Word: giantism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With Hemingway and Faulkner dead, this is not a time of giants. The public is too easily preoccupied with giantism-an understandable result both of the publishers' belief that bestsellers sell best, and of the wistful ache of uncertain readers to be in the mode. But literature has never been a procession of giants. Nor do they arise, like occasional Poseidons, from a featureless sea. Rather, they form part of a moving and sustaining stream of literature, which is and must be fed by tributaries. Minor writers are needed to produce major ones...
...pleasing only himself, and he began to write. His first two novels pleased no one and were not published. His third, The Moviegoer, was warmly praised by a few reviewers, ignored by many others (TIME, May 16, 1961), and widely unread. It was a blow that puffers of giantism accepted with much bad grace when The Moviegoer won last year's National Book Award...