FictionWhere has a decade gone? Has so much time dribbled away since Granta published its inaugural Best of Young American Novelists?
Yes it has, and of that class of 1996, several - including Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Mona Simpson, Lorrie Moore, David Guterson, Ethan Canin, Robert O'Connor, Madison Smartt Bell and so on, who were back then already published and established - left the question of why herald writers most of whom were already known. The answer must lie in seeing how they have done since. Most of them appear to have peaked then.
These "best of" projects had initially been inspired by the success of the first Granta British "stars of the future" back in 1983, which showcased talents such as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift, Maggie Gee, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie and Julian Barnes. Many of those are now part of the British literary establishment. But then, that was quite a generation, most of whom are still producing good work. There have been two subsequent British selections, neither as impressive, although it is interesting to note that AL Kennedy featured in two selections and has remained a writer to heed.
Such lists are fun, if not always conclusive, and are invariably uneven - extracts of unpublished novels compare poorly with polished short stories - and let's be honest, oppressively politically correct. Still, human beings love lists and so Granta looked to the US literary scene - about as broad as you can get in terms of population and multi-culturalism, not to mention the legions of university presses and creative writing programmes, all busily adding to the thousands of books coming out of that country. One thing was for certain, even as recently, or as long ago, as in 1996, depending on an individual's sense of time and trend: the 1996 Granta selection of writers under 40 underlined a definitive tendency - US writers tend to look to story, or at least favour conventional storytelling, far more than their contemporaneous British counterparts. The suburbs dominated - here was the US, a US in which the emphasis was on Americans who saw themselves as just that: American.
A decade on, the profile is different - the selected writers are, as the cover highlights, "now even younger". The 21 writers showcased, all still under 35, reflect all aspects of the new, openly ethnic US, a place in which people always "came" from somewhere else, but are now clearly from elsewhere. This selection is more individual than national. Sex and gender as themes have retreated to the margins. You don't feel, "wow, so this is what is being published in the States". The compilers should consider that readers tend to read what is coming out and European readers are well served by US fiction - and British publishers are publishing it. Also it does make one wonder about the date-of-birth criteria. Perhaps "new" would be more productive than "young"? After all, Annie Proulx first emerged as a "new" rather than young writer - she was 56 when Postcards was published.
INCLUDED IN THIS new Granta selection, by a panel including AM Homes and Edmund White, of new stories and extracts from novels-in-progress, is Jonathan Safran Foer, author of an impressive debut, Everything is Illuminated, and an over-rated 9/11 second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He is already famous and unfortunately represented here by a mediocre short story. His Jewishness is central to his work, as it is to Dara Horn, also author of two novels to date, including The World To Come. Her contribution here, Passover in New Orleans, an extract from a work-in-progress, is a fine example of old-style storytelling. "I went to a hypnotist's show once, here in New York. It was years and years ago, around 1870 or so. My wife was always superstitious, and she was the one who wanted to see the show. But I was the one who ended up on stage."
She has the conversational tone Paul Auster was only to find after several novels and the extract leaves one interested in seeing the completed novel.
That can not be said of Gabe Hudson's violently strident Hard Core, which looks to the military fiction that emerged from the Vietnam experience with writers such as Larry Heinemann and Tim O'Brien. Hudson's war is Iraq. His writing is vulgar and designed to shock; Hard Core is the ugliest sample in the selection.
The eccentric element is playfully alive and well served by Karen Russell in her political satire, The Barn at the End of Our Term. In this lively narrative, a number of former US presidents meet up in a large barn. Each in turn realises he has become a horse, each with a defined personality of his own. One of these horses is convinced his wife has returned in the guise of a sheep and he proceeds to woo her. It just about works. The same cannot be said of Olga Grushin's Exile, which is taken from a work-in-progress. She arrived in the US at 18. Her piece is odd; it reads as pastiche 19th-century Russian fiction, and poor pastiche at that. It is as if this selection is determined to be as wide as possible, and quality is being overshadowed. Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love, is represented by a mere token piece.
FAR MORE ACCOMPLISHED is Nell Freudenberger's Where East Meets West, in which the narrator - an old woman, a former teacher and clearly an individual not to be trifled with - awaits the arrival of her granddaughter's new boyfriend. But before that she entertains herself by watching her neighbour's new wife. Her neighbour had had a messy divorce, and the new wife is far younger, Bengali and secured through a website. The old lady and the young woman become friendly. The young wife, who is learning to drive, explains that "in Desh I was an English teacher". The narrator observes: "She had an animated way of speaking, almost as if she were performing lines in a play. Not that her words seemed false, it was just that they seemed to have a greater intensity than other people's."
As the old lady watches and waits, dissecting everything with the thoroughness of her former teacher self, Freudenberger ensures that the reader remains conscious that the narrator, although sharp and feisty, is also elderly and well aware of her age. "One of the things no one tells you about being old is how you are never allowed to do anything even remotely unusual. I have always had a habit of putting my head in my hands when I am concentrating, and sometimes Serena [her nurse] will come along and find me in that posture. What are you doing? she asks as if I were dressed up in men's clothing, or finger painting on the walls." The story convinces through the narrator's voice and tone, which consolidate the adroit characterisation.
Elsewhere another skilled writer, Maile Meloy - whose two novels to date, Liars and Saints and A Family Daughter, as well as the collection Half In Love, ably demonstrate her feel for character - is represented by a strong, atmospheric performance. O Tannenbaum is a well structured, cinematic story with shades of Tobias Wolff. It is also one of the few conveying a sense of sexual tension. This is an excellent story, in which a couple and their child, having successfully acquired a free Christmas tree, are making their way home in triumph. "That was when they saw the couple at the side of the road. Folks dressed like Eskimos . . . the man wore a blue parka and held up a broken cross-country ski." As a story it represents much of what is distinct and inspired in the finest US fiction and towers above all else in this selection.
Meloy is good. So too is Akhil Sharma, who was born in Delhi in 1971 and came to the US as an eight-year-old. His novel, An Obedient Father, achieves the warmth and humanity so typical of Indian fiction. Mother and Son is taken from a novel-in-progress and is apparently strongly autobiographical. In it, the narrator recalls leaving India as a child and arriving in the US. "I liked America immediately", he says, before beginning a dramatic account of his brother's accident.
IT IS INTERESTING to see Beijing-born Yiyun Li included. Winner of the inaugural Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - ahead of David Means and Bret Anthony Johnston - she is represented by House Fire, a work that has echoes of Amy Tan. In it, six Chinese women form an agency dedicated to saving failing marriages. It has charm and humour and is very Chinese.
Best of Young American Novelists would be more accurately labelled best "young international" writing. Youth is the template here. How important is nationality? In his introduction, Ian Jack decides US fiction has changed. Perhaps what he really means is that the US has changed, the racial composite of the US has changed, as it has everywhere else. In their determination to make their selection representative of the new ethnic literatures, the enthusiastic panel that put this volume together may have forgotten to consider what exactly US fiction is, never mind what constitutes the best of it.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Best of Young American Novelists Granta, 352pp. £12.99
