David Foster Wallace or Chuck Palahniuk?

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT

One of the hardest things to do when setting up brackets like these is to remain impartial. Or: bias is a given, but we need to work to balance that bias.

For instance, if the last slot comes down to David Foster Wallace or Chuck Palahniuk, which writer goes in?

Both have cult followings. In his fiction, Foster Wallace stands for everything I abhor in postmodern lit. The work of both writers is rather dark. Which writer is more important, influential, and representative of our era?

David Foster Wallace put his mind out there as perhaps no author ever has, pushing the envelope of hyper-stimulated intelligence. What his fans react to more than the works themselves is the sensitivity of the person behind the words. His was a dead-end path, in my estimation, yet Wallace took the path all the way to the end, which ended in his own destruction. A cautionary tale, but in its way, an admirable one.

Palahniuk is a more transparent writer. Does this necessarily mean a shallower one? His warmed-over Nietzscheanism has appeal to young men today. Is there anything remarkable or lasting in it? That's the question.

ORIGINALITY
What happens when we throw Michigan writer Jim Harrison into the mix, who's been shown on these threads to have his share of followers?

One thing Harrison isn't, is a trailblazer. He seems to have burst full-born from Hemingway's head. His best-known work, Legends of the Fall, includes a segment about World War I, and is obviously-- obviously-- a nod to Hem and the Hemingway ethos.

That said, Harrison's work feels more American than either Wallace's or Pahluniak's-- there's more affection for the country, the people, the land. With a mere 64 slots to play with, do we include a local colorist? What, then, about Erskine Caldwell? Bret Harte?

Decisions, decisions. . . .

The #9 Seeds

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT

A.) Frank Norris.

B.) John Berryman.

C.) Ray Bradbury.

D.) Margaret Mitchell.

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Norris was a great essayist about literature. He also wrote perhaps the greatest American novel, The Octopus.

Bradbury was a master writer at novel or story, wrote the best sci fi ever-- always a metaphor for our own era-- helped popularize the genre and more than anyone made it respectable.

Mitchell wrote possibly the most famous American novel and in it, two characters everyone knows in Rhett and Scarlett.

As for John Berryman, I'm including him because he was probably the best American poet at a time when American poetry was at its apex.

Each of these four, in very different ways, are giants of American literature. I'd have a hard time finding others at this point I could say that about-- though the rest of the crowd isn't lacking for wannabes, or those who came close.

Reinventing the Canon

To what extent does the approved canon of American literature no longer work?

This question has run through my head several times while putting together brackets for the All-Time American Writer Tournament. How far does one go in respecting the past—or not even the past, but writers of the past approved by literary mandarins now?

John Updike is an example of what I’m talking about. Updike is considered a major literary figure of the last fifty years of our literature—considered so by those who control literature. But these refined persons represent in fact a sliver of the American public. Updike’s world was a narrow world. He never connected with the true mainstream of American culture.

Who in fact are the American writers of past and present that we should be honoring?

Memo

I'll be taking a break from the Tournament for the rest of the week-- but please stay tuned.

Choices

32 SLOTS ARE LEFT

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT

Choices, choices. Does Truman Capote have a large enough body of work with one great nonfiction book and a handful of decent stories? If so, who does he displace? Joseph “Catch 22” Heller? Herman Wouk? Caine Mutiny’s strawberries are part of the culture. Prolific icon Philip Roth? Richard Yates? Yates wrote a few great stories and at least one pretty good novel. As did J.F. Powers. Richard Wright? Can Wright be left out? Or Thomas Wolfe of a few giant novels? Or observant journalist and novelist Tom Wolfe? “The Right Stuff” and “Bonfire of the Vanities” are terms known by those who haven’t read the books.

We’ll see that 32 places isn’t a lot.

Playwrights? August Wilson? Langston Hughes? Neil Simon??? Will Neil Simon’s plays last? Will David Mamet’s plays last? In any sales job one meets individuals who quote from Mamet: the Glengarry leads; coffee is for closers, and such. Should any past but now largely forgotten playwrights like Clifford Odets get in?

32 slots isn’t a lot.

Why isn’t Ralph Waldo Emerson listed yet? Henry David Thoreau? Theodore Dreiser? Robert Lowell? Erskine Caldwell? Remember Tobacco Road. David Foster Wallace of our own time. Bret Ellis. Henry Miller. Joan Didion. Thomas Pynchon. James Dickey. Updike will likely have to take a space, like it or not. Hart Crane Wallace Stevens John Ashbery (ugh!) William Carlos Williams Maya Angelou Alice Walker James Cain Philip K. Dick IsaacAsimovNormanMailerEdithWhartonBernieMalamudSaulBellowSinclairLewisJamesJonesPearlBuckWilliam(EdgarRice?)Burroughs help!

32 spots isn’t a lot.

More Tournament Seeding

At this stage, the order in which I put these writers is arbitrary. Nearly all need to be in the tournament someplace. The hard choices have yet to be made.

#5 Seeds:

A.) T.S. Eliot.
B.) Gore Vidal.
C.) Susan Sontag.
D.) Allen Ginsberg.

#6 Seeds:

A.) Harriet Beecher Stowe.
B.) Nathaniel Hawthorne.
C.) William Faulkner.
D.) Robert Frost.

#7 Seeds:

A.) Stephen Crane.
B.) Carl Sandburg.
C.) J.D. Salinger.
D.) Arthur Miller.

#8 Seeds:

A.) Joyce Carol Oates.
B.) James Baldwin.
C.) Charles Bukowski.
D.) Kurt Vonnegut.

This fills out the top half of the bracket. Many spots are left. So far, I've listed very few living writers-- in part because few have a large footprint in society, and because literature itself no longer has a large footprint in society. There are no major figures, with the possible exception of Stephen King, who's a terrible writer. is too limited to have the artistic and intellectual ambition of a Rand or Sontag, has no personality, and breaks no new artistic ground.

Some writers like Chuck Paluhniak, mentioned in a comment on a previous post, have some footprint in the culture. Enough to include them in the brackets, but not ahead of these other figures.

It's not a great time for the art. Eliot gave readings in the 1950's in stadiums. Great poetic talent then, whether from vistors like Dylan Thomas or home grown poets like John Berryman, or fledgling geniuses like Sylvia Plath, was everywhere. Novelists like Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal through the 60's were celebrities. Some, like Susan Sontag, had personality and style. Creative writers were considered major thinkers.

Which creative writer is considered a major thinker now? If I'm missing a couple, please let me know!

#3 and #4 Seeds

ALL-TIME AMERICAN WRITER TOURNAMENT

#3 Seeds:

A.) Tennessee Williams.

B.) Jack London.

C.) Henry James.

D.) Emily Dickinson.

#4 Seeds:

A.) Kenneth Rexroth.

B.) Sylvia Plath.

C.) Edgar Allan Poe.

D.) John Steinbeck.

Not many surprises, I hope. Rexroth was not only a great poet and essayist, he mentored and influenced the Beats in San Francisco. I don't believe Ginsberg's "Howl" would've been possible without the example of Rexroth's "Thou Shalt Not Kill" before it.

With the rise of the feminist movement in the 1970's, and the publication of Plath's autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath became something of a pop figure. But, the talent lives up to it. Not only did she master the elements of real poetry, rhythmns, euphony, symbols, but she added an intense insight and energy-- her personality-- to the words. As with Emily D's work, the best poetry is eternal.

Jack London? Possibly the best-known and loved American writer in the rest of the world. Few short story writers equalled his mastery of the form. None were better. Ya gotta also love his dog tales.

Tennessee Williams' plays remain potent and remembered. "Stella!"

Though he took American letters in the wrong direction, IMHO, the stuffy, overwritten, and the self-absorbed, Henry James had too much strong output overall for him to be ignored. Even some semi-pop stuff like "Daisy Miller" and "Turn of the Screw." My favorite James work is "Altar of the Dead." Perfect reading for the depressed!

Poe more-or-less invented the detective story and the horror genre, which we've been stuck with, for good and ill, since.

With such a tournament, the question is still who's been left out.