Stroke of literary genius wanted: The next Vonnegut, Salinger, or Hemingway
Collin Llewellyn
Issue date: 11/18/09 Section: Opinion
As I walk down the aisles in the local bookstores, I struggle to find something that sparks any greater interest than a guilty pleasure read. Being the avid reader that I am, I rarely read anything that's been published in the last eight or nine years. Now, that may not be true for all cases, but when I really want to read something with substance, I usually have to dig further back.
This article isn't about the quality of writing today; good books are on the shelves that were written in this decade. Rather, this is about the voice of our generation. What will this time period go down in literature history for?
Hemingway and Fitzgerald spoke for the lost generation of World War One, Vonnegut, Heller and Golding expressed the World War Two generations. There was Jack Kerouac and the beat writers of the fifties. John Irving and Tom Wolfe captured the eighties, while Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis draw us into the teenage wasteland of the early nineties.
A literature professor here at FGCU, Joe Wisdom, suggests that, "Technology probably has carried us beyond the time when cultural moments will be best captured in traditionally published novels."
So where exactly does that leave us and the literature of today? Are we going to be remembered for the weak prose of Dan Brown's thrillers? Will we forever be the generation of cheap vampire romances? These texts just don't speak for our generation.
It seems to me that our generation is just as lost as any other. We spend our time indulging just as much in self-destructive habits. What could be more lost than the epoch that we are in now?
Thousands upon thousands of students are graduating with degrees that may or may not, likely not, lead them into a secure job. According to the Washington Center, only nineteen percent of FGCU graduates had jobs in their field after graduation last year. To me, this is a bit unsettling; to know that once we finish our work here that there may not be something brighter at the end of the tunnel right away.
I want the generations after us to be able to open up a classic novel written in our time and know exactly how it feels to be young in this day and age.
It's hard to reinvent the wheel, impossible for that matter. No one will ever capture the angst that Holden Caulfield instilled in us through "Catcher in the Rye."
Maybe the publication business is really failing, and we have to rely on a Dan Brown or a Stephanie Meyers to save the market.
According to USA Today, in the last 15 years, among the top ten of best-selling books, seven are Harry Potter books, one is the Atkins Diet book and another, "The Da Vinci Code."
But maybe this is a reflection on where we're at as readers. Maybe it's harder today to go back and read into something more deeply. Brown is no Faulkner and Meyer is surely no Virginia Woolf. They could very well be a chapter in the world of literature, a waiting period until we get the next George Orwell or Henry Miller.
Wisdom thinks that we may have moved beyond classic literature as iconic expressions of our generation, "If someone does give us a Jake Barnes, a Nick Carraway, or a Holden Caulfield of 2010, I don't think he will be living in a 250 page novel. Once we moved through the 60s and 70s, other art forms - specifically film and music, and more recently all sorts of web-based genres have moved to the front of pop consciousness, and serious published fiction becomes important to an ever smaller portion of the population."
So again, we're left waiting. Waiting for that classic description of our age to emerge, and I am hoping it will be a prosaic novel that engages me beyond the surface tension of the page. The only question left to answer is: Who will compose this gem?
Collin Llewellyn is a sophomore. He is majoring in English. He is an RA in North Lake Village. Collin is passionate about living life fully and not wasting opportunities, especially chances to learn.
This article isn't about the quality of writing today; good books are on the shelves that were written in this decade. Rather, this is about the voice of our generation. What will this time period go down in literature history for?
Hemingway and Fitzgerald spoke for the lost generation of World War One, Vonnegut, Heller and Golding expressed the World War Two generations. There was Jack Kerouac and the beat writers of the fifties. John Irving and Tom Wolfe captured the eighties, while Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis draw us into the teenage wasteland of the early nineties.
A literature professor here at FGCU, Joe Wisdom, suggests that, "Technology probably has carried us beyond the time when cultural moments will be best captured in traditionally published novels."
So where exactly does that leave us and the literature of today? Are we going to be remembered for the weak prose of Dan Brown's thrillers? Will we forever be the generation of cheap vampire romances? These texts just don't speak for our generation.
It seems to me that our generation is just as lost as any other. We spend our time indulging just as much in self-destructive habits. What could be more lost than the epoch that we are in now?
Thousands upon thousands of students are graduating with degrees that may or may not, likely not, lead them into a secure job. According to the Washington Center, only nineteen percent of FGCU graduates had jobs in their field after graduation last year. To me, this is a bit unsettling; to know that once we finish our work here that there may not be something brighter at the end of the tunnel right away.
I want the generations after us to be able to open up a classic novel written in our time and know exactly how it feels to be young in this day and age.
It's hard to reinvent the wheel, impossible for that matter. No one will ever capture the angst that Holden Caulfield instilled in us through "Catcher in the Rye."
Maybe the publication business is really failing, and we have to rely on a Dan Brown or a Stephanie Meyers to save the market.
According to USA Today, in the last 15 years, among the top ten of best-selling books, seven are Harry Potter books, one is the Atkins Diet book and another, "The Da Vinci Code."
But maybe this is a reflection on where we're at as readers. Maybe it's harder today to go back and read into something more deeply. Brown is no Faulkner and Meyer is surely no Virginia Woolf. They could very well be a chapter in the world of literature, a waiting period until we get the next George Orwell or Henry Miller.
Wisdom thinks that we may have moved beyond classic literature as iconic expressions of our generation, "If someone does give us a Jake Barnes, a Nick Carraway, or a Holden Caulfield of 2010, I don't think he will be living in a 250 page novel. Once we moved through the 60s and 70s, other art forms - specifically film and music, and more recently all sorts of web-based genres have moved to the front of pop consciousness, and serious published fiction becomes important to an ever smaller portion of the population."
So again, we're left waiting. Waiting for that classic description of our age to emerge, and I am hoping it will be a prosaic novel that engages me beyond the surface tension of the page. The only question left to answer is: Who will compose this gem?
Collin Llewellyn is a sophomore. He is majoring in English. He is an RA in North Lake Village. Collin is passionate about living life fully and not wasting opportunities, especially chances to learn.
Viewing Comments 1 - 4 of 4
Joel Morris
posted 11/21/09 @ 9:56 AM EST
I suggest you familiarize yourself with Cormac McCarthy's work. Although his career has ranged from the 1960's to now, his more recent novels has expressed the unsureness of the current times and the future, that I think many (especially those of us in college) are currently experiencing. (Continued…)
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posted 11/25/09 @ 7:58 PM EST
Very interesting article.
E. J. Vincent
posted 1/07/10 @ 7:46 PM EST
Enjoyed your article very much and it is sooo applicable to today's times
James Crews
posted 1/09/10 @ 4:08 PM EST
Give me a few years more and you will have such a work in your hands. It will be "A Long Highway" by James Crews, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that will resurrect waning interest in literature. (Continued…)
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