I’ve broken the habit of a lifetime by finally reading an issue of Granta in the year—although not the actual season—in which it was published. I don’t feel too bad about coming to this particular issue six months late because, presumably, it’s intended to last us for the next ten years. This is Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists 2007.
Why Young?
One thing I don’t understand is, why young? If the aim is to look at new, up-and-coming writers, I would have thought Best New American Novelists would have been a better concept. Age seems a rather arbitrary distinction to make. Why not Best Blonde American Novelists or Best American Novelists who Also Grow Their Own Peaches? It’s even more ridiculous when you think that any American writer of twenty-five or over, who starts their career in the next ten years, will be disqualified from the next edition of this list.
Editor Ian Jack explains in his introduction that the lowering of the age limit—the previous list featured writers up to the age of forty—was intended partly to reflect the legions of creative writing graduates who start trotting out novels before they’re old enough to think, and partly in order to avoid repeating much of the last list. In response to the first argument, I don’t see how lowering the age limit would affect the inclusion of these youngsters except by excluding writers who would otherwise take their place by virtue of being more talented. Meanwhile, the argument that the rules must be changed in order to exclude the last list’s winners is surely an admission that the writers contained in this list aren’t any good?
In fact, they’ve excluded so many people that many of the novelists on this list haven’t actually, well, written a novel. Editor Ian Jack, interviewed on WNYC:
Ironically, or paradoxically rather, a lot of these writers are actually not novelists… We could have said [best American fiction writers], it seemed a bit clumsy to say that, but we could have said that. And perhaps more honestly, we should have said that… I think you have to look at the writing and decide, well, this looks of such promise that one day, one day she will write a novel. Or one day he’ll write a novel.”
So a thirty-six-year-old novelist isn’t a young novelist, but a thirty-five-year-old who hasn’t written a novel is a young novelist. They’re so hung up on the definition of the word young that they drop the age limit to 35, while seeing no importance in the—arguably more important—word novelist.
So this book isn’t a collection of new writers, exactly, and it seems to also have been deliberately limited to exclude better writers in favour of an arbitrary sub-section. What exactly are we being sold here?
The Stories
For the most part, the authors represented in Best of Young American Novelists aren’t wonderful. Nicole Krauss appears, briefly, as does her husband. (Jonathan Safran Foer’s contribution hasn’t made me any more eager to pick up either of his novels.)
The stories are arranged alphabetically by author, and the first really interesting story—the one that had me up and Googling the author—was the drearily named ‘When East Meets West’ by Nell Freudenberger. It’s narrated by a nonogenerian Baptist widow and her voice works really well. The title’s rubbish, though, and the twist obvious. Still, the story engaged me in a way that most of them didn’t. See also this essay from the same author.
Six or seven of the stories in the book were unreadably tedious, and most of these were excerpts from upcoming novels. Several more stories seemed completely unconcerned with the reader’s experience. Actually, that’s a big problem in this list: in many of these stories, there’s no attempt to connect with the reader, no effort to bring them into the story. It’s as though the story is a private exercise, not intended for public consumption. That’s fine, but don’t publish it. If you’re writing to be read, write to your readers.
No News
The majority of the stories here are written well, in the sense of having paragraph breaks in the right place and not dropping any particular clangers, and many do bother to engage the reader, but they have another problem. They just aren’t interesting. Ezra Pound famously said that “literature is news that stays news” but precious little in this collection is even starting life as news.
These stories have nothing to say, and here we come to the next problem with this collection. By limiting it to the very young, they’ve excluded things that are vital to good writing: life experience; a considered point of view; having something to say. As a result of this thinness, the better written of these stories are fine as exercises, but they lack anything more substantial. There’s writing, but no communication. They’re just firing elegant blanks.
This probably accounts for the high proportion of immigrant writers in the book: their alien background compensates for the inexperience of youth. An interesting exception to this is Rattawut Lapcharoensap, who was born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok. His story ‘Valets’, set in Thailand, does suggest a strong identity, and is a rare highlight in this collection. (You can hear an interview with Lapcharoensap on the Guardian website, here.)
Conclusion
So, the Best of Young American Novelists 2007. They aren’t all novelists, most of them are too young to write well, and I sincerely hope that they aren’t the best that America has to offer.
I was going to finish this review with a list of the writers whose work I’ll be seeking out in future. Sadly, it’s barely enough to be called a list. While I might read something else by Nell Freudenberger, the only writer I’m really curious about, from all twenty-one of these Young American Novelists, is Rattawut Lapcharoensap. He’s one of the authors here who has yet to produce a novel, but he’s got a short story collection out called Sightseeing and on the strength of Valets, I’d like to read it.
