US v England contemporary novels

[mgv1208]

I was listening to an interview w Martin Amis and he argued that the English contemporary novel is stronger than the contemporary american novel. What do you guys think?

Prominent English novelists: Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Will Self, Julian Barnes

American Novelists: Don Dellilo, Pynchon, Cormac Mccarthy, Foer

[JBI]

The States by a long shot. England from what I can gather has failed to embrace itself. The world it writes has been museum-afied for about 60 years already, and rather than embrace the James Bond vibe of just ignoring the empire and embracing a freedom and new identity, the culture has retracted into itself.

Not that the US is much better, but it is better, and still has a sizable writing base, and the benefit of a local population unconcerned with international authors.

Still, I think the novel itself is in trouble, as it fails to be as engaging a genre as film or television.

[Kafka's Crow]

The States by a long shot. England from what I can gather has failed to embrace itself. The world it writes has been museum-afied for about 60 years already, and rather than embrace the James Bond vibe of just ignoring the empire and embracing a freedom and new identity, the culture has retracted into itself.

Not that the US is much better, but it is better, and still has a sizable writing base, and the benefit of a local population unconcerned with international authors.

Still, I think the novel itself is in trouble, as it fails to be as engaging a genre as film or television.

Oh my God JBI, what are you saying? Unfortunately all statements in your post are wrong although I really hate to disagree with you. We are comparing two countries so different in size that the comparison itself seems stupid still Britain compares very well with the US as far as the quality (and even quantity) of literary output is concerned. I don't know where to start.

Children's Literature: Ever heard of JK Rowling, CS Lewis, AA Milne, Richmond Crompton, Roald Dahl, Jill Murphy etc and all these writers have nothing to do with the empire?

Novel is alive and kicking: Proof: not many writers win the Booker Prize twice. There is such a plethora of talent that each year you see new faces ranging from Monica Ali to Hilary Mantel in the lineup along with old stalwarts like AS Byatt, VS Naipaul and Kazuo Ishiguro. Even the names would show you how diverse the society and its literature are: Hanif Qureshi, Salman Rushdie, Sam Selvon, Antonia Fraser, D M Thomas, Tariq Ali, Nadeem Aslam...

Poetry: Ted Hughes, Jo Shapcott, Jackie Kay, James Fenton, Andrew Motion, Duffy, Adrian Mitchell:
http://youtu.be/1TWZY14tGsU
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.ne...oem/item/13604

I must admit I don't know much about the poets though I do read and listen to and come across loads of contemporary poetry all the time. We read together as family and AA Milne is among the favorites though the all time favorite being The Old Possum by a certain St Louis fella who became a naturalised British citizen.

Drama: What? No drama in Bard's own land? Bond, Pinter, Osborne, Shaffer, Stoppard, Bennett, Coward, Sarah Kane, Ayckbourn, Simon Gray...

And I am not a knowledgeable person on contemporary literature but I have a good knowledge of English AND American literature in general. Keep in mind, Britain is only one fifth in size (in population) when compared with the US. As far as reading public is concerned, Britain is the 2nd largest producer of books after the US and reading has been on the rise in Britain for many, many years whereas this trend has been in reverse in North America in general and the US in particular. Even Da Vinci Code was last week dethroned from its perch of 'the all time biggest seller' by Fifty Shades of Grey. Even in production of trash literature, Britain has finally beaten the US!!!
And me, an outsider and an exile, can see and say all this about a country that has been my refuge for only 15 years!

[Desolation]

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

[JBI]

We are talking novels, and we are talking England. The Booker is international (all of the empire), and has a very Indian feel anyway.

As for drama, if you said drama, I would have totally agreed. If you said poetry, I still would have gone with the US, as Ted Highes et al are finished (he is dead already). I do not think the British poetic scene is better than an English poetic scene that simply is better funded, larger, and more diverse.

But the topic is novels, not other genres. The American novel is far more alive than the British, but both are in bad shape. The American public is a novel reading public, and has no concern for the continent.

As a Canadian, we are early on taught the importance of the United States in publishing our books. Just look at genre writing, for instance. Niched genres were far more able to form inside the US than the rest of the world because of the simple fact that the readership is greater, and life there is more boring, and people need something to fill their time.

England, as I put it, never recovered from the death of empire. The great British Elegy is the work of Larkin, which would be a depressing poetry, if he did not hammer home with the recurrent, so what? who cares? what do we make of it? themes. The country I guess just crumpled and went on, and so its literature lost its big vision of its own grandeur, something bad for the world but traditionally good for literature.

Now, if we were to say music, well, England would win hands down. But I am afraid the novel is an incredibly Eastern genre now. The great novel publics are now India, China, and I would wager more so than ever, South-East Asia, which has a large self-contained market, and now a renewed sense of nation and improved literacy. Still, due to its size and its self-obsession, the US still trudges on with the genre, more so than elsewhere, and still has some innovators, though the biggest voices are all old, and the names mentioned here are novels out of the 70s generation pretty much, who have already put in their contributions.

[Delta40]

Can I clarify JBI that you're saying UK authorship is contemporarily multi-cultural and what isn't is entrenched in empire and lacks the power to draw on its own unique sense of self?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, America has an automatic edge in that our population is so much larger than England's. Simple math: more people, more chances for good novels. Now, I don't know if this is the case, as I'm pretty unfamiliar with contemporary British literature.

As for who establishes a better national identity, I really don't see how England could beat the USA. If the Americans do anything well, it's pride.

The States by a long shot. England from what I can gather has failed to embrace itself. The world it writes has been museum-afied for about 60 years already, and rather than embrace the James Bond vibe of just ignoring the empire and embracing a freedom and new identity, the culture has retracted into itself.

Not that the US is much better, but it is better, and still has a sizable writing base, and the benefit of a local population unconcerned with international authors.

Still, I think the novel itself is in trouble, as it fails to be as engaging a genre as film or television.

Well, electronic media is beating out literature in any form, really. It's just restoring attention spans. I don't think literature, be it poetry, drama or novel will ever die out completely. There're still too many people reading, even with the vast amount of distractions.

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

Dont forget McCarthy.

[mortalterror]

The Big hitters in recent years:

2008 August: Osage County by Tracy Letts (USA)
2006 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (USA)
2004 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (UK)
2004 2666 by Roberto Bolano (Chile)
2004 Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Columbia)
2004 Wolf Totem by Lu Jiamin (China)
2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (UK)
2003 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan/US)
2002 Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
2002 The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard (UK)
2001 The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (US)
2001 The Human Stain by Philip Roth (US)
2000 Ravelstein by Saul Bellow (US but Canadian born)
2000 The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
2000 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (US)

The best living poets appear to be Seamus Heaney of Ireland and Adunis of Syria.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Man, JBI, Kafak's Crow, AND mortalterror all making an appearance in the same thread? Good to see you, guys.

[JBI]

Man, JBI, Kafak's Crow, AND mortalterror all making an appearance in the same thread? Good to see you, guys.

I had been traveling along the silk road for the past month, where the Chinese government has conveniently made it impossible for "foreigners" without their own computers to go online. wifi is non existent and the virtually free, numerous internet bars require a government identity card (similar to a Chinese national's passport or Greencard) to use, so I was out of luck. The odd times I did get on, the net was too slow to do anything, especially typing on an iphone.

As for Mortal's list, I would generally disagree with many of them, having read more than half, but I do not like novels in general, and have become a classicist anyway.

[Desolation]

Dont forget McCarthy.

I haven't read McCarthy yet, so I can't say one way or the other...But, All the Pretty Horses is my next assigned reading in my American Lit. class.

[mortalterror]

As for Mortal's list, I would generally disagree with many of them, having read more than half, but I do not like novels in general, and have become a classicist anyway.

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!

[stlukesguild]

England, as I put it, never recovered from the death of empire. The great British Elegy is the work of Larkin, which would be a depressing poetry, if he did not hammer home with the recurrent, so what? who cares? what do we make of it? themes. The country I guess just crumpled and went on, and so its literature lost its big vision of its own grandeur, something bad for the world but traditionally good for literature.

How true is that artistically? I agree that a great deal of the finest art across the whole of history comes from those cultures who have some grandiose vision of themselves and their future. This is true whether we are speaking of the Greek Athenian Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance, or the United States from the time of Emerson through perhaps the 1960s. But then we also have the Hebrew Biblical texts written after the fall and captivity of Israel, the Shanameh composed under similar circumstances, and one of your old favorites, Leopardi (I was just reading his Elegy for Italy). It seems to me that a good writer writes from whatever experience life brings. Writing from the position of an Empire in Decline (and we shouldn't ignore the fact that while Britain may be in Decline in terms of international influence and power, they remain the 6th wealthiest nation on the planet and London the 5th largest city in the world) seems no less likely to inspire great literature than writing from a position of increasing wealth and influence.

[stlukesguild]

The gall they have to call poets like Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin great!

I agree... but then you famously dislike most poetry since mid- 20th century... if not earlier. Which poets, beyond Adunis and Heaney, would you deem possibly worthy of being called "great"?

[mortalterror]

The gall they have to call poets like Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin great!

I agree... but then you famously dislike most poetry since mid- 20th century... if not earlier. Which poets, beyond Adunis and Heaney, would you deem possibly worthy of being called "great"?

And it's your contention that the poetry from 1960 onward is as good or better than what came before?