The Best American Writer-Ever

My hero.

In the realm of classic literature, there are a few American names that spring to mind. Let us proceed chronologically.

19th Century: Poe, Twain or Melville are the only ones who stand a chance of being called the greatest American writer. Huck Finn is one of the most influential books in our history. Moby Dick alone means the latter has a pretty good shot.

20th Century: Modernists: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. I am partial to Hemingway. And although Fitzgerald wrote the best American novel of the 20th century (The Great Gatsby), Tender is the Night is his only other work that can be called truly excellent. Both Faulkner and Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I would argue that Hemingway did more to change the face of the American novel. His lapidary style in The Old Man and the Sea is Biblical. We could also mention Salinger and Bellow in this discussion.

Postmodernists: I have ranked the following authors in tiers since not enough time has passed to truly measure their greatness:

In the top tier: Pynchon, Updike, Roth. Gravity's Rainbow is arguably as devastating to fiction as was Moby Dick. Updike wrote a lot, but he will always be remembered for the wonderful Rabbit Tetralogy. And Roth is similarly masterful, and has a number of novels that could be called masterpieces. Toni Morrison is also a contender, she won the Nobel Prize in 1993.

Second Tier: McCarthy, DeLillo, Mailer. These guys have all written great novels, but The Naked and the Dead is a war novel and too limited in scope. White Noise is a contender. And I'm reading Blood Meridian right now. It's hard to assess authors who are still producing, but if I missed anyone, let me know. And feel free to make your case for your favorite.

The Javits Center and Post Postmodernism

Yesterday Daniel Adler went to a trade show at the Javits Center, that huge structure that will one day be remembered as a relic of postmodernism. You know when you go to one of those old malls that has pinks and turquoises everywhere and you think, wow this place must have been great – 35 years ago. That’s what will happen to the Javits Center in about another 20 years. Because I.M. Pei designed it, it will look a better for wee bit longer.

While I was away from the office, I received a nice e-mail highlighting 10 aspects of postmodernism. I have been stewing about post postmodernism recently, and have used some of those aspects to redefine the shape of a couple of tenets described in the above link.

1.    Opposition to authority has become a general acceptance of authority. Religion no longer inculcates morality. The police do that these days. You don’t kill someone because you’re afraid that you will spend a lifetime in hell as was thought maybe fifty years ago; you don’t kill them because you are afraid of being caught and send to prison. When Foucault adumbrated this notion, it led to a resistance against the system. These days, we accept it.

2.    Postmodernists rejected Truth. Post postmodernism embraces it in our era of digital similitudes. It is understood and transmitted that there are certain universal emotions, like love, anger, and sadness. These are conveyed in an intimate manner in contemporary arts, often encouraging the viewer to interact to better understand the universality of such notions.