The last major British novelist?

[Virgil]

I was reading an interview with the British novelist Will Self where he was ruminating on which contemporary (post war) english language novelists will be read 100 years hence ;viz canonised i suppose. (he noted that literary forecasting is impossible but nevertheless thought it was important because it allows us to think about the virtue of our literary culture). He thought that, of the Americans, Bellow and Roth were likley starters and probably De Lillo. This seems about right to me. (with the addition of Cormac McCarthy)

I haven't read Dilio so I can't say. Nor have I read Thomas Pynchon, though some might put him in this catagory. I can agree with Bellow and Roth and McCarthy and I would also add Tony Morrison. There were a few one novel writers who really had masterpieces: Ralph Elison's Invisible Man and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood should be worthy mentions.

However when he got to the British novelists, he suggestions seemed a little less certain. He though Ballard and Grey might survive and possibly Martin Amis but was dismissive of McEwan, Rushdie, Swift.

It got me thinking about British fiction and the potential lack of a major British post war novelist. At first i thought i may be blinkered by an American-centric, Bloomian view of contemporary fiction (or the American tendency to self-aggrandizement). But then standing back a little, i honestly couldn't think of a British novel that i have read which stands up to the key works of their American counterparts. Personally i don't think any of the British authors Self mentions would even get a look in (with the possible exception of Ballard for flat out vision). Notwithstanding the supposed modern renaissance of the Amis/Rushdie/McEwan years, James Wood has said that the last major English novelists were Woolf, Lawrence and Green. (with the possible exception of Naipul who i haven't read). Just wondering if others had some broad thoughts on this topic.


(BTW i realise that English fiction isn't comprised solely of British and America novelists, it's just a comparison that peaked my interest. I'm also painting with a broad brush here, too broad most probably but again, it seemed a ripe topic )

As to the pre-WWII British novelists, yes, Woolf, Lawrence, Conrad, Waugh, E.M. Forster. I'm not including the Irish writers.

I ashamed to say that my lack of knowledge of post WWII British writers is sparse. Martin Aimis's Lucky Jim is hilarious. David Lodge is sometimes mentioned, though I don't think he has the depth. Based on reputation (I just haven't read them) Rushdie, McWEan, Naipal (is he British or other?), Anthony Powell, Iris Murdoch, and A.S. Byatt. I just can't personally vouch for them.

[stlukesguild]

Not to go too much off track but do people really think Comac McCarthy will be read so far into the future? Based upon my experience with The Road I certainly don't think much of this writer, I felt his writing to be quite poor indeed.

Personally, I find McCarthy to be one of the strongest living writers in the English language. Suttree, Child of God, and Blood Meridian are especially powerful... and Blood Meridian may just be the most harrowing book I've ever read... a marvelous merger of the most horrific violence and a visionary prose that often reminds me of some of the strongest passages in Moby Dick.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Not to go too much off track but do people really think Comac McCarthy will be read so far into the future? Based upon my experience with The Road I certainly don't think much of this writer, I felt his writing to be quite poor indeed.

Personally, I find McCarthy to be one of the strongest living writers in the English language. Suttree, Child of God, and Blood Meridian are especially powerful... and Blood Meridian may just be the most harrowing book I've ever read... a marvelous merger of the most horrific violence and a visionary prose that often reminds me of some of the strongest passages in Moby Dick.

Yes you see a few people say similar things whom I trust, but based upon The Road I don't personally see it. However I have had no experience with the books you mention so I don't want to jump to too much of an unnecessary conclusion. Certainly when you say "I find McCarthy to be one of the strongest living writers in the English language" it is quite a dramatic claim.

[mortalterror]

Personally, I find McCarthy to be one of the strongest living writers in the English language. Suttree, Child of God, and Blood Meridian are especially powerful... and Blood Meridian may just be the most harrowing book I've ever read... a marvelous merger of the most horrific violence and a visionary prose that often reminds me of some of the strongest passages in Moby Dick.

I've read Moby Dick and it's something else. I read Blood Meridian a couple of years ago and didn't think much of it. Nothing really stood out to me, besides the ending which I found comically amusing. When No Country For Old Men came out and won the Academy Award, suddenly literary people got an immense hard on for McCarthy's work; so I re-read the first chapter, and I still didn't see anything special there. I think of this surge in interest to be on a par with what happened to Tolkien's reputation when The Lord of the Rings movies came out. You get guys like Lokasenna drastically overrating their novels, calling also rans THE writer of the last century.

I figured I might not be fair judging McCarthy on just one book; so I read a bit of The Road. Didn't do anything for me. Again, it's not bad. It's just not great. Chalk this up as one more example of StLukes and me disagreeing along with Catch-22, On the Road, 1984, Borges Fictiones, In Search of Lost Time, and Ulysses.

I'm not an expert on post-ww2 literature, but the only two writers which I'm sure are the equals of the modernists are Marquez and Bellow. One thing I do know, Self and Amis aren't in that league.

[Jozanny]

It got me thinking about British fiction and the potential lack of a major British post war novelist. At first i thought i may be blinkered by an American-centric, Bloomian view of contemporary fiction (or the American tendency to self-aggrandizement). But then standing back a little, i honestly couldn't think of a British novel that i have read which stands up to the key works of their American counterparts. Personally i don't think any of the British authors Self mentions would even get a look in (with the possible exception of Ballard for flat out vision). Notwithstanding the supposed modern renaissance of the Amis/Rushdie/McEwan years, James Wood has said that the last major English novelists were Woolf, Lawrence and Green. (with the possible exception of Naipul who i haven't read). Just wondering if others had some broad thoughts on this topic.

Even though I have not read her major novels, I think A.S. Byatt will meet that hundred year mark sixsmith. Her short story collections are breath-taking, as near perfect as any fiction style I can imagine. She is able to take the modern idiom, like the loss of identity through Alzheimer's, and turn it into a modern myth with a power that resonates beyond contemporary concerns, similar to Doris Lessing, but we can quibble whether Lessing is British or African.

I kneel to them both, as I could never match either woman, even in their weaker works, but if forced, my money is on Byatt. I am less lavish in my awe of Cormac (gasp). Yes, he has taken the best that minimalism has to offer, stolen well from some others I won't mention, but I don't know that his nuke porn (The Road) really amounts to great literature, and I think The Road may sour me on Blood Meridian, when I start it, which is perhaps unfortunate.

But Byatt trumps not only British voices; she is up there with the best of American modernism.

[Virgil]

But Byatt trumps not only British voices; she is up there with the best of American modernism.

Actually I'm not overwhelmed with American novelists post WWII. Some are noteworthy, but really from a vacuum of great writers. Bellow I think will stand the test of time. And every so often a single novel by a writer is great, like Invisible Man and In Cold Blood. Perhaps William Faulkner just set so high a standard that no one can reach it.

[sixsmith]

I ashamed to say that my lack of knowledge of post WWII British writers is sparse. Martin Aimis's Lucky Jim is hilarious. David Lodge is sometimes mentioned, though I don't think he has the depth. Based on reputation (I just haven't read them) Rushdie, McWEan, Naipal (is he British or other?), Anthony Powell, Iris Murdoch, and A.S. Byatt. I just can't personally vouch for them.

Powell is one that i thought might have been overlooked though i have not read "A Dance to the music of time". Murdoch is pretty dreadful from where i sit.

Personally, I find McCarthy to be one of the strongest living writers in the English language. Suttree, Child of God, and Blood Meridian are especially powerful... and Blood Meridian may just be the most harrowing book I've ever read... a marvelous merger of the most horrific violence and a visionary prose that often reminds me of some of the strongest passages in Moby Dick.

Agreed. In Suttree and Blood Meridian we have two of the greatest prose masterpieces of the last 30 years.

[JBI]

Meh, who cares how they fair against the American novel; first of all, the novel as a form has become a soiled convention; the novelists today, who will probably be remembered are the ones who write books that seem the least like novels, or at least British novels (on the model popularized by Scott, and lasting until the present). Generally, after the nihilistic gimmicks of basic post-modernism (Pynchon, Delillo, etc.), we have two dominant movements left; post-post-modernism, where instead of questioning boundaries, the boundaries simply do not exist: I think here of some of Michael Ondaatje's work, notably In the skin of a Lion, certainly Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, McCarthy's Blood Meridian (which doesn't follow standard novel conventions) amongst other works, and on the other side, these post-colonial works that use metaphorical elements and blend different narrative styles, Like Naipaul, Rushdie, Austin Clarke, Achebe, and others.

From my experience, the British aesthetic right now seems dominated by a sense of mediocre, pseudo-comedic satire. The popularity of Terry Pratchett, for instance, attests to that; but when you try reading Pratchett, you run into a lack of any real substance beyond a few almost funny jokes. I'm looking for a voice that really says something in British fiction, but so far I've run into nothing that particularly inspires. I am told Doris Lessing's Golden Notebook is good, but I have yet to read it (perhaps that is where I should look). Angela Carter was a good voice when she was alive, but ultimately, her skill sits better in short story than novel, and perhaps only The Bloody Chamber or perhaps Fireworks is worthy of being called Great.

Standard novel writing is out of fashion. Henry James style narrative, or the model popularized by Romantic and Victorian writers no longer holds any real power. The movie, in such a case, acts too similarly, and there really is no point in standard narration. We read James now, not for his plot and social critique, but more for his prose, and his style, something which, if emulated today, would probably not grip us.

Lets be honest, is Atonement really a superb work? It's a rather silly story, written in a terribly boring omniscient voice, loaded with all the typical clichés, yet still is held as perhaps the greatest work in the vein of "British novel" in the last little while.

But lets be honest - McCarthy, Pythchon, Roth, Delillo, etc. are all old authors right now. Naipaul, Lessing, Rushdie, and others are also old Authors now.

On a whole, I'd say the novel is on its way out, in the sense of the conventional form, and has been for a while. The concept of a "Novelist" has become all screwy, with either labels of post-modernist, post-colonialist, or mediocre being the only options, with most from the first two categories falling into the third. Traditional narrative practices hold no real weight anymore, and are only flings to be read once and discarded - the form is exhausted, and built on a set of clichés.

Perhaps magical realism did it a favor, but magical realism also destroyed the former concept of the novel. Marquez, for instance, who seems the archetypal Magical Realist novel (outside of Latin America), broke the trend of the novel completely, and opened it up to, what are essentially oral forms, and a series of symbols and metaphors (he described 100 Years as "not a history, but a metaphor for a history"). Rushdie too tried something similar, but how long can Rushdie go? Midnight's Children seems indebted to the fact that it deals with India, and the emergence of a nation. At a time when the concept of Nation feels somewhat dated, and most places have already "emerged", the only thing that is left to do is jump into historiographic metafiction (see Linda Hutcheon, The Canadian Postmodern), something which exhausts itself quite easily. The Concept of "a good read" no longer really exists, as there are enough good reads out there, and to be relevant, you must be relevant, and stay relevant, and not just be a piece of pulp entertainment. To do that, you need to be a little bit crazy, yet at the same time, make a lot of sense. That's been the goal of good novelists all this time: Zola was a little bit nuts, and decided he'd make a "science" out of Balzac. Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, McCarthy, etc. all did the same thing. The typical form has long suffered from lack of creative play within it, or from too much focus on stupid topics like current affairs and politics, as popularized by the Beat Generation, and their essential pollution of American prose.

Right now, it feels like England has exhausted itself. Larkin and Auden picked up on this exhaustion decades ago, and England has never recovered. America has exhausted itself too, it would seem, but it's a large enough country, all speaking the same language, so it is still able to produce good works, just not as freshly and dominantly as before.

There are very few English writers who I like. Perhaps the one I most revere is the poet Geoffrey Hill. Likewise, there are very few current, and by current I mean emerging or just established, mainstream American writers I like. In the same sense, the bulk of my liking for contemporary prose seems to be written by expats, rather than natives.

I'm not an expert on post-ww2 literature, but the only two writers which I'm sure are the equals of the modernists are Marquez and Bellow. One thing I do know, Self and Amis aren't in that league.

Amis is to the novel, what Christopher Hitchens is to political commentary and criticism - they are both essentially the same sort of personality. They have a sense of resentment against them by many, and yet a strong following by others, yet at the same time, seem to be saying what other people have already said, in a misconstructed, sort of misinterpreted way, which makes them sound smart, and everyone else stupid.


Oh, and edit; don't think I'm just trying to put forth other traditions, notably the Canadian one, over Britain and the U.S.; the Canadian novel generally has always been second to the short story, and the short story has been on par with poetry; short fiction and short novels seem the dominant prose form - novels, not so much.


Generally though, in terms of novels right now, we'd probably need to turn to India to find a country that really is putting out novels in the sense that we are looking for.

[Jozanny]

Actually I'm not overwhelmed with American novelists post WWII. Some are noteworthy, but really from a vacuum of great writers. Bellow I think will stand the test of time. And every so often a single novel by a writer is great, like Invisible Man and In Cold Blood. Perhaps William Faulkner just set so high a standard that no one can reach it.

All roads do not lead to Faulkner. He is a great regionalist my friend, so great that he transcends regionalism, but other authors can and do surpass him. European modernism (minus Joyce) and maybe my love of Henry James, gives me a more nuanced view. Faulkner is nearly always dealing with the paranoia of the Other in the closed feedback loop of a broken agrarian culture--but there are competing voices to this, the urban novel, in particular.

[JBI]

All roads do not lead to Faulkner. He is a great regionalist my friend, so great that he transcends regionalism, but other authors can and do surpass him. European modernism (minus Joyce) and maybe my love of Henry James, gives me a more nuanced view. Faulkner is nearly always dealing with the paranoia of the Other in the closed feedback loop of a broken agrarian culture--but there are competing voices to this, the urban novel, in particular.

The current novel, in general, seems a Prufrockian fixation. Certainly Delillo and Pynchon seem rooted in an Eliotic plane, even if they don't admit it. The Unreal City seems to have fused with Dickens' London, and the New York City of the Regan days (and now mixed with tinges of 9/11 syndrome) to create the new archetypal American novel setting. In truth, McCarthy seems one of the few who is fully chasing Faulkner, instead of Eliot.

[Virgil]

All roads do not lead to Faulkner. He is a great regionalist my friend, so great that he transcends regionalism, but other authors can and do surpass him. European modernism (minus Joyce) and maybe my love of Henry James, gives me a more nuanced view. Faulkner is nearly always dealing with the paranoia of the Other in the closed feedback loop of a broken agrarian culture--but there are competing voices to this, the urban novel, in particular.

We'll have to disagree. Yes, Faulkner is regional, but he really transcends into a plane close to Shakespeare. And not just any Shakespeare, but the very tops of Shakespeare. The surface is regional, but the conflicts and themes and emotions he taps into are universal.

Hey I do think Henry James at his best is up there.

[sixsmith]

Amis is to the novel, what Christopher Hitchens is to political commentary and criticism - they are both essentially the same sort of personality. They have a sense of resentment against them by many, and yet a strong following by others, yet at the same time, seem to be saying what other people have already said, in a misconstructed, sort of misinterpreted way, which makes them sound smart, and everyone else stupid.

Yes, but a least Amis has a turn of phrase. Hitchens is the poorer, decidedly less witty, cousin.

Perhaps magical realism did it a favor, but magical realism also destroyed the former concept of the novel. Marquez, for instance, who seems the archetypal Magical Realist novel (outside of Latin America), broke the trend of the novel completely, and opened it up to, what are essentially oral forms, and a series of symbols and metaphors (he described 100 Years as "not a history, but a metaphor for a history"). Rushdie too tried something similar, but how long can Rushdie go? Midnight's Children seems indebted to the fact that it deals with India, and the emergence of a nation.

I love Marquez but i think Magic Realism has a lot to answer for. Certainly it has to answer partly for Rushdie's lesser novels which is no small burden. More broadly though, i think it, along with the Pynchon - De Lillo zeitgeist, has created template for many novelists who otherwise wouldn't have a great deal to say.

[meh!]

Gray would is definitely one for me. The only problem I think is that a lot of his views can go out of fashion and come back every easily. The writing its self has been excellent but he's an old Scottish Socialist and, especially in the 90s, they weren't exactly valued in Britain. All that could be coming back in the next few years, but I doubt it. However, the personal aspects (though this is vague, the personal and the political are always interlinked in Gray) will remain current, I suppose.

That said, I think the quality of the writing will out.

Ballard? I like some of his books and I think he's a decent writer but I can't see him being one of the ones to last.

I'm trying to think who else...

[Jozanny]

The current novel, in general, seems a Prufrockian fixation. Certainly Delillo and Pynchon seem rooted in an Eliotic plane, even if they don't admit it. The Unreal City seems to have fused with Dickens' London, and the New York City of the Regan days (and now mixed with tinges of 9/11 syndrome) to create the new archetypal American novel setting. In truth, McCarthy seems one of the few who is fully chasing Faulkner, instead of Eliot.

Mmm. What can I say? The Road is not a bad novel JBI, but I think it gets lost in all the nuclear holocaust conceits that it toys with, even if one pushes a little further, like Virgil did, in seeing it as a Treasure Island trope. Survivalist literature goes back a long way, but Cormac just seems too conscious of this to me, nearly flippant. A skilled and polished story teller? Yes. Faulkner's ethos? Maybe a pale imitation of it. Luke always raps me with Bloom's anxiety of influence--but Cormac seems too full of influences, a full house here, three aces there, but no royal flush for me. Mind, I ordered BM with The Road and read the latter first for our book club, and I started the first page of BM then, but changed my mind, deciding to wait.

David Mitchell's grantedly showy brilliance has more emotional impact for me than McCarthy. Mitchell is flawed, but he's brilliant, to the point I weep in frustration and should smash the damn television and just write, no matter what--but McCarthy's bag of tricks, those I were taught, and I see them as plotted points, well-placed, but not entirely enlightening. Maybe BM will alter my view.

[sixsmith]

David Mitchell's grantedly showy brilliance has more emotional impact for me than McCarthy. Mitchell is flawed, but he's brilliant, to the point I weep in frustration and should smash the damn television and just write, no matter what--but McCarthy's bag of tricks, those I were taught, and I see them as plotted points, well-placed, but not entirely enlightening. Maybe BM will alter my view.

Mitchell is a something else. I was astonished by the things he pulled off in Cloud Atlas and frequently moved. (Every time he nailed another genre i wanted to stab him in envy). Yet somehow the whole doesn't equal the sum of its parts (that is such a lame and lazy way of putting it). The back half does not quite fulfill the promise of the front. However, given his relative youth, it's scary to think what he may produce.