“Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?”

Well, you won’t find it in this list.

Early this year, the Book Review’s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.”

Yeh, well, that’s exactly the wrong kind of people to ask. Why do I say that? Because it is exactly that list of “prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” who are responsible for the plague of “Suckitudinous Fiction” so well described by Holly Lisle.

It’s fair to say that writing a good story is damned hard to do. Writing something that engages readers and wins them over to the side of the characters and makes these readers care about the outcome of your tale requires constant effort on the writer’s part — brutal questioning of each scene and each line, a tight, sharp focus, and a deep belief in the story that you the writer want to tell.

The writers—and books—on the NYT list fail on most of those points, preferring binstead to write shallow, pretentious, manipulative crap that pointy-headed critics and the like proclaim to be profound and moving because they are themselves shallow pretentious and mani[pulative and have no idea what good storytelling is.

Don’t take my word for it. Check a couple of the books on the list out at your local public library. They’ll be easy to find, cos they’re likely covered with dust. Try to read them. Try your hardest to enjoy reading them.

The more intelligent you are, the harder that task will be, cos most of ’em are really crappy stories with characters it’s easy to dismiss as pretentious and disengaging constructs, reflections of their creators’ mental masturbation.

“Great” literature of the 20th century: the ugly flip side of pop culture crap novels.

Oh, and am I going to tell you what the best American fiction of the last 25 years was? No. You tell me. What work of fiction held you with credible characters, believable plot, well-written descriptive narrative? In short, what was the best-written story you’ve read in the last 25 years? Ignore the Academia Nuts, Mass Media Podpeople and Moonbatteried “critics.” What really grabbed you and held you?

I’d almost go with the mythic legend the Clintoons built up about themselves, except that the whole thing was so pornographic. (And in the end, not even particularly titilating porn, although it did achieve its essential purpose: the further coarsening of the American political and social scene… )

h.t. Chaos Manor Musings for the link to the NYT article, where the reference was listed under “Literary Affirmative Action”—*heh* And I don’t care HOW many thousands of readers Pournelle’s blog has, it’ll ALWAYS be the most under-read blog out there. It should be on everyone’s daily reads.

Self-featured at Mark My Words, Jo’s Cafe, Basil’s Blog, Right Wing Nation and Comittees of Correspondence.