Word: novels
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...scientists have found that in order to accommodate such a vast mental map, the posterior hippocampus of a London cabbie's brain, the bit responsible for spatial memory and navigation, actually grows bigger than those of mere humans. And yet, as demonstrated in The Book of Dave, the latest novel by British author Will Self, the Knowledge alone will not save your life. It fails to warn Dave Rudman, the book's cabbie hero, that junk food, booze and pills are not the best fuel for the long, lonely hours of a night shift. Nor can it stem the drip...
...Wallace, Franzen et al. aren't the leading young novelists anymore, who are? It's not an idle question. The novel is one of the most vital cultural resources we have--a private, potent means of sharing the unspeakableness of daily life with one another. So it's only natural to wonder who's taking care of the novel--who's taking up the torch and where exactly they're taking it. Or whether it has gone out. The novel is one of the platforms from which the voice of a generation speaks. And if you listen closely...
...that there aren't any young novelists (for purposes of rough-'n'-ready generalization, let's say novelists under 40). At 39, Jhumpa Lahiri already has a powerful novel (The Namesake) and a Pulitzer-winning story collection. Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) has got a lot of attention both popular and critical, and he's only 29. A somewhat partisan sampling would also include Colson Whitehead (The Intuitionist), 36; Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory), 37; Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity), 36; Arthur Phillips (Prague), 37; Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep), 30; Myla Goldberg (Bee Season), 34; Nicole Krauss...
...fact, the novel is getting more user-friendly in general. Fun and profundity are no longer mutually exclusive. Humor is back: Smith and Shteyngart are satirists, Foer and Mitchell are wits. Likewise, vigorous, plotty storytelling is in vogue again. For much of the 20th century the border between high and low fiction was diligently policed. Now there's an attractive trend toward hybridizing high and low, grafting the brilliant verbal intelligence of high literature onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction. "That used to be a real novelty act, or something that was done with kid gloves or with...
Updike made several jokes in this interview and at the event, making it seem implausible perhaps that a former president of the Lampoon and someone who drops one-liners could write a dark and ominous novel about a young terrorist...