Wednesday, September 23, 2009

High praise ...

... Her scarlet letter. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Francine Prose is the best American novelist of her generation—the baby boom generation. (Unless Marilynne Robinson [b. 1943] belongs to that generation. Then she shares the title with Robinson.)

4 comments:

  1. Oh dear. I really dislike such sweeping pronouncements, which say more about the person proclaiming them than the writer in question.

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  3. Perhaps the proclamation is intended to draw attention to a writer who is frequently overlooked and low-rated, a writer whom “the person proclaiming” deeply admires and wishes to introduce new readers to.

    Naw, that couldn’t be it.

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  4. That's fine, D. G., and I appreciate it. I also admire Prose, in fact. My objection arises from the attempt to pinpoint the best this, the best that - especially in terms of artistic endeavour, which I find absolutely antithetical to such essentially competitive filtering. As you can imagine, I'm not fond of prize-giving either.

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