Naked and the Conflicted
by Adam | Monday 18 January 2010
Perhaps an indulgent exercise considering the tragedy we're all reading about, BUT...
for those of you interested in following a controversy that is raging around the literary establishment these days (whatever any of that means), a few weeks ago, Katie Roiphe wrote a scintillating essay about sex and the great American male novelists of the past half century.
In it, she indicts the new guard of young male fiction writers for essentially lacking the feral sexual ferocity of the old guard (Roth, Mailer, Updike, et al.) in their writing. Roiphe takes feminism to task for being substantially responsible. The article is also a telescoped-yet-engaging summation of the past 50 years of American fiction.
The morning the essay came out, I received 12 giddy e-mails from friends about it. I also sent it to friends of mine who aren't well-versed on American fiction and they loved it and found it accessible. Needless to say, as someone who pretends to be well-versed on American fiction, I also thought it was fascinating.
At this point, the essay is old news. What's new are the letters to the editor written in response to the essay by a cadre of divergent and intellectual overachievers. Quite a bantering is underway.
If you've got an hour to kill, the whole enterprise is worth your time. I wouldn't post boring shit.