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Originally Posted by evollove
Hm. This is very interesting, the perspectives.
This is how I see it:
Joyce, Conrad and Updike (easily the greatest American stylist of the past fifty years) are the only ones who belong on demonrail's top list.
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The list was just some names of authors I think write well and on that basis I still stand by it. Obviously someone like LeCarre isn't in the same tier as a Nabokov but the list wasn't just about isolating the absolute uppermost of the uppermost. They're all writers I enjoy as much for their style as for their content.
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The three contemporary Brits are fine ("fine" as in "excellent"), but Martin Amis is certainly their equal, if not their superior.
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I disagree but only because I personally find Martin Amis's style almost unreadable. It's not saying he writes badly, just that I can't stand it.
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Bellow, Roth and Delillo kick the living shit out of, say, Graham Greene.
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Apples and oranges, surely. Greene vs Hemingway, or even Chandler, makes sense but not Greene vs Delillo or Bellow or Roth.
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Originally Posted by evollove
Sure, the greats are greats, but it gets a little old after awhile.
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I'm with El Symbols on this, the canon has been a target in univ literature departments for decades now. The tradition of the great white European male has been almost entirely banished from some departments, as they scramble to validate anything that represents its alternative. All in the name of some muddled top-down thinking about 'relevance'.
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And by the way demonrail, one woman? All whites? Please see me after class.
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Kazuo Ishiguro? And I would've included Salman Rushdie if I'd remembered him at the time.