Word: kazin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...every attempt in the last fifty years to write a serious novel, a novel of ideas, the attacks come strong and steady. Some are self-serving, such as Gore Vidal's assertion that to rejuvenate fiction a writer must be witty and satiric. Others are malevolent such as Alfred Kazin's attempts to embarass the writer of the '80s with accusations of simplicity and incompetence. But these attacks are misguided. Fiction lives a healthy and vigorous life. Pummeled by the film industry, mass marketing and now McCarthy's vision of violation and out-dated expectation, the novel prospers...