As reported (here) in yesterday's Guardian, the excellent lit mag Granta has compiled a list of the best young US novelists under 35.
Here it is:
Daniel Alarcón
Kevin Brockmeier
Judy Budnitz
Christopher Coake
Anthony Doerr
Jonathan Safran Foer
Nell Freudenberger
Olga Grushin
Dara Horn
Gabe Hudson
Uzodinma Iweala
Nicole Krauss
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
Yiyun Li
Maile Meloy
ZZ Packer
Jess Row
Karen Russell
Akhil Sharma
Gary Shteyngart
John Wray
My first emotion upon seeing the list was dismay at how few of the authors' books I'd yet read -- or, in a few cases, even known.
Ok ... that's not entirely true. My first emotion was uncontrollable and all-consuming jealousy of Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss -- the first married couple to make one of these best younger author lists? Or perhaps it was disgust that Granta moved the marker on me while I wasn't looking -- the last time around anyone under 40 counted as younger; now, "younger" means under 35. At least with the under-40 marker, I could've consoled myself that, if I just started this summer, I could pound out a novel and just make the cut in time! How carelessly and callously Granta has dashed those hopes. Ah, well, "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
Some will, like the Guardian, note that "seven on this year's list ... have yet to publish a novel." Rather than criticizing them for that, I wish that Granta would instead just look at best young fiction writers under 35. Why marginalize excellent writers of short fiction? To take one example from their 1996 list, Lorrie Moore would've been a must-have, even had she never published Anagrams or Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
[Just to have some measure of Granta's prognosticatory ability, take a gander at the previous list, from 1996.]
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