Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Tracking the decline …

… Books About Next to Nothing | John Waters | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The art of writing, too, has undergone a metamorphosis. Once a way to engage with reality, it has become primarily a status-seeking activity. The idea of “being a writer” nowadays seems more important than learning a craft, perfecting a talent, or honing a worldview. The wannabe writer now offers himself to the ideological architects of the media and academe, providing fodder for their deterministic interventions in a discourse increasingly more about remaking the world than investigating it.
I’m not familiar with the work of  Laszlo Krasznahorkai or George Saunders, but I have read Michel Houellebecq and I agree with what Waters says about him. I would also cite Tan Twan Eng’s novels as being as good as novels have ever been.
Here (again thanks to Dave) is my review of Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain: The intricacies of love ensnarled by loyalty, war.

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