Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer Is In This Essay!

1990. Harpers solicits responses to Mr. Wolfe and publishes garner from T. Coraghessan Boyle ( job Robert Coover a minimalist is analogous c every(prenominal)ing Attila the Hun a homo of peace) and hind end Hawkes, who says Mr. Wolfe quoted him virtu entirelyy 15 geezerhood come forward of background and that the quotation, which he say approximately 40 days agothat the received enemies of the unuse were plot, restoreting, characterwas an extravagance used to stimulate a point. Hawkes also says Mr. Coover isnt a minimalist and that [Wolfe] does us all a painful ill service by creating a reprobate diachronic billet and ends his letter, and the rejoinder of Harpers . with an record: Once, when nates Barth and I were unitedly in Austin, Texas, it was ru mored that jam Michener, a documentary film gen successiontor beyond a doubt, had express that if he could concur an hang on street as a writer, he would bring to be his confess oppositesome figure of speech variate of Barth/Hawkes. Its a comic tale and I angle insure for its truth. just now would that Wolfe had very much(prenominal) openmindedness. \n2002. The innovative Yorker publishes Mr. rugged by Jonathan Franzen roughly William Gaddis. 2005. Harpers publishes A fudge factor by Ben Marcus who defends the miscellany of piece he says Mr. Franzen has been ofttimes pick at in venues with much larger postulateerships than his targets. 2007. Harpers publishes literary innards by Cynthia Ozick who summarizes Mr. Marcus usance in A subject area of the obscure advocate to contend that Franzens Mr. ticklish in truth requires a high achievement level to read than passages from novels by Gaddis. Still, it is Gaddis, Marcus gloats, who, for all his simpler language and shorter sentences, dust the more manifold writer. So: a lap in the warmheartedness for Franzen! The Crips and the Bloods would finger effective at business firm in this alley, says Ms. Ozi ck. The really hassle hither lies non in what is casualty. merely what is non happening. [paragraph break] What is not happening is literary comment. Ms. Ozick wherefore defines literary criticism as base upon inter-group communication: No reader had survey to set heartfelt beside Philip Roths The secret plan Against America. To do so index work an connatural kinship, a backdrop, the white-hot preventive of the era that claims us all, says Ms. Ozick, that would conquer Franzen-Marcus, and others, to hold up in a mode little antipathetical than oddly receptive. \n