The question . . .
is what to make of a diminished thing.
βRobert Frost, βThe Oven Birdβ
One day a few years back, when I was in graduate school, a professor and I were chatting idly about Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Dos Passesβwriters that I had been reading lately, and that, as he told me, he had lionized as a teenager in the 19305. βWho is it you kids look up to now?βΒ he asked. βWho are your idols? Who do you think is writing the Great American Novel these days?βΒ I considered the question. To be sure, there were contemporary American novelists that I respected, that I read with pleasure; but none of them meant to me what Hemingway and company had meant to my professor. The fact was, I didnβt wait breathlessly for anybodyβs next novel; there was no magnificent vision, no grand style out there that had changed my life. βNobody,βΒ I said, and was myself surprisedβand more than a little dismayedβthat this should be my answer. He nodded grimly, as if heβd expected nothing elseβindeed, as if heβd asked the question precisely in order to confront me with my own reply.
It was notβand is notβa pleasant verdict to render. But there it is, like it or not: the American novel has lost a good deal of its prewar glory; it doesnβtmatter quite so much anymore; it is no longer the flagship of the American arts, the most conspicuous of the mirrors we hold up to