{"id":1166,"date":"2011-08-30T21:12:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T21:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=1166"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:04","slug":"novels-of-the-great-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/08\/novels-of-the-great-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"Novels of the Great Recession"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

For a long time, critics were in the habit of complaining that American authors had given up trying to write the Great American Novel. That is, they\u2019d stopped trying to create plots and characters that embodied social trends with wide-ranging significance. In Balsamic Dreams, <\/em>Joe Queenan writes: \u201cBaby Boomer literati absolutely refused to go for the brass ring. Instead, they retreated into their gender, their ethnic group, their sexual demographic group, or their own individual selves.\u201d In \u201cThe Judgment of Memory,\u201d Joseph Bottum makes the point even more succinctly: \u201c[Writers today] have a literary instrument ready to say almost anything. And they have almost nothing ready to say with it.\u201d <\/p>\n

By being so big, so inescapable, and such a goshdamned drag, the Great Recession may have prompted a few writers to take a stab at universality. Today in Salon,<\/i> Jeff Martin dignifies Shann Ray and Philipp Meyer as \u201cOur Modern Steinbecks,\u201d<\/strong><\/a> and reviews their work favorably:<\/p>\n

Meyer\u2019s \u201cAmerican Rust\u201d dives deep into the Rust Belt realities of working-class Pennsylvania. Echoes of John Steinbeck\u2019s resonate in his prose \u2014 Steinbeck\u2019s Depression-era migrants might have led bleaker lives, but the confusion and the uncertainty amongst those who aspire merely to pay the bills and attain a middle-class life can be startlingly similar.<\/p>\n

Ray\u2019s \u201cAmerican Masculine,\u201d meanwhile, takes the story West, into the desolate landscape of Montana. The men and women in his stories seem to the bastard children of Jim Harrison and Raymond Carver, fierce but plain-spoken and adrift, fighting to hold addictions, violence and sadness at bay. It\u2019s a book which redefines the myth of the West \u2014 Manifest Destiny is a thing of the past, the West now is a trap.<\/p>\n

These authors share a visible reverence for an America that no longer exists. In Pollock\u2019s view, American is \u201ca much scarier place to live than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago.\u201d But that nostalgia should not be confused with the same flag-waving mindlessness that led Ronald Reagan\u2019s 1984 reelection campaign to use Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d without ever listening to the lyrics. The characters are rough, the portraits are unflattering, yet readers and critics are connecting with these books in a time when the initial urge might be to escape into some fantasyland of make-believe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ll be interested to read these books, partly to see whether my own tastes have been conditioned by the age. I, too, may have unwittingly retreated into my own gender, age and ethnic group, or at least developed a Seinfeldian preference for fiction about inconsequential things. When I read Philip Roth\u2019s American Pastoral<\/em> \u2014 often praised as a good-faith effort at Great American-ness \u2014 I remember feeling overwhelmed. \u201cGood Lord,\u201d I thought. \u201cThis stuff is so epic. Who does this guy think he is, John Jakes?\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a wonderful, pathetic story to be written about the fake middle class. By that I mean the sorts of hyper-ambitious people I knew in the mortgage industry. With the exception of a retired lawyer or two who closed loans as a lark, none were professionals; some, barely able to read, had scant hope of ever becoming professionals. But they had the kind of drive and optimism that gold rushes and empires are made of. For a brief moment, history dangled all their dreams \u2014 money, prestige, real estate \u2014 before them, then snatched it all back, tweaking their nose into the bargain. A book on these guys would read just like Gone with the Wind,<\/em> only with more hot tubs.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a long time, critics were in the habit of complaining that American authors had given up trying to write the Great American Novel. That is, they\u2019d stopped trying to create plots and characters that embodied social trends with wide-ranging significance. In Balsamic Dreams, Joe Queenan writes: \u201cBaby Boomer literati absolutely refused to go for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,141],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-economy","tag-literature"],"yoast_head":"\nNovels of the Great Recession<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For a long time, critics were in the habit of complaining that American authors had given up trying to write the Great American Novel. 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