The American writer has his hands full, trying to understand and then describe and then make credible much of American reality.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I kind of want to be seen as an American writer, not just a New York writer.
Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.
Since its beginnings, American writing has been in dialogue with other literatures.
The short story, on the other hand, is the perfect American form.
I consider myself a writer who writes about American expatriates. And if I have any overt cause as a writer besides writing the best prose I can, it's to try to make Americans have a more visceral feeling about how America impacts everybody in the world.
If I don't measure up as an American writer, at least leave me to my delusion.
The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.
The cultural decoding that many American writers require has become an even harder task in the age of globalisation. The experience they describe has grown more private; its essential background, the busy larger world, has receded.
American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.