Robert McCrum bewails the state of the contemporary fiction. According to a literary editor in the U.S., there is a new criterion for the successful novel. "A new novel should be summarised in a single sentence, and should stop dinner party conversation for at least 10 minutes".
He calls it the IKEA novel, "competently written in a simulacrum of fine writing", but unfortunately it is "not original, and not distinctive, and with an inner vision of humanity ..it was invented to please a market and to make money."
What would have become, asks McCrum, of Heart of Darkness or Ulyssess in such a world?
Observer Review, 13.11.11
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