4 ms·

Maybe lithub isn't for you.

• throwanem 7y ago
  "Literary" writing, the modern sort at least, has a bad reputation in no small part due to precious affectation in prose style. You can get the sense that few in the field have ever quite gotten over reading Infinite Jest and thinking its author the coolest dude in the world. Me, I feel for the guy. He and Hemingway can drink together and commiserate about what it's like to have one's legacy overshadowed by a legion of half-clever, half-competent would-be imitators whose interest in the work extends only as far as it burnishes the grift that these days we call a "brand". Granted, that legacy is in itself no world-smasher, but both men at least had the skill of writing well, and a knack for rewarding a reader's trust besides. Of their imitators, no such favorable portrait may accurately be drawn. I don't think that's entirely a fair critique of Auster, though. Given his age, he's much more likely to be a wannabe Norman Mailer. Everything else stands, and is it any wonder so many hold the genre in contempt when Auster so ably stands in microcosm of modern "literary" writing and thought?