The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers

William Vollmann is underated. Last Stories was gold once you got past the slav-worship of the first two sections.

>If we don't understand bad writing, we can't understand good writing. Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance.
Not going to say that everything about that list is terrible, but overall that's a pretty shitty way to judge prose.

Vollmann is one of the few people on the list who really can write. His Seven Dreams books are excellent.

>Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity?

Dude can't write for shit but wants to talk about who is overrated.

>pic unrelated
Why did you post it then?

i did it in the desperate hope that you would reply, user.

Out of curiosity, how would you better phrase that sentence?

pastebin.com/zScizSgV

William T. Vollman
Amy Tan
John Ashbery
Mary Oliver
Helen Vendler
Antonya Nelson
Sharon Olds
Jorie Graham
Jonathan Safran Foer
Jhumpa Lahiri
Junot Diaz
Louise Gluck
Michael Cunningham
Billy Collins
Michiko Kakutani

I haven't read a single word by any of these people. I've wanted to pick up something by Vollman or Ashberry for a while, but I haven't even heard of the others. I'm not American though.

There is literally nothing wrong with that sentence.

William T. Vollman
>Third-rate Pynchon desperate to impress with quantity rather than quality.
>Grist for dissertation mills, intends not to be read but admired, motivated by the same incessant logorrhea as David Kirby and Albert Goldbarth in poetry.
>Encapsulates ethical vacuity of American fiction after the collapse of 1970s postmodernism. Any moral meaning is buried in indigestible compendiums of graceless sentences. His few readable pieces are those heavily edited by conventional magazines (such as his Taliban piece edited 40 times by the New Yorker).
Amy Tan
>Ruined minority/ethnic fiction by pouncing upon a made-for-success formula of family secrets wrapped in the multigenerational saga--East and South Asian writers have been doing little else for 20 years.
>Helped deflect Asian-American writing's oppositional energies by promoting convenient multicultural myths. Her facile multicultural template has had vast implications for the entire culture industry. Flattened politics and history to private angst in depiction of minority assimilation. Empowered other immigrant writers to make mountains out of the molehills of their minor adjustment struggles.
>Claims Nabokovian aspirations, but in fact writes pap that allows readers to delude themselves that they know something about Asian culture.
John Ashbery
>Another amateur philosopher, like Jorie Graham, another acolyte of what he thinks is Wittgensteinian logic. Ran away with postmodern irony, eccentricized it to the point of meaninglessness.

>Translation, she's a dull craftswoman who has never questioned realism, and has no clue about history or politics.

Look for the phrase "history and/or politics" and you get the gist of his argument

>minority/ethnic fiction

>and watch for my list of the most underrated American writers today

i wonder what the chances are they will nearly all be black or muslim women

Except it's tryhard as fuck and uses bigger words than it needs to. Knowing what you're writing, who you're writing to and then matching your diction is huge part of writing. And honestly, after reading some of the shit here I can see why nobody really understands that.

It's like showing up to a frat party wearing a suit or wearing a down jacket in Alabama in August. There's no reason to write it that way.

Not to mention starting an article with a fucking question is cliche as fuck and obvious creative constipation.

All the words it used were pretty simple.

>Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity?

What are the big words here, exactly?

I've only read Vollman, Tan, Ashbery, Safran Foer, and Diaz, and I didn't like any of them. Solid article.

>DAT CLEVA MAYN USIN DE BEEG WERDZ, HE FINK HE SO SMARDER DAN ME

l m a o

Minimalism is in vogue because people have awful literary intelligence, it is not automatically good writing.

we get it, you know a lot of big words dude.

the first sentence is a little clunky, and the last sentence is clunky and redundant. they aren't big words for you, but they are unnecessary.

I guess you plebs never heard of MNMDR?

Contemporary. American. And there's something terribly sad and banal about that.

What are the 'big words' in that post you utter mong.
You have expressed nothing with this sentence.

> Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance. Good writing is exactly the opposite. Bad writing draws attention to the writer himself.

HOW WILL Veeky Forums EVER RECOVER

ABSOLUTELY BTFO

Any list of overrated contemporary authors which does not include Ta-Nehisi "MUH BLACK BODIES" Coates is incomplete.

>style over substance
This is the pseud's go to. They heard someone say it about Pulp Fiction and still cling to it years later.

dasd

I think if someone were to call you a retard it would be one of the rare times they were correct on Veeky Forums.