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Comment by dewitt | Hacker News Reader

> "Donna Tartt, one of the best American novelists to emerge in the last 50 years, has published just three novels since 1992. Jonathan Franzen, the only American novelist who is her equal."

Pynchon. DeLillo. McCarthy. Roth...

Edit: Morrison. Updike. Mailer...

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Pynchon - Born 1937, "V" published in 1963

DeLillo - Born 1936, published first short story in 1960, novel in 1971

McCarthy - Born 1933, first short story published 1959, novel 1965

Roth - Born 1933, won award for "Goodbye, Columbus" in 1959

Updike - Born 1932, first published in 50's and 60s

Morrison - Born 1931, first published in 1970

Mailer - Born 1923, first published in 1949

Remember that 50 years ago (from the time this was written) is 1965. Morrison is the only author you mentioned that doesn't have published works from before 50 years ago, and even then she still belongs to that same generation.

King wasn't trying to slight any of them. It's just really has been a very long time.

Edit: To compare, Tartt was born in 1963 and Franzen in 1959. I think this is really the generation he is referring to.

Point made. I think you're right. : )

If it helps, you just made me realize I really need to read some books by these folks. Shamefully, McCarthy is the only on on that list I was familiar with before.

Roth didn’t emerge in the last 50 years (otherwise I’d agree with you).* I’ve enjoyed books by all six but I agree with King on this one. The Goldfinch was, page for page, probably the best reading experience I’ve ever had. I adore that book. Franzen is less lovable but undeniably talented and, for me at least, more fun to read than the people who influenced him (Pynchon, DeLillo, etc)

*edit: I didn’t read the quote carefully. Looks like he really is saying those two are the best American novelists, full stop. Bold and kind of interesting statement on King’s part.

I love Franzen. But not in a class by himself, at least not in a half-century.

I'd take Philip K Dick over all of them put together.

Him too.

With few exceptions, genre fiction doesn't count as Serious Literature.

You mean because it’s not boring?

It’s like serious literature has to eschew anything that would make it a good story, in case it got in the way of being good writing.

Oh come on, Vonnegut is one of the most obvious examples of well respected American writers and you could hardly call his work boring. One of the 2016 Pulitzer prize winners (The Sympathizer - not cherry picking, just a recent book that comes to mind) was an extremely gripping/exciting story about escaping the end of the Vietnam war to America but it still managed to receive nearly unanimous praise.

On the other hand, one could argue that if your works require elaborate setpieces and a fantastical setting then you're drawing attention away from an inability to write captivating stories. A plot summary of a Jonathan Franzen novel for example sounds incredibly boring but his writing is nearly impossible to tear yourself away from and will have your mind going for days or even weeks after you finish. It's perfectly fine to enjoy sci-fi/fantasy etc but there's no need to develop a victim complex about its position in the literary world.

Vonnegut is the exception that proves the rule (perhaps with Atwood).

I found Franzen terrible FWIW, but there is certainly excellent literary writing out there. Prosecraft is a skill, just as plotting and settings are - neither is superior to the other. And there is a real cultural disrespect for the things that SF does well. I wouldn't mind that if good SF was still allowed to continue in its own place, but lately even that seems under threat (e.g. the Hugo awards are lately dominated by literary prose at the expense of the classic SF virtues).

He also emerged more than 50 years ago though.

It's subjective.

Sure. I'd even put Gibson, Wallace, Stephenson, Asimov, and Martin on my own subjective list, just on pure influence and enjoyment. The other ones though are at least in the running by most objective criteria, I'd imagine.

There's no such thing as objective criteria.

It's all a matter of personal opinion, much as some gatekeepers (like critics and academicians) would have you believe otherwise.

> It's all a matter of personal opinion

I'm all for "enjoy what you want" but to say that there is no objective difference in the writing of, say, Don DeLillo and Dan Brown, is ridiculous.

I didn't say there was no difference, just that whether you think one is better than another is not "objective" but a matter of personal preference.

Clearly Dan Brown and Don DeLillo are different. They write different sorts of books that appeal to different sorts of readers. But I struggle to see how those differences make one "objectively" better than the other.

If there are objective criteria by which one could judge whether the one is better than the other, I'd like to know what they are.

There are fairly standard criteria for literary criticism that include psychological and social insight, use of vocabulary, use of advanced writing techniques, use of form, and many, many more.

It is all opinion, but there’s a difference between the opinion of Alan Kay and of someone who has two days of Python and a copy of Angry Birds.

Your example of Alan Kay isn't a very good one though, because we can objectively test their opinions on say, the best way to implement `malloc` by having them do it and testing the results against the computer. There is no such equivalent for literature.

> It is all opinion, but there’s a difference between the opinion of Alan Kay and of someone who has two days of Python and a copy of Angry Birds.

I'm not sure I see your point.

We put more stock in the opinions of Alan Kay, because he has a better command of the relevant objective facts than does the newbie.

In 'pure literature', there are no such objective facts.

The people who make the effort to seek out great prose tend to gravitate to the same stuff.

Those who have no interest in leaving their cave defend their sloth by claiming it's all a matter of personal opinion.

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