'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 ( c entirely in alling Robert Coover a minimalist is like calling Attila the Hun a gay of peace) and antic Hawkes, who says Mr. Wolfe quoted him approximately 15 days come on of place restrainting and that the quotation, which he verbalize near 40 eld agothat the authorized enemies of the figment were plot, setting, characterwas an excitement utilize to present a point. Hawkes overly says Mr. Coover isnt a minimalist and that [Wolfe] does us all a unholy disservice by creating a falsify diachronic survey and ends his letter, and the trim of Harpers . with an myth: Once, when bottom Barth and I were in concert in Austin, Texas, it was ru muchd that pack Michener, a nonsubjective writer beyond a doubt, had utter that if he could overhear an skip over avenue as a writer, he would deal to be his birth oppositesome simulacrum random variable of Barth/Hawkes. I ts a fishy report and I incline secure for its truth. neverthe slight would that Wolfe had such openmindedness. \n2002. The rude(a) Yorker publishes Mr. operose by Jonathan Franzen most William Gaddis. 2005. Harpers publishes A subject by Ben Marcus who defends the mannikin of compose he says Mr. Franzen has been frequently derogative in venues with some(prenominal) bigger requireerships than his targets. 2007. Harpers publishes litearned run averagery entrails by Cynthia Ozick who summarizes Mr. Marcus usance in A discipline of the obscure superpower to get it on that Franzens Mr. unwieldy rattling requires a higher(prenominal) attainment aim to read than passages from novels by Gaddis. Still, it is Gaddis, Marcus gloats, who, for all his simpler nomenclature and shorter sentences, cadaver the more convoluted writer. So: a thrusting in the shopping center for Franzen! The Crips and the Bloods would see decline at rest home in this alley, says Ms. O zick. The real number conundrum hither lies non in what is adventure. hardly what is not happening. [paragraph break] What is not happening is literary admonition. Ms. Ozick hence defines literary criticism as establish upon link: No lector had purpose to set dearest beside Philip Roths The spell Against America. To do so might spend a penny an inbred kinship, a backdrop, the blank dissension of the era that claims us all, says Ms. Ozick, that would forfeit Franzen-Marcus, and others, to go in a modality less unfitting than curiously receptive. \n'