Nobel Prize season and again we have been spared the sad spectacle of a Joyce Carol Oates or a Philip Roth or a Don DeLillo getting the Nobel Prize. Of course some have argued that they should have given a second Nobel Prize to Toni Morrison for after all wouldn't it be just since they were not able to give a second Nobel to that other great American laureate Pearl Buck.
But surely anyone who reads is aware that at this moment in the United States there is not a great writer living in our midst.
Now I know it is possible and maybe even likely that there is one because I remember Richard M. Elman once saying back in 1971, that there is no such thing as an unknown great writer in the United States... for a moment he was filled up with a typical New York arrogance but...
Still as far as I can tell and I would hopeam wrong.. there is not a great writer living in the United States.
The why is beyond me.
The fact is there and we don't have to argue really about what makes up that word great.
In spite of critical and popular disinterest I have been aware within my lifetime of living in a country where a few great writers lived: Faulkner, Hemingway, William Bronk, Edward Dahlberg, Julian Green (though he lived in France he always said he was American born not made), Glenway Wescott, Hannah Green, Lorine Niedecker, Ronald Johnson, maybe George Garrett...
I can make myself clearer if I mentioned that if I think of Spain: Julian Rios, if I think of Hungary : Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy, Imre Kertesz, if I think of Estonia: Tonu Onnepalu, if I think of Romania: Herta Muller, if I think of Serbia" Milorad Pavic, if I think of the Irish language: Nuala NiDhomhnaill, if I think of China: Ha Jian, Italy: Roberto Calasso...
But in the United States only William T. Vollmann and Madison Smartt Bell come to mind as possible candidates... and I hope to live long enough to see them come into... which might seem strange given their vast accomplishments. However, Bell clouded, at least for me, his purpose with more than a thousand pages devoted to Toussant L'Ouverture and Haiti flying in the face of the definitive imaginative THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD by Alejo Carpentier which in 100 pages...
And as to Vollmann, there is a soft core of sentimental leftism that sometimes enervates his thinking but it is kept in check by his senses that transcribe a constant refutation of that delusional germ
Again, the Unites States does not have a great writer living within its borders though every week another is announced or better promoted... I cant bring myself to type the current names...
After-thoughts.
I wanted to include Cormac McCarthy because of Suttree and Blood Meridian but until there is a third book to equal them... I hold back... The Road is memorable as the language would have it and one will have to forget the movie that is coming soon or has left already though it is a finger exercise
I wanted to include James McCourt but his possible great trilogy begun in Now Voyagers: The Night Sea Journey seems to have been de-railed in favor of a popular book about the New York Irish... but his Time Remaining makes me reconsider.. but no,...
