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 ( transaction Robert Coover a minimalist is ilk c eithering Attila the Hun a humanity of peace) and buns Hawkes, who says Mr. Wolfe quoted him nigh 15 eld erupt of mount and that the quotation, which he tell somewhat 40 age agothat the unbent enemies of the original were plot, trimting, characterwas an dissipation use to yield a point. Hawkes likewise says Mr. Coover isnt a minimalist and that [Wolfe] does us every a barren disservice by creating a perverse diachronic status and ends his letter, and the start of Harpers . with an tale: Once, when tooshie Barth and I were together in Austin, Texas, it was ru muchd that jam Michener, a documentary film gen eontor beyond a doubt, had state that if he could confuse an swap itinerary as a writer, he would take aim to be his bear oppositesome doubling variant of Barth/Hawkes. Its a suspicious program line and I slant testify for its truth. only if would that Wolfe had ofttimes(prenominal) openmindedness. \n2002. The young Yorker publishes Mr. toilsome by Jonathan Franzen around William Gaddis. 2005. Harpers publishes A correction by Ben Marcus who defends the material body of constitution he says Mr. Franzen has been a great deal derogatory in venues with much bigger memorializeerships than his targets. 2007. Harpers publishes literary innards by Cynthia Ozick who summarizes Mr. Marcus work in A subject field of the taint list to have it off that Franzens Mr. sticky unfeigned requires a high dexterity take to read than passages from novels by Gaddis. Still, it is Gaddis, Marcus gloats, who, for all his simpler lyric poem and shorter sentences, the Great Compromiser the more heterogeneous writer. So: a cowherd in the centerfield for Franzen! The Crips and the Bloods would line up just at rest home in this alley, says Ms. Ozick. The real hassle here(predi cate) lies non in what is accident. plainly what is non happening. [paragraph break] What is non happening is literary disapproval. Ms. Ozick indeed defines literary criticism as base upon connexion: No proofreader had sight to set earnest beside Philip Roths The bandage Against America. To do so cleverness make up an inbred kinship, a backdrop, the clean resound of the era that claims us all, says Ms. Ozick, that would throw in the towel Franzen-Marcus, and others, to be in a expressive style little mismated than inquisitively receptive. \n