US v England contemporary novels

[The Truth]

I love seeing Danielewski's name pop up. I just finished House of Leaves. Man, what a trip. I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes.

I pre-ordered an autographed copy of his novella The 50-Year Sword which is just now getting a full release and am eagerly awaiting 2014 when his 27-volume serial novel The Familiar. It's an interesting experiment to see it released in a serialized form and I can't wait to see what he does.

You read Only Revolutions yet?

Well, you can't. You only read fifty pages.

House of Leaves is two stories (at least two main stories; others are peppered throughout). One is the actual story of the haunted house, told through interpreting a film documented by the owners of the house. I found the theme of dissociation quite fascinating. We are shown the core of the story, a haunted house story (sections of which are quite creepy) first through the lens of the people behind the camera documenting it (we get no insight into the actual characters thoughts) then we get another lens because we aren't actually seeing the movie, but reading a book about the movie (in that the book portrays itself as nonfictional discussion of the movie, sometimes in academic terms), and then there,s a further lens placed over that in the footnotes we get by the editors and the man who goes mad while reading House of Leaves, his footnotes being a whole other story, also scary, as it's a first person account of a man going insane. There're layers and layers, and without the "padding," it would be just another haunted house story. Which he could have done. He had enough material concerning the story of the house to write a book about that only, but then it would be just another horror story and nothing special.

I need to write a review on the book, as it is definitely one of the most fascinating things I've read, maybe the most fascinating since I read Moby Dick. I can easily see why someone wouldn't like it, as it is always easy to see with strange literature, but I can't imagine the amount of time that went into creating this labyrinthine creation.

P.S. How much of Blair Witch Project was comprised of experts and stuff? Wasn't it like the first ten minutes, at most?

Couldn't agree more, wasn't the section on Navidson's nightmares just terrifying? And Johnny Truant is quite a character. And so is his mother. MZD is just fantastic at what I think is great writing, HoL was one of the most original works I've read in a long time and his character development is just amazing.

I see where the comparisons to David Foster Wallace come from as I'm reading Infinite Jest right now and the way they develop characters is quite similar, not all in one setting but sprawled throughout the novel.

[mgv1208]

I am open to suggestions if you wish to make them. Contemporary literature isn't my strongest area so I'm not entirely married to those novels, especially the ones by Eggers, Franzen, and Roth. Mostly, I was just trying to establish a baseline, or a concrete line of data points, from which to speculate further. No doubt the canon is still in flux, and most of the contenders aren't even on my radar yet. I'm guessing that some very fine work is being done in India, China, and South America right now but they aren't making the same kind of waves as the novels and plays I mentioned.

Some people think that Rushdie or Delillo should make the cut, but I feel like they haven't done significant work in over a decade. Rushdie peaked in the 80s with Midnight's Children and the Satanic Verses. Delillo peaked in the 90s with Underworld.

Martin Amis is an abortion and I read Will Self's Great Apes in college. There was nothing special about it. I don't know how Great Britain can claim these men as it's best writers. They used to be a nation of titans, but now they are all pigmies grimacing at each other in a funhouse mirror. The gall they have to call poets like Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin great!

Why the hate for martin amis?

[Kafka's Crow]

Why the hate for martin amis?

Martin Amis is generally regarded, even in Britain, as a writer who has not produced anything of worth since his first couple of novels back in the '80s. Only he can come up with this stupid idea of comparing American with the British Literature. As far as hurling abuse at Larking or Ted Hughes is concerned, all I can say is, you will never be able to appreciate them as we will never be able to appreciate people like Delillo, Updike or any other of the hundreds typical American writers. As I said earlier, I am willing to give everybody a chance as I am one of Tim Burton's boys, I am different!

As far as Rushdie is concerned, his type of literature is nothing new or unusual any more. Even the greatest of them all, the grand father of métèque writing, G V Dessani, was back in print in 2007 after 3 decades of mysterious absence. This is where they all came from. If Russian novelists "came out of Gogol's Overcoat", Indian métèque writers came out of Dessani's H Hatterr. The genre is more open now. Calling Rushdie ineffectual since the Midnight's Children is like calling Eco inconsequential since The Name of the Rose. They are both going on and even have acquired the dubious title of prolific writers.

[JBI]

Martin Amis is generally regarded, even in Britain, as a writer who has not produced anything of worth since his first couple of novels back in the '80s. Only he can come up with this stupid idea of comparing American with the British Literature. As far as hurling abuse at Larking or Ted Hughes is concerned, all I can say is, you will never be able to appreciate them as we will never be able to appreciate people like Delillo, Updike or any other of the hundreds typical American writers. As I said earlier, I am willing to give everybody a chance as I am one of Tim Burton's boys, I am different!

As far as Rushdie is concerned, his type of literature is nothing new or unusual any more. Even the greatest of them all, the grand father of métèque writing, G V Dessani, was back in print in 2007 after 3 decades of mysterious absence. This is where they all came from. If Russian novelists "came out of Gogol's Overcoat", Indian métèque writers came out of Dessani's H Hatterr. The genre is more open now. Calling Rushdie ineffectual since the Midnight's Children is like calling Eco inconsequential since The Name of the Rose. They are both going on and even have acquired the dubious title of prolific writers.

Who is you, I am Canadian . Our academy is far more British than American in so many ways.

[Kafka's Crow]

Who is you, I am Canadian . Our academy is far more British than American in so many ways.

In the Shadow of the Empire! Even if American Empire doesn't exist and the Dawn of the American Century was a false dawn (and thank f**** for that!) still the empire of the huge American publishing industry would cast its shadow on the nearby countries whose publishing industries can't compare with the size of the American behemoth.

[JBI]

In the Shadow of the Empire! Even if American Empire doesn't exist and the Dawn of the American Century was a false dawn (and thank f**** for that!) still the empire of the huge American publishing industry would cast its shadow on the nearby countries whose publishing industries can't compare with the size of the American behemoth.

Do you think the British crap is any different? Besides, we were getting more of your novels before Nafta anyway.

[Kafka's Crow]

Do you think the British crap is any different? Besides, we were getting more of your novels before Nafta anyway.

You are absolutely right there and this has been my contention since the beginning of this discussion. Our tastes are controlled by the market forces, what Adorno and Horkheimer called "Culture Industry." I admire the writers who rose in their native publication environments without linguistic and commercial support that the writers in English language enjoy, hence my mentioning of Gunter Grass et al, A writer has to be really great to break the confines of linguistic bonds and prove himself worthy of being translated into another language (English in our case) and reach us but think of the ones who never reached us because they were never translated and were never approached by our publishing industry who care about nothing but money, "...wool comes not to market/ sheep bringeth no gain with usura"

[AuntShecky]

The US has Pynchon and DeLillo, the two best novelists working today...So, what more needs to be said?

The last I heard Mr. Philip Roth was still with us.

^^^
As far as younger authors go, does anyone rate Michael Chabon as a young quality American author?

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is meant to be excellent for example? As is The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Yes, indeed.
Also, Richard Powers.
Just finished a short but extremely imaginative novel by a British author named Jim Crace. What happened to him?

[TheFifthElement]

Yes, indeed.

Just finished a short but extremely imaginative novel by a British author named Jim Crace. What happened to him?

He's still around and writing. His last novel, The Gift of Stones, was published this year and he has another due out next. I haven't read anything by Crace but hear good things about him. What was it you just read? I would like to read Being Dead, it sounds interesting.

I think the problem with threads like this is that they too often deteriorate into nationalistic chest beating. The classic 'my worst literature is better than your best literature' rubbish which is impossible to quantify. Plus contemporary literature is always difficult to discuss across cultures as although there is more cross over between British and American literature it is still more often the case that it's the populist works that cross over first, which are barely representative of 'best', and the 'great' literature takes time to percolate, so a 'great' writer tends to be old before they've made that cultural leap.

Plus I see there's a tendancy to focus on those writers who are shameless self-promoters - the likes of Amis, Self and Roth - rather than those writers who are quietly crafting quality works and talking about literature rather than themselves. Hence the sad paucity of female writers mentioned in this thread. As always.

I'd love it if people would be willing to share their experience of great writers from either culture. I have seen excellent works from both, and would love the recommendations of others. It is much easier for me to keep up with contemporary British literature as that's where I live, but I've come across some excellent US writers too and would love to read more. My two-penneth:

British: David Mitchell, Hilary Mantell, Ali Smith, Damon Galgut, Tom McCarthy, Jeanette Winterson, Penelope Lively.
I also hear Julian Barnes is good, but I read A Sense of an Ending and wasn't wowed. Similar experience with Zadie Smith, but I think she falls in the 'shameless self promoter' category.

American: Joyce Carol Oates, Barbara Kingsolver, Ann Patchett, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo.

[prendrelemick]

In my very Limited experience the Americans just have it at the moment. My only experience of contempory works is through a book club I attend bi-monthly. I have noticed that the ordinary non superstar American writers are more Literary and accomplished than ours. Perhaps the publishers only send the better stuff across the Atlantic, I don't know. I have also noticed that it is the American women writers that most impress our group - and me.

[Kjetil]

The US has Pynchon and DeLillo, the two best novelists working today...So, what more needs to be said?

Just that it is hugely debatable if Pynchon and DeLillo are the two best novelists working today.

Even if they're great, You must be incredibly well read to be in a position to make that judgment.....and be sure there is nobody in Guatemala, or Nigeria, or Poland who are more deserving?


For my part, I abandoned Gravity's Rainbow after repeated attempts, concluding that since it is clearly not constructed to appeal through its plot or characters, it seems to need approaching either as an exercise in existential anguish (if you see it as a breaking up of all integrative contexts and thus emulating what Hegel described as "the night of the world"), or as a form of cheap mysticism ( if you see the connecting lines the story establishes as forming some sort of tentative integrative context, at least). Despite my best intentions, I was unable to stick with either.

With Underworld, My attempt was killed by its much-admired first chapter, which I am sure is poignant to americans but which to me came over as an orgy of meningless namedropping and obsessiveness over Baseball. Which I am aware plays a large part in the american psyche, but which to many of us non-americans is just another fringe sport with no emotional connotations of any kind.


Maybe it's just me, and I haven't given up yet.

[Paulclem]

Just that it is hugely debatable if Pynchon and DeLillo are the two best novelists working today.

Even if they're great, You must be incredibly well read to be in a position to make that judgment.....and be sure there is nobody in Guatemala, or Nigeria, or Poland who are more deserving?


For my part, I abandoned Gravity's Rainbow after repeated attempts, concluding that since it is clearly not constructed to appeal through its plot or characters, it seems to need approaching either as an exercise in existential anguish (if you see it as a breaking up of all integrative contexts and thus emulating what Hegel described as "the night of the world"), or as a form of cheap mysticism ( if you see the connecting lines the story establishes as forming some sort of tentative integrative context, at least). Despite my best intentions, I was unable to stick with either.

With Underworld, My attempt was killed by its much-admired first chapter, which I am sure is poignant to americans but which to me came over as an orgy of meningless namedropping and obsessiveness over Baseball. Which I am aware plays a large part in the american psyche, but which to many of us non-americans is just another fringe sport with no emotional connotations of any kind.


Maybe it's just me, and I haven't given up yet.

Having read this, I decided to try White Noise by Delillo. I'm enjoying it very much and would be happy to give Underworld a try afterwards. The discussio about US and UK authors has prompted me to start tocompare some modern examples from each. I've just read The Sense of an Ending by the UK's Julian Barnes. It's a short book, but I felt it approached it's themes in a very English middle class public school way - which by no means meant I was disappointed, but left me musing on how our literary landscape still retains that disproportionate class awareness. I would have liked to have read similar themes completed with a different class reference; I'd like this mainly because of the relevance and a comparison wouldbe good.

White Noise is also very American, rooted as it is in small town eighties America with lots of popular cltural references and reflections. In its own way it's just as bound within a middle American context - it concerns the family and friends of a college professor - but it is a more complex and reflective novel. I'm still reading it. I think I'm going to find the comparisons interesting.