The Literary Novel 1977 – 2007
by Leeli Davidson
9 of the 37 authors in this group wrote literary first novels.
In the last 30 years, novelists have continued to expand and adapt the form of the American novel to reflect the new, post-Vietnam Information Age/Age of Terror, and, at the same time, many of today’s novels continue to explore the novel’s traditional theme of the individual in society.
Many novelists published prior to 1977—Cormac McCarthy, Norman Mailer, Ann Tyler, Robert Stone, Philip Roth, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates, to name a few – remain major writers today whose every new work receives extensive media attention.
Feminist novels, of which Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying may have been the most influential, were a forceful presence in the 1970s. Feminism as a movement has gone through many changes and been subject to much debate since, but there is no question that women novelists of many kinds have risen to prominence during this period.
A crucial development in the history of the literary novel since 1977 is the success of minority writers in the age of multiculturalism. In the last 30 years the literature of African-American, Hispanic/Chicano, Native American and Asian-American writers have been both critically and publicly well-received with depth and breadth that is new for such writers in the history of the novel.In 2007, Granta magazine published a list of 21“Best Young American Novelists;” five were born outside the U.S.
Contemporary African-American novelists include Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, Ernest J. Gaines, Alice Walker, and Ishmael Reed. Hispanic/Chicano writers working in the United States, to name a few, are Sandra Cisneros, Oscar Hijuelos, and Rudolfo Anaya. Native America writers include Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, N Scott. Momaday, and Leslie Silko. And among the many Asian-American novelists we find Frank Chin, Amy Tan, and Maxine Hong Kingston.
The “Postmodern Novel”, whose pre-1977 implementers include John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, and William Gaddis is alive and well in 2007, and some of its current practioners include Don Delillo, David Foster Wallace, Paul Auster, Rick Moody, and Dave Eggers. One of the Postmodern Novel’s subjects is language itself, and the Postmodern Novel can be abstract, non-linear, playful and “difficult”. The Postmodern Novel can also focus on the way America’s consumer/media culture creates a reality of its own.
In the 1980s, the short story experienced a rebirth, and the “new” (Hemingway-influenced) minimalist short story was, in some ways, a reaction against the Postmodern Novel’s metafictional obsessions. Short story writers such as Raymond Carver and Anne Beattie wrote in deceptively simple prose that spared adjectives and focused on the moment while ignoring the “larger” biography of the character. Ordinary, often lower-income, characters in tragic or at least dysfunctional circumstances were Minimalism’s stars. Minimalism found its way into the 1980s novels of Russell Banks and Tobias Woolf. Richard Ford, a major American writer who became a star in the 1980s, writes about the working class characters who often appear in minimalist fiction, but Ford’s style probably keeps him from being labeled a “strict” minimalist. Besides the minimalism of the 1980s, we also find a good number of 1980s novels that criticize the excesses of the “Me” decade, most notably the novels of the "Brat Pack"--Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney and Tama Jamowitz.
Today, a new player on the stage is the “high concept” novel. This novel often is written around a unique, perhaps somewhat outlandish premise, such as Carolyn Parkhurst’s The Dogs of Babel in which the protagonist tries to teach his dog to talk so that the dog can provide answers on a mysterious death. The “postmodern” novel remains in existence, but minimalism is in something of an eclipse. Magical Realism, which at first seemed to be in the possession of South American writers, has worked its way into the American novel.
In the late ‘80s, Tom Wolfe accompanied his very popular Bonfire of the Vanities with polemics against minimalism. Many critics consider Wolfe more a journalist or entertainer than artist, but such “traditional” novels featuring a strong narrative drive and detailed depiction of characters, families, and social milieux, continued to be published throughout the period. Two examples are William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice (1980) and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001).