Franzen in The Corrections (just lauded as the best fiction of the
millenium so far) briefly ventures outside American borders, to 
Lithuania, the results are again crude and embarrassing.
 
Of course there are plenty of exceptions (including Pynchon, of 
course), and of course there is nothing particularly wrong with
this tendency: If Wallace and Franzen and DeLillo write better
about America than about the world, I'd rather they stick with
America.
 
But - at least seen from Europe - the American novel of the last
couple of decades, and perhaps especially after 9/11, has grown
increasingly provincial. The muted and claustrophobic "Falling Man" 
as a response to the global tremors of 9/11? How strange is that!
 
The world is a distant rumour in much recent American fiction. 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Invite your mail contacts to join your friends list with Windows Live Spaces. It's easy!
http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us