Bringing it All Back Home
Interesting: what Joe says about growing up in Europe, entranced by Bellow and other mid-century American novelists, is precisely the same thing Ian McEwan said not long ago when I asked about his influences as he was deciding to become a writer. And even more interesting, maybe, is that at that very same moment the American novelist was becoming disempowered domestically. That is, Bellow, Mailer, Updike and Roth were culturally central in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s and 70s in a way that no novelist has been since.
"How to meet this challenge?" asks Joe of the withering of America's global cultural hegemony. Well, one way for a lot of writers, inevitably, will be to embrace one's Homie-ness, and write well about America for Americans. As 95% of writers in 95% of the countries on earth do. And imperial twilight can be a great subject, as Forster proved.
Speaking (as Mia did) of "who and what makes an American writer or a British one" and "upcoming Irish writers of note," let me offer a (virtual) toast to that Irish-born, British-educated, American-resident writer Joe O'Neill, who made the Man Booker Prize longlist the other day.
Any full-length novel published in Britain and written in English by a resident of a British Commonwealth country, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe is eligible for the prize. Man Booker Prize description per The New York Times
Are you sure Joe O'Neill's an "American-resident writer"?
August 1, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
the times is incorrect. citizenship, not residency determines eligibility. o'neill lives in nyc.
August 1, 2008 9:36 PM | Reply | Permalink