|
-- The Shipping
News author Annie Proulx uses overblown "Evocative
Prose" with little punctuation to achieve dramatic effect.
-- White
Noise author Don DeLillo uses vague "Edgy Prose" to
mystify his not-very-unique criticisms of American
consumerism.
-- All the Pretty
Horses author Cormac McCarthy uses "Muscular Prose" to
inflate the depth of the Wild West.
-- New York
Trilogy author Paul Auster uses "Spare Prose," which
pretends to be minimalist but is really repetitive and
empty.
-- And Snow Falling
on Cedars author David Guterson writes "Generic
Literary" or gratuitously melodramatic, important-sounding
novels.
Myers is annoyed with these writers for
taking themselves so seriously--but his real gripe is with
the critics who mock "genre" novels such as Westerns,
romances, and crime dramas while lavishing praise on
"literary" authors.
"David Guterson is granted Serious
Writer status on the basis of Snow Falling on Cedars,
a murder mystery buried under sonorous tautologies, while
Stephen King, whose Bag of Bones is a more
intellectual but less pretentious novel, is still considered
to be just a talented storyteller," he says in the
Manifesto.
It is this very growing hierarchy of "important"
writing that turns people away from literature, Myers says.
"American readers go from reading older
rubbish like The Old Man and the Sea in college to
new bores like [DeLillo's] Underworld," the Balzac
fan said in an interview with Foxnews.com. "Is it any wonder that they lose
interest in reading?"
Many in the literary world have
dismissed Myers' argument.
"Most of the writers the author goes
after are, in fact, people I admire: Proulx, McCarthy,
DeLillo, Auster," Michael Dirda, editor of The
Washington Post Book World, wrote in an online
discussion. "No one will remember this article in a year,
but people will be reading Proulx, McCarthy, et al
for a long, long time."
But Myers encourages his fans to take
on the establishment.
"It takes a lot of arrogance to
disagree with the consensus of critics … But this is
precisely what we readers need," he said. "Our own taste is
the only authority we should listen to."
Myers' readers seem to agree: The
ratio of letters sent to the Atlantic about his
essay was about 8 positive to 1 negative, he said. Some
even backed up their
statements in interviews with Foxnews.com.
"Today the assumption is that writing
must be hard to understand to be 'literature,'"
one fan of author Philip Roth said.
Californian Jonathan Aurthur said Myers
made him feel better about disliking Proulx.
"Having been assured by the critics
that it was a great book, I slogged through 150 pages of
The Shipping News before I gave up."
And reader Jane Waddick said the
Manifesto encouraged her to read Stephen King.
"I didn't know he (King) was a good
writer … My own snobbery prevented me from reading his work.
Then I did and yes … he is an excellent writer."
But others sided with the critics
against Myers.
"The fact that someone would make the
claim that the likes of Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, and
Annie Proulx are boring hacks is a perfect example of why
the quality of mainstream literature in this country is in
the toilet. If it can't be read in a beach chair with nine
kids screaming in under five hours, it's pretentious," said
struggling Tennessee writer Jim Cheney.
|
