Comments on: Who do the kids in contemporary writing workshops emulate?

Question: Who do the kids in contemporary writing workshops emulate?

Kattullus — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:34:24 -0800

Who's the Carver of today? That is, who do the kids in contemporary writing workshops emulate? Supposedly, in the 50's into the 60's it was Hemingway. From the 60's and 70's it was Donald Barthelme. The 80's and 90's was the reign of Carver. Has anyone taken over?

Yes, these are crass generalizations, but what I'm interested in is perception.

By: nameless.k

nameless.k — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:41:06 -0800

I'm a kid in writing workshop. I would say that among the favorites today are George Saunders, John Barth, David Foster Wallace

By: billysumday

billysumday — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:43:00 -0800

Interesting question - I'll be intrigued to see what the consensus is on this one. I've wondered a few times how many writing students are imitating George Saunders these days.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:48:23 -0800

I'm guessing there's a bunch of Palahniuk followers too.

By: mattbucher

mattbucher — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:17:50 -0800

I would say David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith.

By: craven_morhead

craven_morhead — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:19:36 -0800

Saunders and Palahniuk in my circles, with the occasional nod to Annie Proulx

By: duende

duende — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:19:30 -0800

david foster wallace.

By: princesspathos

princesspathos — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:28:54 -0800

Let us not forget Dave Eggers.

By: divabat

divabat — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:42:54 -0800

In my writing class there are people trying to be George Orwell.

By: mdn

mdn — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:42:56 -0800

I was writing workshops in the 90s and would have said David Foster Wallace then... and Dave Eggers I would have thought would be a result of such writing workshops.

By: thinkingwoman

thinkingwoman — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:04:18 -0800

i was in workshops about 5 years ago and the nonfiction kids loved eggers and gourevitch. i don't know who the fiction kids tried to be.

i myself was trying to be hemingway, but many were trying to be david sedaris.

By: jayder

jayder — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:06:32 -0800

My not-very-informed impression is that I don't think there is a Carver of today. I think the literary world is more decentralized than it was in Carver's day; there's a proliferation of small presses that did not exist then, and a lot of interesting work coming out of those presses, but few real "titans" of contemporary literature. The writers that have been named so far (Wallace, Saunders, Eggers) are so idiosyncratic and stylized that the only people emulating them are fools.

By: vito90

vito90 — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:34:30 -0800

Nobody's trying to be Bukowski anymore?

By: escabeche

escabeche — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:46:11 -0800

Ha, I would have guessed Saunders.

For what it's worth, I think Carver is more "80s" than "80s and 90s." When I was in high school (1986-1989) everyone wanted to write like Carver. When I was in a writing workshop (1993-94) I don't remember there being any dominant model; the people in my program wrote in widely varying styles. But by that time I don't remember Carveriana being one of them.

One thing I do know -- any attempt to imitate David Foster Wallace ends in bad parody David Foster Wallace. I don't think it's ever been done well.

By: Bella Sebastian

Bella Sebastian — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:17:18 -0800

One thing I do know -- any attempt to imitate David Foster Wallace ends in bad parody David Foster Wallace.

I think even David Foster Wallace is a parody of David Foster Wallace now.

By: cowbellemoo

cowbellemoo — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:49:49 -0800

David Schickler and Dave Sidaris from my experience.

By: Wayman Tisdale

Wayman Tisdale — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:04:01 -0800

I think it is correct that there isn't a single dominant voice out there. Eggers and Foster Wallace exert an influence, but I'm not sure we could put them in the same class as Hemingway or even Carver.

Bukowski and Carver are still relevant. There are cults of Denis Johnson and Kerouac and Salinger. Nabokov.

I think Garcia Marquez maintains a strong influence over this generation.

By: Wayman Tisdale

Wayman Tisdale — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:11:26 -0800

Writing that reminded me about how lame writing workshops are. Like in the movie "Kicking and Screaming" when someone profoundly says, "He's like Humbert Humbert mixed with Holden Caufield, and a little Hundred Years of Solitude," and you see the professor in the background rolling his eyes.

By: roll truck roll

roll truck roll — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:20:47 -0800

I've also noticed a lot of kids trying, consciously or subconsciously, to sound like This American Life and the like. Trying to be funny without being really funny.

By: Kattullus

Kattullus — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:40:13 -0800

From people around me who've been in writing workshops lately there are two more votes for George Saunders and one more for David Foster Wallace.

By: jayder

jayder — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:56:30 -0800

Like in the movie "Kicking and Screaming" when someone profoundly says, "He's like Humbert Humbert mixed with Holden Caufield, and a little Hundred Years of Solitude," and you see the professor in the background rolling his eyes.

Yes, the old "bastard love child review," the favorite of lazy critics everywhere: "[hot young novelist]'s work is what we'd have if William Burroughs and Jane Austen had a bastard love child."

It's funny that that's a joke in a movie. I've been amazed at how many reviewers seriously think that is an enlightening way to describe a book.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:49:57 -0800

God this thread depresses me. Carver and his ilk were bad enough, but Saunders? Christ, he's decent, but only barely. We're in for a coming world of hurt.

By: soviet sleepover

soviet sleepover — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 09:30:27 -0800

The fiction writers in my program are overwhelmed with wanting to be Cormac McCarthy, and with inventing appropriate blue collar pasts for themselves.

There's definitely not a central poet-model, though when I lived in Pittsburgh it seemed like everyone wrote in the plainfaced traditional narrative style of Lynn Emanuel.

By: myrrh

myrrh — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:21:59 -0800

Thank you vito90 for making me smile.

In my experience, to repeat what's been said, there are a lot of David Foster Wallace imitators, as well as Palahniuk-ites, and followers of the whole McSweeney's school of style.

Also, though, I've observed a lot of people writing not after the fashion of a single writer, but writing with a cinematic approach, appropriating tools of pacing and visualized metaphors, not to mention a lot of medias in res from film.

I've seen a few "kids" attempting (though, with mixed results) to imitate the stream-of-consciousness-meets-hypertext style of Mark Danielewski, as well. Not unrelated, perhaps, to the notion that writers are increasingly unable to ignore the role of film and other media technology in mediating reader reactions.