Yeah, I remembered you were reading Infinite Jest.
White Teeth is awesome; so is On Beauty--but note that Smith and Rushdie aren't your typical 30-something white male Americans. I really can't agree with categorizing China Miéville as a litfic writer; Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon are people who I think are trying to have their litfic cred and their "I love genre fiction" badges at same time, but they haven't actually written genre books. Also both of those latter two rarely write fully realized female characters (though I do like Chabon passionately, despite my problems with his work).
So I don't quite disagree with you, but most of these people are at the edge rather than the mainstream of litfic. The middle class suburbia-valorizing stuff is more in the mainstream, I think. (There might also be something to be said here about authors' gender and who gets the praise and awards; but I'm not quite sure.)
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regna
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Date: 2010-05-24 00:06 (UTC)White Teeth is awesome; so is On Beauty--but note that Smith and Rushdie aren't your typical 30-something white male Americans. I really can't agree with categorizing China Miéville as a litfic writer; Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon are people who I think are trying to have their litfic cred and their "I love genre fiction" badges at same time, but they haven't actually written genre books. Also both of those latter two rarely write fully realized female characters (though I do like Chabon passionately, despite my problems with his work).
So I don't quite disagree with you, but most of these people are at the edge rather than the mainstream of litfic. The middle class suburbia-valorizing stuff is more in the mainstream, I think. (There might also be something to be said here about authors' gender and who gets the praise and awards; but I'm not quite sure.)