Who are the best contemporary authors?

A modern day writer would write about modern day problems and ideas. And you don't need to read every "classic".

Contemporary literature is truly where it's at. Assuming most of us here read the classics doesn't it seem kind of strange that we spend our time discussing literature that has been sifted through for a very long time? Now with that being said I'm not trying to say there is no value in this. For instance there could be some kind of technological or social advancement in the near future that lets say for the sake of this example Dantes work could shed some insight into metaphorically or what ever.

I find that contemporary literature is exciting in that it more or less takes place in the world we live in now (assuming it's not set in the past/future or some kind of alternate world).

The only problem that is worth writing about right now is post-modernism and whatever we should expect after it, if only we're not experiencing it already. This is the only modern day problem. Not climate change, not Trump winning the election, not aliens - This. Every other modern problem or idea is what we had before, and it all takes start in bce.

And if some genius will write a book that will solve this problem, then I'm sure he won't be obscured. But I won't be able to read and understand him anyway because in order to do so - I need to go through a whole timeline of literature.

A modern man with his modern eyes can't solve this problem unless he'll absorb and understand everything that was before him.

1) There's no easy way to track new books. Comics, for instance, have nipped this problem in the butt, with many services/sites available to see *everything* getting released every Wednesday. I've yet to find a similar system for books.

2) (Modern) critics and (modern) academia can't be trusted. Due to #1, they'd normally be the next best guide to find out what's good, but they can't delineate what makes a book good without harping over its internal politics. This isn't necessarily a bad or new thing, except modern left-wing politics are batshit insane more often than not.

2*) On the same note, literary awards are losing their credibility with every ceremony, for the same reasons as #2.

3) Regular people can't be trusted so much, since literature is basically in the same boat as comics: the overwhelming majority of readers consume the worst versions of lowbrow genre-fiction as their standard reading material. So, if you were to put a piece of real adult literature in front of them, they'd probably hate it.

I would honestly LOVE to talk about good contemporary literature, but it's just difficult to do.

Could you expand on what you mean about the only problem worth writing about is postmodernism?

I'm trying to get into more contemporary lit but everything I read is crap. Knausgaard's a bore, Chabon is unremarkable, Diaz is obnoxious, Vollmann doesn't deverse his self-indulgence, and I just can't find the art in pop lit like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling.

Maybe I'm being a pleb by reading only award winning famous authors, but I really don't know how to decide what to read. Should I just grab random books off the shelf? I've tried that once and got nowhere. Maybe there are hidden gems out there but I already have little free time to read. I'd rather read classics. I don't always win with those of course, but it's the better bet for me.

>unironically reading Chabon
Jesus Christ m8

This is true. There are so many books being published that filtering through the shit is difficult. Online self-publishing is another avenue, but I sometimes think that the type of people who would be great artists in the past are becoming depressed or killing themselves because of the overwhelming stress and isolation modern life gives sensitive and intelligent people.

>what are the things that middlebrows always buy?Queen Anne furniture (faked, but none the less expensive); first editions of dead writers, always the worst; pictures, or reproductions from pictures, by dead painters; houses in what is called “the Georgian style” — but never anything new, never a picture by a living painter, or a chair by a living carpenter, or books by living writers, for to buy living art requires living taste.

HNNNG why is she so qt

Okay. I stand from a position that if you would ask me 'Why don't I read contemporary literature' I'd tell you that 'I don't find it as captivating as classics'. And if then you asked 'What about the modern problems and ideas' I'd ask you back 'What modern problems and ideas?'. You try to allure me with contemporary literature when I 100% believe that it can't surprise me or add something new to the table that's hasn't been already done before, and with a better and more intricate level of prose and poetry.

Classics have it all, and even birth of post-modernity itself can be traced long back before XX century. It only started to be written about and expanded in this time, and it's till going. We live in era of new paganism and post-modernism has completely taken control over our lives. This is the problem that'd be worth my time to read. So, for now, I want to enjoy classical literature, and I'm doing this not for sake of style or anything else, but out of sheer interest for it. I want to the start of it. I want to experience change of tides in literature throughout time and follow the grow of mankind's consciousness. Contemporary literature can't satisfy me right now.

William Vollman
Ian McEwan
J.M.Coetzee
Martin Amis
Kazuo Ishiguro
Gene Wolfe
David Mitchell
John Irving
Marilynne Robinson
John Barth
Jonathan Franzen
Julian Barnes
John Crowley
Mark Danielewski
Thomas Ligotti

Try these before complaining, and no none of them are political writers, and they're all Anglo-Saxon writers

> He doesn't ask himself if he thinks the novel is good, he doesn't ask himself if he thinks the prose is well written, he may not even ask himself if he likes it
You're assuming that if a reader doesn't like a classic, the reader will assume the problem is in himself or herself and not the literature. But the reader can disagree with consensus and they frequently do, whether they have a good reason or not. Example, most American high schoolers will rate Heart of Darkness as one of the worst books.

Choosing classics is more about two things: not wasting one's time and gauging the depth of human output. If there is some historical concensus that the work is great or 'classic' then you may well assume that you are less likely to be wasting your time reading it; that there's something in there worth getting at. You may not always be right but it's a matter of probability on your side. The other part is trying to access the human depths; "there is nothing new under the sun". Why go for derivative new work if you haven't yet approached the major works? Not to mention there is actually some worth in hating a classic in that you come to understand something about those who love it or praise it. Read and hate a new book that barely anyone knows about and you don't learn much other than your own reaction to it (as you won't likely find very many others who have read it).

Ted Chiang is cool. And I also like the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer.

As readers, are interested in a good story? Or something that's intellectually stimulating? Or is a good story supposed to be that.

I enjoy pulpy reads as well as icons of literature, Faulkner and Garcia Marquez, but a good read is still a good read.

How good is Coetzee? He came to a recent book fair in my city a few months ago and im seeing a lot of his books at the library i frequent, tempting me to buy them.
I know he´s a Nobel laurate.

>bunch of faggot baby boomers or just old men

whatever man, anything actually new

Contemporary literature is largely degraded from classical and by classical I really mean any classic tradition and education dating before the latter half of the 20th century.

I hate the meme that great works are out there it just takes time for them to get recognized! Etc etc, no more excuses I don't care to hear it from a society that places 0 emphasis on greek and Latin studying and then expects to have greats roaming around in every corner of the room.

He's a very good writer imo

This actually.

Ishiguro is master class. Vollman is trash.

OP, the problem with at least American contemporary fiction is that a lot of it is just really, really bad. The state of contemporary American fiction is dominated by the boring, cookie cutter MFA program be-part-of-the-club bullshit.

Contemporary lit is infested with boring stories written by shitty uninteresting MFA students in writers' workshop approved wannabe Denis Johnson or Hemingway style that is somewhat easy to imitate.

So much of it is this solipsistic, domestic sphere nonsense where shitty characters just wallow in their own problems. Broad or challenging themes or messages are rarely engaged and pretty much nothing happens.

There's a cabal of the most prominent American contemporary writers who are all basically friends: Junot Diaz, Amy Tan, Johnathan Safran Foer, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michiko Kakutani etc. It' a more or less NYC based circle jerk of domestic sphere drivel and "muh immigrant experience". Lahiri actually has a lot of talent and some of her stuff is quite good--but in true contemp lit MFA style she just doesn't challenge herself at all or say anything new, it's all just "muh upper crust hyper educated Bengali immigrant experience."

In terms of the native English speaking contemporary world: Ishiguro, Pynchon, Delillo, and McCarthy are the standard bearers imho.

>Franzen
>good

Ferrante, James, Coetzee, Sebald, apparently Han Kang, apparetnly yanigaharaetc

If you want to get into them go through the various literature awards lists on wikipedia and find things that interest you, or look through NYRB recent reviews.

Excellent post, and I would add fear of establishing what you find to be excellent vs. what an elite tells you.

Disgrace is a fantastic novel

As a non-obscurantist at least in his prose structure, if not his plotexperimental author, Ishiguro may reign supreme

>I hate the meme that great works are out there it just takes time for them to get recognized!

If you look at the works of any given year you will find real disconnect between what was sold and what was good.

If you are looking for ideas there are tons of yearly literary awards. Unforunately the Man Booker is trending further and further to the left, but there are certainly others out there like the Cervantes that havent been infiltrated by media money and celebrities. The Man Booker Longlist is even good, in that they are books that were rejected for one reason or another.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards

>He doesn't ask himself if he thinks the novel is good, he doesn't ask himself if he thinks the prose is well written, he may not even ask himself if he likes it, because he decided the answer to all those questions before he opened the book.

No.

Do Veeky Forums users who manage to publish ever shill their shit here?

Yes with varying degrees of success. Such shills are far more commonplace on reddit though, for obvious traffic reasons.

To say nothing of Tao Lin and his groupies

I've only read his vegetarian tract slash novella "The Lives of Animals," but as a vegetarian fag I loved it. He's definitely a clear, thoughtful writer, and he didn't cross into polemic even though his subject in that book is so overtly political.

my fucking sides