I'm engaged in an epic battle with David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest right now, which is one of the reasons I say that. This book is just so much damned fun.
Toni Morrison's not joyful on the whole, but Jazz exemplifies the kind of fun you can see in literary fic.
Michael Chabon's oeuvre has certain obviously very personal attractions to me, but he has fun while telling powerful stories about characters whose flaws he loves.
Zadie Smith's White Teeth was spectacular and left me wanting more of her fiction. China Mieville I have my ups and downs with, but The City and the City at least had style and excitement going for it. Jonathan Lethem's done a lot to impress me. Richard Powers blends science and philosophy and wit. Salman Rushdie's work has been filling me with glee on a regular basis recently.
I have some books on order that I think promise the same kind of excitement, Robert Arellano's Don Dimaio of La Plata and Percival Everett's A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid among them.
These books have the humanism and wit that I search for in literature. It's certainly not absent from contemporary litfic.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regna
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-23 23:54 (UTC)Toni Morrison's not joyful on the whole, but Jazz exemplifies the kind of fun you can see in literary fic.
Michael Chabon's oeuvre has certain obviously very personal attractions to me, but he has fun while telling powerful stories about characters whose flaws he loves.
Zadie Smith's White Teeth was spectacular and left me wanting more of her fiction. China Mieville I have my ups and downs with, but The City and the City at least had style and excitement going for it. Jonathan Lethem's done a lot to impress me. Richard Powers blends science and philosophy and wit. Salman Rushdie's work has been filling me with glee on a regular basis recently.
I have some books on order that I think promise the same kind of excitement, Robert Arellano's Don Dimaio of La Plata and Percival Everett's A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid among them.
These books have the humanism and wit that I search for in literature. It's certainly not absent from contemporary litfic.