17 year-old is the future of American letters
via The Syntax of Things.
Alec Niedenthal, 17 year-old, writes in a letter to the NYT:
Don’t worry; we’re working on it. You’ve heard it straight from the tropical mouth of a teenager who is entirely conscientious of the metamorphoses in ideas, principles (or lack thereof) and influences being undergone by your Youth right under your collective noses: the next Great American Novel will come not from Pynchon, Wallace, DeLillo (he’s already had his turn anyway) or any other of your literary heroes.
It will spring from the iMac-fettered keyboards of the young, challenging, Facebook-and-MySpace-addled minds that you have so hastily jettisoned as literary jetsam, from those who see and comprehend, still to the delirious ignorance of the villainous Powers That Be, incalculable brands of grade-A terror being perpetrated unabashedly both by those whom we trust and those whom we loathe.
Took words out of my mouth. As for his list, Pynchon already wrote the Great American Novel, it’s too much to want him write the next one. Delillo was never “Great American Novel” material; and Foster Wallace, 36-year-old-child-prodigy of the form as he will always be, is constantly sabotaged and held back in the middle grounds by his heartbreaking immaturity - and now the Zeitgeist is already leaving him behind. I’m looking forward to Mr. Niedenthal to live up to what he says.
Gustavo wrote:
About american novelists, you are the guy who once wrote about William Gaddis (the recognitions, I guess) a couple years ago, aren’t you? It made me eager to read him, and I think you should pay for doing so by sending me your own copy of it. I mean, I don’t know if I can read Infinite Jest before I read Recognitions, as I couldn’t read The Three Musketeers before I read the Quixote.
But seriously, do you know where could I buy it for, say, less then 30 bucks? It’s about 45 bucks all over the world.
Posted on 13-Jun-08 at 7:47 pm | Permalink
bogeaux wrote:
try abebooks.com
as for reading order, I really don’t see what you are onto. Jest is much easier and simpler than The Rec, and if you might argue that they share a few similar concerns, it would make more sense to go the other way around and warm up with Wallace before tackling the big guys. Nowadays I’m not even sure IJ belongs in Post-War Fiction - Required Reading lists. It holds no comparison to the Rec, for instance. :-T
Posted on 14-Jun-08 at 2:48 am | Permalink
tiago a. wrote:
the world’s still waiting for the post where you’re gonna tell us–unironically*–why you don’t like dfw that much anymore
*^^
Posted on 14-Jun-08 at 8:57 am | Permalink
tiago a. wrote:
and, btw, have you seen how proud his dad is? sooo cute
Posted on 14-Jun-08 at 9:21 am | Permalink
Gustavo wrote:
It’s just that I wanna read the older one first, and that’s all. Nothing like a hard criterion.
I don’t know if I want to read by difficulty order, only chronological - even though, and you don’t need say, I know they have nothing to do with each other. If I find any difficulty reading it - and I know I will -, I can give it up for a while and return to it later on.
Thanks for the abebooks. Found it for US10 (+shipping).
Posted on 14-Jun-08 at 1:34 pm | Permalink
bogeaux wrote:
Ah, Tiago, you need to be of a certain age and disposition to write long essays on the Internet for free that only a handful will read, and often misunderstand. I don’t do that anymore. ^^
But, in few words: I doubt the appropriateness of his call-to-arms fanfaron, which I projected onto Brazil but that sounds out of place in American letters; I’m annoyed by his clumsy attempts at coming off as a polymath, which he isn’t; and though I never said he was an /insightful/ writer or anysuch, I’ve grown increasingly irritated by his self-gratifying, infantilizing Weltanschauung, which is getting worse in his later work - the man has become an evangelical, and it is naive or hypocritical to say we didn’t see it coming.
Posted on 15-Jun-08 at 7:45 am | Permalink
bogeaux wrote:
Oh, and the Zeitgeist thing. Television and its effects in the minds of children - yeah, grandpa, /whatever/.
Posted on 15-Jun-08 at 7:49 am | Permalink