I like this list not so much because I agree with it (Safran Foer? Poets? Kinda insular, dude, but spot on with Amy Tan) but because it shows that he cares about literature enough to give a damn. Tepid criticism and tepid praise are for tepid readers and who the fuck cares about them?
Looking forward to his post on Underrated American Writers.
via Huffington Post:
The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers (PHOTOS)
If we don’t understand bad writing, we can’t understand good writing. Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance. Good writing is exactly the opposite. Bad writing draws attention to the writer himself. These writers have betrayed the legacy of modernism, not to mention postmodernism. They are uneasy with mortality. On the great issues of the day they are silent (especially when they seem to address them, like William T. Vollmann). They desire to be politically irrelevant, and they have succeeded. They are the unreadable Booth Tarkingtons, Joseph Hergesheimers, and John Herseys of our time, earnestly bringing up the rear.
Akopos 