21st Century Literature discussion
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Which 21st Century Writers Or Books Have Not Aged Well Thus Far? (5/3/20)
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Marc
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May 05, 2020 02:36PM
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I read the question wrong, thinking it asked for a writer or book that started strong and continues to have staying power, one book popped to mind. Now I see you want one that seemed great but has not lived up to its potential. Nothing popped when I read it correctly, so now I need to do some pondering!
Erin Morgenstern. I was blown away by Night Circus. It took her awhile to come out with her second book. The second book (The Starless Sea) doesn’t seem to be rated as high as the first. I haven’t read it yet. Just going by the reviews! “There is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories.” It kind of sounds like the collection of tents in Night Circus.
Kathy wrote: "Erin Morgenstern. I was blown away by Night Circus. It took her awhile to come out with her second book. The second book (The Starless Sea) doesn’t ..."I was quite disappointed with that
A few years ago--I can't remember where--I was reading a site that was evaluating the best books of the century so far. Even they knew that it was a futile effort--they weren't claiming that their picks would hold up for posterity--but the best book of the century at that time (probably 2017 or so) was, according to them, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. I wasn't really crazy about it, but I know it was very popular. Is it still? Diaz has had some public issues--I haven't heard much from him since.
I'd think that any book that was picked as a best of the century before even two decades were out would almost by definition be something that wouldn't age well.
Sorry to write it, but Tea Obreht was wonderful with The Tiger's Wife, but disappointing in her Western, Inland. Perhaps just because the genre has been so thoroughly mined. In my memory, it comes across as an also ran to True Grit.
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Sometimes, I think just staying out of the limelight (either lack of praise/scandal or not publishing anything) makes it feel like an author or book has faded somewhat. Most "best of" lists still seem to include Díaz's book.
I'm currently about 1/3 through Morgenstein's latest and it's starting to lose me a bit. But Night Circus was 3 stars for me. Loved the language and style--she excels at creating a mystical kind of atmosphere, but her plots and characters seem to fall short for me personally (lots of my GR friends adored her first book). I plan to finish this one so things could easily change/improve.
No one name or book springs to mind strongly for me. There are a couple on the fence for me... maybe Lionel Shriver and Sherman Alexie (but both of them have taken social backlash that has hurt their critical reception; having not read more of their recent work, I can't say whether their writing has diminished or not in my eyes).
Junot Diaz and Sherman Alexie were the first that came to mind. Not that their writing has gotten worse, but I don't think I could read their work without their serious actions in the front of my mind.I'm trying to think of other authors who have done horrible things which affects my reading. Orson Scott Card comes to mind.
This is such an interesting question. It made me realize how often an author who is lucky enough to have the limelight for a first book just kind of disappears after that, to the point where I'm having trouble remembering who they are. Michael Chabon comes to mind as someone who wrote multiple books that made a huge literary splash, but his newer books, not so much.
Jeffrey Eugenides feels the same: big splashes with The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, then I don't know.
I'm a little nervous about what's happening with Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son, which I loved, and his story collection in 2016 that I believe won the National Book Award...not sure what's happening now with him.
Now that I've written these three authors down in a row it occurs to me they write similarly--with blustery forward manly momentum, I guess. I wonder if it's a writing style that is getting less popular.
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I was trying to think of writers who were run over my the #metoo movement, and you definitely came up with a couple. I hadn't read Brief Life, and now probably won't. I have read quite a bit of Sherman Alexi, but have no interest in picking his work up anymore.
Bretnie, you raise an interesting point. Should an author's personal life have an impact on how that author's writing is judged? I do not mean in the sense that readers will choose not to read the author's work because they are repelled/distressed/perturbed/angry/etc at something the author has said or done. I mean how the writing itself is judged.
Jonathan Lethem is an author whose later books haven't come close to the wonder of his earlier books for me, especially Motherless Brooklyn and Gun, With Occasional Music. His other fiction has been up and down for me, but even the ups haven't been high. His GR ratings seem to shrink over time. I haven't read his nonfiction, and I have Dissident Gardens but I keep putting it off because I don't want to not like it.
Lark wrote: "Michael Chabon comes to mind as someone who wrote multiple books that made a huge literary splash, but his newer books, not so much.I'm not representative of anything, but I was so happy with Moonglow - I felt like the guy who wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was finally back.
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Not sure how I'm affected by an author's declining reputation influencing a particular book (e.g., do I hold, say, Life of Pi in lower esteem just because I'm not personally familiar with anything else Martel has written since... umm... probably not but I do think negative public perception influences my view of a work.). It's not so much that the quality of the writing is any different as that you can't read or re-read the work without it being somehow tainted or lessened... perhaps.
Marc wrote: "It's not so much that the quality of the writing is any different as that you can't read or re-read the work without it being somehow tainted or lessened... perhaps."That may be true for the authors contemporaries, but do you think it will have the same effect 50 years or so later? Or when the best books/writers of the 21st century are identified? I have never considered personal reputation in connection with, say, the great writers of the 19th century and it might not be that easy to track down, so perhaps the first half of the 20th century.
Lark wrote: "Now that I've written these three authors down in a row it occurs to me they write similarly--with blustery forward manly momentum, I guess. I wonder if it's a writing style that is getting less popular.."Hmm, I don't think of Chabon in that way - maybe because I remember many of his protagonists as being relatively contemplative and gentle, often young men confused about manhood. I haven't read his Manhood for Amateurs, but by the title and description it doesn't sound very Hemmingway-esque, to say the least. But it's been a while since I've read him so maybe I'm remembering only my general impressions and not the writing specifically.
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No I don't think it will have the same effect down the road. Memory fades and these days, the next outrage or scandal is mere minutes away. It sometimes feels like we're coated in righteous indignation lighter fluid waiting for the next spark or flame... (the righteous indignation idea I got from Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed).
Also, as time passes, fewer books remain heralded/mentioned (How many books would you recommend from the 20th century? The 19th? How about the 16th? Unless you're a scholar, there's probably only a handful of names that come to mind the farther back you go.).
Nadine wrote: "Lark wrote: "Michael Chabon comes to mind as someone who wrote multiple books that made a huge literary splash, but his newer books, not so much.I'm not representative of anything, but I was so h..."
Same here - I was about to give up on him after reading that sub pynchonian dogs mess called telegraph avenue but moonglow made me change my opinion
It's so interesting to read our various impressions! And I'm fascinated by how we're thinking about #metoo as a literary watershed, where some authors will forevermore be on the wrong side. That didn't happen to J.D. Salinger when he (choose verb) Joyce Maynard when she was 18 and he was 53. Things are changing, thank God.
It's true, Michael Chabon's writing is subtle and complex, and I think in his case I've been influenced by a public persona, or maybe even by the intensely personal way his wife writes about him in her essays at times, making the personal public.
This need for authors to be out there, to have public personas at all, seems new.
Marc wrote: "No I don't think it will have the same effect down the road. Memory fades and these days, the next outrage or scandal is mere minutes away. It sometimes feels like we're coated in righteous indignation lighter fluid waiting for the next spark or flame... (the righteous indignation idea I got from Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed)."It will be interesting to see how things change over time. There are certainly "classic" authors who are still known for their extreme personal beliefs and harmful actions where their books feel a little tainted. (Orson Scott Card and HP Lovecraft come to mind but I'm sure there are other good examples).
I also realize I'm walking into righteous indignation, but want to caution against minimizing sexual abuse and sexual assault as public image/scandal issues. I think it's ok to recognize an author's work as great and even important but also be outraged by their actions. I hope our memory doesn't fade so the authors we celebrate 50 years from now don't have these asterisks by their name. (*wrote good stuff but also did some terrible stuff)
Sorry, I know this tangent wasn't really the intent of the thread, but it's interesting to think about!
I may have accidentally derailed the conversation...or at least shunted it onto a different track. I mentioned Oscar Wao because it wasn't all that long ago that I'd read (one opinion) that it was the best of the century so far. I felt compelled to mention the public troubles of the author as a kind of disclaimer--that alone might have knocked that particular book out of the discussion, because there would almost be no way to consider it outside of its author's public controversy any longer.I tried to look through the literature of the 21C that I've read--I've had a hard time connecting to a lot of it. I wonder if the "This is who we are" style of writing (or maybe, "This is who we are?") of Egan's Goon Squad or Smith's NW will resonate in 50 years...they may be like Edith Wharton is now, I don't know. Maybe they'll be more like Booth Tarkington.
I think DFW is already on the wane--Infinite Jest was from the 90s, but when I think of it now, it seems very sophomoric. I think there's some brilliance there too--it's not a complete waste, but I think it'll keep losing readers (not like it doesn't have a public life of it's own either).
Looking at the early 20th century, it's usually not the writers who were prominent that we remember as much (Walter Pater anyone?), so the most celebrated writer from our time may be someone we've barely heard of. It would be funny, though, if a hundred years from now, our best remembered author would be someone like George Saunders or Ottessa Moshfegh.
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None of these seem like tangents as we're essentially talking about impressions and public reception (a writer or book has to be on the rise, holding steady, or on the decline)--that's just the nature of making art. And these things are cyclical--when Saunders's or Moshfegh's style of writing comes back in fashion 100 years from now, Bryan's digitized spirit will be rolling its avatar's eyes. :p
Some books tap into a certain age group and, perhaps, sentimentality for shared pop culture/experience--I think Oscar Wao falls into this category. I loved it but the Diaz and I were born within 7 yrs of one another, so that probably plays a rather large role (I also thoroughly enjoyed Ready Player One, which is another book that leans heavily on certain references/experiences). Typically, books that tie themselves too closely to popular culture tend to lose relevance/appeal a bit quicker with time.
Bryan "They call me the Doge" wrote: "I may have accidentally derailed the conversation...or at least shunted it onto a different track. I mentioned Oscar Wao because it wasn't all that long ago that I'd read (one opinion) that it was ..."Not a derailment actually since Oscar Wao was the first thing I though of when I read the question "writers or books that have not aged well."
I actually loved Oscar Wao when I read it and it came up again this year because it will be in The Morning News' Tournament of Books of all the past winners. It won for the year it was written, and now it feels so weird to have it come back against other books.
I thought it was a great book, but, just like our topic's question, it didn't age well as society changed and our view of the author changed. So it feels weird to somewhat celebrate it and the author when there are so many other great books possible just as deserving to be remembered years later.
Also, on a different note, this topic is exactly why I almost never re-read books that I loved! I have this fear that they won't live up to my memory of them, or that I've changed enough that they won't hold up.
Robert wrote: "Same here - I was about to give up on him after reading that sub pynchonian dogs mess called telegraph avenue but moonglow made me change my opinion,..."I'm with you there Robert - my husband especially was so primed for Telegraph Ave since he lived there at that time period, but neither of us could get past the first 10 pages. Also about that time I tried to read some of his articles in the New York Review of Books and I foundd them pretentious and impenetrable. Moonglow was such a relief! I got my Chabon back ;)
"Not aged well" is a phrase that nearly always, for me and the friends whose reviews I read most often, signifies content *in the text* which doesn't correspond to contemporary prevailing left-leaning opinion in the literary world. Reputation and sexual and ethical misconduct, and the idea that one shouldn't read, or should read with caution because of them, is connected with the same suite of opinion, but I see it as a different question from the one posed in the title here.
There are authors who haven't, or are not known to have, done anything dodgy, whose books from 10-20 years ago can read, in the last 4 years especially, as not having aged well because of attitudes in the text or just a type of story which is out of favour in those circles at the moment. (e.g. angst of a healthy young white male writer)
I have been too focused on other stuff to chase down examples, but by 2018-19 I had described a few books even from early in the decade as not having aged well because of these issues. (The only one I remember right now, because a friend just started reading it last night, is obscure here, a Slovenian literary SF novel that sounded to me like a riff on stuff published in the 80s-90s here.)
It's very possible that a whole new set of issues will start reading differently going forward, as new norms bed in over the next few years, though whether they are treated in the same way, or merely in some tone as if "we were so naive, we didn't know how lucky we were" kinda way, like people looking back later on the Edwardian era, I'm not sure. Have to see what emerges.
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Quite a few of the authors/books we've mentioned in this thread were published in this century's first decade (10 Books that Defined the 2000s). Jonathan Franzen was a name that popped up for me in perusing that list, but I think he's more divisive than waning (i.e., those that loved The Corrections still do, and those that didn't, still don't).
This is all making me think that you can never read the same book twice. You change, society changes, knowledge changes, ...
It's also easy for me to make a leap that having a 20 year gap or even a 4 year gap between novels is a sign of a waning career...that not producing a memorable book on a schedule = the author is a has-been. Deborah Levy has put that notion to rest. Also Marilynne Robinson. Shirley Hazzard. Donna Tart.One of the reasons I love re-reading novels is to see things in it that I didn't notice before. It's remarkable to me how some of my favorite books from my teens are baldly misogynist and I never noticed it. I can only conclude that 'white male gaze' can affect readers who are not in that category...that when everything there was to read was written from a white male perspective then we all just learned to become token white males when we read books.
Though that can be a potentially essentialist way to look at it, that it isn't valid for some people to identify with male characters/writers/narratives.
Sometimes it is said that the writers/works that last are those that get taught in schools. From those of you that are teachers, are there works since 2000 that are regularly appearing on summer reading or English lit lists?
Marc wrote: "Quite a few of the authors/books we've mentioned in this thread were published in this century's first decade (10 Books that Defined the 2000s). Jonathan Franzen was a name that popped up for me in perusing that list, but I think he's more divisive than waning (i.e., those that loved The Corrections still do, and those that didn't, still don't)."This comment and the link had me looking for a couple of lists of authors assembled by the New Yorker in 1999 and in 2010, each with the names of 20 authors. The first list appeared in the June 21, 1999 issue with a short story or book excerpt from a book by each author. The issue was titled "The Future of American Fiction." The second list was called "40 under 20" (again, American authors) and writings by those twenty 40 or younger authors appeared in the June 14 and June 28 issues. The 1999 list (apologies if I've counted wrong) had 14 men, 11 of whom were white and 6 women, 3 of whom were white. The 2000 list (same apology) had 10 men, 6 of whom were white, and 10 women, 6 of whom were white. It also appears that there are more immigrants on the 2010 list than the 1999 list. There are authors on the 1999 list that I did not recognize. I've read at least one book by each of the authors on the 2010 list, a project I managed to complete in 2014. Six of the authors mentioned in posts here (all men) are on the 1999 list -- Alexie, Chabon, Diaz, Frazen, Saunders, and Wallace, while only one, a women and the youngest of all on the list, appears on the 2020 list -- Obreht. The two lists follow ---
1999
Sherman Alexie
Donald Antrim
Ethan Canin
Michael Chabon
Edwidge Danticat
Junot Díaz
Tony Earley
Nathan Englander
Jeffrey Eugenides
Jonathan Franzen
Allegra Goodman
A.M. Homes
Matthew Klam
Jhumpa Lahiri
Chang-rae Lee
Rick Moody
Antonya Nelson
George Saunders
William T. Vollmann
David Foster Wallace
2010
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chris Adrian
Daniel Alarcón
David Bezmozgis
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Joshua Ferris
Jonathan Safran Foer
Nell Freudenberger
Rivka Galchen
Nicole Krauss
Yiyun Li
Dinaw Mengestu
Philipp Meyer
C.E. Morgan
Téa Obreht
Z.Z. Packer
Karen Russell
Salvatore Scibona
Gary Shteyngart
Wells Tower
The Granta Best Young British Novelists (and further down the page, equivalent, later, American and Spanish lists) would be others to comparehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granta#...
Rachel Cusk has in recent years taken a surprising lead over many of the others after languishing for quite some time (as many of the others still are). Zadie Smith had already had a huge hit with White Teeth by the time the 2003 list was out so it wasn't like they tipped her.
I think Jonathan Safran Fore’s first two novels hold up nicely as post modern lit but his third is plain disappointing - It feels like the product of writer’s block
Thanks Antonomasia for those lists. Robert, I agree with you about Foer. Although, as much as I enjoyed his first two novels, especially his post 9/11 one, I enjoyed his wife's novels more, i.e., those by Nicole Krauss, especially The History of Love, despite hating the title.
My first thought was Franzen. His later rants have made him risible and it is harder to take his literature seriously.
Sara G, I'm interested to know what the rants are that you refer to. I've only read 2 of F's novels so far, and am interested in your reference. Thank you.
One time he went off about how ebooks are ruining society. He has an entire essay called "What's wrong with the modern world?" where he laments writers who engage in self-promotion. He wrote a New Yorker article about how we are all doomed from climate change so why try to stop it; instead we should save birds. Etc. It's the epitome of the Simpson's meme "old man yells at clouds."
Sara G wrote: "One time he went off about how ebooks are ruining society. He has an entire essay called "What's wrong with the modern world?" where he laments writers who engage in self-promotion. He wrote a New ..."Thank you. Now that you mention it, I did see the New Yorker article.
All true about Franzen but otoh he isn't a serial abuser. I don't have turmoil in my soul about picking up one of his novels and reading it, the way I do about some other authors just now. I'm really struggling with how to reconcile #metoo allegations/revelations about an author vs. my personal decision about whether I should pick up up a book and read it or not. That is a different topic from this thread, I know, but current events are driving my reading choices in unexpected ways, and I haven't really figured it out for myself.
My kids loved Orson Scott Card books growing up and they reconciled their love of the books vs. the odiousness of their author by only buying used copies. I'm not sure if that works as a statement though.
I think it is social media and specifically being in the habit of posting about books on it that complicates it. Two aspects:- You are being seen to read it and pigeonholed / judged on that
- Anyone with a largish following can be seen as promoting the book. (But also, it's not like we are the Oprah bookclub or the NYT, we are just people with c.1000 GR followers, quite a lot of whom probably aren't even active.)
Then, especially depending on your own background and what you are getting out of said posting:
-Why should I silence myself (to use a modish phrase) and in what ways might that matter to myself/ be seen by various others?
These were not present if you were borrowing a library book in 1995 and talked about it with one or two friends. And they still aren't present for readers who don't post extensively about books, where the only ethical issues are about purchasing or not purchasing, reading or not reading.
What do you do WRT books by deceased writers who are known to have done something bad? How long ago do they need to be before it becomes less of an issue? Does it matter how widely read they are otherwise? What they did?Would you read and post about Dickens, for example?
It also isn't possible to be approved of/liked by everyone. I think that new media pre-social media, by presenting figures who appeared to be admired by those on both sides (when that was actually just a bunch of journalists and politicians) gave the sense that was possible. But these days it is clear that you do end up being seen as taking a side, and if you are (probably me more so than Lark) one of those people who has opinions that don't all match one side, people who don't know you well will make assumptions and judge on that, or judge because you read something they disapprove of, no further discussion needed, and there isn't a lot you can do about it. You have to accept that some people will disagree on matters of more than taste, and will be thinking you are kind of a bad person because you do read or won't read such and such.
What do you do WRT books by deceased writers who are known to have done something bad? ...."I guess I do censor my remarks and feelings just to dodge any politics when it comes to literary discussions. For instance, I'm aware that I've avoided saying how much I love Sherman Alexie novels, in an online conversation or two.
The whole online culture re:literary things makes the author the center of the discussion, rather than the book. I think that's wrong. I would almost say that the author should be irrelevant once the book is published.
I've had the experience of going back to re-read a novel tjat I remember loving earlier in life, and discovering that novel to be breathtakingly misogynistic, really vile stuff, and yet somehow I didn't see it when I was younger, and somehow the author managed to live a respectable life and to never be accused of any wrongdoing.
And then I read Sherman Alexie or Junot Diaz and I can't find anything in the words that is offensive to me. I like their prose and I like what they have to bring to the world with their books and stories.
Even though all of the above is true though I'm influenced by the argument others make that I shouldn't be supporting a serial misogynist by buying their books. So I'm struggling.
One of the points of being middle aged has traditionally been to have more nuanced / less firebrand views and I for one am happy to embrace that as far as this issue is concerned. Starting to be middle-aged around the same time as these debates became ever more radical was really helpful. I don't really get people, especially people I know well, taking me to task for reading too many male authors or whatever. (Though before the last couple of months I used to read huge amounts of online culture wars material that would basically say that in a more general sense - so it's more like a chorus in the head than something people are saying directly.) But at the idea that they might, I can just think, Why yes, I am a middle aged centrist. Also I don't have kids and I'm not a teacher. I'm fine with teachers remaking the canon in schools, that's an interesting project with benefits for quite a lot of people, but I have my goals for stuff I want to read, and they have been waiting more than long enough already.
I can see how some of it may be different if you are an author, planning on publishing more books and are going for a particular audience. But GR seems to be one of the better places where people can get away with having more nuanced opinions and still have a good following. Also some of these issues can get repetitive; you maybe already do this, but it can be a good exercise to write reviews that don't go into them every time.
(Rhetorical questions as it would be understandable not to want to post about these things, but
What do you actually fear? People making critical comments? Defriendings? Selling fewer books?
Feeling like a bad and not very progressive person? Conflict between that and actually liberal values that you were once used to about literature?
What can be done about these things if applicable?
For the purely GR/social media stuff, are there maybe just as many people who would be okay with you having a mixture of opinions on these topics and not toeing the party line on everything? And some of them might replace followers with more hardline views?)
Antonomasia wrote: "One of the points of being middle aged has traditionally been to have more nuanced / less firebrand views and I for one am happy to embrace that as far as this issue is concerned. Starting to be mi..."Personally I don't care what people think of me. The art has to be separated from the artist. Although I respect people's views, I think it is sort of silly to boycott things - are you going to stop watching tarantino's or the Cohen Brothers films because Weinstein was the company that financed them?
I think it can be genuinely difficult when someone is integrated into a social circle where they share quite a lot, but not all of these views, and those who diverge from time to time within the group are judged heavily. I remember Lark's old There There review. Some groups have cultures where more conformity is expected than others.But I am glad to have grown up with similar music subcultures around the same time as you did Robert. That history has been helpful in dealing with these things and meant I still feel on some level that default is for these things not to matter.
The shift in recent years has been one where a far greater proportion of people are making political reading choices, and it has felt necessary not to get totally left behind with that. Certainly I and a few friends make observations about representation and so on which we wouldn't have 5, definitely not 7 years ago.
But I want to get back to my old long-term goals of reading classics, which are a lot more important to me than the opinions on these topics of some people I don't know well, and which I neglected for too long.
And all sorts of things are realigning politically at the moment and I wouldn't like to say how any of this will look in another few years.
Hmm, I actually had blocked out that There, There review experience. I tried a few rewrites to see if I could still have a public opinion of the novel that didn’t make anyone mad, and these didn’t satisfy anyone, and then I deleted the book from my ‘read’ shelf, along with several other books/reviews that I thought might lead to unpleasant attention down the road. I think I’ve decided I don’t need to share my thoughts about every book. There is this strange transition that happens on GR where for the longest time nobody cares what you think and the they do.
Angry randoms will always have a go at highly ranked negative reviews, or highly ranked reviews of controversial books. As a regular commenter on Warwick's reviews I see a lot of this via notifications. (Most of the time it's the ranking they mind more than anything - other people's likes - but they haven't quite rationalised that one yet because they don't spend such large amounts of time thinking about GR.) But where it's people one knows, I think there is quite a bit of correlation between views and their temperament/likelihood of having a go - also their expectations of the other person - and people who have middling/mixed views don't usually expect as much conformity. Quite a few other people posted more negative reviews of that book and didn't get attacked. I think that is an indication of the very different experiences one gets depending on audience and the expectations that audience has of you.
Mod
It does feel like today's conversation (in the public sphere, not this thread's) has swung a bit too far in the direction of personality and purity tests for all kinds of artists and art forms.
On the flip side, are there 21st century writers/books, you hoped would gain wider recognition, but still haven't (yet)?
21st Century Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (other topics)All Our Names (other topics)
All the Living (other topics)
The Sport of Kings (other topics)
How to Read the Air (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Dinaw Mengestu (other topics)C.E. Morgan (other topics)
Karen Russell (other topics)
Z.Z. Packer (other topics)
Gary Shteyngart (other topics)
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