But is it Art?

My taste in literature is admittedly not modern. I majored in literature and the one semester I took a class on modernism was pure misery. Virginia Wolf's "To the Lighthouse"bored me to tears. James Joyce was OK when interspersed with bouts of heavy drinking. I actually had to buy the Cliff's notes for D.H. Lawrence.

But the modernists were at least doing something new for their time.

Since I have a job that leaves me a lot of time to read, I go through 2 or 3 books a week. And because they come with tempting blurbs on the back, I occasionally wander into current fiction/literature. I liked the Kite Runner. I was entertained by the Time Travelers Wife. Middlesex was OK. But none of these books strike me as amazingly deep or life changing or even properly art. David Sedaris is even further from that category.

These books could all be described as "A bunch of entertaining and quirky stuff happens." Which is not how you would describe Hardy, Shakespeare, Austen, Milton, or any of the other big ones.

One theory is that novels are meant to be about conflict and struggle. If the character wanders around having sex, doing drugs, and talking to witty friends, there isn't exactly an internal struggle. Although a struggle doesn't guarantee anything. One of the very worst novels I read in recent years was The Corrections. I recall some sort of struggle between an old guy and a talking turd. Very modernist. Never done before. And yet not really Art in my book.

And I know the question, what is Art is old fashioned. And I know that nobody is going to write a Five Act novel. My real objection to the talking turd was that it was a self-involved annoying talking turd that was beating up on a buttoned up Midwesterner who never showed emotion. So, while it's hard to critique a talking turd for lacking realism and falling into easy cliches, that particular talking turd scene can be faulted on both those points.

So, I'm looking to expand my horizons and read something by someone who is still living. I'm open to suggestions.... Off the top of my head I can think of John Irving, Alice Munro, and Billy Collins as examples of living authors of books I've read more than once.