What is it about Modernist Literature that makes it superior to most contemporary novels? The material. True, I find much to dislike in the stylistic trends of Post-Modernists—the derivative experimentalism, the ironic pose assumed in narration, the weird character names—but none of this is quite so offensive as the lack of depth, both in the characters and the narrative, displayed by writers of the recent past.
One of my favorite statements to make about contemporary literature is that it’s about as deep and thought provoking as stand up comedy. Take for example Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which in the great tradition of snarky reviewers, I will claim is neither wondrous nor sufficiently brief. The story is told by a narrator who, as a narcissistic, womanizing kid, came to know Oscar and was ultimately changed for the better because of Oscar’s nobility and sacrifice and so on. Diaz applies the focus of the novel on the banal and predictable details of these diametrically opposed characters, and in the course of doing so, never reaches for much beyond the sort of emotional depth one would find in Superbad.
I’m not saying that Oscar Wao is unreadable—like Superbad, it’s actually pretty entertaining. The issue I take with the novel is that in contemporary culture it’s treated as serious literature (or am I just making unfair assumptions about a book that is awarded the Pulitzer Prize these days), but when placed alongside other great works from the cannon of American Literature, Oscar Wao doesn’t compare.
I was reminded of this recently while talking books with a friend of mine. She was about halfway through Oscar Wao, and we talked about it and then other novels, eventually arriving at Willa Cather, whom she hadn’t read. I insisted she borrow my copy of My Antonia, and she did, beginning the book on train back to her apartment that evening. The next time I spoke to her she was nearing the end of My Antonia, but had completely given up on Oscar Wao. I asked her why, to which she answered, “My Antonia ruined it for me. After a few chapters of it, everything in Oscar Wao just seems silly and inconsequential.” (If I ever write a book about literature written in the last twenty years, I’m going to call it Silly and Inconsequential.)
Tangentially related to a discussion of Oscar Wao is my theory that major awards (i.e. the Oscar or the Pulitzer Prize) should function like the baseball hall of fame: each year a new batch of nominees become eligible for the award, but the voters are also allowed to elect a nominee from the previous fifteen years who was not selected previously. In other words, three finalists would still be chosen, but the people who select the Pulitzer Prize would have the option of giving the award to a finalist who lost, let’s say, within the previous decade if the jurors decide that a past book is more deserving than anything published in a given year. Maybe Oscar Wao was better than the other finalists from 2008 (Tree of Smoke and Shakespeare’s Kitchen) but is it better than every other losing finalist of the last ten years, like, Ha Jin’s War Trash in 2005 for instance? I say no.
I originally spawned this idea when I learned the Academy Awards were increasing the number of best picture nominees from five to ten. Wouldn’t it be more interesting, I thought, if they nominated the usual five and then allowed the voters to include all other nominees who lost in the last few years? Wouldn’t the Oscars be infinitely more fascinating if this year Avatar was going up against, say, There Will Be Blood, Good Night, and Good Luck, and The Pianist? Yes. The answer is yes.
