But we’re also strictly speaking of literary fiction. Most American readers aren’t reading lit fiction. They’re Don Winslow and Grisham and Michael Crichton and Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid. None of those authors have MFAs or jumped through the traditional hoops. They just came up with a bit of magic
But we’re also strictly speaking of literary fiction. Most American readers aren’t reading lit fiction. They’re Don Winslow and Grisham and Michael Crichton and Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid. None of those authors have MFAs or jumped through the traditional hoops. They just came up with a bit of magic
You're not wrong, particularly with literary vs. crime and mass market fiction. Men still hold sway there. The MFA point is a notable one, too. I'd only add, in regards to Salinger, he was not quite the swaggering "masculine" novelist, like Mailer and Hemingway. He went to war but, unlike Mailer, didn't go (as far as I remember) explicitly to write a war novel. And unlike Mailer and Hemingway, he saw genuine combat and likely got PTSD at the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day.
yeah, Salinger probably doesn’t belong in that group. But he’s also transmigrated better than the others. Rooney’s character mannerisms reek of Salinger. But this masculine distinction is also particularly American. Fosse and Knausgaard are just as masculine as any of our great dead lit-men
But we’re also strictly speaking of literary fiction. Most American readers aren’t reading lit fiction. They’re Don Winslow and Grisham and Michael Crichton and Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid. None of those authors have MFAs or jumped through the traditional hoops. They just came up with a bit of magic
You're not wrong, particularly with literary vs. crime and mass market fiction. Men still hold sway there. The MFA point is a notable one, too. I'd only add, in regards to Salinger, he was not quite the swaggering "masculine" novelist, like Mailer and Hemingway. He went to war but, unlike Mailer, didn't go (as far as I remember) explicitly to write a war novel. And unlike Mailer and Hemingway, he saw genuine combat and likely got PTSD at the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day.
yeah, Salinger probably doesn’t belong in that group. But he’s also transmigrated better than the others. Rooney’s character mannerisms reek of Salinger. But this masculine distinction is also particularly American. Fosse and Knausgaard are just as masculine as any of our great dead lit-men
Yes. I'm thinking more on the MFA point too. It seems like the early program era was more "masculine" and that changed over time